Sutherland and the Reay country

FOLK LORE. 1 25
on me, Petter, may the Lord Jesus Christ bless his own words,
and to him be all the praze (praise), Amen."
Evidently, it was long long ago known to dwellers in the
north that a strong faith is about as powerful as any drug in
the pharmacopoeia. A small piece of broom — and this,
savours strongly of witchcraft — kept in the mouth for som
time after a charm has been muttered over it, is also a cure.
Perhaps chemists can tell whether there be any curative sub-
stance in it which would make it equally efficacious before
being thus charmed. Another specific which is known to
cure toothache is to take a common earthworm, carry it in
the mouth " dumb " to the next parish, and there bury it.
This is perhaps a little difficult to do in the Highlands, where
everybody knows everybody else, and where, if you do not
pass a remark regarding the weather to everyone you meet,
you are thought to be very proud, or to entertain them a
grudge. My informer tells me that she knows of several
persons who were cured in this way, and among them, her-
self; only, in order to be unseen, she left home at 3 a.m. One
scarcely knows, in a case like this, whether to pity most the
poor worm or the poor patient.
The belief that the seventh son who is also the seventh
child of the same father and mother, is a " born doctor," is
common all over the country, but in the north of Scotland
the poor fellow is not allowed to prescribe his cures, he must
act them. And of the many which he is able to perform
the two following may be taken as fair examples. Anyone
suffering from a sore back has only to lie prone while this
doctor walks seven times up and down on it. Should the
sufferer be unable to bear this trampling it will suffice that the
doctor step across the patient the same number of times.