they do powder with gently rubbing and the powder of dried earth worms from the churchyard when the moon be on the increase but overcast, which you will gather by lanthorn which you must be sure not to let go out while you be yet within the gate or there virtue be gone from them.  All these make into a fine powder and well searce, this been ready melt the honey till it simmer then add three ounces each of brown wax, rossin, and grease of a fat pigg, and when all be come at the boil divide your powders to seven heaps and add one at a time.  Do not shake your paper on which the powder hath been put but fold it carefully and hurry it at some grave as there be among what be left some dust of ye wormes which have fed upon ye dead.  So boil it till all be well mixed and then let cool and if it be too stiff add swine grease till it work easy.  When you would use it warm a little in a silver spoon and annoint the sore holding a hot iron over till it be nearly all soaked in, then sprinkle but a little finely doubled searced powder of viper where there be matter.  This hath been tried many times and on different folk in these dales and hath done wonderous cures when all else failed them.  And these words wrate on lambs skin with lambs blood and hung above the ill one’s head hath wrought a most magick wonders of healing and some I do find ready to take oath on it.  I leave it so.”

But Pickering was not very much behind the rest of England when we discover that in the second edition of “A collection of above 300 receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery” published in 1719, and printed and sold in London is given the following:—­

“A very good snail-water for a consumption.  Take half a peck of Shell-snails, wipe them and bruise them Shells and all in a Mortar; put to them a gallon of New Milk; as also Balm, Mint, Carduus, unset Hyssop, and Burrage, of each one handful; Raisons of the Sun stoned, Figs, and Dates, of each a quarter of a pound; two large Nutmegs:  Slice all these, and put them to the Milk, and distil it with a quick fire in a cold Still; this will yield near four Wine-quarts of Water very good; you must put two ounces of White Sugar-candy into each Bottle, and let the Water drop on it; stir the Herbs sometimes while it distils, and keep it cover’d on the Head with wet Cloths.  Take five spoonfuls at a time, first and last, and at Four in the Afternoon.”

It was only about eighty years ago that the old custom of racing for the bride’s garter on wedding days was given up.  In the early years of last century an improvement in public morals showed itself in a frequently expressed opinion that the custom was immodest, and gradually the practice was dropped the bride merely handing a ribbon to the winner of the race.

[Illustration:  A LOVE GARTER, DATED 1749.

The spaces were for the initials of the wearer of the garter and her betrothed.  These garters were raced for on wedding days, the winner of the race being allowed to take the bride’s garter. ]