might require. On one occasion Sir Richard Owen, who said he had learned it from the keeper, who knew them all, repeated two or three lines of doggerel used when rotating the child over the bar, but I did not write them down, and cannot remember either sense or words. The passing of the child round the bar used to be timed to meet the rising sun. Whether only one or both women uttered the charm does not appear, but the failure to use the proper word at the exact moment when the first ray of sunrise broke over the horizon was given as the cause whenever the ash, with the intervention of the "shrew-mother," did not effect a cure. Many children were said to be cured at the tree. The greatest secrecy was always observed when visiting it. This was respected by Sir Richard Owen, who, whenever he saw a group advancing towards it, moved away, and was always anxious they should not be disturbed. He could not tell me in what year he last saw a group approach the tree to seek its aid. He could only say he had seen them often, and thought they continued to come for many years.[1]
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- ↑ A writer in the Mid Surrey Times for 1874 says the ash in Richmond Park was at that time "still used and believed in." See History and Antiquities of Richmond, Petersham, Ham, &c.," by E. Beresford Chancellor (1894). Mrs. S. C. Hall, in The Book of the Thames (1859), gives in her well-known decorated manner an account of the Shrew Ash, having apparently obtained her main facts with regard to the Richmond tree from Sir Richard Owen.
