employment of a broom for favouring the expulsion of the after-birth. That is, it seems probable to me that (at least from the supernatural side) that employment has been based primarily on an application to the broom for its assistance (because of the implement's general associations with childbirth), largely for the keeping away of the demons who might delay the expulsion of the afterbirth, and perhaps in part for actual assistance and with special reference to its power as a clearer-out of things. The convenient form of a broom-handle has, on purely physical grounds, doubtless helped in the adoption of the broom as a thing to be held during parturition, although what has been its importance as a factor in that adoption must at present remain indeterminate.
As a cure for a wart, one is recommended to touch the wart with a twig broken from a broom, and then to place the twig in a drain, where it will rot and gradually be washed away, the belief being that as the twig disappears so will the wart, until nothing is left of either [Yokohama]. This practice, in which contagious and imitative magic are combined, is easily to be paralleled amongst other peoples. It is especially interesting to find what seems an extremely close parallel to it in England, where, when the removal of a wart is desired, the wart may be touched with a stick of elder-wood, which is afterwards buried in the ground to rot,[1] for the elder is looked upon as a magic-working shrub. That, in Japan, the twig with which the wart is to be touched is taken from a broom mainly because of the supposed magical virtues of the broom, and not merely
- ↑ J. Hardy, "Wart and Wen Cures," in Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 222. Kunze, op. cit. p. 147, cites a W. Prussian wart-cure consisting of the stroking of the wart three times with a broom, and then, without speaking a word, putting the broom back into its place. The Cornish belief, quoted in Folk-Lore Record, vol. v. pp. 176, 177, to the effect that "A cure for sore throat was to take a piece of a birch broom and cross it nine times over the part affected" (compare, with this, footnote 2, p. 200, supra) is also interesting in his connection.
