Читать книгу Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate. A Scottish Historical Romance онлайн

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"'Tis a great secret, and yet withal a simple one; for with it my mother, the Lady Jane Gordon of Glenbucket (quhom God assoilzie), made a whole man of her sister's son, the abbot of Pluscardine, who hath now departed to the company of the saints. 'Tis the first egg that a pullet hath laid (and mark, ye damsels, it must be laid upon a Friday), beat up widdershins with the first dew of the morning, and with thirteen drops of holy water, for ye ken there is a charm in that number; and this simple, if taken as the first food for nine successive mornings, would cure her. Gif it failed, there is one other mode—by applying a stone called a magnet, of potent and miraculous power, to the pit of the stomach, and repeating the word Abrodœtia three times; whilk failing, we must trust to God, for then it can be no other than the demon Archeus, who, at times, takes possession of the stomach, as the learned Paracelsus told father St. Bernard, when he dwelt with him at the Scottish cloister of Wurtzburg, in the year 1528."