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ANCIENT SUPERSTITION RESPECTING FELLING OAKS.


In the _Magna Britannia_, the author in his _Account of the Hundred of
Croydon_, says, "Our historians take notice of two things in this
parish, which may not be convenient to us to omit, viz. a great wood
called Norwood, belonging to the archbishops, wherein was anciently a
tree called the vicar's oak, where four parishes met, as it were in a
point. It is said to have consisted wholly of oaks, and among them was
one that bore mistletoe, which some persons were so hardy as to cut for
the gain of selling it to the apothecaries of London, leaving a branch
of it to sprout out; but they proved unfortunate after it, for one of
them fell lame, and others lost an eye. At length in the year 1678, a
certain man, notwithstanding he was warned against it, upon the account
of what the others had suffered, adventured to cut the tree down, and he
soon after broke his leg. To fell oaks hath long been counted fatal, and
such as believe it produce the instance of the Earl of Winchelsea, who
having felled a curious grove of oaks, soon after found his countess
dead in her bed suddenly, and his eldest son, the Lord Maidstone, was
killed at sea by a cannon ball."

P.T.W.

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