Asober tradesman's wife in Launcetown
(about sixty-three miles northest of Helston in
central Cornwall nears the great moors) says that the
townspeople say that a swelling of the neck came be
cured by going to the grave of the latest young
person of the opposite sex before sunrise on the
first of May (Beltane, modern is "May
Day"), and applying the dew, gathered by passing
the hand three times from the head to the foot of the
grave, to the neck. It is also said in these parts
that one can improve the complexion by washing the
face with the early dew from the fields gathered May
first and that a child weak in the back may be cured
by drawing him over grass wet with morning dew on
each of the mornings of May first, second, and third.
