At the south corner of the Plestor, or area, near the church, there
stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard-
ash, which for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as
a shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches,
when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve
the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse
over the part affected: for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so
baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a
beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted
with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the
limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable,
our provident fore-fathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which,
when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-
ash was made thus: * -- Into the body of the tree a deep hole was
bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in
alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations
long since forgotten.
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