The great charmer of charms[147] in this strange corner of the world is a seventh son born in direct succession from one father and one mother. Find such a person, and you have "the sayer of good words" always at your command. He is called in our folk-lore the doctor of the district. There is such an old man in my hamlet, popularly called Uncle Tony Cleverdon. He was baptised Anthony; but this has been changed by kindly village parlance and the usage of the West. For with us the pet name is generally the short name, and any one venerable from age and amiable in nature is termed, without relationship, but merely for endearment, "uncle" and "aunt."[148] Uncle Tony has inherited this endowment in a family of thirteen children, he being the seventh born. He often says that his lucky birth has been as good as "a fortin" to him all his life; for although he is forbidden by usage and tradition to take money for the exercise of his functions, nothing has hindered that he should always be invited to sit as an honoured guest at the table furnished with good things in the houses of his votaries. Uncle Tony allowed me, as a vast favour, to take down from his lips some of his formularies: they had never been committed to writing before, he said; not, as I believe, for more than three centuries, for they smack of the Middle Ages. He very much questioned whether their virtue would not be utterly destroyed when he was gone, by their being "put into ink."
Uncle Tony was like an ancient augur in the science of birds. "Whenever you see one magpie alone by himself," said he, with a look of inimitable sagacity, "that bird is upon no good: spit over your right shoulder three times, and say--
"Clean birds by sevens, Unclean by twos, The dove in the heavens Is the one I choose!"
Among the myriads of sea and land birds that throng this coast, the raven is king of the rock.[149] The headland and bulwark of the slope of Holacombe is a precipice of perpendicular rock. There, undisturbed (for no bribe would induce a villager to slay them, old or young), the ravens dwell, revel, and reign. One day, as we watched them in their flapping flight, said Uncle Tony to me, "Sometimes, sir, these wild creatures will be so merciful that they will even save a man's life." "Indeed! how?" "Why, sir, it came to pass on this wise. There was once a noted old wrecker called Kinsman: he lived in my father's time; and when no wreck was onward, he would get his wages by raising stone in a quarry by the sea-shore. Well, he was to work one day over yonder, half way down Tower Cliff, and all at once he heard a buzz above him in the air, and he looked up, and there were two old ravens flying round and round very near his head. They kept whirling and whirling and coming so nigh, and they seemed so knowing, that the old man thought verily they were trying to speak, as they made a strange croak; but after some time they went away, and old Kinsman went on with his work. Well, sir, by-and-by they both came back again, flying above and round as before; and then at last, lo and behold! the birds dropped right down into the quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the old man's feet." (Very often the wreckers pick up Neapolitan wax-candles from vessels in the Mediterranean trade that have been lost in the Channel.) "So when Kinsman saw the candles, he thought in his mind, 'There is surely wreck coming in upon the beach:' so he packed his tools together and left them just where he stood, and went his way wrecking. He could find no jetsam, however, though he searched far and wide, and he used to say he verily believed that the ravens must have had the candles at hand in their holt, to be so ready with them as they were. Next day he went back to quarry to his work, and he always used to say it was as true as a proverb: there the tools were all buried deep out of sight, for the craig above had given way and fallen down, and if he had tarried only one hour longer he must have been crushed to death! So you see, sir, what knowledge those ravens must have had; how well they knew the old man, and how fond he was of wreck; how crafty they were to hit upon the only plan that would ever have slocked him away: and the birds, moreover, must have been kind creatures, and willing to save a poor fellow's life. There is nothing on airth so knowing as a bird is, unless it may be a snake. Did you ever hear, sir, how I heal an adder's bite? You cut a piece of hazelwood, sir, and you fasten a long bit and a short one together into the form of a cross; then you lay it softly upon the wound, and you say, thrice, blowing out the words aloud like one of the commandiments--