Moles

Much used in folk cures, all of which involved trapping and mutilating the living animal. One or more of its paws would be cut off, sewn up in a bag, and worn round the neck (for toothache, epilepsy, or king's evil), or kept in the pocket (for rheumatism); it would then be released to die slowly, taking the disease with it. Its body cut in half, or the skin flayed off alive, would be bound to the neck till it rotted (for wens on the throat and goitre); its blood drunk in white wine cured epilepsy (Opie and Tatem, 1989: 256-7). According to Francis Grose (A Provincial Glossary (1790), 45), if you hold a mole in your hand till it dies your hands will acquire healing power.

Lincolnshire farm-workers used to rid their fields of moles by the same method as was more commonly used for mice in a house:

Moles were a damn nuisance for eating what you'd planted, especially turnips and swedes, they seemed to love them. They were difficult to get shut of; we tried a number of ways but often we wrote them a note telling them to go away. You wrote on a bit of paper, ‘I’m sick of you eating my stuff, bugger off to the next field’, you put the note under a stone. It worked, but don't ask me why. (Sutton, 1997: 36)

Many superstitions grew up around moles. It was a common error to believe that moles were blind, whereas in fact their eyes are small and often hidden in the hair. As late as Shakepeare's time, moles were popularly believed to be blind, as indicated in the dramatist's play The Tempest: "Pray you tread softly, that the blind mole may not hear a footfall."

Other popular beliefs were that if moles came into a meadow it was a sign of fair weather, that if a mole dug his hole very deep, you could expect a very severe winter, and that if a mole threw up earth during a frost, the frost would disappear in two days.

Some Gypsies believed that moles never touched earth that had been stained with blood. In Britain, farm laborers used to wear the forelegs and a hind leg of a mole in a bag around the neck to protect against toothache. It was also believed that if you pulled molehills up on St. Sylvester's Day (December 31), the moles would not throw up earth again.