gold

   Thought to have healing properties, especially for sore eyes and styes, which should be rubbed with a wedding ring (the only gold object most families were likely to possess). Gold *earrings were also thought to strengthen the eyes, and, among sailors and fishermen, to prevent one from drowning. *Aubrey says some people of his time tied gold *coins to ulcers and fistulas; he wonders whether the cure worked because 'gold attracts mercury' or because older gold coins 'were printed with St Michael the Archangel, and to be stamped according to some Rule Astrological' (Aubrey, 1688/1880: 206). Similarly, a letter written during the Plague of 1665 advises: 'Friend, get a piece of angell gold, if you can of Eliz. coine (yt is ye best) wch is phylosophicall gold, and keepe it allways in yor mouth when you walke out or any sicke persons come to you' (Opie and Tatem, 1989: 175). In such cases, the power resides both in the metal and in the symbolism of its design.

   For good luck at sea, sailing boats often had a gold sovereign set in the socket under the mast; the custom was common till about 1914, and is still sometimes followed. It has precedents from ancient Rome (Smith, FLS News 26 (1997), p. 12). Lovett found that fishermen from several towns used to ram a coin into the cork float of a drift-net, to break a run of bad luck in fishing, and held that 'in the old days' it would have been a gold one (Lovett, 1925: 54-5).