hiccoughs

   Four remedies for hiccups are generally quoted. One is to breathe into a paper bag (in and out, as long as it takes), another is to hold one's breath. The third is to drink a cup of water backwards, that is out of the opposite side of the cup than normal, which can be done by bending over and tilting the cup slightly away from you (with your chin inside the cup). The fourth is to be startled out of them by someone making you jump. Earlier remedies tend to be more complex. 'Take a cup of water, and say: Hiccups, Jiccups, Rise up Jacob, Seven gullups in the cup, Cure Hiccups' (Jones-Baker, 1977: 99). A correspondent in N&Q (5s:3 (1865), 465) writes that you must cross the front of the left shoe with the forefinger of the right hand, while you repeat the Lord's Prayer backwards. In the 1820s, Edward Moor recommended holding the breath and saying, three times, 'Hiccup - sniccup - look up - right up - three drops in a cup - is good for the hiccup' (Moor, 1823: 167); long before that, in 1584, Reginald *Scot commented, 'Some will hold fast their left thombe in their right hand when they hickot; or else will hold their chinne with their right hand whiles a gospell is soong.' Opie and Tatem, 1989: 198-9.