Snails and warts

Wart curing is very common, and in most classes there will be someone who has had experience of it. At Fowlmere in Cambridgeshire I was told this story by a man over seventy who, incidentally, never missed [an evening] class.

"When I was a boy I had warts on the back of my hands, and was advised to rub a black snail on them, then stick the snail on a thorn, and at the new moon I was to point my hand to the moon and blow along the back of it. I did that, and the warts went." He added humorously, "I don't know where they went to."

'Adult education and folklore', by GW Pattison, in Folklore v.64 (1953).