The St Agnes’s Eve ague charm

Hone preserved a charm for the ague that was said to work only on St Agnes’s Eve. It had to be said up the chimney by the eldest woman of the family. The words ran in three short couplets bidding the fever tremble and go, tremble and quake, and at last tremble and die, and never return on the third day. Ellis added it to Brand’s account of the eve, which is otherwise given over to maidens’ divinations of their future husbands.