Dowse

dowse (verb)  a south England dialect word of uncertain origin, mayhave been introduced by German miners in Elizabethan times. Related: Dowsed; dowsing.

1): to practice dowsing

2): search for or discover by dowsing.

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Dowsing is a type of divination used to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites and many other objects and materials with-out the use of a scientific apparatus. It is also known as divining, doodle-bugging (particularly in the United States, in searching for petroleum) or (when searching for water), water witching (in the United States).

      Dowsing as practiced today may have originated in Germany during the 16th century, when it was used in attempts to find metals.

     As early as 1518, Martin Luther listed dowsing for metals as an act that broke the first commandment (i.e., as occultism). The 1550 edition of Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia contains a woodcut of a dowser with forked rod in hand walking over a cutaway image of a mining operation.

  

The rod is labelled "Virgula Divina – Gluck-Rot", but there is no text accompanying the woodcut.

     By 1556, Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica, included a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.

...There are many great contentions between miners concerning the forked twig, for some say that it is of the greatest use in discovering veins, and others deny it. ... All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that the clenched fingers should be held toward the sky in order that the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither and thither at random through mountainous regions. It is said that the moment they place their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists, and so by its action discloses the vein; when they move their feet again and go away from that spot the twig becomes once more immobile. ...