Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/163

Rh whither they are going. In Ireland, to meet a weasel under certain circumstances is unlucky. A weasel crossing the path was regarded as an omen by the Aztecs.

Further, Pythagoras warned his followers against stepping over a broom. In some parts of Bavaria, housemaids, in sweeping out the house, are careful not to step over the broom for fear of the witches. Again, it is a Bavarian rule not to step over a broom while a confinement is taking place in a house; otherwise the birth will be tedious, and the child will always remain small with a large head. But if anyone has stepped over a broom inadvertently, he can undo the spell by stepping backwards over it again. So in Bombay they say you should never step across a broom, or you will cause a woman to suffer severely in childbed.

Again, it was a precept of Pythagoras not to run a nail or a knife into a man’s footprints. This, from the primitive point of view, was really a moral, not merely a prudential precept. For it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus, in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you thrust a nail into a man’s footprints the man will go lame. Australian blacks held exactly the same view. “Seeing a Tatūngolūng very lame,” says Mr. Howitt, “I asked him what was the matter? He said, ‘Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.’ I asked him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his