Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/171

Rh instance of these agricultural superstitions, I will mention that when a Greek sower sowed cummin he had to curse and swear all the while he did so, otherwise the crop would not turn out well. Similarly, Esthonian fishermen think that they never have such good luck as when somebody is angry with them and curses them. So, before a fisherman goes out to fish, he commonly plays a rough practical joke on some of his house-mates, such as hiding the key of the cupboard, upsetting a kettle of soup, and so on. The more they curse and swear at him, the more fish he will catch; every curse brings at least three fish into the net.

Under the head of what may be called domestic folk-lore, I must content myself with a Greek cure for the sting of a scorpion and a couple of Roman superstitions relative to child-birth. If a man has been stung by a scorpion, the Geoponica recommends that he should sit on an ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the ass’s ear, “A scorpion has stung me.” In either case, we are assured, the pain will pass from the man into the ass. The wood-spirit Silvanus was believed to be very inimical to women in child-bed. So, to keep him out of a house where a woman was expecting her confinement, three men used to go through the house by night armed respectively with an axe, a pestle, and a broom. At every door they stopped, and the first man struck the threshold with his axe, the second with his pestle, and the third swept it with his broom. This kept Silvanus from entering the house. When his wife was in hard labour, a Roman husband used to take a stone or any missile that had killed three animals—a boar, a bear, and a man. This he threw over the roof of the house, and immediately the child was born. A