Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/180

152 Folklore from the Southern Sporades. least as Zenobius, who collected proverbs in the second century, ; and, if he is to be believed, even to Sappho. Hesychius, a lexicographer of Constantinople, also mentions Gelló. The following passages contain a small corpus of black and white magic. Penance is imposed on the "wizard or soothsayer, and the wax-melter, and the lead-melter, or whoso bespells the beasts, or 'binds' the wolf from eating them, or binds a married couple from having children, or who works charms against sickness … Now wizards are those who draw the demons to them by enchantment, binding them according to their own will, and who bind creeping things that they hurt not the beasts if they happen to be abroad."

Astrologers are also mentioned, and Egyptian women, or Gypsies, as working spells and divining of the future. "Those who practise divination by barley," we read, "or by beans, and all such as wear amulets made of plants or any such thing, and put colours upon their children or beasts against the Evil Eye. … He that calls in magicians