Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/156

 146 Charm ai^ainst the Cliild-stealing Witch-

night, or in the middle of the day, that every unclean spirit, every earthly and airy demon, and the abominable Gylo be kept 75 miles away from the house of N. the servant of the Lord, from his wife and his children." (Here follows a long list of saints that are invoked, whose protection is sought, and who are asked to drive away evil spirits and demons, and the charm finishes with a prayer to the Lord).

The second version is the more complete, though to a certain extent somewhat shorter ; and the saints that are invoked at the end of it are totally different from those of the first version. The translation of it is as follows : —

" In the time of the Consulate of King Laurentius there lived in Ausitis or Arabia a woman called Melitena, who had seven children. They had all been snatched away by the accursed Geloo. When she found herself again with child, and the time of the birth had approached, she built a tower and fortified it from within and from without, she stored up in it food for five and twenty years (?), and she took two handmaids with her and shut herself up in that tower. The brothers of Melitena, the saints of the Lord Sisynnios and Sisynodoros, were then warring in Numeria, that is, Arabia. It so happened once, that becoming separated from their army they came to the tower in order to see their sister. When they came to the entrance, they asked with a loud voice for the gates to be opened, but Melitena refused to open the gates, saying, ' I cannot open the gates to you, as I have given birth to a child and I am frightened, I will therefore not open.' They replied and said, ' Open unto us, for we are the angels of the Lord and we carry the mysteries of the Lord.' She opened the door and the saints of the Lord entered. At the same time the Evil Spirit changed itself into a clod of earth, and fast- ened itself inside the hoof of one of the horses, and thus entered with them. In the middle of the night it stole the child. Melitena wept bitterly and said, ' O thou Sisynne and thou Sisynodore, what have you done unto me ? For this