Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/223

Rh locusts and other noxious insects. One of the peasant women who saw me looking at the heap of "earth" on one side of the church asked for my handkerchief and filled it with the earth, knotting up the corners safely, and making the sign of the cross upon it with holy water from the stoup at hand. She then handed it to me, telling me to take it home and sprinkle the "earth" on my field, and there would be no locusts and no hurtful insects in it, so that my crops would be good. She added that I might also sprinkle a little on the floor of my house, and I should thus keep it free from unpleasant insects!

The little square space before the church door was surrounded by stalls, where rosaries, coloured woodcuts of S. Domenico with the serpents looking up at him, reliquaries and medals bearing his image, small gilt keys—"Keys of S. Domenico"—and small metal mule-shoes, with one point prolonged to a spike, were sold as charms against toothache; fillets of braided white cotton, with coloured flecks at intervals, were sold as a protection against serpent-bites. They are worn twisted round the wrist or hat, or tied to the women's shoulder straps. To be efficacious these charms must first touch the relic worn by the Saint.

In the street, just beyond the Piazza of the Sanctuary, we heard a continually-repeated cry of "Per la Gettatura!" and saw a small stall where a man was driving a brisk trade in charms against the Evil Eye—coral, mother-of-pearl, or silver horns, nickel hands, mother-of-pearl or nickel hunchbacks, skulls, fish, flasks, keys, rings with the device of a skull, boars' tusks, bunches of badger's hair—in fact, nearly all the charms used against the Evil Eye in South Italy.

On the morning of the festival more troops of peasants came in early from the nearer villages, and every variety of costume was seen in the street, all the women wearing on their heads either the white tovaglia or linen head-covering, or a white or brightly-coloured kerchief; except the women of Scanno, whose dark, refined features, and curious turban head-dress with the plaits of hair closely wound with wool, were remarkable even in that crowd of picturesque and beautiful figures. From time to time