Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/366

 330 Collectanea.

Water with three leaves of mint in it in the month of May is good for babies; it "opens their heart," i.e. cheers them up.

A child must not sleep at midday.

A baby's toes must not be kissed.

Babies must not ride on donkeys, or they will have big teeth.

If a child should be born with a caul, the midwife takes the caul and puts it secretly under the altar of a church, and leaves it there for forty days. It is then good against the evil eye and other things.

Bread may be used instead of a cross or an icon to protect children in the absence of the mother.

To make a baby speak soon, put a young chicken's beak into its mouth.

To stop incontinence of urine, eat roast magpie and drink pig's urine.

To make the hair grow, kill a conger on your head and let its blood remain for six days.

To promote the flow of milk, a woman should take the sound of the grey mullet and throw it over her shoulder.

Love-charm. A mother's milk and a daughter's milk together with a piece of menstruous cloth as a potion.

Remedium Amoris. Take earth from twelve successive steps of the girl. Take it to church, dip a piece of cotton in church-oil and put it in the earth. Put it under the patient's pillow, and he forgets all about the girl.

A woman during her periods may not come into an olive-press, or into a garden, or enter a boat.

Women when they have to kill fowls (which are usually killed by the men) put on their husbands' boots. (Kephalos, Cos.)

Women should not step over dough, nor over their husbands' or children's clothes.

No woman should be present when the dough is being kneaded, except of course the woman who is kneading it. Any other woman who chances to come in must spit on the ground to charm away the evil of her presence, and must leave before the cross is put on the loaves. Otherwise she will " carry away the bread with her."