Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/88

70 up, falls upon a graduated scale on the inside of the inner ring, from which the time can be read off.

( III.)

(Read at Meeting, November 5th, 1908.)

is a common idea that few traces of folk-beliefs can be found in great cities, but my own experience is that, at any rate for the seeker after amulets, there is no better hunting ground than the hawkers' handbarrows in the poorest parts or slums of such dense aggregations of people as London, Rome, and Naples. In a visit to Italy last summer I obtained a large number of amulets used by the poorer people in Rome and Naples, and Fig. 9 (Plate III.) shows a group of purchases in these cities. The amulets were found, mixed with ex votos and modern religious medals and symbols, for sale, not to the visitor and curio-hunter who rarely invade the slums, but to the poor city dweller and to the peasant visiting the city. The first and third in the top row are metal wavy horns; the second is a tusk; the three in a vertical line on the extreme right and the one in the bottom left-hand corner are artificial horns cut from pearl shells; the largest object is an artificial horn cut from the lip of a conch shell; and the four remaining objects are two pincers of a crab of different sizes, a tooth, and the core of a goat's horn. The general resemblance of these amulets to those shown in the upper part of the Plate is quite obvious, although the group in Fig. 8 was collected from the costers' barrows in the poor man's markets of London.

For many years I have been in touch with some of the London street dealers in unconsidered trifles, and I am much surprised to find how much they know as to the reasons for carrying certain amulets. Phallic symbols, such as the glass and cornelian drops