Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/191

Rh bark at us, we shall not be affected by them. Therefore do all Malays give tongue when they meet the wild dog in the forest." It is the same with the classical superstition about the wolf:

It is priority of action and initiative which constitutes the success of the man who seeks safety in a voluntary contact with a dangerous power.

But, further, this deliberate contact with the dangerous power may be efficacious as a charm when the victim has already been bewitched. This is the original basis of the medical practice which is inspired by the belief "similia similibus curantur." The idea of transference, which is advocated by Messrs. Hubert and Mauss, is here, I am convinced, a later development, just as it is a later development in the case of the rites attaching to a sacred well and tree. A few examples will suffice. A large number of the charms against the evil eye consist of the wearing of amulets which take the form of the dangerous power. An effective method of dealing with witchcraft is to employ those very modes of contact which witchcraft itself uses. Thus you may spit upon the witch. After quoting examples from Russia, Corsica, and classical antiquity, Mr. Hartland continues,—"The intention here is by spitting on the evil thing so to bring it on your side as to prevent its doing you any ill." In Italy a successful charm is to fling the dust of the witch's footprint over the person or cattle bewitched. The Persians scrape mud from the sorcerer's shoes, and