Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/211

Rh of the fifth month, put them in vermilion bags, and hang them, one on the man's left arm, and the other on the woman's right. Or let them be carried constantly in the sleeve.

To cure a wife of envy and jealousy. Feed her on boiled nightingales. [A Chinese recipe.]

Undutiful conduct in a child, wife, or concubine may be cured by plastering the kitchen furnace with a mixture of earth and dog's liver.

To make a woman reveal her fickleness. Take earth from the footprint of a horse that has gone in an easterly direction, and hide it in her clothing.

To make one's posterity rise to high office. Hang up a tiger's nose over the door.

To make a person wealthy. Hang to the roof-tree the ear of a twelfth-month pig.

To make a poor man rich. On the seventh day of the seventh month, let him take earth secretly from a rich man's garden and therewith plaster the kitchen furnace [which is deified in Japan]. The next year he will undoubtedly become rich. Another plan is to plaster the kitchen furnace on the last day of the year with earth from the field of a wealthy farmer.

The shell of a crab suspended over the gates of a house will avert diseases caused by demoniac influences.

To quell a storm. Burn the pelt of a black dog, and scatter the ashes down the wind.

To become invisible. Take pills composed of the liver of a white or pale-coloured dog mixed with tsusōku (a drug).

A preservative against epidemic disease. Take two oz. of cinnabar of first quality. Reduce it to powder, and with honey make it into pills the size of hempseed. On the last day of the year let all the household, before eating anything else, turn to the east and swallow whole twenty-one of these pills. This is a sure safeguard against pestilence. [Here it may be noted that red is the colour of life, and that the last day of the year is the date on which demons, i.e. diseases personified, are expelled. The choice of an odd number as lucky is also to be observed. (Cf. also use of red and of number twenty-one in nightmare charms above.—)].

To prevent smallpox from injuring the sight. Give the child