Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/249

Rh to attend at the birth of her daughter's child, at any rate never the first time. Later on it appears not to matter so much,—but there was uncertainty, and I gather that it is not done. Should no child be borne after a year of marriage, the prohibition of the mother's visit is removed.

It is customary to break an egg over the face of a newborn child. Therefore eggs are a correct present to take to a house after the occurrence of a birth. The breaking of the egg is, so far as I can make out, to avert the Evil Eye.

Foundation sacrifices.—Cocks and lambs are still often sacrificed when foundations of houses are laid in North Albania. The citadel at Scutari is one of the many buildings of which it is told that a human being was built into the foundations. This particular event, according to an old and powerfully dramatic ballad, occurred early in the fourteenth century, when this place was under Serb rule. Devils destroyed by night what was built by day, and only after sacrificing the young wife of one of the three young Princes could the building be reared. The tradition of such burials in foundations has survived till recent years. An Austrian engineer in Bosnia told me in 1906 that some twelve years previously a panic was caused by a report that the Austrians were going to brick a child into the foundations of a bridge. This bridge was being built over the Lim, and, owing to the incapacity of the engineer, was so badly constructed that it fell twice. When the third attempt to erect it was made, the people took fright, and were only with difficulty persuaded that no human sacrifice would take place.

Objection to portraits —The late Mr. Holman Hunt has repeatedly told me that, when he began his painting in Palestine, he had the greatest difficulty in getting people to sit to him as models, owing to a belief that, when the Day of Judgment came, the portrait might arrive first at the Gates of Heaven and be admitted, and the rightful owner of the name be dismissed as an impostor. A month or two ago I met again the aged man who was afraid lest my sketch of him might cause his death, as mentioned in Dr. Frazer's book. He had not forgotten the