Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/75

 COLLECTANEA.

Further Notes on Spanish Amulets.

(With Plates I. and II.).

Folk-Lore for December, 1906, I published some notes deallng, for the most part, with a series of specimens collected during the course of the previous year. In the spring of 191 1 I had the opportunity of collecting a new series of specimens, as well as of obtaining some slight further information concerning certain of the types already noticed, upon which the following notes are based. I think that the difficulty of obtaining reliable information at first-hand has increased considerably during the six years intervening between my visits, and the number of amulets visibly worn or newly-made has decreased in a like proportion, owing to the advances of modern education and material progress; as these matters are purely quantitative it is manifestly impossible to base an accurate judgment upon them in circumstances necessarily personal.

With respect to a considerable proportion of the specimens hereinafter described, I was unable to learn more than that these were "amulets," intentions unstated or given vaguely as against "the evil eye"; in such cases I have referred to similar Italian forms of which the intentions are known. With respect to certain of the finer specimens, of silver, no definite information was forthcoming, probably for the reason that these objects were used only by the wealthier classes and during, apparently, the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and that these classes are the ones most likely to alter or to lose their old beliefs. Numerals in ordinary type refer to the Figures illustrating the present paper,