Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/414

 404 Collectanea.

Notes on Spanish Amulets (Fourth Series).^

(With Plates I. and II.)

This series of notes is to a great extent a mere description of the specimens shown on Plates I. and II. In only a portion of the cases in which I am unable to refer for comparison to objects described in my earlier notes am I able to quote any precise information as to the intention, in Spain, of the amulets illustrated. A number of the specimens described below are unique in my experience ; I think it possible that such were never very common, and that they are at present practically, if not actually, obsolete. I have not had the good fortune to meet with more than a very few people who could give me an explanation concerning any of the things to which my previous notes supplied no key. Much of the value of the present series lies, therefore, in the placing on record, in association with the specimens illustrated previously, of a number of objects of types I had not recorded previously or of forms differing from those of the specimens of the other series. I believe that all the specimens (with the exception of those of Figs. 39, 40, 41, 42, and a and b) shown on the plates are of Spanish make ; it must, however, be remembered that in former centuries, just as at present, amulets of foreign manufacture filtered into Spain, and, if of sufficient intrinsic or ornamental value, tended to be preserved — thus, I have a pendant, of agate mounted in silver, of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, which, although it is almost certainly of Bavarian or Tyrolese origin, I found among Spanish amulets at Madrid.

Horns, Teeth, Bone. — Figs, i and 2 show unusually large and fine specimens of pieces of deer's horn, mounted in silver, for suspension from the waists of small children against the evil eye ; they are similar in intention to the specimen shown in Fig. 3, Plate IV., vol. xvii., supra. The straighter one, which is about 6| inches long, I obtained at Madrid ; the branching one comes from Toledo. I bought at Madrid another amulet of the same kind, unusual in that the socket is made of iron, treated in a

^ For my previous notes on this subject, see Folk-Loi-e, vol. xvii., pp. 454-71 ; vol. xxiv., pp. 63-74; and vol. xxv., pp. 206-12.