Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/420

408 the same class. (For some notes on heart-shaped amulets, cf. supra, vol. xxv., pp. 210, 211.)

Fig. 20. A heart-shaped piece of veined pinkish limestone, in a silver frame; Toledo. A smaller specimen of the same kind was obtained at Madrid.

Fig, 21. A heart-shaped piece of brown and light brownish limestone, in a silver frame; Madrid. Said (by a woman at Toledo) to be an amulet against witches, the evil eye, etc., of a kind no longer used.

Fig. 22. A compound amulet, composed of a globular bead and a pinkish agate object hung from a silver chain; Toledo. The bead is made of a brown hardstone with whitish flecks, and is mounted in silver; it was said to be for wearing in order to secure abundant lactation. The agate object has a form resembling that of a bird, and looks to be of exotic origin; an informant told me that it represented a "galápago" (a fresh- water tortoise), and was to be worn as a protection against (or as a cure for) fevers; she stated that the few people who wore such representations always had them made of a similar stone (? always of some agate). I think that my informant, a rather uneducated woman, may possibly have confused "papagayo" (a parrot, which the object somewhat resembles) with "galápago" and then have attached to the object some belief really referring to the tortoise; I have quoted her explanation here because it seems to contain a certain amount of folklore. My own belief is that the amulet as a whole belongs to the numerous category, to which I have referred above, in which a reddish material and a whitish material are combined, presumably for use by a woman, and that the shape of the reddish object is in this instance merely fortuitous.

Fig. 23. An irregularly circular piece of chiastolite (a variety of andalusite), with parallel flat faces, showing a black cross on each face, due to its natural structure; Toledo. It is bound round with a piece of wire, and by means of this it was fastened, at the time I bought it, below a small ornamental brass cross such as might be placed on the wall of a room. Its nature and any beliefs attached to it were not known to the vendor. In Italy a stone of this kind is called