Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/172

148 of Mandamádos, the church is surrounded by buildings like a college quadrangle, simply for sick folk and pilgrims. On the great festivals they actually sleep in the church, just as the ancients slept in the temple of Æsculapius. At Ayassos I saw this: the side aisles were crammed with visitors "incubating"; their bedding was piled in heaps on the top of the carved stalls of the nave. They cook in the church, and make their home there while the feast lasts. Miraculous cures are supposed to take place on these occasions. The Bishop told us of two miracles in which he was privileged to be the humble instrument. A church once took fire, and no water was to be had, so he put it out by means of water melons, "by the help of God." On another occasion, if I understood him aright, he put out a fire with one blanket.

The Evil Eye.—Here, as in all parts of the Greek world, the Evil Eye is believed in. Skulls of oxen or other horned creatures are hung on sticks or trees to avert it from the crops and the fruit. I saw one tree which bore the model of a bullock's head, coloured to imitate life; of this I have a photograph. If a man yawns much, he is supposed to have been overlooked. If you admire a child, the mother spits three times in her bosom, as did Polyphemus in Theocritus (6. 39, ), and mutters, "off to the hills and the branches," which reminds us of the third charm given in this paper.

A is fumigated with incense; in the censer they burn flowers that have been blest in church by the priest, and put cloves in the flame, by whose jumping or hopping they divine who did it. This cure was wrought on me by an old dame of Mytilene. I had taken her photograph in the afternoon, and in the evening I had a headache. "Poor boy!" she said, "he was overlooked; everybody stared at him as he was doing the photograph." She passed the censer three times round my head, and