Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/34

10 always known who can do so; but people with blue eyes, perhaps because of their scarcity, are peculiarly dreaded, especially blue-eyed women. Hence, probably, the general use of blue beads as a preventive. Strings of blue beads are hung around horses' necks, or a few are twisted into the mane or tail. One man, asked how these voided the evil, replied: Because the offending eye naturally lighted first upon them, and thus the blow was, so to speak, warded off from the bearer by the bead. Among both Jews and Arabs, a newly-born child must be spat upon four times by a visitor before she looks at it. Moslems in Palestine place the skull of an ox or camel over the door of a newly-built house to avert the Evil Eye. A print made by a human hand dipped in paint upon doors, door-posts, and shutters of a Moslem or Jewish dwelling is everywhere to be seen in Beyrout and in the coast towns still retained by the Turks. Christians substitute a string of shells or blue beads; though even they, when a house is newly whitewashed, dip their hands in the pail and print their hand-marks on windows and flour-boxes, to avert chilling February winds from old people, and to bring luck to the bin. White stones and animal-bones are hung on people's necks. Here is a small cylindrical metal case with chain and pendants, which is usually worn on children's caps, with a drop of mercury in it; for quicksilver hath virtue also against the eye of evil. Here is a round amulet-box of common metal, made to contain pieces of the bones of martyrs, which save both from the Evil Eye and from sickness. This particular box has been worn by generations of one family for sixty years. Here are four triangular leather cases, tied together on a faded and rather greasy old bit of ribbon, which contain respectively spells against the Evil Eye, sickness, nightmare, and the crying of children in their sleep.

I have before me the translation, by my friend Mr. Tanius Cortas, a master at the Boys' Training Home, Brumana, of one of these spells made by a man after twenty-four hours