Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/268

256 the young mother of her milk; and any one who enters the house without sitting down will assuredly carry off the infant's sleep.

If the child be subject to frequent and apparently groundless fits of crying, that is a sure sign that it has been bewitched, either by some one whose eyebrows are grown together, and may consequently be supposed to have the evil-eye, or by one of the invisible evil spirits whose power is great before the child has been taken to church; but even a person with quite commonplace eyebrows may convey evil by unduly praising the child's good looks, unless the mother remembers to spit on the ground as soon as the words are spoken.

I will here quote a few specimens of the various recipes in vogue for undoing such evil spells:

Nine straws, which must be counted backward from nine till one, should be placed in a jug of water, drawn from the river with the current, not against; into this are thrown parings of wood from off the cradle, the door-step, and the four corners of the room in which the child was born, also nine pinches of ashes, likewise counted backward. When all these various ingredients have been boiled up together, the water is poured boiling hot into a large basin, and the pot left in it upside-down. If the boiling water draws itself into the jug (as of course it will), that is proof positive that the child was bewitched; and the mother should moisten its forehead with the water before it is cold, and give it (still counting backward) nine drops to drink.

The child that has been bewitched may likewise be held above a red-hot plowshare, on which a glass of wine has been poured; or else a glass of water, in which a red-hot horseshoe has been placed, given to drink.

In almost every village there used, not long ago, to be old women who made a regular trade out of preparing the water which was to undo evil spells.

The Saxon mother is careful not to leave her child alone until it has been baptized, for fear of the malignant spirits, who may steal it away, leaving an uncouth elf in its place. Whenever a child grows up clumsy and heavy, with large head, wide mouth, stump nose, and crooked legs, the gossips are ready to swear that it has been changed in the cradle, more especially if it prove awkward and slow in learning to speak. To guard against such an accident, it is recommended to mothers obliged to leave their infants alone, to place beneath the pillow either a prayer-book, a broom, a loaf of bread, or a knife stuck point upward.

Very cruel remedies have sometimes been resorted to in order to force the evil spirits to restore the child they have stolen, and take back their own changeling. For instance, the unfortunate little creature, suspected of being an elf, was placed astride upon a hedge and beaten with a thorny branch until it was quite bloody; it was then supposed that the evil spirits brought back the stolen child.

The infant should not be suffered to look at itself in the glass till