Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/389

Rh The evident relationship between the last two old Roman cures and the Gaelic one above cited suggests an interesting problem, for the student of comparative folk lore. Both the Roman and the Cape Breton charm cures may be descendants of some older Aryan superstition, or the Cape Breton one may have been brought to Great Britain by the Roman invaders. But what theory of distribution will account for a custom similar to those just cited, which is very general among the Japanese, a people separated from western Europeans by the whole width of an immense continent, and differing ethnically so far from the Caucasian race?

It naturally happens, from the Japanese national custom of sitting with the feet doubled under on a mat, that one or both legs will become numb. A Japanese scientist has kindly communicated to me the following particulars in regard to the saliva cures for this numbness:

"In the province of Suwo (southwest part of the main island of Japan) a person picks up a piece of straw, wets it with saliva, and then sticks the same on the middle part of his forehead. The piece is left there till it naturally comes off. In Tokio, after a piece of straw is placed on the forehead, as in the above process, a person wets his index-finger, with which he first touches the tip of his nose and then he rapidly moves his finger up toward the forehead (without touching the latter or the straw). This is repeated three times, accompanied by a saying, 'Shibire Kyo ye agare' which is of course also repeated the same number of times. The phrase means literally, 'Numbness, go up to Kyo.' Kyo is an abbreviation for Kyoto, where our emperors used to live for many centuries till 1868, and which was then the recognized center of Japan. People always spoke of going up to 'Kyoto' I do not know the origin of the phrase addressed to the numbness, neither do I know its true significance; but one which strikes me as very probable is, that it was meant to entice numbness out of the lower members of the body, as every one was right glad to obey such a command at any time. In the province of Echigo (northwest part of the main island of Japan) I heard that straw is not used, but a cross is drawn on the forehead with a finger wet with saliva."

Since the cross is not one of the emblems of the old Shinto or of the Buddhist religion, the signature of the cross in the last charm is undoubtedly a survival from the introduction of Roman Catholicism into Japan by Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century.

Pliny states that a boil may be cured by wetting it three times with fasting spittle. We still find various kindred remedial charms extant in the United States. From a village near