Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/95

Rh jettatura, is almost universal among the peasants and common people, and quite prevalent even among the higher and more cultivated classes. Pope Pius IX was generally supposed to be a jettatore, and many good Catholics, while kneeling before him for his benediction, were wont slyly to extend toward him their hands doubled into a fist, with the thumb thrust between the index and middle finger as a means of warding off the malign influence. Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born with this uncanny gift, and neither his consecration to the priesthood nor his elevation to the papacy sufficed to eradicate it or to suspend its operation. The benignity of aspect which distinguished this kind-hearted successor of St. Peter might conceal, but could not counteract, the fatal fascination that lurked in his "evil eye."

In Germany, it is only in the Tyrol that this superstition appears to prevail, although sporadic cases of it occur in Thuringia, where the witchcraft delusion still has a strong hold on the rural population. The village of Espenfeld, for example, numbers two hundred inhabitants, of whom one half are firmly convinced that the other half are skilled in sorcery; of the latter, several are supposed to have grown rich by paying out money and then conjuring it back into their own coffers. A peasant, who imagined that he had lost considerable money in this way, was advised by a "wise woman" to put the. coin thus received into a glass jar and then seal it up. He did so, and soon afterward the coins began to hop and skip as if they wished to get out, but, finding it impossible to escape, gradually grew quiet. By taking this precaution he circumvented the conjurer and saved his money.

In England, men or kine that are supposed to suffer from the witchery of the evil eye are said to be "overlooked." "If a murrain afflicts a farmer's cattle," says the author of a recently published work on this subject (The Evil Eye, by Frederick T. Elworthy; London, Murray, 1895), "he goes off secretly to the 'white witch'—that is, the old witch finder—to ascertain who has 'overlooked his things,' and to learn the best antidote. Only the other day a farmer in North Devon, whose cattle were dying of anthrax, applied, not to a first-class veterinary surgeon, but to a 'white witch,' for a remedy against the pestilence, and as a consequence lost almost his whole herd." The same writer states that a pig's or sheep's heart stuck full of pins is found in many chimneys in old farmhouses as a reprisal against witches. It was believed that the witch, who had "overlooked" the animal and caused its death, would have her own heart pricked and pierced by the pins thrust into the heart of her victim, which had been "ill wisht" by her. This sort of retribution, based upon the principle of sympathy, plays a prominent part in the annals of witchcraft. The Somerset peasant says: "Nif you do meet wi' anybody