Page:Popular medicine, customs and superstitions of the Rio Grande, John G. Bourke, 1894.pdf/3

Rh man appears to marry the girl. Often when women were bathing in the waters of the Rio Grande itself, or in some of the great "acequias," mischievous boys would yell "Axolotl!" and cause a scampering of all the bathers.

Among the Italian peasantry notions of this same kind obtain: "When a man wishes his wife to be faithful, he should take sperma illius mulieris and put it in a bottle, and then catch a lizard with the left hand and put it in the same bottle, and cork up both very tightly and say:—

Here I put the fidelity of My wife, that she may be Ever, ever true to me.

Then be careful not to lose the bottle." "Roman Etruscan Remains," Charles G. Leland, New York, Scribners, 1891, page 292. He traces this superstition back to the time of the Roman poet, Marcellus, from whom he quotes.

The following may be included in the same category, although it is expressed very obscurely, and I find it difficult to clearly understand:—

"Il y avait une fois une jeune fille qui, toutes les nuits, allait coucher dans le foin. Chacun lui disait:

"'Parie que le faudonx ira te fauder!'

"Mais elle n'y faisait pas attention et elle retournait coucher dans le sends (grenier à foin). Pourtant le faudoux venait la fouler, et elle disait à ses voisins:

"Je ne sais ce que j'ai: je suis plus lassée au matin qu'en me couchant.

"Nous te l'avions bien dit, répondaient-ils, c'est le faudoux qui vient te fauder."

And much more of the same import. Paul Sébillot (Vannes, France): "Additions aux Coutumes, etc., de la Haute Bretagne," in "Revue des Traditions Populaires," Paris, 1892.

When speaking of the axolotl, the coyote, and other animals to which are attached myths and superstitions of various kinds, I was disappointed in not learning anything of the wild boar—peccary—or Tabilin—which is so readily domesticated that I am inclined to believe it must have been the "guinea pig," which Garcilasso de la Vega says that the ancient Peruvians "bred in their houses called cocoz." Book vi. (Markham), quoted also in vol. vi. "Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences," 7th Memoir,—"Human Bones of the Hemenway S. W. Archaeological Exploration, in Army Medical Museum," p. 200.

Stomach Bitters.—Pour a quart of mescal over a handful of the white flowers and root of the "amargosa" bush. VOL. VII. — NO. 25. 9