Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/102

94 "Think of a great solid iron ball, larger than the heavens and the earth. A bird comes once in a hundred millions of years and just touches the great iron ball with a feather of its wing. Think that you have to burn in a fire till the bird has worn the great iron ball away with its feather. Is this Eternity? No."

A German Folk-lore Expression.—The following proverbial saying, the source of which puzzled even a Jacob Grimm, may claim your readers' attention: "Jemanden in's Bockshorn jagen"; lit., to drive some one into the he-goat's horn, i.e., to intimidate him. Grimm thinks this phrase must have originated far more remotely than it has now been traced. He quotes the corresponding Kussian phrase, "Sogmst' kogo v' baranii rog," i.e., to drive some one into the ram's-horn, which he suggests may have been borrowed (v. Deutsches Wörterbuch, ii. 208). Since I find, however, a peculiar superstition connected with this Slavonic expression, viz., that wicked beings are conjured by it, as by a charm or incantation, to be transformed and to disappear (v. Slavisches Archiv, ed. Jagic, vii. 509), the Russian saying, it seems to me, must have an origin of its own, perhaps anterior to the German.

Roumanian Charms.—Against Tooth-ache.—Sit beside an ant-hill, masticate a crust of black bread, spit it out, and over the ant-hill; as the ants eat the bread, the tooth-ache will cease.—Against Quinsy.—At midnight, and when the moon is increasing, go out, put yourself to the left of the moon, gaze fully on it, and at the same time rub the throat sharply, and repeat three times, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen;" then go away in silence, and say nothing to any one.—Speedy Cure for a Wound.—Take the instrument which was the cause of the wound, plunge it into a piece of bacon, and let it remain there until the wound is healed, which will come to pass very shortly.

Charm for Toothache.—The following is a variant of the Irish charm for toothache given in vol. ii. p. 33:

Upwards of sixty years ago a woman, at Looe, in south-east Cornwall, complained to a neighbouring woman that she was suffering from toothache, on which the neighbour remarked that she could give a