Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/408

 332 Cf. the mannikin called "Panczimanczi," in Lad. Arany's "Eredeti Nepmesek" p. 277. His height is half an ell, his moustache two ells, his beard three ells long. He is seen leaping merrily over a fire, and heard singing the following: "I am Panczimanczi; no one knows my name; I roast, I cook, I boil; the day after to-morrow I shall fetch my pretty bride home."

In Kriza's tale his name is Dancing Vargaluska. "How the name is held to be part of the very being of the man who bears it, so that by it his personality may be carried away, and, so to speak, grafted elsewhere, appears in the way in which the sorcerer uses it as a means of putting the life of his victim into the image upon which he practises;" e.g. the widespread making of wax images to represent certain persons, and then melting them, that the persons named may waste away. Magyar peasants say, that hair combings must not be thrown away, lest the birds get them, and build them in their nests; for whilst they are doing so, you will have headache; and again, if a young girl wishes to compel a young man to marry her she must steal something from the young man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold, with the words, " Lord of the infernal regions and of the devils, and possessor of the hidden treasure, give to N. or M. some incurable illness (or inflame him with unquenchable love for N. or M.), and I will join you."

See also "The two Orphans," where the witch's daughter steals a lock of the queen's hair, p. 222. Cf. the Finnish method of curing "knarr" (German "Knirrband"), a complaint that is common at harvest-time among those who are not used to the reaping-hook. Amongst its symptoms are curious crackings of the wrist. The sick one asks someone who is well "to chop his knarr" for him, which is done as follows. The patient lays his sick hand upon a chopping block, and three pieces of three-jointed straw are so laid, side by side, as to correspond joint for joint. The "doctor" then takes an axe, and chops with all his strength into the block through the first joint. "What are you chopping?" asks the sick one. "I'm chopping the