about foot-water, and no woman was allowed to wash her feet in the sacred
wells though the lavation was permitted to men.
If a child is fairy-struck, give it a cup of cold water in the name of Christ
and make the sign of the cross over it.
On St. Martin's Day when blood is spilt, whoever is signed with the
blood is safe, for that year at least, from disease.
For the Evil Eye, a piece cut from the garment of the evil-eyed, burned to
tinder and ground to powder, must be given to the person under the
baneful spell, while his forehead is anointed with spittle thrice. So the
Greeks spat three times in the face of the evil-eyed to break the spell.
Pass a red-hot turf three times over and under the body of an animal
supposed to be fairy-struck, singeing the hair along the back. This drives off
the fairies.
The Irish always went westward round a holy well, following the course
of the sun, and creeping on their hands and knees. So did the ancient
Persians when offering homage at the sacred fountains.
Red-haired people were held to be evil and malicious and unlucky,
probably because Typhon, the evil principle, was red; and therefore a red
heifer was sacrificed to him by the Egyptians.
In the mystic, or snake dance, performed at the Baal festival, the
gyrations of the dancers were always westward, in the track of the sun, for
the dance was part of the ancient ritual of sun worship.
THE POWER OF THE WORD
The belief in the malific influence of the Evil Eye pervades all the Greek
islands, and the same preventive measures are used as in Ireland. An old
woman is employed to spit three times at the person affected, if she is a
person learned in the mysteries and accounted wise. Salt and fire are also
used as safeguards, precisely as the Irish peasant employs them to guard his
cattle and children from the evil influence. But no superstition is more
widely spread; it seems to pervade all the world, and to be instinctive to
humanity. The educated are as susceptible to it as the illiterate, and no
nerves are strong enough, apparently, to resist the impression made by an
envious, malicious glance, for a poison that blights and withers seems to
emanate from it. Reason appeals in vain; the feelings cannot be overcome
that the presence and glance of some one person in a room can chill all the
natural flow of spirits, while the presence of another seems to intensify all
our mental powers, and transform us for the moment into a higher being.
But a malific power, stronger even than the glance of the Evil Eye, was
exercised by the Bards of Erin: whom they would they blessed, but whom
they would they also banned; and the poet's malison was more dreaded
amid was more fatal than any other form of imprecation--for the bard had