Note 3 — V.—CHARMS, SPELLS, AMULETS AND DIVINATIONS.

Charms of another sort are sometimes used by the Chinese. It is only three years since that H. E. Li Hung Chang, who is at this moment premier of China, fired cannon at the Peiho to make it cease inundating the surrounding country.3 The Eagre or bore of the Tsien Tang river, which flows from the boundaries of Kiang-si, Fuhkien and Chih-keang to Hang-chow Bay, and takes its name “money-dyke” from the amount expended on its embankments,4 has been treated with “charms” on several occasions, but as Chinese annals tell us, with very indifferent success. Prince Wu Shu (A.D. 930) made five hundred “daring archers” let fly six arrows apiece at the dreaded tidal wave as it came rolling onwards, and then after praying to Wu Tsz-si, the tutelary deity of the stream, put the key of the dyke water gate into an envelope, and threw it into the river. Forthwith the waters retired; but as they would have retired in the ordinary course of events, even the Chinese did not consider the experiment a remarkable success. In 1131 the Emperor Kan Tsung sunk ten iron plates, each weighing over 130 lbs., in the river by way of charming the mischievous spirits of the waters, but charms and embankments were alike carried off by the resistless power of the tide. Experience however was not availed of in a case where superstition had firm hold, and time and time again was a similar experiment tried—with, I need hardly say, similar success. Such practices, however, have not been quite unknown amongst ourselves, and even at the present day there are many springs in rural Britain supposed to be guarded by spirits who require charming in a very similar way. The crooked pins cast into St. Winifred’s well in North Wales, the fourpenny pieces cast into that of Gwern Degla, the rags and clothes thrown into those of Strathfillan and Kenethmont in Scotland, and Benton (near Newcastle-upon-Tyne), and the common offering of three stones as a tribute to the spirit of the stream in Unst (Shetland), are, like the nosegays thrown into wells and fountains in honour of their presiding nymphs at the Roman fontinalia, or the cakes of bread-corn similarly offered of old to Juno in Laconia, evidences of a belief not at all unlike that which prompts Chinese acts of a similar nature.