Note 15 — V.—CHARMS, SPELLS, AMULETS AND DIVINATIONS.

My informant used sometimes, jokingly, to say to the applicant, “Oh! take a hair from the dog yourself,” but not liking his looks, this offer was usually declined, and the alternative suggested brings into notice another curiously wide-spread superstition. He was asked to spit in her hand, as a charm against evil. Now the virtues claimed for this not very cleanly proceeding by the Chinese found a thorough belief amongst the ancients, which survives to this day amongst the lower classes in England. Brand gives a most interesting chapter on this subject.15 The Roman custom of lustrating an infant by spittle on the day of its being named, that of the Mandingoes who spit thrice in the child’s face on the same occasion, and the custom of fishwomen at home who still “spit upon their handsel,” or the first money they take in the day, all point to the same belief as that entertained by the Hakkas. There is still a rural English belief that spitting three times in a person’s face is a charm against the evil eye. The Hebrew belief in the mystic properties of saliva is said to be of considerable antiquity, and we find our Saviour on two occasions (St. John ix. 6 and Mark vii. 33) using it in curing the blind.