Note 6 — V.—CHARMS, SPELLS, AMULETS AND DIVINATIONS.

Equally as widespread as the foregoing superstition is a common belief, that drowned bodies may be discovered by throwing into the water certain objects which, it is asserted, will stop over the exact spot where the corpse may lie. The American Indians use a chip of cedar wood. In England a loaf of bread loaded with quicksilver is used, while in Ireland similar use is made of a wisp of straw, bound round with a strip of parchment on which some cabalistic words have been written by the parish priest. In Java and in some parts of China a living goat (a sheep, I believe, will do as well) is cast into the water, and its dead body will, as is believed, indicate the resting place of the drowned man. As regards running streams it is easy to account for this common superstition by natural facts, but the varied forms it assumes are interesting. Another Chinese superstition relates to the use of salt, which is thrown into the water when any one has been rescued from drowning. A few months since a correspondent wrote to a Shanghai newspaper as follows:—“Yesterday afternoon a youngster of the Chinese nationality fell into the water off a pontoon. So his relatives set to work to fish him out, which humane act being accomplished, was followed by two old women very properly pulling his ears for trying to drown himself, and giving them trouble, while another old woman threw salt into the water at the spot he had fallen in. Can any of your readers inform me what the salt-throwing meant, and whether it is a custom on such occasions to do so?” The query remained unanswered. Nor has subsequent enquiry enabled me to throw any light upon the subject. “It’s a local custom,” was the only answer I could get. But a reference to Brand gives us some very interesting facts in connection with the use of salt for the purposes of lustration.6 Flinging salt over the left shoulder to avert threatened calamity is a well-known custom. The Greeks and Romans used it in their lustrations, and Jews and Pagans alike used it in their sacrifices as a propitiation. The Romans especially designed it as a propitiatory offering to avert the vengeance of Stygian or infernal Gods—an exact parallel to the Chinese custom. In the Isle of Man, a gift of salt is an essential element in numerous transactions. The Scotch used to, and perhaps still, put salt in the first milk taken from a cow after calving. That the Chinese should credit salt with propitiatory virtues also is therefore curious. Another item of our own household folk-lore, concerning the last piece of any edible left on a dish, is purely Chinese. While our goodwives give it the name of the “bachelor’s bit,” the Chinese call it the “poison piece,”—not because it is in itself poisonous, but because he who takes it may fare as badly as if he had been veritably poisoned. The Chinese think it unlucky to have the spout of a kettle, standing on the fire, turned outwards;—a belief I can only match by our superstition that it forebodes ill to cross two knives on the dinner table, being unable to trace the origin of either superstition.