Note 141.3 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

So too of other portions of the body. The Poles say that a girl who drops tears on a corpse will become consumptive. At Zwickau in the Erzgebirge any who does so is in danger of an early death.141.3 A fine appreciation of the antiseptic properties of tobacco is reputed to be shown by some French smokers, who preserve in their tobacco-pouches the teeth lost from their heads, believing by this means to prevent toothache.141.4 It used to be the custom in Derbyshire to preserve all one’s shed teeth in a jar until death, and then to have them buried in the coffin with their owner; for, it was said, on reaching heaven the man would be obliged to account for all the teeth he had upon earth: an obvious afterthought, and not the real reason.141.5 I have already mentioned the English superstition that a child’s cast tooth must not be thrown away, but burnt. The practice on the Riviera is the same.141.6 In Piceno the infant is made to hide the tooth in a crack of the hearth, in the hope of finding a gift the next morning. In the Abruzzi it is enough to put it into any hole.142.1 While among the southern Slavs the child is instructed to throw it into a dark corner, crying: “Mouse, mouse! There is a bony tooth; give me an iron tooth instead.” He is then to spit; and this is done that no more teeth may fall out. Sometimes his cast tooth is plugged into an old willow, that he may never suffer from toothache.142.2 In the Erzgebirge, to attain the same end the father is told to swallow a daughter’s tooth, and the mother a son’s.142.3 The origin of the superstition, widely spread in Europe, that the mother should bite and not cut a baby’s nails, may possibly be found in some analogous reason.