Note 128.3 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

Many of the philtres, too, as we have seen, are deemed sufficient if brought into contact with the beloved object by being placed upon, or fastened into, his or her clothes. A few examples may be added. Magyar peasants make a sort of fetish which bears the name of czolonk. It is fashioned at Christmas of aspen-wood, is an efficient protection not only against witches and devils, but also against bullets and swords, and accordingly is worn next to the skin in all perilous enterprises. Every year the old one is burnt, and the ashes mixed with milk are scattered in the cattle-stalls. But a love-spell may be framed by sprinkling the czolonk with one’s own blood before burning it, and strewing the ashes on the garments of the person to be love-witched.128.3 A Gipsy girl will drop warm blood from her left foot secretly in the shoes or stockings of her beloved, so to bind his footsteps night and day to herself.128.4 In Hesse it seems to be even enough to steal a shoe or boot from the object of desire, carry it about for eight days, and then restore it.129.1 Lucian, writing in the second century, makes mention of a different mode of dealing with a man’s belongings. The witch takes some portion of his clothing, or a few hairs, or something else of his, and hanging them on a nail she fumigates them with incense, and sprinkling salt in the fire she pronounces the name of the woman, with it coupling the man’s name. Further spells are muttered to the twirling of a spindle; and the charm is complete. If we may believe one of the interlocutors in the Dialogue, the spell is most effective, for she had herself tested its power.129.2 It can hardly be more effective than the boiling of a sock on Saint Thomas’ night, said to be practised in the Land beyond the Forest, which has given rise to the proverbial expression, for one who is restless, that some one has boiled his stockings.129.3 Theocritus, in his second idyll, presents Simaetha casting into the magical flame some fringe from the cloak of Delphis, whom she loves, as part of a similar charm to that mentioned by Lucian. Any youth on whose raiment a maiden of the Seven Cities has bound a thread spun by herself on Saint Andrew’s Day (30th November) will be inflamed with love for her.129.4 Albanian wives (as provident as the wives in Brazil) are in the habit of sewing in their husbands’ gear when the latter are going from home little objects which they themselves have worn as talismans, to bring them safely back.130.1 In Eastern Africa no Taveta woman will part with her loin-cloth to a man for any consideration after she has once worn it, for “she would be under some sexual subjection to him”; he could bewitch her by means of it, and take her away from her husband and friends.130.2