Note 118.3 — Chapter IX · WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.

Our present business, however, is not with philtres like these, but rather with such as operate in a manner similar to the charms described in the previous chapter, founded, as I am endeavouring to show, upon the belief that portions of the body, though outwardly severed, are still in some secret physical connection with one another. In the Mark of Brandenburg a maiden causes the object of her affections to fall in love with her if she give him one of her hairs in his food, or a third person can compel a youth and maiden to love by laying a hair of each together between two stones in such a manner that the wind can play with them.118.3 According to Gipsy belief, love can be awakened by mixing one’s sweat, blood or hairs with the food of the person desired; and on the other hand it can be destroyed by burning these substances.119.1 Another Gipsy charm, and one not unknown among the Russians, is made by a maiden who burns some of her hair to ashes and mingles them with the drink of the man she loves.119.2 A Bohemian, or a Wendish maiden, is said to take some hairs from her arm and bake them in a cake for him.119.3 Hairs are not such enticing food as to be readily eaten: hence charms made of them are likely to fail if this be necessary. It is, therefore, enough to convey them into the clothes of the beloved. A Transylvanian Saxon maid can kindle love if she can contrive this; and if the hairs remain there until New Year’s morning the youth cannot forsake her that year.119.4 Formerly at all events a similar belief seems to have prevailed in Germany.119.5 A Gipsy wife endeavours to bind her husband to her by binding some of her own hair among his; but, to be effectual, it must be done thrice at the full moon. For this cause, apparently, a widower on marrying again cuts off on the wedding day his beard and hair and burns it. Spells cast by the dead wife are thus destroyed. If a man wish to bind a maiden to him, he obtains some of her hairs, spits thereon, and hides them secretly in the coffin of a dead man.120.1 The writer who reports this charm also tells us that a Hungarian lover will secure the maiden by burying some of her hair at a cross-road. The cross-road is everywhere a place only one degree less dreadful than the churchyard; and burial there is doubtless a substitute for burial in the churchyard and committing the hair as a pledge to the keeping of the dead. A traveller in Ireland in the early part of the last century declares that a love-sick Irish youth will thread a needle with the hair of the damsel he covets and run it through the fleshy part of the arm or leg of a corpse, “and the charm has that virtue in it to make her run mad for him whom she so lately slighted.” Some light is perhaps thrown on these practices by the corresponding charm said to be practised by Magyar girls. She who desires to be loved steals some of the youth’s hair and, throwing it towards the moon, utters a prayer for his love and for marriage, “if that can be.”120.2 The hair is thus given to the moon, both as an act of worship, and that it may be the means whereby the object of worship may, in accordance with the belief discussed in the last chapter, constrain the original owner to compliance with the votary’s wishes. Another Magyar practice confirms this interpretation. The first egg laid by a black hen is carefully blown and laid on the hearth to dry. Hairs, nail-parings, and some drops of blood of the person whose love is desired are then introduced into it, and it is buried in the grave-mound of an unbaptized child. After three days it is dug up; and if any moisture be found inside the egg-shell success is assured.121.1 Here the moisture seems to be the work of the dead child, and, brought thus into contact with portions of the body of the beloved, it will have its effect upon him. More direct and more in accordance with the cases cited in the earlier part of this paragraph is the superstition (also Hungarian) that a woman who can, after reciting a certain spell, strip quite naked and in this condition steal a lock of hair from a sleeping man, and binding it afterwards wear it in a bag or ring, will obtain absolute mastery over his affections.121.2 The same result is attained by a Wendish youth who can cut hair thrice from the back of the neck of a sleeping maiden and keep it in his waistcoat pocket.121.3 Among the charms carried by German settlers to Pennsylvania was one which prescribed as a means of rendering a girl crazy for a certain man, that he should without her knowledge get a piece of her hair and sew it in his coat.121.4 And the witch in Apuleius’ immortal tale bade her servant bring away for some such purpose the clippings of the hair of the Bœotian youth of whom she was enamoured.121.5 In Bohemia it is enough to hide the hair under one’s threshold or in the doorposts.122.1 Farther south the Slavonic youth (the practice may also be followed by a maiden) obtains a few hairs or a shred from the smock of the beloved, and wrapping his prize up in a rag wears it upon his heart. If he wish for her society, all he has to do is to throw it into the fire at new moon, and let it burn: the beloved will certainly come.122.2 This is the very charm given by the Helpful Beasts in the märchen. An amusing tale is told in Corsica of a youth who loved a girl, from whom he could get no encouragement. So he begged her to give him at least one of her hairs. She sent him a long camel’s hair drawn out of a sieve which hung on a nail in the kitchen. Towards midnight the sieve tumbled down with a great noise and began to roll about the floor. At last it found its way out of doors and rolled straight to the lover’s house, where he was impatiently expecting quite a different visitor.122.3 A Prussian prescription for securing a maiden’s love is to stick three of her hairs in a split tree, so that they must be grown over as the tree heals.122.4 In some of the central Brazilian tribes, when a husband sets out on an expedition, the wife takes and keeps portions of his nails or hair, that he may not forget to return; and a woman who desires to win or preserve a man’s love puts some of her nail-parings or hair in his cigar.122.5 To prevent a dog in Germany from straying, three of his hairs are taken out and laid in the kitchen under the leg of the table; or he is made to eat in a cake hairs from his master’s armpit. To keep a newly purchased cow a handful of hair is cut from between her ears and buried before the stable door.123.1