Note 28 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

While a house is being built, an iron pot, or a pot painted black, which is good enough to scare the demon, is always kept on the works, and when it is finished the young daughter of the owner ties to the lintel a charm, which is also used on other occasions, the principal virtue of which consists in a small iron ring. Here is combined the virtue of the iron and the ring, which is a sacred circle. In India iron rings are constantly worn as an amulet against disease, as in Ireland an iron ring on the fourth finger cures rheumatism. The mourner, during the period of ceremonial impurity, carries a knife or a piece of iron to drive off the ghost of the dead man, and the bridegroom in the marriage procession wears a sword as a protection; if he cannot procure a licence from a magistrate to carry a real sword, he gets one made of lath, which is good enough to frighten the evil spirit. In this case he fastens an iron spike to the point. On the same principle the blacksmith’s anvil is used as a hail charm, and any one who dares to sit on it is likely to be punished for the contempt by an attack of boils. The Romans used to drive large nails into the side posts of the door with the same object. We have already noticed the value of iron nails for the purpose of laying the ghost of the Churel, and such nails are in India very commonly driven into the door-post or into the legs of the bed, with the object of resisting evil spirits. The horse-shoe is one special form of the charm. The wild Irish, we are told, used to hang round the necks of children the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, a crooked nail out of a horse-shoe, or a piece of wolf-skin.28 Why the horse-shoe should be used in this way has been much debated. Mr. Farrer thinks it may be connected with the respect paid to the horse in folk-lore.29 The Irish say that the reason is that the horse and ass were in the stall when Christ was born, and hence are blessed for evermore.30 The idea that its shape connects it with the Yonî and phallicism hardly deserves mention. One thing is clear, that the element of luck largely enters into the matter; the shoe must have been found by chance on the road. Mr. Leland says, “To find and pick up anything, at once converts it into a fetish, or insures that all will go well with it, if we say when taking it up, ‘I do not pick it up,’—naming the object—‘I pick up good luck, which may never abandon me!’”31 This, combined with the general protective power of iron, is probably a sufficient explanation of the practice. The custom is common in India. The great gate of the mosque at Fatehpur Sîkri is covered with them, and the practice is general at many shrines.