Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/190

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

1 62 Folklore from the Southern Sporades.

Samaritans, Phoenicians, Pisidians, Paphlagonians, Galatae, Phrygians, Bulgarians, Dardanians, Germans, Spaniards, Romans, Gauls, Turks, Tartars, Unicorns, Cynoscephalians, women with one breast, AUemanni, Wallachians, and many more whose names I never heard of. The great spirits Serachia, Eligdeos, Adonai, Sabaoth, and all those whom King Solomon bound by oath, are invoked. A demon, interviewed by the Archangel Michael, gives at command a list of his names ; these are, arpl'yX.a, jiXov, /jLop(j)ov, /3apc-^ov, dpa/3ap8ov, ^pecpoTrvrjKTOV, Trapacjjov, -^evhopbevrj, fiavrarapeva, pua^XiaTov.

There are still current many of these beast-binding charms. From Lesbos I got one or two which have been already given to this Society,^ and I now add another from an old dame at Cos, aged ninety or more. Sometimes a mother wants to go out to work, leaving her children at home ; then she repeats the following lines : —

" Holy Phoucas Loucas, Five-prong iron fingers, Do thou bind and bridle Scorpion and viper, And all great creeping things : Do thou bind and bridle Him, the man of evil, Wandering at night-time, Till the hour of sunrise. Then five pastry-rollers, Reed-sticks nine are wanted, So to give my bags a shaking, And to waken up my children, And to go about my business." ^

' Vol. vii. p. 143.

" "Ayie t&ov/ca AovKa,

(7ibepoTrepToba')(Tv\i,

beae Kcil "^aXivwGe

OTTOv (TKopwios Kcil o~)(evTpa \^ = €y(ihva\

Kai ovXia TapTrera piydXa.