seven green beans to throw into the well, which must be prayed to seven times.
To prevent injury to the eyes from smallpox. Apply to them blood squeezed from a living crayfish or sparrow.
Are you disturbed in your sleep by a crying child? Place under its bed grass from the lair of a wild boar. This must be done without the knowledge of the mother or nurse. Or hang on its back a red bag containing the hair of a dog. Or place a lump of cow-dung under the bed. The mother and nurse must not know of this.
To obtain one's heart's desire. Drink sake in which ashes of the feathers of a cock have been infused. Or, on the fifth day of the fifth month, take the head of a wild boar, place it on the kitchen furnace, and do worship to it.
To prevent a fox from returning to his hole and working you mischief. Place a rhinoceros's horn in it. A rhinoceros's horn is also good against possession by cats, foxes, and badgers.
A lifelong cure for sneezing. Swallow two spoonfuls of an ox's saliva.
To dispel mists when travelling by land or water. Take raw beans and reduce them to powder by pounding them in a mortar or by chewing them. If this is scattered on the road or the water the mist will disperse.
How to know whether a sick man will live or die. The man whose temperament is of metal will die if he has taken ill on a certain specified day of the sexagenary cycle, and so on. [This is pure Chinese.]
To improve the complexion. Use an application of white of eggs.
How to remain beautiful for ever. Take on the Kanoye[1] day and at the Kanoye hour the blood of a woodpecker and drink it with your face turned towards the west. Your complexion will retain its pearly beauty.
To become beautiful in a week. Crush a wild gourd and dissolve in water in which red ochre has been mixed. Apply every night and wash it off in the morning.
- ↑ [The decimal and duodenary cycles of the calendar restart together on every sixty-first day, which is the Kanoye ne, a festival to Ebisu and Daikoku, two of the "Seven Happy Gods."—Ed.]
