or sometimes attached to her girdle, both of which have been noticed as safeguards against the evil eye, serve also to 'cut' this magic bond of impotence. Sometimes too a pair of scissors and a piece of fisherman's net are put in the bridal bed. In Acarnania and Aetolia, and it may be elsewhere, a still more primitive custom prevails; both bride and bridegroom wear an old piece of fishing-net,—in which therefore resides the virtue of salt water,—round the loins next to the body; and from these bits of netting are afterwards made amulets to be worn by any children of the marriage. Such customs are likely long to continue among the simpler folk of modern Greece, who frankly and innocently wish the bride at her wedding reception 'seven sons and one daughter.'
But it is not only for ailments induced by malicious magic that magical means of cure or aversion are used. The whole of popular medicine is based upon the knowledge of charms and incantations. Many simples and drugs are of course known and employed; but it is still generally believed, as it was in old time, that 'there would be no good in the herb without the incantation[1].' For the most ordinary diseases are credited to supernatural causes, and there is no ill to which flesh is heir,—from a headache to the plague,—without some demon responsible for it. A nightmare and the sense of physical oppression which often accompanies it are not traced to so vulgar a cause as a heavy supper, but are dignified as the work of a malicious being named (
Greek characters)[Greek: Brachnâs][2], who in the dead of night delights to seat himself on the chest of some sleeper, and by his weight produces an unpleasant feeling of congestion. Material for a similar personification has been found also in the more terrible pestilences by which Greece has from time to time been visited. It is still believed among the poorest folk of Athens that in a cleft on the,
- ↑ Plato, Charm. § 8 (p. 155).
- ↑ The name is probably derived from the ancient (
Greek characters)[Greek: bránchos], with metathesis of the nasal sound. If (Greek characters)[Greek: bránchos] means congestion of the throat, the modern formation in [Greek: -as] would mean 'one who causes congestion,'—apparently of other parts besides the throat. The by-forms (Greek characters)[Greek: Barachnâs] and (Greek characters)[Greek: Barychnâs] seem to have been influenced by a desire to connect the name with (Greek characters)[Greek: barys], 'heavy.' Under the ancient name of this demon, 'Ephialtes,' Suidas gives also a popular name of his day, (Greek characters)[Greek: Baboutsikários], a word borrowed from late Latin and apparently connected with babulus (baburrus, baburcus, babuztus) 'foolish,' 'mad.' Babutsicarius should then be the sender of foolish or mad dreams. Suidas however may be in error; see below p. 217.
