a corpse and dried, is suspended from the neck and is reputed to have the powers of an amulet. In Flanders, a sick person imprisons a spider between two walnut shells and wears it around his neck.[1]
There were also specific amulets in circulation. For every ailment or unhappiness there was obtainable in the market of the necromancers, a charm which was supposed to have a certain beneficial influence for the affliction. Guttierez, a Spanish physician, who wrote a book on "Fascination" in the year 1653, states that children of that country wore amulets against the evil eye. In case a person who had the evil eye should gaze upon a child wearing this stone-charm, the vicious influence of the gaze will be attracted by the stone which will then crack.[2] For epilepsy there was in circulation a charm which had this inscription:
Jasper brings myrrh, and Melchior incense brings,
And gold Balthazar to the King of Kings;
Whoso the names of these three monarchs bears,
Is safe, through grace, of epilepsy's fears.
For convulsions, as another example, they used to wear a necklace of beads from the root of the peony. Pliny tells that for headache a remedy to be tried is the halter by which somebody has been recently hanged; this should be worn around the neck of the patient. In 1726, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, wrote in great praise of the Goa Stone:
The Goa Stone is an admirable preparation of various ingredients; it is made by a Jesuit at Goa; it hath the same effects with the Lady Kent 's powder, but is much stronger; it is a sudorificke, and expels all poisons and humors in the blood; it is admirable in all feavours and agues; it drives out measles and small-pox.
There was a belief current in the middle ages that the cries of animals had each a significance. A very plausible arrangement of the cries was made by a certain anonymous genius. One must, however, be a scholar of Latin in order to understand what the animals were saying. Arranging the conversation of the beasts in the form of a dialogue, we have the following curious effect:
| Cock: | Christus natus est. |
| Duck: | Quando, quando? |
| Raven: | In hac nocte. |
| Cow: | Ubi, ubi? |
| Lamb: | Bethelem. |
"Incredulity," said Ashmole, "is given the world as a punishment." It is no wonder then that human beings in order to avoid this penalty, believed all that was told them, and relied upon others to grant them the same courtesy; and then acting upon this privilege or license, helped to burden the lore of the world with tales of absurdity and incongruity.
