Perhaps it may not be considered an unwarrantable stretch of barbarous logic to regard the casting of a spell as an act of appropriation parallel to theft. Theft, however, like any other act of appropriation, sets up union between the person appropriating, and the article appropriated. Ownership, by the process of thought I have endeavoured already to trace, is in fact union; and injury inflicted upon a man's property is in a literal sense inflicted on himself.

CHAPTER X

WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES-PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL

LEECHCRAFT.

IN

N the last chapter we dealt with that branch of witchcraft which has been called Sympathetic Magic. There is another branch that will repay a little attention, namely, the composition and administration of philtres. Many philtres are of course potions compounded of herbs and other substances known to ancient pharmacopoeia. They are believed to have an effect partly inherent, partly conferred by spells. It is probable, indeed, that all medicine has arisen out of witchcraft, in the same way as chemistry, the true science, has emerged from alchemy, the false, and astronomy from astrology. Witchcraft, alchemy and astrology are all related by very close ties. They are the practical application of early beliefs and speculations growing out of one and the same theory of the universe. So far as I know, the history of the evolution of medicine from witchcraft has not received the attention which the corresponding evolution of chemistry and astronomy has had; but it is not less interesting, and in some respects it is even more surprising. Among lovepotions made of herbs or of portions of the lower animals it is often difficult, or impossible, to estimate how far the virtue of the dose is conceived to be inherent in the

ingredients, and how far it is conferred by spells or other observances with which it is concocted. Sometimes the inherent virtue seems to preponderate; at other times the spell. In extreme cases on the one hand the spells are absent, or are reduced to the simple direction to cull the materials at a certain time, as in the case of the Gipsy philtre consisting of the bones of a green frog powdered and mixed with cantharides and a well-sweetened dough, and baked into a cake. Here the frog must be caught on Saint John's day, put into a pot having holes in the sides, and sunk into an ant-hill until the ants have picked the bones clean.1 On the other hand, the ingredients are almost disregarded, and the spell it is that is relied on. a philtre reported by M. Laisnel de la Salle consists, like the other, of a little cake, of whose substance we are told nothing. Its power is obtained by being placed under the altar-cloth, so that the priest unwittingly says mass and sheds his benediction over it.2

So

Our present business, however, is not with philtres like these, but rather with such as operate in a manner similar to the charms described in the previous chapter, founded, as I am endeavouring to show, upon the belief that portions of the body, though outwardly severed, are still in some secret physical connection with one another. In the Mark of Brandenburg a maiden causes the object of her affections to fall in love with her if she give him one of her hairs in his food, or a third person can compel a youth and maiden to love by laying a hair of each together between two stones in such a manner that the wind can play with them.3 Accord1 Von Wlislocki, Volksgl. Zig., 134.

2 ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 24.

3 H. Prahn, in i. Zeits. des Vereins, 182.

ing to Gipsy belief, love can be awakened by mixing one's sweat, blood or hairs with the food of the person desired; and on the other hand it can be destroyed by burning these substances.1 Another Gipsy charm, and one not unknown among the Russians, is made by a maiden who burns some of her hair to ashes and mingles them with the drink of the man she loves.2 A Bohemian, or a Wendish maiden, is said to take some hairs from her arm and bake them in a cake for him.3 Hairs are not such enticing food as to be readily eaten: hence charms made of them are likely to fail if this be necessary. It is, therefore, enough to convey them into the clothes of the beloved. A Transylvanian Saxon maid can kindle love if she can contrive this; and if the hairs remain there until New Year's morning the youth cannot forsake her that year.1 Formerly at all events a similar belief seems to have prevailed in Germany.5 A Gipsy wife endeavours to bind her husband to her by binding some of her own hair among his ; but, to be effectual, it must be done thrice at the full moon. For this cause, apparently, a widower on marrying again cuts off on the wedding day his beard and hair and burns it. Spells cast by the dead wife are thus destroyed.

1 Von Wlislocki, Volksgl. Zig., 134.

2 Ibid., Volksleb. Mag., 34; iv. Kobert, 82.

3 Wilken, Haaropfer, 80. For the Wendish maiden an alternative is "eine unpaarige Zahl Haare vom Gemächte ganz klein zu schneiden, dass sie nicht mehr sichtbar sind, und in Kartoffelen den Geliebten genieszen zu lassen.” Conversely, "wenn bei den Wenden ein Bursche von einem Mädchen geliebt sein will, so soll er sich Haare von ihrem Gemächte verschaffen, sie in eine Nähnadel einfädeln und so bei sich tragen." Ibid. 4 Von Wlislocki, Siebenb. Sachs., 57. Bourke, 219, quoting a story from Paullini, Dreck Apotheke (Frankfort, 1696).

5

a man wish to bind a maiden to him, he obtains some of her hairs, spits thereon, and hides them secretly in the coffin of a dead man.1 The writer who reports this charm also tells us that a Hungarian lover will secure the maiden by burying some of her hair at a cross-road. The crossroad is everywhere a place only one degree less dreadful than the churchyard; and burial there is doubtless a substitute for burial in the churchyard and committing the hair as a pledge to the keeping of the dead. A traveller in Ireland in the early part of the last century declares that a love-sick Irish youth will thread a needle with the hair of the damsel he covets and run it through the fleshy part of the arm or leg of a corpse, "and the charm has that virtue in it to make her run mad for him whom she so lately slighted." Some light is perhaps thrown on these practices by the corresponding charm said to be practised by Magyar girls. She who desires to be loved steals some of the youth's hair and, throwing it towards the moon, utters a prayer for his love and for marriage, "if that can be."2 The hair is thus given to the moon, both as an act of worship, and that it may be the means whereby the object of worship may, in accordance with the belief discussed in the last chapter, constrain the original owner to compliance with the votary's wishes. Another Magyar practice confirms this interpretation. The first egg laid by a black hen is carefully blown and laid on the hearth to dry. Hairs, nail-parings, and some drops of blood of the person whose love is desired are then introduced into it, and it is buried

1 Von Wlislocki, Volksgl. Zig., 82, 203. The last seems also a Transylvanian Saxon charm. Ibid., Siebenb. Sachs., 203.

2 Ibid., Volksleb. Mag., 78; ii. Brand, 605, quoting The Comical Pilgrim's Pilgrimage into Ireland.