whither they are going.[1] In Ireland, to meet a weasel under certain circumstances is unlucky.[2] A weasel crossing the path was regarded as an omen by the Aztecs.[3]
Further, Pythagoras warned his followers against stepping over a broom.[4] In some parts of Bavaria, housemaids, in sweeping out the house, are careful not to step over the broom for fear of the witches.[5] Again, it is a Bavarian rule not to step over a broom while a confinement is taking place in a house; otherwise the birth will be tedious, and the child will always remain small with a large head. But if anyone has stepped over a broom inadvertently, he can undo the spell by stepping backwards over it again.[6] So in Bombay they say you should never step across a broom, or you will cause a woman to suffer severely in childbed.[7]
Again, it was a precept of Pythagoras not to run a nail or a knife into a man’s footprints.[8] This, from the primitive point of view, was really a moral, not merely a prudential precept. For it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus, in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you thrust a nail into a man’s footprints the man will go lame.[9] Australian blacks held exactly the same view. “Seeing a Tatūngolūng very lame,” says Mr. Howitt, “I asked him what was the matter? He said, ‘Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.’ I asked him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot-
- ↑ Callaway, Nursery Tales, etc., of the Zulus, p. 5.
- ↑ M‘Mahon, Karens of the Golden Chersonese, 273.
- ↑ Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii, 128.
- ↑ Hippolytus, Refut. omn. haeres., vi, 27.
- ↑ Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern, 38.
- ↑ Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube², § 574.
- ↑ Indian Notes and Queries, iv, 104.
- ↑ Fragm. Phil. Gr., l. c.
- ↑ Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg, ii, Nos. 1597, 1598; cp. id., No, 1611a seq.
