The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

VI GURGOYLES 229
tions of them were certainly used as amulets. In support
of this we point to Fig. 91, a bronze
arm from a larger figure, holding out
a woman and child, in a manner which
candour must admit to be conclusive.
The bronze, of evident antiquity, was
obtained by the writer from a native on
the Nile. It is scarcely a likely object
to have been forged. Another piece
of convincing evidence is found in
the woman and child in both repre-
sentations of the Mano Pantea (Figs.
148, 156).
Appendix II
Fig. 91.
From Author's Col-
lection.
The evident defence of a Christian church by the horn
and crocodile amulets of Seville naturally leads to
the consideration of those very common though remarkable
appendages to other Christian churches with which
most people are familiar. It would be an interesting
study to ascertain when the grotesque and hideous things,
those nightmares in stone which we call gurgoyles, were
first adopted. Where was the germ first planted ? From
what kind of eggs were these fanciful birds, beasts,
fishes, and reptiles, first hatched ? Without waiting, how-
ever, for an answer to these questions, we may venture
to assert that the idea from which they sprang must have
been the same as that we have been considering. The
ievil glance of a wicked eye might as well be personi-
fied as the great variety of other vices, such as avarice, lust,
and drunkenness, to say nothing of the virtues, graces, and
higher attributes, all of which have found their representa-
tions in personal shapes. Precisely then as justice, mercy,
truth, find their expression in human female beauty, so
would their opposites, the ideals of evil, find theirs in the
fanciful and distorted shapes commonly understood by the
term fiendish. The old conceptions of Gnostic days would