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

XII SPITTING THREE TIMES 417
It is quite commonly said liere in Somerset :
" Nif you do meet wi' anybody wi' a north eye, spat
dree times. ""^^^ Why always three times ? why three
times by the nurses of old days, except that there is
some virtue added by the number three ?
Those afflicted with obliquity of vision have
ever been accounted as dangerous by hard-headed
as well as superstitious people. Even in London
the enlightened, these beliefs are not extinct. The
Morning Herald of August 16, 1839, records that
two women were fellow-lodgers, but unfortunately
one of them squinted, and the other, to avert the
supposed consequences from the defect in the first,
considered she could only protect herself by spitting
in her face three times a day.^^''
In many parts of England, certainly here in the
west, it is a common saying: " Always spat dree times
'nif ee do zee a piebald 'oss." Piebald horses are
thought uncanny nearly everywhere.
Country people generally have well - known
occasions when to spit ; indeed
the act is almost as
naturally performed as to breathe.
Not long ago, in shooting, the writer with others
came upon a dead dog which w^as most offensive.
One keeper said : "Here's
said :
"
a pretty breath" ;
the
other
Mus' bring a showl an' bury un " ; but both
accompanied their words with deliberately spitting
Quando poi vi pettinate
I capei, che son condutti
Li sputate tutti tutti. "— Marugi, Capricci, p. 103. .
The Editor remarks in a note to the above that Thiers says one spits
three times on the hair pulled out by the comb before throwing it away ; and
further he says, Tibullus enjoins spitting on the breast, giving his precise
words : " Despuit in molles et sibi quisque sinus." He adds : "I do not fail
to do this always, and I have found the benefit of it."
655 -pj^g same thing is recorded in Hone's Yea}--Book, 1831, p. 253.
^56 Brand, vol. iii. p. 50.
2 E
^