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

424 THE EVIL EYE chap.
It is Strange that animals should have become
so connected in thought with the various constella-
tions and Zodiacal signs ;
but
so it is, and the con-
nection is evidently of the utmost antiquity, because
since history began, civilised races have all adopted
the same ideas, and in their several languages denote
the same animals.^ We are told *^'^ that the star
stories of Greeks and Egyptians (which we inherit)
are in direct correspondence with the like legends
among modern savages, yet many of them call stars
and constellations by names representing animals
different from those we call them. Nearly all savage
8 The Greeks had two names for the great northern constellation, which
remain to this day— the Great Bear and the Wain. Our modern name of
" King Charles's Wain" is but a very ancient one, revived with a prefix com- -
memorating some modern event. No amount of imagination can see any
real resemblance between the grouping of the points of light we call stars,
and the animals or things whose names have been given to them, yet the
idea took such root in primaeval minds that it has survived unchanged to
this day ; like the belief in the evil eye, it is quite unaccountable, and only to
be set down among the facts that are. See Appendix III.
Very many are the beliefs here in England and all over the world relating
to falling stars. The most widespread is probably that which connects them
with death or birth. Among the shepherds of the Apennines, a falling star
is a death portent ("Ecco un altro awiso di morte ; chi sa mai a chi tocchera?"
(Bellucci, Le Stelle Cadente e le loro leggende, Perugia, 1893, p. 10.) This
author recounts various other fantastic fancies. The same is held in the
Val Anzasca concerning events to happen to some one living in the house
on which it appears to fall. In Russia a falling star signifies an actual death
— in Lapland that of an infant. If so common a sight in some places
presages death, we naturally should expect to find the complementary notion
in others. In Somerset every falling star denotes a birth, while in Norfolk
it proclaims a child begotten.
In New Zealand a falling star is a kick which one god gives to another
weaker than himself. The universal belief in the living, animal character of
heavenly bodies is shown in the belief of the people of Guiana, who say that
falling stars are /' orina of the other stars, while the Loochoo Indians say that
they are excrementi delle stelle (Bellucci, op. cit. p. 29).
After having written so much upon the existing belief in animal portents,
it is amusing to read in the Spectator oi Nov. 24, 1894, p. 725, that "the
belief in animal portents ... no longer survives in our century " (!) Two
days after this (Nov. 26) a Somerset friend writes : " Does not the death of
a lion still give anxiety to many a woman expecting childbirth ? " This latter
is a curious and unsought confirmation of the remarks on p. 76 ante.
6" A. Lang, Myth and Custom, p. 124. See also Goguet, VOrigine des
Lois, on this subject.