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

11 FATTURA BELLA MORTE 57
Closely allied to these practices is that of the
maidens in Shropshire, who drop needles and pins
into the wells at Wenlock, to arrest and fix the
affections of their lovers.^^ Nor is this particular form
of sympathetic enchantment, which here in Somerset
is a very common one, by any means confined to
this country.
A year or two ago a friend showed me in Naples
an almost identical object, within a few days of its
discovery : the following is his own account of it :
In 1892 Mr. William Smith, English grocer at Naples, in
course of cleaning his house, took down his curtains, and on the
top of the valence-board found the object. Mrs. Smith presented
it to Mr. Neville Rolfe, knowing that he took an interest in such
things. He showed it to his cook, an old man, who was as
ignorant and superstitious as ever a Neapolitan could be ; and
he was so horror-stricken (thinking it had been sent to the house
by some evil-disposed person) that he declined to remain in the
house unless the object were at once sent out of it ! Mr. Rolfe,
accordingly, lent it to the Museum at Oxford. It consists of an
ordinary Neapolitan green lemon, into which twenty-four cloutheaded
nails and half a dozen wire nails are stuck, the nails
being secured by a string twisted round their heads. The cook
asserted that after the thing was made by the witches, they put it
above a brazier, and danced round it naked, thus making it of
deadly power. Many stories are current in Naples of the efficacy
of the incantations practised by the witches, and especially of one
who resided in Mergellina, a part of Naples still mainly inhabited
by fishermen.
It appears that in Southern Italy the article is so
common as to have a regular name, Fattura della
In all the foregoing instances, it will be noted that the hearts or onions
were to be scorched either by being actually thrown on the fire or by being
placed in the chimney, where they would be exposed to much heat. The
inside of the clavel beam would be a particularly hot place. A specimen of
the same kind of heart as Fig. 5, at Oxford (Pitt Rivers Museum), has also a
large nail through it, to fasten it to the wooden clavel.
®5 Mrs. Gaskell in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1894, p. 264.
This, however, is somewhat wide of our subject, and belongs rather to the
widely-extended belief in holy wells and sacred springs. (For full information
on this subject, see Mackinlay, Folk Lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs, 1894.)
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