SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTED WITH BIRTH AND BAPTISM.
In the time of Shakespeare babies were supposed to be exposed to other risks and dangers than the infantile disorders to which they are subject. Mary Shakespeare, as she watched the cradle of the infant William, may have been troubled by fears and anxieties that never occur to a fond mother now.
Witches and fairies were supposed to be given to stealing beautiful and promising children, and substituting their own ugly and mischievous offspring. Shakespeare alludes to these "changelings," as they were called, in the Midsummer-Night's Dream (ii. 1. 23), where Puck says that Oberon is angry with Titania
"Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling."
This "changeling boy" is alluded to several times afterwards in the play.
In the Winter's Tale (iii. 3. 122), when the Shepherd finds Perdita, he says: "It was told me I should be rich by the fairies; this is some changeling"; and the money left with the infant he believes to be "fairy gold." As the child is beautiful he does not take it to be one of the ugly elves left in exchange for a stolen babe, but a human changeling which the fairy thieves have for some reason abandoned. If it were not for the gold left with it, he might suppose that the stolen infant had been temporarily hidden there. We have an allusion to such behavior on the part of the fairies in Spenser's Faerie Queene (i. 10. 65):—
"For well I wote thou springst from ancient race
Of Saxon kinges, that have with mightie hand,
And many bloody battailes fought in face,
High reard their royall throne in Britans land,
And vanquisht them, unable to withstand:
From thence a Faery thee unweeting reft,
There as thou slepst in tender swadling band,
And her base Elfin brood there for thee left:
Such men do Chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft.
Thence she thee brought into this Faery lond [land],
And in a heaped furrow did thee hyde;
Where thee a Ploughman all unweeting fond [found],
As he his toylesome teme that way did guyde,
And brought thee up in a ploughmans state to byde."
In 1 Henry IV. (i. 1. 87), the King, contrasting the gallant Hotspur with his own profligate son, exclaims:
"O that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine."
The belief in the "evil eye" was another superstition prevalent in Shakespeare's day, as it had been from the earliest times. It dates back to old Greek and Roman days, being mentioned by Theocritus, Virgil, and other classical writers. In Turkey passages from the Koran used to be painted on the outside of houses as a protection against this malignant influence of witches, who were supposed to cause serious injury to human beings and animals by merely looking at them.
Thomas Lupton, in his Book of Notable Things (1586) says: "The eyes be not only instruments of enchantment, but also the voice and evil tongues of certain persons." Bacon, in one of his minor works, remarks: "It seems some have been so curious as to note that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envious eye does most hurt are particularly when the party envied is beheld in glory and triumph."
Robert Heron, writing in 1793 of his travels in Scotland, says: "Cattle are subject to be injured by what is called an evil eye, for some persons are supposed to have naturally a blasting power in their eyes, with which they injure whatever offends or is hopelessly desired by them. Witches and warlocks are also much disposed to wreak their malignity on cattle.... It is common to bind into a cow's tail a small piece of mountain-ash wood, as a charm against witchcraft."
As recently as August, 1839, a London newspaper reports a case in which a woman was suspected of the evil eye by a fellow-lodger merely because she squinted.
In this case, as in many others, the possession of the evil eye may not have been supposed due to any evil purpose or character. Good people might be born with this baleful influence, and might exert it against their will or even unconsciously. It is said that Pius IX., soon after his election as Pope, when he was perhaps the best loved man in Italy, happened while passing through the streets in his carriage to glance upward at an open window at which a nurse was standing with a child. A few minutes afterward the nurse let the child drop and it was killed. Nobody thought that the Pope wished this, but the fancy that he had the evil eye became universal and lasted till his death.
In the Merry Wives of Windsor (v. 5. 87) Pistol says to Falstaff: "Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth." In the Merchant of Venice (iii. 2. 15) Portia playfully refers to the same superstition in talking with Bassanio:—
"Beshrew your eyes,
They have o'erlook'd me and divided me;
One half of me is yours, the other half yours."