Glass.
Glass in the form of beads, which seem to derive some of their efficacy from being perforated, is also very useful in this way. Mirrors from time immemorial have been held to possess the same quality. “Fascinators, like basilisks, had their own terrible glance turned against them if they saw themselves reflected,” “Si on luy presente un miror, par endardement reciproque, ces rayons retournent sur l’autheur d’iceux.” Philostratus declares that if a mirror be held before a sleeping man during a hail or thunder-storm, the storm will cease.[87] Hence women in India wear mirrors in their thumb rings, and the Jâtnî covers her sheet with little pieces of shining glass.
Pieces of horn, especially that which is said to come from the jackal, and that of the antelope, are also efficacious. The bâzâr Banya treasures up the gaudy labels from his cloth bales for the same purpose. Garlands of flowers possess the same quality, and so do various fruits, such as dates, cocoanuts, betel-nuts, and plantains, which are placed in the lap of the bride or pregnant woman to scare the evil spirits which cause barrenness, and sugar is distributed at marriages. The bones of the camel are very useful for driving off insects from a sugar-cane field, and buried under the threshold keep ghosts out of the house. Pliny says that a bracelet of camel’s hair keeps off fever.[88]
Lastly, the demon may be trapped by physical means. “To be delivered from witches they hang in their entries whitethorn gathered on May Day.”[89] So, many of the menial castes in the North-West Provinces keep a net and some thorns in the delivery room to scare evil spirits.
There are certain persons who are naturally protected from the Evil Eye and demoniacal agency, or who have control over evil spirits. Such is a man born by the foot presentation, who can cure rheumatism and various other diseases by merely rubbing the part affected. Men with double thumbs are considered safe against the Evil Eye, and so is a bald man, apparently because no one thinks it worth his while to envy such people. According to English belief, children born after midnight have power all through their lives of seeing the spirits of the departed. In India, people who are born within the period of the Salono festival in August are not only protected from, but possess the power of casting, the Evil Eye. The same is the case of those who have accidentally eaten ordure in childhood. We have already noticed the mystic power of cowdung. Dung generally is offensive to spirits. It was believed in Europe that horsedung placed before the house or behind the door brought good luck.[90] Women who eat dung possess, as we shall see, the power of witchcraft.
A man with only one eye is dreaded because he is naturally envious of those with good sight, and he is proverbially a scoundrel. The giant with one eye is familiar in folk-lore, and he is generally vicious and malignant. We have the black man of Celtic folk-lore who has only one eye and one leg.[91] In the Irish tales Crinnaur, like the Cyclopes, has only one eye. Sindbad in his third voyage encounters a monster of the same kind. Laplanders have a one-eyed giant Stalo, and in one of the modern versions of the Perseus myth there are two hags who have only a single eye between them. The same idea appears in Indian folk-lore. The planet Sukra is said to have only one eye. Such was also the case with the monster Kabandha, who was killed by Râma, and Arâyî, the female fiend of the Veda. The one-eyed devil appears in one of the Kashmîr tales.[92]