I caught a hare all alive.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

I let her go again.”

The following from the medical spells and charms of Marcellus Burdigalensis manifestly explains it:—

“Lepori vivo talum abstrahes, pilósque ejus de subventre tolles atque ipsum vivum dimittes. De illis pilis, vel lana filum validum facies et ex eo talum leporis conligabis corpusque laborantis præcinges; miro remedio subvenies. Efficacius tamen erit remedium, ita ut incredibile sit, si casu os ipsum, id est talum leporis in stercore lupi inveneris, quod ita custodire debes, ne aut terram tangat aut a muliere contingatur, sed nec filum illud de lana leporis debet mulier ulla contigere. Hoc autem remedium cum uni profuerit ad alias translatum cum volueris, et quotiens volueris proderit. Filum quoque, quod ex lana vel pilis, quos de ventre leporis tuleris, solus purus et nitidus facies, quod si ita ventri laborantis subligaveris plurimum proderit, ut sublata lana leporem vivum dimmittas, et dicas ei dum dimittis eum:

“ ‘Fuge, fuge, lepuscule, et tecum aufer coli dolorem!’ ”

That is to say, you must “first catch your hare,” then pluck from it the fur needed ad dolorem coli, then “let it go again,” bidding it carry the disorder with it. In which the hare appears as a scape-goat. It may be observed that all this ceremony of catching the hare, letting it go and bidding it run and carry away the disorder, is still in familiar use in Tuscany.

It has been observed to me that “any nursery rhyme may be used as a charm.” To this we may reply that any conceivable human utterance may be taken for the same purpose, but this is an unfair special pleading not connected with the main issue. Mr. Carrington Bolton admits that he has only found one instance of coincidence between nursery rhymes and spells, and I have compared hundreds of both with not much more result than what I have here given. But those who are practically familiar with such formulas recognize this affinity. On asking the Florentine fortune-teller if she knew any children’s counting-out rhymes which deemed to her to be the same with incantations, she at once replied:—

“In witchcraft you sometimes call on people one by one by name to bewitch them. And the little girls have a song which seems to be like it.” Then she sang to a very pretty tune:—

“Ecco l’imbasciatore,

Col tra le vi la lera,