“Charm against Nose-bleeding.

“Zachariah was slain in the Lord’s temple, and his blood turned into stone. Then stop, O blood, for the Lord’s servant, ——. I exorcise thee, blood, that thou stoppest in the name of the Saviour, and by fear of the priests when they perform the liturgy at the altar.”

Those who sell these charms are almost universally supposed to be mere quacks and humbugs. If this were the case, why do they so very carefully learn and preserve these incantations, transmitting them

“as a rich legacy

Unto their issue.”

But they really do believe in them, and will give great prices for them. Prof. Dragomanoff told me that once in Malo-Russia it became generally known that he had made a MS. collection of such spells. A peasant who was desirous of becoming a sorcerer, but who had very few incantations of his own, went whenever he could by stealth into the Professor’s library and surreptitiously copied his incantations. And when Prof. Dragomanoff returned the next year to that neighbourhood, he found the peasant doing a very good business as a conjuring doctor, or faith-healer. I have a lady correspondent in the United States who has been initiated into Voodoo and studied Indian-negro witchcraft under two eminent teachers, one a woman, the other a man. The latter, who was at the very head of the profession, sought the lady’s acquaintance because he had heard that she possessed some very valuable spells. In the fourth or highest degree, as in Slavonian or Hungarian gypsy-magic, this Indian-Voodoo deals exclusively with the spirits of the forest and stream.

M. Kounavine, as set forth by Dr. A. Elysseeff (Gypsy-Lore Journal, July, 1890), gives a Russian gypsy incantation by which the fire is invoked to cure illness. It is as follows:—

“Great Fire, my defender and protector, son of the celestial fire, equal of the sun who cleanses the earth of foulness, deliver this man from the evil sickness that torments him night and day!”

The fire is also invoked to punish, or as an ordeal, e.g.:—

“Fire, who punishest the evil-doer, who hatest falsehood, who scorchest the impure, thou destroyest offenders; thy flame devoureth the earth. Devour —— if he says what is not true, if he thinks a lie, and if he acts deceitfully.”

These are pronounced by the gypsy sorcerer facing the burning hearth. There is another in which fire is addressed as Jandra, and also invoked to punish an offender:—