May they perish!
Sickness depart
From thy head,
From thy breast,
From thy belly,
From thy feet,
From thy hands,
May they go hence
Into the evil eyes!”
It may be observed that meal forms an ingredient in several of these sorceries. It is a very ancient essential to sacrifices, and is offered to the spirits of the stream to appease them, as it was often given for the same purpose to the wind. The old Germans, says Prætorius, imagined the storm-wind as a starving, ravenous being, and sought to appease it by throwing meal to it. So it happened once even of later years near Bamberg when a mighty wind was raging one night that an old woman took her meal-bag and threw its contents out of the window, saying:—