“Hair, hair, burn!
Dirt and hair burn!
Dirt and hair burn!
Illness be burned!”
This bears manifest mark of Hindoo origin, and I have no doubt that the same ceremony in every detail is practised in India at the present day. In Southern Hungary convulsive weeping in children is cured as follows: In the evening, when the fire burns before the tent, the mother takes her child in her arms and carries it three times around the fire, putting on it a pipkin full of water, into which she puts three coals. With this water she washes the head of her child, and pours some of it on a black dog. Then she goes to the next stream or brook, and lets fall into it a red twist, saying:—
“Lává Niváshi ádá bolditori te láhá m’re čaveskro rovipen! Káná sástavestes ánáv me tute pçábáyá te yándrá.”
“Nivashi take this twist, and with it the weeping of my child. When it is well I will bring thee apples and eggs.”
When a child “bumps” its head the swelling is pressed with the blade of a knife, and the following spell is muttered thrice, seven, or nine times, according to the gravity of the injury:—
“Ač tu, ač tu, ač kovles,
The may sik tu mudarés!