Take it quickly!”
If the child has pains in the stomach, the hair of a black dog is burned to powder and kneaded with the mother’s milk and some of the fæces of the child into a paste. This prescription occurs in the magical medical formulas of Marcellus Burdigalenis, the court-physician at Rome in the fourth century: “Cape mel atticum et stercus infantis quod primum demittit, statim ex lacte mulieris quœ puerum allactat permiscebis et sic inunges,” &c. Most of the prescriptions of Marcellus were of ancient Etrurian origin, and I have found many of them still in use in the Romagna Toscana. This is put into a cloth and bound on the belly of the child. When it falls asleep a hole is bored in a tree and the paste put into it. The hole is then stopped up with a wooden plug, and while this is being done the following is repeated:—
“Andrál por prejiá,
André selene beshá!
Beshá beshá tu káthe!
Penáv, penáv me tute!”
“Depart from the belly
Live in the green! (tree)
Remain, remain thou here!
I say, I say to thee!”