In Calabria it is thought unlucky to be either born or christened on a Friday. Saturday is likewise esteemed an inauspicious day, which points to its association with the witches' Sabbath, once the subject of numerous superstitious beliefs throughout the southern provinces of Italy. Not far from the battlefield near Benevento where Charles of Anjou defeated Manfred, grew a walnut tree, which had an almost European fame as the scene of Sabbatical orgies. People used to hang upon its branches the figure of a two-headed viper coiled into a ring, a symbol of incalculable antiquity. St Barbatus had the tree cut down, but the devil raised new shoots from the root and so it was renewed. Shreds of snake-worship may be still collected. The Calabrians hold that the cast-off skin of a snake is an excellent thing to put under the pillow of a sick baby. Even after their christening, children are unfortunately most susceptible to enchantment. When a beautiful and healthy child sickens and dies, the Irish peasant infers that the genuine baby has been stolen by fairies, and this miserable sprite left in its place. Two ancient antidotes have great power to counteract the effect of spells. One is the purifying Fire. In Scotland, as in Italy, bewitched children, within the memory of living men, have been set to rights by contact with its salutary heat. My relative, Count Belli of Viterbo, was "looked at" when an infant by a Jettatrice, and was in consequence put by his nurse into a mild oven for half-an-hour. One would think that the remedy was nearly as perilous as the practice of the lake-dwellers of cutting a little hole in their children's heads to let out the evil spirits, but in the case mentioned it seems to have answered well.
The other important curative agent is the purifying spittle. In Scotland and in Greece, any one who should exclaim, "What a beautiful child!" is expected to slightly spit upon the object of the remark, or some misfortune will follow. Ladies in a high position at Athens have been observed to do this quite lately. The Scotch and Greek uneasiness about the "well-faured" is by no means confined to those peoples; the same anxiety reappears in Madagascar; and the Arab does not like you to praise the beauty of his horse without adding the qualifying "an it please God." Persius gives an account of the precautions adopted by the friends of the infant Roman: "Look here—a grandmother or superstitious aunt has taken baby from his cradle and is charming his forehead and his slavering lips against mischief by the joint action of her middle finger and her purifying spittle; for she knows right well how to check the evil eye. Then she dandles him in her arms, and packs off the little pinched hope of the family, so far as wishing can do it, to the domains of Licinus, or to the palace of Crœsus. 'May he be a catch for my lord and lady's daughter! May the pretty ladies scramble for him! May the ground he walks on turn to a rose-bed.'" (Prof. Conington's translation.)
One of the rare lullabies that contain allusion to enchantment is the following Roumanian "Nani-nani":
Lullaby, my little one,
Thou art mother's darling son;
Loving mother will defend thee,
Mother she will rock and tend thee,
Like a flower of delight,