In the Shrewsbury Museum is a small iron ring, with an intaglio representing a fawn springing out of a nautilus-shell. It was discovered at Wroxeter. This and similar devices the Rev. C. W. King ascribes as probable charms against the ‘evil eye.’
This superstition still prevails extensively in the East, and is also entertained in many parts of Europe. That it was well known to Romans we have the authority of Virgil: ‘Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos’ (Ecl. iii.).
The following engraving (from the Collection Chabouillet) represents a Greek amulet ring, adopted by the Etruscans and Romans, and which offers, by the stone and setting, the figure of an eye. These rings were movable, and turned on the axis.
Amulet against the ‘evil eye.’
The great preservative against this was the wearing of a ring, with the figure of a cockatrice, supposed to proceed from a cock’s egg under various planetary and talismanic influences. The Londesborough thumb-ring has two cockatrices cut in high relief upon an agate.
Amulets against the ‘evil eye.’
The deadly power of the cockatrice is alluded to by Shakspeare in ‘Twelfth Night’ and in ‘Romeo and Juliet’—
Say thou but I,
And that base vowel I shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.