If you want to have luck in gambling you must kiss the cards before the game begins. (France.)
If you have the toothache you should kiss a donkey on his chops. (Germany.) This very efficacious advice is found as far back as Pliny.
If you drop a bit of bread on the floor you must kiss it when you pick it up. The same respect is also to be shown to books you have dropped. (Denmark, Germany.)
According to Danish superstition, it is a bad omen when the first person you meet of a morning is an old woman; nevertheless, you can ward off all evil consequences by giving her a kiss. Evil must be expelled by evil.
People kiss little children when they have knocked themselves, in order to take away the pain; they must “kiss them well again,” as it is termed, or, as Englishmen say, “kiss the place and make it well.”
The Greenland mother, who does not understand kissing as expressive of love, kisses her sick child on the breast, shoulders, hips, and navel to restore it to health.
As the loving kiss of a living human creature brings life, health, and happiness, so it is thought, on the other hand, that kisses of a supernatural being bring destruction.
In Lucian’s True History there is a description of a perilous journey to the realms of fancy. In one of these the travellers came upon a remarkable vineyard wherein all the vines at the bottom were green and luxuriant, but those above had the shape of women. “They greeted us, as we drew nigh, and bade us halt. Some of us kissed them on the mouth, and those who were kissed lost their understanding and reeled about like drunken men. But worse befell those who had suffered themselves to be embraced by these women; they were powerless to extricate themselves from the latter’s arms, and we beheld their fingers changed into boughs and twigs.”[27]
I will here call your attention to the Roumanian song about cholera, which comes in the shape of an ugly old woman to Vîlcu, and Vîlcu entreats it thus: “Take my horse, take my weapons, but give me still some days so I may once more see my children, which are as dear to me as the light of the sun.” But the old woman stretches forth her bony arms, folds Vîlcu to her bosom, presses her pallid lips to his, and, in a death-dealing kiss, takes his life, whereupon she departs with a mocking laugh. The Roumanian text is here very strong:
Gură pe gură punea,
Buze pe buze lipĭa,
Zilele i le sorbĭa.
Apoĭ cloanza ear ridea,
Cu zilele purcedea,
Si voĭnicul mort cădea.