32 Impact o£ Iron on Thought 



Summary 



It appears that when a mother insists that her child use a steel needle and not 

 a brass pin when he picks a sliver out of his finger, she does it because her 

 remote forbears in 700 b.c. thought that the newly introduced iron would 

 keep away those evil spirits and fairies who might cause the wound to fester. 

 The reason the fairies would not come near the iron was because it was so 

 newfangled that they distrusted and strongly disliked it. 



REFERENCES 



1. Frazer, Sir James: The Golden Bough. A study in magic and religion (Ne^v York: 1926). 

 S.Elworthy, F. T.: The Evil Eye. An account of this ancient and luidespread superstition 

 (London: 1895). 



3. Budge, Sir E. A. Wallis: Amulets and Superstitions (London: 1930). 



4. Riclcard, T. A.: Man and Metals: a history of milling in relationship to the development of 



civilization, II (New York: 1932), 507. 



5. Bishop, C. W.: "The neoHthic age in northern China" Antiquity 7:389, 1933. 



Relevant Articles Not Referred to in the Text , 



Friend, J. N.: Iron in Antiquity (London: 1926). 



Hazhtt, W. C: Faiths and Folklore. [Based on Brand and Ellis' The Popular Antiquities of 



Great Britain], II (London: 1905). 

 Hovorka, D. von, and Kronfeld, A.: Vergleichende I'olksmedizin, I (Stuttgart: 1908). 

 Payne, J. F.: English Medicine in Anglo-Saxon Times (London: 1904). 

 Richardson, H. C: "Iron, prehistoric and ancient" Amer. Jl. Archaeol. 38:553, 1934. 

 van Patten, N.: "Obstetrics in Mexico prior to 1600" Ann. Med. Histor. (n.s.) 4:203, 1932. 

 Wainwright, G. A.: "The coming of iron" Antiquity 10:5, 1936. 



