xxii Introduction. 



' When the ceremony is over, they dine on the caudle.' ' 



In Ireland 'Bel-tien,' according to Macpherson/ is celebrated on the 

 2 1st of June at the solstice, by making fires on the hill-tops, when peo- 

 ple and beasts are made to pass through them, to ensure protection 

 against pestilence. 



Neither was the influence of the ' evil eye ' less dreaded and 

 guarded against by strange and oftentimes curious rites and customs. 

 It is surprising to find this superstition existing widely over the world 

 in ancient and modern times. Virgil's shepherd exclaims, 'Nescio 

 quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos ! ' The Irish and Scotch 

 believed that their cattle could be blighted by an evil eye ; the Mala- 

 bars, Hindus, Arabians, Turks, and other eastern peoples wear charms 

 to avert its influence ; the Mahometans suspend objects from the 

 'ceilings of their apartments with the same intention ; in Ceylon the 

 Singhalese place white vessels on their gables to guard against the myste- 

 rious agency, which the Tamils at Jaffiia, in the same island, believe to 

 work injury on their herds and flocks. Sir J. Emerson Tennent ^ even 

 asks if there is any hidden connection between the prohibition to covet 

 contained in the tenth commandment, and the horror of the 'evil eye,' 

 so frequently mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. 



The fear and panic reigning in countries where plagues, either of 

 man or the lower animals, have shown themselves, have never much 

 abated 5 and at the present day, with all our science and enlighten- 

 ment, the public mind is almost as troubled at their appearance as in 

 earlier times : troubled not so much, perhaps, by the apparently inevit- 

 able destruction they are likely to cause, as by the mystery that shrouds 

 their origin. 



Though a Christian civilization has to a great extent remov^ed the 

 influence of superstitious ideas, with regard to the agency of evil spirits 

 or spiteful gods, and though the polytheism of the heroic ages has been 

 supplanted by monotheism, the commencement of these afflictions has 

 still been often enough ascribed to sources as erroneous as before, and 

 only too frequently the wrath of many gods has merely been condensed, 

 if we may use the term, into that of one. Hebrew traditions have 

 brought in the anger of Jehovah as a frequent cause of pestilence, and 

 His displeasure as being made manifest, not on sinful man alone, but 

 also on the unoffending creatures around him. The wise King, Solo- 

 mon, a witness to the participation of the inferior animals in the 



1 Tour in Scotland in 1769, p. 100. 2 Critical Dissertations. 



^ Ceylon, vol. ii. p. 177. 



