Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 15 



Roman days makes part of a bronze finger-ring. The combination 

 may have been merely a convenient device to prevent loss, but 

 some would identify it as an amuletic charm. 57 A key still serves 

 as an amulet of release for those who are blessed with faith in 

 occult action of a magical sort. It is reputed to relieve an epi- 

 leptic of his falling sickness, free a baby from convulsions, send 

 the blood to a limb that is numb and stiff, and assure a nursing 

 mother a good flow of milk for her child. 58 Putting a female key 

 frequently in the hand of a baby is now said to make it able to 

 talk soon. It releases that flow of language which men who 

 wish to do the talking complain is natural to members of the fe- 

 male sex. 59 I have known the 3>BK key, dangling from a watch- 

 chain, to be mistaken even by an Italian professor for some sort 

 of American amulet, "Philosophy, the guide of life", notwith- 

 standing; but precisely what a key could do for a full-grown male 

 who spoke soon enough, and could neither throw fits, nor bear 

 or nurse a baby is beyond conjecturing. 



Under the pillow of an Italian puerpera, it is quite possible to 

 find concealed, if one has chanced upon a properly superstitious 

 woman, not only a key, but also a piece of iron, a bone from the 

 dead, some salt, and various sacred objects which are thought to 

 protect her against witchcraft and to ease her delivery. It is also 

 a modern protection for her against the machinations of a witch 

 to put a piece of a priest's stole, a broom, and the skin of a badger 

 behind the street door. 60 



Useful, also, at the time of confinement, if we may believe an- 

 cient lore, was a stick with which a frog had been struck out of 

 the mouth of a snake. This operation of delivering one reptile 

 from the other was expected to work by sympathetic magic upon 

 the delivery of a baby. 61 The choice of animals does not seem 

 quite complimentary to either mother or child. Snakes play a role 

 in obstetrics for other occult reasons, as we shall presently see, 

 but just how the Roman applied that stick to a parturient woman 

 we are left to conjecture. However, I have learned that nowadays 

 a properly instructed Italian need merely touch the skin of the 

 woman's belly with a walking-stick with which a viper has been 

 slain. 62 Actually, this may well be merely a modern version of 

 the old practice. It is certainly a more agreeable way to ease a 

 parturition than fumigating the parts involved by burning bran, 



