134 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



" There dwalt a weaver in Moffat toun, 

 That said the minister wad dee sune ; 

 The minister dee'd ; and the fouk o' the toun, 

 They brant the weaver wi' the wudd o' his lume, 

 And ca'd it weel-wared on the warlock loon." ' 



As lias been so often said^ these two arts are encouraged by 

 tlie unfailing test of success, if they have but time enough, 

 and the latter justifies itself by killing the patient through his 

 own imagination. When he hears that he has been " wished," 

 he goes home and takes to his bed at once. It is impossible 

 ■ to realize the state of mind into which the continual terror of 

 witchcraft brings the savage. It is held by many tribes to be 

 the necessary cause of death. Over great part of Africa, in 

 South America and Polynesia, when a man dies, the question 

 is at once, "who killed him?" and the soothsayer is resorted 

 to to find the murderer, that the dead man may be avenged. 

 The Abipones held that there was no such thing as natural 

 death, and that if it were not for the magicians and the Spa- 

 niards, no man would die unless he were killed. The notion 

 that, after all, a man might perhaps die of himself, comes out 

 curiously in the address of an old Australian to the corpse at a 

 funeral, " If thou comest to the other black-fellows and they 

 ask thee who killed thee, answer, '^No one, but I died.' "^ 



There are of course branches of the savage wizard's art that 

 are not connected with the mental process to which so many 

 of his practices may be referred. He is often a doctor with 

 some skill in surgery and medicine, and an expert juggler ; and 

 often, though knavery is not the basis of his profession, a cun- 

 ning knave. One of the most notable superstitions of the 

 human race, high and low, is the belief in the Evil Eye. 

 Knowing, as we all do, the strange power which one mind has 

 of working upon another through the eye, a power which is not 

 the less cei'tain for being wholly unexplained, it seems not un- 

 reasonable to suppose that the belief in the mysterious influ- 

 ences of the Evil Eye flows from the knowledge of what the 

 eye can do as an instrument of the will, while experience has 



' R. Chambers, ' Popular Ehymes of Scotland ;' Edinburgh, 1826, p. 23. 

 - Lang, ' Queensland ;' London, 1861, p. 360. 



