33 1 ".Notes on .some Wiltshire Superstitions." 



" overlooked/' bewitched ; that though she did not mind the doctor 

 coming* if he liked, yet that no good could be done to the sick man 

 till she had found out the person who had overlooked him. This 

 broom was placed there in the firm belief that if the person who 

 had " overlooked " her husband came by, he or she would be obliged 

 to take it up. " Why/'' said the vicar, " how absurd ; it was the 

 merest chance that I did not take it up, instead of kicking it away/' 

 " Ah ! Sir," said the woman, "but you didn't take it up." So the 

 woman had the best of the argument. 



1 need hardly say that this belief in the " evil eye " (St. Mark, 

 vii., 22) is not confined to Wiltshire, but as this is a letter on 

 Wiltshire superstitions I do not follow the matter further. Some 

 of your readers will, no doubt, remember stories showing how 

 widely-spread this belief is in Italy, in Egypt, and elsewhere, in 

 the present day as it was in ancient times. Virgil, in a well-known 

 passage (Eel., iii., 103), refers to it ; and St. Chrysostom (Horn, 

 xii., in I. Cor, ad fin) ridicules the folly of nurses who used to smear 

 mud on the foreheads of children in order to turn away the malignant 

 power of the "evil eye/' I have not lately come across instances 

 of belief in this power of " overlooking," but in this, as in other 

 cases of superstition, it is not always easy to get the peasantry to 

 open their minds and say what they really think before a listener 

 whom they suspect may be unsympathetic and unbelieving. They 

 are very sensitive to ridicule, and their ways of thinking and reasoning 

 are — as some of the above-mentioned instances may show — often 

 somewhat peculiar. However, we must not speak disrespectfully of 

 our future rulers. 



Bremkill, Calne, 

 October 1st, 1885. 



