208 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1917 
the domestic hearths of the State were affiliated. Hence, a 
grain of salt flung over the shoulder into the fire propitiated 
the Penates or Divinities, who guarded the household store- 
cupboards. A grain of it was also sprinkled on every animal 
that was to be sacrificed to the Gods ; and the ' granum salis ’ 
was also placed in a new-born infant's mouth. Consequently, it 
became, later, by borrowing, a special element in Christian 
baptisms (Cf. Rituale Romanuni) , and even in “Ordeals " (Lea 
280 supra), and, again, in late mediaeval days, witches were 
often accused of the deliberate misuse of salt in baptizing 
beasts.^ It is obvious that the spilling of so sacred an element 
and a human necessity, became a prognostic of ill-fortune. 
Even to upset it was to offend the Divinity. Hence, Leonardo’s 
fine use of it in his fresco of the Last Supper ; although all 
trace of that sellar has long vanished from that long-suffering 
master-piece, and only appears in the engravings. Good luck 
to the Tsar, as father of the Russian people, was signalised on all 
his arrivals at Moscow or Kieff, by offering him in the name of 
Holy Moscow bread and salt. Salt is here the symbol of 
Hospitality, therefore, as well as of Friendship. Salt (it was, 
and is, held) should not get into the hands of any doubtful 
well-wishers to a house from thence, for it is thought by certain 
people that this salt will at once place the household in the 
power of its enemies. In Ireland, before sowing a field, some 
propitiatory salt is put by the Kerry farmer in the ground. 
On the other hand, as a token of destructive and sterilizing 
conquest the Ancients (and also that autocratic Mediaeval 
Pope, Boniface VHL, in imitation of his classical predecessors, 
in his war with the House of Colonna) , sowed a furrow with salt 
on the ruined site of the town of Palestrina. King Philip of 
Spain ordered the self-made tyrant, Lope de Aguirre, in 1561, 
in Trinidad, to be put to death by his Viceroy in Peru : and he 
commanded that his houses be destroyed and their sites sown 
with salt, which was done. In Scotland, salt is still put into 
the mouth of a cow after calving, to prevent ' skaith’ or ‘ evil.’ 
In the Isle of Man no man will accept your proffered food un- 
less salt is added ; nor will a woman marry, or change her 
I For baptizing a bell, oil, holy water, cream and salt are offered in naming it. In the Russian 
dedications of churches it is mixed with ashes and holy water. Here it represented Divine Truth. 
The Bishop sprinkles the various parts of the building. 
It was even given to catechumens instead of the Sacrament, A.D. 307 Carthage). 
