STORIES OF THE EVIL EYE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10412, 26 March 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

STORIES OF THE EVIL EYE.

(By Harry Thurston Peck.)

If you should happen to bo strolling in the suburbs of iNaples, you might very likely chance to come across some countrywoman holding in her arms a [ bright-eyed, x olivc-skmned attractive " little child," such as aro often seen among the Italian peasantry. lb -would recall to you the pure Italian type of face in art, and it is quite probable that you would stop a moment to admire the perfection of the type. If you did so you would be not unlikely to say to tho mother, with a smile: "What a. beautiful bambino!" or, "How strong and well that But if you did such p, thing as this, you would be most unwise. Tho chances are that tho woman would turn upoii you in a rage and point her middle finger at you. Presently a crowd would gather, and you would have to make your escape amid J a shower of stones. It is not at all un-

likely that if you fled through some narrow street, there would emerge a swart-faced bravo, who would plunge a stiletto into the small of your back. Very likely, if you made good your escape, you would wonder why your complimentary expression should have aroused such hatred. But if you thought a little while, or consulted an experienced friend, you would begin to realise that in praising the infant for its good looks and health, you had stirred the depths of a strange belief — a belief which is older than history itself, the very oldest of all tho mysterious superstitions that ever existed in the minds of men and women. Research would show you that this superstition, if one chooses to call it so, is not merely tho oldest, but also the

most widely spread. It is not confined to the people of Naples and Corsica, and Italy, but it may be traced to lands ] very far remote from Southern Europe ] and to peoples who could never have I t had any possiblo connection with the Italians. This is the superstition of the mal' occhio, or the evil eye. You can find this belief among the peasantry of England, and you can also find it in the heart of Africa. It disturbs the minds of Turks and Ilusrians. It is known to the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, to the Scandinavians, and the Chinese; and even among the ignorant peasantry of the north of England there are those to whom it is very real—as real as their ■ belief in the rising and setting of the sun, as real as their belief that if you I put your finger in the tiro it will be burned and make yon suffer pain. Now a belief like this, so very ancient and practically universal, is something more than an idle superstition. It springs \\p instinctively in the human mind; and neither the teachings of religion nor the processes of reason have been able to extinguish it. What, then, in the first place, is the power of the evil eye, which the Italians call jcttatura, and how are we to account for the tenacity with which a belief in it has fastened itself on mankind?

Among all tho peoples that have been mentioned, there is this one point in common. They hold that certain persons, sometimes knowingly and sometimes even without their own knowledge, possess the power of working harm upon others by -a glance, of the eye directed toward a. living object. This belief may or may not coincide with a belief in witchcraft, demonology, or Satanism. Taken by itself, it does not necessarily havo anything to do with either. As a rule, in ancient times, women were supposed to possess the evil eye more commonly than men. In such a woman the eyes were usually squinting or deep-set, and they almost always, had double pupils. It was said by' some writers in the Middle Ages that you could detect an evil eye by a very simple experiment. If you suspected a person of possessing this sinister power, all that was necessary war. to look into the eye itself, and if you saw your own imago reflected there, upside down, then the eye was necessarily evil.

In modern times this sinister possession is held to belong oftcner to men than t'-. women. In tho south of Italy the man with tho evil eye is thought to be a crouching, shrivelled creature, with sallow skin and a morose and gloomy manner. >

As was said above, however, tho evil eye may belong to a person who docs not himself know that ho has it. A very curious instance of this was tho popular belief that Pope Pius IX, who was Pope from 1846 until 1878, had the evil, eye, although ho was most benignant and gentle. Nevertheless, the ignorant shrank from his presence, lest by any chance his- gazo should fall upon them and do harm to them or their crops, or, especially, their children. A simule wav of averting the evil ev.-> ■ was to hang images upon-one's fruittrees, and also to wear them about the neck. To this clay ignorant Italians wear small amulets of coral or of silver, which may be of different forms, either that of an antelope horn or of n key or of a hand with its iirst and fourth'fingers doubled down, or of a crescent moon with a face in it. Many also wear a combination of these amulets which they call cimaruta. But the. most effective and instantaneous way of. avoiding this fascination is to point the middle finger at the

person who is supposed to have the evil eve. This gesture was, in Roman times, considered most h-.sulting. The Emperor Caligula was killed by one of his officers at whom tho Emperor had made this sign. A knowledge of the fact has a certain practical value to-day; for if in Naples or Sicily you are beset by a swarm of

beggars, you can scatter them at once by pointing your middle finger at them.

After that you will be left alone and

can go about quite free from their importunities.. Among the Jews it was thought to be unlucky to number your possessions, because this seemed like showing pride in them. Therefore the Jews would not count exactly the number of their sheep or cattle, and were averse to mentioning the number of their children. Oddly enough, this same unwillingness is found to-day among the Scottish fishermen, who arc most unwilling to tell you the number of fish that they have caught, or, in fact, to ascertain the number for their own information. It is not merely among the ignorant of own time that a belief in the evil eye prevails. Only five years ago, the Rev. Dr John L. Nevius, for forty years a missionary in China, published a volume

on demonology, in. which he sets forth very minutely certain strange occur-

rences which he had noted among the Chinese, and which he thought could be explained only by the theory of demon-possession and the evil eye. It is not necessary, however, to accept any one's conclusion, though w. may unhesitatingly believe his facts.

Thus, there is no doubt that Professor William Crcokes, one the most eminent physicists in England, took the medium Slade into his physical laboratory, and Slade there caused certain phenomena

which could not easily be ascribed to

jugglery or deception. Yet it is not necessary to suppose, as Professor Crookes did, that the phenomena were supernatural. There are many things which men have spoken of as supernatural, yet which are better described as wholly natural, though belonging to a sphere of nature which has not yet been scientifically explored. Professor William James, oMlarvard, has very well said: . "I .find myself suspecting that thought-transference experiments, veridical hallucinations, the crystal vision, vea, even ghosts, are sorts of things which with the years will tend to establish themselves. All of us live more or less on somo inclined plane of credulity. The piano tips ono way in one man, another way in another; and may he whose plane tips in no way, be the nrst to cast a stone!" ' And Professor James also says: — "Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules. Then newlv divined conceptions bind old and new together in a reconciling law." Now if wo apply these very sensible remarks to a belief in the evil eye, we may arrive at a. basis of truth which will not brand the evil eye as a vain superstition, nor yet compel tin to believe all the stories that are told about: it. ...

First of all, however, it is very significant that from tho beginning of human life such a thing as tho evil eye has been credited all. over the world. This shows us that it is something more than a sporadic fancy. Thero in \ruth in it somewhere. May wo not ho!"l, at least tentatively, tho notion that chore are and. always have been persons endowed with such tremendous wills and

with such power of concentration as to produce effects upon others than themselves? , This thought is not a new one. It is embodied very strikingly in BulwcrLytton's pseinio-scientiiic story "Tlio Haunters and the Haunted," and also in Conan Doyle's strange narrative entitled "John Barrington Cowlcs." In the first we have a sort of serpent-man, who, like a'serpent, has a power of fascination so great as to overwhelm the wills of others. In the. second, the possessor of the evil eve, is a sort of vampire-woman whose will is likewise) able to affect the courso of lifo of all with whom she comes in contact. \\ lu-.l is told here as lietion may verv well have a residuum of truth. Tho actual possessors of the evil eye —or, in other words, of the dominating will —are few, and must have always been exceptions. Yet the fact remains a fact, however much it may have been over-

laid by the superstitious fancies of tho vulgar who have converted a rare phenoniemon into some-thing that is prevn-

Ilcnt- | The very latest use in fiction of what is essentially a belief in the evil eye is made by lludyard Kipling in his somewhat gruesome story known 1 as " TheHouse "Surgeon." Here again, it is a woman who exercises the uncanny [ power. She is a woman of immense force of character and of will. Her very narrowness gives her a greater intensity of thought. A curious feature of this talo is that it reverts to conscious influence. A charming English country-house with spreading lawns and cheerful aspect, has about it some finality which makes its dwellers subject; to tho most terrible depression; and tho same is true of all who enter it. They may Hood it by night with electric; lights, and they may try to drink and make merry with their guests; yet a sort of hideous, impalpable pall appears to hang over the interior. The most indifferent persons who come there feel this influence.

It is explained in the end as duo to the. woman already mentioned —a hard, narrow-minded, and intensely religious woman —who believes that her sister committed suicide here in one of the chambers of the house, and is therefore doomed to everlasting punishment. So terribly intense is this belief, that althougltfthe woman lives far away, her though't is always centred upon the house, while the almost savage gloom which possesses her descends and occupies the mansion itself. In .Kipling's story, the evil influence is broken only when the woman is made to see, by undoubted evidence, that her sister really met her death by accident, and was guilty of the crime of seli'-murder. Then only is the baleful influence withdrawn.

In general, such phenomena as are popularly ascribed to "an evil eye," are identical with the more scientific terms "Tehesthesia" and "Telepathy,"' which were coined by members of the Society for Psychical Research. They include "all cases of impression received at a distance without the normal operation of the organs of sense which we recognise." A very interesting book, known a."Phantasms of tho Living," published in 1886, and written by three, men of scientific attainments, contains tho statement that "Under particular conditions of excitement, certain persons seem to havo tho faculty of communicating to other persons at a distance what is happening to them, often without any intention or consciousness of doing so." It is held by many educated men that the near approach of death is apparently one of the most effective of these conditions; but a;i yet there aro not enough authenticated cases to allow any one to make a general statement. It is not unscientific to admit'thab there exist thoso who havo the evil eye. Wo become unscientific only when wo venture to believe that sii"h a thing is common, and that it occurs so frequently as to form a necessary factor in our daily life.