THE EVIL EYE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2853, 18 November 1908, Page 80

THE EVIL EYE.

— Pet Superstition of Italians and Its Origin. — It requires but slight acquaintance with the Italian element to become familiar , with their unconquerable fear of the " Evil Eye." This superstition is so deeply ingrained in the race (says the New , York Evening Sun} that even the intelligent do not always recover from that old inheritance, and at some sudden provo- • cation find themselves captured by early habits of thought and tradition, even to a betrayal visibly. An Italian peasant, at the least sign of sickness or misfortune, whether man or woman, becomes immediately convinced that he or she is under a baneful Fattura, or spell of the ' evil eye. What they do, if at all pos- , sible, is to visit some witches or fatto- I chiara to induce them to undo the evil witchery afflicting them, or, if that can- ' not be done, to create a more powerful . spell which will protect them from the dire effects of the lesser one. j The victim will then, after such a ' visit, return to his health and foiuxlne-s of body and limbs, and with his family ' and friends will manifest the gre.it'-.^t satisfaction and joy. In their turn family and friend* are filled with bountiml c>vmpatliy and indulge in onei< rejoicing. This is repeated every time an Italian meets with any mijsfoitune. We afe apt to think that only Italians

are given to the superstition of the evil eye or malocchia, and that it has its origin in Italy so far back in ancient times as to be lost record of. Far from it. As far back as we have any knowledge of man's distinction between good and evil, day and night eeemed to "him. two active ' symbols — the -day-fiE -goad,, the night for darkness or - cvil — and" to- -ml- themselves ! of the evil : men framed in ; every land t their racial superstitions. - IfrweiTtnra' to ' the important monuments' of ' Egypt" "we find the symbolic eye painted on vases. Warriors had on theiT shields many protective symbols, most of them being variations of the eun wheel, in order to ward off wounds and death — the sun being looked upon -as the benignant solar eye. | A Western or Bohemian conception of the devil, or evil, was the "Swift Eye," and allied very much to Italy's witchcraft. In Patmos the chief remedy for the evil eye was to cut, the end ' from a girdle worn by a man without beard or by a hairy woman. It was burnedi in an incense burner, which was afterwards waved before the person afflicted, after which three carnation leaves were dropped into the fuse, so that by their cracking sound it was learned that healing had begun. If there was no" crackling a messenger was sent to the nearest monastery for a priest to come and read a prayer. In Irish legends, Balar's eye (Suil Bhalair, whose enemies were petrified by his basilisk glance) is the name given even to this day in Ireland to the overlooking or evil eye. As late as 1904 in the town of Terrasini Tavoratta, near Palermo, an innocent | married woman vrce. reputed to have the evil eye. One of her brother's children died com« months before, and he attrii buted Ms death to his sister. Profiting by the fact that the house door was I opened because of the great heat, at midnight he crept inside and stabbed her sleeping husband td death, then poured petroleum over the supposed witch that , lay in the bed and set fire to it. The , assassin fled, and his sister died in great agony. The police could gain tic assistance from the populace of Terrasini, who celebrated the murder with ferocious joy. [ Mohammed AH of Egypt, believing he , would) come under the influence of the .jeril eye during his reign, never left the city of Cairo by the gate called Bab el Hadud. Among Turks, Greeks, Chinese, and Japanese all are prone to this superstition, and to ward off-the evil eye amd> > other misfortune they use an onion and ' garlic. The evil eye in Scriptures is inseparably associated with the vices of envy and covetousness. A man with an evil eye is there described as disturbed to "get rich." Who shall say that America in the twentieth century is free from this Biblical malocchia in the sense of viee — or that in Salem days of witchcraft the land of the Pilgrim Fathers was not as deeply plunged in the evil-eye superstition as the natives of Terrasini? i