“As Peter sat on a marble stone,
   The Lord came to him all alone;
   ‘Peter, what makes thee sit there?’
  ‘My Lord, I am troubled with the toothache.’ 
  ’Peter arise, and go home;
  And you, and whosoever for my sake
   Shall keep these words in memory,
  Shall never be troubled with the toothache.’”

T.J.

Charms.—­The Evil Eye.—­Going one day into a cottage in the village of Catterick, in Yorkshire, I observed hung up behind the door a ponderous necklace of “lucky stones,” i.e. stones with a hole through them.  On hinting an inquiry as to their use, I found the good lady of the house disposed to shuffle off any explanation; but by a little importunity I discovered that they had the credit of being able to preserve the house and its inhabitants from the baneful influence of the “evil eye.”  “Why, Nanny,” said I, “you surely don’t believe in witches now-a-days?” “No!  I don’t say ‘at I do; but certainly i’ former times there was wizzards an’ buzzards, and them sort o’ things.”  “Well,” said I, laughing, “but you surely don’t think there are any now?” “No!  I don’t say at ther’ are; but I do believe in a yevil eye.”  After a little time I extracted from poor Nanny more particulars on the subject, as viz.:—­how that there was a woman in the village whom she strongly suspected of being able to look with an evil eye; how, further, a neighbour’s daughter, against whom the old lady in question had a grudge owing to some love affair, had suddenly fallen into a sort of pining sickness, of which the doctors could make nothing at all; and how the poor thing fell away without any accountable cause, and finally died, nobody knew why; but how it was her (Nanny’s) strong belief that she had pined away in consequence of a glance from the evil eye.  Finally, I got from her an account of how any one who chose could themselves obtain the power of the evil eye, and the receipt was, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows:—­

“Ye gang out ov’ a night—­ivery night, while ye find nine toads—­an’ when ye’ve gitten t’ nine toads, ye hang ’em up ov’ a string, an’ ye make a hole and buries t’ toads i’t hole—­and as ’t toads pines away, so ’t person pines away ’at you’ve looked upon wiv a yevil eye, an’ they pine and pine away while they die, without ony disease at all!”

I do not know if this is the orthodox creed respecting the mode of gaining the power of the evil eye, but it is at all events a genuine piece of Folk Lore.

The above will corroborate an old story rife in Yorkshire, of an ignorant person, who, being asked if he ever said his prayers, repeated as follows:—­

  “From witches and wizards and long-tail’d buzzards,
   And creeping things that run in hedge-bottoms,
       Good lord, deliver us.”

MARGARET GATTY.

Ecclesfield, April 24. 1850.