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.


_Charms._--I beg to represent to the correspondents of the "NOTES AND
QUERIES," especially to the clergy and medical men resident in the
country, that notices of the superstitious practices still prevalent, or
recently prevalent, in different parts of the kingdom, for the cure of
diseases, are highly instructive and even valuable, on many accounts.
Independently of their archæological {430} interest as illustrations of
the mode of thinking and acting of past times, they become really
valuable to the philosophical physician, as throwing light on the
natural history of diseases. The prescribers and practisers of such
"charms," as well as the lookers-on, have all unquestionable evidence of
the _efficacy_ of the prescriptions, in a great many cases: that is to