She who will pronounce a certain spell, strip herself quite naked, and can steal into the room where a man is lying sound asleep and can clip from his head a lock of hair and escape without awakening him or meeting any one will obtain absolute mastery over him, or at least over his affections. The hair must be worn in a bag or ring on the person. But woe unto her who is caught, since in that case the enchantment "all goes the other way." Once a beautiful but very poor Hungarian maid gave all she had to a young gypsy girl for a charm to win the love of a certain lord, and was taught this, which proved to be a perfect success. Having clipped the lock of hair she wove it in a ring and wedded him. After a time she died, and the gypsy being called in to dress the corpse found and kept the ring. Then the lord fell in love with the gypsy and married her. But ere long she too died, and was buried, and the ring with her. And from that day the lord seemed as if possessed to sit by her grave, and finally built a house there, and never seemed happy save when in it. "If a Roumanian maid," says Mrs. Gerard, "desires to see her future husband's face in the water she has only to step naked at midnight into the nearest lake or river, or, if she shrink from this, let her take a stand on the more congenial dung-hill with a piece of Christmas cake in her mouth, and as the clock strikes twelve listen attentively for the first sound of a dog's bark. From whichever side it proceeds will also come the expected suitor." A naked maid standing on a "congenial dung-hill" with a piece of Christmas cake in her mouth would be a subject for an artist which should be eagerly seized in these days when "excuses for the nude in art" are becoming so rare. It is worth observing that this conjuration is very much like one observed in Tuscany, in which Saint Anthony is invoked to manifest by a dog's barking at night, as by other sounds, whether the applicant, or invoker, shall obtain her desire. At the birth of a child in Wallachia every one present takes a stone and throws it behind him, saying, "This into the jaws of the Streghoi" [16]--"a custom," says Mrs. Gerard, "which would seem to suggest Saturn and the swaddled up stones." It is much more suggestive of the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha. Strigoi is translated as "evil spirits"--it is evidently, originally at least, the streghe, or witches of Italy, from the Latin strix, the dreaded witch-bird of Ovid. "Festus derives the word à stringendo from the opinion that they strangle children." Middle Latin strega (Paulus Grillandus). For much learning on this subject of the Strix the reader may consult De Gubernatis, "Myth of Animals," vol. ii. p. 202.