This incantation casts light upon the earliest Shamanic remedies. When it was discovered that certain herbs really possessed curative qualities, this was attributed to inherent magic virtues. The increase of their power by combining them with water, or mingling them, was due to mystic affinities by which a spirit passed from one to another. The Spirit of Earth went into saffron, that of saffron into water. The magician thus by a song sent the pain into its medical affinity, and so on back to the source whence it came. From early times saffron, as one of the earliest flowers of spring, owing to its colour, was consecrated to magic and love. Eos, the goddess of the Aurora, was called krokotieplos, the one with the saffron garment. Therefore the public women wore a yellow robe. Even in Christian symbolism it meant love, as Portalis declares: "In the Christian religion the colours saffron and orange were the symbols of God embracing the heart and illuminating the souls of the faithful" ("Des Couleurs Symboliques," Paris, 1837, p. 240). So we can trace the chain from the prehistoric barbarous Shamanism, preserved by the gypsies, to the Greek, and from the Greek to the mediæval form still existent. The same sympathetic process of transmission may be traced in the remedy for the erysipelas. The blood of a bullfinch is put into a new vessel with scraped elder-bark, and then laid on a cloth with which the eyes are bound up overnight. Meanwhile the patient repeats:-- "Duy yákhá hin mánge Duy punrá hin mánge Dukh ándrál yákhá Já ándre punrá Já ándrál punrá. Já ándre pçuv, Já ándrál pçuv Andro meriben!" "I have two eyes, I have two feet, Pain from my eyes Go into my feet! Go from my feet, Go into the earth! Go from the earth Into death!"