This was simple action and reaction, and the repulsion was effected with starving, enduring smoke, or using repulsive and filthy objects. Out of this in due time came penance of all kinds. The Oriental or Greek Church is found at every turn, even more than the Catholic, interchanged, twined, and confused with ancient sorcery. Theodore, like Saint Simeon and Anthony in Tuscany, is very much more of a goblin than a holy man. His weakness is young women, and sometimes in the shape of a beautiful youth, at others of a frightful monster, he carries off those who are found working on his day--that is the 23rd of January. Theodore, according to the Solar mythologists personifies the sun. (De Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," vol. ii. p. 296). In any case the saint who seizes girls is the Hindoo Krishna or his prototype, and therefore may have come through the gypsies. The overworked solar myth derives some support from the fact that among the Serbs on Theodore's day the Sintotere--or centaur, as the name declares--who is half horse and half man, rides over the people who fall in his power. The Centaurs were connected with the "rape of maidens," as shown in the legend of the Lapithæ, and it is very probable that Theodore himself is, in the language of the Western Americans, "half a horse," which they regard as the greatest compliment which can be paid to a man. [15] "Wonderful potions and salves," says Mrs. Gerard, "composed of the fat of bears, dogs, snakes, and snails, with the oil of rain-worms, spiders, and midges, rubbed into a paste, are concocted by these Bohemians (i.e., gypsies). Saxon and Roumanian mothers are often in the habit of giving a child to be nursed for nine days to some Tzigane women supposed to have power to undo the spell." These revolting ingredients are not the result of modern invention, but relics of the primitive witchcraft or Ur-religion, which was founded on pain, terror, and the repulsive. Among other Roumanian-Romany traditions are the following:-- Swallows here as elsewhere are luck-bringing birds, and termed Galiniele lui Dieu--fowls of the Lord. So in England we hear that:-- "The robin and the wren Are God Almighty's cock and hen." There is always a treasure to be found where the first swallow is seen. Among the Romans when it was observed one ran to the nearest fountain and washed his eyes, and then during the whole year to come, dolorem omnem oculorum tuorum hirundines auferant--the swallows will carry away all your complaints of the eyes.