Similar were the "_Passau charms_" of the seventeenth century, written on post paper, virgin parchment, or the host, with a peculiar pen in bat's blood; the superstition was in strange characters, wizard feet, circles, crosses, and the letters of foreign languages; according to Grimmelshausen[18] the rhyme runs thus: Devil help me, body and soul give I thee. When fastened under the left arm they expelled the shot and closed the guns of the enemy. Sometimes even the charms were eaten. But opinions concerning their efficacy were fluctuating. Some thought them safeguards only for four-and-twenty hours; but according to others their magic did not begin to work till after the first four-and-twenty hours, and whoever was shot before that time belonged to the devil. Other charms were also used for protection, everything odious and dismal was collected together, and what had been fearful in the ancient mythology continued to retain its old power. A piece of the cord or chain by which a man had been hung, or the beard of a goat, the eyes of a wolf, the head of a bat and the like, worn round the body in a purse of black cat's skin, rendered a person invulnerable. Hair balls (a mass of hair from the stomach of the chamois), and the caul in which children are born, gave invulnerability; he who had never eaten kidneys was secure from shot or pestilence, and it was believed at Augsburg, that a famous knight and experienced General, Sebastian Schärtlin, had thus protected himself before the enemy. Old magic herbs, as endive, verbena, St. John's wort, chickweed, vervain, mallow, and garlick were used as charms, and the most powerful of all, the deadly nightshade. It was necessary to dig them up with the best new sharpened steel, and never to touch them with the bare hand, least of all with the left, and they were carried like an _Agnus Dei_. They were circular, and only found on the battle-fields of great battles, and were, as Zimmermann says, sacred for the sake of the dead. Besides these there was a fire-coloured flower which Cabalists called "Efdamanila;" it not only protected the wearer from shot, stabs, and fire, but when it was hung over the wall in a besieged town near the enemy's cannon, they were spell-bound for a whole month.