In the _Winter's Tale_ (iii. 3. 122), when the Shepherd finds Perdita, he says: "It was told me I should be rich by the fairies; this is some changeling"; and the money left with the infant he believes to be "fairy gold." As the child is beautiful he does not take it to be one of the ugly elves left in exchange for a stolen babe, but a human changeling which the fairy thieves have for some reason abandoned. If it were not for the gold left with it, he might suppose that the stolen infant had been temporarily hidden there. We have an allusion to such behavior on the part of the fairies in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ (i. 10. 65):-- "For well I wote thou springst from ancient race Of Saxon kinges, that have with mightie hand, And many bloody battailes fought in face, High reard their royall throne in Britans land, And vanquisht them, unable to withstand: From thence a Faery thee unweeting reft, There as thou slepst in tender swadling band, And her base Elfin brood there for thee left: Such men do Chaungelings call, so chaung'd by Faeries theft. Thence she thee brought into this Faery lond [land], And in a heaped furrow did thee hyde; Where thee a Ploughman all unweeting fond [found], As he his toylesome teme that way did guyde, And brought thee up in a ploughmans state to byde." In _1 Henry IV._ (i. 1. 87), the King, contrasting the gallant Hotspur with his own profligate son, exclaims: "O that it could be proved That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd In cradle-clothes our children where they lay, And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet! Then would I have his Harry, and he mine." The belief in the "evil eye" was another superstition prevalent in Shakespeare's day, as it had been from the earliest times. It dates back to old Greek and Roman days, being mentioned by Theocritus, Virgil, and other classical writers. In Turkey passages from the Koran used to be painted on the outside of houses as a protection against this malignant influence of witches, who were supposed to cause serious injury to human beings and animals by merely looking at them. Thomas Lupton, in his _Book of Notable Things_ (1586) says: "The eyes be not only instruments of enchantment, but also the voice and evil tongues of certain persons." Bacon, in one of his minor works, remarks: "It seems some have been so curious as to note that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envious eye does most hurt are particularly when the party envied is beheld in glory and triumph."