According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint, so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer, exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house homœpathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is shown by the fact that a farmer’s hired man named Sier and belonging to the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and two months’ imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.