carried thrice round a herd of horses before they go afield in the spring, and the bearer locks and unlocks it as he goes, saying, “I lock from my herd the mouths of the grey wolves with this steel lock.” After the third round the padlock is finally locked, and then, when the horses have gone off, it is hidden away somewhere till late in the autumn, when the time comes for the drove to return to winter quarters. In this case the “firm word” of the spell is supposed to lock up the mouths of the wolves. The Bulgarians have a similar mode of guarding their cattle against wild beasts. A woman takes a needle and thread after dark, and sews together the skirt of her dress. A child asks her what she is doing, and she tells him that she is sewing up the ears, eyes, and jaws of the wolves so that they may not hear, see, or bite the sheep, goats, calves, and pigs.(1135) Similarly in antiquity a witch fancied that she could shut the mouths of her enemies by sewing up the mouth of a fish with a bronze needle,(1136) and farmers attempted to ward off hail from their crops by tying keys to ropes all round the fields.(1137) The Armenians essay to lock the jaws of wolves by uttering a spell, tying seven knots in a shoe-lace, and placing the string between the teeth of a wool-comber, which are probably taken to represent the fangs of a wolf.(1138) And an Armenian bride and bridegroom will carry a locked lock on their persons at and after marriage to guard them against those evil influences to which at this crisis of life they are especially exposed.(1139) The following mode of keeping an epidemic from a village is known to have been practised among the Balkan Slavs. Two old women proceed to a spot outside the village, the one with a copper kettle full of water, the other with a house-lock and key. The old dame with the kettle asks the other, “Whither away?” The one with the lock answers, “I came to lock the village against mishap,” and suiting the action to the words she locks the lock and throws it, together with the key, into the kettle of water. Then she strides thrice round the village, each time repeating the performance with the lock and kettle.(1140) To this day a Transylvanian sower thinks he can keep birds from the corn by carrying a lock in the seed-bag.(1141) Such magical uses of locks and keys are clearly parallel to the magical use of knots, with which we are here concerned. In Ceylon the Singhalese observe “a curious custom of the threshing-floor called ‘Goigote’—the tying of the cultivator’s knot. When a sheaf of corn has been threshed out, before it is removed the grain is heaped up and the threshers, generally six in number, sit round it, and taking a few stalks, with the ears of corn attached, jointly tie a knot and bury it in the heap. It is left there until all the sheaves have been threshed, and the corn winnowed and measured. The object of this ceremony is to prevent the devils from diminishing the quantity of corn in the