your finger on the wen, and say thrice, “What I see waxes; what I touch, let it vanish away.” After each of these two sentences you should cross yourself thrice. Then go home without speaking to any one, and repeat three paternosters behind the kitchen door.(406) The Huzuls of the Carpathians recommend a somewhat similar, and no doubt equally efficacious, cure for waterbrash. They say that at new moon the patient should run thrice round the house and then say to the moon, “Moon, moon, where wast thou?” “Behind the mountain.” “What hast thou eaten there?” “Horse flesh.” “Why hast thou brought me nothing?” “Because I forgot.” “May the waterbrash forget to burn me!”(407) Thus a curative virtue appears to be attributed by some people to the waning and by others to the waxing moon. There is perhaps just as much, or as little, to be said for the one attribution as for the other. CHAPTER X. THE KING AS OSIRIS. (M123) In the foregoing discussion we found reason to believe that the Semitic Adonis and the Phrygian Attis were at one time personated in the flesh by kings, princes, or priests who played the part of the god for a time and then either died a violent death in the divine character or had to redeem their life in one way or another, whether by performing a make-believe sacrifice at some expense of pain and danger to themselves, or by delegating the duty to a substitute.(408) Further, we conjectured that in Egypt the part of Osiris may have been played by the king himself.(409) It remains to adduce some positive evidence of this personation.