Like many other superstitions, the above may be founded on a physical reality. In hot countries, where the sun and moon are particularly dazzling, the belief in the evil eye is most prevalent. If we turn to the Scripture, we shall probably come to the solution of the belief. "The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night." Ps. cxxi. 5, 6. To those who loiter in the sunshine, before the king of day has nearly reached his bourn in the west, the sun has an evil eye, and his glance produces brain fevers; and to those who sleep uncovered, beneath the smile of the moon, her glance is poisonous, producing insupportable itching in the eye and not unfrequently total blindness: all the charms, scrawls, and rabbinical antidotes have no power to avert these effects. The northern nations have a superstition which bears some resemblance to the evil eye. They have no brilliant sun and moon to addle the brain and poison the eye, but the gray north has its marshes, and fenny ground, and fetid mists, which produce agues, low fevers, and moping madness, and are as fatal to cattle as to man. Such disorders are attributed to elves and fairies. This superstition still lingers in some parts of England, under the name of _elf-shot_, whilst, throughout the north, it is called _elle-skiod_, and _elle-vild_, (fairy wild.) It is particularly prevalent amongst shepherds and cowherds, who, from their manner of life, are most exposed to the effects of the so called elf-shot. The Gitános had a venomous preparation called _drao_, or _drow_, which they were in the habit of flinging into the mangers of the cattle, for the purpose of causing sickness and death. It was the province of the women to compound the ingredients of this poison, which answered many wicked purposes. The stalls and stables were visited secretly, and the provender of the animals being poisoned, they at once fell sick; speedily there appeared the Gitános, offering their services on the condition of no cure no pay, and when these were accepted, the malady was speedily removed. They used no medicines, or pretended not to, but charms only, which consisted of small variegated beans, called, in their language, _bobis_, coming from a Russian word signifying _beans_. These beans they dropped into the mangers, though they doubtless administered privately a real and efficacious remedy. By these means they fostered the idea, already prevalent, that they were people possessed of supernatural gifts and powers. By means of drao, they likewise procured themselves food; poisoning swine, as their brethren in England still do, and then feasting on the flesh, the poison only affecting the head of the animal, which was abandoned as worthless; witness one of their own songs:-- "By Gypsy drow the porker died; I saw him stiff at evening tide; But I saw him not when morning shone, For the Gypsies ate him, flesh and bone."