I have known these beings offer to cure the glanders in a horse (an
incurable disorder) with the very same powders which they offer as
a specific for the evil eye.
Leaving, therefore, for a time, the Spaniards and Gitanos, whose
ideas on this subject are very scanty and indistinct, let us turn
to other nations amongst whom this superstition exists, and
endeavour to ascertain on what it is founded, and in what it
consists. The fear of the evil eye is common amongst all oriental
people, whether Turks, Arabs, or Hindoos. It is dangerous in some
parts to survey a person with a fixed glance, as he instantly
concludes that you are casting the evil eye upon him. Children,
particularly, are afraid of the evil eye from the superstitious
fear inculcated in their minds in the nursery. Parents in the East
feel no delight when strangers look at their children in admiration
of their loveliness; they consider that you merely look at them in
order to blight them. The attendants on the children of the great
are enjoined never to permit strangers to fix their glance upon
them. I was once in the shop of an Armenian at Constantinople,
waiting to see a procession which was expected to pass by; there
was a Janisary there, holding by the hand a little boy about six
years of age, the son of some Bey; they also had come to see the
procession.
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