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Persians had a leather standard. The Jewish tabernacle and sacred vessels were covered with skins.70 The Jews had a custom of handing over a shoe to confirm & contract.71 German Jews, at the last gasp or before execution, have knotted leather thongs bound round their arms and head.72 Roman Jews wear little rolls of parchment written with words in peculiar ink enclosed in black calf's skin and tied to the arm or brow to keep off evil influences, especially nightly terrors.73 Among the Felops of the Gambia Coast, West Africa, if a father is killed in a brawl his son wears his father's sandals once a year.74 In Bornon, in North Africa, married women are careful to cover their beds with skins when their husbands visit them.75 The lamb-skin or white leather apron is the badge of the freemason.76 The Alaska Esquimaux Indians (North America) clothie the dead in a frock of skin.77 Among the Oregon Indians, at their faneral pyres, the doctor tries to restore life, and if he fails, he throws & slip of leather on the dead.78 Some Indian tribes wrap the dead in buffalo hide.79 Hugh Lupus, the great Earl of Chester (A.D. 1120), was wrapped in leather and laid in a stone coffin.90 According to Bancroft, Vol. III. p. 519, the Americans pat sandals on the dead. At the Lupercalia, the object of the Roman youths, in striking people with a thong of leather, was probably at first to drive away spirits. Barren women tried to receive a cut of the thong hoping the stroke would make them conceive, that is, hoping that the spirit that made them barren might be driven out of them. Compare at the Indian Muharram some of the sporters striking men and women on the head with leather rolled in the form of a club.81 The original object of the Roman and Skandinavian practico of fastening shoes on the feet of the dead may have been either to prevent the spirit coming back, or to prevent evil spirits entering the body.92 To bring luck to the family American negroes keep all old shoes and old leather in some place in the house. 83. The Gypsies consider that ill-luck is bound and loosed by a shoe-string.84 In Germany, throwing shoes over one's head and seeing which way the points look, reveals the place where one is destined to stay longest.as In Ireland, persons were elected by throwing a shoe over them, 88 and as late as 1689 tattered brogues were thrown into the grave of the Irish piper.87 In England, shoes are thrown for luck after the bride and bridegroom, and after the youth who is leaving his family and friends.88 Rustics mark their shoes' outlines on the tops of the steeples of churches. In the West Highlands of Scotland, on New Year's Eve, at the laird's honse, a man dressed in a cow's hide used to run round and be beaten with sticks, and in Lincolnshire, on Palm Sunday, there was a custom of cracking a leather-thonged whip. Iu Durham, on Easter Tuesday, wives beat their husbands, and on the next day husbands beat their wives with shoes.92 In Gujarat, beating with a shoe is a common device for driving out an evil spirit in a possession case. This suggestion of possession is perhaps an element in the Musalman horror of placing a slipper on the head. The Urda proverb says : -"Give me bread and lay your slipper on my head.93 An English folk-guard against the ill-luck of hearing a dog howl (or rather against Death the vision of whom makes the dog howl) is to take off your left shoe, place it sole up, spit on the sole, and set your foot on the spittle. Spitting on the shoe as a precaution against the Evil Eye was approved by Pliny and is still practised in Italy.95 In 1647, freshmen at Oxford
· Jones' Crowns, p. 131.
70 Numbers, vi. 5. 11 Ruth, iv. 7. 8; Greenlaw's Masonic Lectures, p. 101. 1 King's Gnostics, p. 118. 11 Story's Castle of St. Angelo, p. 214.
- Purk's Truls, Vol. I. p. 16. T8 Denham and Clapperton's Africa, Vol. II. p. 174.
Mackay's Freemasonry, p. 22, 11 Pirat Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, p. 154.
75 Op. cit. p. 145. ** Op. cit. pp. 152, 153. The Denham Tracta, Vol. II. p. 286.
Herklot's Quanuni Isllim, p. 200. - A body of a pregnant woman was found in Roman-British tomb shod with sandals and brass nails (Wright's Coll, Roman and $12on, p. 805). The Norseman's hell or death shoon was afterwards explained by his having to cross whinny moor (Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 196).
** St. James'. Budget, 7th April 1888, p. 19. # Leland's Gypsies. p. 159. # Grimm's Teutonio Mythology, Vol. III. p. 1118. ** Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. III. p. 169. m Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 986.
* Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 167: The Denham Tracts, Vol. II. p. 33. * Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 824,
• Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 8.
1 Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 131. nOp. cit. Vol. I. p. 180.
Elliot'. Mwalmin History of India, Vol. I. p. 498. Notos and Queries, Vol. VII. p. 91.
Elworthy's The Evil Eye, p. 419.
