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The ebb-tide bears them away seaward, and thus
the town is swept clean of ghosts and devils for another two years.
Similar annual expulsions of embodied evils are not unknown in
Europe. On the evening of Easter Sunday the gypsies of Southern
Europe take a wooden vessel like a band-box, which rests cradle-wise
on two cross pieces of wood. In this they place herbs and simples,
together with the dried carcase of a snake, or lizard, which every
person present must first have touched with his fingers. The vessel
is then wrapt in white and red wool, carried by the oldest man from
tent to tent, and finally thrown into running water, not, however,
before every member of the band has spat into it once, and the
sorceress has uttered some spells over it. They believe that by
performing this ceremony they dispel all the illnesses that would
otherwise have afflicted them in the course of the year; and that if
any one finds the vessel and opens it out of curiosity, he and his
will be visited by all the maladies which the others have escaped.


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