Leaving, therefore, for a time, the Spaniards and Gitános, 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. I was struck with the remarkable loveliness of the child, and fixed my glance upon it: presently it became uneasy, and turning to the Janisary, said: ‘There are evil eyes upon me; drive them away.’ ‘Take your eyes off the child, Frank,’ said the Janisary, who had a long white beard, and wore a hanjar. ‘What harm can they do to the child, efendijem?’ said I. ‘Are they not the eyes of a Frank?’ replied the Janisary; ‘but were they the eyes of Omar, they should not rest on the child.’ ‘Omar,’ said I, ‘and why not Ali? Don’t you love Ali?’ ‘What matters it to you whom I love,’ said the Turk in a rage; ‘look at the child again with your chesm fanar and I will smite you.’ ‘Bad as my eyes are,’ said I, ‘they can see that you do not love Ali.’ ‘Ya Ali, ya Mahoma, Alahhu!’ { 117} said the Turk, drawing his hanjar. All Franks, by which are meant Christians, are considered as casters of the evil eye. I was lately at Janina in Albania, where a friend of mine, a Greek gentleman, is established as physician. ‘I have been visiting the child of a Jew that is sick,’ said he to me one day; ‘scarcely, however, had I left the house, when the father came running after me. “You have cast the evil eye on my child,” said he; “come back and spit in its face.” And I assure you,’ continued my friend, ‘that notwithstanding all I could say, he compelled me to go back and spit in the face of his child.’