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AMULETS: PRIMITIVE, MODERN 369
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to
have been brought from Palestine command what is regarded as a good
price, three roubles being paid for a single one ; these are great
favorites with the Jews more especially, one of their supposed virtues
being to prevent abortion.38
The
religious fervor of the Russians is illustrated by the character of the
amulet said to be constantly worn by the Czar as a protection against
the dangers which hourly threaten him. This is a ring in which is set a
piece of the True Cross, the sacred material which was believed to lend
a mighty potency to the famous "Talisman of Charlemagne." A less
venerable belief is said to render the Czar superstitiously careful to
see that an ancestral watch in his possession is always kept wound up,
for a family legend tells that should this watch ever stop the glory of
the reigning house would pass away.39
Of
bone amulets there is a great variety. Among ffchose used in the
British Isles may be noted a hammer-shaped type, fashioned out of a
sheep's bone, worn by Whelby fishermen as protection from drowning;
similarly shaped bone amulets find favor with some London laborers as
preventives of rheumatism. This is the type of Thor's Hammer, still
popular with the Manxmen. The strange resemblance of the os sacrum of
the rabbit to a fox's head has recommended its use as a talisman, or
luck-bringer, and a London solicitor is stated to have owned an example
which he had mounted as a gold scarf-pin, the likeness to an animal
head being brought out still more by the insertion of onyx eyes.40
The
talismanic power of the turquoise is still credited in provincial
England, for in the counties of Hampshire and Sussex it is believed
that when two persons station them-
" S. Weissenberg, " Südrussische Amulette," in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1897, pp. 367-369.
•From Jewellers' Circular Weekly, Feb. 5, 1913, p. 153.
"
A. E. Wright and E. Lovett, " Specimens of Modern Mascots and Ancient
Amulets of the British Isles," Folk Lore, vol. six, p. 295, Plate V,
fig. 1. 24
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