The Evil Eye

1845. On taking down the south-west angle wall a skeleton was found imbedded in the stone and mortar. There was every appearance of the body having been buried alive, and hurriedly. A mass of mortar was over the mouth, and the stones were heaped and huddled about the corpse; the rest of the wall had been built properly.

Many similar accounts are given of finds of a like nature in various parts of Germany, and the superstition that walls would not stand without a human victim, existed among Celts, Slavs, Teutons and Northmen. Even so late as 1813 when a Government official went to repair a broken dam on the Elbe, an old peasant sneered at his efforts, and said: "You will never get the dyke to hold unless you first sink an innocent child under its foundations." Several stories are told of parents who sold their children for this purpose, and of others where the victim, often a woman, was kidnapped and built into the foundations.

At the building of the castle of Henneberg a mason had sold his child to be built into the wall. The child had been given a cake, and the father stood on a ladder superintending the work. When the last stone had been put in, the child screamed in the wall, and the man, overwhelmed with self-reproach, fell from the ladder and broke his neck.

At the castle of Liebenstein, a mother sold her child for this purpose. As the wall rose about the little one it cried out: "Mother, I still see you!" then later, "Mother, I can hardly see you!" and lastly, "Mother, I see you no more!" 124b Several other castles have similarly ghastly stories connected

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