Headaches were no doubt much relieved when damp cloths were wrapped round a patient’s head and scented wood was burned beside him, while the magician, in whom so much faith was reposed, droned out a mystical incantation.  The curative water was drawn from the confluence of two streams and was sprinkled with much ceremony.  In like manner the evil-eye curers, who still operate in isolated districts in these islands, draw water from under bridges “over which the dead and the living pass",[271] and mutter charms and lustrate victims.

Headaches were much dreaded by the Babylonians.  They were usually the first symptoms of fevers, and the demons who caused them were supposed to be bloodthirsty and exceedingly awesome.  According to the charms, these invisible enemies of man were of the brood of Nergal.  No house could be protected against them.  They entered through keyholes and chinks of doors and windows; they crept like serpents and stank like mice; they had lolling tongues like hungry dogs.

Magicians baffled the demons by providing a charm.  If a patient “touched iron”—­meteoric iron, which was the “metal of heaven”—­relief could be obtained.  Or, perhaps, the sacred water would dispel the evil one; as the drops trickled from the patient’s face, so would the fever spirit trickle away.  When a pig was offered up in sacrifice as a substitute for a patient, the wicked spirit was commanded to depart and allow a kindly spirit to take its place—­an indication that the Babylonians, like the Germanic peoples, believed that they were guarded by spirits who brought good luck.

The numerous incantations which were inscribed on clay tablets and treasured in libraries, do not throw much light on the progress of medical knowledge, for the genuine folk cures were regarded as of secondary importance, and were not as a rule recorded.  But these metrical compositions are of special interest, in so far as they indicate how poetry originated and achieved widespread popularity among ancient peoples.  Like the religious dance, the earliest poems were used for magical purposes.  They were composed in the first place by men and women who were supposed to be inspired in the literal sense; that is, possessed by spirits.  Primitive man associated “spirit” with “breath”, which was the “air of life”, and identical with wind.  The poetical magician drew in a “spirit”, and thus received inspiration, as he stood on some sacred spot on the mountain summit, amidst forest solitudes, beside a’ whispering stream, or on the sounding shore.  As Burns has sung: 

    The muse, nae poet ever fand her,
    Till by himsel’ he learn’d to wander,
    Adown some trottin’ burn’s meander,
      An’ no think lang: 
    O sweet to stray, an’ pensive ponder
      A heart-felt sang!

Or, perhaps, the bard received inspiration by drinking magic water from the fountain called Hippocrene, or the skaldic mead which dripped from the moon.