nd she comes
bearing in her hand a tripod, better known as a three-legged stool,
the uses of which are only revealed to the initiated. She is
received by the matronly friends of the mother, and begins the
mysteries by opening every lock and lid in the house. During this
ceremony the maiden females are excluded.

The rites which succeed the baptism of a child are still more
recondite. Four or five days after the christening, the midwife
prepares, with her own mystical hands, certain savoury messes,
spreads a table, and places them on it. She then departs, and all
the family, leaving the door open, in silence retire to sleep. This
table is covered for the Miri of the child, an occult being, that is
supposed to have the care of its destiny. In the course of the
night, if the child is to be fortunate, the Miri comes and partakes
of the feast, generally in the shape of a cat; but if the Miri do not
come, nor taste of the food, the child is considered to have been
doomed to misfortune and misery; and no doubt the treatment it
afterwards receives is consonant to its evil predestination.

The Albanians have, like the vulgar of all countries, a species of
hearth or household superstitions, distinct from their wild and
imperfect religion. They imagine that mankind, after death, become
voorthoolakases, and often pay visits to their friends and foes for
the same reasons, and in the same way, that our own country ghosts
walk abroad; and their visiting hour is, also, midnight. But the
collyvillory is another sort of personage. He delights in mischief
and pranks, and is, besides, a lewd and foul spirit; and, therefore,
very properly detested. He is let loose on the night of the
nativity, with licence for twelve nights to plague men's wives; at
which time some one of the family must keep wakeful vigil all the
livelong night, beside a clear and cheerful fire, otherwise this
naughty imp would pour such an aqueous stream on the hearth, that
fire could never be kindled there again.

The Albanians are also pestered with another species of malignant
creatures; men and women whose gifts are followed by misfortunes,
whose eyes glimpse evil, and by whose touch the most prosperous
affairs are blasted. They work their malicious sorceries in the
dark, collect herbs of baleful influence; by the help of which, they
strike their enemies with palsy, and cattle with distemper. The
males are called maissi, and the females maissa--witches