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In view of this danger it is natural that ample precautions should be taken at every wedding. During the dressing of the bride or the bridegroom, it is customary to throw a handful of salt into a vessel of water, saying, ὅπως λυώνει τὸ ἁλάτι, ἔτσι νὰ λυώσουν οἱ ὀχτροί (ἐχθροί), ‘As the salt dissolves, so may all enemies dissolve.’ The black-handled knife worn by the bridegroom in his belt, and the pair of scissors put in the bride’s shoe or sometimes attached to her girdle, both of which have been noticed as safeguards against the evil eye, serve also to ‘cut’ this magic bond of impotence. Sometimes too a pair of scissors and a piece of fisherman’s net are put in the bridal bed. In Acarnania and Aetolia, and it may be elsewhere, a still more primitive custom prevails; both bride and bridegroom wear an old piece of fishing-net,—in which therefore resides the virtue of salt water,—round the loins next to the body; and from these bits of netting are afterwards made amulets to be worn by any children of the marriage. Such customs are likely long to continue among the simpler folk of modern Greece, who frankly and innocently wish the bride at her wedding reception ‘seven sons and one daughter.’