Brewer's: Tobit

sleeping one night outside the wall of his courtyard, was blinded by sparrows “muting warm dung into his eyes.” His son Tobias was attacked on the Tigris by a fish, which leapt out of the water to assail him. Tobias married Sara, seven of whose betrothed lovers had been successively carried off by the evil spirit Asmodeus. Asmodeus was driven off by the angel Azarias, and, fleeing to the extremity of Egypt, was bound. Old Tobit was cured of his blindness by applying to his eyes the gall of the fish which had tried to devour his son. (Apocrypha: Book of Tobit.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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