Page:Chinese Life in the Tibetan Foothills.djvu/207

 A horse is also very unlucky and will not be allowed to leave a house which it may have entered before the owner pays a fine.

If a cow trespasses on the ancestral graves it will also be liable to be seized and held till the spirits of the ancestors have been appeased. If a chicken comes to the house the chief fear is that people should know; thus honest people return it at once, but others either hasten to kill and eat it, or take steps to have it sold for fear of detection. When a chicken is lost the loser not infrequently suspects the right person, and will deliberately sit down and curse what is called the speckled cock, ma hua chi chung, or curse the spotted turtle, curse the pheasant red and curse the neighbours all round.

Chickens are often stolen by the street arabs, who kill them and make the feathers into feather dusters. The low class of inn where these rascals put up is called chi mao tien, chicken feather inn, so named because chickens are killed and feathers stored and manufactured there.

There is a saying which means Rather lend the chief room of a house to deposit a coffin, than lend it to anyone to hold a marriage in. A marriage and a funeral are both to be avoided unless the person belongs to the family, but a marriage held in the house is more unlucky than a funeral, and no one will allow it at any cost.

No woman from an outside family may sit on the door step of the chief room of the house. No woman who has been confined will be tolerated in another person's house till her forty days of purification have been accomplished; a woman during that time must certainly tso y&uuml;eh ( 月), sit one moon. No woman would dare to go near the chief room of her own house for the same length of time for fear of offending the idols.

No one may go to another person's home and weep, for fear of troubling the weeping spirit. Nor may anyone go with a fresh wound into another's house, as it is very unlucky.

When the white-necked crow makes a lot of cawing it is very unlucky; this bird is called the kuei lao ya, demon crow.