Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/23

 MAGIC SONGS OF THE FINNS.

ROM the earliest recorded times, spells, charms, incantations, and exorcising formulas have been in use. They were employed in the past by peoples enjoying a higher civilisation, like the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and are current at this moment among those whose culture has never reached the stage of making pottery, like the Australians. We must, therefore, believe that magic songs and charms were a very early expedient for defence against the dangers of the unseen world. Indeed, they are almost the inevitable result of an animistic view of nature. When once man supposed that every visible object, whether possessed of organic life or no, is inhabited by a spirit in its nature but a double of himself, and capable of injuring or benefiting him, he would naturally imagine the invisible personage could be influenced and controlled in the same way as an ordinary individual. A Finnish hunter before starting for the forest could sing:

After he has made an offering he can say: