Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/368

362 house is haunted by her ghost, which presents a most savage appearance and pursues people.

In a village in the Canton Province there is a temple, the idol in which has its face turned towards the wall and its back to the entrance. The legend explaining the peculiar position of the idol is as follows. A certain person, who belonged to the village, had just returned from abroad, having acquired, while in distant regions, the sorcerer’s art. Some of the villagers remembered him, and consequently, when one of the neighbours was giving a house-warming, he was not among the invited. His wife, who felt the slight, jeered at his powers of sorcery, seeing that they could not even succeed in getting them an invitation to a dinner. Incited to action by these remarks, the sorcerer bade his wife take a bamboo and place it transversely inside the house, and hold a white and black handkerchief in her hand. The banqueters were at this time in the midst of their cups, when they were suddenly startled by beholding a large white snake with its head hanging down from the main beam of the house, its eyes glittering, and thrusting out its tongue, which appeared like a sword, and by seeing another black snake.

There was a certain man. around whose left arm was always wound a yellow cloth, which was never removed, and who was well known to be possessed of the power of magic. On one occasion he arrived at the town of Sai-nám, which is situated on a river, along the banks of which were anchored junks discharging their cargoes of rice. One of the rice coolies was a man of gigantic strength, who could carry three sacks of rice at once. While he was descending the gangway with a load some of his fellow emyloyés tilted it aside in fun, in order to give him a tumble.