Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/184

 174 and obedience to their mandates be a sufficient test of genuineness) has sprung up out of the Awe inspired by the bull-roarer; and Mr. Lang's assertion may safely be endorsed that Animism, with the opportunities it affords for spiritualistic hocus-pocus, could serve to introduce therein a principle of degeneration only.

My other set of instances pertains to the fascinating subject of stone-worship—a subject, alas! from which I would fain illustrate my point at far greater length. Stones that are at all curious in shape, position, size, or colour—not to speak of properties derived from remarkable coincidences of all sorts—would seem specially designed by nature to appeal to primitive man's "supernaturalistic" tendency. A solitary pillar of rock, a crumpled volcanic boulder, a meteorite, a pebble resembling a pig, a yam, or an arrowhead, a piece of shining quartz, these and such as these are almost certain to be invested by his imagination with the vague but dreadful attributes of Powers. Nor, although to us nothing appears so utterly inanimate as a stone, is savage animatism in the least afraid to regard it as alive. Thus the Kanakas differentiate their sacred stones into males and females, and firmly believe that from time to time little stones appear at the side of the parent blocks. On the other hand, when a Banks' Islander sees a big stone with little stones around it, he says that there is a Vui (spirit) inside it, ready if properly conciliated to make the women bear many children and the sows large litters. Now, this is no longer Animatism, but Animism proper. A piece of sympathetic magic is explained in terms of spirit causation. The following case from the Baram district of Borneo is transitional. A man protects his fruit trees by placing near them certain round stones in cleft sticks. He then utters a curse, calling upon the stones to witness it: " May he who steals this fruit suffer from stones in the stomach as large as