Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/158

144 serves as a means of suspending the lemon over the brazier of incense, the upper end of the cord being held in the left hand and the birch in the right. Everything being prepared, the magician, after the customary scattering of rice and fumigation of the birch and the lemon, recites the appropriate charm, and presently commences to put questions to the lemon which the spirit is now supposed to have entered, rebuking and threatening it with the birch whenever it fails to answer directly and to the point. The spirit's conversational powers were, however, extremely limited, being confined to two signs expressing "Yes" and "No." The affirmative was indicated by a pendulum-like swing of the lemon, which rocked to and fro with more or less vehemence according to the emphasis with which the reply was supposed to be delivered. The negative, on the other hand, was indicated by a complete cessation of motion on the part of the lemon. When the lemon is required to discover the name of a thief, the names of all those who are at all likely to have committed the theft are written on scraps of paper and arranged in a circle round the brazier, when the lemon will at once swing in the direction of the name of the guilty party. The most propitious night for the performance of this ceremony is believed to be a Tuesday.

The Cup and Ring Ordeal.—Another and perhaps a commoner form of the foregoing ordeal is described by Maxwell, as follows: "Supposing that a theft has taken place in a house, all the inmates are assembled, and their names are written on the edge of a white cup, on which some sentences of the Koran are also inscribed. A ring is then suspended by a maiden's hair and held right over the middle of the cup. It is then swung round gently, and the name which it first strikes is the name of the thief."

In a slightly different form of the divination, the instrument is a bowl, which is tilled with water and covered over with a white cloth, on which the scraps of paper with the names