Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/159

Rh are successively deposited. The bowl is supported by two men on their knuckles, and a passage from the Koran is read. When the scrap of paper containing the name of the thief is laid on the cloth covering, the bowl twists itself off the men's knuckles, and falls to the ground with a crash.

The Sieve Ordeal.—In some cases a sieve (nyiru) is similarly used. Mystic sentences are written upon it with turmeric, and when all the household is assembled a man grasps the sieve by the edge and holds it out horizontally. Presently it is seen to commence oscillating up and down, and pulls away from the man who is holding it, the latter following its lead until it reaches and touches the thief.

The Divining-rod.—The last object of this class is the Malay divining-rod, which is similarly gifted with the power of making supernatural movements. This is a rod or birch of rotan sega (the best marketable variety of cane), which may consist either of a single stem, or of any odd number of stems up to nine. The handle of the rod or rods is bound with a hank of "Javanese" yarn, which may or may not be stained yellow. The sorcerer who wishes to use it grasps the butt-end of the rod in his right fist, and after burning incense and scattering sacrificial rice, repeats the appropriate charm, which commences with a summons to the spirit to descend from the mountains and enter into his embodiment. If the invocation is properly performed, the spirit descends, and entering the sorcerer's head by way of the fontanel, proceeds down his arm and into the rod itself. The result is that the tip of the rod commences to rotate with rapidly increasing velocity, until the sorcerer loses consciousness, in which case the rod will point in the direction of any sort of lost or hidden treasure, which it may be the object of the operators to discover. Even underground water could, I was assured, be thus discovered.

III. We now come to the third class—that of demons, animals, and even inert objects, which are made to act on