Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/163

 From Spell to Prayer. 145

not infrequently the absence of any incantation from a piece of magical ritual as at any rate performed to-day is expressly noted. To give but one example. Among the Khonds of Orissa a branch cut by a priest in the enemy's country is dressed up and armed so as to personate one of the foe. Thereupon it is thrown down at the shrine of the war god, but this " appeal " to him for co-operation is, we are expressly told, " silent," ^^ and that notwithstanding the semi-religious character which the magical rite has put on. On the other hand, the use of the spell as an accompani- ment or rather integral portion of the magical performance is so prevalent, that I am inclined, merely on the strength of the historical evidence, to regard its presence as normal in the perfect and uncontaminated ceremony. This suppo- sition would, however, be immensely strengthened if we could discover good psychological reason why the spell ought to be there.

I preferred a moment ago to speak of the spell as an integral portion, rather than as the mere accompaniment, of the magical rite, since it is rather with developed than with rudimentary magic that we shall be concerned when in the sequel we consider actual specimens of the kind of spell in use. Corresponding to the act of primitive credulity there may be, I conceive, a kind of spell, if spell it can be called, which is no more than a mere accompaniment. Such a verbal accompaniment will either be purely expletive, or it maybe what I shall call "descriptive," as when a child making a picture of a man says aloud to himself, " I am making a man " ; that is, supposing him to be merely playing spectator to himself, and not to be assisting himself to imagine that what he draws is a man. Such descriptive accompaniments would of course tend to pass, unaltered in form, into instruments of make-believe as soon as the make-believe stage of magic begins. Nevertheless, the whole psychological character of the spell is from that '^ /. A. /. , ix. 362.

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