Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/169

 From Spell to Prayer. 151

tiveness of the mimic act is established as a fact, a fact however, that as mysterious, occult, calls aloud for interpre- tation, the projective character of the silent part of the magical ritual will come to underlie its whole meaning ; and further, that the spell, as being the crispest embodi- ment of the "must" as spring and soul of the projection, will naturally provide the general explanatory notion under which the rest will be brought, namely that of an imperative utterance.

Let us now consider typical specimens of the various kinds of spell in common use, partly in order to test and substantiate the foregoing contentions, but more especially so that haply we may observe the spell pass by easy grada- tions into the prayer, the imperative into the optative. To begin with, I would suggest that at the stage of developed magic the most perfect spell is one of the following form — a form so widely distributed and easily recognised that a single example will suffice to characterise it. In ancient Peru, when a war expedition was contemplated, they were wont to starve certain black sheep for some days and then slay them, uttering the incantation-^ : " As the hearts of these beasts are weakened, so let our enemies be weakened." Precisely the same type is found all over the world, from Central Australia to Scotland.-^ I call this form perfect, because it takes equal notice of present symbolisation and ulterior realisation, instrument and end. Here the instru- ment is the weakening of the beasts, the end the weakening of the enemy. Let us not, however, overlook the explicitly stated link between the two, the unifying soul of the pro- cess, namely the imperative " let them be weakened." It is apt to escape one's attention because the operator, instead of obtruding his personality upon us, concentrates like a good workman on his instrument, which might there- fore at the first glance be credited with the origination of

^ Acosta, ii., 342.

'-6 Cf. Sp. atid G., 536, and G. B.,- i., 17.