Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/179

 From Spell to Prayer. i6i

exposed them on a board, sing: "O lord sun and moon let the bullets rebound from our husbands .... just as raindrops rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil." *^ Dr. Frazer speaks of "the prayer to the sun that he will be pleased to give effect to the charm" as "a religious and perhaps later addition." No doubt in a sense it is. We have seen reason to believe, however, that such a development is natural to the spell ; and this particular development would be especially natural if we regard the sun and moon as invoked not merely as magic- working powers in general, but as powers of the sky which send the rain and are thus decidedly suggested by the spell itself. At any rate it seems quite certain that reflec- tion on the occult working of a spell will generate the notion of external divine agency, and this notion in its turn give rise to prayer. Thus the New Caledonia rainmakers poured water over a skeleton so that it might run on to some taro leaves. " They believed that the soul of the deceased took up the water, converted it into rain, and showered it down again." From this belief it is but a step to prayer. And so we find that in Russia, where a very similar rite is practised, whilst some pour water on the corpse through a sieve, others beat it about the head, exclaiming, " Give us rain." ^° In these cases the power invoked is more or less external to the symbol. On the other hand, it may be identical with the symbol. Thus the Fanti wizard puts a crab into a hole in the ground over which the victim is about to pass, and sprinkles rum over it with the invocation: " O Crab-Fetish, when So-and-So walks over you, may you take life from him." ^^ Here the crab, I suggest, was originally a magical symbol on a par with the stones which in Borneo serve to protect fruit trees,

« G. B.:- i., 33. 50 G. B.,M., 100.

" _/. A. /., xxvi., 151. Cf. G. B.,- ii., 69-70, where the divine cuttle-fish is propitiated, lest it make a cuttle-fish grow in the man's inside. VOL XV. M