Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/463

 Notes from Armenia. 433

some other appropriate manner." Instances are given from New South Wales, Central Africa, and Mongolia. Our Turkish cases may now be added to these. The Golden Bough gives in connection with these charms the closely related one of water poured over the sacred stone, which leads naturally enough to the rain-charm in which water is poured over a sacred stone image^ or in which the image itself is thrown into the water.

To return to the rain-charms reported from Ourfa, we have the singular case (I think it was Turkish) of the exhumation of a Jew, and the throwing of his head into the sacred pool. I was much puzzled over this custom, and do not even now feel able to elucidate it perfectly. The first thing, however, is to collect the parallels. Reference to Golden Bough, i., 99 sqq., will show a number of cases "where the rain-charm operates through the dead." For example, in New Caledonia they dig up a dead body and pour water over the skeleton.

In Russia until lately the peasants used to dig up the corpse of some one who had drunk himself to death and sink it in the nearest swamp or lake. An example is given from a village in the Tarashchausk district, where the body of a Raskolnik or Dissenter was dug up, beaten about the head with the exclamation, " Give us rain," while water is poured on the exhumed body through a sieve. Here, then, we have close and convincing parallels to the exhumation of the Edessan Jew. It remains to be seen whether there is any thought of substituting the dead Jew for a living one. All that I am prepared to say at present is that the Edessan parallel should be added to the cases in the Golden Bough} Now turn to the Armenian and Syrian cases of water- throwing and of the drenching of the corn-dolly. Most of the cases which I have collected can be seen to belong to a common tradition. But the case of water-throwing at Aintab calls for special notice, because while, in the com-

' [Cf. also Folk-Lore, xi., 437, and xii., loi, 214. — Ed.] VOL. XV. 2 F