Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/506

450 patient, but beyond this simple contrivance not much solicitude was evinced for his comfort. The young boys of the party played marbles, indulged in fisticuffs, threw dirt upon each other, yelled, and in other ways made themselves prominent, if not useful, members of the congregation.

The singing consisted of a recitation by a trio of "medicine-men" and a choral refrain from the united voices of all present. The time was not bad, although the execution was poor enough. When the singers became tired, they stopped for a minute or two, and then resumed the chant with renewed fervour.

At intervals, an old squaw, seated at the head of the sick man, and near the drummer and "medicine-men", would arise, and, with much mumbling and mystic manipulation, sprinkle Hoddentin over the heads of the "medicine-men", then of the choristers, and lastly over and around the couch of the sick man.

The instrumental music was furnished by rattles and a drum, which latter was made in this manner: An iron camp-kettle was partly filled with water and covered tightly by a wet cloth, well soaked. The stick was a long willow switch, curved into a ring at the end, which struck the drum. No flutes were used and no whistles, although the Apaches make and play them both. Neither did the performers introduce their favourite Tzit-idoatl (or "music- wood"), the native fiddle, formed of a section of the stalk of the century plant.

Severiano gave the following explanation of this particular ceremony. The Hoddentin, he said, was sprinkled around the sick man's couch, and, in form of a cross, upon his breast and abdomen. While so doing, the sprinkler should mumble the following formulary: "Gunjule, Akudé, Sichízi, Gunjule." The first and fourth words he translated as: "I pray, or we pray you be good." The second, he explained, was a compound of Aku = here, and Judé, the