Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/188

160 a river without washing his hands in its waters. By effecting a contact with the power of the water, you prevent its harming you. Again, a wounded man, who might cause the Zulu cattle to milk blood, is given to drink the parboiled entrails of a young heifer. Among the Bechuanas a woman, whose husband is dead, must boil her food in a mixture of milk taken from every cow in the herd, and must smear herself with dung from the cattle pens, in order to avert the danger to the cattle consequent on contact with her. In the Highlands a stranger suspected of overlooking a cow is made to drink some of her milk. In Melanesia a madman is supposed to be afflicted by an angry tindalo. In such a case "they will put bits of the fringe of the mat which has belonged to the deceased," (i.e. the man whose ghost has become the tindalo in question), "into a coco-nut shell and burn it under the nose of the possessed." Mr. Crawley has drawn attention to what he calls "Inoculation" in the Lower Culture. "Inoculation," he says, "is the avoiding of the dangers of taboo by boldly courting them; taboo is minimised by breaking it." Zulus apply the principles of homoeopathic medicine, eating in the case of sickness the flesh of animals supposed to be the cause of the disease; among the same people things struck by lightning are held to have the power of lightning. With these witch-doctors inoculate themselves, and priests sometimes make the people eat an ox that has been struck by lightning. A Zulu, before crossing a river full of crocodiles, will chew crocodiles' excrement and spatter it over his person.