Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/211

Rh with the Lhota Nāga, a tribe on the north-eastern frontier of our Indian Empire, to cut off the head, and hands and feet, of any one they could meet with "without any provocation or pre-existent enmity, merely to stick up in their fields to ensure a good crop of grain." This approaches very closely to the famous Meriah sacrifice of the Khonds, but perhaps involves the idea rather of a guardian than of a fertilizer. More personal is the relation between the head-hunter of the Malay Archipelago and the skull of his victim. The soul of the victim seems to be attached to the skull, and becomes the bringer of luck to, and the guardian-spirit of, the murderer and possessor. So among the Eskimo of Behring Strait a man will sometimes cause the death of a new-born child and secretly steal its body to carry about with him. He believes that the child's shade will then accompany him and secure success for him in hunting.

Whether the shrines of any European saints have originated like those in Afghanistan and India just referred to I do not know. The idea at least is not quite unknown. Southey put into verse the curious tale of Saint Romuald which he found recorded in both French and Spanish. The French writer, horrified at the popular wickedness and jealous for the honour of his country, laid the scene in Catalonia; the Spanish writer for the same excellent reasons laid it in Aquitaine. But both were agreed that such was the renown of Saint Romuald during his life that the people of his neighbourhood made up their minds to slay him in order to be sure of having his relics as a precious possession afterwards. Unhappily for them the saint heard of their intention; he disapproved of their excessive devotion, and fled the country. The importance of securing the tomb of a