Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/350

 312 whole village, while twin girls keep the good results to their parents. Some again say that children born out of wedlock bring good luck, but I suspect that they mean the children of people who are free to marry, since the marriage laws are strict enough. They interpret a dream of putting a hen in a basket as meaning that a girl child will be born to the dreamer soon. Dreaming of water is always a good sign, and we may connect this with the worship of the river spirit performed before the birth of a child. To dream of a tiger is good at marriage, but of bad import at other times. To dream that an unmarried girl has a child is usually interpreted as a sign of good crops or of other prosperity.

In this sketch I have tried on a small scale to bring birth customs into relation with social structure viewed from several aspects, and, while I am fully conscious of the many gaps in my information, due perhaps to the difficulties under which my work was carried on, yet I think I have shown the main features of the rites which express the interest of Nāga society in the processes which repair the ravages which death causes in its fabric.