Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/487

 Collectanea. 463

November is not a good birth-month, being le mois des morts.

If a child sucks his finger, the habit is curable; but, if he sucks his thumb, nothing will break him of it, and it is of no use trying.

A girl who goes about with her dress not properly fastened, e.g. unhooked at the back, will lose her lover. (Just such another bit of popular morality as the second " marriage omen " in the last set of notes.)

E. H. and H. J. Rose.

Customs at Death among the Manipuris and Cognate Clans.

All deaths which are not in the ordinary course of nature are considered likely to have evil effects either on the community or on the near relations of the deceased. This belief is found among all the inhabitants of the hill tracts of Assam, and there are many interesting points with reference to it which would repay investigation, but in this note I only propose to deal with the deaths of infants and deaths in childbirth. Such deaths are generally classed as abnormal, and necessitate the performance of some ceremony to remove the evil consequences which are thought likely to ensue.

The spirits of infants which die under three years of age are considered by the Manipuris to be extremely malicious, and, should any one tread on the grave of such a child, he would certainly get some disease of the eyes or of the feet. Such spirits are also always on the look-out for an opportunity to become reincarnated, and therefore steps have to be taken to avoid this, for it is thought that the child in which the spirit is born again will also die young. As is only natural, the spirit is more likely to re-enter the womb of the mother of the dead baby than that of any other woman, and therefore the parents perform the ceremonies described below to avert such a misfortune.

The spirits of male children dying in infancy are called Suren, and those of females Apunibi. In order to prevent them from