Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/86

 72 question as to whether in this particular example we have a true thunderbolt belief, or merely one founded on European analogies, is a question upon which I myself am unable to enter." To this Professor Petrie added, "I have never met with pyrites nodules kept in graves or houses, except selected even balls for playing a game. Peculiar flints selected are often found, so the idea was familiar, but pyrites was unnoticed. One name for iron, however, was ba ne pat (iron of the sky), and this was applied both to haematite and native iron. The idea of meteoric iron was thus known, but the material was disregarded."

The only Egyptian example I have been able to find is described by Sir J. Evans, who says that a celt of nephrite engraved with gnostic inscriptions in Greek was found in Egypt many years ago, and appears to be unique.

In Africa the sole example of the keraunic belief given by Tylor is that of Djakuta or Jakuta, the Stone-Caster of the Yoruba, usually called Shango, the Thunder-god, who, as among so many other people who have forgotten their Stone Age, flings down from heaven the stone hatchets which are found in the ground and preserved as sacred objects. A fuller account of these Yoruba beliefs is given by Dwyer, who states that the ancient axeheads or celts found in the country and called adura are "messengers from," not the bolts of, Shonga the local Thunder-god, and that they have peculiar properties when "fresh." When a house is struck by lightning and fired, it is visited by the priests of Shonga, who are strongly "possessed" (by the spirit), and succeed in producing the thunder-stone from its ashes, a fee being charged by the priests for the performance. Mr. Dwyer could never ascertain where the stones came from, even the offer of heavy bribes failing to extract the information, the invariable reply being "they come from Shonga." Further, "if a person offends some of the Elders or commits some crime," his house will be burnt a few days afterwards,—the priests