Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/253

 Collectanea. 231

Rain stopping. — " Some people stop rain by hanging out a wooden ladle in the air; others believe in putting antimony in a cock's eye; women light a small fire in the open and damp it down with green leaves, to make it send up a column of smoke into the sky. Any one who can put two and two together will surely admit that the rain is bound to die away if it falls on a dead body ; so the Jamall Baloch of Las Bela are doubtless wise in their generation in never taking their dead to burial if it's raining, unless of course there has been enough rain and to spare. But corpses are not always procurable, and I am assured on all hands that the best all-round device to stop rain is to run a thread through a frog's mouth and then let it go with the thread tied round it.^ Unfortunately the hated miser, who hoards up grain, in his bins and spends his days praying for drought, has learned to turn the frog to his own base uses. When the rains are withheld, folks soon begin to suspect that he has hidden some frogs away in his house in a jar of water, and so stopped the rain. And sure enough, driven to desperation, they have more than once ran- sacked some miser's house and exposed his hateful trick. At least so they tell me. The survey department may possibly have wondered why their constructions are occasionally demolished in the wilder parts of the Brahul country. It may be of interest to them to know that they are joint-accused with the hoarders of grain, and stand charged with locking up the rain by means of their survey pillars " (p. 66).

" To a Pathan the stopping of rain must seem simple enough. For he has a sheaf of devices to choose from. Throw a handful of salt on the fire ; nail a horse-shoe on to the wall, well out of the reach of the rain ; plaster a pat'ira or wheaten bannock on a rubbish-heap ; put a Koran into an oven when the fire is out, and

'During a drought in China, "a geomancer came forward, and obtained the sanction of the Viceroy to the following ridiculous arrangements for propitiating the Dragon King. After having closed the south gate of the city — a device usually resorted to in such emergencies — he placed under it several water tubs, filled to the brim, and containing frogs — a number of boys were then ordered by the soothsayer to tease the frogs so as to make them croak. In a few days rain is said to have followed this extraordinary exhibition of human folly." J. H. Gray, China (1878), vol. i., p. 147. Cf. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk- Lore 0/ Northern India (1896), vol. i., p. 73.