Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/491

Rh to serve as clothing. A certain tree, on the bark of which are markings supposed to resemble a troublesome skin complaint, is believed to be the cause of this disease, or at least to be the special abode of the Lai which causes it. If a sufferer hangs his clothes on the tree, and after dancing before it departs home without looking back, and leaving his rags on the tree, he will get well. Should he not recover, he concludes that his particular complaint is not due to that Lai, and consults a maiba, or goes to hospital.

A short note of mine on the subject of Rain-stopping appeared in Folk-Lore for September, 1911, and Mr. Hodson in The Meitheis has given various rain-compelling ceremonies. The following is from my friends the pundits. A certain woman, who had no children, worshipped Sorārel, and asked for nine sons. Shortly after this she gave birth to four stone children. Being ashamed of her progeny, she left her home and came to the Iril, carrying the four stone infants. Finding the river in flood, she left the children and crossed alone, and the abandoned ones cried loudly, whence that place is called Nunglaubi (stone crying). Subsequently the full number of nine children was born to her, but all were of stone, and she left them in the places where they were born and returned to look after the first four. She asked Sorārel on what she was to feed these strange children, and was told that the god would stop the rain and her progeny could live on the offerings made by men to procure rain. I must admit that this explanation comes rather too frequently in the pundits' book. Having got this promise the woman joined her four children, and changed herself into a stone. She and her offspring are still to be seen in a small cave in the Nongmaijing hill. The stone resembling the mother is said to have some resemblance to the human form, but the four others are merely round stones from a river bed. There is considerable disinclination to touch these stones, as handling them