Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/176

156 hand a small round shield, and a little bag with lemons and oranges. They then raise the crane with great shouting and sound of instruments, firing guns, and making other festal demonstrations: and in this manner the car begins its march on the way to the house of the idol to which the promise was made, and she goes suspended by those hooks fastened into her flesh, and the blood runs down her legs. And she continues to sing and shout for joy, and to strike upon the shield, and to throw oranges and lemons to her husband and to her relations, who go with her in this manner to the door of the said house of prayer, where they take her down, and cure, her, and deliver her to her husband; and she gives at that place great alms to the Bramans and offerings to the idols, and a great feast to as many as accompanied her."

Caspero Balbi thus describes a hook-swinging ceremony as presented at St. Thome, near Madras, in the year 1582:—

"These Gentiles are very different in their adoration, for some worship the image of a man, some of a cow, others of serpents; others the sun or moon; some a tree, or the water, and other things. They are accustomed to celebrate many feasts; but in the month of September I saw one: the people planted a tree in the ground like the mast of a ship, with the main yard across, upon which main yard were two hooks fastened; and there are many which desire to free themselves from trouble or misery, who make a vow to the pagod, to hook or ganch themselves; and for this there are some appointed that stand there, who seeing anyone that will ganch themselves for devotion, they first make an offering, and then they loosen a cord and let down the hooks, and with them they fasten the shoulders of him that will hook himself, and then they hoist him up aloft, making him turn his face to the pagod and salute it three times with his hands in a suppliant manner before his breast, and make him play with a weapon which he carrieth in his hands while he is drawing up: and after awhile they let him down and colour the tree with his blood, saying they