Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/386

 358 The Magical and Cerevwnial Uses of Fire.

softened in this way, while the blubber is chewed in summer time, in order to extract oil for their lamps. This habit has developed their temporal muscles to such an extent that they can stand the vibration caused by the drill.

Sometimes the ends of the thong are attached to a bow, which is worked backwards and forwards. In this case only one operator is necessary, one hand working the bow while the other holds down the spindle, which is sometimes capped with half a cocoanut. The bow-drill seems to have been used by the ancient Egyptians, and hearths (the horizontal stick) have been found on sites belonging to a period as early as the twelfth dynasty. Bow-drills have also been found belonging to the same period. Such a bow-drill is still used by the Reindeer Chukchee. Instead of half a cocoanut shell, such as is often used by the Malays and others, at the top of the spindle, the upper piece is almost always made of the astragalus of a reindeer. These people hold it in position with the left hand or the breast, the board being kept steady by the foot. The right hand works the bow.

Another way of making fire is that known as the Per- aission viet/iod, flint and steel or iron pyrites being used. This was in common use in this country up to quite recent times, in fact, until the introduction of matches. It also seems to have been one, at any rate, of the methods em- ployed in prehistoric times ; for in a cave of the Mousterian period in Jersey,^ as well as on Neolithic sites, pieces of iron pyrites have been found which show marks of such use, and are associated with flints of a form suggesting that they were employed for this purpose. This way of producing fire is almost world-wide, and is an especially convenient method in damp climates. It is constantly found side by side with one of the frictional processes.

^ R. R. Marett, Archaeologia, Ixii. p. 465.