Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/388

 360 The Magical and Ceremonial Uses of Fire.

near them to ward ofif such dangers. Light is a safeguard, for evil spirits can only carry out their malicious designs under cover of darkness. Throughout Northern India this idea is very prevalent. The Vadar of Thana fear a visit from the birth spirit on the fifth night after a birth. This spirit comes in the shape of a cat, hen, or dog, and eats the heart and skull of the child. Around the mother's bed are placed strands of a creeper; an iron knife or scythe is placed on the bed ; and a fire in an iron bickern guards the entrance to the room, keeping watch during the night. This fire must on no account be allowed to go out, or the evil spirit may enter, and, stepping over the cold ashes, place its fatal mark on the child's forehead.^

Among the Parsis, when a child is born a lamp is lighted and kept burning in the room where the mother is con- fined. One of their sacred books says : " When the child becomes separate from the mother, it is necessary to burn a lamp for three nights and days — if they burn a fire it would be better."- The length of time that this lamp is kept burning varies. Sometimes it is kept alight for ten days, sometimes for forty, the latter being the time usually observed as the period of confinement. Another book directs that the lamp must be placed in such a position as to render it impossible for anyone to pass between it and the child.-^ In many parts of Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany the custom of lighting fires or candles round the newly-born infant still persists, to keep it from falling into the power of evil spirits.'* The Hindus of Northern India think that spirits are always hovering in the air round a person's head. At a marriage, lights, among other things, are waved round the heads of the newly- married pair, to

'W. Crooke, Folklore of Northern India, vol. i. p. 265. - Sad-dar, ch. xvi. 2.

^ Shayast-la-Shayast, ch. x. 15. Quoted in art. on "Birlh" in Hastings' Diet, of Eel. and Ethics, by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi.

^Hastings' Did. of Rel. and Ethics, art. "Birth" (Teutonic), E. Mogk.