Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/391

 The Magical and Ceremonial Uses of Fi^-e, 363

is killed, and the fire-board, shaped in human form, is anointed with the blood and fat of the sacrifice. The mother then pronounces an incantation over it, appealing to Big Raven to set up this new fire-board as a guardian of the newly formed herd and hearth. "Now my reindeer will have their own herdsman," the elder son would say.^

In some of the tombs of ancient Egypt, in a hole made for it in the south wall, a lamp was placed. This lamp consisted of a brick of unbaked clay, which carried a reed with a wick inside it. There is a unique example of this lamp in the British Museum. The following formula had to be spoken over it : " It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber, and who repel that one who would repel him with the desert flame. I have set aflame the desert (.■'), I have caused the path to be mistaken. I am for the protection of Osiris N." This magic lamp, besides having a general protective purpose, "seems," says Dr. Gardiner, " to have been specially designed to prevent the burial chamber from becoming black with sand." Dr. Gardiner has kindly given me some further information about this lamp. He suggests that it may be merely a model torch, not a real one. In any case the reed would probably be a nozzle for the wick, and the wick must have been dipped in oil. The oil used for this purpose was castor oil. What the wicks were made of we do not know.'^

Fire as a Purifier.

A use of fire allied to the foregoing may next be noticed.

Among the Nandi when disease breaks out in a herd a fire is made, and, after certain ceremonies have been gone through, the cattle are driven round the fire, and milk is poured over each animal.^ Among the Chukchee evil

^W. Jochelson, " The Koryak, "ycj^/ A^. Pacific Exped. vi. 32.

2 Nina de G. Davies and A. Gardiner, The Tomb of Atnenemhct (No. 82), p. 1 1 7.

=5 A. C. HoUis, The Nandi, pp. 45-46.