Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/392

364 spirits are driven off from the reindeer by means of a sacred fire. The herd is driven towards it from the leeward side, so that "the breath of the fire" may pass over them and so drive away the contamination they have contracted. This ceremony takes place at the end of the summer, when they return to their winter quarters.

In the Malay Peninsula one of the ceremonies a mother has to undergo after childbirth is called "ascending the roasting place." The unfortunate woman is placed on a roughly made platform, under which a roaring fire is lighted. This fire is always kindled by the midwife, and to do this she takes a brand from the house-fire. When once kindled it must not be allowed to go out during the whole forty-four days during which the woman is secluded. Nothing must be cooked at it or the child will suffer. Custom demands that the patient should recline on this couch two or three times in the day for an hour or two, and, as the platform is only about two feet from the ground, the sufferings of the woman can be imagined, and, indeed, the effects have sometimes been terrible. By way of supplementing these drastic measures, one of the hearthstones is sometimes wrapped up in a piece of flannel or in old rags and applied to the patient's stomach, thus "roasting" her still more effectually. In China people fire crackers when an execution takes place. This has the effect of frightening away the headless ghost. A mandarin superintends the execution, and he safeguards himself by being carried in his sedan-chair over a fire lighted on the pavement. By this means he shakes off the troublesome ghost. For the same reason, after a funeral the mourners in China, and even those who have paid a visit of condolence to the house where there has been a death, often think it wise to purify themselves from the contamination by stepping over a fire. The same idea is found among