Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/394

 366 The Magical and Ceremonial Uses of Fire.

the leaves crackle very much and fall apart, it shows such incompatibility of temper that the parties interested will be wise if they decide to separate before being bound by the marriage tie.^

In 162 1 Elizabeth Sawyer was executed as a witch. One of the tests used to divine if she was the guilty person was by taking a handful of thatch off her cottage and setting fire to it. The witch would appear while the handful of thatch was burning.^

Fire Ceremonially Extinguished.

On certain occasions fires must be put out, since they have become contaminated by death or other unclean things ; and fresh fire must be made free from such im- purities. Among the Ekoi of West Africa, if a woman wishes to free herself of her husband without first discuss- ing the question with him, she rakes out the fire and pours water over the glowing embers till they are quite extin- guished. She then cuts her hair and paints herself all over with white paint. Thereupon she is fiee, and, even if she changes her mind and her husband wants her to come back, she can never return.^

Among the Banyoro of Central Africa, when the king died, all the fires had to be put out. For cooking necessary food a fire might be lighted by friction only, but directly the cooking was done, the fire had to be put out.'^ When the

^J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, pp. 328-329.

"Information given me by Miss M. M. C. Pollard. See Henry Goodcole, reprinted with a play based on this story, IVitch of Edmonton, by Kowley, Dekker and Ford.

For those who would care to study further examples of divination, good examples of divination with a lamp in Ancient Egypt can be found in Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, by F. LI. Griffith and H. Thompson.

^ A. Talbot, Ln the Shadow of the Bush, p. 113.

■* f. Roscoe, The Northern Bantu, p. 5i-