Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/149

 of Sociology and Folklore. 139

earthen pot is sent into the house before the owner and his family take up their quarters there. Sometimes husband and wife enter with their sheets knotted together, as was done on their wedding day, doubtless to mark the new departure and as a fertility charm. The gods who control luck are worshipped, and the rite ends with the lighting of the sacred fire as a protective.^ Mr. Rose ^ quotes, on the authority of Dr. Francke, a more drastic method used in the Sutlej valley, where a Lama recently beheaded his father while asleep in order to make his house habitable. When the Oraons build a new house, the ancestors are invited to enter it, and a sacrifice is always offered on the first day the house is occupied.^

I have not been able to procure much in the way of parallels to these customs in this country. Mrs. Leather kindly informs me that in Herefordshire, on entering a new house, the paws of the family ca.t are buttered and she is put in through the window backwards. It is held unlucky to move in the furniture before coal, bread and salt are taken in, and on the Welsh border it is said to be very unlucky to go into a new house. Why is the cat put in tail foremost } Miss Burne kindly suggests that the cat represents a sort of foundation sacrifice, like the dog which was passed over the Devil's Bridge as the first passenger, and she notes that things done backwards are an element in various charms and spells. This may be so, or perhaps the cat is sent in backwards to show that she is not under duress, and that she can come out when she likes by " following her nose." From Ireland it is reported that when you are moving it is unlucky to take your cat with you, and hence in Dublin many cats are left derelict, and suffer terribly.* In Lancashire, when moving into a new house, the wife brings v.ith her a Bible, salt and oatmeal,

^ Panjab Notes and Queries, i. 135. -(9/. cii. i. 64.


 * P. Dehor), Memoirs Asiatic Society of Bengal, 19C6, p. 137.


 * Notes and Queries, 4th series, iii. 359.