Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/201



OR more than two centuries past it has been well known to those Europeans who have resided for any length of time in Madagascar, that a somewhat elaborate system of divination, called Sikìdy or Sikìly, is practised by almost all the various tribes inhabiting the island. A good deal of information as to the modus operandi of this divination was given by Flacourt, the French governor of Fort Dauphin, in his fine work upon Madagascar published in 1661. And in later histories, such as that of Ellis in 1838, other particulars are given, as well as diagrams of the methods by which the diviners "worked the oracle". But within the last five or six years the subject has been investigated in a most complete manner by a learned Norwegian missionary, the Rev. Lars Dahle, and he has given the results of his inquiries in three articles contributed to successive numbers of a magazine which I have edited, in whole or in part, for several years past, the Antanànarìvo Annual. I propose, therefore, to give in this paper a summary of the information Mr. Dahle has obtained, omitting many of the minuter points of philology, which would hardly prove interesting or serviceable in a paper like the present, Mr. Dahle has brought to his researches what no previous writer on the subject possessed, viz., a very accurate knowledge of Arabic, as well as of the Semitic languages generally, and hence he has thrown a flood of light upon what had previously been hopelessly obscure. I can therefore lay claim to no original research at all in the particulars I have to lay before you;