Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/203

Rh settle the matter between yourselves as best you can; neither are they shallow-minded enough to treat the case merely 'symptomatically'. As diligent men, they set to work immediately, and, as truly scientific doctors, they first try to find out the cause of the evil, and then the means of removing it. And if they can give you no other benefit in a desperate case, they will at least cheer up your spirits with a good assurance, generally terminating in a very emphatic phrase, to the effect that 'if you die, you shall be buried on the top of their head'. And even if your spirit has actually left you, they do not give you up in despair, as I shall have occasion to point out subsequently.

"I am, however, reluctantly forced to admit that I am not able entirely to exculpate my friends from the accusation that there is a slight tinge of medical heresy about them, inasmuch as their whole system of fàditra (i.e., expiatory offerings or piacula) seems to rest upon the homœopathic principle, Similia similibus curantur; for the fàditra (i.e., the thing the diviner ordered to be thrown away to prevent or avert an evil) was generally something that in name, shape, or number, etc., was similar to the evil in question. For example, if the sikìdy brought out màty ròa ('two deaths'), two locusts should be killed and thrown away, to prevent the death of two men; if it brought out maràry ('sick'), a piece of the tree called hàzo maràry ('sick-tree') should be made a fàditra"; and so on.

"The people had a remarkable trust in their diviners and their art; this appears even in the names by which they called them. In Imèrina and Bétsiléo (the two most important central provinces of the island), it was quite common to style them simply Ny màsina ('The sacred ones'), a term which, however, did not so much imply sanctity as strength and superhuman power. In the outlying provinces—especially in the south and west—they are generally called ambiàsa or ombiàsy, as they were also called among the Antanòsy at Fort Dauphin as early as