Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/218

210 rises the diviner cuts off the head of the cock, enters the house with the bloody knife in his hand, and touches with this the person for whom the sikìdy is made.

If Alaimòra comes into Talé and Adibijády into Fáhasívy, or Adibijàdy into Fàhasìvy and Alaimòra into Talé, it is called Lèhi-hènjana ("the strong one"), and the meaning is that a son of young parents is likely to die young, if some effective remedy is not resorted to. And this is the remedy: Two young bullocks' horns (one from the right and one from the left side of the head) are taken and placed on the top of a piece of a tree called hàzo-bòka (i.e., "the leprosy-tree"), which is then erected close to a river, so as to throw its shadow on the water, and a trench is made from the water up into the land. Then the man for whom the sikìdy is worked enters into this trench, and through this into the water. Finally, an assistant takes the stem of a banana-tree of the same length as the man for whom the sikìdyis worked, puts it into the trench, and joins the diviner in offering a prayer that the banana-stem may be accepted as a substitute for the person, and that he may live long. About sunset the man is sprinkled with two kinds of consecrated water, and the proceedings are at an end.

C.—The Sikìdy of Combined Figures.—It may happen that neither of the two classes of divination already described gives any reasonable answer to the questions, and then this third kind (Lòfin-sikìdy) is the final resort. The general rules for this operation are the following:—

1. The figures in any two columns of an ordinary sikìdy (like the one given in the diagram) may be combined in the very same manner as that by which all the lower columns were filled from the four upper columns in it.

2. These new figures must of course be like some of the sixteen figures already enumerated (see table, p. 199); but the columns they occupy get new names, and consequently give material for fresh answers. Their names do not however, depend on what figures come out, but from