Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/392

 3S4 Folk-lore Miscellanea.

sitting across like Scana, and the ends of the fetish are carved into open mouths, with the teeth regularly indi- cated, as in the case of Scana's residence. I should like to suggest that the carving here indicates the same animal forms, but the identity of the idea in the two cases is most striking and impossible to miss. I led my friend to look at the ivory fetish, and he made a remark which seemed to me well worth bearing in mind, namely, that the fetish for collecting disembodied spirits reminded him of Welsh stories relating how demons of the crockery-breaking species used to be exorcised in former days. Now one of the tasks of the exorcist was to make the demon reduce his dimensions, and when this was done, he got him, by hook or by crook, into some small receptacle or other, for the spirits then appear to have been quite as stupid as those with whom our modern spiritualists busy themselves. The most usual sort of receptacle was, perhaps, the exorcist's own snuff-box or tobacco-box, whence the offending demon might be transferred to a bottle, and safely corked for centuries to come. Is it possible that the snuff-box or tobacco-box only took the place of a specially-constructed contrivance for spirit-catching ?

It is, in any case, fairly evident that no casual box could be equal to the ivory fetish with its open mouths, which emphasise the impossibility of backing out on the part of any demon prisoner who once begins to enter the portals of their teeth. It would not be to the point to say that the Christian exorcist availed himself of the aid of terrible formulae of words, unless it could be shown that the medicine-men of savage nations are badly equipped in this respect, which I should fancy highly improbable. Hoorts and Scana were presented to the Museum by Dr. Tylor in 1887, and it is much to be wished that he would publish a full account of them, if he has not already done so. To make it thoroughly intelligible, it should be accompanied with woodcuts or photographs of both ; also of the Haidah ivory, and other things of the same