Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/393

Rh class, of which Mr. Balfour showed me several the other day. One would then be in a better position to judge how far the ideas of the natives of British Columbia can be matched by ideas of the same order underlying the folk-lore of the British Isles.

Whilst at the Pitt-Rivers Museum, I noticed a somewhat recent acquisition, consisting of a very rude clay model, about a yard long, of the human figure. It is labelled as follows: "Corp creidh, or clay figure, rudely shaped to a representation of a person whose death is desired. It is stuck with pins and nails, etc., in order that the person may suffer corresponding torments, and perish miserably. Such figures are usually placed in a stream, with the idea that, as the clay is wasted away, so the enemy will waste and perish."

The specimen is from G. . . . ., in the county of Inverness, and it is the gift of Major G of that place. The history of the present specimen is, however, not that it was found in a stream, but discovered early one morning placed at Major G's door. The workmen who found it there were horrified by its presence, and threw it away. The Major, having come to hear of this design on his life—for he was the victim intended—took the very enlightened revenge on his ill-wishers of carefully collecting the disjecta membra of this rude model of himself, and of presenting it to our Museum.

Since this occurred, I have heard a still more remarkable story of the same kind. A minister in the Highlands—I forget his name and the name of his church—happened to offend some of his people by holding certain theological views not accepted by them. He, proving obdurate in his heresies, was suddenly observed to be wasting away like one whose strength and vigour were rapidly ebbing. His friends became anxious about him, and discovered the cause of his illness in a corp creidh deposited, by the theologians of the other party, in a stream that passed by his house. VOL. III.