Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/24

16 crime was a young man of the clerk or shopkeeper caste, and that the boy was murdered to make up a love-philtre, one of the ingredients of which had to be the blood of an eldest son. This Chetti seems to have told the rest of the gang—all young men—that a charm compounded from the blood of an eldest son would enable them to obtain possession of any woman. When the boy was murdered his throat was cut and the Chetti caught the blood in a cocoa-nut shell and carried it away.

When this Chetti's house was searched two books were found in it. One of them contained a number of receipts, among them love-charms.

In one of these, one of the ingredients appeared to be a first-born child, but it was very difficult to give any intelligible meaning to the charm, which appeared to consist of disjointed words and phrases. An old Brahmin purôhit, or family priest, was examined by the prosecution to explain the charm. He was, however, very unwilling publicly to admit any knowledge of black magic, insisting that he was only acquainted with white magic, and knew very little about the evil spells. He explained, however, what I think will interest this Society, that the various charms used in Hindoo magic were handed down by oral tradition, and that what was committed to writing and found in the book produced were only a few catch-words to prevent the charm from being totally forgotten. Thus these charms or spells become genuine folk-lore.

There was more definite result from the other book found. This was a MS. book in the writing of the Chetti, and contained, among other things, eight diagrams, each drawn on one page of the book. Each page was headed with a title, written, like all the rest, in the Tamil language.

These eight titles corresponded to the Ashta-Karma, or eight principal divisions of Hindoo magic, such as causing the death of any person, causing a spirit or absent person to appear, obtaining possession of a woman, etc. I have