Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/289

Rh ghosts inhabit hill-tops, rivers, wells, and ponds. Omens taken from throbbings in the body; those on the right side are lucky, on the left unlucky. In clearing the jungle they are exposed to the attacks of the demons of it, whom they propitiate by burying some animal bones, or hanging them on a tree hard by. They eat pigs, cloven-foot animals and fish. They have a dialect of their own, which is always spoken by the women and children; the men can usually speak Hindi. Bride-price paid in coarse earthen vessels or implements for digging, which thus form a kind of rude currency. No priests; the eldest male of a family does any ceremonies himself.

281. Lodhia, a game played by girls of the higher-class Hindus (Basti and Gorakhpur). A room set apart; the girls enter. One makes a figure on the wall out of cow-dung, representing the goddess Gaura. They all cover it with flowers, sticking them in so that it looks as though made thereof. They make music with drums and other things. The chief waves a lamp over the image's head, with a song (words given). After much music they retire, the cow-dung and flowers being put aside. Next day a different figure is made, and so on till the fifteenth day, the first day of the waxing moon. Such figures are taken as husband and wife, peacock and peahen, Mahadeo's Temple, lotus-leaf, etc. On the final day, all the dung and flowers used in making the figures are put in a basket, which a girl carries on her head to a tank or river, and it is thrown into the water.

282. Likeness between Malays and the Orang.

283. Karnal. Rules for exogamy.

284. The Agni-hotri, or Fire-Worshipper of Kumaon, begins to worship fire from his wedding-day. The sacred fire from the marriage altar, which is held to be a witness of the ceremony, is taken in a copper vessel to his fire-pit. It is kept always alight, and his pyre is kindled from it. [Jat., No. 162, turns on the worship of a "Birth-fire" by an anchorite.]

Mode of kindling the sacred fire by rubbing. It is supposed to be emblematic of the procreation of human beings, and upon the lower of the two pieces of wood are drawn the female emblems.

2S5. Games from Kumaon.—Tip-cat, hide-and-seek.

Charms for procuring Rain or the stopping of it.—(Some of them turn on the pity which Indra will feel for beings in trouble, and a dog or frog, or what not, is tormented for this purpose.) So in the Jatakas, a saint in trouble causes Indra's throne to grow hot, whereat he comes down to help.

Charms to stop Hail.—(Instances of imitative or sympathetic magic are found amongst these charms.)

Bonfire of grass around a pole wreathed with flowers and cucumbers on the first day of Asoj or Kuar, with explanatory myth.