Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/355

 Miscellanea. , 347

305. Auspicious omens from the Ramayana. One is a crow on the ht.

306. Jalandhar. — Goats and grain offered to rivers to avert floods. The goat is taken across and let go; the grain is some thrown in, the rest eaten by the people.

307. Charm to cure toothache.

308. Girls married to a god " always died soon afterwards".

311. Guga was a snake that changed to man's form for love of a princess.

312. Cure for hydrophobia.

315. When a child is born to a Desbasth Brahmin, he throws him- self into a well with all his clothes on ; dresses in fresh clothes, and in presence of his and wife's relations lets a couple of drops of honey and butter fall into the child's mouth.

338. KJumdesh. — Marwari Banyas. At marriage, the groom finds at his bride's door seven or nine wooden sparrows, the middle one the biggest. He must touch the middle one with his sword.

339. Every Hindu tank must be married, or its water will not be sweet, but will increase thirst instead of c^uenching it. Evil spirits haunt unmarried tanks. A pole set in the centre is the husband. Wells must be married to a tree. [Doubtless the pole represents a tree. More of this in Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections ; marriage of tank with tree before using, i, 40. So one of the fruit trees in a grove must be married with another tree before any dare eat of the fruit, i, 38. A stone is married yearly to a shrub in Orchha, i, 149 and note^

340. Charm to aid delivery. — Piece of brick from a certain old fort is dipped in water, which is then drunk. Or a likejtess of the fort is drawn in a dish, shown to the woman, and washed in water, which she drinks.

342. The Shah wears an aigrette in his crown, because the founder of the Sufi dynasty dreamt he bore a child to an ass. He therefore vowed to wear an ass phallus in his crown if he got the empire, and to imitate ass braying in his music. [The last vow is certainly fulfilled in much Eastern music]

345. Note of the dove interpreted to be a wail for an absent lover. [The nightingale was supposed by the Greeks to bewail the child Itys.]

346. Among the Kamdthis of Thdna (Bombay), a girl at puberty is bidden to sit ten or thirteen days by herself.

347. Sitapur. — Taboo against growing sugar-cane, and making tiled houses.

348. Mirzapur. — For pains, kill a kite on Tuesday, and wear its bones strung about the part.