Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/260

 248 Mystical and Ce7'emonial Avoidance

initiation ceremonies the boys are carried to the " buck " or " medicine " house on the shoulders of their fathers and uncles. The full description in Haddon's article is as follows: "The persons carrying the boys wait outside the ' buck ' till all the other men have entered. The men form a line across the hall and dance. Other men blow the flutes from behind the row of dancers. When the boys are brought into the hall, the pipers burst through the rows of dancers and press the flutes upon the navels of the boys. After further ceremonies the boys are placed not on the bare ground but upon a piece of sago bark and taught to play the instruments. In a subsequent ceremony of going down to the river the boys are also carried by their fathers or uncles, and put into the water."

It is not unimportant to notice that those who carry the boys are their fathers or uncles, and to compare it with the Australian practice of the boy who has his tooth knocked out being carried by the man whose name he subsequently adds to his own, and, further, to compare it with the African example which is given below of the initiate into a secret society walking on the body of the chief of that society. In all cases the sat-apon or walked- upon person is an elder or one in a higher position, and not an inferior.

No. 2. The Bride. ^

Coming now to marriage ceremonies it is not uncommon to find steps taken to guard the purity of the bride. In ancient times among the Romans it was the duty of the bridegroom to lift the bride over the threshold as she entered her husband's house for the first time. In looking to see if there was anything of this nature among African tribes I was told that among the Mende some, but I do not think all, the chiefs observe this custom by carrying the bride into the house and laying her on the bed. Those that ^ Cf. Folk-lore, xiii. 226 et seqq.