Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/337

Rh of incision belongs to an ancient stratum of Ambrimese culture, and the entrance of the boys into the representation of a canoe and the setting adrift of this vessel must be regarded as relics of a funeral rite belonging to this older stratum of culture. A rite which at first sight seems to afford striking evidence of the symbolic representation of rebirth by plunging into water turns out on closer examination to bear a widely different meaning and to be a relic of the funeral rites of a former time.

I am indebted to Dr. Paul Radin for the information that the symbolic representation of rebirth is only known in one ceremony of North or South America, and it is a significant fact that here, as elsewhere, the rite in question forms part of the ceremonial of a secret society, viz. the Midiwiwin of the central Algonquian tribes. This society has a wide distribution, and wherever it occurs the main purpose of the ritual is the initiation of a person into the society by means of a symbolic representation of death and rebirth. In the process of initiation a sea-shell, taken from a bag made of the skin of a water-animal (the otter), is supposed to be shot into the body of the candidate, who falls to the ground unconscious and only regains consciousness after coughing up the shell which is believed to have previously entered his body. Unless the use of the sea-shell and the skin of a water-animal are taken as its equivalent, there is no use of water in the rite, and even if the shell is taken as such equivalent, it is the instrument by which the ceremonial death is produced rather than a symbol of rebirth.

Though I am dealing only with the ritual of rebirth, I may take this opportunity to mention that though, according to Dr. Radin, there is no definitely formulated belief that birth or rebirth is in any way connected with water, there is reason to believe that the myth of the origin of the Midiwiwin society is closely related to the myth of the origin of the world, and that over a large part of America