Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/345

 Asimis in Tegtdis. 37

portents which diversify his work, two instances of c.attle chmbing to the roof, or at least the upper storeys of a house. ^ This comes a httle nearer Trimalchio's ass, for though cattle do on occasion give omens {bos locutus is a stock portent), and of course weather signs (as Verg. Georg. i. 375), they cannot be called ominous creatures in general, certainly not creatures of evil omen ; by virtue of their constant use in the worship of the gods, they would rather be of good omen if ominous at all. But it is a safe rule that domestic creatures do not, by their mere presence, give omens. Leaving the ancient world, — Greece has, I think, no instance of what we are looking for just now, — • we find more than one example of the idea that for a domestic animal to climb upon the roof is very unlucky. The goat in the central provinces of India ; the buffalo in the Panjab ; - the goat again among the Oraons of Bengal ; ^ the cow among the Lolos ; * perhaps the dog in the instances already cited, or some of them, since this animal is held in very varying esteem in different parts of the world, all point that way. Here and there a woman must not go on the roof ; * but this we may perhaps dis- regard in the present enquiry, owing to the wide distribution of the idea that it is unlucky for a woman to stand or step over things, especially things belonging to men.

Again, then, we have a series of portents involving a hving creature, generally a domestic animal, and a roof, and this time the omen is invariably bad. We may, there- fore, fairly conjecture that in the former series of examples the badness of the omen which would in any case have been given by the owl or raven, is intensified by the fact that it is on a roof. In other words, the roof itself has about it an atmosphere of magic, chiefly of a dangerous sort.

1 xxxvi. 37, 2 ; xxi. 62, 3.

- Crooke, op. cit. p. 135.


 * Frazer, Folk-Lore of the O.T. iii. p. 262.


 * A. Henry, I.e.