Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/346

 38 Asinus in Tegiilis,

II. Rooj- Magic. In considering the roof we must also, perhaps especially, consider the opening in it, smoke-hole, chimney, or impluuium. For though roof -magic is widely spread enough, it is by no means invariable. A priori, this is just what one would expect. Taking the usual type of Northern house, for instance, we find a roof more or less sharply sloping, whose chief function is to keep out the weather. As no one normally sits or stands on it, it is a place about which all kinds of fancies may gather. But the flat platform-roof, found, e.g., in Syria and the Panjab, whereon people commonly sit, work, and sleep, particularly in hot weather, when the rooms of the house are stuffy, is much more of an every-day place. But even with this type of roof, there is one unoccupied spot, the hole through which smoke goes out and rain comes in. Thus in the Panjab, I am informed that whereas the roof in general is not supposed to be haunted, the opening in it is a way of entrance for evil spirits.^ Even in houses with a kind of roof which is not commonly sat upon, the chimney is a very important point, particularly as furnishing a roadway for the magic without, but also in its own right ; thus it makes no difference whether the stork nests upon the roof proper or upon the chimney (Grimm, xxx. op. cit. pp. 438, 441). If w^e look a little at the history of house-building, we find the roof connected with much magical ceremonial even in quite simple dwellings, such as those of most African peoples.

Thus, among the Baganda ^ the rings to which the thatch of a chief's house is fastened are very elaborate affairs, involving much ceremonial for their making and putting up. At Gorai, an island in the Shortlands group, a sort of ritual battle takes place between the thatchers and

1 Communicated by Mr. R. L. Chopra, a Panjabi student of this College.

2 Roscoe, The Baganda, London, 191 1, p. 369 ff.