Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/363

 A sinus in Tegulis. 55

rational as well as a magical reason can be adduced ; the chimney is the one place which one can be sure is dry and will not rust the steel. In Norfolk and Yorkshire, and doubtless elsewhere, a poker laid horizontally across the top bar " makes the fire burn " ; see vol. xxvi. p. 210.

And it would seem that not only withches themselves, but their missiles on occasion come down chimney. A farmer in the Isle of Man was working a counter-charm, when stones were thrown down the chimney to frighten him. However, he was not to be scared, and his courage was regarded by the witch coming in through the window to surrender.^

[d) Some Doubtful Interpretations. Here and there I find a piece of roof-belief which might at a pinch be connected with the escape of a ghost through the roof, but seems to me to yield more plausibly to another interpretation. Thus, in the article by Sir J. G. Frazer, already quoted, he explains (p. 84) the Persian custom of lighting a fire on the roof during illness as an attempt to set up a barrier against the escape of the patient's soul. This is not impossible ; but in view of the examples of malignant spirits living on or entering by the roof, is it not quite as likely that it is an attempt to dislodge the demon of sickness ? Again, many ghosts seem to live quite quietly among the beams or in the thatch of the roof, not merely to use it as a roadway. " A man's soul may be spoken of as occupying the roof of his hut " in South Africa,^ and the Zulu Amatongo make themselves heard to the diviner, " above, among the wattles of the hut," according to Calloway ; yet the South African corpse-door would seem rather to be in the side of the hut.^ In India, the ghosts of the unburied dead moan and twitter about the ridge-pole.'*

1 Vol. ii. p. 297.

- Rev. J. Macdonald in J. R.A.I, xx. (1890), p. 120.

^ Ibid. xix. (1889), p. 275.


 * Crooke, op. cit. p. 143.