Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/96

84 of discussion as to which nats have a right to be included in the Thirty-seven. I do not think the point is of any importance. The Burmese have a curious fondness for using numbers loosely as a mere description of a group, just as I said, a few moments ago, "a hundred other things," without meaning that the number of Burmese nature-gods was exactly a hundred in addition to those mentioned. Territorial areas are constantly named "The Nine Demesnes," "The Twenty-seven Villages," and so on, though the actual number may be nothing like nine or twenty-seven. And as a matter of fact the list given by Sir Richard Temple in his sumptuous work entitled The Thirty-seven Nats actually contains thirty-eight, if not thirty-nine, as may be seen from the description of those numbered thirteen and thirty-two.

The list includes all kinds of gods, from the lord of heaven, through princes who died of drink, down to a tea-dealer who was killed by a tiger in comparatively modern times, and seems curiously out of place in this august assembly. Few of them are worshipped now, and some gods whose images are kept in Burman houses are not in the list. Most remarkable of all, not one of the great Burmese kings is included, though many minor royalties are.

At the Taungbyôn festival, described later, is a long line of booths occupied by women to whom is given the appellation natkădaw, or wife of a nat. They may be found in any part of Burma, and are more or less professional fortune-tellers; or rather spirit-mediums, for they tell fortunes only after working themselves into a trance. Before they can practise they must go through a ceremony of marriage with some nat whom they believe to have fallen in love with them in their dreams or trances. The ceremony may be conducted by another natkădaw,