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Rh when evil supernatural beings, who fear the sunlight, come forth from their hiding-places of the day, and the taboo is perhaps based on some fear of irritating them whilst they are abroad either by the flying particles swept out or by the direct effect of the broom. Night, too, is the time when the spirits of the dead, who also fear the sun and therefore go about only during the hours of darkness, are likely to be revisiting the houses or the persons they loved in their lifetimes, and there is therefore perhaps a dread that they may be disturbed by the use of the broom. Again, the taboo may conceivably be connected with a distrust of performing in the presence of some evilly-disposed prowler of the night the action of sweeping things out of the house, lest he look upon it as symbolic, and (as the recorder of the taboo says is threatened) the people of the house become poor. Furthermore, possibly there may be some fear that, if things which have been in immediate and recent contact with the people of the house be swept out into the presences and thus within easy reach of the evil haunters of the night air, those people are thereby rendered subject to harm brought about through a contagious action carried out upon the sweepings.

Certain sweepings are used magically in Japan; I think, however, that their supposed qualities are thought to be due rather to the circumstances of their deposition than to