Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/260

250 their religious rites make the circuits sinistrally—i. e., contrary to the apparent course of the sun, or, as physicists say, contra-clockwise. The Mokis also are careful to stir medicines according to the sinistral circuit. But countless instances go to show that among Asiatic and European peoples the general belief or feeling is that the dextral circuit—i. e., clockwise, or with the apparent motion of the sun—is the correct and auspicious direction.

The following illustrations of this I quote from William Simpson's Meeting the Sun: "They [people of past times] held that going sunwise was good and lucky, while going the opposite way was unpropitious. The Lama monk twirls his mani or praying cylinder in one direction on this account, and he fears lest a stranger should get his wheel and turn it the other way, thus destroying whatever virtue it had acquired. They also build piles of stones, and uniformly pass them on one side in going and on the other side in returning, thus making a circuit in imitation of the sun. The ancient dagopas of India and Ceylon were also thus circumambulated. The Mohammedan performs the tawaf or circuit of the Caaba after the same fashion; and it is an old Irish and Scotch custom to go 'Deisul' or sunwise, round houses and graves, and to turn their bodies in this way at the beginning and end of journeys for luck, as well as at weddings and various ceremonies."

To turn the opposite way was called by them "withershins," and supposed to be an act intimately connected with the purposes of the evil one. Witches danced this way, and in imitation of the same read prayers backward. The author of Olrig Grange, in an early poem, describes this most graphically:

 Hech! sirs, but we bad grand fun Wi' the muckle black deil in the chair, And the muckle Bible upside doon A' ganging withershins roun' and roun', And backwards saying the prayer. About the warlock's grave, Withershins gangin' roun', And kimmer and carlins had for licht The fat of a bairn they buried that nicht, Unchristened beneath the moon."

The Imperial Dictionary gives the derivation of the word withershins as from the Anglo-Saxon wither, against, and sunne, the sun—that is, contrary to the motion of the sun—though I believe there has been some disagreement regarding the origin of the word. It is sometimes spelled widershins, which would imply a direct relation to the German wider and schein. Withershins movements were generally used in working spells or