Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/471

Rh spirits are ancestral manes, who talk in a low whistling tone short of a full whistle, whence they have their name of 'imilozi' or whistlers. These ideas correspond with classic descriptions of the ghostly voice, as a 'twitter' or 'thin murmur:'

'Umbra cruenta Remi visa est assistere lecto, Atque haec exiguo murmure verba loqui.'

As the attributes of the soul or ghost extend to other spiritual beings, and the utterances of such are to a great extent given by the voice of mediums, we connect these accounts with the notion that the language of demons is also a low whistle or mutter, whence the well-known practice of whispering or murmuring charms, the 'susurrus necromanticus' of sorcerers, to whom the already cited descrip- tion of 'wizards that peep (i.e. chirp) and mutter' is widely applicable.

The conception of dreams and visions as caused by present objective figures, and the identification of such phantom souls with the shadow and the breath, has led to the treatment of souls as substantial material beings. Thus it is a usual proceeding to make openings through solid materials to allow souls to pass. The Iroquois in old times used to leave an opening in the grave for the lingering soul to visit its body, and some of them still

2 Homer, Il. xxiii. 100.

3 Ovid, Fast. v. 457.