Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/224

 216 of priests. They blacken themselves all over, exhume a dead body, take the bones to a cave, joint them, and suspend the skeleton over some taro leaves. Water is poured on the skeleton to run down on the leaves. They suppose that the soul of the departed takes up the water, makes rain of it, and showers it down again. They have to fast and remain in the cavern until it rains, and sometimes die in the experiment. They generally choose, however, the showery months of March and April for their rain-making. If there is too much rain, and they want fair weather, they go through a similar process, only they kindle a fire under the skeleton and burn it up."

In South Africa the Rainmakers are a most important class. The Rev. Robert Moffatt, says, "The rainmaker is, in the estimation of the people, no mean personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even to that of their King, who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of this arch-official. . . . Each tribe has one, and sometimes more, who are also doctors and sextons, or the superintendents of the burying of the dead, it being generally believed that that ceremony has some influence over the watery treasures that float in the skies. . . . Though the bodies of the poor are habitually exposed, the orders of the rainmaker apply to all, because if any were buried it would not rain." Sometimes the rainmaker permits interments, and then after various curious observances "a large bowl of water, with an infusion of bulbs, is brought, when the men and women wash their hands and the upper part of their feet, shouting 'pula, pula, rain, rain.'" Mr. Moffatt next describes an embassy to a rainmaker: —"They assured him that, if he would only come to the land of the Batlapis, and open the teats of the heavens, which had become as hard as a stone, and cause the rains to fall and quench the flaming ground, he should be made the greatest man that ever lived. "

In Mexico in seasons of drought, at the festival of the insatiable Tlaloc, the god of rain, children, for the most part infants, were offered up.