Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/335

 Rh beverage to them and to them alone, as though in propitiating the favour and goodwill of the young, the simple, and the sinless, they established a claim on the benevolence of God.

Lastly there is a custom almost universally followed in the Upper Punjah among both Hindus and Mohammadans, and it is so quaint and curious, and its origin evidently lies so deep in the historic or possibly pre-historic past, that a detailed description of it will becomingly close this paper.

It was in the burning summer of 1879 that some little girls with bare heads and shoeless feet were observed to leave the village of Haji Shah, close to Attock, and in mournful procession make their way to the top of a neighbouring hill. In their hands they carried dolls roughly made up out of old rags to represent both the sexes. Under the pitiless sun of midday these little ones took their stand in a circle, and sadly beating their breasts began, in a wailing chant of Gregorian cadence, to sing the following old-world ditty:

Having sung their simple dirge with all the gravity of a funeral party they dug holes, and, committing their mannikins to the earth, covered them in with the soil. These children were of course Mohammadans. If they had been Hindus, cremation would have been substituted for burial.

There are other stanzas—some five or six altogether, but in these parts only the one is sung unless a cloud should appear in the distant sky, when the following are added to the former: