Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/336

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II.

Some of the most extraordinary superstitions in the Peshawur Valley and in the Upper Panjab generally are connected with women. Women, say the people, are all witches. For various reasons they may choose not to exercise their powers, but the powers are inherent in them, and there is not one of them who could not work a spell or employ supernatural agency for ruin and mischief if the fancy seized her.

Among the Patháns, as among most oriental tribes, a childless woman is regarded with aversion, and in some sense as accursed. Barren women are notorious all over the country for the singular devices to which they resort in order to procure offspring, and in the present paper I purpose to describe a few of those devices which strike me as being the most extraordinary.

1. If a married woman happens to be barren, she proceeds, if she possesses the necessary gift, to entice a hyena to come to her, and, mounting it astride with her face to the tail, she rides it in a circle seven times round. Then she dismounts, and makes the animal seven salaams, after which she lays her chuddah, or cloth, on the ground, and setting upon it a vessel of bread and liquid butter, she feeds the creature with the morsels.

This ceremony always occurs at night, and the villager who described it to me related that in the village of Ghazi there lives a woman who is well known to be addicted to this practice for inducing conception, and that she performs it every Sunday evening. And so convinced is