Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/337

 Rh The of the truth of the matter that he promised to show me the whole ceremony if I would come to the village at the proper time.

2. Another custom having the same object is this. "When a dead body has been burnt, i.e., after the funeral rites of a Hindu, the ban-en woman visits the spot at night, and, undressing, she cooks her food over the dead man's smoldering ashes, and there eats it.

A villager told me that he once watched a woman engaged in such a weird ceremony. He said that he saw her one night visit the spot where a Hindu had been burnt, and, having undressed, she bathed herself. Then she put down four wooden pegs in the ground in the form of a square. To the first peg she tied some red thread, to the second some green thread, and to the third some white thread. She then took up her position at the fourth peg, and having kneaded a cake on a stone she cooked it and ate it, preserving a strict silence. When she had finished her meal she burnt the fragments of her food in the fire, together with the four pegs and all the thread, excepting the red thread. This she carefully tied round her waist, to remain there until a child was born.

The woman, said my informant, had been barren twenty-two years, notwithstanding which, by virtue of the charm, she afterwards conceived and bore her husband a son.

3. There is another equally curious custom, but it has reference to a body which has been buried, that is, to the body of a Mohammadan. In this case, the barren woman visits the graveyard at night, strips herself naked at some distance, then throws over her head a sheet, which she also throws off at the grave. She then, having previously bathed herself, digs up the fresh corpse, and cleans its teeth, the idea being that in return for this act of charity the dead will instil virtue into her so that she may have a child whose teeth she may also clean. Having finished her ghastly task, the woman lays the body in the earth once more, and sitting with her back to the grave she proceeds to cover it up by throwing in the soil backwards.

4. A commoner custom, however, among this unfortunate class is to procure written charms from some priest famous for such things, and, having dissolved them in water, to swallow them. In other cases the charms are tied round the waist and so worn.