Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/204

196 lot with the stranger. Side by side they fight until all are slain, the little Sematuye man last of all.

Among the Aino there are still prophets and prophetesses, who limit their powers now, however, to telling the cause of illness, prescribing medicine, charming away sickness, and such like. A person when prophesying is supposed to sleep or otherwise lose consciousness, and to become, so to speak, the mouth-piece of the gods. The prophet is not even supposed to know what he himself utters, and often the listeners cannot understand the meaning of the utterances. The burden of prophecy sometimes comes out in jerks, but more often in a kind of sing-song monotone. It is difficult to imagine a more solemn scene than that of an Aino prophet prophesying, as once witnessed by Mr. Batchelor. Absolute silence reigned around, old men with grey beards sitting with eyes full of tears, in rapt attention, the prophet himself, apparently quite carried away with his subject, trembling, perspiring profusely, and beating himself with his hands. At length he finished exhausted; though, as he opened his eyes for a moment, they shone with a wild light.

FOLK-LORE OF THE SENECA INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA.

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HE Seneca Indians relate to their children a great number of tales, weird, ingeniously constructed, and interwoven with which are the customs and manners of the tribe. These tales they do not, for superstitious considerations, tell when snakes are about. In the long winter evenings a story-teller, whom some family secures for the occasion—and he must be