Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/385

Rh The green whip snake in native opinion enjoys the purity and sanctity of the Brahmin, and its skin is said to get blistered by the very shadow of man falling on it. (64)

A jungle tribe, the Jénu-kurubas, gather the honey of bees in the month of Jane. While thus engaged they sing a peculiar song made for the occasion, and expressing their feigned sympathy with the spoliated bees, so rudely disturbed of their nightly rest. (73)

Of the three kinds of crabs, a mother of the Yeddavanád people will exhort her children with the proverb:

On Monday the farmer does not plough with bullocks, but buffaloes only, considering Monday as the day of the bullocks' creation. (88)

With the first showers in April and May the ploughing commences. On a propitious day before sunrise the house-lamp is lighted in the inner verandah, the house-people assemble and invoke their ancestors and Kávéri Amma for a blessing; the young men make obeisance to their parents and elders and then drive a pair of bullocks into the paddy-fields, where they turn the heads of the beasts towards the east. The landlord now offers cocoanuts and plantains, rice and milk, to the presiding deity of his Nád, and lifting up his hands in adoration to the rising sun invokes a blessing. The oxen are yoked and three furrows ploughed, when the work is finished for that morning. Of the turned earth they take a clod home to the storehouse or granary, praying Shiva to grant them a hundredfold increase. (88)

As a protection against the evil eye, some half-burnt bamboos about six feet high are erected in a line throughout the middle of the fields. (90)

They worship demons and departed spirits. Charms and sorceries abound all over the country. Disease among men and cattle is readily ascribed to the curses and witchcrafts of enemies. The dead are supposed to trouble the living and to demand sacrifices and other atonements. (125-126)

The head of a Coorg houge on his dying bed will solemnly charge