Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/523

 mouth of a jar that is filled to the brim with water. We cannot affirm anything as to the sharpness of the knife, but we presume that the fee is well earned even if the dragon part of it is purely imaginary.

In the case of coastwise vessels, the mttdang calls up the dragon spirit and the spirits of the men who have drowned, and implores them to make the sea calm and the voyage successful. For fishing craft a single ceremony suffices for the whole fleet. The mudang confesses to the dragon that it is rank trespass for men to go and catch his subjects to eat, but men must live; she begs him to overlook the wrong and give the fishermen a good catch. The ferry is an important institution in Korea, owing to the lack of bridges. The boats are often so crowded that they sink, and the annual loss of life from this cause is considerable.

At important ferries the ceremony is a very animated one. A boat is dressed in gala attire, with a spar like a roof-tree extending its whole length. The mudang and her accompanying crowd enter and push off from the shore. Food is thrown into the water for the spirit, and as the mudang begins to grow excited and "possessed" she imitates the motions of a person dying by drowning. She then leaps to the roof-tree and dances thereon, screaming at the top of her lungs. After an hour of such antics they come ashore, and the mudang runs to a willow tree and climbs to its very top, wailing and "taking on" shockingly. She says she is a spirit imprisoned in the dark water, and she must have one chance to take a good look around. From the top of the tree she has a "look see" and then comes down. All the time she has been gnashing her teeth, and howling as loudly as her lungs will permit.

Until the year 1894 the government sent an annual embassy to Peking, and before it started the attendants and underlings held a great kut. It would have been beneath the dignity of the envoy to have anything to do with such a superstition, but there is every reason to believe that a good part of the cost was defrayed by him. Four or five mudangs were employed, and they