Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/534

 is the patient urged to call in a physician. The writer evidently knew that the reader would probably not be able to afford the care of a physician.

Only once, far back in the eighties, was it my privilege to witness the curious ceremony of frightening away the "Heavenly Dog" that was going to swallow the moon. From the earliest antiquity eclipses have been looked upon with fear by the Koreans, and even though they have known for many centuries the cause of the phenomenon and were formerly able to predict an eclipse, yet the still more ancient custom of frightening away the animal persists.

A brisk walk of ten minutes brought us to the limits of the suburbs, and there we found a company of a thousand Koreans or more gathered on a circular piece of ground, which was surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills. They were grouped in silent companies on the sloping hillsides, and in their white garments looked like a congregation of very orderly ghosts. The central plot was covered with mats to form a dancing floor, and on either side was a huge bonfire. Around the edge of the circle sat the Korean orchestra, whose strains alone ought to have sufficed to scare the Heavenly Dog. At ten o'clock the shadow of the earth began to pass across the face of the moon. A sudden darkness fell upon the scene, and the two fires, no longer suffering competition, gleamed with a new intensity upon the still faces which pressed eagerly forward to catch the subtle meaning of the weird notes that the musicians produced. Only one who is "to the manner born," and who has in his blood the dash of mysticism born of the East, can get from that weird music all that the Korean can. All the time the moon is adumbrated the crowd stands silent, awed, intent. They know that it is all a mere play, but the dramatic element in their nature carries them back to those far days when their savage forbears stood transfixed with genuine fear lest the light of the moon be for ever darkened.

The moment the limb of the moon appears beyond the