Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/288

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280
Miscellanea.

Flour-cakes in shape of doves are made, because crows are fond of animal food. Some are strung in necklaces, others set aside for the crows. On the festival morn, the children lay the crow's share apart, and, wearing the necklets of dove-cakes, cry to the crows to come and eat. If they come at once it forebodes health and luck. They pray to the crows for blessing with this ditty:

"Crow, crow, take this soft cake;
If you come to-morrow your neck I'll break!"

Sesame is the hair of God.

280. St. Ramdei. At his shrine are yearly cured one blind-eyes and one leper. A peculiarly modest miracle-worker.

316. N. W. Provinces (Eastern districts).—Songs of pilgrims to Jagannath.

317. Gopālpur.—In the spring the potters crucify a monkey, whereby the other monkeys should be scared away, and withal the demons that do damage to their crops. (The narrator thinks this is a survival of human sacrifice done in spring.)

319. Cave Temples in Kumaon.—In one of them is a cold pool, wherein the worshipper must bathe with all his clothes on. The priest then takes these as his perquisite, and the man puts on a new set. [This looks like the stage next before that in which a rag is left at the sacred well, as described in Mr. Hartland's paper.]

320. Covered Images.—Three instances of gods covered with lids so as to hide them quite. For one the story is told that the goddess used to climb on tree and ask the names of people, who then died. The lid apparently stops her.

Anthropology.

247. Almonds used for money in the " Empire of the Great Mogul" see § 11). Wooden tallies used in money transactions in Brittany, Normandy, Savoy, Lyons, the Auverne, and Basque regions.

249. Points of contrast between Europeans and Asiatics, traced to the use of flexor muscles by the Asiatic, and extensoral by the European, as above (§§ 648 and 705 of vol. ii).

251. Lower Himalaya—Raji Caste. Exogamous, but do not marry two sisters; monogamous, but keep concubines. Bride-price usually paid. Levirate, with restriction that only the younger brother of the husband can claim the widow. Babies named on the fifth day. No couvade, no adoption. Clothes and corpse-sheet of the dead laid and left upon the grave. The children and younger brothers of the dead get heads, beards, and moustaches shaved, and throw the hair on the grave. No loss of ceremonial purity after death, child-birth, or menstruation. Worship Devi by day (offering goats), demons by night (fowls); on hill-tops or under some great tree. Demons and