4o Asimis in Tegiilis.
fantastic forms of weathercocks with this practice. Under the same or a similar heading would naturally fall the curious custom reported from Great Bookham, Surrey, of putting a broom up the chimney with its twigs protruding during the absence of the housewife.^ But perhaps it is rather to be classed with the beliefs commented upon below (VI.).
Nor is the roof merely put up and decorated with magical precautions. The most miscellaneous objects are fastened to it in one way or another in various parts of the world, either to bring luck, to protect the house against real or imaginary dangers, or to influence the whole of which they form a part. The list includes hair, various plants, bits of the human body or of domestic animals, charms of all sorts ; and considering how little the average householder knows about electricity, one might alm.ost add the once popular lightning-rod.- In Japan, we get a further refine- ment ; at the Shogun's court, in the annual sweeping ceremony, a broom was so manipulated as to trace the character for voaier on the ceiling, a handy and cheap pre- caution against fire (W. L. Hildburgh in Folk-Lore, vol. xxx. p. 174). Here, however, it is against a purely material danger that the double protection of sweeping and the written word is invoked.
Being thus girt with all manner of magical ceremonies, it is natural that the roof should be able to perform a little magic on its own account. There are instances of omens in which the roof itself, not an omen-creature, claims the chief share or even the whole. One of the innumerable omens reported during the Second Punic War was as follows :
^ Folk-Lore, vol. xxi. p. 388.
" See Frazer, Folk-Lore of O.T. iii. 210, 268 ; J. R.A.I. (1920), p. 396 and note ; Grimm, op. cit. p. 436 ; Aubrey, Remaines, <SyC. (ed. Britten, London, 1881), p. 167 ; Folk-Lore, vol. xiii. p. 275 ; Blinkenberg,
Thimdenveapoii, e.g. p. 82 ; Lane, Mod. Egypt, p. 253, n. i (" Every- man ").
