person’s name, asks whether he is returned. Being answered from within that he is returned, he enters and lays the cloth in which he has caught the soul on the patient’s throat, saying, “Now you are returned to the house.” Sometimes a substitute is provided; a doll, dressed up in gay clothing and tinsel, is offered to the demon in exchange for the patient’s soul with these words, “Give us back the ugly one which you have taken away and receive this pretty one instead.”[1] Similarly the Mongols make up a horse of birch-bark and a doll, and invite the demon to take the doll instead of the patient and to ride away on the horse.[2]
Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered on a new house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoers of Celebes the priest performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through a list of the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the whole night through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of the master of the house says, "“Here you have your soul—go (soul) to-morrow away again.” He then does the same, saying the same words, to the housewife and all the other members of the family.[3] Amongst the same Alfoers one way of
- ↑ Van Schmidt, “Aanteekeningen, nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en bijgelovigheden der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, Haroekoe, Noessa Laut, en van een gedeelte van de zuid-kust van Ceram,” in Tijdschrift voor Neêrland’s Indië, 1843, dl. ii. 511 sqq.
- ↑ Bastian, Die Seele, p. 36 sq.; J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, ii. 359 sq.
- ↑ P. N. Wilken, “Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,” in Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, 1863, vii. 146 sq. Why the priest, after restoring the soul, tells it to go away again, is not clear.
