in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year or two is allowed to elapse.”[1] The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North America do not cut the nails of female children till they are four years of age.[2] In some parts of Germany it is thought that if a child’s hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;[3] or that if a boy’s hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.[4]
But when it is necessary to cut the hair, precautions are taken to lessen the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation. Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause.[5] “He who has had his hair cut is in the immediate charge of the Atua (spirit); he is removed from the contact and society of
- ↑ Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. No. 1092.
- ↑ G. Gibbs, “Notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America,” in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 305; W. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 202. The reason alleged by the Indians (that if the girls’ nails were cut sooner the girls would be lazy and unable to embroider in porcupine quill-work) is probably a late invention, like the reasons assigned in Europe for the similar custom (the commonest being that the child would become a thief).
- ↑ Knoop, l.c.
- ↑ Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. 209 (No. 57).
- ↑ R. Taylor, New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 206 sqq.
östlichen Hinterpommern, p. 157 (No. 23); E. Veckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche, p. 445; J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen, p. 313; E. Krause, “Abergläubische Kuren u. sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. 84.
