rites of water-worship. In the East, among the Wanika, every spring has its spirit, to which oblations are made; in the West, in the Akra district, lakes, ponds, and rivers received worship as local deities. In the South, among the Kafirs, streams are venerated as personal beings, or the abodes of personal deities, as when a man crossing a river will ask leave of its spirit, or having crossed will throw in a stone; or when the dwellers by a stream will sacrifice a beast to it in time of drought, or, warned by illness in the tribe that their river is angry, will cast into it a few handfuls of millet or the entrails of a slaughtered ox.[1] Not less strongly marked are such ideas among the Tatar races of the North. Thus the Ostyaks venerate the river Ob, and when fish is scanty will hang a stone about a reindeer's neck and cast it in for a sacrifice. Among the Buraets, who are professing Buddhists, the old worship may still be seen at the picturesque little mountain lake of Ikeougoun, where they come to the wooden temple on the shore to offer sacrifices of milk and butter and the fat of the animals which they burn on the altars. So across in Northern Europe, almost every Esthonian village has its sacred sacrificial spring. The Esths could at times even see the churl with blue and yellow stockings rise from the holy brook Wöhhanda, no doubt that same spirit of the brook to whom in older days there were sacrificed beasts and little children; in newer times, when a German landowner dared to build a mill and dishonour the sacred water, there came bad seasons that lasted year after year, and the country people burned down the abominable thing.[2] As for the water-worship prevailing among non-Aryan indigenes of British India, it
- ↑ Krapf, 'E. Afr.' p. 198; Steinhauser, l.c. p. 131; Villault in Astley, vol. i. p. 668; Backhouse, 'Afr.' p. 230; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 90; Bastian, l.c.
- ↑ Castrén, 'Vorlesungen über die Altaischen Völker,' p. 114. 'Finn. Myth.' p. 70. Atkinson, 'Siberia,' p. 444. Boecler, 'Ehsten Abergläub. Gebräuche,' ed. Kreutzwald, p. 6.
'Comm. Real.' i. 10. See also J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 258, 260, 282.
