XXIII—MODERN SURVIVAL OF MAGICAL WOOD CHURINGA
I take another example of modern survival in magic. Dr. Munro, perhaps, would think wooden churinga, used for magical ends, “incongruous with the earlier Scottish civilisation.” But such objects have not proved to be incongruous with the Scottish civilisation of the nineteenth century.
The term churinga, “sacred,” is used by the Arunta to denote not only the stone churinga nanja, a local peculiarity of the Arunta and Kaitish, but also the decorated and widely diffused elongated wooden slats called “Bull Roarers” by the English. These are swung at the end of a string, and produce a whirring roar, supposed to be the voice of a supernormal being, all over Australia and elsewhere.
I am speaking of survivals, and these wooden churinga, at least, survive in Scotland, and, in
Aberdeenshire they are, or were lately called “thunner spells” or “thunder bolts.” “It was believed that the use of this instrument during a thunderstorm saved one from being struck by the thunner bolt.” In North and South America the bull roarer, on the other hand, is used, not to avert, but magically to produce thunder and lightning. [91] Among the Kaitish thunder is caused by the churinga of their “sky dweller,” Atnatu.
Wherever the toy is used for a superstitious purpose, it is, so far, churinga, and, so far, modern Aberdeenshire had the same churinga irula as the Arunta. The object was familiar to palaeolithic man.
XXIV—CONCLUSION OF ARGUMENT FROM SURVIVALS IN MAGIC
I have made it perfectly certain that magic stones, “witch stones,” “charm stones,” and that churinga irula, wooden magical slats of wood, exist in Australia and other savage regions, and survive, as magical, into modern British life. The point is beyond doubt, and it is beyond doubt that, in many regions, the stones, and the slats of wood, may be inscribed with archaic markings, or may be uninscribed. This will be proved more fully later. Thus Pictish, like modern British civilisation, may assuredly have been familiar with charm stones. There is no a priori objection as to the possibility.
Why should Pictish stones not be inscribed with archaic patterns familiar to the dwellers among inscribed rocks, perhaps themselves the inscribers of the rocks? Manifestly there is no a priori improbability. I have seen the
archaic patterns of concentric circles and fish spines, (or whatever we call the medial line with slanting side lines,) neatly designed in white on the flag stones in front of cottage doors in Galloway. The cottagers dwelt near the rocks with similar patterns on the estate of Monreith, but are not likely to have copied them; the patterns, I presume, were mere survivals in tradition.