[900] J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” pp. 310 sq. (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. i. part iv.). The Lillooet Indians of British Columbia also believed that twins were the real offspring of grizzly bears. Many of them said that twins were grizzly bears in human form, and that when a twin died his soul went back to the grizzly bears and became one of them. See J. Teit, “The Lillooet Indians,” (Leyden and New York, 1906), p. 263 (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. ii. part v.).
[901] Father Baudin, “Le Fétichisme ou la religion des Nègres de la Guinée,” Missions Catholiques, xvi. (1884) p. 250.
[902] J. Spieth, Die Ewe Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 204, 206.
[903] Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 92 (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association for 1890). The instrument by which the twins make fine weather appears to be a bull-roarer. Compare J. Teit, “The Shuswap” (Leyden and New York, 1909), pp. 586 sq. (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. ii. part vii.): “Twins were believed to be endowed with powers over the elements, especially over rain and snow. If a twin bathed in a lake or stream, it would rain.”
[904] Mark iii. 17. If James and John had been twins, we might have suspected that their name of Boanerges had its origin in a superstition like that of the Peruvian Indians. Was it in the character of “sons of thunder” that the brothers proposed to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village (Luke ix. 54)?
[905] P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp. 16 sq., 32, 33, 119, 130, 132.
[906] H. A. Junod, Les Ba-ronga (Neuchâtel, 1898), pp. 412, 416 sqq. The reason for calling twins “Children of the Sky” is obscure. Are they supposed in some mysterious way to stand for the sun and moon?
[907] Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood (London, 1906), p. 47.
[908] P. Reichard, “Die Wanjamuesi,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, xxiv. (1889), pp. 256 sq. Another African superstition as to twins may here be mentioned. On the Slave Coast when a woman has brought forth stillborn twins, she has a statue made with two faces and sets it up in a corner of her house. There she offers it fowls, bananas, and palm-oil in order to obtain the accomplishment of her wishes, and especially a knowledge of the future. See Missions Catholiques, vii. (1875) p. 592. This suggests that elsewhere two-faced images, like those of Janus, may have been intended to represent twins.
[909] M. N. Venketswami, “Superstitions among Hindus in the Central Provinces,” Indian Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 111.