Staying the sun by means of a net or string.
Staying the sun by putting a stone or a clod in the fork of a tree.
As some people think they can light up the sun or speed him on his way, so others fancy they can retard or stop him. In a pass of the Peruvian Andes stand two ruined towers on opposite hills. Iron hooks are clamped into their walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one tower to the other. The net is intended to catch the sun.[1116] On a small hill in Fiji grew a patch of reeds, and travellers who feared to be belated used to tie the tops of a handful of reeds together to prevent the sun from going down.[1117] As to this my late friend the Rev. Lorimer Fison wrote to me: “I have often seen the reeds tied together to keep the sun from going down. The place is on a hill in Lakomba, one of the eastern islands of the Fijian group. It is on the side—not on the top—of the hill. The reeds grow on the right side of the path. I asked an old man the meaning of the practice, and he said, ‘We used to think the sun would see us, and know we wanted him not to go down till we got past on our way home again.’”[1118] But perhaps the original intention was to entangle the sun in the reeds, just as the Peruvians try to catch him in the net. Stories of men who have caught the sun in a noose are widely spread.[1119] When the sun is going southward in the autumn, and sinking lower and lower in the Arctic sky, the Esquimaux of Iglulik play the game of cat’s cradle in order to catch him in the meshes of the string and so prevent his {p317} disappearance. On the contrary, when the sun is moving northward in the spring, they play the game of cup-and-ball to hasten his return.[1120] Means like those which the Esquimaux take to stop the departing sun are adopted by the Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast to catch a runaway slave. They take two sticks, unite them by a string, and then wind the string round one of them, while at the same time they pronounce the name of the fugitive. When the string is quite wound about the stick, the runaway will be bound fast and unable to stir.[1121] In New Guinea, when a Motu man is hunting or travelling late in the afternoon and fears to be overtaken by darkness, he will sometimes take a piece of twine, loop it, and look through the loop at the sun. Then he pulls the loop into a knot and says, “Wait until we get home, and we will give you the fat of a pig.” After that he passes the string to the man behind him, and then it is thrown away. In a similar case a Motumotu man of New Guinea says, “Sun, do not be in a hurry; just wait until I get to the end.” And the sun waits. The Motumotu do not like to eat in the dark; so if the food is not yet ready, and the sun is sinking, they say, “Sun, stop; my food is not ready, and I want to eat by you.”[1122] Here the looking at the sinking sun through a loop and then drawing the loop into a knot appears to be a purely magical ceremony designed to catch the sun in the mesh; but the request that the luminary would kindly stand still till home is reached or the dinner cooked, coupled with the offer of a slice of fat bacon as an inducement to him to comply with the request, is thoroughly religious. Jerome of Prague, travelling among the heathen Lithuanians early in the fifteenth century, found a tribe who worshipped the sun and venerated a large iron hammer. The priests told him that once the sun had been invisible for several months, because a powerful king had shut it up in a strong tower; but the signs of the zodiac {p318} had broken open the tower with this very hammer and released the sun. Therefore they adored the hammer.[1123] When an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from going down till he gets home, he puts a sod in the fork of a tree, exactly facing the setting sun.[1124] For the same purpose an Indian of Yucatan, journeying westward, places a stone in a tree or pulls out some of his eyelashes and blows them towards the sun.[1125] When the Golos, a tribe of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, are on the march, they will sometimes take a stone or a small ant-heap, about the size of a man’s head, and place it in the fork of a tree in order to retard the sunset.[1126] South African natives, in travelling, will put a stone in a fork of a tree or place some grass on the path with a stone over it, believing that this will cause their friends to keep the meal waiting till their arrival.[1127] In this, as in previous examples, the purpose apparently is to retard the sun. But why should the act of putting a stone or a sod in a tree be supposed to effect this? A partial explanation is suggested by another Australian custom. In their journeys the natives are accustomed to place stones in trees at different heights from the ground in order to indicate the height of the sun in the sky at the moment when they passed the particular tree. Those who follow are thus made aware of the time of day when their friends in advance passed the spot.[1128] Possibly the natives, thus accustomed to mark the sun’s progress, may have slipped into the confusion of imagining that to mark the sun’s progress was to arrest it at the point marked. On the other hand, to make it go {p319} down faster, the Australians throw sand into the air and blow with their mouths towards the sun,[1129] perhaps to waft the lingering orb westward and bury it under the sands into which it appears to sink at night.
Accelerating the moon.
As some people imagine they can hasten the sun, so others fancy they can jog the tardy moon. The natives of German New Guinea reckon months by the moon, and some of them have been known to throw stones and spears at the moon, in order to accelerate its progress and so to hasten the return of their friends, who were away from home for twelve months working on a tobacco plantation.[1130] The Malays think that a bright glow at sunset may throw a weak person into a fever. Hence they attempt to extinguish the glow by spitting out water and throwing ashes at it.[1131] The Shuswap Indians of British Columbia believe that they can bring on cold weather by burning the wood of a tree that has been struck by lightning. The belief may be based on the observation that in their country cold follows a thunder-storm. Hence in spring, when these Indians are travelling over the snow on high ground, they burn splinters of such wood in the fire in order that the crust of the snow may not melt.[1132]
§ 4. The Magical Control of the Wind
Making the wind to blow or be still.
Once more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still. When the day is hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone which he has chanced to find in an animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves the stick about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow.[1133] In order to procure a cool wind for nine days the stone should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or beast and {p320} then presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three turns contrary to the course of the luminary.[1134] The Wind clan of the Omahas flap their blankets to start a breeze which will drive away the mosquitoes.[1135] When a Haida Indian wishes to obtain a fair wind, he fasts, shoots a raven, singes it in the fire, and then going to the edge of the sea sweeps it over the surface of the water four times in the direction in which he wishes the wind to blow. He then throws the raven behind him, but afterwards picks it up and sets it in a sitting posture at the foot of a spruce-tree, facing towards the required wind. Propping its beak open with a stick, he requests a fair wind for a certain number of days; then going away he lies covered up in his mantle till another Indian asks him for how many days he has desired the wind, which question he answers.[1136] When a sorcerer in New Britain wishes to make a wind blow in a certain direction, he throws burnt lime in the air, chanting a song all the time. Then he waves sprigs of ginger and other plants about, throws them up and catches them. Next he makes a small fire with these sprigs on the spot where the lime has fallen thickest, and walks round the fire chanting. Lastly, he takes the ashes and throws them on the water.[1137] If a Hottentot desires the wind to drop, he takes one of his fattest skins and hangs it on the end of a pole, in the belief that by blowing the skin down the wind will lose all its force and must itself fall.[1138] Fuegian wizards throw shells against the wind to make it drop.[1139] On the other hand, when a Persian peasant desires a strong wind to winnow his corn, he rubs a kind of bastard saffron and throws it up into the air; after that the breeze soon begins to blow.[1140] Some of the Indians of Canada believed that the winds were caused by a fish like a lizard. When one of {p321} these fish had been caught, the Indians advised the Jesuit missionaries to put it back into the river as fast as possible in order to calm the wind, which was contrary.[1141] If a Cherokee wizard desires to turn aside an approaching storm, he faces it and recites a spell with outstretched hand. Then he gently blows towards the quarter to which he wishes it to go, waving his hand in the same direction as if he were pushing away the storm.[1142] The Ottawa Indians fancied they could calm a tempest by relating the dreams they had dreamed during their fast, or by throwing tobacco on the troubled water.[1143] When the Kei Islanders wish to obtain a favourable wind for their friends at sea, they dance in a ring, both men and women, swaying their bodies to and fro, while the men hold handkerchiefs in their hands.[1144] In Melanesia there are everywhere weather-doctors who can control the powers of the air and are willing to supply wind or calm in return for a proper remuneration. For instance, in Santa Cruz the wizard makes wind by waving the branch of a tree and chanting the appropriate charm.[1145] In another Melanesian island a missionary observed a large shell filled with earth, in which an oblong stone, covered with red ochre, was set up, while the whole was surrounded by a fence of sticks strengthened by a creeper which was twined in and out the uprights. On asking a native what these things meant, he learned that the wind was here fenced or bound round, lest it should blow hard; the imprisoned wind would not be able to blow again until the fence that kept it in should have rotted away.[1146] In South Africa, when the Caffres wish to stop a high wind, they call in a “wind-doctor,” who takes a pot with a spout and points the spout towards the quarter from which the wind is blowing. He then places medicines {p322} and some of the dust blown by the wind in the vessel, and seals up every opening of the pot with damp clay. Thereupon the doctor declares, “The head of the wind is now in my pot, and the wind will cease to blow.”[1147] The natives of the island of Bibili, off German New Guinea, are reputed to make wind by blowing with their mouths. In stormy weather the Bogadjim people say, “The Bibili folk are at it again, blowing away.”[1148] Another way of making wind which is practised in New Guinea is to strike a “wind-stone” lightly with a stick; to strike it hard would bring on a hurricane.[1149] So in Scotland witches used to raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it thrice on a stone, saying:
“I knok this rag upone this stane
To raise the wind in the divellis name,