Enclosing the winds in knots, bags, and pots.
The art of tying up the wind in three knots, so that the more knots are loosed the stronger will blow the wind, has been attributed to wizards in Lappland and to witches in Shetland, Lewis, and the Isle of Man. Shetland seamen still buy winds in the shape of knotted handkerchiefs or threads from old women who claim to rule the storms. There are said to be ancient crones in Lerwick now who live by selling wind.[1167] In the early part of the nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott visited one of these witches at Stromness in the Orkneys. He says: “We clomb, by steep and dirty lanes, an eminence rising above the town, and commanding a fine view. An old hag lives in a wretched cabin on this height, and subsists by selling winds. Each captain of a merchantman, between jest and earnest, gives the old woman sixpence, and she boils her kettle to procure a favourable gale. She was a miserable figure; upwards of ninety, she told us, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of clay-coloured cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in colour to her corpse-like complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and chin that almost met, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her quite the effect of Hecate.”[1168] A Norwegian witch has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a bag in which she had shut up a wind.[1169] Ulysses received the winds in a leathern bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds.[1170] The {p327} Motumotu in New Guinea think that storms are sent by an Oiabu sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he opens at pleasure.[1171] On the top of Mount Agu in Togo, a district of German West Africa, resides a fetish called Bagba, who is supposed to control the wind and the rain. His priest is said to keep the winds shut up in great pots.[1172]
Frightening, driving away, and killing the spirit of the wind.
Often the stormy wind is regarded as an evil being who may be intimidated, driven away, or killed. When the darkening of the sky indicates the approach of a tornado, a South African magician will repair to a height whither he collects as many people as can be hastily summoned to his assistance. Directed by him, they shout and bellow in imitation of the gust as it swirls roaring about the huts and among the trees of the forest. Then at a signal they mimic the crash of the thunder, after which there is a dead silence for a few seconds; then follows a screech more piercing and prolonged than any that preceded, dying away in a tremulous wail. The magician fills his mouth with a foul liquid which he squirts in defiant jets against the approaching storm as a kind of menace or challenge to the spirit of the wind; and the shouting and wailing of his assistants are meant to frighten the spirit away. The performance lasts until the tornado either bursts or passes away in another direction. If it bursts, the reason is that the magician who sent the storm was more powerful than he who endeavoured to avert it.[1173] When storms and bad weather have lasted long and food is scarce with the Central Esquimaux, they endeavour to conjure the tempest by making a long whip of seaweed, armed with which they go down to the beach and strike out in the direction of the wind, crying, “Taba (it is enough)!”[1174] Once when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on the coast and food was becoming scarce, the Esquimaux {p328} performed a ceremony to make a calm. A fire was kindled on the shore, and the men gathered round it and chanted. An old man then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the demon of the wind to come under the fire and warm himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man present had contributed, was thrown on the flames by an old man, and immediately a flight of arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had been. They thought that the demon would not stay where he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns were discharged in various directions, and the captain of a European vessel was invited to fire on the wind with cannon.[1175] On the twenty-first of February 1883 a similar ceremony was performed by the Esquimaux of Point Barrow, Alaska, with the intention of killing the spirit of the wind. Women drove the demon from their houses with clubs and knives, with which they made passes in the air; and the men, gathering round a fire, shot him with their rifles and crushed him under a heavy stone the moment that steam rose in a cloud from the smouldering embers, on which a tub of water had just been thrown.[1176]
Confronting the storm with swords and drums.
In ancient India the priest was directed to confront a storm, armed to the teeth with a bludgeon, a sword, and a firebrand, while he chanted a magical lay.[1177] During a tremendous hurricane the drums of Kadouma, near the Victoria Nyanza, were heard to beat all night. When next morning a missionary enquired the cause, he was told that the sound of the drums is a charm against storms.[1178] The Sea Dyaks and Kayans of Borneo beat gongs when a tempest is raging; but the Dyaks, and perhaps the Kayans also, do this, not so much to frighten away the spirit of the storm, as to apprise him of their whereabouts, lest he should inadvertently knock their houses down. Heard at night above the howling of the storm, the distant boom of the {p329} gongs has a weird effect; and sometimes, before the notes can be distinguished for the wind and rain, they strike fear into a neighbouring village; lights are extinguished, the women are put in a place of safety, and the men stand to their arms to resist an attack. Then with a lull in the wind the true nature of the gong-beating is recognised, and the alarm subsides.[1179]
Attacking the whirlwind with weapons.
On calm summer days in the Highlands of Scotland eddies of wind sometimes go past, whirling about dust and straws, though not another breath of air is stirring. The Highlanders think that the fairies are in these eddies carrying away men, women, children, or animals, and they will fling their left shoe, or their bonnet, or a knife, or earth from a mole-hill at the eddy to make the fairies drop their booty.[1180] When a gust lifts the hay in the meadow, the Breton peasant throws a knife or a fork at it to prevent the devil from carrying off the hay.[1181] Similarly in the Esthonian island of Oesel, when the reapers are busy among the corn and the wind blows about the ears that have not yet been tied into sheaves, the reapers slash at it with their sickles.[1182] The custom of flinging a knife or a hat at a whirlwind is observed alike by German, Slavonian, and Esthonian rustics; they think that a witch or wizard is riding on the blast, and that the knife, if it hits the witch, will be reddened by her blood or will disappear altogether, sticking in the wound it has inflicted.[1183] {p330} Sometimes Esthonian peasants run shrieking and shouting behind a whirlwind, hurling sticks and stones into the flying dust.[1184] The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco ascribe the rush of a whirlwind to the passage of a spirit and they fling sticks at it to frighten it away.[1185] When the wind blows down their huts, the Payaguas of South America snatch up firebrands and run against the wind, menacing it with the blazing brands, while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the storm.[1186] When the Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm, the men go out armed, and the women and children scream their loudest to intimidate the demon.[1187] During a tempest the inhabitants of a Batta village in Sumatra have been seen to rush from their houses armed with sword and lance. The rajah placed himself at their head, and with shouts and yells they hewed and hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed to be specially active in the defence of her house, slashing the air right and left with a long sabre.[1188] In a violent thunderstorm, the peals sounding very near, the Kayans of Borneo have been seen to draw their swords threateningly half out of their scabbards, as if to frighten away the demons of the storm.[1189] In Australia the huge columns of red sand that move rapidly across a desert tract are thought by the natives to be spirits passing along. Once {p331} an athletic young black ran after one of these moving columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or three hours, and came back very weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that Koochee had growled at him and he must die.[1190] Of the Bedouins of eastern Africa it is said that “no whirlwind ever sweeps across the path without being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who stab into the centre of the dusty column in order to drive away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the blast.”[1191]
Fighting the simoom.
In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth of the tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to make war on the south wind. But when they entered the desert the simoom swept down on them and buried them to a man.[1192] The story may well have been told by one who watched them disappearing, in battle array, with drums and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of whirling sand.