[755]. F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Vienna, 1885), p. 430.

[756]. F. S. Krauss, op. cit. p. 531.

[757]. This saying was communicated to me by Miss Mabel Peacock in a letter dated Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 30th October 1905.

[758]. Max Buch, Die Wotjäken (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 52, 59; L. v. Schroeder, op. cit. pp. 129, 132.

[759]. Above, pp. [221] sq.

[760]. As it is believed that fire may impregnate human beings, so conversely some people seem to imagine that it may be impregnated by them. Thus Mr. T. R. Glover, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, writes to me (18th June 1906): “A curious and not very quotable instance of (I suppose) Sacred Marriage was brought to my notice by Mr. Brown of the Canadian Baptist Mission to the Telugus. He said that in Hindoo temples (in South India chiefly?) sometimes a scaffolding is erected over a fire. A man and a woman are got to copulate on it and allow the human seed to fall into the fire.” But perhaps this ceremony is only another way of conveying the fertilising virtue of the fire to the woman, in other words, of getting her with child.

[761]. Above, pp. [215], [221].

[762]. Suidas, Harpocration, and Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Ἀμφιδρόμια; Hesychius, s.v. δρομάφιον ἧμαρ; Schol. on Plato, Theaetetus, p. 160 E. On this custom see S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 137-145. He suggests that the running of the naked men who carried the babies was intended, by means of sympathetic magic, to impart to the little ones in after-life the power of running fast. But this theory does not explain why the race took place round the hearth.

[763]. The custom has been practised with this intention in Scotland, China, New Britain, the Tenimber and Timorlaut Islands, and by the Ovambo of South Africa. See Pennant’s “Second Tour in Scotland,” Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 383; Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, ed. 1883, p. 101; China Review, ix. (1880-1881) p. 303; R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, pp. 94 sq.; J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 303; H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 307. A similar custom was observed, probably for the same reason, in ancient Mexico and in Madagascar. See Clavigero, History of Mexico, translated by Cullen, i. 31; W. Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 152. Compare my note, “The Youth of Achilles,” Classical Review, vii. (1893) pp. 293 sq.

[764]. Compare E. Samter, Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer (Berlin, 1901), pp. 59-62.