The Corn-sieve.
The corn-sieve or winnowing basket, the Mystica vannus Iacchi of Virgil, has always enjoyed a reputation as an emblem of increase and prosperity, and as possessing magical powers. The witch in Macbeth says:—
“Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, Master of the Tiger;
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail.”
It was used in Scotland to foretell the future at Allhallow Eve. Divination was performed with a pair of shears and a sieve. Aubrey describes how “the shears are stuck in a sieve, and the maidens hold up the sieve with the top of their fingers by the handle of the shears, then say, ‘By St. Peter and St. Paul, he hath not stolen it.’ After many adjurations the sieve will turn at the name of the thief.”[118]
In India the sieve is the first cradle of the baby, and in Bombay the winnowing fan in which a newly-born child is laid is used on the fifth day for the worship of Satvâî. This makes it impure, and it is henceforward used only for the house sweepings. In Northern India, when a mother has lost a child, she puts the next in a sieve and drags it about, calling it Kadheran or Ghasîtan, “the dragged one,” so as to baffle the Evil Eye by a pretence of contempt.
All through Upper India, at low-caste marriages, the bride’s brother accompanies the pair as they revolve in the marriage shed, and sprinkles parched grain over them out of a sieve as a charm for good luck and a means of scaring the demon which causes barrenness. So Irish brides in old times used to be followed by two attendants bearing high over the heads of the couple a sieve filled with meal, a sign of the plenty that would be in the house, and an omen of good luck and the blessing of children.[119] We have already seen that this rite survives in the custom of flinging rice over the newly-married pair as they leave for the honeymoon.
This habit of scaring the spirits of evil by means of the sieve appears in a special usage at the Diwâlî festival. Very early in the morning the house-mother takes a sieve and a broom, and beats them in every corner of the house, exclaiming, “God abide, and poverty depart!” The fan is then carried outside the village, generally to the east or north, and being thrown away, is supposed, like the scapegoat, to bear away with it the poverty and distress of the household. The same custom prevails in Germany. The Posterli is imagined to be a spectre in the shape of an old woman. In the evening the young fellows of the village assemble, and with loud shouts and clashing of tins, ringing of cow-bells and goat-bells, and cracking of whips, tramp over hill and dale to another village, where the young men receive them with like uproar. One of the party represents the Posterli, or they draw it in a sledge in the shape of a puppet, and leave it standing in a corner of the other village. In the same way the Eskimo drive the demon Tuna out of their houses.[120]
Among the Kols, when a vacancy occurs in the office of the village priest, the winnowing fan with some rice is used, and by its magical power it drags the person who holds it towards the individual on whom the sacred mantle has fallen. The same custom prevails among the Orâons.[121]