which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town. The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. "Twenty or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the mountains." 1 In spring, as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great annual festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of the devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was chased from the village, the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes, beating him with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.2 Some 1 S. Powers, Tribes of California, p. 159. 2 G. Catlin, North American Indians, i. 166 sqq.; id., O-kee-pa, a Religious Ceremony, and other Customs of the Mandans. of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious being called Molonga, who prowls unseen and would kill men and violate women if certain ceremonies were not performed. These ceremonies last for five nights and consist of dances, in which only men, fantastically painted and adorned, take part. On the fifth night Molonga himself, personified by a man tricked out with red ochre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear, rushes forth from the darkness at the spectators and makes as if he would run them through. Great is the excitement, loud are the shrieks and shouts, but after another feigned attack the demon vanishes in the gloom.1 On the last night of the year the palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When they have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep them out. The Kasyas, a hill tribe of Assam, annually expel the demons. The ceremony takes place in a fixed month of the year, and part of it consists in a struggle between two bands of men who stand on opposite sides of a stream, each side tugging at the end of a rope which is stretched across the water. In this contest, which resembles the game of "French and English" or "the Tug of War," the men on one side probably represent the demons. Some 1 W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, pp. 120-125. 2 Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 172. Cp. above, p. 85. 3 A. Bastian, in Verhandl. d. Berlin. Gesellsch. f. Anthropol. 1881, p. 151; cp. id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 6 sq. Amongst the Chukmas of South-East India the body of a priest is conveyed to the place of cremation on a car; ropes are attached to the car, the people divide themselves into two equal bodies and pull at the ropes in opposite directions. "One side represents the good spirits; the other, the powers of evil. The contest is so arranged that the former are victorious. Sometimes, however, the young men representing the demons are inclined to pull too vigorously, but a Men stick generally quells this unseemly times in an Esthonian village a rumour will get about that the Evil One himself has been seen in the place. Instantly the whole village is in an uproar, and the entire population, armed with sticks, flails, and scythes, turns out to give him chase. They generally expel him in the shape of a wolf or when the people want a rainy wind from the west, the population of the village, men, women, and children, divide into two parties and pull against each other at the ends of a long bamboo. But the party at the eastern end must pull the harder, in order to draw the desired wind out of the west (Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 282). According to another writer, while the contest only takes place in these islands when rain is wanted, it is closely connected with that ceremony for the fertilisation of the earth which has been already described (vol. ii. p. 205 sq.). The men and women appear to take opposite sides, and their motions are significant of the union of the sexes. See Van Hoevell, "LetiEilanden," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxiii. (1890), p. 207. In Corea about the fifteenth day of the first month villages engage in the same kind of contest with each other, and it is thought that the village which wins will have a good harvest. Both men and women pull at the rope; the women load their skirts with stones to increase the strength of their pull. See A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man, citing Stewart Culin, Korean Games, p. 35. The Roocooyen Indians of French Guiana play at the "Tug of War" as a sort of interlude during the ceremonial tortures of the youth. See H. Coudreau, Chez nos Indiens: quatre années dans la Guyane Française (Paris, 1895), p. 234. The Cingalese perform it as a ceremony in honour of the goddess Patiné (Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon, London, 1840, i. 358). We have seen that the Esquimaux practise it to procure good weather in winter (vol. ii. p. 103 sq.). In November, when the fishing - season is over, the Kamtchatkans used to divide into two parties, one of which tried to pull a birch tree by a strap through the smoke - hole into their subterranean winter dwelling, while the other party outside, pulling at the other end of the tree, endeavoured to hinder them. If the party in the house succeeded, they raised shouts of joy and set up a grass effigy of a wolf, which they preserved carefully throughout the year, believing that it espoused their young women and prevented them from giving birth to twins. See Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtsckatka, p. 327. These instances make it probable that wherever the game is played only at certain definite seasons it was in its origin a magical ceremony intended to work some good to the community. Thus in the North-West Provinces of India it is played on the 14th of the light half of the month Kuár (Sir H. M. Elliot, Memoirs on the history, etc., of the races of the NorthWestern Provinces of India, i. 235); and at Ludlow in Shropshire, Presteign in Radnorshire, and Pontefract in Yorkshire it used to be played on Shrove Tuesday. See Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 92; Burne and Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore, pp. 319-321. The custom has been discussed by Prof. A. C. Haddon, Study of Man, pp. 270-276. His view that the custom was intended to secure a good harvest appears not to cover all the cases. In Normandy at the Carnival desperate contests used to take place between neighbouring villages for the possession of a large leathern ball stuffed with bran and called the soule. It was thought that the victorious village would have a better crop of apples that year. See J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand, ii. 153 sqq. Compare Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France, i. 86 sqq.; and as to the game of soule, see Guerry, in Mémoires des Antiquaires de France, viii. (1829), pp. 459-61. a cat, occasionally they brag that they have beaten the devil to death.1 At Carmona, in Andalusia, on one day of the year, boys are stripped naked and smeared with glue in which feathers are stuck. Thus disguised, they run from house to house, the people trying to avoid them and to bar their houses against them.2 The ceremony is probably a relic of an annual expulsion of devils. Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish between occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the former. The vehicle which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district of the island of Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship is made and filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, and so forth, which have been contributed by all the people. A little sail is hoisted on the ship. When all is ready, a man calls out in a very loud voice, “O all ye sicknesses, ye small-poxes, agues, measles, etc., who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely, but who now cease to plague us, we have made ready this ship for you and we have furnished you with provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye shall have no lack of food nor of betel leaves nor of areca nuts nor of tobacco. Depart, and sail away from us directly; never come near us again; but go to a land which is far from here. Let all the tides and winds waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun rise on you again." Then ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land-breeze, feeling convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next time. If sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same sickness, but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same manner. When the demon-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the 1 J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen, ii. 278. 2 Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1889), p. 174. VOL. III H village, whereupon a man cries out, "The sicknesses are now gone, vanished, expelled, and sailed away." At this all the people come running out of their houses, passing the word from one to the other with great joy, beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments.1 Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands. Thus in Timor-laut, to mislead the demons who are causing sickness, a small proa, containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage, is allowed to drift away with wind and tide. As it is being launched, the people cry, "O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor land?" Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men says, "Old sir, I beseech you, make well the grandchildren, children, women, and men, that we may be able to cat pork and rice and to drink palm-wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and make all the people in the village well." If the proa is stranded at any inhabited spot, the sickness will break out there. Hence a stranded proa excites much alarm amongst the coast population, and they immediately burn it, because demons fly from fire.2 In the island of Buro the proa which carries away the demons of disease is about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, and so on, and well stocked with provisions. For a day and a night the people beat gongs and drums, and rush about to frighten the demons. Next morning ten stalwart young men strike the people with branches, which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water. As soon as they have done so, they run down to the beach, put the branches on board the proa, launch another boat in great haste, and tow the disease-burdened bark far out to sea. There they cast it off, and one of them calls out, "Grandfather Smallpox, go away-go willingly away-go visit another land; we have made you food ready for the voyage we have now nothing more to give." When they have 1 François Valentyn, Oud- en nieuw Ost-Indiën, iii. 14. Backer (L'Archipel Indien, p. 377 sq.) copies from Valentyn. 2 Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 304 sq. |