“The _rombo_ {208} is an instrument not unlike the _trottola_ or peg-top of our boys, called in Latin _turbo_, and in common language also _paléo_. It was believed that with it in witchcraft a lover could have his head turned with passion, or that he would be turned at will while it spun. The same held true of other disks (tee-totums) of wood, iron, or copper.” This idea was extended to the hum of spinning-wheels, which aided the conception of the Fates, and the thread of life, to the buzzing of bees and flies, and many other variations of such sounds. Mr. Andrew Lang has in an admirable paper shown that the _bull-roarer_ has been regarded as so sacred among certain savages that women, or the profane, were not allowed to touch it. A bull-roarer is so easily constructed, that it is remarkable how few people are familiar with it. Take a common stick, say six inches in length, tie a cord three feet long to one end, and, grasping the other, whirl it round, with the result of astonishing all to whom it is not familiar by its sound: “First it is but a gentle hum, Like bird-song warbling in the trees, Then like a torrent it doth foam, And then a wild and roaring breeze.” When vigorously spun, it may be heard of a calm evening for a mile, and its effect is then indescribably—I will not say, as most novelists here would, “_weird_,” for I do not know that it prophesies anything, but it is certainly most suggestive of something mysterious. Therefore the bayadere, with her spinning _pas seul_ and buzzing _romore_, who appears to the eater of the figs, is the magic top in person, her form being taken from the fig. The connection of the enchanted dog with the tree is not so clear, but it may be observed that there is a vast mass of tradition which makes the black dog a _chthonic_, that is, a subterranean or under-earthly symbol, and that in this story he comes out of the earth. This animal was a special favourite of Hecate-Diana of the world below, the queen of all the witches. There is a vast quantity of folklore in reference to the fig as an emblem of fertility, reproduction, and sensual affinity, and, on the other side, of its being an emblem often used in proverbs to express the very contrary, or trifling value, worthlessness, and poverty. Thus, the barren fig-tree of the New Testament had a deep signification to all who were familiar with these poetic and mystic “correspondences.” The reader has probably observed that in this story there is, as in a parable, a strong intimation of symbolism, or as if more were meant than meets the ear.