Another method of dealing with a god or any supernatural being is to bind and imprison him, if you can catch him. This needs but a cursory mention here. It has been dealt with at some length by Mr William {187} Crooke, who has ingeniously suggested that the Homeric story, already referred to, of the binding and imprisonment of Ares by Otus and Ephialtes owes its origin to this practice.[187.1] In any case it is a common expedient for the laying of a ghost. I was privileged to live for some years in a house concerning which one of these ghost-laying traditions was told; and so far as my experience goes the expedient was entirely successful. It is still in use by medicine-men for delivering their clients from the persecution of troublesome spirits. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo “sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.”[187.2] Obviously the adage “First catch your hare” applies here. The supernatural being cannot always be caught. But he may be driven away. Dr Frazer has illustrated very fully the widespread practice of expelling evils considered as personal beings either periodically or occasionally by ceremonies of violence or of enticement, persuasion and magical spells.[187.3] The ancient Scandinavians seem to have instituted solemn legal proceedings against troublesome ghosts. There is a remarkable story in the _Eyrbyggia Saga_ of a number of malignant ghosts who haunted the settlement at Frodiswater with disastrous effects to men and stores. The Christian priest sang the hours there, manufactured holy water and shrived all folk. This was not enough to disperse the ghosts, who had audaciously come and sat by the fires, to the horror of the survivors, and devastated the place with sickness and misfortune. It was but the preparation for the stringent measures to follow. The bed-gear of Thorgunna, the deceased stranger-woman who had started {188} the mischief, was burned. The ghosts were summoned to a door-doom; “and it was done in all matters even as at a doom of the Thing: verdicts were delivered, cases summed up and doom given.” The ghosts attended in obedience to the summons. As each was found guilty he was sentenced to depart. “But as soon as the sentence on Thorir Wooden-leg was given out, he rose and said: ‘Here have I sat while sit I might’”; and thereafter he stumped out by the door opposite to that before which the court was holding its session. Thus they were banished one after another; “and each arose as the sentence fell on him, and all said somewhat at their going forth; but ever it seemed by the words of each that they were all loth to depart.” Last of all judgement was given upon Thorod, the recently deceased goodman of the house, “and when he heard it he stood up and said: ‘Meseems little peace is here; so get us all gone otherwhere’; and therewith he went out. Then in walked Kiartan [the heir] and his folk, and the