Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This conception has probably left traces in most languages,(407) and it lingers as a metaphor in poetry. But what is metaphor to a modern European poet was sober earnest to his savage ancestor, and is still so to many people. The Malays carry out the conception in question to its practical conclusion. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so prevented from taking its perilous flight. Thus in Java when a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially dangerous), it is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as if she were calling hens.(408) Amongst the Battas of Sumatra, when a man returns from a dangerous enterprise, grains of rice are placed on his head, and these grains are called _padiruma tondi_, that is, “means to make the soul (_tondi_) stay at home.” In Java also rice is placed on the head of persons who have escaped a great danger or have returned home unexpectedly after it had been supposed that they were lost.(409) In Celebes they think that a bridegroom’s soul is apt to fly away at marriage, so coloured rice is scattered over him to induce it to stay. And, in general, at festivals in South Celebes rice is strewed on the head of the person in whose honour the festival is held, with the object of detaining his soul, which at such times is in especial danger of being lured away by envious demons.(410)