The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 01 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 01 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
have adopted the name because they had heard a phrase used by Spanish
children when it thunders, “The horse of Santiago is running.” Or it
may have been because they saw that the Spanish infantry in battle,
before they fired their arquebuses, always cried out “Santiago!
Santiago!” For the Indians called an arquebuse _illapa_, that is,
“lightning,” and they might easily imagine that the name which they
heard shouted just before the flash and roar of the guns was that of
the Spanish god of thunder and lightning. However they came by the
name, they made such frequent and superstitious use of it that the
church forbade any Indian to bear the name of Santiago.[905]
[Sidenote: Superstitions as to twins in Africa.]
The same power of influencing the weather is attributed to twins by the
Baronga, a tribe of Bantu negroes who inhabit the shores of Delagoa Bay
in south-eastern Africa. They bestow the name of _Tilo_—that is, the
sky—on a woman who has given birth to twins, and the infants themselves
are called the children of the sky. Now when the storms which generally
burst in the months of September and October have been looked for in
vain, when a drought with its prospect of famine is threatening, and
all nature, scorched and burnt up by a sun that has shone for six
months from a cloudless sky, is panting for the beneficent showers of
the South African spring, the women perform ceremonies to bring down
the longed-for rain on the parched earth. Stripping themselves of all
their garments, they assume in their stead girdles and head-dresses
of grass, or short petticoats made of the leaves of a particular sort
of creeper. Thus attired, uttering peculiar cries and singing ribald
songs, they go about from well to well, cleansing them of the mud
and impurities which have accumulated in them. The wells, it may be
said, are merely holes in the sand where a little turbid unwholesome
water stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one
of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and must drench her
with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done so they
go on their way, shrieking {p268} out their loose songs and dancing
immodest dances. No man may see these leaf-clad women going their
rounds. If they meet a man, they maul him and thrust him aside. When
they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour water on the graves
of their ancestors in the sacred grove. It often happens, too, that
at the bidding of the wizard they go and pour water on the graves of
twins. For they think that the grave of a twin ought always to be
moist, for which reason twins are regularly buried near a lake. If
all their efforts to procure rain prove abortive, they will remember
that such and such a twin was buried in a dry place on the side of
a hill. “No wonder,” says the wizard in such a case, “that the sky
is fiery. Take up his body and dig him a grave on the shore of the
lake.” His orders are at once obeyed, for this is supposed to be the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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