Bathing is practised as a rain-charm in some parts of southern and western Russia. Sometimes after service in church the priest in his robes has been thrown down on the ground and drenched with water by his parishioners. Sometimes it is the women who, without stripping off their clothes, bathe in crowds on the day of St. John the Baptist, while they dip in the water a figure made of branches, grass, and herbs, which is supposed to represent the saint.​[927] In Kursk, a province of southern Russia, when rain is much wanted, the women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him from head to foot.​[928] Later on we shall see that a passing stranger is often taken for a deity or the personification of some natural power. It is recorded in official documents that during a drought in 1790 the peasants of Scheroutz and Werboutz collected all the women and compelled them to bathe, in order that rain might fall.​[929] An Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into the water and drench her.​[930] The Arabs of North Africa fling a holy man, willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy for drought.​[931] In Minahassa, a province of North Celebes, the priest bathes as a rain-charm.​[932] In Central Celebes when there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-stalks begin to shrivel up, many of the villagers, especially the young folk, go to a neighbouring brook and splash each other with water, shouting noisily, or squirt water on one another through bamboo tubes. Sometimes they imitate the plump of rain by smacking the surface of the water with their hands, or by placing an inverted gourd on it and drumming on the gourd with their fingers.​[933] The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra have a rain-making ceremony which lasts a week. The men go about with bamboo squirts and the women with {p278} bowls of water, and they drench each other or throw the water into the air and cry, “The rain has come,” when it drips down on them.​[934] In Kumaon, a district of north-west India, when rain fails they sink a Brahman up to his lips in a tank or pond, where he repeats the name of a god of rain for a day or two. When this rite is duly performed, rain is sure to fall.​[935] For the same purpose village girls in the Punjaub will pour a solution of cow-dung in water upon an old woman who happens to pass; or they will make her sit down under the roof-spout of a house and get a wetting when it rains.​[936] In the Solok district of Sumatra, when a drought has lasted a long time, a number of half-naked women take a half-witted man to a river; and there besprinkle him with water as a means of compelling the rain to fall.​[937] In some parts of Bengal, when drought threatens the country, troops of children of all ages go from house to house and roll and tumble in puddles which have been prepared for the purpose by pouring water into the courtyards. This is supposed to bring down rain. Again, in Dubrajpur, a village in the