The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
In the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach in
the eighteenth century it is said that a woman had engaged two men to work
in her vineyard. After noon they all lay down to rest as usual. An hour
later the men got up and tried to waken the woman, but could not. She lay
motionless with her mouth wide open. They came back at sunset and still
she lay like a corpse. Just at that moment a big fly came buzzing past,
which one of the men caught and shut up in his leathern pouch. Then they
tried again to waken the woman, but could not. Afterwards they let out the
fly; it flew straight into the woman’s mouth and she awoke. On seeing this
the men had no further doubt that she was a witch.(134)
(M28) It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper,
because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the
man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely
necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the
soul time to return.(135) A Fijian in Matuku, suddenly wakened from a nap
by somebody treading on his foot, has been heard bawling after his soul
and imploring it to return. He had just been dreaming that he was far away
in Tonga, and great was his alarm on suddenly wakening to find his body in
Matuku. Death stared him in the face unless his soul could be induced to
speed at once across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement. The man
would probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to
allay his terror.(136) Some Brazilian Indians explain the headache from
which a man sometimes suffers after a broken sleep by saying that his soul
is tired with the exertions it made to return quickly to the body.(137) A
Highland story, told to Hugh Miller on the picturesque shores of Loch
Shin, well illustrates the haste made by the soul to regain its body when
the sleeper has been prematurely roused by an indiscreet friend. Two young
men had been spending the early part of a warm summer day in the open air,
and sat down on a mossy bank to rest. Hard by was an ancient ruin
separated from the bank on which they sat only by a slender runnel, across
which there lay, immediately over a miniature cascade, a few withered
stalks of grass. “Overcome by the heat of the day, one of the young men
fell asleep; his companion watched drowsily beside him; when all at once
the watcher was aroused to attention by seeing a little indistinct form,
scarce larger than a humble-bee, issue from the mouth of the sleeping man,
and, leaping upon the moss, move downwards to the runnel, which it crossed
along the withered grass stalks, and then disappeared among the
interstices of the ruin. Alarmed by what he saw, the watcher hastily shook
his companion by the shoulder, and awoke him; though, with all his haste,
the little cloud-like creature, still more rapid in its movements, issued
from the interstice into which it had gone, and, flying across the runnel,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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