her husband’s house, a young lad leaps into the saddle before she touches the ground, in order that her first child may be a boy.(707) (M233) Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the assumption of woman’s dress is sometimes intended to disguise a man for the purpose of deceiving a demon. Thus among the Boloki or Bangala on the Upper Congo a man was long afflicted with an internal malady. When all other remedies had failed, a witch-doctor informed the sufferer that the cause of his trouble was an evil spirit, and that the best thing he could do was to go far away where the devil could not get at him, and to remain there till he had recovered his health. The patient followed the prescription. At dead of night he left his house, taking only two of his wives with him and telling no one of his destination, lest the demon should hear it and follow him. So he went far away from his town, donned a woman’s dress, and speaking in a woman’s voice he pretended to be other than he was, in order that the devil should not be able to find him at his new address. Strange to say, these sage measures failed to effect a cure, and wearying of exile he at last returned home, where he continued to dress and speak as a woman.(708) Again, the Kuki-Lushai of Assam believe that if a man kills an enemy or a wild beast, the ghost of the dead man or animal will haunt him and drive him mad. The only way of averting this catastrophe is to dress up as a woman and pretend to be one. For example, a man who had shot a tiger and was in fear of being haunted by the animal’s ghost, dressed himself up in a woman’s petticoat and cloth, wore ivory earrings, and wound a mottled cloth round his head like a turban. Then smoking a woman’s pipe, carrying a little basket, and spinning a cotton spindle, he paraded the village followed by a crowd roaring and shrieking with laughter, while he preserved the gravity of a judge, for a single smile would have been fatal. To guard against the possibility of unseasonable mirth, he carried a porcupine in his arms, and if ever, tickled beyond the pitch of endurance, he burst into a guffaw, the crowd said, “It was the porcupine that laughed.” All this was done to mortify the pride of the tiger’s ghost by leading him to believe that he had been shot by a woman.(709)