The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 10 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
which he kept his tobacco, and bunged it up tight. Then he walked back
with his wife to the village, carrying the bamboo with the were-wolf in
it. When they came to the village, the human body of the were-wolf was
still on the roof, working away with the rest. The man put the bamboo in a
fire. At that the human were-wolf looked down from the roof and said,
“Don’t do that.” The man drew the bamboo from the fire, but a moment
afterwards he put it in the fire again, and again the human were-wolf on
the roof looked down and cried, “Don’t do that.” But this time the man
kept the bamboo in the fire, and when it blazed up, down fell the human
were-wolf from the roof as dead as a stone.(764) Again, the following
story went round among the Toradjas not so very many years ago. The thing
happened at Soemara, on the Gulf of Tomori. It was evening and some men
sat chatting with a certain Hadji Mohammad. When it had grown dark, one of
the men went out of the house for something or other. A little while
afterwards one of the company thought he saw a stag’s antlers standing out
sharp and clear against the bright evening sky. So Hadji Mohammad raised
his gun and fired. A minute or two afterwards back comes the man who had
gone out, and says he to Hadji Mohammad, “You shot at me and hit me. You
must pay me a fine.” They searched him but found no wound on him anywhere.
Then they knew that he was a were-wolf who had turned himself into a stag
and had healed the bullet-wound by licking it. However, the bullet had
found its billet, for two days afterwards he was a dead man.(765)
(M277) In Sennar, a province of the Egyptian Sudan, the Hammeg and Fungi
enjoy the reputation of being powerful magicians who can turn themselves
into hyaenas and in that guise scour the country at night, howling and
gorging themselves. But by day they are men again. It is very dangerous to
shoot at such human hyaenas by night. On the Jebel Bela mountain a soldier
once shot at a hyaena and hit it, but it dragged itself off, bleeding, in
the darkness and escaped. Next morning he followed up the trail of blood
and it led him straight to the hut of a man who was everywhere known for a
wizard. Nothing of the hyaena was to be seen, but the man himself was laid
up in the house with a fresh wound and died soon afterwards. And the
soldier did not long survive him.(766)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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