a party of girls who pelt them with cooked food.[1] In the Congo,[2] the ridge-pole is of much importance; to capture that of an enemy chief is a great exploit, and to return it is an effectual way of sealing a treaty of peace. Coming to the far higher culture of Madras, we still find the ridge-pole of importance, so much so, that worship is offered it before it is put up; while in Upper Burma, a house with no ridge-pole exposes its inhabitants to the danger of attacks from tigers. Its craking, in the Central Provinces, is a bad omen.[3] It is, therefore, not at all surprising to find English witches' utensils hidden away under it, and a witch sitting astride of it.[4] But the other beams have their importance also. The Panjabi house, I learn from the same informant as before, has commonly two main beams running longitudinally, and on them cross-beams; the number of these must always be odd, to secure more male than female births in the house.[5]
This leads naturally to decorations of a prophylactic nature. Northern Europe, especially Germany, seems to be the region richest in examples of this; but it is also found in the Tyrol, Rhaetia, and Spain; in Iceland, sporadically in Great Britain, in India, the Celebes, once at least in Borneo (Hose and McDougall, Pagan Tribes, ii. 73), and in a simple form in Africa.[6] I am inclined to connect the
- ↑ G. Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 204.
- ↑ Weeks, Congo Life (R.T.S. 1911), pp. 219, 222.
- ↑ Crooke, op. cit. pp. 143, 144, 135.
- ↑ Folk-Lore Journal, v. (1887), p. 1 ff., 82.
- ↑ It would be interesting, but too far removed from the main subject of this paper, to determine whether any connection exists between this and the Cretan preference for transverse rows on three rather than two columns (B. C. Rider, Greek House, p. 104); also, whether it is to be connected (via the common Aryan speech?) with the Pythagorean, and probably Italian, idea that even numbers were female, odd numbers male.
- ↑ N. W. Thomas in Folk-Lore, vol. xi. p. 322; cf. ibid. 437; B. C. Rider, op. cit. p. 30; Crooke, op. cit. pp. 143, 144.
