soul. Offerings of food are therefore left under a tree and the soul is brought home in a piece of wax.[1] Amongst the Dyaks of Sarawak the priest conjures the lost soul into a cup, where it is seen by the uninitiated as a lock of hair, but by the initiated as a miniature human being. This is supposed to be thrust by the priest into a hole in the top of the patient’s head.[2] In Nias the sick man’s soul is restored to him in the shape of a firefly, visible only to the sorcerer, who catches it in a cloth and places it on the forehead of the patient.[3]
Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by sorcerers. In Fiji if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a scarf with which “to catch away the soul of the rogue.” At the sight, or even at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean breast. For if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his soul was caught in it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the end of a chief’s canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would pine and die.[4] The sorcerers of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on either side of different sizes, to suit the different sizes of souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had a grudge, they set up these soul-
- ↑ Riedel, op. cit. p. 376.
- ↑ Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 189. Sometimes the souls resemble cotton seeds (ib.) Cp. id. i. 183.
- ↑ Nieuwenhuisen en Rosenberg, “Verslag omtrent het Eiland Nias,” in Verhandel. van het Batav. Genootsch. van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxx. 116; Rosenherg, Der Malayiscke Archipel, p. 174.
- ↑ Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 250.
