WEATHER MAKING, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 257 



board a halfpeuuy. Another notion, common also to the same sailors, 

 is that if you put the end of the sheet overboard it will produce wind, 

 and that if you hit it three times across the thwarts it will stop the 

 rain. Mr. Kinahan, illustrating the sincerity of the belief in the 

 power of whistling in raising wind, says: ''In a dead calm you may 

 whistle for wind, except in a dangerous place. Crossing from Skib- 

 bereen to Clear Island, County Cork, a friend of mine was very nearly 

 getting into a row for inadvertently whistling." This belief is very 

 general. In California sailors say that one may whistle softly for a 

 breeze, but that it is dangerous to indulge in loud or thoughtless whist- 

 ling as it may bring a gale. Here the skipper scratches the mizzen- 

 mast for a fair wind. 



Sailors profess great confidence in the ability of the cat to raise the 

 wind, and are accustomed to say that the cat carries the wind in her 

 tail. Cats have the general reputation of being very weatherwise. On 

 shipboard, especially, it is considered imprudent to provoke a cat, 

 because she is assumed to have a certain share in the arrangement of 

 the weather. Imprudence of this sort appears, however, to have no 

 terrors for the Soudanese in western Java, for, when rain is needed, 

 they form in procession with gongs and clappers, take their cats to the 

 nearest streams, where the animals are sprinkled and bathed.' 



Many sailors also have a very curious notion that hens' eggs on board 

 ship produce contrary'- winds, and on the occurrence of such winds they, 

 are likely to insist that the eggs must be thrown overboard. 



Another of these folklore remnants of sailors is the idea that there 

 is a distinct relation between the albatross and wind. This superstition 

 has been embalmed in most attractive form by Coleridge in his Lay 

 of the Ancient Mariner. One stanza runs as follows: 



For all averred I had killed the bird 



That made the breeze to blow. 

 Oh, wretch ! said they, the bird to slay 



That made the breeze to blow. 



In addition to the above folklore remnants there are some methods 

 which are purely magical. The earliest reference of this sort which I 

 have found is the case of Sopater. He is said to have caused a horrible 

 famine in Asia Minor by "chaining the winds." He was put to death 

 by Constantine — probably for this reason, as this crime was forbidden 

 by the laws of the Twelve Tables, as well as later in the Theodosian 

 code. 



The association of weather making with the witches in Finland is 

 familiar. Steele, in his Medieval Lore, from Bartholomew Anglicus 

 (about 1260), referring to the people in Finland, says: 



"The men - - - occupy themselves with witchcraft, and so to 

 men that sail by their coasts, and also to men that abide with them 

 for default of wind ; they prefer wind to sailing, and so they sell wind. 



' Forbes. Eastern Archipelago, page 75. 

 SM 94 17 



