Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlvi. (1902), No. 13. 5 



sick man has been trespassing, therefore his soul has been 

 taken away and put in a magic fence and now the man is 

 ill. The dreamer asks pardon for the man and begs back 

 his soul, which in the end is released.* 



In sleep or fainting the soul has gone out of a man. 

 In Grimm's Teutonic Mythology (iii., 1082, Stallybrass' 

 edition) there is a story of King Gunthrum. He once 

 went to sleep, and the follower who was with him said a 

 little beast like a snake ran out of his master's mouth and 

 made its way to a stream which it could not get over. He 

 lays his sword across the water and the creature runs over 

 and goes into a hill. After some time it returns the same 

 way into the sleeper, who presently wakes up and tells 

 how in a dream he had crossed over an iron bridge and 

 gone into a mountain filled with gold.f 



The treatment of illness by a sorcerer is described in 

 the following passage : — 



Now if the sick man eats what is given him, it is a good sign ; otherwise, 

 they say that he is very sick, and after some days (if they can) they will send 

 for the AiUiiioin, whom the Basques call Pilotoys ; i.e., sorcerer. Now this 

 Pilotoys, having studied his patient, breathes and blows upon him some 

 unknown enchantments ; you would say that these chest winds ought to 

 dispel the vitiated humors of the patient. 



If he sees after some days, that notwithstanding all his Ivlowing the evil 

 does not disappear, he finds the reason for it accoiding to his own ideas, and 

 says it is because the devil is there inside of the sick man, tormenting and 

 preventing him from getting well ; but that he must have the evil thing, get 

 it out by force and kill it. Then all prepare for that heroic action, the killing 

 of Beelzebub. And the Autinoin advises them to be on their guard, for it 

 can easily happen that this insolent fellow, seeing himself badly treated by 

 him, may hurl himself upon some one of the crowd, and strangle him upon 

 the spot. For this reason he allots to each one his part of the farce ; but it 

 would be tedious to describe, for it lasts fully three hours. 



The sum and substance of it is that the juggler hides a stick in a deep hole 

 in the ground, to which is attached a cord. Then after various chants, dances, 

 and howls over the hole, and over the sick man, who is not far away, of such 

 kind that a well man would have enough of it to deafen him, he takes a 



* Codrington, The Alelanesians, their Anthropology and Folk-Lore, p. 2o8. 

 t Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i., 247 ff. 



