ANIMISTIC BELIEFS 67 



Another ceremony in which the fowl plays a 

 prominent part is that by which the wandering soul 

 of a sick person is found and led back to his 

 body by the medicine-man. This is described in 

 Chapter XIV. 



It seems clear that the fowl, like the pig, is used 

 on these occasions as a messenger sent by man to 

 the Supreme Spirit. In most cases when a fowl is 

 slaughtered in the course of a ceremony, it is first 

 waved over the heads of the people taking part in 

 it, and its blood is afterwards sprinkled upon them. 



In the blood-brotherhood ceremony, when each 

 of the two men drinks or smokes in a cigarette a 

 drop of the other's blood drawn with a bamboo- 

 knife, a fowl is in many cases waved over them and 

 then killed, and occasionally a pig also is killed. In 

 such a case the man who has killed the fowl will 

 carry its carcase to the door of the house, and there 

 he will wave towards the heavens a frayed stick 

 moistened with its blood, while he announces the 

 facts of the ceremony to Bali Penyalong. So that 

 here again the fowl seems to play the part of a 

 messenger. The carcase and the bloody stick are 

 afterwards put up together on a tall pole before 

 the house. After going through this ceremony a 

 man is safe from all the members of the house- 

 hold to which his blood -brother belongs ; and in 

 the case of two chiefs all the members of either 

 household are bound to those of the other by a 

 sacred tie. 



Fowls' eggs are sometimes put on the cleft poles 

 as sacrifices. In one instance, when we were 

 engaged in fishing a lake with a large party in boats, 

 we came upon a row of eight poles stuck upright at 

 the edge of the lake, each holding a fowl's egg in 

 its cleft upper end. These had just been put there 

 by the crew of one of the canoes as an offering to 

 the crocodiles, which were regarded as the most 



