OLD MURRAY BAY 



way to carry a coffin about a grave, coil a 

 rope, stir porridge, dismiss a milked cow, 

 turn a boat to sea, deal at cards, send round 

 the wine, do a hundred other things — from 

 right to left. Whereas a witch in accosting 

 her master the devil must at her peril draw 

 near him withershins, for this is the ritual 

 approach in the practice of all black magic. 

 Sir James Frazer (to whom speculations 

 such as these are more than meat or drink) 

 suggests that the two turns with their re- 

 spective trains of consequences took charac- 

 ter in the beginning from! the superior luck- 

 iness of the right hand, which is presented 

 to and kept towards an object when you 

 circle to the left. This luckiness, he ad- 

 mits, is a matter of pure conjecture. The 

 hypothesis is discardable as unnecessary, if 

 it be shown that beneficent and maleficent 

 incidents have otherwise become woven in- 

 to the very fabric of the turns. Then the 

 hand will borrow reputation from the turn 

 rather than the turn be in debt to the hand. 

 May the wherewithal for two sets of 

 contrasting beliefs not be found in primitive 

 observations of the wind's shifts and the 

 weather's responses, and the inevitable rea- 

 soning thereon of credulous awakening 

 minds? 



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