8 4 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



to forgive her, and " de se faire une place dans son 

 venire." On her return home she knocks at the door, 

 saying : " The wood to be dried up, I to be swollen up ! " 

 The ved-ava, it should be noted, are not merely river- 

 spirits ; they dispense rain and fertility. Imagined 

 themselves as females in human form, they are pro- 

 tectresses of love and of the fecundity of women. Young 

 couples pray to them for children and it is to their 

 anger that sterility is ascribed : hence probably the 

 prayer for forgiveness just mentioned. 1 There is no 

 bathing mentioned in these rites. We find it, how- 

 ever, practised in the parallel case of the Burmal 

 er Rabba spring near Constantine, in Algeria, fre- 

 quented both by Jewesses and Moors for the re- 

 moval of infecundity. Each of these women slays 

 a black hen before the door of the grotto, offers inside 

 a wax-taper and a honey- cake, takes a bath and goes 

 away assured of the speedy accomplishment of her 

 wishes. 2 Childless couples in Palestine "go long dis- 

 tances to bathe in certain pools ; and barren women 

 visit the hot springs in various districts, not as might 

 be supposed for any medicinal properties, but because 

 the jinn who causes the vapour is regarded as being 

 capable in a definite and physical sense of giving 

 them offspring/' 3 The Oromo of East Africa believe 

 in a multiplicity of supernatural beings called by the 

 generic name of Ajana. Some of these have their 

 seat in the depths of streams and springs. Their 

 presence lends the water supernatural power. The 



1 Smirnov, i. 432, 397, 398. Kara Kirghiz women spend a 

 night beside a holy well ; but the ceremonies practised are not given, 

 unless they include that mentioned infra, p. 113 (Radloff, v. 2). 



2 Ploss, Weib, i. 437. 



3 Mrs. H. H. Spoer, F. L. xviii. 55. 



