PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 103 



undergone some change of this kind. Whatever may 

 have been the intention in adding a stone to a cairn, 

 or hammering a nail into a sacred tree, we cannot 

 doubt the analogy in form between this act and the 

 much less archaic gift of money at a shrine has struck 

 the peasant's mind and caused a substitution of the 

 more valuable for the less valuable object bestowed. 

 So it seems to me that the .rite of beating a patient in 

 order to drive the demon of sickness or some other 

 evil being out of him has been confounded with the 

 similar rite of striking to cause some good to enter 

 him. These two distinct rites have in fact undergone 

 conflation, the same act which drives out the demon 

 being held to induce the desired good. 



M. Salomon Reinach has objected to Mannhardt's 

 interpretation that the latter has overlooked the 

 importance of striking with the branches of certain 

 definite trees or plants, or with thongs made from 

 the hides of certain animals. 1 It may be replied that 

 certain plants are endowed in the popular belief with 

 the property of drawing away or keeping at a distance, 

 witches and devils. This must be admitted. But 

 here again arises the difficulty, of disentangling notions 

 which have grown together for ages. The difficulty, 

 however, does not attach with the same persistence to 

 all. At Hildesheim the women and girls are struck at 

 Shrovetide with a small fir-tree or a stalk of rosemary. 2 

 In Altmark at the same period a band of men-servants 

 goes from farm to farm with music and beats with 

 birch- twigs first the mistress, then her daughters, and 

 lastly the servant-maids. 3 These are only samples of 



1 UAnthrop. xv. 52. 



2 Mannbardt, BK. 254. 3 Ibid. 256, 



