PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 135 



earlier stage the rite was held to cause what it is 

 taken at last only to discover : another example of 

 magic dwindling into divination. Mr. Crooke also 

 refers to the Ahir legend of Lorik, localised in 

 the Mirzapur District, and related in his Folklore 

 of Northern India. In that legend, the hero tests 

 His still maiden-wife's chastity by stretching a loin- 

 cloth across the entrance to his camp. Other women 

 stepped over it, but her delicacy was so excessive that 

 she refused to her husband's satisfaction. 1 We have 

 already learned something of the virtue of loin-cloths 

 in putting an end to barrenness. 



To recur for a moment to the ceremonies at sacred 

 stones : on the islands of Ambon and Uliase, in the 

 East Indies, barren women often place offerings on the 

 sacred stone of the commune and afterwards, for they 

 are supposed to be Christians, go to the church to 

 pray. 2 There is a miraculous stone on the sacred hill 

 of Nikko in Japan at which women who want to 

 become mothers throw stones, sure of having their 

 ambition gratified if they succeed in striking it. A 

 traveller recording the custom says maliciously they 

 seem very clever at the game. In the Uyeno Park at 

 Tokio is a seated statue of Buddha. Whoso succeeds 

 in flinging a stone upon the sacred knees attains the 

 same result. At Whitchurch, near Cardiff, in the 

 eighteenth century, a woman animated by the wish for 

 children would go on Easter Monday to the parish 

 churchyard, armed with two dozen tennis-balls, half of 

 them covered with white leather and the other half 

 with black, and would throw them over the church. 

 As they fell on the other side the villagers no doubt 

 1 Crooke, F. L. N. Ind. 11.161. 2 Riedel, 75. 



