TRANSFORMATION 233 



around the bed of a sorcerer sick unto death, people 

 incessantly offering gifts and endeavouring to make 

 themselves useful. 1 In the same spirit one of the 

 prescriptions of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers directs a 

 woman who has miscarried to go to the barrow of a 

 deceased man and step thrice over it with certain 

 words conjuring the effects of the miscarriage. 2 The 

 Gipsy women in Hungary however require a material 

 vehicle for the transfer of the life they seek, when at 

 waxing moon they eat grass from the grave of a 

 pregnant woman. 3 So among the Southern Slavs the 

 woman goes to a pregnant woman's grave, calls upon 

 her by name, bites some of the grass off the grave, 

 calls upon her again, conjuring her to give her her 

 child, and then taking some earth from the grave 



1 Paulitschke, ii. 28. In a later passage merely the gift of sooth- 

 saying is spoken of as thus obtained for the first-born among the 

 children of these busy-bodies (Ibid. 61) ; but the passage cited above 

 expressly connects the practice with the belief in Scelenwanderung, 

 and speaks of receiving the sorcerer's machtigen Geist. It is not 

 clear whether the people referred to are men. If so, there has 

 probably been a transfer of function from women similar to that in 

 the case of marchen influenced by Islam, where the magical fruit is 

 sometimes eaten by the husband and not by the wife (Leg. Perseus, 

 i. 79). The Mohammedanism of these tribes is, however, somewhat 

 superficial. 



Many of the Nilotic tribes bury the dead outside the door of the 

 hut in which they had lived. The Soudanese soldiers employed in 

 Uganda have been required to abandon this practice in favour of 

 burial in a cemetery. They have " more or less accepted the order," 

 save in the case of children, " who are often buried just outside the 

 hut of their parents ; and whenever Soudanese lines have been 

 moved from one place to another " a number of these little graves 

 has generally been discovered (Major Meldon, Journ. Afr. Soc. vii. 

 r2 7 ). 



2 Sax. Leechd. iii. 66. 



8 Ploss, Weib. i. 439, citing von Wlislocki. 



