BOURKE] CEREMONIAL DUST. 537 
DUST FROM CHURCHES—ITS USE. 
The last ceremonial powder to be described is dust from the ground, 
as among some of the Australians who smear their heads with pipe- 
clay as a sign of mourning.! 
The French writers mention among the ceremonies of the Natchez 
one in which the Great Sun * gathered dust, which he threw back over 
his head, and turned successively to the four quarters of the world in 
repeating the same act of throwing dust.”” 
Mention is made of ‘“‘an old woman who acted as beadle” of a church, 
who “once brought tothe bedside of a dying person some of the sweep- 
ings from the floor of the altar, to ease and short. a very lingering 
death.” * 
Altar dust was a very ancient remedy for disease. Frommann says 
that, of the four tablets found in a temple of Esculapius, one bore this 
inscription: ‘Lucio atfecto lateris dolore; veniret et ex ara tollerit 
cinerem et una cum vino comisceret et poneret supra latus; et con- 
valuit,” ete. * 
It seems then that the medieval use of altar dust traces back to the 
Roman use of altar ashes. 
So hard is it to eradicate from the minds of savages ideas which have 
become ingratted upon their nature that we need not be surprised to 
read in the Jesuit relations of affairs in Canada (1696-1702) that, at 
the Mission of Saint Francis, where the Indians venerated the memory 
of a saintly woman of their own race, Catheraine Tagikoo-ita, ‘‘ pour 
guérir les malades que les rémeédes ordinaires ne soulagent point, on 
avale dans l’eau ou dans un bouillon un peu de la poussiére de son 
tombeau.” 
A few persons are to be found who endeavor to collect the dust from 
the feet of one hundred thousand Brahmins. One way of collecting this 
dust is by spreading a cloth before the door of a house where a great 
multitude of Brahmins are assembled at a feast, and, as each Brahmin 
comes out, he shakes the dust from his feet as he treads upon this cloth. 
Many miraculous cures are declared to have been performed upon per- 
sons using this dust.° 
A widow among the Armenian devil-worshipers is required ‘to strew 
dust on her head and to smear her face with clay.” © 
CLAY-EATING, 
The eating of clay would appear to have once prevailed all over the 
world. In places the custom has degenerated into ceremonial or is to 
‘Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 2, p. 273. 
*Gayarre, Louisiana, 1851, p. 308. 
3 Notes and Queries, 4th ser., vol. 8, p. 505. 
4 Tractatus de Fascinatione, Nuremberg, 1675, 197. 
® Southey, quoting Ward, in Buckle’s Common place Book, London, 1849, 2d ser., p. 521. 
*North American, October 27, 1888. 
