Rest Days; A Sociological Sfttdy 6y 



notions have played their part in generating ideas of tabooed or 

 nnhicky days. Thus the Akikuyu of British East Africa, who 

 regard the moon as the sun's wife, beHeve that when the moon 

 comes to maturity the sun fights with her and kills her. While 

 she is "dead," as the natives say, no journeys are undertaken, 

 no sacrifices offered, no sheep killed. It is further considered 

 that goats and sheep will not bear on the day after the disap- 

 pearance of the moon.^*^ Some tribes of equatorial Africa, ac- 

 cording to the account given by Du Chaillu, believe that the new 

 moon is especially ill-humored and hungry on the day she emerges 

 from darkness. " She looks down over our country," the natives 

 declared, " and seeks whom she can devour, and we poor black 

 men are very much afraid of her on that account, and we hide 

 ourselves from her sight on that night." People who die between 

 new and full moon are said to be those whom the new moon 

 saw at this fateful time, in spite of all the precautions they took.^^ 

 The Canarese of Hyderabad and Mysore do not work in the 

 fields on the last day of the month. If a child is born on the 

 day before the new moon this is a sign that some one in the 

 family will die. If a cow or a buffalo has a calf at such a time, 

 it must be sold. On the evening before new moon or at new 

 moon no one may eat cooked food. The new moon is con- 

 secrated to the dead.^- The ancient Greeks paid special regard 

 to the period, reckoned at three days, between the disappearance 

 of the old and the reappearance of the new moon. At Athens 

 these days were called do-cAivot because the moonlight was ex- 

 tinguished at this time. They were classed with the other 

 d7ro(/)pa8es yjp.ipai or unfavorable days {supra), when no meetings 

 of the senate were held, when the tribunals of justice did not 

 render decisions, and when private individuals abstained from all 



^ W. S. and Katherine Routledge, IVith a Prehistoric People, London, 

 1910, p. 284. 



*' P. B. Du Chaillu, In African Forest and Jungle, New York, 1903, pp. 

 96 sq. For the Abyssinian beliefs see Littmann, in Archiv filr Religions- 

 ivissenschaft, 1908, xi. 314 sq. For the Arab superstitions see Goldziher, 

 ibid., 1910, xiii. 44 n.* 



"Gengnagel, in Ausland, 1891, pp. 871 sq. 



67 



