TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 633 
November 23: in North Worcestershire on St. Katharine’s, November 25. The 
name varies accordingly. The areas of ‘Clementing’ and ‘Catterning’ seem 
to be determined by the customs of the local trades and the cults of patron 
saints. The dole probably belongs to the economic side of the festival, and was 
a sequel to the annual settlement of accounts. 
The observances as practised to-day show traces of early agricultural custom, 
of successive importations of foreign culture, and of the growth and decay of 
early economic institutions. 
4. Evidence for the Custom of Killing the King in Ancient Egypt. 
By Miss M. A. Murray. 
Dr. Frazer deduced the general practice of killing the King: from literary 
sources, from legend, and from ceremonial survivals; a theory not at first 
received by all, but triumphantly confirmed in the end by Dr. Seligmann’s 
discoveries among the Shilluks of the Nile Valley. In the same way we follow 
‘the converging lines of evidence’ in ancient Egypt. 
The evidence for human sacrifice in ancient Egypt is conclusive, in spite 
of what Herodotus says. As regards the cult of Osiris, with which this paper 
mainly dealt, the theory of the vegetation spirit (the theory so despised by 
Plutarch) is the only one which so far covers all the facts in Egypt, as Dr. 
Frazer has shown it to cover the facts in other countries. 
The subject is divisible into five parts: (1) the parallels in neighbouring 
countries; (2) the meaning of the name Osiris (the identification of the King 
with Osiris being already established); (3) the literary evidence—from the 
Pyramid Texts, from the Book of the Dead, and from legends both Egyptian 
and Arab; (4) the representations in Art, i.e., the Sed-festival and the Drowned 
Men of Dendur; (5) the modern survivals. A summary of the work which has 
been done bearing on this subject by Frazer, Sethe, Mdéller, Petrie, Seligmann, 
and Moret showed what was old and what was new in this paper, and made it 
possible to offer a few suggestions as to the lines on which further research 
might be pursued. 
5. Hook-swinging in India.2 By J. Tl. Powe. 
Hook-swinging, a rite in which the devotee is suspended by means of hooks 
passed through his back, has in certain parts of India been more or less common, 
but is now disappearing. 
The ceremony is still practised in certain villages of Chota Nagpur. Two 
hooks with several yards of rope attached to each are inserted in either side of 
the victim’s back. He is then conducted to a raised platform or staging upon 
which he is bound to a long cross-pole pivoted on a tall upright post in such a 
way as to admit of his being first raised to the necessary height and then 
rotated. The whole of the man’s weight is borne by as much of the fleshy part 
of his back as is taken up by the hooks, and he is tied close up to the cross-pole 
without the ropes being passed round his body. 
Hook-swinging is frequently recorded from the sixteenth century onwards, 
and a careful examination of these records goes to show that it is a Dravidian or 
aboriginal, and not a Hindu rite. 
No satisfactory account of its origin and significance appears yet to have 
been given, the one suggested by Dr. J. G. Frazer in a note on ‘Swinging as a 
Magical Rite’ appended to ‘The Dying God’ being apparently based on the 
assumption that hook-swinging is synonymous with swinging on hooks, whereas 
this is not the case. Suspension and rotation are the essential features of the 
ceremony. 
There are grounds for supposing hook-swinging to be a commutated form of 
human sacrifice. Not only is it found in the area in which we might expect to 
meet with such a rudimentary form, but the circumstances in which it is 
* To be published in Man. 
? To be published in Folklore. 
