138 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



cliildren^ who indeed thorouglily appreciate and enjoy it, — the 



rattle. 



" Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, 

 Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw." 



When the dignity of manhood is to be conferred on a Sia- 

 mese prince by cutting his hair and giving him a new dress, 

 they shake a rattle before him as he goes, to show that till the 

 ceremony is performed, he is still a child. As if to keep us 

 continually in mind of his place in history, the savage magician 

 clings with wonderful pertinacity to the same instrument. It 

 is a bunch of hoofs tied together, a blown bladder with peas in 

 it, or, more often than anything else, a calabash with stones or 

 shells or bones inside. It is his great instrument in curing the 

 sick, the accompaniment of his medicine-songs, and the symbol 

 of his profession, among the Red Indians, among the South 

 American tribes, and in Africa. For the magician's work, it 

 holds its own against far higher instruments, the whistles and 

 pipes of the American, and even the comparatively high-class 

 flutes, harmonicons, and stringed instruments of the negro.^ 

 Next above the rattle in the scale of musical instruments is the 

 drum, and it too has been to a great extent adopted by the 

 sorcerer, and, often painted with magic figures, it is an impor- 

 tant implement to him in Lapland, in Siberia, among some 

 North American and some South American tribes.^ The 

 clinging together of savage sorcery with these childish instru- 

 ments, is in full consistency with the theory that both belong to 

 the infancy of mankind. With less truth to nature and his- 

 tory, the modern spirit-rapper, though his bringing up the 

 spirits of the dead by doing hocus-pocus under a table or in a 

 dark room is so like the proceedings of the African mganga 

 or the Red Indian medicine-man, has cast oS" the proper ac- 

 companiments of his trade, and juggles with fiddles and ac- 

 cordions. 



1 Catlin, vol. i. p. 39, 109. Schoolcraft, part i. p. 310 ; part ii. p. 179. Char- 

 levoix, vol. vi. p. 187. Burton, ' Central Africa,' vol. i. p. 44 ; vol. ii. p. 295. 

 Pnrchas, vol. iv. p. 1339, 1520, etc. etc. Dobrizhoffer, vol. ii. p. 72. Klemm, 

 C.a., vol. ii. p. 169, 171-2. See Strabo, xv. 1, 22. 



2 Eegnard, ' Lapland,' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 168, 180. Eavenstein, p. 93. 

 Molina, Hist, of Chile, E. Tr. ; London, 1809, vol. ii. p. 106, etc. etc. 



