LUCKY AND UNLUCKY DA YS. 279 



most nourishing vegetables are fady, or tabooed, by certain 

 individuals or families. Thus, I was once warned that I 

 could not enter a certain house if I had amongst my property 

 any arrowroot prepared from the manioc root, as that was 

 f&dy to the owner of the house. 



Lucky and Unlucky Bays and Times. — Leaving now the 

 natural objects, animal and vegetable, with which superstitious 

 notions are associated in Madagascar, something may be said 

 about days and times. The wide-spread belief in lucky and 

 unlucky days is common to all the tribes in the island. The 

 Malagasy month is, of course, a lunar one ; indeed, the word 

 for moon and month are the same. In some parts of the 

 country there seems little use of a sevenfold division of time, 

 but the days from one new moon to another are called by 

 twelve names. These are the very same as the month 

 names, and include two or three days respectively, which 

 are distinguished as vava, vonto, and fara or vddy ("mouth 

 or opening," " swelling or increase," and " end or close ") of 

 that name. The Hova names for the months are all of 

 Arabic origin, while those used on the coast are compounds 

 of native words ; but curiously enough, although these words, 

 with slight variations in their form, are the same on both 

 the eastern and western sides of the island, they are not 

 synchronous. So that while the order of the twelve names is 

 the same, the month Volambita, for instance, is four months 

 later in the east of Madagascar than on the western side of 

 it. From the double meaning of month names, a very com- 

 plicated system of lucky and unlucky times was formerly 

 in use among the Hovas. Thus, out of the twenty-eight days 

 of the month, twelve only are lucky. The vava or first days 

 of some months were especially disastrous to the children 

 born on them, in some cases to the offspring of the people 

 generally, and in others, to those born of the family or in 

 the household of the sovereign. These were usually put to 

 death by placing the new-born infant's head, face downwards, 

 in a shallow wooden dish filled with lukewarm water. In 

 certain cases, however, this fate might be averted by making 

 prescribed offerings, or by undergoing an ordeal, as will be 

 presently described. On the other hand, some days were 



