THE BASIS OF MAGIC IN FISHING 29 
out, “ What is this? I fear I am caught.” Such procedure 
is believed to attract the fish efficaciously and to ensure a 
good haul.! 
Scotland not a century ago witnessed pantomimes of similar 
character, according to the Rev. J. Macdonald, minister of 
Reay. Fishermen, when dogged by ill luck, threw one of their 
number overboard and then hauled him out of the water, 
exactly as if he were a fish. This Jonah-like ruse apparently 
induced appetite, for ‘‘ soon after trout, or sillock, would begin 
to nibble.” 
The comparative ethnologist detects in all these cases an 
attempt to establish direct relations between the hunter or the 
fisher and his quarry. Primitive man in search for food 
frequently seeks to establish an impalpable but in his eyes very 
serviceable connection between himself and the object of his 
quest by working a likeness of his desired prey. 
Such a likeness, according to the doctrine that a stmulacrum 
is actively en rapport with that which it represents, bestows 
on its possessor power over the original—“ l’auteur ou le pos- 
sesseur d’une image peut influencer ce qu’elle représente.’’ ? 
The cases are simply the commonplaces of homcepathic or 
imitative magic. 
We find that just as the savage attempts to appease the 
ghosts of men he has slain, so he essays to propitiate the 
spirits of the animals and fish he has killed: for this purpose 
elaborate ceremonies of propitiation are widely observed.4 
Of similar character and intent are the taboos observed by 
fishermen before the season opens, and the purifications per- 
formed on returning with their booty. 
Magic, exercised not so much to propitiate as to avoid 
offending some power—in the following instance the element . 
of water—originated the rule (existent among the Eskimos | 
fifty years ago) that forbade during the salmon season any 
1 E, Aymonier, Cochinchene Frangoise, No. 16, p. 157, as quoted by Frazer. 
va S. Reinach, L’Anthropologie (1903), p. 257. 
3 Such is the solution which Bates (Ancient Egyptian Fishing, 1917, p. 
205) offers of the presence in the pre-dynastic Egyptian graves of the numerous 
slate palettes bearing the profile of a fish or beast. 
4 Frazer, Golden Bough. Taboo, Part ii. (London, rgtz), p. 191 ff. 
