CHAPTER XV 
Bororo Superstitions—The Bororo Language — Bororo Music 
T HE Rororos were superstitious to a degree. They 
believed in evil spirits. Some of these, they said, 
inhabited the earth; others were invisible and lived 
“ all over the air,” to use their expression. The aerial 
ones were not so bad as those on earth. It was to the 
latter that their invocations were made, not directly, but 
through a special individual called the harih, a kind of 
medicine man, who, shouting at the top of his voice while 
gazing skyward, offered gifts of food, meat, fish, and 
grain to the boppe or spirits invoked. There were two 
kinds of bcirili: a superior one with abnormal powers, and 
an inferior one. The harih eventually pretended that the 
spirit had entered his body. He then began to devour 
the food himself, in order to appease the hunger of his 
internal guest and become on friendly terms with him. 
The wife of the harih, who on those occasions stood by 
his side, was generally asked to partake of the meal, but 
only after the harih had half chewed the various viands, 
when he gracefully took them with his fingers from his 
own mouth and placed them between the expectant lips 
of his better half. She sometimes accepted them, some¬ 
times not. All according to her appetite, I suppose, and 
perhaps to the temporary terms on which she was that day 
with her husband. 
The Bororos, curiously enough, spoke constantly of 
the hippopotamus — ape, as they called it—and even 
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