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TAE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1895.
had on Shrove Tuesday to take an oath on an old shoe.36 In the north of England (1825), to dream of their true love, girls laid their shoes soles up under their pillows.97 Similarly, Dorsetshire girls put their shoes by their bedside in the form of a T or cross, saying: -
"Hoping this night my true love to see,
I place my shoes in the form of a T."98 In China and the Malay Peninsula, no iron tools, leather, or umbrellas, may be brought into a mine for fear of annoying the earth spirits. The Brâhman worships sitting on the skin of the black antelope. The Hindu ascetic dresses in a deer or tiger skin. The skin of the vietiin ram was drawn over the statue of Jupiter Ammon. The oracle-seeker at Delphi slept in the victim's skin. The ancient Scot cooked his meat in the victim's skin. To the early inan the hide was a great guardian. It formed his clothes, his armour, and his means for carrying food, drink and coin.
Apart from its usefalness, the source of the holiness or evils-oaring power of leather is that the spirit of the animal to which it belonged lives on in the skin. So, in Tibet, the greatest of oaths is for the swearer to lay a Scripture on his head, and, sitting on the reeking hide of an ox, to eat part of the ox's heart.100
(To be continued.).
FOLKLORE IN SOUTHERN INDIA. BY PANDIT 8. M. NATESA SASTRI, B.A., M.F.L.S.
No. 39. - Devoted Vatsalá. In a certain village there lived a Brahman named Patanibhagya. He had an affectionate wife named Vatsalá. She was a very good woman, and was equally kind to all the members of her household, and especially to her mother-in-law, the mother of Patanibhagya. She was so sincerely attached to her that Vatsala's attachment to her mother-in-law became proverbial thronghout the village. Some people regarded it as madness, and began to doubt as to how she would survive lier inother-in-law, as, in all probability, the old woman would die first. But tie niore considerate thought Vatsala to be merely a little wanting in common sense, and that was the real truth. She considered her mother-in-law as a goddess, and, apart from her sincere devotion to her, she was under the strong belief that no daughters-in-law could live in the world without mothers-in-law to guide and rule them. Every morning, as she rune up from her bed, she first worshipped her mother-in-law, consulted her taste in cooking the liousehold meal, prepared only those dishes which she ordered, served her meal first, and then attended to the table of others. Thus it was with Vatsalá; and her motherin-law, on lier part. as, of course, was natural, was deeply attached to her. Thus passed several happy years. But time must work its changes, and the old people must die giving place to new, and the end of the mother-in-law approached, and she passed away in the arms of her daughter-in-law. The funeral rites followed and after a time the house revived from the mourning. It was a natural death in good old age. There was not much sorrow felt in the family. But to Vatsala the world became a nonentity. She had nothing now to care for in the world. Her monitor was no more. Who would receive henceforth her devotions? Who would direct her in her household duties? These became great riddles to her. Patanibhagva advised her to cheer up, but to no effect. His sound arguments were of no avail to sooth, the sorrows of Vatsala, for she had not that quota of common sense, -- the general property of all : wint she wanted was some tangible and material object to be respected as her mother-in-law.
"I must have a mother-in-law. Give me a mother-in-law, my dear husband," mourned Vistsala.
* Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 85. ** Dyor's Folk-Lord, p. 185. 100 Waddell's Buddhism in Tibet, p. 569.
1 The Denham Tracts, Vol. II. p. 279.
Journal Straits Branch R. A. Soc. p. 82.
