Note 187.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Another method of dealing with a god or any supernatural being is to bind and imprison him, if you can catch him. This needs but a cursory mention here. It has been dealt with at some length by Mr William Crooke, who has ingeniously suggested that the Homeric story, already referred to, of the binding and imprisonment of Ares by Otus and Ephialtes owes its origin to this practice.187.1 In any case it is a common expedient for the laying of a ghost. I was privileged to live for some years in a house concerning which one of these ghost-laying traditions was told; and so far as my experience goes the expedient was entirely successful. It is still in use by medicine-men for delivering their clients from the persecution of troublesome spirits. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo “sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.”187.2