Note 4 — Religion and Superstitious Beliefs and Practices

There is a very common ceremony performed when natives, in travelling through the country, pass a spirit-haunted spot. The leader of the party turns round, and in a low voice tells the others that they are approaching the spot, whereupon they all become silent, though up to that point they have been chattering. The leader then takes a wisp of grass and ties it in a knot, and all the others do the same. They then walk on in silence for a period, which may be anything from five to fifteen minutes, after which, as they pass the spot, the leader turns round and throws his bunch of grass on the ground, and the others do the same. In this way they avert the danger and afterwards chatter as before.4 Another somewhat similar ceremony commences, like the former one, with silence; but, instead of throwing grass down as they pass the haunted spot, the visible sign of which in this case is a hole in the ground, the leader stops and looks round at the others, and then presses the palm of his hand down into the interior of the hole, and the others do the same; and after this all is safe and well, as in the former case. In travelling through the country these holes with numerous impressions of hands in them are to be seen; and you may in one day’s journey pass several of these signs of haunted places, of either or both sorts, within a comparatively short distance of one another. The hole in which the people put their hands may not have originally existed, and may have been produced by the oft-repeated pressure of hands on the ground as natives passed the haunted spot; but on this point I am unable to make any statement. Nor have I been able to ascertain what the difference, if any, is, or has been, between the places where they put grass and those in which they merely press the hands.