older notion, in the course of a generally reasonable argument in favour of games of chance when played for refreshment and not for money. I have heard,' he says, 'from them that have skill in such things, there are such strange chances, such promoting of a hand by fancy and little arts of geomancy, such constant winning on one side, such unreasonable losses on the other, and these strange contingencies produce such horrible effects, that it is not improbable that God hath permitted the conduct of such games of chance to the devil, who will order them so where he can do most mischief; but, without the instrumentality of money, he could do nothing at all.' With what vitality the notion of supernatural interference in games of chance even now survives in Europe, is well shown by the still flourishing arts of gambler's magic. The folk-lore of our own day continues to teach that a Good Friday's egg is to be carried for luck in gaming, and that a turn of one's chair will turn one's fortune; the Tyrolese knows the charm for getting from the devil the gift of winning at cards and dice; there is still a great sale on the continent for books which show how to discover, from dreams, good numbers for the lottery; and the Lusatian peasant will even hide his lotterytickets under the altar-cloth that they may receive the blessing with the sacrament, and so stand a better chance of winning.2

Arts of divination and games of chance are so similar in principle, that the very same instrument passes from one use to the other. This appears in the accounts, very suggestive from this point of view, of the Polynesian art of divination by spinning the 'niu' or coco-nut. In the Tongan Islands, in Mariner's time, the principal purpose for which this was solemnly performed was to enquire if a sick person would recover; prayer was made aloud to the patron god of the family to direct the nut, which was then spun, and its direction at rest indicated the intention of the

1 Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium,' in Works, vol. xiv. p. 337.

2 See Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' pp. 95, 115, 178.

god. On other occasions, when the coco-nut was merely spun for amusement, no prayer was made, and no credit given to the result. Here the serious and the sportive use of this rudimentary teetotum are found together. In the Samoan Islands, however, at a later date, the Rev. G. Turner finds the practice passed into a different stage. A party sit in a circle, the coco-nut is spun in the middle, and the oracular answer is according to the person towards whom the monkey-face of the fruit is turned when it stops; but whereas formerly the Samoans used this as an art of divination to discover thieves, now they only keep it up as a way of casting lots, and as a game of forfeits. It is in favour of the view of serious divination being the earlier use, to notice that the New Zealanders, though they have no coco-nuts, keep up a trace of the time when their ancestors in the tropical islands had them and divined with them; for it is the well-known Polynesian word 'niu,' i.e. coco-nut, which is still retained in use among the Maoris for other kinds of divination, especially that performed with sticks. Mr. Taylor, who points out this curiously neat piece of ethnological evidence, records another case to the present purpose. A method of divination was to clap the hands together while a proper charm was repeated; if the fingers went clear in, it was favourable, but a check was an ill omen; on the question of a party crossing the country in war-time, the locking of all the fingers, or the stoppage of some or all, were naturally interpreted to mean clear passage, meeting a travelling party, or being stopped altogether. This quaint little symbolic art of divination seems now only to survive as a game; it is called 'puni-puni." A similar connexion between divination and gambling is shown by more familiar instruments. The hucklebones or astragali were used in divination in ancient Rome, being converted into rude dice by numbering the four sides, and

6

1 Mariner, 'Tonga Islands,' vol. ii. p. 239; Turner, Polynesia,' p. 214; Williams, Fiji,' vol. i. p. 228. Compare Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 231. 2 R. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 206, 318, 387.

even when the Roman gambler used the tali for gambling, he would invoke a god or his mistress before he made his throw. Such implements are now mostly used for play, but, nevertheless, their use for divination was by no means confined to the ancient world, for hucklebones are mentioned in the 17th century among the fortune-telling instruments which young girls divined for husbands with, and Negro sorcerers still throw dice as a means of detecting thieves.3 Lots serve the two purposes equally well. The Chinese gamble by lots for cash and sweetmeats, whilst they also seriously take omens by solemn appeals to the lots kept ready for the purpose in the temples, and professional diviners sit in the market-places, thus to open the future to their customers. Playing-cards are still in European use for divination. That early sort known as 'tarots' which the French dealer's license to sell 'cartes et tarots' still keeps in mind, is said to be preferred by fortune-tellers to the common kind; for the tarot-pack, with its more numerous and complex figures, lends itself to a greater variety of omens. In these cases, direct history fails to tell us whether the use of the instrument for omen or play came first. In this respect, the history of the Greek 'kottabos' is instructive. This art of divination consisted in flinging wine out of a cup into a metal basin some distance off without spilling any, the thrower saying or thinking his mistress's name, and judging from the clear or dull splash of the wine on the metal what his fortune in love would be; but in time the magic passed out of the process, and it became a mere game of dexterity played for a prize. If this be a typical case, and the rule be relied on that the serious use precedes the playful, then games of chance may be considered survivals in principle or detail from

1 Smith's Dic., art. 'talus.'

2 Brand, Popular Antiquities,' vol. ii. p. 412.

3 D. & C. Livingstone, Exp. to Zambesi,' p. 51.

* Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. pp. 108, 285–7; see 384; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. pp. 76, 125.

5 Smith's Dic., art. 'cottibos.'

corresponding processes of magic-as divination in sport made gambling in earnest.

Seeking more examples of the lasting on of fixed habits among mankind, let us glance at a group of time-honoured traditional sayings, old saws which have a special interest as cases of survival. Even when the real signification of these phrases has faded out of men's minds, and they have sunk into sheer nonsense, or have been overlaid with some modern superficial meaning, still the old formulas are handed on, often gaining more in mystery than they lose in sense. We may hear people talk of 'buying a pig in a poke,' whose acquaintance with English does not extend to knowing what a poke is. And certainly those who wish to say that they have a great mind to something, and who express themselves by declaring that they have a month's mind' to it, can have no conception of the hopeless nonsense they are making of the old term of the month's mind,' which was really the monthly service for a dead man's soul, whereby he was kept in mind or remembrance. The proper sense of the phrase 'sowing his wild oats' seems generally lost in our modern use of it. No doubt it once implied that these ill weeds would spring up in later years, and how hard it would then be to root them out. Like the enemy in the parable, the Scandinavian Loki, the mischief-maker, is proverbially said in Jutland to sow his oats (nu saaer Lokken sin havre'), and the name of 'Loki's oats' (Lokeshavre) is given in Danish to the wild oats (avena fatua).1 Sayings which have their source in some obsolete custom or tale, of course lie especially open to such ill-usage. It has become mere English to talk of an unlicked cub' who 'wants licking into shape,' while few remember the explanation of these phrases from Pliny's story that bears are born as eyeless, hairless, shapeless lumps of white flesh, and have afterwards to be licked into form.2

Again, in relics of old magic and religion, we have some

1 Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 222.

2 Plin. viii. 54.

times to look for a deeper sense in conventional phrases than they now carry on their face, or for a real meaning in what now seems nonsense. How an ethnographical record may become embodied in a popular saying, a Tamil proverb now current in South India will show perfectly. On occasions when A hits B, and C cries out at the blow, the bystanders will say, "Tis like a Koravan eating asafœtida when his wife lies in!' Now a Koravan belongs to a low race in Madras, and is defined as 'gipsy, wanderer, assdriver, thief, eater of rats, dweller in mat tents, fortuneteller, and suspected character;' and the explanation of the proverb is, that whereas native women generally eat asafoetida as strengthening medicine after childbirth, among the Koravans it is the husband who eats it to fortify himself on the occasion. This, in fact, is a variety of the worldwide custom of the 'couvade,' where at childbirth the husband undergoes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed for days. It appears that the Koravans are among the races practising this quaint custom, and that their more civilized Tamil neighbours, struck by its oddity, but unconscious of its now-forgotten meaning, have taken it up into a proverb.1 Let us now apply the same sort of ethnographical key to dark sayings in our own modern language. The maxim, 'a hair of the dog that bit you' was originally neither a metaphor nor a joke, but a matterof-fact recipe for curing the bite of a dog, one of the many instances of the ancient homœopathic doctrine, that what hurts will also cure: it is mentioned in the Scandinavian Edda, 'Dog's hair heals dog's bite.'2 The phrase 'raising the wind' now passes as humorous slang, but it once, in all seriousness, described one of the most dreaded of the sorcerer's arts, practised especially by the Finland wizards, of whose uncanny power over the weather our sailors have not to this day forgotten their old terror. The ancient

1 From a letter of Mr. H. J. Stokes, Negapatam, to Mr. F. M. Jennings. General details of the Couvade in Early History of Mankind,' p. 293. 2 Hávamál, 138.