with tiger's teeth, many-coloured plumes, bells, and shells, executed a
wild dance for the purpose of exorcising the evil spirits; then all
fires were extinguished and a new light was struck by a man suspended by
his feet from a beam in the ceiling; "he did not touch the ground," we
are told, "in order to indicate that the light came from heaven."[14]
Again, newly born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango
they are not allowed to touch the earth.[15] Among the Iluvans of
Malabar the bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men
and then carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the
marriage booth; he may not touch the ground with his feet.[16] With the
Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, two districts of Dutch Borneo, it is a custom
that for a certain time after marriage neither bride nor bridegroom may
tread on the earth.[17] Warriors, again, on the war-path are surrounded,
so to say, by an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North
America might not sit on the bare ground the whole time they were out on
a warlike expedition.[18] In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to
many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the
earth with his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the
others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.[19] German
wiseacres recommended that when witches were led to the block or the
stake, they should not be allowed to touch the bare earth, and a reason
suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might
make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of _The
Striped-petticoat Philosophy_ in the eighteenth century ridicules the
idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed
to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep
significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a
chemical analysis of the timber of which the cart was built. To clinch
his argument he appeals to plain matter of fact and his own personal
experience. Not a single instance, he assures us with apparent