prove the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion,
there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for
exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed
against men or things. _Kar_ means to bewitch, as in German we have
_einem etwas anthun_, in low Latin _facturare_, in Italian
_fattucchiere_, and from _Kar_ we have _carmen_, a song or magic
formula. The goddess _Carmenta_, who was supposed to watch over
childbirth, derived her name from _carmen_, the magic formula which was
used to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as
_Carmenta_, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs were
termed _carmentes_.[38] The Sanscrit _maya_, meaning magic or illusion
and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from _man_, to think or know; from
_man_ we have _mantra_, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, _manthra_
is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse _manadh_,
incantation or juggling, and _moniti_ in Lithuanian. The linguistic
researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in
primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and
the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical
forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So
also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from
the same root.

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to use
exorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with the
noise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology,
and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the first
rude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms down
to our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to Pius
IX. by M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water against
the innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people the
cosmic spaces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of all
modern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fanciful
personification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song,
and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories,
and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of the
trumpets, as if these contained the spirit of God. The Patagonians, to
quote a single instanc