ved or their
sins atoned for?

Simaetha, it will be remembered, in the second Idyll of Theocritus,
curses her faithless lover Delphis, and as she melts his waxen image she
prays that HE TOO MAY MELT. All this is of the nature of Magic, and is
independent of and generally more primitive than Theology or Philosophy.
Yet it interests us because it points to a firm instinct in early
man--to which I have already alluded--the instinct of his unity and
continuity with the rest of creation, and of a common life so close
that his lightest actions may cause a far-reaching reaction in the world
outside.

Man, then, independently of any belief in gods, may assist the arrival
of Spring by magic ceremonies. If you want the Vegetation to appear you
must have rain; and the rain-maker in almost all primitive tribes has
been a MOST important personage. Generally he based his rites on quite
fanciful associations, as when the rain-maker among the Mandans wore a
raven's skin on his head (bird of the storm) or painted his shield with
red zigzags of lightning (1); but partly, no doubt, he had observed
actual facts, or had had the knowledge of them transmitted to him--as,
for instance that when rain is impending loud noises will bring about
its speedy downfall, a fact we moderns have had occasion to notice on
battlefields. He had observed perhaps that in a storm a specially loud
clap of thunder is generally followed by a greatly increased downpour
of rain. He had even noticed (a thing which I have often verified in
the vicinity of Sheffield) that the copious smoke of fires will generate
rain-clouds--and so quite naturally he concluded that it was his smoking
SACRIFICES which had that desirable effect. So far he was on the track
of elementary Science. And so he made "bull-roarers" to imitate the
sound of wind and the blessed rain-bringing thunder, or clashed
great bronze cymbals together with the same object. Bull-voices and
thunder-drums and the clashing of cymbals were used in this connection
by the Greeks, and are mentioned by Aeschylus (2); but the bull-roarer,
in the form of a rhombus of wood whirled at the end of a string, seems
to be known, or to have been known, all over the world. It is described
with some care by Mr. Andrew Lang in his Custom and Myth (pp. 29-44),
where he says "it is found always as a sacred instrument employed in
religious mysteries, in New Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, ancient
Greece, and Africa."

(1) See C