startling, may now be held to have won acceptance from
science. This is what the Dene Hareskins call the Sleep of the
Shadow, that is, the Magical Sleep, the hypnotic trance. Savages
are well acquainted with this abnormal condition, and with means of
producing it, and it is at the bottom of all their more mysterious
non-sympathetic magic. Before Mesmer, and even till within the last
thirty years, this phenomenon, too, would have been scouted; now it
is a commonplace of physiology. For such physical symptoms as
introverted eyes in seers we need look no further than Martin's
account of the second-sighted men, in his book on the Hebrides. The
phenomenon of anaesthesia, insensibility to pain, in trance, is not
unfamiliar to science, but that red-hot coals should not burn a seer
or medium is, perhaps, less easily accepted; while science,
naturally, does not recognise the clairvoyance, and still less the
'spiritual' attendants of the seer in the Sleep of the Shadow.
Nevertheless, classical, modern, and savage spiritualists are agreed
in reporting these last and most startling phenomena of the magic
slumber in certain cases.

Beginning with what may be admitted as possible, we find that the
Dene Hareskins practise a form of healing under hypnotic or mesmeric
treatment. {38} The physician (who is to be pitied) begins by a
three days' fast. Then a 'magic lodge,' afterwards to be described,
is built for him in the forest. Here he falls into the Sleep of the
Shadow; the patient is then brought before him. In the lodge, the
patient confesses his sins to his doctor, and when that ghostly
friend has heard all, he sings and plays the tambour, invoking the
spirit to descend on the sick man. The singing of barbarous songs
was part of classical spiritualism; the Norse witch, in The Saga of
Eric the Red, insisted on the song of Warlocks being chanted, which
secured the attendance of 'many powerful spirits'; and modern
spiritualists enliven their dark and dismal programme by songs.
Presently the Hareskin physician blows on the patient, and bids the
malady quit him. He also makes 'passes' over the invalid till he
produces trance; the spirit is supposed to assist. Then the spirit
extracts the _sin_ which caused the suffering, and the illness is
cured, after the patient has been awakened by a loud cry. In all
this affair of confession one is inclined to surmise a mixture of
Catholic practice, imitated from the missionaries. It