Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

MILL-WHEEL WATER. RAIN-MAKING. 593
such water omaya, rebound, from omanuti, omakhnuti, to rebound.
Vuk, under the word, observes that women go early on St.
George s day (Apr. 23), to catch it, especially off a small brookmill
(kashitchara), and bathe in it. Some carry it home the
evening before, and sprinkle it with all manner of broken greens :
they think all evil and harm will then glance off their bodies like,
the water off the millwheel (Vuk sub v. Jurjev dan). Similar,
though exactly the reverse, is the warning not to flirt
the water
off your hands after washing in the morning, else you flirt away
your luck for the day (Sup. I, 21).
Not only brooks and rivers (p. 585), but rain also was in the
childlike faith of antiquity supposed to be let fall out of bowls by
gods of the sky; and riding witches are still believed to carry
pitchers, out of which they pour storm and hail upon the plains,
instead of the rain or dew that trickled down before. l
When the heavens were shut, and the fields languished in
drought, the granting of rain depended in the first instance on a
deity, on Donar, or Mary and Elias, who were supplicated accord
ingly (pp. 173-6). 2 But in addition to that, a special charm
was resorted to, which infallibly procured rainwater/ and in a
measure compelled the gods to grant it. A little girl, completely
undressed and led outside the town, had to dig up henbane (bilsenkraut,
OHG. pilisa, hyoscyamus) with the little finger of her
right hand, and tie it to the little toe of her right foot ; she was
then solemnly conducted by the other maidens to the nearest
river, and splashed with water. This ceremony, reported by
Burchard of Worms (Sup. C, 20P) and therefore still perhaps in
use on the Ehine or in Hesse in the llth cent., comes to us with
the more weight, as, with characteristic differences which put all
direct borrowing out of the question, it is still in force among
Servians and Mod. Greeks. Vuk, under the word dodole/
describes the Servian custom. A girl, called the. dodola, is stript
naked, but so wrapt up in grass, herbs and flowers, that nothing of
1 The Peruvians believe in a rain-goddess, who sits in the clouds with a pitcher
of ivater, ready to pour it out at the right time if she ; delays, her brother with
thunder and lightning smites the pitcher in pieces. Garcilaso de la Vega s Histt.
Incarum peruanorum 11, 27 conf. ; Talvj s Characteristik der volkslieder, p. 126.
2 I will here add, from Anton s Coll. on the Slavs, the substance of a Walla-
chian song, which the children sing when the corn is endangered by drought :
Papaluga (father Luga), climb into heaven, open its doors, and send down rain
from above, that well the rye may grow !