The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

Note. The Pleiades in Primitive Calendars. 373will put an end to the fast of Ramadan. 1044 The Hottentotsdate the seasons of the year by the rising and setting of the [317]Pleiades. 1045 An early Moravian missionary settled among theHottentots, reports that “at the return of the Pleiades these nativescelebrate an anniversary; as soon as these stars appear above theeastern horizon mothers will lift their little ones on their arms,and running up to elevated spots, will show to them those friendlystars, and teach them to stretch their little hands towards them.The people of a kraal will assemble to dance and to sing accordingto the old custom of their ancestors. The chorus always sings: ‘OTiqua, our Father above our heads, give rain to us, that the fruits(bulbs, etc.), uientjes, may ripen, and that we may have plentyof food, send us a good year.’ ” 1046 With some tribes of BritishCentral Africa the rising of the Pleiades early in the evening isthe signal for the hoeing to begin. 1047 To the Masai of EastAfrica the appearance of the Pleiades in the wrest is the sign ofthe beginning of the rainy season, which takes its name fromthe constellation. 1048 In Masailand the Pleiades are above thehorizon from September till about the seventeenth of May; andthe people, as they express it themselves, “know whether it willrain or not according to the appearance or non-appearance of thesix stars, called The Pleiades, which follow after one another likecattle. When the month which the Masai call ‘Of the Pleiades’ 1049arrives, and the Pleiades are no longer visible, they know thatthe rains are over. For the Pleiades set in that month and are not1044 Stephen Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London, 1833), p. 273.1045 Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's (Breslau, 1872). p. 340.1046 Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi(London, 1881), p. 43, quoting the Moravian missionary George Schmidt, whowas sent out to the Cape of Good Hope in 1737.1047 H. S. Stannus, “Notes on some Tribes of British Central Africa,” Journalof the R. Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) p. 289.1048 M. Merker, Die Masai (Berlin, 1894), pp. 155, 198.1049 May.