Section 4. The Magical Control of the Wind.
ONCE more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still. When the day is
hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone which he has chanced to find in an
animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times round it, and ties it to a stick. He then
waves the stick about, uttering a spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow. In order to
procure a cool wind for nine days the stone should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or
beast and then presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three turns contrary to the
course of the luminary. If a Hottentot desires the wind to drop, he takes one of his fattest
skins and hangs it on the end of a pole, in the belief that by blowing the skin down the
wind will lose all its force and must itself fall. Fuegian wizards throw shells against the wind
to make it drop. The natives of the island of Bibili, off New Guinea, are reputed to make
wind by blowing with their mouths. In stormy weather the Bogadjim people say, "The Bibili
folk are at it again, blowing away." Another way of making wind which is practised in New
Guinea is to strike a "wind-stone" lightly with a stick; to strike it hard would bring on a
hurricane. So in Scotland witches used to raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and
beating it thrice on a stone, saying:
"I knok this rag upone this stane
To raise the wind in the divellis name,
It sall not lye till I please againe." 1
In Greenland a woman in child-bed and for some time after delivery is supposed to
possess the power of laying a storm. She has only to go out of doors, fill her mouth with
air, and coming back into the house blow it out again. In antiquity there was a family at
Corinth which enjoyed the reputation of being able to still the raging wind; but we do not
know in what manner its members exercised a useful function, which probably earned for
them a more solid recompense than mere repute among the seafaring population of the
isthmus. Even in Christian times, under the reign of Constantine, a certain Sopater suffered
death at Constantinople on a charge of binding the winds by magic, because it happened
that the corn-ships of Egypt and Syria were detained afar off by calms or head-winds, to
the rage and disappointment of the hungry Byzantine rabble. Finnish wizards used to sell
wind to storm-stayed mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the
first knot, a moderate wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if the third, a
hurricane. Indeed the Esthonians, whose country is divided from Finland only by an arm of
the sea, still believe in the magical powers of their northern neighbours. The bitter winds
that blow in spring from the north and north-east, bringing ague and rheumatic
inflammations in their train, are set down by the simple Esthonian peasantry to the
machinations of the Finnish wizards and witches. In particular they regard with special
dread three days in spring to which they give the name of Days of the Cross; one of them
falls on the Eve of Ascension Day. The people in the neighbourhood of Fellin fear to go out
on these days lest the cruel winds from Lappland should smite them dead. A popular
Esthonian song runs:
Wind of the Cross! rushing and mighty!
Heavy the blow of thy wings sweeping past!
Wild wailing wind of misfortune and sorrow,
Wizards of Finland ride by on the blast. 2
It is said, too, that sailors, beating up against the wind in the Gulf of Finland, sometimes
see a strange sail heave in sight astern and overhaul them hand over hand. On she comes
with a cloud of canvas-all her studding-sails out-right in the teeth of the wind, forging her
way through the foaming billows, dashing back the spray in sheets from her cutwater, every
sail swollen to bursting, every rope strained to cracking. Then the sailors know that she
hails from Finland. 3
The art of tying up the wind in three knots, so that the more knots are loosed the
stronger will blow the wind, has been attributed to wizards in Lappland and to witches in
Shetland, Lewis, and the Isle of Man. Shetland seamen still buy winds in the shape of
knotted handkerchiefs or threads from old women who claim to rule the storms. There are
said to be ancient crones in Lerwick now who live by selling wind. Ulysses received the
winds in a leathern bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds. The Motumotu in New Guinea think
that storms are sent by an Oiabu sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he opens
at pleasure. On the top of Mount Agu in Togo, a district of West Africa, resides a fetish
called Bagba, who is supposed to control the wind and the rain. His priest is said to keep
the winds shut up in great pots. 4
Often the stormy wind is regarded as an evil being who may be intimidated, driven away,
or killed. When storms and bad weather have lasted long and food is scarce with the
Central Esquimaux, they endeavour to conjure the tempest by making a long whip of
seaweed, armed with which they go down to the beach and strike out in the direction of the
wind, crying "Taba (it is enough)!" Once when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long
on the coast and food was becoming scarce, the Esquimaux performed a ceremony to make
a calm. A fire was kindled on the shore, and the men gathered round it and chanted. An old
man then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the demon of the wind to
come under the fire and warm himself. When he was supposed to have arrived, a vessel of
water, to which each man present had contributed, was thrown on the flames by an old
man, and immediately a flight of arrows sped towards the spot where the fire had been.
They thought that the demon would not stay where he had been so badly treated. To
complete the effect, guns were discharged in various directions, and the captain of a
European vessel was invited to fire on the wind with cannon. On the twenty-first of
February 1883 a similar ceremony was performed by the Esquimaux of Point Barrow,
Alaska, with the intention of killing the spirit of the wind. Women drove the demon from
their houses with clubs and knives, with which they made passes in the air; and the men,
gathering round a fire, shot him with their rifles and crushed him under a heavy stone the
moment that steam rose in a cloud from the smouldering embers, on which a tub of water
had just been thrown. 5
The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco ascribe the rush of a whirl-wind to the passage of
a spirit and they fling sticks at it to frighten it away. When the wind blows down their huts,
the Payaguas of South America snatch up firebrands and run against the wind, menacing it
with the blazing brands, while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the storm.
When the Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm, the men go out armed, and the
women and children scream their loudest to intimidate the demon. During a tempest the
inhabitants of a Batak village in Sumatra have been seen to rush from their houses armed
with sword and lance. The rajah placed himself at their head, and with shouts and yells they
hewed and hacked at the invisible foe. An old woman was observed to be specially active in
the defence of her house, slashing the air right and left with a long sabre. In a violent
thunderstorm, the peals sounding very near, the Kayans of Borneo have been seen to draw
their swords threateningly half out of their scabbards, as if to frighten away the demons of
the storm. In Australia the huge columns of red sand that move rapidly across a desert tract
are thought by the natives to be spirits passing along. Once an athletic young black ran
after one of these moving columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or three
hours, and came back very weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that
Koochee had growled at him and he must die. Of the Bedouins of Eastern Africa it is said
that "no whirl-wind ever sweeps across the path without being pursued by a dozen
savages with drawn creeses, who stab into the centre of the dusty column in order to drive
away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the blast." 6
In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern critics have
treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth of
the tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the
Sahara had dried up all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body
to make war on the south wind. But when they entered the desert the simoon swept down
on them and buried them to a man. The story may well have been told by one who watched
them disappearing, in battle array, with drums and cymbals beating, into the red cloud of
whirling sand. 7