For example, if a man is born on the first day of the
second month (February), his house will be burnt down when he comes
of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the
friends of the infant will set up a shed in a field or in the
cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be really effective,
the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and only
plucked, like brands, from the burning hut before it is too late.
Again, dripping November is the month of tears, and he who is born
in it is born to sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that
thus gather over his future, he has nothing to do but to take the
lid off a boiling pot and wave it about. The drops that fall from it
will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from trickling
from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young girl, still
unwed, should see her children, still unborn, descend before her
with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity as follows. She
kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and
mourns over it like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to
be comforted.
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