" According to them, twins remain throughout life endowed with
supernatural powers. In particular they can make good or bad
weather. They produce rain by spilling water from a basket in the
air; they make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of wood
attached to a stick by a string; they raise storms by strewing down
on the ends of spruce branches.
The same power of influencing the weather is attributed to twins by
the Baronga, a tribe of Bantu negroes who, inhabit the shores of
Delagoa Bay in South-eastern Africa. They bestow the name of
_Tilo_--that is, the sky--on a woman who has given birth to twins,
and the infants themselves are called the children of the sky. Now
when the storms which generally burst in the months of September and
October have been looked for in vain, when a drought with its
prospect of famine is threatening, and all nature, scorched and
burnt up by a sun that has shone for six months from a cloudless
sky, is panting for the beneficent showers of the South African
spring, the women perform ceremonies to bring down the longed-for
rain on the parched earth.
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