In the Caucasian province of Georgia, when a
drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples
with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and
thus harnessed they wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes,
praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing. In a district of
Transylvania when the ground is parched with drought, some girls
strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also
naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the fields to a
brook, where they set it afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and
keep a tiny flame burning on each corner of it for an hour. Then
they leave the harrow in the water and go home. A similar rain-charm
is resorted to in some parts of India; naked women drag a plough
across a field by night, while the men keep carefully out of the
way, for their presence would break the spell.
Sometimes the rain-charm operates through the dead. Thus in New
Caledonia the rain-makers blackened themselves all over, dug up a
dead body, took the bones to a cave, jointed them, and hung the
skeleton over some taro leaves.
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