" Also they string some
fresh-water snails on a cord, and hang the cord on a tree, and say
to the snails, "Go and ask for rain, and so long as no rain comes, I
will not take you back to the water." Then the snails go and weep,
and the gods take pity and send rain. However, the foregoing
ceremonies are religious rather than magical, since they involve an
appeal to the compassion of higher powers.
Stones are often supposed to possess the property of bringing on
rain, provided they be dipped in water or sprinkled with it, or
treated in some other appropriate manner. In a Samoan village a
certain stone was carefully housed as the representative of the
rain-making god, and in time of drought his priests carried the
stone in procession and dipped it in a stream. Among the Ta-ta-thi
tribe of New South Wales, the rain-maker breaks off a piece of
quartz-crystal and spits it towards the sky; the rest of the crystal
he wraps in emu feathers, soaks both crystal and feathers in water,
and carefully hides them. In the Keramin tribe of New South Wales
the wizard retires to the bed of a creek, drops water on a round
flat stone, then covers up and conceals it.
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