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" When all
is ready, a priest prays to Old Mother Kh?n-ma that she would be
pleased to accept these dainty offerings and to close the open doors
of the earth, in order that the demons may not come forth to infest
and injure the household.
Again, effigies are often employed as a means of preventing or
curing sickness; the demons of disease either mistake the effigies
for living people or are persuaded or compelled to enter them,
leaving the real men and women well and whole. Thus the Alfoors of
Minahassa, in Celebes, will sometimes transport a sick man to
another house, while they leave on his bed a dummy made up of a
pillow and clothes. This dummy the demon is supposed to mistake for
the sick man, who consequently recovers. Cure or prevention of this
sort seems to find especial favour with the natives of Borneo. Thus,
when an epidemic is raging among them, the Dyaks of the Katoengouw
River set up wooden images at their doors in the hope that the
demons of the plague may be deluded into carrying off the effigies
instead of the people.


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