Lame GodsAuthor(s): Louise KennedySource: Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar. 25, 1902), pp. 88-89Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1254384 .

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88 Correspondence.

LAME GODS.

(Vol. ix., p. 295.)

In Mr. Hartland's article on " The High Gods of Australia" (Folk-Lore, December, 1898), the following passage occurs: "The name of Daramulun is a secret known only to the Murring tribes and their congeners. It is said to mean leg-on-one-side, or lame, probably from a personal peculiarity, like Tsunillgoam among the Hottentots."

Whether a personal peculiarity can be the occasion of these recurring epithets is a point of doubt, to say the least. Tsunillgoam is said to mean, literally, wounded knee. This is precisely the attribute of the Finnish divine hero Wiinii-m6inen, who, it was said, was building a boat when he wounded his knee with his own hatchet. He was thereafter appealed to for healing, like Tsunillgoam or Wounded Knee.

Lame gods are, in fact, not infrequent in mythologies. It is hardly necessary to remind readers of Hephaistos, the Fire-god of the Greeks, who was cast forth from heaven by the Thunderer and lamed by the fall, and who thenceforth worked as a smith in the nether regions. But I would draw special attention to a curious wood-cut in Mrs. Nuttall's recent study of ancient Mexican religion.1 It reproduces a Mexican drawing repre- senting a divine figure on one leg, the foot of which is held in a fire-drill. The other leg stands free, so that "the only action possible is that of hobbling on one foot in a circle." Here we have a pictured Leg-on-one-side. This divinity, the chief god Tezcatlipoca, is "usually represented with one foot." When shown walking, one foot planted and the other following, he is within a circle of carefully-delineated footsteps. His foot is said to have been bitten off by an alligator (cf. the Fenris wolf and the god Tyr in Scandinavian mythology); and "the broken end of the leg-bone is commonly depicted with its hollowness accentuated, and puffs of air or breath issuing from it." It was " in descending to the water " that the catastrophe occurred.

Zelia Nuttall, "The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilisations : " Arch. and Ethnol. Papers of tke Peabody Museum (Harvard), vol. ii. (I901), p. 9; fig. I, p. Io, and fig. 59, P. 279.

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Correspondence. 89

The fire-drill or flint-stone was the symbol of the North in Mexican usage, because the polar point, there and in many regions, was regarded as the primary fire-stone; the central hearth where was perpetually born the divine spirit animating all created forms.

LOUISE KENNEDY.

FIRE-WALKING IN SOUTHERN INDIA.

(Vol. xii., p. 446.)

In the recently issued Bulletin (vol. iv., No. i, 1901, p. 55) of the Madras Government Museum, Mr. E. Thurston, director of the

Museum, reprints from the Madras Mail (no date given) a full account of a ceremony which took place recently at St. Thomas' Mount, near the city of Madras. The following is a summary of all the essential features. Fire-walking has been observed as an annual festival at Allandur, near St. Thomas' Mount, for more than half a century, and always in connection with the local temple of

Draupati, the heroine of the Mahabharata. Draupati successfully passed through the ordeal of walking through fire in order to prove her chastity, and ordained that whoever, placing implicit faith in her powers, should undertake to walk over fire, should get rid of any maladies he might be subject to, and attain all objects of his desire. In Southern India anybody and everybody, with the

exception of Pariahs and others occupying a similar status in Hindu society, takes part in the fire-walking ceremony, provided that he or she has any vow to fulfil. The vow-takers are pre- viously purified. First the temple servant walked with measured steps and quite calmly on a platform upon which the fire had been

evenly spread to a depth of a few inches, and the space thus covered, about 20 feet square, was ablaze with burning charcoal and embers. The other devotees then rushed in a body up on to the platform and walked over the glowing cinders to the other side, where they cooled their feet in a puddle of water (the 1al-kuli or milk pit). A boy of about eight years old walked over the fire, while a still smaller child was hurried over, hanging on to the hand of its father.

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