into the water; and there it stayed all right to the knowledge of the whole village. None would approach, for they feared a witch dead as much as they feared her alive. The messengers sent by the headman to inform the police even made a detour that night to give the pit a wide berth, lest the wicked ghost of Kali having left her body should be hovering near, and enter into them. Vithu's other brother, Tulshiram, died two days after Kali was killed, and nothing could persuade the people of Gaddavna that she had not bewitched them all. They would not pull her body out of the well, and the police were forced to bring men from another village for the purpose. Vithu went to jail for some years, a punishment which he looks upon as gross injustice. How could he defend himself from the disease sent by a witch except by killing her? He was convinced that he had already begun to feel the fatal pangs and was saved only by her death. This happened in January of last year. An Indian gentleman who acted as assessor in that case thought that Vithu was entitled to chastise the women of his family, and Kali's death was pure bad luck! No doubt Vithu's troubles came thick upon him, and he had some excuse for acting according to his lights. But what of the man in another case who murdered two women for witches because they refused to cure his brother of a headache? Umya Soma is his name and he is a Koli, a hillman of the Western Ghauts, of the caste whose name is known all over the world in the shape of the word "coolie." Let him tell his story in his own way, as he did at his trial for murder. My brother Ramji had headache from the beginning of the monsoon. We tried all remedies and failed to cure it: therefore we knew it was witchcraft. This was a matter for the whole village, so we called a punchayet (meeting) and asked what they would do. I spoke earnestly to them that they should tell their mothers and wives to accept a cock or a goat from us and cure the pain. The elders nodded their heads, but nothing was done. So I went to Ladkya Warli, a bhagat of Phanaspada, who told me to fetch a man from every house in my village. I did this, for they came easily, being curious to see what the bhagat would do, and fearful lest their female relations should be denounced through enmity if they were absent. The bhagat asked them many questions about the women of the village and much was learnt; at last he declared that the headache was caused by the witchcraft of Gopi, Bhagi, and Bayaji, these three women. We departed home. Next morning the punchayet again assembled and sent for the three witches. Gopi confessed that she had been taught something by Bhagi. We called on Bhagi to cure my brother, and in the presence of all she put ashes on his head and placed her hand on his nose. But the pain was no less. Then he fell at her feet and begged that she would kill and eat one of his two sons; but anyhow let her cure him. She refused. I grew weary of the headache of my brother and made a firm and final offer of a cock or a goat to the three witches to cure him; but they now changed and said they had not harmed him at all. So I became very angry and struck at them with the sickle I had in my hand. I killed Bayaji. I then got an axe and pursued Gopi and struck her. She died. Bhagi escaped, as she was a fast runner. I afterwards went with my axe to the chavdi (village hall) at Nanashi to give myself up, but no policeman was there; so I sat on the moneylender's verandah till the policeman came. This artless recital is a fair example of the childlike mentality of those amongst whom such superstitions flourish, and the cases here described are but a few that have come before the courts in one small district in the twentieth century. To relate others of the same nature would be tedious. It may be taken for granted that similar beliefs pervade the lower classes throughout the length and breadth of India and Burmah, from time to time causing tragic situations with strange underlying motives. Reference has been made to spirit possession. The conception is of man being surrounded and threatened by spirits, mostly malign, that are ready at any moment to pounce upon him and possess him, or catch" him, as they say in the vernacular. Any unusual state of body or mind is apt to be ascribed to this cause. To quote a native authority: "A patient is believed to be possessed by an evil spirit if his eyes are bloodshot or bleared as from drink, if he suffers from shooting pains, if he keeps crying or weeping, if he talks too much, does not speak for days or answers questions with abuse, if he refuses food for days, or eats too much and yet feels hungry, if he lets his arms fall loose and sways his body to and fro, if he faints, suffers from cramp, or spits blood." Any disease or illness is likely to be regarded as a form of spirit-possession. There are many methods of treatment: the herbs and drugs of native physicians, vows and fastings in worship of the gods, or the rites and ceremonies prescribed by exorcists and witches; but the treatment most likely to lead to trouble is the favourite method of beating the patient with a stick to drive the devil out of him. This may end in the death of the sufferer and the arraignment of his nearest relations for homicide. The ravings of delirium in an unnatural voice are taken for the very tones and speech of the devil within. There was a case of typhoid in which a severe drubbing was administered while the victim was unconscious death followed next day, but the affair was hushed up. Again, two exorcists beat a girl to death to drive out the devil who was causing a pain in her back. They began the attack in her bedroom; she fled out into the street; they pursued her to the burning ground, the home of spirits and ghosts, thrashing her all the way till at last she fell and died. They were severely punished; but possibly they behaved in good faith, and they were even assisted actively by the father of the girl, who accompanied them, offering lemons to induce the spirit to leave his daughter. These devils of possession are often held to be the ghosts of the dead, and their special haunts are cemeteries and burning grounds where they last took leave of their fleshly tenements. When a person dies, fear of his departed spirit sits heavily on the shoulders of the survivors. There was a case in which a grasping moneylender died and his body was buried. Suspicion arose and he was exhumed for examination, when long iron nails were found embedded in his forehead and breast-bone. One of the murderers confessed that, having strangled him, they drove in the nails to prevent his ghost from haunting them. The man was killed for his money, and the spirit of a dead miser is supposed to hover around his hoard and bring mischief on those who touch it. There is thought to be virtue in iron nails, and they are often seen driven into wooden thresholds to repel evil spirits from the house, just as they were intended to bind the ghost in the body while the miser's moneybags were rifled. The propitiation of a departed spirit or ghost is a kind of worship, and in the rustic mind the departed soul tends to become a god. In the villages the spirits of dead heroes and ancestors are worshipped as minor gods of the locality, and just as some men obtain place and power above others, so there are spirits and gods who are pre-eminent. Exorcists and magic-mongers often claim to be possessed by a god that can command other gods and spirits; on the strength of this, they are called in to cast these others out. This claim was made by the two exorcists who beat the girl to death for her pain in the back. One man, known to the writer, believed himself to be possessed by a very powerful deity or, at any rate, if he did not believe it, he loudly proclaimed it to a crowd at a festival. There happened to be a well close at hand, the water of which had turned brackish; so the crowd promptly told him to prove the prowess of his god by turning it sweet. He advanced to the well confidently, and after muttering incantations announced that the miracle was accomplished. A bucket was let down and water drawn, which, of course, was as salty as ever. Thereupon the crowd mocked and jeered and threw mud at him. He was a tall and powerful fellow, and if not possessed by a god was certainly possessed by a violent and uncontrolled temper. He rushed off to a blacksmith's shop and picked up a long sharp-edged piece of iron, with which he ran amuck in the crowd, inflicting terrible injuries on half a dozen persons, several of whom died. The police came quickly, and captured him—not without damage to themselves. He was prosecuted for murder, but pleaded insanity, and by clever acting managed to deceive the doctors, so that he was shut up in a lunatic asylum instead of being tried. Here his symptoms of madness vanished in a suspicious manner, and he was about to be sent for trial when he escaped over the asylum wall. He is still at large. To some extent the religion of the Hindus favours these beliefs, holding, as it does, that everything in nature has life, and that on death the spirit is not destroyed but reincarnated in a lower or a higher form according to merit. At its best, among the enlightened this may be a consistent and philosophical view, but in the mind of the ignorant and savage it appears at its worst, and is difficult to disentangle from the crude and gloomy belief of animism that man must tread warily amid a world full of ghosts. R. T. F. KIRK THE WELSH LANGUAGE IN LIFE AND 1. Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the President of the 2. The Welsh Mind in Evolution. By the Rev. VYRNWY MORGAN, D.D. H. R. Allenson. 1925. BEFORE dealing with the Report itself, allusion must be made lamented death of the Chairman of this Departmental Committee, the late Dr. John Owen, Bishop of St. David's, who passed away in November, 1926. For over forty years Bishop Owen was an outstanding figure in all Welsh life and movements, so that his demise has been a serious loss to the whole country. But for his untimely death, some nine months before the publication of the Report, it is almost certain that many of its recommendations would have been greatly modified, for Bishop Owen was a recognized leader of wide and tolerant outlook, and saw Wales in its entirety and not merely as a Welsh-speaking unit. His ripe wisdom and safe guidance were never more needed than in the preparation of this Report, the final drafting of which he did not live long enough to supervise. The Report is a lengthy document of 366 pages, and at the special request of Lord Eustace Percy, President of the Board of Education, it has also been translated and issued in Welsh. It is frankly a one-sided appeal on behalf of the Welsh language, and it also contains a number of suggestions as to the best means of enforcing the use of Welsh in all the schools, colleges, and even homes throughout the Principality. "The Welsh language, the whole Welsh language, and nothing but the Welsh language,' constitutes the aim and burden of this Report. For on this committee there was no pretence of including any kind of representation of the English element in modern Welsh life, or of calling English witnesses in its defence, although the monoglot English inhabitants of Wales number nearly two-thirds of the total population. In discussing the Report then, this is the first point to be remembered: however specious the Report itself may be |