sides in these sports may be regarded as associated with these directions.*

Dr. F. Boas informs us that among the Eskimo the boys born in summer fight those born in winter!

In the first month of the year in South China, village fights occur on the open plains; sometimes they are very serious affairs.†

Professor Culin, in his valuable Korean Games, to which I have had to refer so often, gives a suggestive clue to the origin of the straw rope contest to which allusion has just been made. This is played by any number of boys about the 15th of the first month. In the country the entire population of districts and villages engage against other districts or villages at this season. It is believed that the village that wins will have a good harvest. The rope is of straw, two feet in diameter, with its ends divided into branches. The men take the main stem, and the women the branches. The latter frequently do more than the men, as it is customary for them to load their skirts with stone on these occasions. The Dictionnaire Coréen Français defines the rope as a rope which they pull by the two ends to secure abundance."

The tug-of-war is a common amusement among *CULIN, Korean Games, p. 63.

+ GRAY, China. London, 1878, i., p. 256.

STEWART CULIN, Korean Games: with Notes on the corresponding Games of China and Japan. Philadelphia, 1895, p. 35.

schoolboys in Japan under the name of "ropepulling." According to The Japanese Months, on the 15th day of the eighth month in the old calendar people turned out to admire the full moon, and made offerings to it of dango, a kind of cake made of rice, beans, and sugar. The sport known as "tug-of-war" afforded amusement on the same evening to the boys of rival villages, or to contending parties belonging to the same place, grown-up persons sometimes joining in the fun. Each side has its own rope, which is of large size, and made of rice-straw. There is a loop at each end, and a stick is passed through the loop at one end of each rope, so that both are pulled at the same time. The contest is concluded when one party is pulled over the dividing-line, or till the ropes break. This practice is now a thing of the past. It is significant that the period from the middle of July to the middle of August is an anxious period for the farmers, whose rice-plants are in danger of perishing from lack of water should no rain fall for several consecutive days.

The tug-of-war thus resolves itself in Korea and Japan into a magic ceremony to ensure a good harvest. Probably the straw rope typifies the harvest, and the pulling it over a boundary would ensure a fruitful harvest for the winning side. This is quite in accordance with the working of the savage mind, as innumerable examples from what is known as

sympathetic magic will testify. It is interesting to note that in Korea itself the ceremony has broken down, and is degraded in Seoul into faction-fights; but, true to their origin, they begin with straw ropes; and, further, it is noteworthy that the small boys retain the older fashion-they are more true to the traditional custom. Further research will show whether the contests in our villages and towns are merely racial or tribal in origin, or whether there may not be some harvest ritual behind them.

IN

CHAPTER X.

THE BULL-ROARER.

N some parts of the British Islands boys occasionally play with a toy which consists of a thin slat of wood tied to the end of a long piece of string, the rapid whirling of which results in a noise that is expressed in the various names given to this simple instrument. Prof. E. B. Tylor informs me that the name of "bull-roarer" was first introduced into anthropological literature by the Rev. Lorimer Fison, who compares the Australian turndun to "the wooden toy which I remember to have made as a boy, called a 'bull-roarer, and this term has since been universally adopted as the technical name for the implement.

*

For some years past I have collected all the specimens and information I could about this interesting object. I have one specimen made by a boy at Balham in Surrey (London, S.W.); it is 7 inches in

* FISON and HOWITT, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 1880, p. 267. Prof. E. B. Tylor in his review of this book in The Academy (April 9th, 1881, p. 265), gives "whizzer" as an alternative name.

length and 1 inches in breadth, 187 mm. by 30 mm. The ends are square, and it is serrated along each side. I have heard of it in Essex, but have not seen a specimen.

In West Suffolk it is called a "hummer" and is slightly notched; I have been told that in East Suffolk the edges were sometimes plain. I have several specimens from different parts of Norfolk, where it is called "humming buzzer," or simply "buzzer " (101 × 11, X 11×17 111×13; 257×38, 282 × 47, 292 × 35). The ends are usually square, but the string end is rounded in the last one; the sides may be serrated or simpy notched along both surfaces of each side, the notches being more or less deep. One specimen "buzz" from Mid-Norfolk is rounded at the string end and pointed at the other, and with only five notches along each side (71 × 21, 184 × 54). I have been informed that in Cambridgeshire it was called a "bull," and has plain edges. In Bedfordshire its name is "buzzer." The Lincolnshire variety, "swish," is quadrangular, like the ordinary Norfolk form, and notched. I have heard of its occurrence in the East Riding of Yorkshire, but have no details. In East Derbyshire it is known as a "bummer" or buzzer." My Derbyshire specimen. is plano-convex, the string end is square and the

* Subsequently I give, within brackets, the English measurements, followed by the same converted into the metric system.