When about to undergo a water-cure the patient may recite:
O pure water! water’s Mistress!
Water’s Mistress! water’s Master!
Make me now both well and healthy,
Beautiful as formerly,
Since I pray in chosen language,
Since I give thee as an offering
Blood in order to appease thee,
Salt as well to reconcile thee.
(L. R., p. 232.)
If the presence of a spirit is considered undesirable, it may be appealed to either by threats or promises to remove elsewhere. As spirits, like men, are not of equal strength, and may prove quite as obstinate, it may become necessary to threaten them with the vengeance of a greater and more powerful spirit who happens to be on the other side. For naturally they divide into two classes, good and bad, according as they seem such in their behaviour towards man. In this case the man of understanding and magic lore will menace the recalcitrant spirit with the anger of his strong ally, the powerful beneficent spirit, just as a small boy threatens a bully that he will tell his big friend, who will certainly punch the tyrant’s head. For instance, rust in corn is thus addressed in a Finnish spell:
Depart, O Rust, to tufts of grass,
“Frog”! get inside a lump of clay,
If thou should raise thy head from there,
Ukko[1] will split thy head in two
With a silver knife, with a golden club.
(L. R., p. 150.)
Another incantation, for a somewhat similar purpose, ends much in the same way:
Yet there is Ukko in the sky.
- ↑ The thunder god.
