held
much the same belief, according to Sahagun:--

It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the ground, he who
saw them lying there was bound to lift them, wherein, if he failed, he
harmed the maize, which plained itself of him to God, saying, 'Lord,
punish this man, who saw me fallen and raised me not again; punish him
with famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.'

Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian Mama
cora, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of human
nature. We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians and Scotch
are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they met each other,
and borrowed each other's superstitions. Again, when we find Odysseus
sacrificing a black sheep to the dead, {20} and when we read that the
Ovahereroes in South Africa also appease with a black sheep the spirits
of the departed, we do not feel it necessary to hint that the Ovahereroes
are of Greek descent, or have borrowed their ritual from the Greeks. The
connection between the colour black, and mourning for the dead, is
natural and almost universal.

Examples like these might be adduced in any number. We might show how,
in magic, negroes of Barbadoes make clay effigies of their enemies, and
pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato's time, or the men of Accad in
remotest antiquity. We might remark the Australian black putting sharp
bits of quartz in the tracks of an enemy who has gone by, that the enemy
may be lamed; and we might point to Boris Godunof forbidding the same
practice among the Russians. We might watch Scotch, and Australians, and
Jews, and French, and Aztecs spreading dust round the body of a dead man,
that the footprints of his ghost, or of other ghosts, may be detected
next morning. We might point to a similar device in a modern novel,
where the presence of a ghost is suspected, as proof of the similar
workings of the Australian mind and of the mind of Mrs. Riddell. We
shall later turn to ancient Greece, and show how the serpent-dances, the
habit of smearing the body with clay, and other odd rites of the
mysteries, were common to Hellenic religion, and to the religion of
African, Australian, and American tribes.

Now, with regard to all these strange usages, what is the method of
folklore? The method is, when an apparently irrational and anomalous
custom is found in any country, to look for a country wher