Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd.

  • Edward Clodd
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    54/256 page 42
    debt may pawn his name, say 46 Flying Cloud,55 for a year, during which he calls himself something else, or is anonymous. If he borrows thirty blankets, he has to redeem the loan by paying back one hundred blankets. If his credit is fairly good, he may borrow on terms of repay¬ ment of twenty-five per cent, of blankets. These articles, and also copper plates, are the media of exchange. Mr. Boas met a swaggering native who was the owner of seven thousand five hundred blankets. The Indians of British Columbia, and the prejudice “ appears to pervade all tribes alike,55 dislike telling their names—thus you never get a man’s right name from himself, but they will tell each other’s names without hesita¬ tion.1 In correspondence with this, the Abipones of South America would nudge their neighbour to answer for them when anyone among them was asked his name, and the natives of the Fiji Islands would get any third party who might be present to answer as to their names.2 “ Among 1 British Columbia, p. 278, R. C. Mayne. 2 Possibly, this falls into line with an experience of which a lady friend who was sketching in North Wales told me. Five little girls came up to see what she was doing, when she asked their names. The first girl simpered and, point¬ ing to the girl standing next to her, said, “ Her name is Jenny Owen,” and not one of them would tell her own name. 44 The children,” she says, 44 were not shy on other topics, but they were not to be beguiled over this.” And it may not be so far-fetched as it seems to detect traces of
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