The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1884-10-09
Dreams and Drealners.

Dreams are in the main referred by
the savage either to the entrance into
him of some outside spirit as among
the Feejeeans, who believe that the
spirit OF q living man will leave the
body to trouble sleeping folk-or to
the real doings of himself
When the Greenlander dreams of
hunting, or fishing. or counting, he be-
lieyes that the soul quits the body; the
Dyaks of Borneo think that during
sleep the soul sometimes remains in
the body or travels far away being en-
dowed, whether present or absent, with
conditions which in waking moments
are lacking. Wherever we lind low
state of mental development, the like
belief exists. In Mr.. i'm Thurn's elab-
crate work on the Indians of Guiana
we have corroborative evidence the
more valuable because of its freshness.
He tells us that the dreams which
come to the Indian are to him as real
as any of the events of his waking life.
10 him dream acts and waking acts
differ only in one respect. namely, that
the former are done by the spirit, the
latter are done only by the spirit in its
body. Seeing other men asleep, and
afterwards hearing from them the
things which they suppose themselves
to have done when asleep. the Indian
has no difficulty in reeoneiling that
which he hears with the fact that the
bodies of the sleepers were in his sight
and motionless throughout the time of
supposed action, because he never
questions that the spirits, leaving the
sleepers, played their part in dream adj
ventures.
In the Scandinavian Vatnsdala Saga
there is q curious account of three
Firms who were shut up in hut for
three nights, and ordered BY Ingimund,
Norwegian chief, to visit Iceland, and
inform him of the line of the country
where he was to settle. Their bodies
became rigid, and they sent their souls
on their errand, and on their awaken
ing, at the end of three DAYS, gave an
accurate account of the Vatnsdal, in
which Ingimund ultimately dwelt No
wonder that in medieval times, when
witches swept the air and harried the
cattle, swooning and other forms of in
sensibility were adduced in support of
the theory of soul absence, or that we
find among savages-as the Taials OF
the Luzon Islands objections to walk
ing sleeper, lest the soul happens to
be out of the body. As corollary to
this belief in soul absence, fear arises
lest it be prolonged to the peril of the
owner, and hence rough-and-ready
theory of the cause of disease is framed,
for savages rarely die in their beds.
That disease is arrangement of
functions, interrupting their natural
action, and carrying attendant pain as
its indication. could not enter the head
of the uncivilized; and indeed among
ourselves cold or fegeris commonly
thought OF as an entity in the body
which has stolen in, and having been
caught, must be somehow expelled.
With the universal primitive belief in
spiritual agencies everywhere inhaled
with the breath or swallowed with the
food or drink, all diseases were re-
garded as their work, whether, as re-
marked above, through undue absence
of the righttul spirit or subtle entrance
of some hostile one. If these be the
cause of which sicknesses are due, OBJ
viously the only cure is to get rid of
them, and hence the sorcerer and the
medicine man find their services in re-
quest in casting out the demon by force,
or enticing him by cajolery, or in bring
ing back the truant soul. -Harper's
WeekLH