However fantastic this supposition of human influence on the weather,
there is an inclination to treat it with a semblance of respect when it
is borne in mind that up to a comparatively recent date a similar belief
prevailed even in enlightened England. Addison has a sarcastic reference
to the superstition in one of his delightful essays. Detailing the news
brought from his country seat by Sir Roger de Coverley, he says that the
good knight informed him that Moll White was dead, and that about a
month after her death, the wind was so very high that it blew down the
end of one of his barns. "But for my own part," says Sir Roger, "I do
not think that the old woman had any hand in it." In this particular,
blacks are not so very far in the wake of races quite respectable in
other points of civilisation.
Among other causes to which bad weather is ascribed is the eating by the
young men of the porcupine (ECHIDNA), a dainty reserved for the wise,
conservative old men. If young men should eat of the forbidden flesh, a
terrible calamity will befall--the clouds will "come down altogether!"
One day Tom picked up a young porcupine before it had time to dig a
refuge in the soil, and took it to his camp alive.
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