"They make their own swords, three and a
half to five spans long, with square heads, and have bows which it takes
three men to draw, but no muskets." - H.C.]
NOTE 5. - I have nowhere met with a precise parallel to this remarkable
superstition, but the following piece of Folk-Lore has a considerable
analogy to it. This extraordinary custom is ascribed by Ibn Fozlan to the
Bulgarians of the Volga: "If they find a man endowed with special
intelligence then they say: 'This man should serve our Lord God;' and so
they take him, run a noose round his neck and hang him on a tree, where
they leave him till the corpse falls to pieces." This is precisely what
Sir Charles Wood did with the Indian Corps of Engineers; - doubtless on the
same principle.
Archbishop Trench, in a fine figure, alludes to a belief prevalent among
the Polynesian Islanders, "that the strength and valour of the warriors
whom they have slain in battle passes into themselves, as their rightful
inheritance." (Fraehn, Wolga-Bulgaren, p. 50; Studies in the Gospels,
p. 22; see also Lubbock, 457.)
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