A note of the habits of the pygmy falcon
This is a brief note by F. F. Laidlaw, published in JMBRAS Vol. 1, No. 2 (1923), p. 377. Despite the catalogued title “A note on the habits of the Pygmy Falcon,” the surviving text fragment actually describes a bomor (shaman) conducting a healing seance, and is headed in the journal as part of Laidlaw’s “Miscellaneous Notes.”
Summary
The fragment records Laidlaw’s and Skeat’s observation of a bomor performing a cure for a sick man. The seance involved incantations accompanied by furious head-shaking, during which onlookers beat metal cooking pots rhythmically with small sticks (p. 377). The bomor eventually identified the cause of the illness as a dove that the sick man’s mother had driven out of the house without offering it rice, and after further incantation announced the steps necessary for a cure (p. 377). Laidlaw notes that the bomor subsequently accepted a small present and, when asked to predict the winner of a bull fight the following day, did so correctly and without circumlocution (p. 377).