r had run its
brief but brilliant course. Pressing his right hand to his yelling mouth,
each of them held aloft in his extended left, by way of propitiating the
angry star, a bundle of cigarettes. "There!" they seemed to say, "all that
tobacco will we give to ward off the impending visitation. Woe to you, if
you do not leave us in peace."(129) The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco
also stand in great fear of meteors, imagining them to be stones hurled
from heaven at the wicked sorcerers who have done people to death by their
charms.(130) When the Abipones beheld a meteor flashing or heard thunder
rolling in the sky, they imagined that one of their medicine-men had died,
and that the flash of light and the peal of thunder were part of his
funeral honours.(131)

(M46) When the Laughlan Islanders see a shooting star they make a great
noise, for they think it is the old woman who lives in the moon coming
down to earth to catch somebody, who may relieve her of her duties in the
moon while she goes away to the happy spirit-land.(132) In Vedic India a
meteor was believed to be the embodiment of a demon, and on its appearance
certain hymns or incantations, supposed to possess the power of killing
demons, were recited for the purpose of expiating the prodigy.(133) To
this day in India, when women see a falling star, they spit thrice to
scare the demon.(134) Some of the Esthonians at the present time regard
shooting stars as evil spirits.(135) It is a Mohammedan belief that
falling stars are demons or jinn who have attempted to scale the sky, and,
being repulsed by the angels with stones, are hurled headlong, flaming,
from the celestial vault. Hence every true believer at sight of a meteor
should say, "I take refuge with God from the stoned devil."(136)

(M47) A widespread superstition, of which some examples have already been
given, associates meteors or falling stars with the souls of the dead.
Often they are believed to be the spirits of the departed on their way to
the other world. The Maoris imagine that at death the s