<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">Hunger-demons — Kephn — Miru — Kagura — Rdhu the Hindu sun-
devourer — The earth monster at Pelsall — A Franconian custom
— Sheitan as moon-devourer — Hindu offerings to the dead —
Ghoul — Goblin — Vampyres — Leanness of demons — Old Scotch
custom. — The origin of sacrifices.
In every part of the earth man's first straggle was for his
daily food. With only a rude implement of stone or bone
he had to get fish from the sea, bird from the air, beast
from the forest. For ages, with such poor equipment, he
had to wring a precarious livelihood from nature. He
saw, too, every living form around him similarly trying to
satisfy its hunger. There seemed to be a Spirit of Hunger
abroad. And, at the same time, there was such a resist-
ance to man's satisfaction of his need — the bird and fish
so hard to get, the stingy earth so ready to give him a
stone when he asked for bread — that he came to the con-
clusion that there must be invisible voracious beings who
wanted all good things for themselves. So the ancient
world was haunted by a vast brood of Hunger-demons.
There is an African tribe, the Karens, whose representation of the Devil (Kephn) is a huge stomach floating </pre>
<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">through the air ; and this repulsive image may be regarded
as the type of nearly half the demons which have haunted
the human imagination. This, too, is the terrible Mini,
with her daughters and slave, haunting the South Sea
Islander. * The esoteric doctrine of the priests was, that
souls leave the body ere breath has quite gone, and travel
to the edge of a cliff facing the setting sun (Ra). A large
wave now approaches the base of the cliff, and a gigantic
bua tree, covered with fragrant blossoms, springs up from
Avaiki (nether world) to receive on its far-reaching branches
human spirits, who are mysteriously impelled to cluster on
its limbs. When at length the mystic tree is covered
with human spirits, it goes down with its living freight to
the nether world, Akaanga, the slave of fearful Mini,
mistress of the invisible world, infallibly catches all these
unhappy spirits in his net and laves them to and fro in
a lake. In these waters the captive ghosts exhaust them-
selves by wriggling about like fishes, in the vain hope of
escape. The net is pulled up, and the half-drowned spirits
enter into the presence of dread Mini, who is ugliness per-
