Three sides of the box are adorned with the head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a black yak’s tail.  Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his right hand.  They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the music of drums and a pipe.  The dance goes on for hours and is thought to avert ill-luck from the fair.  It is said that the box is brought to Simla from a place sixty miles off by relays of men, who may not stop nor set the box on the ground the whole way.[27] In Scotland, when water was carried from sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not touch the earth.[28] In some parts of Aberdeenshire the last bunch of standing corn, which is commonly viewed as very sacred, being the last refuge of the corn-spirit retreating before the reapers, is not suffered to touch the ground; the master or “gueedman” sits down and receives each handful of corn as it is cut on his lap.[29]

[Sacred food not allowed to touch the earth.]

Again, sacred food may not under certain circumstances be brought into contact with the earth.  Some of the aborigines of Victoria used to regard the fat of the emu as sacred, believing that it had once been the fat of the black man.  In taking it from the bird or giving it to another they handled it reverently.  Any one who threw away the fat or flesh of the emu was held accursed.  “The late Mr. Thomas observed on one occasion, at Nerre-nerre-Warreen, a remarkable exhibition of the effects of this superstition.  An aboriginal child—­one attending the school—­having eaten some part of the flesh of an emu, threw away the skin.  The skin fell to the ground, and this being observed by his parents, they showed by their gestures every token of horror.  They looked upon their child as one utterly lost.  His desecration of the bird was regarded as a sin for which there was no atonement."[30] The Roumanians of Transylvania believe that “every fresh-baked loaf of wheaten bread is sacred, and should a piece inadvertently fall to the ground, it is hastily picked up, carefully wiped and kissed, and if soiled, thrown into the fire—­partly as an offering to the dead, and partly because it were a heavy sin to throw away or tread upon any particle of it."[31] At certain festivals in south-eastern Borneo the food which is consumed in the common house may not touch the ground; hence, a little before the festivals take place, foot-bridges made of thin poles are constructed from the private dwellings to the common house.[32] When Hall was living with the Esquimaux and grew tired of eating walrus, one of the women brought the head and neck of a reindeer for him to eat.  This venison had to be completely wrapt up before it was brought into the house, and once in the house it could only be placed on the platform which served as a bed.  “To have placed it on the floor or on the platform behind the fire-lamp, among the walrus, musk-ox, and polar-bear meat which occupy a goodly portion of both of these places, would have horrified the whole town, as, according to the actual belief of the Innuits, not another walrus could be secured this year, and there would ever be trouble in catching any more."[33] But in this case the real scruple appears to have been felt not so much at placing the venison on the ground as at bringing it into contact with walrus meat.[34]