62 THE NON-ARAB RACES OF DARFUR L4.v.

follow in the train of the procession, but it is not customary for any- one else to do so.

At the end of the festival the offerings are all handed over to the two elders, who divide up one-third of the total among the lads and keep two-thirds for themselves. The leaders of the procession get no more in this distribution than their companions.

Then the lads disperse to their homes and the father of each (or

in default the father's brother) cuts off his son's locks and gives them

to the mother, and she hangs them up in the home and there they remain suspended indefinitely.

This cutting of the hair is the final consummation of the whole

affair, and every male Midobi goes through the process on the

threshold of his manhood, and once for all. There is no particular

age specified, and the rite has apparently no connection with puberty,

marriage, etc. One simply waits for a reasonably good harvest year.

It is only forbidden for sons of the same mother to go through the ceremony in a single year, though sons of the same father by different mothers may do so. Until his hair has been shorn it is improper for

a boy to leave the mountain, and, in the case of the one with unshorn

locks whom I encountered, nothing but the force of particular cir- cumstances would have induced him to do it, and he was obviously ashamed of himself^.

^ So far as I could ascertain no other neighbouring Ddrfur tribe has any strictly analogous rite. The somewhat similar practice among the Kimr (see Para, xxi) is associated with circumcision and has nothing to do with the harvest.

The obvious interest in the Midobi festival is the resemblance it bears to May-Day festivals, whether that associated with the holy bull of Magnesia (Asia Minor) in pre-Christian days, or that still held in Thuringia, or in the country

districts of England "where," as Miss Harrison says, "the Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to house. Nowadays it is to

collect pence; once it was to diflFuse 'grace' and increase" (Ancient Art and Ritual,

P- 175)- Take the case of the Thuringian festival first: "As soon as the trees begin

to be green in spring, the children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking for gifts of food, such

as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes..." {Art and Ritual, p. 60).

Even more striking is the parallel from ancient Asia Minor: "It was not only

at Elis that a holy Bull appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive Question: 'Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?' And we find

to our amazement that the .Sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is holy him-

self, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his death in the month Bysios, the month that fell...' at the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many

plants.'

"We do not hear that the 'Sanctifier' at Delphi was 'driven,' but in all prob-

ability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake in the sanctity