iUttarakhand 147
..unless their friends find out the cause of their sickness and wor-
ship the fairies, together with dancing at night. The fairies
,,are not regarded as goddesses, but as spirits, troublesome and
destructive to those who are possessed by them. The snow
-ranges are their popular haunts. Fanciful stories of their falling
in love with the mortals are told.
The ghosts
The earliest connected account of the province of Kumaon is
found in Traill's settlement report, 1820. Traill found the popu-
lation divided into two classes, human beings and ghosts * "The
ghost tribe" he says "is divided into many varieties. The first
and most formidable is the bhut or ghosts of persons, who have
died of a violent death, by murder, drowning, or public execution,
and to whose spirit due funeral honours have not been paid.
These require to be appeased by sacrifices and offerings. Masan
or Chanchri are the ghosts of young children, the ladies of whom
who are not buried and not burnt, and who prowl about the
villages in the shape of bears aijd other wild animals. Tola or
-will-o'-wisps are ghosts of bachelors, that is males who die at
mature age unmarried, dwellers in solitary places and condemned
by other ghosts. The Airi or ghosts of persons killed in hunting,
wandered about the forests in which their death occurred, and
might be heard from time to time hallooing to their spectral dogs.
The Acheri or hill fairies were the ghosts of young female chil-
dren, who flitted about the tops of mountains, producing wonde-
•rous optical illusions among the distant ranges, and descending
;at dusk to play in the valleys. The deos or demons formed a
•numerous and malignant class, indeed scarce a village but had its
peculiar deo. This phenomenon of ghosts and godlings conti-
nues to be operative in parts of Kumaon and even today it is
common to hear people professing to have seen spectres and
ghosts or evil spirits at night assuming male or female forms,
disappearing, and then appearing in some other forms, it may
Ibe in the shape of animals and with their appropriate voices.
Occasionally they are reported to have apared in hideous
gigantic figures, then turning into a misty pilor and vanishing.
These are seen by one or more persons, and always at might*
perferably when people are alone* They play these trides to.