their search for game, and not at all keen of scent, (the grass being very high and the bush thick at this season); so the hunters thought that the spirit of the dead dog was affecting the living dogs, because they had buried it without ceremony, and the only way to interest the living dogs in their hunting was to appease and comfort the spirit of the dead dog that had been buried so unceremoniously. The hunters went and surrounded the deceased dog's grave, and solemnly fired volley after volley until they considered that they had propitiated the dead dog's spirit.

A good hunting dog is wrapped for burial in the skin. of an antelope it has killed, and is then interred at a cross road.

B.M.S. Thysville, Wathen,

Congo Free State.

JOHN H. WEEKS.

(To be continued.)

COLLECTANEA.

THE "JASS" At Thun.

(PLATE XI.)

AT Thun, in Switzerland, the annual Shooting Feast takes place in October, when three days are devoted to making holiday. One of the tallest and strongest boys in the town is previously selected by the schoolmasters for the honour of appearing during the feast in the costume of a "Jass" or Jester, shown in the accompanying photograph (Plate XI.). His mission is to walk about the town and belabour with his baton all the youngsters whom he can catch. During the rest of the year the "Jass" is held up as a bugbear wherewith mothers and nurses threaten their children, telling them that, if they are not good, the "Jass" will catch them, and give them a beating. Another name given to the "Jass" is "Fulla Hund," i.e. Fauler Hund, "Lazy Dog."

During a recent visit in the neighbourhood I made several enquiries about this custom from natives of Thun, and gathered the following account of its origin.

In the fourteenth century the town of Thun and the district surrounding it, including both shores of the lake, Interlaken, and the valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, were under the lordship of the powerful Dukes of Kyburg. When the last of this family, three brothers, were living in their castle at Thun, they treated their subjects so badly that the latter applied to the Bernese government, begging to be freed from their yoke. A battle took place at Kiesen between Bern and

the Dukes of Thun, in which the Dukes were defeated, and thereupon the town of Thun and the whole of the Bernese Oberland were annexed to Bern. After their defeat the three Dukes of Kyburg committed suicide by throwing themselves over the walls of their castle, and there is an inscription in old Swiss German which marks the spot.

During their reign the Dukes used to keep a Jester (Jass), whose sympathies were with the downtrodden inhabitants of Thun. He was invited every year to their great Shooting Feast, which then took place annually in October, as it does now. This Jester of the Kyburgs used to be dressed exactly in the same costume as that which is worn by the "Jass" of to-day. The children in Thun knew that he had nothing to do but amuse his masters, and so they nicknamed him "Fulla Hund," "Lazy Dog." As he was in the employ of the muchfeared masters of the castle, he was greatly respected, and after the fall of the House of Kyburg he remained in Thun, and all his expenses were paid by the citizens. Mothers ordered the Jester to punish their children for calling him "Fulla Hund," and he used to beat those he caught at the feast in October, though in these more humane days he only pretends to beat them. There is no longer a professional "Jass," but the old tradition is still maintained, the part being taken by a schoolboy.

It may be remarked that this account of the fall of Thun is not to be found in the standard histories. The historians of the Swiss nation say nothing about this battle of Kiesen and this tragical end of the Kyburgs, though they give a detailed description of a murder which took place in the castle of Thun in 1322, when, after a bitter quarrel between two brothers of the House, one of them was thrown down from the top of the keep, whereupon the surviving brother betrayed Thun to the Bernese. There was fighting between Bern and Duke Rudolf of Kyburg for many years before 1384, when it was finally put an end to, not however so much owing to the

1I was told by one informant that the "Jass" is called "Fulla Hund" because he is too lazy to beat the boys, but only pretends to do so. It seems clear, however, that in former days he used to beat them.