In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it has become a mere play.  But among the Esquimaux[15] there is still carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood.  In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks.  The ptarmigans are the people born in winter, the ducks those born in summer.  They stretch out a long rope of sealskin.  The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the other, then comes a tug-of-war.  If the ducks win there will be fine weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad.  This autumn festival might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of spring.

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The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these magical agones, or “contests,” is not very easy to realize.  The weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day’s pleasuring or raises the price of fruit and vegetables.  But our main supplies come to us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation.  The intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the Central Australians.

The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden fertility.  The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a marvellous transformation.  In the dry season all is hot and desolate, the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life save for the thousand ant-hills.  Then suddenly the rainy season sets in.  Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water.  Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose.  Insects, lizards, frogs, birds, chirp, frisk and chatter.  No plant or animal can live unless it live quickly.  The struggle for existence is keen and short.