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Title: The legend of Perseus, Volume II (of 3)
The life-token
Author: Edwin Sidney Hartland
Release Date: July 3, 2023 [eBook #71107]
Language: English
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS, VOLUME
II (OF 3) ***
The
Legend of Perseus
A STUDY OF TRADITION IN STORY
CUSTOM AND BELIEF: BY
Edwin Sidney Hartland
F.S.A
VOL. II.
THE LIFE-TOKEN
Published by David Nutt
in the Strand, London
1895
[IMPRINT]
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
NOTE
The discussion of the Life-token has proved so important, going down
to the very foundations of the savage philosophy of life, that I have
found it impossible to bring to a close this study of the Legend of
Perseus within the compass of two volumes. A third, however, will
complete the task, and will also include a supplementary
Bibliographical List and an Index.
I desire to add to the names of friends who have so kindly extended to
me their assistance in various ways, those of Mr. Edward Clodd, now
president of the Folklore Society, the Rev. W. Gregor, LL.D., Mrs.
Fanny D. Bergen, M. J. D. E. Schmeltz, the learned Curator of the
Ethnographical Museum at Leiden, and editor of the _Internationales
Archiv_, and Mr. W. R. Paton. To Mr. W. H. D. Rouse I have had
occasion to refer so frequently for assistance of various kinds,
constantly and ungrudgingly rendered, that I hardly know how to thank
him.
Highgarth, Gloucester,
_May_ 1895.
CONTENTS
{vi}
CHAPTER VIII.
The Life-token in Tale and Custom
Two classes of life-tokens; the one, originally connected with the
hero; the other, arbitrary--Examples given in previous
chapters--Examples from _märchen_ outside the Perseus cycle--The
magical mirror--The Life-token in mirror and well--Tokens of
Fidelity--Connection of the Life-token and External Soul--Birth
Ceremonies--Planting of trees and other life-tokens in
custom--Divination.
CHAPTER IX
Witchcraft: Sympathetic Magic
Folktale incidents presenting the divisibility of a person, continued
sympathy of severed portions of a person with the bulk, and the
endowment of the severed portions with consciousness--Modes of
witchcraft--Witchcraft upon objects identified with the
victim--Severed portions of the body--Footprints--Food--Dress--Objects
more remotely associated with the victim--Witchcraft upon arbitrary
objects--Name--Defences against witchcraft.
CHAPTER X
Witchcraft: Philtres--Preventive and remedial Leechcraft
Different kinds of love-potions--Hair and other substances taken from
the body--Clothing--Footprints--Dangers {vii} of carelessness over
severed parts of the body--Cure for warts--Doctrine of
Transplantation--Mistaken applications of--Doctrine of
Sympathy--Remedies derived from the dead--“A hair of the dog that bit
you.”
CHAPTER XI
Sacred Wells and Trees
Ceremonies at wells and trees in the British Islands--On the Continent
of Europe--Nails driven into trees and images--Analogous rites
elsewhere--Usual explanations discussed--Rites at cairns--True meaning
of the rites--Dedication of hair at sacred shrines and graves--Other
votive offerings.
CHAPTER XII
Totemism--The Blood Covenant--Customs connected with Saliva
Recapitulation--Union with the god--Totemism--Sacrifices--The Blood
Covenant--Its evolution--Its sacramental character--Its decay--Changes
in its effect--Saliva customs--Analogy to the Blood Covenant--Spitting
on infants--Spitting on various occasions--Against witchcraft--Saliva
of sacred personages.
CHAPTER XIII
Funeral Rites
The clan one body--The common meal--Eating the dead in
antiquity--Among modern savages--Survivals in modern Europe--Funeral
feasts--The Sin-eater--Similar customs in other countries--Eating with
the dead--Sacramental union with the dead--Smearing with ashes,
etc.--Wearing bones and other relics of {viii} the dead--Cutting
oneself for the dead--Mutilation--Gifts of hair to the dead--Burial in
a common grave--Custom of Ettá.
CHAPTER XIV
Marriage Rites
Analogy of marriage with admission into the clan--Custom of
_Sindra-dán_--Blood-rites--_Confarreatio_--Ritual food shared by all
guests--Meaning of the rite--Marriage constitutes a new relationship
on the part of the entire kin--Bridal dance and kiss--Nasamonian
rite--Group-marriage--Rights of the kin over husband or wife--The
Levirate--Reception by marriage into the kin--Consent of the kin.
CHAPTER XV
The Couvade and other illustrations of the strength of the
Blood-tie--Conclusion of the inquiry into the theory of the Life-token
The Couvade--Its true meaning--Not found among the lowest
savages--Sponsorship--Adoption--Collective responsibility of the
clan--The Blood-feud--Medical treatment of the kin for the disease of
one member--Solidarity of the family--Cannot be terminated even by
death--Sacramental conception of a kindred--The theory of life
underlying the Life-token--Conclusion of the inquiry into the
Life-token.
Endnotes
Press Notices
Errata
THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS
{1}
{2}
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.
{3}
The life-tokens we have met with in previous chapters may be divided
into two classes, namely, such as have some original connection with
the hero, and such as are merely arbitrary. Of the first, the most
widespread and important is the tree that grows up from some portion
of the magical fish. In _The King of the Fishes_ and in the
corresponding Norman tale the tree is a rose-tree growing, in the one
case from the buried scales, in the other from the buried bones. In
one of the stories from Lorraine it will be remembered that some of
the fish’s bones were buried under a rose-tree, and there the babes
are subsequently found. Their life-tokens are not the tree, but three
roses growing upon it. In one of Grimm’s German tales we find two
golden lilies growing from two pieces of the fish. Two cypresses arise
from the fish’s tail in the Greek story. In the Hungarian Gipsy tale,
where the mother becomes pregnant by drinking from an _urme’s_ breast,
the _urme_ drops of her milk into two holes in the ground, whence the
life-tokens, two oak-trees, spring. The mermaid, in a Highland
_märchen_, gives twelve grains, of which three are for the fisher’s
wife and produce three boys, and three are to be planted and produce
trees of a kind unspecified. Equally, {4} doomed to death at the hands
of a Rakshasi, her fellow-wife, gives her son in a golden vessel a
small quantity of her own breast-milk, which will become red if his
father be killed, and more deeply red if she herself be slain.[4.1]
In both these cases there has been originally an organic connection
between the token and the person whose condition is indicated. Such a
connection is not common outside the Perseus cycle. Usually there is
no more connection traceable between the hero and his life-token than
that subsisting between an owner and his property, sometimes not so
much. At most it is founded in the planting by him, or at the time of
his birth, of the tree that serves as the token. A remnant of organic
connection, however, appears in the Panjâbi story about Prince
Lionheart. This personage was born in consequence of his mother’s
eating some barleycorns given her by a fakir. When the prince bids
farewell to his retainer, the knife-grinder, on whom he has bestowed a
kingdom and a bride, he gives him a barley-plant as a life-token. He
afterwards gives, in similar circumstances, a barley-plant each to his
other retainers, the blacksmith and the carpenter. His instructions
are that these plants be carefully tended and watered, for so long as
they flourish he will be alive and well; but if they droop, misfortune
will be at hand. The prince’s life is dependent on his sword. When the
sword is thrown into the fire, a burning fever comes over him: when
the hilt {5} comes off, his head rolls off; and at the same moment
every one of the barley-plants snaps, so that the ears fall to the
ground.[5.1] In a Bengali tale, and in the first of the tales in the
_Siddhi-Kür_, each of the heroes plants a “life-tree.”[5.2] In a
Karen tale the hero sets two plants, and directs his comrades, if the
plants wither, to come and seek for him.[5.3] Ibonia, a Malagasy hero,
plants arums and plantain-trees, saying to his parents: “If these grow
withered, then I am ill; and if they die, that is a sign that I also
am dead.”[5.4] The princess in a Russian tale, when her husband leaves
her, gives him a sackful of seeds, telling him to throw them on either
side of the road he travels: “Wherever they fall, that moment trees
will spring up; on the trees precious fruit will be hanging in beauty,
various birds will sing songs, and tom-cats from over the sea will
tell tales.” When he is drugged, the tree-tops begin to wither; and
the princess sets out after him.[5.5] An Indian story shows us the
lame prince, on undertaking an adventure, giving his mother a plant as
his life-token.[5.6] Apparently the plant is a growing one, but it
does not appear whether the prince had himself set it. A curious
example is found in a variant of Cinderella, collected by M. Cosquin
in Lorraine. Florine was a king’s only daughter. Her mother in dying
had commended above all things to her {6} daughter’s care a little
white lamb. This lamb gives her magical food. When her stepmother
discovers this, she feigns to be sick and persuades the king to kill
the lamb that she may eat of it. Ere it dies the lamb directs Florine
to gather its bones and put them on the pear-tree, whose branches will
thenceforward be adorned with pretty little golden bells, ringing
ceaseless chimes: if these bells be ever silent, it will be a sign of
misfortune. By her command over this magical tree Florine is enabled
to pluck and give to a certain king some of the bells, which her
stepsister cannot do. The king, therefore, marries her. In his absence
her stepmother throws the bride into the river and puts her own
daughter in her place. Forthwith the golden bells cease to chime. Now,
their sound could be heard two hundred leagues around. The king,
remarking that they have stopped, hastens home, and arrives just in
time to save the drowning heroine.[6.1] There is little doubt that the
tale in its more archaic shape exhibited both the lamb and the
pear-tree as transformations of the heroine’s mother, and in this way
connected with the heroine by a tie of blood.
It is not uncommon for the plants to be set by natural or adoptive
parents. The young Klepht in a modern Greek folksong begs his mother:
“Do thou plant a rose-tree, and plant a dusky clove,
And water them with sugar, and water them with musk.
So long they blossom, mother, so long they put forth flowers,
This son of thine will not be dead, but meet the Turks in battle.
But if the day of sorrow, the bitter day should come,
If the two trees fade together, and if their flowers fall,
Then I, too, shall be smitten, and thou shalt wear the black.”[6.2]
{7}
A Negro story from Angola represents one of the heroes, immediately on
his birth, as directing his parents to plant his _kilembe_, or
life-tree, at the back of the house.[7.1]
The Smyrnæan tale I have already mentioned in Chapter IV. brings
before us a childless queen, who is gifted by a dervish with three
apples. These she must eat, and she will then give birth to three
boys. At the birth of each a pumpkin is to be planted in the garden:
it will bring forth one fruit, wherein the child’s strength will
reside. Afterwards, when one of the pumpkins is cut and carried away,
the corresponding youth falls ill, until it is recovered.[7.2] Here
the pumpkin is rather the life itself than the life-token; but the
distinction, as we shall hereafter see, is not very important. A
Tirolese variant of _The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette_
describes the gardener who rescues the children as planting a
gilliflower for each of the two boys, and a rose for the girl.
Apparently this is done at the time he finds and adopts the babe. The
boys grow up and go away successively to seek the Three Beauties of
the World; and their flowers wither when they themselves are changed
into marble by the Medusa-witch.[7.3]
Often, however, the original planting is not mentioned. The twins, in
a Melanesian story from the island of Aurora, simply set a taboo upon
a banana belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu: “If you go
into the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at the
top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us; but if you
see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is ripening upwards, we
shall have killed him.”[7.4] A banana {8} growing by the hero’s hut is
also his life-token, in a Malagasy story.[8.1]
There is a large number of cases which need not detain us now, where
on departure the hero gives a flower that will continue fresh and
flourishing so long as he is hale and prosperous, but will fade on
misfortune or death happening to him. This is a markedly oriental form
of the Life-token, occurring repeatedly in India and among the Arabs
of modern Egypt.[8.2] In the _Sinhasana Dwatrinsatika_, or _Thirty-two
Stories of the Speaking Statues_, a Sanskrit work, Siva gives to
Vikram a lotus-flower, saying: “When this flower withers, then you
will know that you must die in six months, and prepare
accordingly.”[8.3] Here the ideas of the Life-token, the life itself,
and a prophetic message are all mixed up.
The knife stuck into a tree, to drip with blood, or to rust, if the
owner die, is a commonplace of Slavonic stories.[8.4] In a Serbian
tale the knife falls out when the hero is overpowered by the
witch.[8.5] When three brothers part on the search for a magical
pelican, in a Hungarian _märchen_, they mark a finger-post at the
cross-roads. Blood will ooze out of it, on the return of any of them,
if the absent one be in misery or captivity; but milk will flow if he
be well.[8.6] A German tale represents the brothers as each cutting a
tree. The cut becomes blood-red if either {9} of them be dead or in
need.[9.1] In the _Arabian Nights_ Bahman gives his hunting-knife to
Perizadah: it will become blood-stained on his death. The same
incident is found in Spain, in Iceland, and in Italy.[9.2] Elsewhere
other weapons are named. So long as a poniard can be drawn from its
sheath, in a tale obtained by M. Luzel at Plouaret in Lower Brittany,
no ill has happened to its owner; but if it stick, he is dead.[9.3]
Sikulume, in a Kaffir story, sticks his assagai in the ground before
he ventures among some cannibals, saying: “If it stands still, you
will know I am safe; if it shakes, you will know I am running; if it
falls down, you will know I am dead.”[9.4] An Epirote story makes one
of the twins say, when they part: “If the sword of either of us become
bloody, that will be a sign that the other one lies dying.”[9.5]
Among other articles of property, a rosary, or a ring, is the
favourite. Parwez, in the _Arabian Nights_, gives his sister a string
of one hundred pearls: while they run loose on the string, he is
living. The rosary also appears in a modern Arab folktale from Egypt
(already cited), in Catalonia, in Brittany, and in tales obtained at
Troyes in Champagne and at Mantua.[9.6] In Arab tales the ring
tightens round the finger when the giver of the ring suffers
mishap.[9.7] In a Vlach ballad it rusts.[9.8] More usually the {10}
stone it contains changes colour. This is the case in the old French
romance of _Flores et Blanchefleur_; and it reappears among the
Basques, in Italy, and, though rarely, in Russia.[10.1] In Sicily the
ring is originally the gift of a fairy, or rather a Fate, at the birth
of the three children borne by the heroine of a variant of _The Two
Sisters who envied their Cadette_.[10.2] The virtues ascribed of old
to precious stones were many; and we should have had cause for
surprise if we had not found gems in the list of life-tokens.
A handkerchief is a frequent gift. It becomes black, or more usually
besmirched with blood.[10.3] In a Vlach ballad just referred to, the
lady delivers to her husband her veil, adorned with a border of golden
broidery. “When the gold shall melt,” she says, “know thou that I am
dead.” In a modern Greek tale from the island of Syra, two brothers,
starting to seek for the magical bird Dikjeretto, leave their shirts
with their sister. If misfortune meet them, the shirts will turn
black.[10.4] Each of three brothers in a Lithuanian story sets up at
the crossway, ere they part, a blue banner, which will be stained with
red--in other words, with blood--in the event of his death.[10.5] In a
story from Southern Russia, Ivan Popyaloff, going to fight the snake
that withheld the daylight, hung up his gloves, desiring his brothers
to hasten to his help if blood dropped from them.[10.6] In {11}
another Russian story the hero thoughtfully puts a plate beneath, to
catch the blood.[11.1] Lemminkäinen, in the _Kalevala_, having
brushed his beautiful hair, flings the brush upon the oven-posts, and
declares that on harm’s happening to him it will shed blood.
Accordingly, when he is done to death in the Underworld, his wife is
made aware of the fact by the bristles dripping with gore.[11.2] Mats
made from the skins of beasts he has slain, and a pipe, are left
behind with his foster-mother by a young Micmac brave, who goes to
make war on the savage Culloos: she will see blood on them if he be
killed.[11.3] Strong Hans, in a tale from Syra, cannot be got to do
anything but play his cither. When he sallies forth to fight the ogre,
who has ravished away the king’s daughter, he tells his mother: “If
you see that the strings of my cither are broken, then up and seek
me!”[11.4] In an obscure passage of the _Popol Vuh_, the sacred book
of the Quiché, the heroes Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu appear to
leave as their life-token with their mother the india-rubber ball with
which they loved to play.[11.5] One of the Torres Straits islanders
told Professor Haddon a tale wherein a mother, while at work, breaks
her digging-stick, and at once concludes that something has happened
to her baby-boy. Sure enough it has; for a gust of wind had blown down
his basket-cradle, and a man and his wife passing by have found the
child in the grass and taken him away.[11.6] Here the instrument
neither belongs to, nor {12} is it indicated by, the person affected.
So in an Iroquois legend, when the hero starts in search of the
daughter of a neighbouring chief, his uncle, under whose tutelage he
is, brings out “a curious thing made of coloured string and elk-hair
of deep red, about a foot long. ‘I shall keep this by me,’ said he,
‘and so long as you are doing well it will hang as it is; but if you
are in danger it will come down itself almost to the ground, and if it
does reach the ground you will die.’”[12.1]
According to a _märchen_ told by the Transylvanian Armenians, a
maiden presses a gold coin into her lover’s hand and tells him that
when it is rusty she will be dead.[12.2] In the Russian tale of _Marya
Morevna_, the hero leaves successively his silver spoon, fork and
snuff-box with his three Animal Brothers-in-law, when he goes on the
perilous adventure of rescuing his fair wife from Koshchei the
Deathless. When he is killed and chopped into pieces by the ogre, all
the silver turns black.[12.3] The hero of a Tirolese tale and his
sister kindle two lights; and he declares that if one of them go out,
she must take it as a sign that something has happened to him and he
will nevermore return.[12.4] A candle is combined with the
handkerchief which becomes bloody in a Russian story. The youngest
brother going away in a Sicilian _märchen_ touches a vase of cloves
and utters the warning that the drying up of the cloves will be a
signal of his having been {13} turned to marble by the
Medusa-witch.[13.1] In Russian tales the hero’s horse stands in blood
up to his knees, or even up to his neck, or up to his ankles in tears,
when his master is dead.[13.2] In another Russian tale a glass of
water becomes tinged with blood.[13.3] And in a Servian tale the
eldest brother, on going out with the second, directs the youngest to
put a kettle on the fire to boil, and to keep stirring the fire
beneath it. If the water turn to blood, he is to let a little dog out
of the cellar, and bid it follow the way the two elder brothers have
taken.[13.4] Similarly in a Georgian story the prince fills a cup with
water and puts it near the fire. So long as it remains pure he will be
alive; but on its changing to blood he will be dead.[13.5] In the
Egyptian manuscript the elder brother is warned of his younger’s fate
by the beer he is about to drink turning into froth. Here again, it
will be noted, there is no apparent connection with the hero, save
that he has previously appointed this sign.
One of the magical objects most famous in tradition and in romantic
literature is the mirror wherein the beholder can see any object at
will. It became prominent in the dreams of science during the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when it is said to have
figured among the properties of astrologers. In English literature the
Enchanted Mirror is best remembered from the Squire’s Tale of
Cambuscan Bold, and by the admirable use of it in one of the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. I do not propose to discuss it here further than
is necessary to show its relations with the Life-token. The first time
we meet with it in literature is in Lucian’s _True History_. It is
found in the {14} moon, of enormous dimensions, lying over a well.
Anybody, we are told, who enters the well hears whatever is said upon
the earth; and anybody looking into the mirror sees as in a panorama
all the cities and nations of the world. The Greek Munchausen declares
that he saw his family and his entire fatherland; and whoever does not
believe him can go there and look for himself! A singular parallel is
found among the Dyaks of Borneo. According to their traditions, one of
the ancient fathers of the race climbed upon a gigantic tree to the
Pleiades, where he was hospitably entertained by a friendly being, who
introduced him to rice--a food until then unknown on earth. Being left
alone for a short time, the visitor peeped into a big jar, and there,
to his astonishment, saw, as in a mirror, his father’s house, with the
whole family party gathered in animated discussion. His spirits fell,
for he feared he should never return home from that immense distance.
But his host cheered him up; and after giving him a good dinner, and
some rice to plant, with full instructions as to its cultivation and
other hints on husbandry, he let him down by a rope to the earth
again. The adventurer, having thus got back in safety, taught his
people the lessons he had learned in the Pleiades; and he is still
venerated as the father of agriculture.[14.1] In the far west the Ynca
Yupanqui, if we may trust the Peruvian legend reported by Molina, once
went to visit his father Viracocha Ynca. Coming to a certain fountain,
he saw a piece of crystal fall into it; and within the crystal he
beheld the figure of a man dressed like an Ynca. From the back of his
head issued three brilliant rays like those of the sun. The royal
fringe was upon his head, and {15} ear-pieces, like those of the
Yncas, adorned his ears. Serpents twined around his arms and
shoulders. Upon his shoulders there was a lion, while the head of
another lion appeared between his legs. Yupanqui fled; but from within
the fountain the apparition called him by name. “Come hither,” it
said, “my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt
conquer many nations: therefore be careful to pay great reverence to
me, and remember me in thy sacrifices.” Saying this, the apparition
vanished; but the crystal remained. The Ynca took care of it, and we
are told that thenceforth he saw in it everything he wanted.[15.1]
Mr. Clouston, in his notes to John Lane’s feeble continuation of the
Squire’s Tale, has brought together a large number of instances of
magical mirrors, beginning with Vergil the Magician and coming down to
the practices recorded by Mr. E. W. Lane and others in modern Egypt
and India.[15.2] A boy is ordinarily the agent in the last-mentioned
practices, and a spot of ink in the hollow of his hand the mirror. The
same practices were employed in classical antiquity, and were not
unknown during the Middle Ages. A German saga relates that a jewel of
crystal was by a mysterious stranger left as a gift with a burgess of
Nuremberg who had shown him hospitality for three days. If a chaste
boy looked into the crystal he would see a little man, who would show
him everything it was desired to know. So great was the reputation of
the {16} glass, that people used to threaten one another: “Speak the
truth, or I’ll go to the little man.”[16.1] In a Gipsy story from
Transylvania a king’s daughter possesses a mirror wherein she can see
everything in the world.[16.2] Another mirror with somewhat more
limited capacity was the gift of a mountain spirit in a German tale;
but it had other powers that resulted at last in a curse.[16.3] When
Vasco da Gama was sailing towards India, some of the Indian wizards
are said to have shown the people at Calicut in basins of water his
three ships.[16.4] The Egyptian and modern Indian practices are
ordinarily used for discovering thefts; and this was often the purpose
in Europe. In Tahiti and Hawaii the priest was sent for on similar
occasions. After some prayers he caused a hole to be dug in the floor
of the house, and filled with water. He continued his incantations
with a young plantain in his hand until he observed the image of the
thief in the water.[16.5] In the Isle of Man a notorious witch is
reported to have made use of a bowl of {17} water in order to divine
as to the safety of a herring-fleet.[17.1] The Otando fetish-man of
Equatorial Africa also uses a vessel of water; the Mpongwe fetish-man
uses a mirror.[17.2] In Borneo the _manang_, or medicine-man, is
frequently provided with a magical stone into which he can look and
see what is ailing a sick man, and prescribe for him
accordingly.[17.3] The Cakchiquels of Central America had a sacred
obsidian stone, which was their national oracle, and was mysteriously
connected with the origin of mankind. A stone, apparently identified
with this, is preserved in the church of Tecpan, Guatemala. It was
shown to Mr. Stephens, who describes it as “a piece of common slate,
fourteen inches by ten, and about as thick as those used by boys at
school, without characters of any kind upon it.”[17.4] No doubt the
eye of faith was required to see anything in it. Crystals are used by
the medicine-men of the Apaches for divining.[17.5] The Urim and
Thummim of Hebrew antiquity seem to have been objects of the same kind
of superstition. The “Mirror of Light” is not unknown even in these
days, and has been honoured with the attention of the Society for
Psychical Research.[17.6]
Lucian, in placing the mirror in a well, was probably {18} satirising
the belief in sacred wells which had properties like those he
attributed to the mirror. Such wells and pools are still to be found,
both in stories and in fact. A fairy in an Italian tale points out to
the hero a fountain which will be a mirror for him, into which he can
look, and to which he can give commands, and they will be
obeyed.[18.1] It was formerly believed at York that he who flung, on
May morning before the Minster clock struck one, five white stones
into a certain part of the Ouse near the city, would see in the water,
as in a mirror, whatever he might desire, whether past, present, or
future.[18.2] On the promontory of Tænarum, now Cape Matapan,
Pausanias tells us, was a famous fountain. In his day there was
nothing remarkable to be seen in it; but anciently those who pried
into its depths might see views of ports and ships. In the Cyaneæ,
hard by Lycia, too, there was a spring, into which whoso descended saw
whatever he wished to behold.[18.3] And there is a wonderful well in
Samoa, wherein a variety of scenes may be perceived by those who will
undertake the risk of being enticed into its stony depths.[18.4]
So far we have found no Life-token in mirror or well. A mirror or
well, however, which reveals to the inquirer only the health of one in
whom he has an interest, is obviously nothing more than a special
variety of the mirror {19} or well revealing anything or everything.
This is the variety mentioned in a Roman variant of _Beauty and the
Beast_, where Beauty, on taking leave of the Beast for a short time,
is given a mirror, into which she can look and see how he is.[19.1] In
a Swedish _märchen_ already cited, on the two comrades parting at a
crossway, one of them dips his knife into the fountain adjacent, and
says to the other: “It shall be to thee a sign that I am living so
long as the water of this spring is clear; but if it be red and
turbid, then I shall be dead, and I certainly expect that thou wilt
avenge my death.”[19.2]
This convenient way of obtaining news of absent friends is said to be
still in use. The Eskimo of Greenland, when a man has not returned in
due time from an expedition in his kayak, hold the head of his nearest
relation over a tub of water, and judge from the reflection beneath
whether the absent person has been upset, or is still sitting in the
boat, rowing.[19.3] In the island of Tahiti, if one, looking at the
water of certain springs, chance to see it tinged with blood, it is a
sign that one of the beholder’s friends is about to die.[19.4] Nor is
it different in our own country. Gulval Well, in Cornwall, answers
inquiries put with the proper formula. If the person asked after be
alive and well, the quiet water will instantly boil and bubble clear
and pure; if he be sick, the water becomes foul and puddled; if he be
dead, it remains calm and lifeless.[19.5] The legends accounting for
these phenomena in Tahiti and Cornwall are unrecorded. In the parish
of Kirkmichael, in the county of Banff, there {20} is a fountain
dedicated to St. Michael, and famous for its healing virtues. The
guardian of the well appears in the shape of a fly which, it is
believed, never dies. “To the eye of ignorance,” we are told, “he
might sometimes appear dead; but agreeably to the Druidic system, it
was only a Transmigration into a similar form, which made little
alteration on the real identity.” He was, in former days at all
events, constantly on duty. “If the sober matron wished to know the
issue of her husband’s ailment, or the love-sick Nymph that of her
languishing Swain, they visited the Well of St. Michael. Every
movement of the sympathetic Fly was regarded in silent awe; and as he
appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their
presages; their breasts vibrated with correspondent emotions.”[20.1]
Brand and Ellis quote from an old writer a passage concerning
fountains which prognosticate plenty or famine. The writer concludes
by saying: “Myselfe know some Gentlemen that confesse, if a certaine
Fountaine (being otherwise very cleane and cleare) be suddenly
troubled by meanes of a Worme unknowne, that the same is a personall
Summons for some of them to depart out of the world.”[20.2] These
superstitions frequently degenerated into mere divination. Dalyell
records that auguries as to the fate of {21} any one were drawn from
the finding of a dead or a living worm in a well in the parish of
Strathdon, and also in the well at Ardnacloich in Appin,
Argyllshire.[21.1] Sir John Lubbock quotes a striking instance from
Dr. Anderson’s account of the expedition to Western Yunnan. Three men
having gone to the Kakhyen hills, a report reached their families that
one of them had died. To ascertain which of them it was, the old women
were divining by means of needles and cotton-wool. Each needle
representing one of the absent men, threaded with a piece of
cotton-wool to act as a float, was let down gently into the water. As
the floats got thoroughly wetted, the needles would sink one after
another; and the man whose needle sank first would be the dead
one.[21.2] The water there was probably contained in a vessel; but the
principle, as we see from several instances already cited, is the
same. Before the temple of Demeter at Patras there was a spring that
was consulted on the issue of any disease. The method (and here,
perhaps, we touch the object of Lucian’s satire) was to let down a
mirror suspended by a cord so as just to allow the water lightly to
touch its edges, but not its face. After praying and clearing the air
with incense, the performers (probably priests) looked down into the
mirror, and thence perceived whether the patient would live or
die.[21.3] On the isle of Andros it is still the practice for Greek
maidens to hold a mirror over a well and to look in it for the face of
their future husbands reflected from the well below.[21.4] In Brittany
there are certain wells wherein children’s shirts are dipped. If a
shirt sink to the bottom, it is a sign of the child’s death within a
year. Contrariwise, {22} if the shirt swim, the child will live; and
to ensure its living and to preserve it from every kind of evil the
wet garment is immediately put on.[22.1] After that, nobody would deny
the child’s continued health to be a miracle. The superstition was not
by any means confined to Brittany; but it will suffice to give one
more example of it here. “Between the towns of Alten and Newton,” says
one of the Cottonian Manuscripts, “near the foot of Rosberrye
Toppinge, there is a Well dedicated to St. Oswald. The neighbours have
an opinion that a Shirt or Shift taken off a sick person and thrown
into that Well, will show whether the person will recover or die: for,
if it floated, it denoted the recovery of the party; if it sank, there
remained no hope of their life; and to reward the Saint for his
intelligence, they tear off a Rag of the Shirt, and leave it hanging
on the Briars thereabout; where I have seen such numbers as might have
made a fayre Rheme in a Paper Myll.”[22.2]
For divination of this kind no special connection would be necessary
between the life and the pool or fountain, such as is hinted at in the
quotation concerning the “Worme unknown.” This is not always so. At
Brereton, in Cheshire, is a lake whereon floating logs betokened the
death of the head of the family of Brereton.[22.3] Leonard Vair in his
book on charms and sortileges mentions a very curious case
communicated to him by Cardinal Granvelle. {23} At the monastery of
Saint Maurice on the borders of Burgundy, near to the Rhone, was a
fish-pond which was kept stocked with as many fish as there were
monks. When any of the monks fell sick (we are bound to believe it on
the authority of a bishop and cardinal), one of the fish floated on
the surface of the water, half dead; and if the monk were going to
die, the fish would die three or four days before him.[23.1] In like
manner, on a mountain in Franconia a fountain issues near the cradle
(_Stammhaus_) of an ancient noble family. The clear stream gushes
forth incessantly the whole year round; and it was believed to fail
only when one of the family was about to die.[23.2] It is reported of
the holy spring of Szörény that its water becomes blood-red as often
as a King of Hungary dies.[23.3] There is a crater-lake in Madagascar,
about eighty miles south-south-west of Antanánarívo, called
Tritriva. It is of a deep green colour, almost black. The natives hold
that there is an intimate and secret relation between the lake and the
members of a neighbouring tribe, the Zanatsara. When a tribesman is
taken ill, the waters of the lake are at once examined. If they are
troubled and become of a brown colour, it is a presage of death: if
they remain clear, {24} the patient will have a chance of life.[24.1]
In these cases we have precisely the conditions of the Life-token; and
we may be allowed to conjecture that other cases of inquiry after
absent friends, or divination for the sick, were originally limited to
persons believed to stand in some special relation with the fountain
consulted. Further, the stories and superstitions regarding mirrors
have evidently been transferred from pools and springs, to which they
must have originally attached. And in the Eskimo practice, and the
divination at Patras, and elsewhere, in the performances of Indian and
Egyptian conjurers and of the fetish-men and priests of Equatorial
Africa and the Pacific Islands, we may perhaps trace some of the
intermediate stages.
These pools and mirrors have led me to anticipate somewhat. And before
returning to Life-tokens a few words must be spent upon the cognate
subject of Tokens of Fidelity. The extension of the idea of a
life-token to a faith-token is obvious where the persons parted are
lovers or spouses. In such cases it would not be enough for one to
know that the other was living: constant assurance of the absent one’s
fidelity would be as necessary to the other’s happiness as his life.
There is another magical object, familiar in certain stages of
civilisation, with which the Faith-token may easily be confounded. I
mean the Test of Chastity, like the mirror in the beautiful tale of
_Zayn al-Asnam_, or Florimel’s girdle in the _Faerie Queene_. With
this test of chastity in a general sense we have not here to do; nor
is it necessary to discuss the Faith-token itself at any length.
In Eastern tales the Faith-token ordinarily assumes the {25} form of a
flower. In the _Tutinameh_, a soldier’s wife gives her husband on his
departure a rose which will remain fresh while she preserves her
purity.[25.1] In the _Kathá-sarit-Ságara_, the god Siva appears in a
dream to Guhasena and his wife Devasmitá when they are about to part,
and gives them a red lotus apiece, saying: “Take each of you one of
these lotuses in your hand. And if either of you shall be unfaithful
during your separation, the lotus in the hand of the other shall fade,
but not otherwise.” When they awoke, each beheld in the other’s hand a
red lotus, “and it seemed as if they had got one another’s
hearts.”[25.2] In a modern folktale obtained in the Panjáb the kind
of flower is not specified, but the incident is the same.[25.3] The
token appears also as a flower or a garland in several of the European
romances of chivalry; and in a Hungarian _märchen_ a king, going to
war, gives to his two daughters two wreaths which will wither if they
lose their maidenhood.[25.4] In a modern folksong of one of the Greek
islands, an apple-tree, questioned why it withers, replies:
“They plighted a youth and maiden beneath my shelter;
They swore by my branches that they would cling together,
And now, because I know they part, my leaves are turning yellow.”[25.5]
These stories have their counterpart in practice. Siva, the Hindu god
who is the agent in one of the stories just quoted, is a phallic
deity. Among the Mech of Bengal, a Mongoloid tribe just now in a
transitional state of religion between animism and the Hinduism which
is macadamising the innumerable aboriginal cults of India, a sij plant
{26} (_Euphorbia Indica_) grows in the courtyard of every house. This
plant is carefully tended as the abode of Siva and the emblem of
conjugal fidelity. If its leaves wither, something is wrong with one
of the women of the household.[26.1] A curious superstition of an
analogous kind was commonly practised among our own countrymen within
the memory of men only a few years dead. Lovers who desired to know
how they should succeed in their suit carried flowers called
bachelors’ buttons in their pockets, and judged of their good or bad
success by the flowers’ growing or not growing there.[26.2] So it is
noted among the superstitions prevalent in France two hundred years
ago, that, in order to know which of three or four persons loved one
the best, a corresponding number of thistles should be taken, the buds
cut off, and to each plant should be imputed the name of one of the
persons concerning whom it was intended to inquire. The thistles were
then to be placed under the head of the inquirer’s bed; and the one
representing the person who had most affection would put forth new
buds.[26.3] At Siena a maiden who wished to know how her love
progressed kept and tended a plant of rue. While it flourished all
went well; but if it withered it was a sign that the love she desired
had failed her.[26.4]
In the ballad of _Hind Horn_ the king’s daughter gives the hero a
jewelled ring. As long as the stone keeps its {27} colour, he may know
that she is faithful; but if it change its hue, he may ken she loves
another man. Professor Child, commenting on the ballad, adduces not
merely several variants and romances on the same subject, but also a
Roumanian ballad wherein a prince going to war gives his wife a ring
which will rust if he be dead, and a Silesian story and another
British ballad where the ring breaks in twain.[27.1] In these ballads
and stories we probably have the real meaning of plighting the troth
in the marriage service with a ring. Bacon, somewhere discussing the
superstition, gravely suggests that a trial should be made by two
persons of the effect of compact and agreement; that a ring should be
put on for each other’s sake, to try whether, if one should break his
promise, the other would have any feeling of it in his absence. The
hero of a North German tale receives from his bride the day after
marriage a snow-white shirt, which will turn black if she die, and
become stained and spotted if she be untrue.[27.2] A Hungarian
tradition speaks of a carbuncle which lighted up the neighbourhood of
a lake in the Carpathians while the consort of the king of the
water-fays was true to him; but when she fell in love with a mortal
prince it lost its splendour, and the king with his golden palace and
all his treasures sank into the black depths of the lake.[27.3] The
Faith-token is a piece of machinery too suggestive to be {28}
overlooked by poets and dramatists of more refined art than the
mediæval romancers. Davenant mentions an emerald, not set like the
Carpathian carbuncle on a palace tower, but worn by a lady, and
growing pale when her husband is unfaithful. Massinger’s play of _The
Picture_ turns upon a portrait of his wife given to the parting
knight, Mathias, by “a great scholar,” or magician, with these
instructions:
“Carry it still about you, and as oft
As you desire to know how she’s affected,
With curious eyes peruse it: while it keeps
The figure it now has, entire and perfect,
She is not only innocent in fact,
But unattempted; but if once it vary
From the true form, and what’s now white and red
Incline to yellow, rest most confident
She’s with all violence courted, but unconquer’d;
But if it all turn black, ’tis an assurance
The fort by composition or surprise
Is forced or with her free consent surrender’d.”
I do not propose, however, to trace the Faith-token through
literature. If a gift of doubtful benefit to a jealous lover, many a
literary artist in search of a plot has found it useful. Our business
is with the Life-token, to which we may now return. Tales of
life-tokens credited as facts are not very numerous. Perhaps one or
two of the stories already mentioned may be included in that category.
The rest may be treated together with superstitions and customs.
In many variants of the Perseus cycle, as well as in many of the
_märchen_ cited in the present chapter, we have found the life-token
to be a tree planted before or at the time of the hero’s birth, or
sometimes planted by himself or merely indicated by him. In the
Smyrnæan tale, it will be {29} remembered, the queen plants a pumpkin
on the birth of each of her sons. The pumpkin brings forth one fruit,
wherein the strength of the boy resides; and when it is cut the boy
falls ill. As I have already pointed out, the pumpkin would seem here
to be the life itself, and not merely the life-token. A distinction
between the life and the life-token is generally observed in
_märchen_. On the one hand, we have the story of Punchkin with his
hidden soul, in which the magician, or demoniacal enemy of the hero,
cannot be slain by any evil inflicted on his own body. His soul, or
life, must be sought out in a distant spot where, enveloped in various
coverings and protected by numerous defences, is a parrot, or an egg,
to destroy which is to kill the magician. On the other hand, we have
in the variants of _The King of the Fishes_ and other types the
mysterious token left at home while its owner sallies forth in search
of adventures. If he fall, or suffer reverses, the token at home, if a
tree or a flower, withers; if a knife, or a phial of liquid, or some
other article, it drops blood, or rusts, or changes colour, or
indicates in some other manner its sympathy with the hero’s fortunes.
This broad distinction is natural in a story the plot of which is made
to depend upon it. It is easy to understand, however, that the
distinction could not be maintained in any corresponding practical
superstition. To assume, for instance--what is quite possible--that
the lives of the monks of Saint Maurice were actually believed to be
bound up with those of the fishes in the fishpond of the monastery,
how could it be determined whether a fish’s death caused the death of
one of the brethren or only betokened it? In the course of the
following pages we shall meet with many cases of sympathy between a
child {30} and a tree or other object. The child’s death and the
withering of the tree, or some other corresponding change, are
believed to be coincident. Experience will very soon show that
sometimes the injury may happen to the child, sometimes to the
life-token. If the superstition survive, it can only do so by
supposing that both alike are vulnerable, and that the consequences of
an injury to either are mysteriously transmitted to the other.[30.1]
Even in a story, however, the distinction between the Life-token and
the “External Soul,” as Mr. Frazer calls it, is not always maintained.
In the tale of Prince Lionheart, referred to at the beginning of this
chapter, the hero derives his origin from a barleycorn. His
life-token, multiplied in a lavish oriental manner by three, consists
of three barley-plants. It is noteworthy that he directs that every
one of them shall be carefully tended, for so long as they flourished
he would be alive and well, and, on the contrary, if they drooped,
misfortune would be at hand: implying that his life and prosperity
were dependent upon them. His external soul proper is a sword. When
its hilt comes off, his head falls, and at the same instant the ear of
each of the barley-plants snaps. Other stories may easily be recalled
where a plant as the hero’s life-token is commended to the special
care of the friend or kinsman left behind, as if injury to the plant
would affect its absent owner. We shall, accordingly, be justified in
treating the Life-token and the External Soul as almost always one and
the same thing in belief and custom.
In the _Popol Vuh_, the twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, whose
birth I have already described in Chapter v., on starting for the
realm of Xibalba to avenge their {31} father’s death, plant each a
cane in the midst of their grandmother’s dwelling, that she may know
by its flourishing or fading whether they are alive or dead.[31.1]
According to a tradition of the province of Berri, in central France,
a local saint, Honoré de Buzançais, who flourished at the end of the
thirteenth century, in setting forth on a journey told his mother
that, by means of a certain laurel which had been planted the day he
was born, she would at any time be able to learn how he fared. The
tree would languish if he were ill, and wither if he died. He was
murdered, and the laurel withered at the same instant.[31.2] On the
island of Tahiti, a sacred tree, resembling the banian of India, was
said to have shot forth a new tendril at the birth of one of the kings
whose inauguration is described by Ellis; and this branch reached the
ground when the inauguration took place.[31.3] So Suetonius tells us
that thrice when the mother of the Emperor Vespasian gave birth to a
boy a certain ancient oak-tree belonging to the Flavian _gens_ and
sacred to Mars put forth a new shoot; and when the Emperor himself was
born the shoot was of such vitality that it grew to the size of the
old trunk itself.[31.4]
These are legends. In actual life, among the Maori, when the
navel-string came off a newborn child, the child was carried to a
priest. The cord was buried in a sacred place; and over it a young
sapling was planted, which was expressly regarded as the babe’s “Sign
of Life,” or life-token.[31.5] Another account states that the
placenta was buried and a tree planted over the spot. “Instances have
been known of territorial right being claimed in consequence {32} of
the placenta and umbilical cord having been buried in the vicinity,
the tree being pointed to as evidence.” Elsewhere in New Zealand the
cord was buried by the mother at the foot of some out-of-the-way tree
or bush, with certain mystic words. If the tree or bush decayed or
died, the child would not be expected to live long.[32.1] In Southern
Celebes a cocoa-nut is planted at the child’s birth, and watered with
the water in which the cord and after-birth have been washed. The
tree, as it grows up, is called the “contemporary” of the child.[32.2]
In Old Calabar a palm-tree is planted, so as to grow with the child,
and the after-birth is buried beside it.[32.3] The superstition is not
confined to these distant lands. In Pomerania the after-birth is
buried at the foot of a young tree; in Mecklenburg it is merely cast
there; in either case the child will grow with the tree, and thrive as
it thrives.[32.4]
{33}
It is obvious that in all these cases there is a connection
established between the child and the tree by means of the placenta.
The reasons for planting a tree are probably twofold. Not only is it
difficult to preserve the after-birth itself; it is also desired to
bring to bear upon the child all the gracious influences of Nature, to
aid in his growth and development. This is done by the intervention of
the young tree, which thus becomes more than a mere index of his
fortunes. The placenta is, in fact, a portion of the child
incorporated in the tree. A caul, which is as much a portion of the
child as the placenta, and which, unlike the latter, is easy of
preservation, was formerly regarded in this country as an index of the
health of the person who was so lucky as to be born with it. While he
remained alive and well, it was firm and crisp; if he sickened or
died, it became flaccid and relaxed.[33.1] Any fragment of a human
being may, indeed, become his life-token. A pathetic instance is on
record of a boy in Grafton County, New Hampshire, who, early in the
present century, was badly scalded, so that a piece of his skin, fully
one inch in diameter, sloughed off, and was carefully treasured by his
mother. When the boy came of age he left home, and was never heard of
after; but his mother used from time to time to examine the skin,
persuaded that so long as it was sound her son was alive and well, and
that it would not begin to decay until his death. She died about 1843;
and thenceforth her daughters kept the skin for their brother’s sake
as she had done, and with the same notions about its preservation and
decay.[33.2] In these examples we do not find the idea of the External
Soul. {34} The object, whether caul or skin, is kept merely to obtain
tidings of the absent. It is not united for his benefit to any living
organism like a tree; nor does it seem to be necessary to his life to
preserve it from harm.
Sometimes, however, the belief connected with the rite of planting at
a birth is more obscure, whether from the fault of those who have
recorded it, or because it has faded out of the memory of those who
perform it. The Fiji islanders bury the navel-string with a cocoa-nut,
which is intended to germinate and grow. The tree produced is
considered the property of the child.[34.1] Among the tribes of
Guatemala, and also of Virginia, the cord was cut upon an ear of
maize, and the grains thus besprent with blood were sown in the
infant’s name.[34.2] The umbilical cord of an Aztec boy was buried
with mimic weapons in a place where a battle might be expected to take
place on a future day. A girl’s cord, with domestic implements proper
to her sex, was buried under a _metate_, or stone whereon the maize
was crushed.[34.3] The interpretation of none of these presents any
difficulty, save that of the Aztec boy. But if we regard the cord as
his external soul, we may suppose that it was either put into a safe
place, or was expected to strengthen and encourage its owner on the
day of battle. The Badouj husband, in Java, buries the placenta in the
forest. We are told nothing as to {35} the situation in which it is
buried; if not at the foot of a tree, it is probably intended to be
hidden securely away.[35.1]
In other cases there appears no physical contact with the infant, or
with the accompaniments of its birth, though the intention is plain.
On the island of Bali, in the East Indies, a cocoa-palm is simply
planted. It is called the child’s “Life-plant,” and is believed to
grow up equally with him. When twins are born, in some Zulu tribes,
the father plants two euphorbia-trees near the door of the hut. Among
the Mbengas of Western Africa, when two babes are born on the same
day, two trees of the same kind are planted, and the people dance
round them. “The life of each of the children is believed to be bound
up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies, or is
thrown down, they are sure that the child will die soon.” The life of
a newborn child is united by some of the Papuans with that of the tree
by driving a pebble into the bark. “This is supposed to give them
complete mastery over the child’s life; if the tree is cut down, the
child will die.”[35.2] Among the Sakalava of Madagascar, a tree called
Hàzomànitra (Fragrant Wood) is planted at the birth of a first
child. This is said to be a witness that the father acknowledges it as
his own.[35.3] But had he not acknowledged it, the child must
presumably have been put to death, so that this can hardly be the real
reason. According to the Babylonian Talmud it was a Hebrew practice to
plant a cedar at the birth of a boy, and {36} a pine at the birth of a
girl.[36.1] On the New Marquesas Islands a breadfruit-tree is set
apart for the use of every infant at its birth; or, if the parents be
too poor to do this, a sapling is immediately planted. The fruit of
the tree is taboo to every one save the child; even the parents dare
not touch it.[36.2] Among several European nations it is, or has been
up to recent times, the custom to plant a tree at the birth of a
child. When the poet Vergil was born, his parents are said to have
planted a poplar, in the hope that, as that tree overtopped all the
rest, their son’s greatness would outstrip all others’. Poplars are
still set in the neighbourhood of Turin when a girl is born; and they
become in after-years the maiden’s dower. In Switzerland an apple-tree
is set for a boy, a pear or a nut for a girl; and it is believed that
as the young tree flourishes, so will the child. In Aargau, in
particular, it was the custom, not many years back, to plant a
fruit-tree on the land of the commune for every infant that was born;
and if a father were enraged with a son who was at a distance, and
therefore out of his reach, he would go to the field and cut down the
tree planted at his son’s birth.[36.3] In England we still hear
sometimes of trees being planted at a birth. Count de Gubernatis, I
know not on what authority, asserts that there are families in Russia,
Germany, England, France, and Italy, whose practice it is to plant at
the birth of a {37} child a fruit-tree, which is loved and tended with
special care as the symbol of the child and of the child’s fate.[37.1]
Only thirty years ago it was the custom of the good folk of Liége to
plant a tree in the garden when a child was born: a custom which, it
seems, is still continued in some parts of Belgium.[37.2] In the
province of Canton, in China, although we are not informed that trees
are planted on the like occasions, we seem to have a relic of some
such practice in the superstition requiring a child’s fortune to be
told, in order to ascertain the particular idol or tree to which he
belongs. It is thought that a tree is planted in the spirit-world to
represent the life in this world, “and that the child is as much the
fruit of the tree as it is that of the womb.”[37.3] It is difficult to
see how such a thought could have originated, unless it were connected
with the planting of a tree in this world when the babe was born.
Nor is it only at a birth that the life-token is planted. Among the
English-speaking population on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake,
when one of a family leaves home, a bit of live-for-ever is stuck in
the ground to indicate the fortune of the absent one. It will flourish
if he prosper; otherwise it will wither or die.[37.4] An Italian {38}
work falsely attributed to Cornelius Agrippa gives the following
prescription for divining the health of a person far distant: Gather
onions on the Eve of Christmas, and put them on an altar, and under
every onion write the name of one of the persons as to whom
information is desired. When planted, the onion that sprouts the first
will clearly announce that the person whose name it bears is
well.[38.1] In the north-east of Scotland, when potatoes were dug for
the first time in the season a stem was put for each member of the
family, the father first, the mother next, and the rest in order of
age. Omens of the prosperity of the year were drawn from the number
and size of the potatoes growing from each stem.[38.2] Every Roman
emperor solemnly planted on the Capitol a laurel, which was said to
wither when he was about to die. It was the custom, too, of a
successful general at his triumph to plant in a shrubbery set by Livia
a laurel which was believed to fade after his death.[38.3] Marco Polo
records that the Great Khan planted the highways through his realm
with rows of trees, for the purpose of marking the roads; and that he
did it all the more readily because his astrologers and diviners told
him that he who planted trees lived long.[38.4] Why, unless his life
were bound up with the trees he planted? In British Guiana, when young
children are betrothed, as is the custom among the aborigines, trees
are planted by the respective parties in witness of the contract. {39}
If either tree happen to fade, the child it belongs to will die.[39.1]
The custom exists also in Germany. At Hochheim, Einzingen, and other
places in the neighbourhood of Gotha, a bridal pair plants at the
wedding, or shortly after, two young trees on the land of the commune.
If either of the trees perish, the spouse who planted it will shortly
die.[39.2] “On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo,” says Mr.
Frazer, quoting Professor Wilken, “plant a palm-tree, which is
believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes they
reckon on good fortune, but if it withers or dies they expect
misfortune.”[39.3] What else than this can be the true meaning of the
ceremony practised by some of the Australian blacks when a boy attains
puberty? His two upper front teeth are knocked out, and his mother
carefully inserts them in the fork of the topmost branches of a young
gum-tree, which thereupon becomes taboo.[39.4] {40} The tree is not,
indeed, newly planted, but, as in the Papuan practice cited just now,
the boy’s fate is united with it. If a gipsy babe do not thrive in
Transylvania, the mother drops a little of her own blood in its mouth,
and rubs its saliva in the hole of a tree, repeating a rhyming formula
adjuring the child to grow like that tree.[40.1] When a child has been
passed, for hernia or some other disease, through a young tree split
for the purpose, the tree is forthwith bound up and plastered with mud
or clay so that it may grow together again; and according as this
treatment is successful on the tree, the child is expected to recover.
This, I need hardly remind the reader, is a superstition very widely
spread in Europe. In Mecklenburg, and most likely elsewhere, it is
believed that if the tree be felled the child will die.[40.2] So, too,
among the Buryats of Siberia, a shaman on the eve of his first
dedication cuts a magical stick from a growing birch. It must be of
some size, since a horse’s head is required to be carved at the top,
and a horse’s knee and hoof at the lower end. It must be so cut that
the birch will not wither from the excision, for that would be an ill
omen for the shaman.[40.3] His life, or at least his professional
success, is thus bound up with the life of the tree.
Of other species of life-tokens we may note the following. A tradition
of the Mojave Indians of Arizona relates that two twin brothers, in
starting to hunt, hung a quiver up by the lodge fire, and each tied a
long hair (no doubt one of his own) across the doorway. “If you see
that quiver fall,” they said to their wives, “that is a sign we are
dead; and {41} if the hairs break, we die.” The brothers are
treacherously murdered; the quiver falls and the hairs are
broken.[41.1] In this case we have the hairs originally part of the
heroes’ bodies, and the quiver was their property. Thus the reason why
these objects could be made life-tokens was the sympathy they retained
from their erewhile close connection with the brothers. This is,
however, by no means a necessity: the mere superscription of the name
is sufficient, as in the onion-charm cited a page or two back, to
establish the requisite sympathy. Tiglath-Uras, an Assyrian king,
caused a seal of crystal to be engraven with his name and title, and
with the words: “Whosoever buries my writing and my name, may Assur
and Rimmon destroy his name and his land! Whoever makes the seal
legible ensures the preservation of my life.”[41.2] Here the seal,
with its inscription, bears the aspect of the king’s external soul;
and it must be remembered in this connection that archaic belief
regards the name as a part of its owner. A similar character attaches,
in the opinion of many savages, to a portrait. This is the foundation
of the belief in witchcraft by means of a puppet or picture.[41.3] But
if the writing of a name or the accuracy of a likeness were {42}
important, it is clear that the superstition could not be traced far
back into the lower culture, and witchcraft could only be practised by
accomplished artists. Accordingly, it is enough to attribute the name
of the man to the object whereby it is proposed to represent him. In
Thuringia, if it be desired to know whether absent children or other
kinsmen be still living, all that is necessary is to stick a loaf of
bread with ears of corn before putting it into the oven to bake. Each
of the ears is designated by the name of one of the absent concerning
whom inquiry is made. If any of the ears be scorched in the process of
baking, the person symbolised is assuredly dead; if not, he is
living.[42.1] Either some such divination, or that lively presentation
which is but a step short of it, was recorded by Mr. Backhouse, who,
in visiting Tasmania, noticed one day a native woman arranging some
flat oval stones, about two inches wide and marked with black and red
lines. He learned that these represented absent friends, and one
larger than the rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinders Island,
known by the name of Mother Brown.[42.2]
As in the _märchen_ we have reviewed, so in sagas and in practical
superstition, mere ownership or the wearing of an object sets up a
connection with it, which remains even after parting with its
possession, and will render it an efficient life-token. This has been
already illustrated in the quiver of the Mojave saga. In a legendary
history of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Duke Lewis, her husband, when
setting out for the Crusade, sent her a ring, the stone of {43} which
would break when misfortune happened to him. It is curious that in
fact, if the Count de Montalembert’s investigations may be trusted,
the duke told his wife that if he sent her his ring it would be a
token that some misfortune had occurred.[43.1] In Italy it is believed
that if a woman take off her wedding-ring, her husband will run some
serious risk.[43.2] A Hungarian superstition declares that a garnet
remains of a beautiful red colour when its wearer is well, but turns
pale if he be sick or ailing.[43.3] But here the line between the
Life-token, or the External Soul, and the Fetish becomes very narrow.
So a Shawnee prophet tried to persuade Tanner that the fire in his
lodge was intimately connected with his life. At all seasons and in
all weathers it was to remain alight; for if he suffered it to be
extinguished, his life would be at an end.[43.4] Of a similar
character is the Negro luck-ball, so graphically described, with the
making thereof, by Miss Owen, and of which a specimen was obtained by
her for Mr. Leland. We will not here inquire into the composition of
this nasty but magical article; we will rest satisfied with knowing
that it receives the name of the person for whom it is intended, and
contains his soul. It is usually carried about by its owner; and the
agonies of a Negress who thought she had lost her ball are set forth
in Miss Owen’s book with humour. “No ball could be found. Then Aunt
Mymee went wild. Her morning duties were forgotten, she ran hither and
thither looking in all possible and impossible places of concealment,
and obstinately refusing to state what she had lost. Finally, with a
groan of despair, she flung herself down on her cabin floor in a {44}
cowering heap and quavered out that she would be better off in her
grave, for an enemy had stolen her luck-ball, and her soul as well as
her luck was in it.”[44.1] The North American Indians and many other
savages carry such objects; and of the same kind would appear to have
been that wonderful stone in the Chinese story, which contained
ninety-two grottoes representing the allotted years of its owner’s
life.[44.2]
Mr. Frazer, in the remarkable work to which I have been indebted for
numerous illustrations in the course of this chapter, refers to the
belief on the part of many peoples in the lower culture that the lives
of individual men and women are bound up with those of various
animals. In Rome the animals in question were snakes; and the
superstition was so widely spread that, according to Pliny, they
multiplied to an extent which would have rendered it impossible to
make head against their fecundity, if their numbers had not been kept
down by occasional conflagrations. The snake was, in fact, the
_genius_ of a man--his external soul, and therefore was carefully
guarded from all harm.[44.3] The Zulus also believe in an _ihlozi_, or
mysterious serpent, belonging to every man. It is usually invisible,
underground; but it may be killed, and then the man must die. In other
parts of the {45} world there is no such monopoly: all sorts of
animals are looked upon by different members of the same clan as their
second selves. Mr. Frazer frames from this a theory of totemism which
it is foreign to my present purpose to examine. Whatever may be
thought of the theory, it is clear that some aspects of the Totem, the
External Soul, and the Fetish approach one another very nearly, and
require a closer study than they have yet received from any scientific
anthropologist, with the exception of the distinguished author of _The
Golden Bough_.
Coming back to the Life-token proper, it would seem that it is
sometimes connected, not with the individual concerned, but with the
relative or friend left behind. When a Zulu warrior goes on a hostile
expedition his wife hangs up her own sleeping-mat against the door or
wall of the hut. If the shadow be cast sharp and clear, her husband is
well; if otherwise, “he will never look upon the sun again.”[45.1] The
Coptic Christian legends contain the same plentiful supply of miracles
which the accounts of other saints furnish. The life of the Coptic
saint Shnudi, by his disciple Visa, relates that another saint, Mar
Thomas, foretold to Shnudi that the latter should be informed of Mar
Thomas’s death by the breaking in two of the stone whereon Shnudi used
to sit and meditate.[45.2] In this case {46} Mar Thomas appoints the
life-token; and he displays a lofty recklessness about the condition
of furniture which does not belong to him. But the appointment by the
person whose life is the subject of inquiry is not usual, where the
token is in no way connected with him. The friend left behind can
generally manage a life-token without his assistance. Frequently,
however, the aid of a sorcerer is called in. Among the western
islanders of Torres Straits the sorcerer on these occasions goes
through some jugglery with a crocodile’s tooth, which he pretends to
swallow and bring out again through his hand. After this he sends it
on a journey in the direction where the man is supposed to be, and
divines his life or death by the condition of the tooth when it
returns.[46.1] In Brittany a sailor’s wife who has been long without
tidings of her husband makes a pilgrimage to one of the shrines
innumerable in that country, and lights before the saints a taper
wherewith she has provided herself. If her husband be yet alive and
well, it burns with a clear, steady flame; otherwise the flame will be
poor and intermittent, and will go out.[46.2] John Banks, a dramatist
of the Restoration, refers to one form of the superstition still, or
very lately, living in Scotland, as well as in other parts of Europe.
The passage runs as follows:--
“Douglas.
Last night, no sooner was I laid to rest,
But just three drops of blood fell from my nose
And stain’d my pillow, which I found this morning,
And wondered at.
Queen Mary.
That rather does betoken
Some mischief to thyself.{47}
Douglas.
Perhaps to cowards,
Who prize their own base lives; but to the brave,
’Tis always fatal to the friend they love.”[47.1]
Strictly speaking, this only announces the deaths of near relations:
it would be too dreadful if a man’s whole acquaintance made known
their deaths by bleeding him, or, as it is believed in Denmark, by
pinching him and thereby causing blue spots on his body.[47.2] Second
sight, however, also well known in Scotland, was not confined to
kindred; but it is of a ghostly nature, not dependent on material
objects.
Closely connected with the Life-token, as we have already seen, is
divination concerning the prospects of life of persons who are not
absent. This is a wide subject; and here we can only select a few
examples among those whose form is similar to those of the Life-token.
The Thuringian practice of divining as to absent members of the family
seems to be one of several Teutonic methods of divination by the
baking of bread. The decrees of Burchard of Worms, issued probably
early in the eleventh century, refer to the omen drawn on the first of
January by baking a loaf of bread in the name of any one and noting
how it rises and whether it becomes compact and light. Another
practice is described, of sweeping the hearth and placing grains of
barley on the heated place: if the grains popped, they indicated
danger; otherwise, if they remained quiet.[47.3] {48} At Rauen, in the
north of Germany, if a newly baked loaf have a crack, one of the
family will die.[48.1] In Suffolk, to overturn a loaf in the oven is
to have a death in the house.[48.2] In Saxony on the Bohemian border
the same augury is obtained by making as many little cakes as there
are persons in the house, giving to each cake the name of one of the
persons, and punching a hole in it with your finger. He whose hole
closes up in baking will die.[48.3] In Hungary on Saint Lucien’s Day a
feather is stuck in each cake, and the death-augury is drawn if the
feather be burnt in baking. On Christmas Eve in many places every one
eats a nut and fills the shell with water. If the shell be dry by the
next morning he must die during the year.[48.4]
Divination from the burning of candles is well known. On Twelfth
Night, in some parts of Ireland, as for example in Leitrim and
Roscommon, rushes were gathered and made into rushlights, each of the
length of six inches. They were stuck into a cake of cow-dung and
named from the members of the family. Then they were all lighted, and
the family knelt around them, telling their beads. The taper that
burnt out first indicated who should die soonest.[48.5] So Meleager’s
life, according to the classical story, departed when the brand
expired whereon it depended. In Thuringia, if an altar-light go out of
itself, one of the priests will die; but it does not appear whether
the candle must be entirely consumed.[48.6] In some towns of {49}
North Germany it is a common practice on a child’s birthday to give
him a cake with a “Life-light” placed on it. The light must not be
blown out, but suffered to burn to the end.[49.1] This is contrary to
the general rule at Chemnitz, and elsewhere, which declares that when
a candle goes out of itself, some one in the house will die--a
superstition especially regarded on Christmas Eve.[49.2] In Iceland,
if a man let a light die out slowly, he will have a long
death-struggle.[49.3] On the other hand, the Romans, if we may trust
Plutarch, never extinguished a lamp, but suffered it to burn
out.[49.4] Omens of this kind are frequently drawn at weddings. Two
candles represent the bride and bridegroom: the one whose candle first
expires will die first. Such is the belief in Thuringia and Esthonia,
as well as in Italy. Among the Southern Slavs and among the Bretons
the altar-candle opposite either of the spouses during the ceremony is
the one whose conduct in this respect is regarded. At Chemnitz it was
customary to allow the light to burn clean out in the bride-chamber,
perhaps for the same reason.[49.5]
{50}
In Denmark, Saint John’s-wort (_hypericum_) is gathered on Saint
John’s Day, and the plants are set between the beams under the roof.
If one of them grow upwards toward the roof, he whom it represents
will have a long life; if downward, sickness and death are
betokened.[50.1] The Saxons of Transylvania, and the Hungarians, are
said to place as many billets of wood as there are members of the
family present on Saint Sylvester’s Night (New Year’s Eve) in the open
air on or against a wall or a tree, giving each billet the name of a
person. Any of them falling before the morning forecasts the death of
him whose billet falls. Or a rag is thrown on a tree, and if it be
there in the morning the thrower expects luck in the coming year. On
Saint John’s Day wreaths are made of marsh-marigolds and thrown singly
thrice on the roof. If anybody’s wreath remain up, he will die before
the next summer.[50.2] The same principle is embodied in the Maori
custom of divining by means of sticks. Before they go to war they put
up two sticks, or two rows of sticks, with certain ceremonies. From
the way in which the wind blows the sticks or the manner in which they
fall, if thrown, omens are drawn as to the success of the war, or the
fate of the inquirer.[50.3] The Gipsies of the Danubian countries
divine as to the fate of their relatives by putting
flowers--apparently willow flowers--in a sieve on Saint George’s Eve,
one for each {51} member of the family. He whose flower is found
withered the next morning will die first.[51.1] In the Isle of Man, at
Hollantide, “as well as on the last night of the year, ivy-leaves
marked with the name of the family were put into water, and if one of
the leaves withered it was supposed that the person whose name was on
it would die before the end of the year.”[51.2]
The tales and superstitions we have examined in this chapter are
conclusive as to the wide range of a belief in the mysterious
connection of a man’s life and health with some object external to
himself. And they point with equal certainty to the belief that this
connection originates in some relationship, either natal or
established subsequently to birth by possession or ownership, or by
appointment of the person concerned. In other words, the external
object is believed to be, or to contain, a part of the man himself, or
the man and the external object are regarded as two parts of a greater
whole. This is the reason why, in _märchen_ belonging to _The King of
the Fishes_ and other types, the tree growing in the garden at home is
an index of the adventurer’s fate in the palace of the Medusa-witch.
Both the tree and the hero are sprung from the magical fish; both are
of his substance; and hence their sympathy. So, among the Maories and
in Pomerania, when the navel-string or after-birth is buried and a
tree planted over it, the latter would be conceived to absorb the
substance of the object at its root--that is to say, of something
which is already part of the child himself--and in that way become
connected with him. Our evidence, though extending from Polynesia and
Melanesia {52} to the East Indies, though good for Germany and for
portions of the American continent, does not directly establish the
practice of such burials as universal. But such a custom is a fair
inference wherever we find the planting of a tree at birth, especially
where, as in the majority of cases, the tree is looked upon as
betokening the child’s fate. Yet the custom could not have been one of
the most archaic. It must have been unknown so long as mankind were
wanderers having no settled places of abode or defined territory.
Earlier than this, therefore, must have been the belief that some
other relic such as hair, weapons, ornaments or clothes, which had
been in contact with their owner’s body, or even some more arbitrary
thing appointed by him, acquired the mysterious connection of which I
am speaking. By constant use, or by habitual wear, things not
originally part of a man would become inseparably associated with him
in the minds of all his acquaintance, impregnated with his
personality, identified with his corporeal presence. After a while
mere ownership would be enough to warrant the ascription of this
quality, at least to any portable object. The Maori claims of
territorial right, based upon the burial of the claimant’s after-birth
and navel-string, are instances of the subtle bond in native thought
between ownership and a personal substance like that which was
supposed to penetrate the trees whose existence was appealed to as
evidence. True, these claims could only be made by members of a
settled community, or of one whose limits of wandering were fixed. But
the state of thought they disclose is thoroughly archaic, rooted in a
still ruder past.
Not only, however, is a man’s property credited with the mysterious
sympathy which enables it to become his life-token. {53} It is not
even necessary for him to appoint a life-token for himself, whether
part of his property or not. Both in the stories and in actual life,
and that very low down in savagery, a kinsman is represented as able
to appoint a life-token, or at all events to divine, by the condition
of a perfectly arbitrary object, what is the fate of an absent person.
This power is with one exception limited to a kinsman. In the last
resort it is possible to obtain tidings of a distant friend through a
sorcerer. Here other beliefs are brought into play. Setting this
exceptional case aside, we may class all the others together under the
heads of Life-tokens--
1. By original corporeal connection with the absent person.
2. By virtue of his ownership.
3. By his appointment.
4. By corporeal connection with a kinsman of the absent person.
5. By virtue of a kinsman’s ownership.
6. By a kinsman’s appointment.
The appointment of a life-token not belonging to the person concerned,
or his kinsman, was, we may assume, at first by a magical formula, as
in the instance of the taboo set upon the banana by the twins in the
Melanesian story. In this way a consecration to the speaker, an
ἀνάθεμα, was performed, which would have the effect of ownership. In
course of time, and of the changes wrought by advancing civilisation,
the taboo would be forgotten; and a simple declaration of the
intention to make the object his life-token would remain. The cases of
appointment thus resolve themselves into ownership; and ownership, as
we have seen, is nothing but an extension of the idea of {54}
corporeal connection. The reason why the corporeal connection with a
kinsman, or his ownership of the life-token, is equivalent to that of
the absent hero, is because the kinsman, being of the same stock as
the hero, is deemed to have an original corporeal bond with him like
that of the tree in the _märchen_ growing from the bones or scales of
the fish from whose flesh the hero is sprung. They are both of the
same substance, two parts of a greater whole. This will be brought out
more clearly as we proceed. We are then face to face with the question
why separated portions of the same substance should remain in such
sympathy with one another that the condition of the one will betoken
the condition of the other. To explain this we must enter upon a wider
survey of savage customs and superstitions.
CHAPTER IX.
WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.
{55}
There are certain common folktale incidents we must first of all
notice, though it is unnecessary to do so at any great length. One of
them is found in a group of tales which I have elsewhere ventured to
classify under the name of _The Teacher and his Scholar_. A Greek
variant of these, from the island of Syra, referred to in an earlier
chapter, runs thus: A disguised demon promises children to a childless
king on condition of his repaying him with the eldest. The demon
thereupon gives the king an apple, to be eaten, one half by himself
and the other half by the queen. Three sons are born; and the eldest
is, notwithstanding all precautions, carried off by the demon. After
some time he finds means to escape from his master’s clutches,
accompanied by a princess whom the demon has held captive. During his
term of service he has learned how to transform himself at will; and
on parting for a while from the princess he takes lodgings with an old
woman. To make money, he changes into a mule, which his hostess offers
for sale; but he charges her to retain the halter. Afterwards he
changes into a bath-house, whereof she is to keep the key. By this
precaution he is able to return to his own form. Finally he changes
into a pomegranate, {56} which his father plucks; but the demon by a
trick nearly succeeds in getting possession of it. It falls in pieces,
and the seeds are scattered. The demon then takes the shape of a hen
and chickens; whereupon the hero becomes a fox and kills the hen and
chickens, but loses his eyes, for the hen has eaten two of the seeds.
He afterwards recovers his sight and marries the princess.[56.1]
The incident, here found, of the Transformation-fight occurs all over
Europe, and as far to the east as India. Its best-known variant is
embodied in the story of the Second Calender in the _Arabian Nights_;
but the _Siddhi-Kür_ contains one far more ancient, if we have regard
to the time when it was written down, though more modern in form than
many of the most recently collected folktales. Welsh tradition, as we
have seen, identifies the incident with the name of Taliessin. Ovid
describes metamorphoses undergone by Metra, daughter of Erisichthon,
in her flight from the successive masters to whom her ravenous father
sold her in order to procure himself food.[56.2] But all these tales
ignore the point which is important for our present inquiry, namely,
the divisibility of the hero’s person. It comes out, however, quite
clearly in the story just quoted, {57} and is exhibited in a twofold
manner. There is, first, the halter, or bridle, which must be retained
by the vendor, else the horse, or mule, will not be able to escape and
return to human form. Here the halter is probably the external soul.
So long as it is free its owner cannot be held within the purchaser’s
power. Secondly, there is the pomegranate, which falls into a thousand
pieces. In northern and western Europe, where the pomegranate grows
not, a heap of grain takes its place.[57.1] In Cashmere it becomes a
rose. In the Turkish romance of _The Forty Vezirs_, the rose, in
falling, changes to millet.[57.2] The pomegranate bursts, and its
seeds are scattered; the petals of the rose drop in a shower; the
grains of corn or millet are shed abroad. But the hero is still in
existence although divided thus. He cannot be destroyed until every
seed, every petal, every grain has been devoured. So long as a single
seed, petal, or grain escapes he can be restored to his pristine form.
In the same way in a North American tale the hero in the shape of an
eagle is killed, and repeatedly restored from a single feather. The
power of self-reconstitution from a fragment is frequently attributed
to wizards, not merely in tales but in living superstitions, and in
both tales and superstitions affords a reason for the entire
destruction of a magical foe.[57.3] For this cause, too, the hero of
the Greek story kills the hen and all the chickens into which the
demon transforms himself--a third example in the same tale of personal
divisibility.
{58}
The Helpful Beasts, to whom so many adventurers are indebted in our
Nursery Tales, furnish another incident illustrative of the same
faculty. In the Transformation-fight it is not necessary to manifest
the continued sympathy of the divided personality; but it is different
when a Helpful Beast offers one of its own limbs as the summons for
aid. Thus an ant will give one of its legs, a bird will give a
feather, or a lion one of its hairs, to be burnt, or fumigated, or
simply rubbed. On this being done the owner forthwith appears and
performs the necessary services.[58.1] In a Tirolese tale the power is
extended to a human being. A merchant’s daughter having fallen in love
with a golden-haired prince, is advised by a great sorceress to
procure three hairs from his head and beard, lay them in a jar with
warm ashes, and boil the contents a little. The prince would then
change into a dove, and fly hurriedly through the window into her
room, where she must have a basin of water ready for him. In this he
would dip himself and return to his proper form. The spell is
successful; but we need not follow the lady’s further fortunes.[58.2]
{59}
Nor is the incident restricted to _märchen_. A Pomeranian saga
records that a supernatural boar which haunted a pool in the forest of
Kehrberg once fell into a wolf-pit and could not get out. A courageous
man, hearing its grunting, approached; and the monster begged for
help. When it was released it tore three bristles from its hide, and,
giving them to its deliverer, said: “When thou art in deadly peril,
rub these three bristles between thy fingers, and I will be with thee
forthwith and save thee.” The man was the lord of a manor. He might
have been an Irish landlord for harshness; and this promise made him
worse than ever. Many of his serfs in desperation joined the
robber-bands that infested the forest; and one day they caught him in
an ambush. Nor would he have escaped the punishment of his misdeeds,
had he not quickly rubbed the bristles between his fingers. The boar
was at his side in an instant, and not one of his enemies escaped. I
wish I could add that the adventure made him repent of his evil ways.
His godless, frantic life continued to the end; and after death he
naturally found no rest in the grave. Wherefore, ever since, in
company with his friend the boar, he dwells in the pool and ranges the
forest, to the no small terror and danger of wayfarers.[59.1]
A belief of the kind of which these are the remains is put to a
practical use by the natives of Borneo, where it is said that the gift
of a tiger’s tooth to a chief of the Kinah tribe will make him a
friend for life. He will not dare to {60} fail the giver, or to turn
false to him, for fear of being devoured by the beast.[60.1] Here, and
in the stories, the portion of the animal’s body given away is still
linked by sympathy with the rest. What happens to it is felt by the
bulk. The apparent severance is continuous and real union.
A third incident found in European folktales endows the heroine’s
saliva with consciousness like her own. In a Danish tale, when Maiden
Misery is about to elope with Prince Wanderer from the Kobold who has
them both in his power, she heats the oven and puts two pieces of wood
to stand, one on either side. Then she spits on each of them and
whispers something to it. After she and the prince have started, the
Kobold wakes up and inquires: “Is the oven hot, Maiden Misery?” “No,
not yet,” answers one of the pieces of wood, but it sounded as if it
were she who answered. The Kobold turned over and went to sleep again.
After a while he awoke again and repeated the question. He got the
same answer and went to sleep once more. When he called out again
there was no reply. He got up and found the oven quite cold; but
Maiden Misery and Prince Wanderer had vanished, and so had the
Kobold’s wonderful steed.[60.2] The same device for delaying pursuit
appears in the Polish _märchen_ of Prince Unexpected. There the
maiden spits on one of the window-panes, and her spittle freezes. Then
she {61} locks up the room and escapes with the prince. When they are
well on their way King Bony awakes, and sends his servants for the
prince. The spittle answers in his voice: “Anon.” They are thus put
off twice before the door is broken open, and the spittle on the
window splits with laughter at the disappointed messengers.[61.1] In
another story from Poland, a brother desires to wed his sister, and
makes her various presents of robes, and a magical car. She shuts
herself in her room, puts on the dresses, and mounts the car. She
spits on the ground and commands the saliva to answer with the voice
of her maid, whom she has secretly sent away. The earth then opens at
her request and swallows her up. When the brother sends to know if she
be ready, the saliva replies: “She has just drawn one stocking on.”
The next time it answers: “She has just put her dress on: she will be
quite ready directly.” When the impatient brother himself comes, the
spittle taunts him in the most intelligent way:--
“Thy sister is far beneath;
This message did she bequeath:
Earth, open wide! When a sister is bride
To her brother, ’tis sin.”[61.2]
In a story from Hesse, Hänsel and Grethel are in a witch’s power.
They run away, but before going Grethel spits in front of the hearth.
So when the sleepy witch cries out to ask whether the water will soon
be hot, to cook Hänsel in, the saliva replies: “I am just fetching
it”; and to subsequent inquiries: “It’s boiling now,” {62} and “I am
just bringing it.” At last the spittle is dried up; and, receiving no
further answer, the witch gets out of bed, discovers the real state of
the case, and follows the children.[62.1] Among the Kaffirs, an
equivalent incident represents the misleading agent as tufts of hair.
The hero, rescuing his sister and her child from a band of cannibals,
directed her to pluck the hair from her head and scatter it about in
different directions. When the cannibals, coming to look for her,
called out, the tufts of hair answered; and the fugitives gained time
while the seekers were thus confused. Another Kaffir tale represents a
single feather of a certain magical bird as endowed with the entire
power of the bird after the latter has been swallowed by the
heroine.[62.2] The Cegihas of North America, a branch of the Sioux,
have a legend of a rabbit who overcame the black bears. He visited
their lodge; and at night on departing he left his fœces all round
the door, with instructions to give the scalp-yell as soon as it was
day. The fœces accordingly yelled as if a large number of persons
were attacking the lodge. The black bear rushed out and was killed by
the rabbit.[62.3]
In this case, too, we are fortunate in being able to produce evidence
that the belief on which the tale is grounded is still living. When a
Hungarian Gipsy is pursued as a thief, he scratches his left hand as
he runs, and smearing the spurting blood on any convenient object,
{63} exclaims: “Speak for me!” In this way he hopes to escape; and the
more scars a Gipsy has upon his left hand from this cause the more he
is honoured for his dexterity in stealing and evading pursuit.[63.1]
In Grimm’s tale of _The Goose-girl_, which belongs to the cycle of
_The Substituted Bride_, the maiden’s mother, on parting with her,
cuts her own finger, and, letting three drops of blood fall upon a
handkerchief, hands it to her daughter as a protection. The drops of
blood speak to her from time to time on the way, though it must be
owned their observations are not very helpful. When she loses them she
becomes powerless, and her waiting-maid ousts her from her place as
the bride.[63.2] It is impossible to misapprehend the meaning of the
three drops of blood. So long as the maiden keeps them she retains her
mother’s presence and protection, of which they are more than a
symbol.
The folktales I have just cited present in an ascending series, first,
the divisibility of a person, secondly, the continued sympathy of the
severed portions with the bulk, and thirdly, the endowment of each of
the severed portions with speech and power--in other words, with
consciousness and reason. The identification of the severed portions
with the whole is thus complete in the stories. Nor are we without
illustrations in practical superstition of this belief. The two
examples already given afford a striking exhibition of the truth which
I may perhaps be pardoned for insisting on with wearisome iteration,
that, namely, of the dependence of folktales on custom and belief. It
is, however, in the practices of witchcraft that we find the severed
portions of a person most frequently and completely {64} identified
with the whole. To some of these practices we will accordingly now
turn our attention.
Witchcraft is usually wrought in one or more of three ways--by
incantations or curses, by symbolic actions, or (and it is this only
with which we are now concerned) by acts done upon objects identified
with the person intended to be affected. Among these objects severed
portions of his body take the first rank.
In the old trials for witchcraft in this country we have full accounts
of the proceedings then regarded as effectual in causing injury by
witches. It is quite likely that some at least of the means mentioned
in the confessions of the accused were at times actually adopted. But
whether actually adopted or not, they are equally valuable for our
present purpose, since their efficacy was undoubted. On the 11th
March, 1618-9, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower were burnt
alive at Lincoln for sorcery. They had been, with Joan Flower, their
mother, confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at
Belvoir Castle. If we might credit their own confession under torture,
they had become dissatisfied with their employers, and had employed
the Black Art in order to gratify their spite. The mother had a
familiar spirit in the form of a cat, named Rutterkin. Their procedure
was to procure a lock of the hair of a member of the Earl’s family, or
to steal one of his gloves. The hair they burnt; the glove was thrown
by Joan Flower into boiling water, then repeatedly pricked with a
knife, and afterwards rubbed on the cat. These performances were
accompanied with words, bidding Rutterkin go and do some hurt to the
owner of the glove. Finally, the glove was burnt, and its owner fell
sick and died. Joan Flower vehemently protested her innocence, {65}
and asked for bread. Taking a piece, the unfortunate woman wished that
if she were guilty it might choke her. Immediately, so says the tale,
she fell stark dead. Other women were associated in the accusation,
and their confessions confirmed those of the sisters Margaret and
Philippa.[65.1]
The results of the practices of which these poor girls were convicted
were terrible enough to them, if not to their supposed victim. Yet if
their depositions exhausted their knowledge of the modes of witchcraft
they cannot have penetrated far into its mysteries. A jealous Italian
woman or a mischievous Gipsy, a North American Indian or an Australian
savage, could have given them points.
A Sienese or Tuscan maiden, for example, deserted by her lover, will
take some of his hair and put it into a toad’s mouth, or round a
toad’s legs. The animal is then imprisoned in a covered pot, or else
it is placed under a potsherd and bound to a tree. While the creature
lives in this torment, the faithless lover will pine away; and when it
dies, he will die also.[65.2] Wherefore a lock of hair is the most
precious gift, the mark of the highest confidence, a lover or friend
can bestow. In the province of Lucca, {66} indeed, it is almost always
refused; for even an imprecation uttered over it would render bald the
head whereon it had grown; and the women, when they comb their hair,
never throw the combings out of window, lest they be bewitched by some
one passing by.[66.1] Nor is less care taken elsewhere in Italy--not
to say throughout Europe--to burn the combings of the hair oneself or
to put them in a place of safety. Dr. Pitrè remembers a woman at
Palermo, who, when she was lying sick, having seen a man pick up one
of her hairs--as she thought, with malicious intent--jumped out of bed
and followed him in her shift, weeping and begging him to give it back
to her and not to do her any harm.[66.2] In Tuscany the hair is
occasionally boiled with a peppercorn and some other substance, the
operator repeating an incantation consigning the foe to death and the
society of witches. In Friuli the hair and blood of the victim are
boiled with nails, needles, knives and other pieces of iron.[66.3]
Even in some parts of England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised
to get a lock of his hair and boil it. Whilst it is simmering in the
pot he will have no rest.[66.4] In Belgium, as also about Mentone, it
is {67} possible to bewitch an enemy by putting one of his hairs into
an egg, and leaving it there to rot; so that one must burn any hairs
that fall out or are cut off, or at least spit or blow upon them as a
protection against witchcraft before throwing them away.[67.1] In
certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the hair or
nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried beneath the
elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or carefully
hidden, for fear of witches.[67.2] In Poland it is thought possible to
blind an enemy by threading one of his hairs in a needle which has
sewed three shrouds, and then passing it through a toad’s eyes, and
letting the poor brute go.[67.3] In Livonia, if you desire to bewitch
a girl to the extent of preventing her marriage, all that need be done
is to get hold of one of the pins with which her shift is fastened
over her breast, wind round it three hairs torn by the roots from her
head, and stick the pin in a corner in a northerly direction, or on
the first paling of the house, saying: “As long as this sticks here
the girl shall have no suitor.”[67.4] In Hungary and Transylvania
continual strife between a married pair can be secured by laying a
hair from each of their heads on the head of a corpse. They will have
no peace until {68} the hairs have decayed away.[68.1] On the other
hand, if a Magyar suspect another of an intention to injure him
secretly, he will possess himself of some hairs belonging to the
suspected person, and hang them in the chimney until they disappear in
the smoke: the enemy will then have abandoned his evil purpose.[68.2]
So likewise among the Pennsylvanian Germans a witch can be disabled by
securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and
firing a silver bullet into it.[68.3]
We pay European peoples the compliment of calling them civilised:
among savages the same methods are adopted. It was the belief of the
Clal-lum, a tribe of British Columbia, that if they could procure the
hair of an enemy and confine it with a frog in a hole, the head whence
it came would suffer the torments of the frog.[68.4] And a lock of
hair in the hands of certain women of the Chilcotin tribe would give
them power over the person from whose head the lock was severed.[68.5]
Any part of the body answers the same purpose among the
Greenlanders.[68.6] At the opposite extremity of the American
continent the Patagonians burn the hairs brushed out from their heads,
and all the parings of their nails, for they believe that spells may
be wrought upon them by any one who can obtain a {69} piece of
either.[69.1] In Central Brazil the Bakaïrí of one village fear the
medicine-men of another, holding that if they can get any portion of
their hair or blood, they will put it into a poison-calabash and so
cause illness to the original owner.[69.2] What the inhabitants of the
isle of Chiloe fear is that a foe will fasten a lock in the seaweed
where the tide flows: hence they often keep their hair very
short.[69.3] In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success
of any sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the
victim, such as the parings of his nails, a lock of his hair, saliva
or other secretions, or else a portion of his food. Accordingly, a
spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant of a chief of
the Sandwich Islands to receive his expectorations, which were
carefully buried every morning. And the Tahitians used to burn or bury
the hair they cut off; and every individual among them had his
distinct basket for food.[69.4] Among the Maoris “the usual way of
obtaining power over another was to obtain (European fashion) some of
the nail-parings, hair, etc., anything of a personal nature to act as
a medium between the bewitched person and the demon. Spells would be
muttered over these relics, then they were buried, and as they decayed
the victim perished.”[69.5] In the Banks’ Islands “there are three
principal kinds of charms by which evil was believed to be inflicted
through the power of ghosts.” One of these called _garata_ operated
through fragments of food, bits of hair or nail, “or anything closely
connected {70} with the person to be injured. For this reason great
care was used to hide or safely dispose of all such things.”[70.1]
Similar beliefs and practices obtain in the New Hebrides and the New
Marquesas.[70.2] At Matuku in Fiji, the priest of the god Tokalau, the
wind, “promises the destruction of any hated person in four days, if
those who wish his death bring a portion of his hair, dress or food
which he has left.” Happily the doom can be averted by bathing before
the fourth day. Most natives take the precaution of hiding the hair
they cut off in the thatch of their own huts.[70.3] Some of the Papuan
inhabitants of Timor-laut were delighted to make use of Mr. Forbes’
scissors to cut their hair; but they declined to allow the traveller
to retain any specimens, for they said they would die; and they
gathered up every scrap they could find.[70.4] Among the Australian
aborigines of Western Victoria an unsuccessful lover who can get a
lock of the lady’s hair covers it with fat and red clay and carries it
about with him for a year. The knowledge of this so depresses her that
she pines away and often actually dies. When a husband has, or
imagines, a grievance against his wife he cuts a lock of her hair
while she sleeps, and tying it to the bone hook of his spear-thrower
he covers it with a coating of gum. Then he goes away to a
neighbouring tribe and stays with them. At the first great meeting of
the tribes he gives the spear-thrower to a friend, who sticks it
upright before the camp-fire every night, and when it falls over, the
husband considers it a sign that his wife is dead. This process, and
the taunts to which the {71} deserted wife is subjected, seldom fail
to bring her to a sense of her duty of going to seek her husband,
apologising for her conduct and bringing him home. The natives are
very careful to burn their superfluous hair; and locks are only
exchanged by friends as a mark of affection. If a lock thus obtained
be lost it is a very serious matter. The loser of the lock will die;
and so strong is the belief, that he sometimes does die, unless the
person who holds the lock of his hair given in exchange be willing to
return it, and so undo the exchange.[71.1] Other tribes have the like
superstitions. Mr. Howitt records it as a general practice among the
natives of the south-east of Australia, and particularly of the
Wotjobaluk tribe, to procure a piece of the victim’s hair, “some of
his fæces, a bone picked by him and dropped, a shred of his opossum
rug, or at the present time of his clothes,” for the purpose of
injuring him. “If nothing else can be got, he may be watched until he
is seen to spit, when his saliva is carefully picked up with a piece
of wood and made use of for his destruction.” And the writer, a keen
observer, adds: “There is evidently a belief that doing an act to
something which is part of a person, or which even only belongs to
him, is in fact doing it to him. This is very clearly brought out by
the remark of one of the Wirajuri, who said to me: ‘You see, when a
black-fellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and
roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the
smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.’” Indeed, all over
Australia sorcery by means of hair is practised, or at least feared;
and the same is asserted of the now exterminated Tasmanians.[71.2] In
Sumatra {72} Mr. Forbes once noted a man carefully burying the scraps
after paring his finger-nails.[72.1] The approved method of killing a
foe at Amboyna is to take some of his hair or clothing, his quid of
betel chewed and ejected, or the measure of his footprint, and put it
into three bamboo cylinders, one of which is laid beneath a coffin,
another buried under the steps of the house, and the third flung into
the sea. To injure him it is apparently sufficient to put some of his
hair into a coffin, or a grave, or to bind it to the tail of a living
fish and return the creature to the water, or to stuff it into a
cranny in a house or boat.[72.2] In the Panjáb some wizards are
reputed to have the power of killing a woman by cutting off a lock of
her hair, and afterwards bringing her to life again even though she
had been buried.[72.3] And in Sindh no woman will give a lock of her
hair, even to her husband, for fear of the power he would thus
obtain.[72.4] Arab women are very careful to bury the parings of their
nails for fear of witchcraft.[72.5] The Rautiás, a caste of Chota
Nagpur in Bengal, partly Aryan and partly Dravidian, on the other
hand, while convinced that witches can act upon their victims through
bits of cut hair or nails, are guilty of the suicidal conduct of
neglecting to preserve or destroy such articles.[72.6] They seem,
however, exceptional in this respect among races in the lower culture.
On the Slave Coast of Africa, “anything that has belonged {73} to a
man, especially anything that has formed part of, or has come out of,
his body, such as hair-clippings, nail-parings, saliva, or the fæces,
can be used” to his detriment. “Hence it is usual for pieces of hair
and nails to be carefully buried or burned, in order that they may not
fall into the hands of sorcerers”; and the saliva of a chief is
gathered up and hidden or buried.[73.1] The Makololo used to burn or
bury their hair, lest, in the hands of a witch, it should be used as a
charm to afflict the owner with headache.[73.2] Among the Basuto hairs
or nail-parings of the person aimed at, or drops of his blood which he
had not taken the precaution of effacing with his foot where they
fell, were used by sorcerers in the manufacture of their charms. And
without prolonging the list it may safely be said that this
superstition is rife all over the continent.[73.3] Naturally the Negro
has carried it to America. A lady writing half a century ago relates
an incident which happened on the island of Antigua. A Negro boy had
been drowned; and one of his kinswomen contrived to cut off some hair
from the head of an acquaintance with whom she had a quarrel. This
hair she placed in the dead boy’s hand just before his coffin was
screwed down, at the same time pronouncing the word “Remember.” The
ghastly result was thus described by the Negro who told the tale: “De
pic’nee jumby trouble he [namely, the lady who had lost her hair] so
dat he no know war for do, till at last he go out of he head, an’ he
neber been no good since.”[73.4] Among the Negroes of the {74} United
States the recipe for driving an enemy mad is to get one of his hairs
and slip it inside the bark of a tree. When the bark grows over it his
intellect is gone for ever. But in fact everything “that pertains to
the body, such as nails, teeth, hair, saliva, tears, perspiration,
dandruff, scabs of sores even, and garments worn next the person,” is
employed in charms. A powerful conjurer told Miss Owen: “I could save
or ruin you if I could get hold of so much as one eye-winker or the
peeling of one freckle.”[74.1]
Prominent in the magical superstitions of some nations is blood. All
Europe holds that the pact with the devil must be signed with one’s
own blood. It is by handing over a portion of his blood that the
unhappy mortal puts himself in the power of the Father of Evil.
Without this gage his covenant would be voidable. A popular allegation
against the Freemasons in some places is that the candidate for
initiation is required to paint his own figure on the wall of the
lodge with blood taken from his finger. If thereafter he betray the
secrets he has sworn to keep, he can be slain by stabbing the portrait
thus made.[74.2] A German saying advises that blood let out of a vein
should always be thrown into running water.[74.3] There, of course, it
will always be free, it will speedily be lost, and no witchcraft can
be wrought upon it. The Transylvanian Saxons declare that if any
blood, saliva, or suchlike of a living person be put into a coffin
with the dead, the former will slowly languish and die.[74.4] The
blood or saliva, corrupting and decaying with the corpse, reacts upon
the living body {75} whence it has been derived. Similar is a Magyar
prescription for causing barrenness in a woman, namely, by rubbing a
dead man’s organ with her menses. In Hungary, too, if you wish to
render a bridegroom indifferent to his bride, take some of his blood,
or saliva, and with it smear the soles of the bride’s shoes before the
wedding, or write his name in his blood on a pigeon’s egg and contrive
that she shall tread unawares upon it. In either of these ways she
will tread out her husband’s love.[75.1] In Ireland, when a child is
vaccinated, the medical man is not allowed to take lymph from its arm
without giving some present, however trifling, in return; and Dr. C.
R. Browne records that when he was vaccinated in county Tipperary, his
arm, as the nurse reported, was kept inflamed because the doctor did
not put silver in his hand when taking the lymph.[75.2] The ground of
the superstition appears to be the belief in witchcraft. Payment is
always held to neutralise a witch’s power over a person through
something received from him, probably because what she gives in
exchange would confer a like power over her, and hence becomes a
hostage for her good faith.[75.3]
When a shaman among the Cherokees wishes to destroy a man, he hides,
and follows his victim about until the latter spits upon the ground.
Then he collects on the end of a stick a little of the dust moistened
with the saliva. “The possession of the man’s spittle gives him power
over the life of the man himself.” He puts it into a tube consisting
of a joint of the wild parsnip, “a poisonous plant {76} of
considerable importance in life-conjuring ceremonies,” together with
seven earthworms beaten into a paste, and some splinters from a tree
struck by lightning. With the tube thus prepared he goes to a tree
which has been lightning-struck. At its base he digs a hole, in the
bottom of which he lays a large yellow stone slab. Upon this he places
the tube and seven yellow pebbles. Then, filling up the hole with
earth, he builds a fire over it. The fire, we are told, is for the
purpose of destroying all trace of his work; but it may well be done
with another object. The yellow stones are said to represent trouble,
and to be substitutes for black stones, not so easily found, which
represent death. The shaman and his employer fast until after the
ceremony. The victim is expected to feel the effects at once: “his
soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is
dead.”[76.1] A traveller in Oregon relates how some Kwakiutl who were
exasperated against him took up his saliva when he spat, intending, as
they subsequently told him, to give it to the medicine-man, who would
charm his life away.[76.2] The custom, everywhere practised, of
obliterating all trace of the saliva after spitting, doubtless
originated in the desire to prevent such use of it.[76.3]
Sweat has been mentioned as one of the means of witchcraft among the
American Negroes. The Melanesians hold a leaf wherewith a man has
wiped the perspiration from his face an effective instrument for doing
him mischief.[76.4] The {77} fouler _excreta_ are quite as potent; and
this belief has been one of the most beneficial of superstitions. To
it is due the extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fæcal matter
which is almost universally a characteristic of savages. I shall
content myself with throwing into a footnote references to a few
passages of various authorities bearing on this means of
witchcraft.[77.1]
Sorcery may be wrought upon a foe through any of his teeth which have
been extracted. Wherefore the aborigines of Australia, among whom the
loss of a front tooth is the sign of admission to the privileges of
manhood, are very careful of the teeth which are knocked out. About
the river Darling in New South Wales, “the youth’s companions take the
tooth when it is extracted, and return it to him later with a present
of weapons, rugs, nets, and suchlike. The youth places the tooth under
the bark of a tree, near a creek, water-hole, or river: if the bark
grows over it, or it falls into the water, all is well; but should it
be exposed, and the ants run over it, it is believed that the youth
will suffer from a disease in the mouth.”[77.2] Of other tribes in
south-eastern Australia it is recorded that the extracted tooth is
taken care of by one of the old men. It {78} is passed from one
head-man to another, until it has made the complete circuit of the
community. It then returns to the youth’s father, and finally to
himself. He carries it always about with him; but it must on no
account be placed in his bag of magical substances, else great danger
will accrue to him.[78.1] In England and elsewhere children are
commonly told to burn their milk-teeth when taken out. In Belgium
about Liége the reason assigned is to obtain a tooth of gold. In
fact, the fear is that a witch may find it if thrown away, and injure
the child by its means, or that a dog, a cat or a wolf may swallow it,
in which event the new tooth growing in its place will be that of the
animal.[78.2] This particular form of the superstition is also found
in Sussex and Suffolk, and probably in other parts of England.[78.3]
Earth from a man’s footprints, on account of its close contact with
the person--and closer still it must have been before mankind was
shod--has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Out of a
number of illustrations of its use in witchcraft I select the
following from all quarters of the globe. Widely spread in Germany is
the belief that if a sod whereon a man has trodden--all the better, if
with naked foot--be taken up and dried behind the hearth or oven he
will parch up with it and languish, or his foot will be withered. He
will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking his footprint with
nails--coffin-nails are the best--or broken glass. Burchard of Worms
in the Middle Ages forbade the former practice; in still earlier times
and another country Pythagoras had forbidden the latter.[78.4] They
are still, {79} however, particularly recommended in various parts of
Germany and adjacent lands for punishing a thief, though it is equally
effectual to put tinder in his footprint, for he will thus be burnt,
or to fill a pouch with some of the earth he has trodden and beat it
twice a day with a stick until fire (!) come out of it: he will feel
the blows and die without fail if he bring not back the stolen goods.
According to Bezzenberger a Lithuanian, who finds a thief’s footmark,
takes it to the graveyard and selects a grave, wherefrom he draws out
the cross, thrusts the earth of the footprint into the hole and rams
down the cross upon it again. The thief then falls ill, and thus is
revealed.[79.1] In Italy and Russia one may be bewitched by similar
means to those used in Germany.[79.2] In Hungary, when a woman has a
child of unwedded love and desires to bind its father’s affections to
it, she digs up one of his footprints, drops {80} some of her own milk
into it and carefully puts it back, reversing its position toe to
heel.[80.1]
The use of the footprint survives in the British Islands, I think,
solely as a means of defence against witches. A correspondent of Mr.
Train, the historian of the Isle of Man, writing about half a century
ago, relates a story in which a colt was taken ill and there was
reason to fear the Evil Eye. A friend of the owner gathered the dust
of the road out of the footsteps of the suspected person, and rubbed
the animal with it. Thereupon it once more partook of food and rapidly
recovered.[80.2] Quite recently a parallel case has been reported, the
beast bewitched having been a calf.[80.3] Mr. Hollingsworth, in his
_History of Stowmarket_, published in 1844, says of a reputed witch
that, if any one followed her as she walked, and drove a nail or a
knife well into the ground through one of her footprints, she was
deprived of power to move another step until it was extracted.[80.4]
In Grafton County, New Hampshire, in the year 1852, a woman was seen
to stick a knitting-needle in the footmarks of another who was
regarded as a witch, under the belief that the steel had power to
fasten a witch in her tracks, so that she could not move. On this
occasion the device was ineffectual. There is always a reason for want
of success in such performances. The performer was satisfied that she
had broken the needle’s power by speaking. Elsewhere in New England
and in Canada an awl is prescribed for the purpose.[80.5] Further
south, the mixed white population of the Alleghanies recommend a nail
from the coffin wherein a corpse has {81} decayed to be driven with
three blows into a thief’s track; it will produce the same effect as
if it entered the robber’s foot. But you are cautioned to tie a string
round the nail’s head, so that it can be drawn out when requisite;
else the man will die.[81.1]
Savages, on the other hand, are more frequently reported as using the
footmark as a means of offence. The Karens of Burmah use the earth of
a man’s footprints for the purpose of making a magical image of
him.[81.2] The Pakoos strike an enemy’s footsteps with certain stones,
with the intention of causing his death.[81.3] On the Slave Coast of
Africa a magical powder thrown on a foe’s track renders him mad.[81.4]
The Kurnai and other Australian aborigines bury sharp fragments of
quartz, glass, bone or charcoal in the footmarks or in the place where
the victim has lain, under the belief that the substances will thus be
caused to enter his body.[81.5] In the west of Victoria--probably
elsewhere--the black-fellow possessed of supernatural powers, who in
hot weather comes upon the spoor of a kangaroo, follows it up, putting
live embers on it. He will follow it thus for two days, unless he
track it to a water-hole and spear it sooner.[81.6] This superstition,
to which a special name is given, and of which Mr. Dawson, a most
competent inquirer, failed to get any explanation, is analogous to the
practice of the North American Indians. A compound, called “hunter’s
medicine,” the preparation {82} whereof is taught to the neophyte in
the initiation ceremony of the Ojibways, is dropped on the track of
the animal pursued, to compel it to halt wherever it may be at that
moment.[82.1] The Zuñi hunter follows the trail until he finds a
place where the creature has lain down. He then deposits with certain
offerings a spider-knot, tied of set purpose awkwardly, of four
strands of yucca-leaves on the spot over which he supposes the
victim’s heart to have rested or passed. Immediately in front of it he
sticks a forked twig of cedar obliquely into the ground, leaning in
the direction opposite to that taken by the animal. Other ceremonies
follow, meant to have the effect of impeding and overcoming the
prey.[82.2]
With the foregoing may be compared some ceremonies practised in
Europe, the design of which, though not hostile, is to attach the
animal to one place and prevent it from straying. A German huntsman,
for example, sticks a coffin-nail into the trail of the game he
desires to retain in his preserve.[82.3] When a calf is born, a
Transylvanian Saxon farmer will take a peg of birch and drive it over
the head into the spot on which the calf has fallen.[82.4] So an
ancient English charm for the recovery of stolen cattle directed three
candles to be lighted and the wax dripped thrice into the hoof-track,
and the following invocation to be sung: “Peter, Paul, Patrick,
Philip, Mary, Bridget, Felicitas; in the name of God and the Church:
he who seeketh findeth.”[82.5] It seems to have required a perfect
{83} army of saints to stop one thief; but peradventure some of them
were talking, or in a journey, or sleeping, and could not attend to
the business.
Among the various instruments of witchcraft I have mentioned the
refuse of food. In the South Sea Islands this has been noted over and
over again by missionaries and travellers. In New Britain a native,
seized with fever, complained to Mr. Powell that one of his enemies
had bewitched him by obtaining the skins of some bananas he had eaten,
“making magic” over them and then burning them. For fear of this, Mr.
Powell explains, the natives are very careful to burn or hide the
refuse of anything they have been eating.[83.1] In the New Hebrides a
bit of a certain stone, taken with a prayer, is pounded up with a
fragment of food of the person to whom mischief is to be wrought; or
the refuse of his food, such as a banana-skin or a piece of sugar-cane
he has chewed, is simply burnt. An amphibious sea-snake called _mae_
is credited with supernatural power. It will do harm to men by taking
away morsels of their food into a sacred place, whereupon their lips
will swell and their bodies break out with ulcers.[83.2] In one of the
Solomon Islands there is a sacred pool haunted by a _Tindalo_, or
disembodied spirit, much resorted to for a similar purpose by persons
who know the place and the spirit. If the scraps of food thrown into
the pool are quickly devoured by a fish or a snake the thrower’s
object is accomplished: the man whose food has been pilfered for the
purpose will die. If otherwise, the _Tindalo_ is unwilling {84} to do
the mischief desired of him.[84.1] Without pausing to enumerate any
other cases it may be said in general terms that the superstition
which is the subject of this paragraph is found everywhere in
Australasia, Polynesia and Melanesia.[84.2]
Nor is it confined to the Southern Ocean. Among the Ainu double fruits
are liable to be the means of bewitching any one who is bold enough to
eat of them, unless he eat both.[84.3] In Europe, the Magyars
carefully throw into the fire the remains of food partaken of at the
Christmas feast; else the witches will make all sorts of evil charms
of them. In many places they are kneaded together into a sort of paste
in human form, and, with the words: “Eat fair ladies!” put into the
oven, where they are burnt up in the next baking. The bones are
frequently thrown into the open fire; and from their colour, and the
way they crack and split in the heat, prognostications of future
fortunes are drawn. Sometimes the bride buries close to the house the
bread-crumbs, bones and other relics of her wedding-feast, in order
“to strengthen the building.”[84.4] In both cases the anxiety to
secure the food from harm, once extended to food in general, seems to
have become restricted to special occasions. The reason alleged in the
case of a wedding is probably no more the real reason than that stated
in the {85} Mark of Brandenburg for not giving away a slice of bread
which has been bitten, lest, we are told, one quarrel with the
recipient.[85.1] People in Posen are counselled not to eat in the
presence of a stranger for fear of being bewitched through the remains
of their food, nor to take drink from a strange hand without saying as
a counterspell: “God bless it!”[85.2] About Chemnitz one is advised on
rising from a meal to leave no bread behind, lest somebody throw it
over the gallows, in which event hanging would be the doom awaiting
the person who had left it. In the neighbourhood of Ansbach he would
get off more lightly, since only toothache is threatened.[85.3] In
Belgium, things like milk or bread are never given to any one capable
of bewitching the giver, save in exchange for a centime or some other
trifle: the sale appears to destroy the evil power, a belief we have
already found elsewhere. Children are also forbidden to receive from a
woman whom they do not know cakes or sweetmeats, or if they do they
must throw them over their shoulders, as in fairy tales the drink
presented by supernatural beings is poured away by mortals; and a
similar caution is enjoined in Italy.[85.4]
Before dismissing the dangers which may arise from the remains of food
being tampered with, it may be well to mention a curious ordeal in use
among the Tunguses of Siberia. A fire is made and a scaffold erected
near the hut of the accused. A dog’s throat is then cut and the {86}
blood received in a vessel. The body is put on the wood of the fire,
but in such a position that it does not burn. The accused passes over
the fire, and drinks two mouthfuls of the blood, the rest whereof is
thrown into the fire; and the body of the dog is placed on the
scaffold. Then the accused says: “As the dog’s blood burns in the
fire, so may what I have drunk burn in my body; and as the dog put on
the scaffold will be consumed, so may I be consumed at the same time
if I be guilty.”[86.1] The effect intended to be produced on a guilty
man is obviously the operation of the sympathy between the blood
united with his body by drinking and the remainder of the blood and
the carcase of the dog as they are consumed, the one in the fire, and
the other by putrefaction or birds of carrion.
Clothes, from their intimate association with the person, have
naturally attained a prominent place among the instruments of
witchcraft. Among the Transylvanian Saxons, to put on an article of
clothing belonging to another is to put on his luck, provided it be
done undesignedly.[86.2] The German population of Pennsylvania
cherishes the belief that witches “acquire influence over any one by
becoming possessed of anything belonging to the intended victim, such
as a hair, a piece of apparel, or a pin. The influence acquired by the
witch is greater if such an article be voluntarily or unconsciously
handed to her by the person asked for it.”[86.3] For a similar reason,
the Votjaks hesitate even to sell any article of clothing they have
worn.[86.4] A pin from the maiden’s dress, it will be remembered, was
a necessary {87} part of the Livonian charm cited a few pages back;
one of the victim’s gloves appears in the confessions of the
unfortunate Margaret and Philippa Flower; and a parallel practice has
been recently recorded in Sicily.[87.1] At Mentone the witch with a
piece of her victim’s garment can render him sick.[87.2] An elaborate
Tuscan charm given by Mr. Leland prescribes the use of the hairs of
the victim, “or else the stockings, and those not clean, for there
must be in them his or her perspiration.”[87.3] As elsewhere, among
the Greco-Walachian population of Macedonia a newly born babe and its
mother are held to be specially subject to injury by supernatural
beings. To prevent this their clothes must not remain out of doors all
night; and the water in which they or the clothes have been washed
must be poured through pipes into the depths of the ground.[87.4] In
Germany, in Spain, in Asia Minor and in many other places a portion of
the witch’s dress is burnt to destroy her spells and restore the
object of her conjurations to health.[87.5] A Gipsy prescription to
recover a stolen horse is to bury the harness which may be left, to
kindle a fire over the spot and sing {88} an imprecation on the thief
and an invocation to the steed to return safe and sound.[88.1] Our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers thought it enough to sing over the
foot-shackles or the bridle the powerful invocation I mentioned just
now.
The Segoo conjurer on the Upper Niger uses a piece of cloth belonging
to the victim, or a little dirt that has been touched by his foot.
These he sticks by means of hen’s blood to a fetish charm prepared,
according to price, to kill or only to produce various degrees of
damage to his client’s foe.[88.2] In a Hottentot story a fugitive
throws off his mantle, and it immediately runs in another direction so
as to deceive and baffle his pursuers.[88.3] Here the garment is
represented as endowed with life and sympathy for its owner; but it
does not appear that when it was caught the pursuers thought it worth
while to destroy it with intent to slay the owner. As already
mentioned, a piece of an Australian native’s opossum rug, or any other
portion of his scanty dress, is sufficient to enable an enemy to
bewitch him.[88.4] The Maories and the Fiji islanders are equally
superstitious. It is related of the latter that if they have reason to
suspect others of plotting against them, they not only avoid eating in
their presence, or leaving any fragments of their food behind, but
they also dispose their clothing so that no part of it can be
removed.[88.5] On the island of Tanna, in the New Hebrides, a
_yolnuruk_, or wizard, can bewitch any one by means of a portion of
his food, the {89} unused part of a stick of tobacco, his belt or
garment, a stick he has had in his hand, the scrapings of a stone on
which he has sat, or in fact anything that has once touched his
body.[89.1] To a Tonga islander it was fatal to hide a portion of his
clothing in the family tomb of one of his relations of higher rank
than himself.[89.2]
Everywhere, indeed, it is dangerous to leave an article of a living
person’s dress in the possession of the dead. An old woman who went to
pray in the old church, now ruined, of Saint Martin at Bonn was
surprised by finding herself in a congregation of the departed. A
spectral Mass was, in fact, being celebrated by spectral priests, and
she was the only living being in the assembly. Her dead husband was
there; and, warned by him, she fled. But the door, in swinging-to as
she passed out, caught her cloak; and she had to leave it behind. She
sickened and died; and “the neighbours said it must be because a piece
of her clothes had remained in the possession of the dead.”[89.3] In
Germany and Denmark no portion of a survivor’s clothing must on any
account be put upon a corpse, else the owner will languish away as it
moulders in the grave; and the superstition has been carried by Saxon
settlers into the Land beyond the Forest.[89.4] Among the Poles, to
lay a maiden’s garland on the head of a dead body covers the maiden
herself with scabs; and the Masurs declare that if a bystander at an
open grave drop anything in, or if any article {90} belonging to a
living person be laid in it, he will die soon.[90.1] Conversely the
greatest caution is necessary in taking anything belonging to the
dead. Legends are common in Northern and Central Europe of persons who
have wittingly or unwittingly stolen shrouds. The thief always comes
to a bad end, or at least escapes only by the skin of his teeth. These
catastrophes are attributed to ghostly action; but a similar power is
ascribed to mere sympathy. To appropriate pieces of a coffin, or
flowers from a grave, to say nothing of bones or other parts of a
corpse, is, among the Saxons of the Seven Cities, to appropriate
ill-luck for the rest of one’s life. To hang rags from the clothing of
a dead man upon a vine is to render it barren. Even in taking his gear
in the most legitimate manner, pious formulæ and ceremonies must be
used; and then it will not last you long. In former times it was
charitably given to the poor.[90.2] To stick a nail from a coffin in a
living man’s shoe is, in Thuringia, to cause his death.[90.3] In the
New World the Caribs held that they could injure an enemy by wrapping
up some trifling object belonging to, or habitually used by, him with
the bones of one of their deceased friends, which were preserved for
that and other magical purposes.[90.4] The Aleutian Eskimo think that
the tools and garments of the dead remain in sympathy with him; “hence
their touch chills, and the sight of them inspires sadness.”[90.5]
Probably it is only a different interpretation of the same belief
which alike in Christian, in Mohammedan, and in {91} Buddhist lands
has led to the ascription of marvellous powers to the clothes and
other relics of departed saints. The divine power which was immanent
in these personages during life attaches not merely to every portion
of their bodies but to every shred of their apparel. The Ursuline nuns
of Quintin keep one of the principal schools in Brittany. When a girl
who has been their pupil marries and finds herself “in blessed
circumstances,” the pious nuns send her a white ribbon painted in blue
(the Virgin’s colour) with the words: “Notre Dame de Délivrance,
protégez nous.” Before despatching it, they touch with it the
reliquary of the parish church, which contains a fragment of the
Virgin Mary’s zone. The recipient hastens to put the ribbon around her
waist, and does not cease to wear it until her baby is born.[91.1] For
the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, though
that contact has ceased to outward appearance, is still in some subtle
connection with the goddess, and can, with the power it has thus
acquired, leaven its reliquary and everything that touches the
reliquary. Father De Acosta bears unconscious testimony to the real
character of this belief. Speaking of the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca,
he relates that upon the even of his feast the god was furnished by
the nobles with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken
off “and kept with as much or more reverence {92} than we doe our
ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments, of course, are meant; and the
writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll
many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and
pretious feathers, which served to no other vse but to be there, and
was [_sic_] worshipped as their god it selfe.”[92.1] Not to multiply
instances which might be adduced from the Arctic Ocean to the Southern
Sea, I will refer only to the sacred girdle worn by Tahitian kings.
The red feathers which adorned this girdle were taken from the images
of the gods. It “thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods,
the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of
power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was
designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that Mr. Ellis
says it “not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but
identified him with their gods.”[92.2]
Nor is it merely to clothes and personal ornaments that this intimate
and sympathetic connection with their owner’s life is ascribed. It
might be supposed that the constant visible and tangible association
of these things with the man himself might render it difficult to
disintegrate the image thus formed in the slowly working mind of a
savage, and that this might be the reason for their identification
(for it amounts to nothing less) with his personality. Or it might be
argued that, as is distinctly suggested in certain cases, they have
become saturated with his sweat by repeated use, and thereby become an
{93} outlying portion of his body. The identification, however, is
extended to things we should suppose more easily dissociated from him,
to things but rarely coming beneath his touch. The Wanyoro of Central
Africa imagine that straws from the thatch of a dwelling may be so
charmed as to bring calamity upon its owner.[93.1] When Captain Speke
was in Unyoro, the king, Kamrasi, sent some one to steal some grass
from the thatch of a Chopi chief, “in order that he might spread a
charm on the Chopi people, and gain such an influence over them that
their spears could not prevail against the Wanyoro.”[93.2] In the Isle
of Man, one fisherman can rob another of his luck by plucking a straw
from the latter’s cottage as he passes it on his way to fishing.[93.3]
A woman of Kirk Lonan in the same island confessed, on the 31st of
July 1712, to a charge of having taken up some earth from under a
neighbour’s door and burnt it to ashes, which she had given to her
cattle, “with an intention, as she owns, to make them give more
milk”--in other words, to a charge of stealing by magical means the
milk from her neighbour’s cows.[93.4] In Denmark, to steal
fishing-tackle is to rob the fisher of his luck. For a similar reason,
no Esthonian farmer is willing to give earth from his
cornfields.[93.5] In southern Bohemia the sweepings must not be
allowed to lie before the house-door, else the witches will be enabled
by its means to lame the inhabitants, as well as to ascertain what is
going on in the house.[93.6] In the Tirol an enemy can be ruined by
cutting a turf from one’s own ground and {94} throwing it on his roof;
while a Fijian can bewitch his foe by burying certain leaves in the
foe’s garden or hiding them in his thatch.[94.1] The Annamites are
said by Dr. Bartels, I know not on what authority, to effect a spell
of injury by driving a nail into a plank of the victim’s ship or one
of the posts of his house.[94.2] As long as the men are away from a
Dyak village on a warlike expedition their fires are lighted on their
hearths as if they were at home. “The mats are spread and the fires
kept up till late in the evening, and lighted again before dawn, so
that the men may not be cold. The roofing of the house is opened
before dawn, so that the men may not lie too long and so fall into the
hands of the enemy.”[94.3] The belief in the inseparable connection of
a person and his property seems to have limited to some slight extent
the indiscriminate almsgiving practised in many European, especially
Roman Catholic, countries. It is deemed prudent always to refuse
persons suspected of witchcraft; and at certain times, as on the
occasion of a birth or death, or even when a cow has calved, every one
must be refused. To give fire on these occasions, or on various days
of the year, is highly dangerous, and it is by no means safe at any
time. Mr. Frederick Starr, the Curator of the Natural History Museum
at New York, records a case of witchcraft that came under his own
notice among the German population of Pennsylvania, where the trouble
was traced to the giving of a match to the sorceress to {95} light her
pipe.[95.1] Nor is the superstition unknown to the American
aborigines, as witness the attempt mentioned in the last chapter of
the Shawnee prophet to persuade John Tanner that his life was
dependent on his lodge fire. And the Moravian missionaries found it in
Greenland, where one of the things a pregnant woman may not permit is
the lighting of a match at her lamp.[95.2]
In the _Mahábhárata_ an ascetic who is enraged with king
Dhritaráshtra accepts from the king the carcases of some cattle which
had died. Then he lighted a sacrificial fire and cut up the animals;
and “observant of rigid vows the great Dálvya-vaka poured
Dhritaráshtra’s kingdom as a libation on the fire with the aid of
those pieces of meat. Upon the commencement of that fierce sacrifice,
according to due rites, the kingdom of Dhritaráshtra began to waste
away, even as a large forest begins to disappear when men proceed to
cut it down.” The monarch, it need hardly be added, was soon reduced
to submission.[95.3] Here the foe is affected by rites performed upon
his cattle; and perhaps the same belief is the origin of the
resentment felt by a Samoan when he finds marks of a knife or hatchet
inflicted by another upon anything belonging to him, such as his
canoe, his breadfruit-tree, or even on a few taro-plants. We are told
that “he considers it is like cutting himself, and rages like a bear
to find out who has done it.”[95.4] The close connection held in cases
like these to subsist between {96} property and its owner is further
exemplified by the practice of the Pipiles of Central America, who had
special regulations for indulgence in marital embraces at the moment
of sowing.[96.1] So also when the Ynca Mayta Capac ordered certain
prisoners in one of the provinces he had conquered to be burnt alive,
the zealous people not only carried out the command but included in
the punishment all that the criminals had in their houses, destroying
the houses and strewing their sites with stones as accursed places.
“They also destroyed their flocks, and even pulled up the trees they
had planted. It was ordered that their land should never be given to
any one, but that it should remain desolate, _that no man might
inherit with it the evil deeds of its former owners_.”[96.2] Among the
Alfours of Posso in Celebes, when a man dies he is solemnly tried, and
every one is entitled to express an opinion upon his life. If the
decision be unfavourable he is buried without ceremony, provided his
debts be paid, and his goods are destroyed, for nobody can, and nobody
wishes to, inherit from him.[96.3] The spirit and intention evinced in
this destruction of a great offender’s property dictated the
extermination (or at least the story of the extermination) of Achan,
the son of Zerah, with the goods he had appropriated at the sack of
Jericho, his sons, and his daughters, “his oxen, and his asses, and
his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.” It was only when they
had been burnt and covered with a great heap of stones, as in the case
of the Peruvian prisoners, that “the Lord turned from the fierceness
of his anger.”[96.4] {97} Hardly an extension is it of the belief here
indicated which leads the Chinese to identify the produce of labour
with the labourer himself. In the Middle Kingdom grave-clothes are
procured long beforehand and kept in store for years. Professor De
Groot says: “Old age being a benefit the Chinese prefer above all
things, most people have the clothes in question cut out and sewed by
an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that,
whereas such a person is likely to live still a great number of years,
a part of her capacity to live still long must surely pass into the
clothes, and thus put off for many years the moment when they shall be
required for use.”[97.1] Traces of the same thought are found in the
German requirement that in making vinegar, to make it good, one must
look sour and be savage, and in the high value placed upon yarn spun
by a girl under seven years of age.[97.2]
But superstition stops not with a man’s property and the produce of
his labour any more than with portions of his body or his garments and
ornaments. Things arbitrarily associated with him, if the proper
ceremonies be observed, and the proper incantations muttered or sung,
may be made effectual instruments of injury as if they were parts of
himself. His name, it may be argued, is something peculiarly his own;
and a portrait, if any resemblance be traceable to the person
represented, may bear identification with him. But, as I have already
pointed out, likeness is by no means necessary. If it be enough, in
order to constitute a life-token, merely to attribute connection at
the will of the person inquiring concerning the absent, it must {98}
be enough also for the purpose of bewitching him. What is valid in the
one case must be valid in the other. So much has been written on the
aspects of savage thought concerning personal names and personal
portraits, and on the images made for the purposes of witchcraft, that
I need not do more than point out that the profane use of images for
witchcraft is exactly parallel to the sacred use of images of gods and
saints. If by sticking a pin into a waxen figure, or melting it in the
fire, I can torture and do to death the person whom the figure
represents, the converse process of honouring and feeding and
pacifying with incense and adoration will have its effect upon the
deity whose image is thus treated. Wherever he may be, he is present
by means of the sympathy between the picture or the statue and
himself, a sympathy thus indistinguishable from identity. Practically
of course this involves omnipresence. The difficulty is not felt by
the savage. If the theologian feel it, he can explain it away in a
crowd of unctuous phrases, or smother his common sense with the
authority of the Church. The scientific investigator can do neither.
The only theory of the superstition he can present is that which is
educed from a comparison of analogous cases, namely, that just as hair
and other portions of the body, when severed in outward appearance,
yet maintain an essential connection with it, so images bearing the
name of, or intended to represent, an absent man or a deity are an
extension of his person, bound to it by an invisible and indivisible
link. That a ceremony should be required to perfect the bond, to
complete the connection, is only to be expected; and naturally this
ceremony is fully developed in solemn and formal worship and the
higher sorcery. But the ritual of consecration depends upon another
principle--that {99} of the power of certain forms of words when
uttered in a prescribed manner to bring about the fulfilment of a
wish--the discussion whereof is foreign to this inquiry.
A few illustrations of the identity imputed for magical purposes to
arbitrary objects other than effigies may perhaps be interesting as
showing how far the imputation may be carried, and on how slender a
connection of thought in many cases it rests. On the Slave Coast,
Major Ellis reports that an enemy’s death may be compassed by wrapping
a tree-stump with palm-leaves and strips of calico, and hanging a
string of cowries on it, and then hammering the top with a stone while
pronouncing the victim’s name.[99.1] In the Congo region, an approved
method of bewitching mortally is to put a certain herb or plant into a
hole in the ground. As it decays, so the vigour and spirits of the
person aimed at will fail and decay.[99.2] In Fiji, a cocoa-nut is
buried beneath the temple hearth, with the eye upwards. A fire is kept
constantly burning on the hearth; and as it destroys the life of the
nut, so the health of the person represented by the nut fails, and he
ultimately dies.[99.3] In the Hervey Islands, the expanded flower of a
gardenia was stuck upright--no easy feat--in a cocoa-nut-shell cup of
water. The sorcerer would then offer a prayer for the death of the
person intended; and if the flower fell his prayer would be
successful.[99.4] In some districts of Sicily on Christmas Eve, at the
moment of the elevation of the host at midnight mass, an orange or a
lemon, previously charmed for the {100} purpose by a witch, must be
taken from the pocket, a piece of the rind torn off, and the fruit
stuck with pins. It is necessary to accompany the act with an
imprecation of as many pains and misfortunes on the unhappy victim as
the pins in the fruit. At Palermo an egg is used, a ribbon is attached
to one of the pins, and the egg is then hidden somewhere in the house
of the person to be injured.[100.1] In Bosnia, a maiden may be
detached from her lover by burying an egg before and another behind
her dwelling, saying the while: “It is not eggs I bury; I bury rather
her luck; her luck shall be turned to stone.” But the effect of the
charm may be dissipated by the maiden’s finding the eggs, throwing
them out of the farmyard, and retiring without looking round.[100.2]
In each of the foregoing cases the association with the victim appears
to be formed by the utterance of his name, though in the two last
there is further the introduction of the bespelled object into his
dwelling or its immediate vicinity. This effects a kind of contact
with him. It was the same in a spell cast over a maiden to whose aid
Saint Hilarion was once called. She had rejected the advances of a
young magician, who in return laid a copper plate engraved with
certain characters under the door of her dwelling. The effect was, as
we know from Saint Jerome, that she became possessed by a devil, who
boasted that he would not leave her until the copper plate was taken
away. But in Hilarion, who was so full of the Holy Spirit that he
could tell one devil from another by the smell, the tormentor had met
his match. The saint forbade the removal {101} of the plate; nor would
he bandy words with the demon, but delivered the girl by the sheer
strength of his prayers.[101.1] At Vate, one of the New Hebrides, if a
man were angry with another, he buried certain leaves by night close
to his foe’s house, so that the latter in coming forth in the morning
might step over them and be taken ill.[101.2] More direct contact is
set up with the person condemned to undergo the poison ordeal at
Blantyre, in Central Africa, when the ordeal is to be inflicted, as
frequently is the case, by proxy on a dog or a fowl, or some other
animal. The proxy is then tied by a string to the accused.[101.3] The
same result is obtained in the neighbourhood of Hermannstadt in
Transylvania on the occasion of a robbery, if restitution be desired,
by procuring a consecrated wafer and putting it upon any portion
remaining of the stolen property. The operator then sticks a needle
into the wafer, saying: “Thief, I stick thy brains; thou shalt lose
thy reason!” Again he sticks the needle in, saying: “Thief, I stick
thy hands to change thee to goodness!” A third time he sticks it in,
saying: “Thief, I stick thy feet to lame thee!” After this, if the
thief would avoid death, he must bring the stolen goods back.[101.4]
If, at the time of a death among the Poles, anything have been stolen,
a similar article or a piece of the same material is laid in the
coffin with the dead, and as it corrupts the thief withers away and
ultimately dies.[101.5] The concurrence of a theft with a death,
however, does not always happen so {102} conveniently. The Masurs,
therefore, reckon it sufficient to bury the article in the
churchyard.[102.1] In the Fiji Islands, Macdonald records that,
certain roots having been stolen, the sorcerers who were called in
placed the remains of the roots in contact with a poisonous plant. As
soon as this was known, two persons fell sick with a disease that
proved mortal; and before dying they confessed to the robbery.[102.2]
The principle applied in these instances appears to be a logical
extension of that which identifies a man with his property. The thief
is identified with the articles he has possessed himself of, and is
affected by means of a portion of the bulk to which they belong, and
whence he has severed them. In this country the identification is
usually arbitrary, no contact being attempted. The heart of some
animal, as a sheep, a hare, or a pigeon, is procured and stuck full of
pins; and a form of words is pronounced similar to those in the
Transylvanian example. In a case mentioned by Mr. Henderson as
occurring no longer ago than the year 1861, a live pigeon was thus
tortured and pierced to the heart, and then roasted, the object being
to punish and discover a witch who was believed to have killed some
horses by means of the Evil Eye. This kind of incantation is perhaps
more usual in philtres, or where the girl betrayed seeks to avenge
herself upon her lover. Mr. Henderson quotes the following directions
from _The Universal Fortune Teller_: “Let any unmarried woman take the
blade-bone of a shoulder of lamb, and borrowing a penknife (without
saying for what purpose) she must, on going to bed, stick the knife
once through the bone every night for nine nights {103} in succession
in different places, repeating every night while so doing these words:
’Tis not this bone I mean to stick,
But my lover’s heart I mean to prick;
Wishing him neither rest nor sleep
Till he comes to me to speak.
Accordingly at the end of the nine days, or shortly after, he will
come and ask for something to put to a wound inflicted during the time
you were charming him.”[103.1] Reginald Scot gives a charm “to spoile
a theefe, a witch, or anie other enemie, and to be delivered from the
evill,” by cutting a hazel-wand on Sunday morning before sunrise,
saying: “I cut thee, O bough of this summer’s growth, in the name of
him whom I mean to beat or maim.” The table is then to be covered,
using thrice the formula, “In nomine Patris, etc.,” and struck with
the wand, the performer repeating some apparently meaningless jargon
and a prayer to the Trinity to punish the object of vengeance.[103.2]
It would be easy, but tedious, to multiply examples. Let it suffice to
say that the spell here described is known in one form or other all
over Europe. Generally the substance practised upon is a part of some
animal, a puppet-figure, or else a candle or brand. In the last
chapter we have seen the candle or brand as Life-token. It is
immaterial whether the identification of the brand with a human being
be for the purpose of divination or of witchcraft. If the brand
indicate by its condition the condition of the person about whom I am
inquiring, then I can, by affecting the condition of the brand, affect
also that of the person in question. {104} The Bishop of Evreux in his
statutes of the year 1664 condemns, among other practices, the
purchase of a fagot to burn with incense and white alum at an uneven
hour of the day or night with a long and horrible imprecation against
an enemy by name. Mingled wine and salt were, we learn, poured over
the burning fagot in the course of the proceedings. As an alternative
the statutes mention the burning of nine, eleven, thirteen or fifteen
candles. And apparently the same ill effects were to be produced by
simply cursing the foe while putting out the lights in the dwelling,
and then rolling on the ground reciting the one hundred-and-eighth
psalm.[104.1]
This is a superstition familiar to us in the classic tale of Meleager.
When Althæa gave birth to him she was visited by the three Fates, who
placed a billet of wood on the fire and bespelled her child to live
until it was consumed. She snatched the brand from the flames,
extinguished them with water and kept it safely until the day she
beheld her two brothers brought home from the hunting of the
Calydonian boar, both dead by Meleager’s hand. In the madness of her
anger she fetched it forth, and after a struggle between her love as a
mother and her love as a sister she cast it on the fire. Meleager
absent and unwitting felt his entrails burning, and died in torture
when the brand was consumed. The writer of a work, ascribed to
Plutarch, on _Parallels between the Romans and the Greeks_, quotes in
a fragmentary way from Menyllus a story of one Mamercus, a son of Mars
by Sylvia the wife of {105} Septimius Marcellus. Mamercus’ life was by
his divine father bound up with a spear, which was burnt by his mother
under somewhat similar provocation to that of Althæa. The tale is yet
current in Epirus, in the Vosges, and among the Germans both in
Germany and Transylvania; and a few years ago I heard from the lips of
a collier on the wild upland between the vale of Neath and the vale of
Swansea a legend of a man named John Gethin, who had been overcome
with fright on raising the Devil and so put himself into the enemy’s
power. A fight ensued between the conjurer who accompanied him and the
Devil for Gethin’s body. The conjurer pulled and the Devil pulled,
until the unfortunate man was nearly torn in two. The conjurer at
length obtained from his adversary permission to keep him so long as a
candle which was part of his conjuring apparatus lasted. The candle
was instantly blown out, but though it was kept in a cool place it
wasted away, and with it John Gethin’s life, so that when he died the
candle was found to be entirely consumed. His body vanished; and the
coffin buried in the parish churchyard at Ystradgynlais, on the
borders of Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, contained nothing but
clay.[105.1] In the province of Posen it is said that every man has a
burning taper which is set up in a certain grove; and when it goes
out, the life of the man to whom it belongs goes out too.[105.2] This
is the foundation of an incident in a folktale known in many parts of
Europe, wherein Death takes a man down into his own abode and shows
him an array of candles {106} which are the lives of men, some long,
some short, and some on the point of extinction.
The superstitions we have discussed in the present chapter disclose a
parallel range to those of the Life-token. First we find witchcraft
exercised upon detached portions of the victim’s body, identified with
himself by the same process of thought as that analysed in the last
chapter. The remains of his food are equally liable to hostile
practices, because they are a portion of something which he has
incorporated into his own substance. Clothing and the dust or mud of
naked footprints would also be likely to retain sweat, hairs and
specks of skin available for the sorcerer’s purpose; and it may well
be believed that this was the original reason for treating other
articles of property in the like manner. But with the accumulation of
property of all kinds the real reason for the use of such things would
fade, and the procedure would degenerate into mere simulation. The
process would be facilitated by the superstition of regarding a man’s
name as a part of himself. Any one who knew another’s real name, by
imputing it to some convenient object, could identify that object with
his enemy, and work his will upon it, and upon his enemy through it.
There is, however, a wide tract of borderland where the underlying
reason for the practices is vague, and it is consequently difficult,
or impossible, to determine whether the injuries are believed to be
inflicted on something essentially part of the victim, or are no more
than symbolic. But here as elsewhere symbolism is the offspring of an
earlier practice; it is the form which remains when the real practice
can no longer be repeated. It points unmistakably to injuries
originally inflicted on something regarded as actually part of, and so
united with, the {107} victim, though in appearance detached, that he
will suffer all that it receives.
One of the most curious applications of the doctrine we have been
considering deserves a few illustrations before passing on. The
imputation of identity of a man’s property with himself would lead us
to expect that wherever the instrument of witchcraft could be found,
its destruction would be attended with injury and even destruction to
the sorcerer, as when in Silesia cattle are bewitched. In such a case,
any object found under the crib, or under the threshold, is put into a
bag and hung up in the chimney. The witch will then come and ask for
something. If she be refused, the cattle are saved and she herself
suffers.[107.1] A Danish tradition of a bewitched household relates
that under a large stone outside the dwelling was found a silken
purse, filled with claws of cocks and eagles, human hair and nails.
When it was burnt, the suspected witch died, and all sorcery was at an
end.[107.2] So too in the Isle of Man, Professor Rhys was told, by the
man who did it, of the burning of a reputed witch’s broomstick. She
died; and the man firmly believed that the burning of the broomstick
had caused her death.[107.3] On the Slave Coast, any one who wishes to
be revenged upon another prays to certain gods to send the owl, their
messenger, to eat out the heart of the offending person by night. “The
only mode of escape,” we are assured, “is to catch the bird and break
its legs and wings, which has the effect of breaking the legs and arms
of the person who sent it.”[107.4] A gruesome tale, {108} current
among the descendants of Scottish Highlanders settled in Ontario,
speaks of a large blue butterfly that frequented a certain farm, where
the churns were bewitched and the butter was of an inferior quality.
When the creature was persistently followed and killed the charm was
destroyed, and so was a neighbour, a lonely old woman who was wicked
enough not to go to church, and was on ill terms with the
community.[108.1] Tales of this kind are current in Germany and the
Netherlands, especially in connection with nightmare stories.[108.2]
The Gipsies of the Austrian empire believe that women become witches
by holding sexual intercourse with demons. From this a demon-spirit
passes over into the woman. She can send it at her will out of her own
body in the form of an animal to injure and slay her neighbours. This
it does by creeping while they sleep into their bodies, generally
through their mouths: whence Gipsies are very careful not to sleep
with the mouth open. Meantime the witch’s body lies as dead, and only
revives when the sleeper awakes and the spirit returns to its owner,
leaving its spittle behind in the victim’s intestines, to cause
sickness and even death. The antidote consists of certain
incantations, accompanied by the symbolic crushing of an egg and the
burning of portions of the witch’s hair, nails, clothing or the like.
The victim leaps nine times over the fire, calling out the witch’s
name, and then spits and makes water into the flames.[108.3] Here
nothing is said about catching the mischievous animal, as in the {109}
West African and some of the European examples; while in all alike the
close connection, amounting to an imputation of identity, between the
witch and the animal is related very nearly to the belief in the
witch’s power of self-transformation so commonly believed in western
Europe.
The Gipsy prescription, however, goes further. When the victim leaps
over the flames he symbolises an immolation that actually takes, or
used within recent times to take, place when cattle are bewitched. In
the earlier half of the last century a witch was believed to have been
burned to death at Ipswich by the process of burning alive a sheep she
had bewitched. “It was curious,” says Mr. Zincke, “but it was as
convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of the witch were the
only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This was
satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep,
by which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed
in the flames that consumed its body.” The same writer knew a woman at
Wherstead, in Suffolk, who had once baked alive a duck, one of a brood
believed by her to be under a spell.[109.1] In 1833 a man at
Woodhurst, in Huntingdonshire, was persuaded by his neighbours to
roast alive a pig belonging to a litter recently farrowed, all of
which with the sow were bewitched. The sorceress was expected to
appear during the ceremony, and doubtless to suffer with the tortured
beast.[109.2] More lately still, if a correspondent of the _Diss
Express_ can be trusted, an old woman at South Lopham burnt one of her
hens on a Sunday {110} at noon, about the year 1892, to put an end to
a spell laid upon her fowls by a neighbour.[110.1] Unhappily England
does not enjoy a monopoly of this cruel prescription. It was certainly
known in Germany. One of the directions in some folklore collected at
Gernsbach, near Spire, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century,
is: “If your hens, ducks, pigs, etc., die fast, light a fire in the
oven, and throw one of each kind in; the witch will perish with them.”
While it is included by implication in the more general precept
obtained at Pforzheim: “If a thing is bewitched, and you burn it, the
witch is sure to come, wanting to borrow something; give it, and she
is free; deny it, and she too must burn.”[110.2] The same prescription
is reported from Franconia.[110.3] At the present day it is usual to
wait until the bewitched animal be dead, and then its heart is taken
and stuck with pins, and frequently burnt, cooked, or suspended in the
chimney. Variants of the prescription deal in a similar manner with
other portions of the body. All over the west of Europe this is the
course taken; and immigrants from the Old World practise it in
Pennsylvania and the Alleghanies. In some countries the ceremony is
very elaborate, and great precautions are taken to prevent the witch
from entering the house while it is proceeding, or from borrowing
anything, lest the efficacy of the counter-spell be destroyed.[110.4]
Reginald Scot quotes a {111} direction for grilling the intestines of
a beast slain by witchcraft. They are to be trailed unto the house,
and not taken in at the door but drawn under the threshold. “As they
wax hot” on the gridiron, “so shall the witches entrailes be molested
with extreame heat and paine.” The doors must be made fast; for if she
can succeed in taking away a coal of the fire, her torments will
cease. To this end she will make extraordinary efforts, darkening the
house and troubling the air “with such horrible noise and earthquakes,
that,” writes an eye-witness, “except the doore had been opened, we
had thought the house would have fallen on our heads.”[111.1]
Sometimes the animal bewitched is shot, or it is deemed enough to beat
it, or to fumigate it with herbs, or, among the Poles, with the ashes
of a young snake caught on the festival of the Annunciation.[111.2] In
Germany, when a cow’s milk has been taken away by a witch, the
animal’s nostrils are burnt with a hot iron and its name is
changed.[111.3] The milk or urine of a bewitched animal is beaten,
pricked with a fork, cooked in a pot with pins and needles, or nails,
or poured on the dunghill.[111.4] When the milk only is affected, so
that butter cannot be made, it is common to beat it, or thrust a
red-hot poker into the churn, or to beat the churn. A farmer in the
State of Vermont, who had churned nearly all day without making
butter, “loaded his musket and fired the whole charge into the churn,”
saying that “the {112} witches had got into it.” The result was
satisfactory, for shortly afterwards the butter came; but what was the
effect of the shot upon the witches we are not told.[112.1]
A bewitched person is treated in precisely similar ways. The Abipones
pulled out the heart and tongue of a dead man, boiled them, and gave
them to a dog to devour, so that the author of his death might die
too.[112.2] Among the Masurs it is believed that if a person killed by
witchcraft be buried with the feet up, the guilty witch will be
discovered; for she cannot endure it, and must come to put the bier in
the proper position.[112.3] As an example of simulated destruction,
like that in the Gipsy counter-spell above quoted, we may cite the
treatment of a “heart-grown” child at Stamfordham, in Northumberland,
given by Mr. Henderson. The puny patient is brought before sunrise “to
a blacksmith of the seventh generation, and laid naked on the anvil.
The smith raises his hammer as if he were about to strike hot iron,
but brings it down gently on the child’s body.” This is done thrice,
and the child, though overlooked or otherwise bewitched, is sure to
thrive from that day.[112.4] In Suffolk, blood, hair and nails from
the victim were simmered, or fried. The witch was expected to come and
knock at the door, which in all such cases is fast shut, and ask to
borrow something. If denied, she would die.[112.5] Anne Baker, one of
the confederates of the sisters Flower, being examined concerning a
child of Anne Stammidge whom she was suspected of having bewitched to
death, gave most damnatory evidence against herself. She was {113}
charged “that upon the burning of the haire and the paring of the
nailes of the said childe, the said Anne Baker came in and set her
downe, and for one houre’s space coulde speake nothing”; and she
confessed “shee came into the house of the said Anne Stammidge in
great paine, but did not know of the burning of the haire and nailes
of the said childe, but saith she was so sick that she did not know
whither she went.”[113.1] A French writer a few years before this case
recorded the means taken by a Fleming who suffered from sorcery. He
cut his nails of hands and feet, threw them into a pot of fresh water,
and at night before he went to bed he put the pot on the fire and cast
in four large needles. When the water began to boil, the witch could
not resist coming to his house, for the needles pricked her like
spurs. She threw herself on his bed, but he threatened her with sword
and dagger; and other persons rushing in to his help she fled in the
form of a cat.[113.2] A mother and child at Spickendorf, in Prussia,
who were bewitched, were fumigated with nine kinds of wood, and the
straw was taken out of the cradle and thrust into the kitchen-furnace,
where no fire had been lighted for four weeks. A clear flame
immediately burst forth and burnt the straw. The witch came to the
house and tried to get in; but as the door was fastened she tried in
vain. The end of this tale ought to be the witch’s death and the
recovery of her victims. Unfortunately, however, it was the child who
died; and everybody said that the wise man who directed the ceremony
was called in too late for the fumigation to be effectual.[113.3]
{114}
Not merely the blood, hair and nails are dealt with: the remedy often
lies in the _exuviæ_ of the person bewitched. Preservation of the
urine in a closed vessel was prescribed when the patient was afflicted
by a witch in the shape of a nightmare. This was sure to bring the
sorceress to the house, for she would be unable to make water until
the vessel was opened. The prescription was, and still is, a favourite
in the Low Countries, and that not merely for nightmares. Sometimes,
there and elsewhere, it is considered necessary to boil the contents
of the vessel, or at least to hang it in the chimney, a course which
adds greatly to the witch’s torments. An old English recipe directs
the urine to be baked with meal into a cake.[114.1] On the island of
Lesbos a portion of the sufferer’s dress, or of the threshold of the
house where he dwells, is burnt to free him from the spell.[114.2] In
Italy it is usual to boil the clothes of a bewitched child, sometimes
taking the precaution of sticking a long fork into them now and again
during the process. The child will recover and the witch will die. At
Venice it is believed that the witch will present herself and ask for
salt; if it be given, the counter-charm is destroyed.[114.3] It is
generally believed, indeed, that sooner or later she will be compelled
to come to the house on some pretext. At Milan, in the spring of 1891,
a child was ill with some unknown and obstinate disorder--therefore
bewitched. By the advice of a woman who pretended to know something of
{115} medicine the parents boiled its clothes. A neighbour’s wife
happening to call at that moment out of kindness to inquire after the
little one, she was at once attacked by the parents. A raging crowd
assembled and pursued her to the church of Santa Maria del Naviglio.
There, before the altar itself, she was savagely beaten; her hair was
torn out; and, despite the interference of the parish priest, she was
finally dragged back to the house of the sick child, and with blows
and curses was ordered to disenchant her victim. Her protests of
innocence only called forth repeated howls, curses and blows. The
whole suburb of the Porta Ticinese was in an uproar; nor was it
without much trouble that the military police at length succeeded in
rescuing her more dead than alive, and in dispersing the mob. The
women who had torn her hair from her head went home and burnt it,
running afterwards to see if the child were not cured. They declared
they found it somewhat better, and exclaimed: “See now if it is not
true that she is a witch!”[115.1]
These cases all seem explicable by the supposition that the witch has
united herself in some way with the object of her spells, and thus
injury inflicted upon it, by any other hand than hers, will reach and
injure her. This is clearly so, for instance, where she bewitches
cattle to draw away their milk. There she may be punished by
vindictive action upon the milk, or upon the kine producing it. It is
hardly less clear where she has, in the shape of a nightmare,
appropriated an unfortunate man or animal as her steed; and the same
reasoning applies to all the rest. {116} Perhaps it may not be
considered an unwarrantable stretch of barbarous logic to regard the
casting of a spell as an act of appropriation parallel to theft.
Theft, however, like any other act of appropriation, sets up union
between the person appropriating, and the article appropriated.
Ownership, by the process of thought I have endeavoured already to
trace, is in fact union; and injury inflicted upon a man’s property is
in a literal sense inflicted on himself.
CHAPTER X.
WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES--PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.
{117}
In the last chapter we dealt with that branch of witchcraft which
has been called Sympathetic Magic. There is another branch that will
repay a little attention, namely, the composition and administration
of philtres. Many philtres are of course potions compounded of herbs
and other substances known to ancient pharmacopœia. They are believed
to have an effect partly inherent, partly conferred by spells. It is
probable, indeed, that all medicine has arisen out of witchcraft, in
the same way as chemistry, the true science, has emerged from alchemy,
the false, and astronomy from astrology. Witchcraft, alchemy and
astrology are all related by very close ties. They are the practical
application of early beliefs and speculations growing out of one and
the same theory of the universe. So far as I know, the history of the
evolution of medicine from witchcraft has not received the attention
which the corresponding evolution of chemistry and astronomy has had;
but it is not less interesting, and in some respects it is even more
surprising. Among love-potions made of herbs or of portions of the
lower animals it is often difficult, or impossible, to estimate how
far the virtue of the dose is conceived to be inherent in the {118}
ingredients, and how far it is conferred by spells or other
observances with which it is concocted. Sometimes the inherent virtue
seems to preponderate; at other times the spell. In extreme cases on
the one hand the spells are absent, or are reduced to the simple
direction to cull the materials at a certain time, as in the case of
the Gipsy philtre consisting of the bones of a green frog powdered and
mixed with cantharides and a well-sweetened dough, and baked into a
cake. Here the frog must be caught on Saint John’s day, put into a pot
having holes in the sides, and sunk into an ant-hill until the ants
have picked the bones clean.[118.1] On the other hand, the ingredients
are almost disregarded, and the spell it is that is relied on. So a
philtre reported by M. Laisnel de la Salle consists, like the other,
of a little cake, of whose substance we are told nothing. Its power is
obtained by being placed under the altar-cloth, so that the priest
unwittingly says mass and sheds his benediction over it.[118.2]
Our present business, however, is not with philtres like these, but
rather with such as operate in a manner similar to the charms
described in the previous chapter, founded, as I am endeavouring to
show, upon the belief that portions of the body, though outwardly
severed, are still in some secret physical connection with one
another. In the Mark of Brandenburg a maiden causes the object of her
affections to fall in love with her if she give him one of her hairs
in his food, or a third person can compel a youth and maiden to love
by laying a hair of each together between two stones in such a manner
that the wind can play with them.[118.3] According {119} to Gipsy
belief, love can be awakened by mixing one’s sweat, blood or hairs
with the food of the person desired; and on the other hand it can be
destroyed by burning these substances.[119.1] Another Gipsy charm, and
one not unknown among the Russians, is made by a maiden who burns some
of her hair to ashes and mingles them with the drink of the man she
loves.[119.2] A Bohemian, or a Wendish maiden, is said to take some
hairs from her arm and bake them in a cake for him.[119.3] Hairs are
not such enticing food as to be readily eaten: hence charms made of
them are likely to fail if this be necessary. It is, therefore, enough
to convey them into the clothes of the beloved. A Transylvanian Saxon
maid can kindle love if she can contrive this; and if the hairs remain
there until New Year’s morning the youth cannot forsake her that
year.[119.4] Formerly at all events a similar belief seems to have
prevailed in Germany.[119.5] A Gipsy wife endeavours to bind her
husband to her by binding some of her own hair among his; but, to be
effectual, it must be done thrice at the full moon. For this cause,
apparently, a widower on marrying again cuts off on the wedding day
his beard and hair and burns it. Spells cast by the dead wife are thus
destroyed. If {120} a man wish to bind a maiden to him, he obtains
some of her hairs, spits thereon, and hides them secretly in the
coffin of a dead man.[120.1] The writer who reports this charm also
tells us that a Hungarian lover will secure the maiden by burying some
of her hair at a cross-road. The cross-road is everywhere a place only
one degree less dreadful than the churchyard; and burial there is
doubtless a substitute for burial in the churchyard and committing the
hair as a pledge to the keeping of the dead. A traveller in Ireland in
the early part of the last century declares that a love-sick Irish
youth will thread a needle with the hair of the damsel he covets and
run it through the fleshy part of the arm or leg of a corpse, “and the
charm has that virtue in it to make her run mad for him whom she so
lately slighted.” Some light is perhaps thrown on these practices by
the corresponding charm said to be practised by Magyar girls. She who
desires to be loved steals some of the youth’s hair and, throwing it
towards the moon, utters a prayer for his love and for marriage, “if
that can be.”[120.2] The hair is thus given to the moon, both as an
act of worship, and that it may be the means whereby the object of
worship may, in accordance with the belief discussed in the last
chapter, constrain the original owner to compliance with the votary’s
wishes. Another Magyar practice confirms this interpretation. The
first egg laid by a black hen is carefully blown and laid on the
hearth to dry. Hairs, nail-parings, and some drops of blood of the
person whose love is desired are then introduced into it, and it is
buried {121} in the grave-mound of an unbaptized child. After three
days it is dug up; and if any moisture be found inside the egg-shell
success is assured.[121.1] Here the moisture seems to be the work of
the dead child, and, brought thus into contact with portions of the
body of the beloved, it will have its effect upon him. More direct and
more in accordance with the cases cited in the earlier part of this
paragraph is the superstition (also Hungarian) that a woman who can,
after reciting a certain spell, strip quite naked and in this
condition steal a lock of hair from a sleeping man, and binding it
afterwards wear it in a bag or ring, will obtain absolute mastery over
his affections.[121.2] The same result is attained by a Wendish youth
who can cut hair thrice from the back of the neck of a sleeping maiden
and keep it in his waistcoat pocket.[121.3] Among the charms carried
by German settlers to Pennsylvania was one which prescribed as a means
of rendering a girl crazy for a certain man, that he should without
her knowledge get a piece of her hair and sew it in his coat.[121.4]
And the witch in Apuleius’ immortal tale bade her servant bring away
for some such purpose the clippings of the hair of the Bœotian youth
of whom she was enamoured.[121.5] In Bohemia it is enough to {122}
hide the hair under one’s threshold or in the doorposts.[122.1]
Farther south the Slavonic youth (the practice may also be followed by
a maiden) obtains a few hairs or a shred from the smock of the
beloved, and wrapping his prize up in a rag wears it upon his heart.
If he wish for her society, all he has to do is to throw it into the
fire at new moon, and let it burn: the beloved will certainly
come.[122.2] This is the very charm given by the Helpful Beasts in the
_märchen_. An amusing tale is told in Corsica of a youth who loved a
girl, from whom he could get no encouragement. So he begged her to
give him at least one of her hairs. She sent him a long camel’s hair
drawn out of a sieve which hung on a nail in the kitchen. Towards
midnight the sieve tumbled down with a great noise and began to roll
about the floor. At last it found its way out of doors and rolled
straight to the lover’s house, where he was impatiently expecting
quite a different visitor.[122.3] A Prussian prescription for securing
a maiden’s love is to stick three of her hairs in a split tree, so
that they must be grown over as the tree heals.[122.4] In some of the
central Brazilian tribes, when a husband sets out on an expedition,
the wife takes and keeps portions of his nails or hair, that he may
not forget to return; and a woman who desires to win or preserve a
man’s love puts some of her nail-parings or hair in his cigar.[122.5]
To prevent a dog in Germany from straying, three of his hairs are
taken out and {123} laid in the kitchen under the leg of the table; or
he is made to eat in a cake hairs from his master’s armpit. To keep a
newly purchased cow a handful of hair is cut from between her ears and
buried before the stable door.[123.1]
A cake, an apple or a sweetmeat impregnated with the sweat of the
giver is a powerful philtre throughout the greater part of northern
and central Europe from Cairn Gorm to the Carpathians. Sugar in the
same condition is sometimes given in drink.[123.2] Nor can I suggest
any better reason for the Hungarian recommendation to a lass to steal
meal and honey at Christmas, bake a cake thereout and take it to bed
with her for one night, afterwards giving it to the lad of her choice
to eat.[123.3] When a spell has been cast upon a Finnish woman to wean
her affections from her husband, they may be recalled by drinking of a
running stream out of his shoe and throwing the shoe upside down over
her shoulder.[123.4] Here too the chief motive seems the same. Among
the Pennsylvanian Germans an instance was known by Dr. Hoffmann of a
widow who sent a cake, one of the ingredients whereof was a small
quantity of cuticle scraped from her knee, to a man whose love she
desired.[123.5] The bread mentioned by Burchard of Worms, as made by
women and given to their husbands to inflame their conjugal passion,
appears to have owed its efficacy to the absorption of their
perspiration or particles of skin; and the interpretation is confirmed
by the confessors’ manuals formerly, if not still, in use in the Greek
Church, where {124} women are accused of the practice of rubbing dough
on their bodies, and giving to eat to men in whom they wished to
arouse satanic love.[124.1] It is a Negro-Indian, as well as a
Belgian, superstition that if you give a dog some bread soaked in your
sweat, he will have to follow you to the ends of the earth: he is
yours.[124.2] He has eaten and absorbed into his own substance a part
of you, and has thus become united with you.
One’s blood is of course a powerful potion. In Denmark the
prescription is three drops introduced into an apple or dropped into a
cup of coffee, and so consumed by the person intended.[124.3] In
Transylvania a girl puts a drop from her left hand in a cake to be
eaten by the lad on New Year’s Eve.[124.4] An old recipe in the
Netherlands--and one current, with variations, in other parts of
Europe--is to take a wafer not yet consecrated, write some words on it
with blood from the ring-finger, and let the priest say five masses
over it. Then divide it into two equal parts and give one to the
person whose love is to be won, retaining the other half oneself. Many
a chaste maiden has been fordone by this means.[124.5] Blood, as well
as hair and sweat, is an approved philtre among the Danubian Gipsies
both for inward and outward application. A bride and bridegroom of the
northern stock, before setting out for their wedding, smear the soles
of their left feet with one another’s blood. And a bride of the
southern stock, or a bride of the Serbian {125} Gipsies, will seek on
her wedding night to smear unobserved a drop of blood from her left
hand in her husband’s hair, in order that he may be true to her.
Gipsies also give their blood to their cattle and dogs to prevent them
from being stolen, or perhaps from straying.[125.1] Among the Magyars,
if a girl can smear the warm blood of the little finger of her left
hand in a lad’s hair, he must always be thinking of her; and a man who
can induce his wife unwittingly to eat his name written in his blood
can thus assure her fidelity.[125.2] A maiden who can get some of a
youth’s blood unknown to him and rub it on the soles of a corpse binds
him to her for ever.[125.3] But, alike in Esthonia, in Denmark, in
Germany and in Italy, in Scotland, in the valley of the Danube, and,
if we may trust the confessors’ manuals just cited, in the Balkan
peninsula, a woman regards her menstruous blood as the most effective:
an opinion rife, too, among the mixed population of central
Brazil.[125.4] Conversely, the other sex has its peculiar product,
which is equally esteemed;[125.5] while the impurer issues of the body
{126} common to both sexes are also made use of.[126.1] Students are
referred to the authorities below-cited for details.
Saliva is also a favourite fluid. I have already mentioned some
applications of it. In Hungary it often supplies the place of
blood.[126.2] Gipsy girls in the valley of the Danube steal some of
the hair of their beloved, boil it down to a pap with quince-kernels
and a few drops of their own blood taken from the little finger of the
left hand. They chew this pap, repeating a charm, and then smear it on
the raiment of the youth, in order that he may find no rest, unless
with the maid who has thus bespelled him.[126.3] Or a blade of grass
gathered on Saint George’s Day before sunrise is held in the mouth
while a spell is muttered; and it is then placed in the food of the
person whose affection is sought.[126.4] In the early part of this
century rustic lovers in France were said to seal their troth by
spitting into one another’s mouths.[126.5] Signor Gigli reports a
curious custom {127} at Taranto, the origin and significance whereof
are not clear to him, but perhaps may be explained by the practices we
are now considering. A young man announces his love by prowling about
under the windows of the fair one. She easily understands what he
means, and, if averse to the match, withdraws inside the house. On the
other hand, if desirous of encouraging her suitor, she leans out and
spits on his happy head.[127.1] Among the Cherokees a young and
jealous bridegroom watches his bride until she sleeps, when he begins
to chant:
“Listen! O now you have drawn near to hearken--
Your spittle I take it, I eat it.”
Repeating this four times (four is a sacred number among the American
aborigines), he moistens his fingers with saliva and rubs it on her
breast. The ceremony is reiterated, with variations in the song, the
three following nights, and is wound up on each occasion with a prayer
addressed to the “Ancient One;” after which no husband need have any
fears about his wife.[127.2] In Silesia and in certain parts of Italy
bread whereon one has spit is given to a dog to attach him to the
giver.[127.3] In other parts of Italy, in Corsica and in the Gironde
the direction is to spit into his mouth.[127.4] About Chemnitz a goose
is passed between the legs thrice and given three mouthfuls of chewed
bread; and she will always come home.[127.5]
Many of the philtres I have mentioned are put into food. {128}
Food-philtres are not always equally objectionable in character. It is
a Scandinavian saying that if a girl and boy eat of one morsel, they
grow fond of each other.[128.1] In many parts of the East Indies the
custom of chewing betel-nut is universal, and the quid has become a
symbol of love. It is employed as a love charm; it is given as a
pledge of love; and the chewing by both parties of one quid is an
essential--indeed, _the_ essential--part of the wedding
ceremony.[128.2] The idea embodied in food-philtres underlies also
other usages. A familiar example is that of drinking at the Fountain
of Trevi by visitors to Rome before they leave, as a charm to draw
them back.
Many of the philtres, too, as we have seen, are deemed sufficient if
brought into contact with the beloved object by being placed upon, or
fastened into, his or her clothes. A few examples may be added. Magyar
peasants make a sort of fetish which bears the name of _czolonk_. It
is fashioned at Christmas of aspen-wood, is an efficient protection
not only against witches and devils, but also against bullets and
swords, and accordingly is worn next to the skin in all perilous
enterprises. Every year the old one is burnt, and the ashes mixed with
milk are scattered in the cattle-stalls. But a love-spell may be
framed by sprinkling the _czolonk_ with one’s own blood before burning
it, and strewing the ashes on the garments of the person to be
love-witched.[128.3] A Gipsy girl will drop warm blood from her left
foot secretly in the shoes or stockings of her beloved, so to bind his
footsteps night and day to herself.[128.4] In Hesse it seems to be
even {129} enough to steal a shoe or boot from the object of desire,
carry it about for eight days, and then restore it.[129.1] Lucian,
writing in the second century, makes mention of a different mode of
dealing with a man’s belongings. The witch takes some portion of his
clothing, or a few hairs, or something else of his, and hanging them
on a nail she fumigates them with incense, and sprinkling salt in the
fire she pronounces the name of the woman, with it coupling the man’s
name. Further spells are muttered to the twirling of a spindle; and
the charm is complete. If we may believe one of the interlocutors in
the Dialogue, the spell is most effective, for she had herself tested
its power.[129.2] It can hardly be more effective than the boiling of
a sock on Saint Thomas’ night, said to be practised in the Land beyond
the Forest, which has given rise to the proverbial expression, for one
who is restless, that some one has boiled his stockings.[129.3]
Theocritus, in his second idyll, presents Simaetha casting into the
magical flame some fringe from the cloak of Delphis, whom she loves,
as part of a similar charm to that mentioned by Lucian. Any youth on
whose raiment a maiden of the Seven Cities has bound a thread spun by
herself on Saint Andrew’s Day (30th November) will be inflamed with
love for her.[129.4] Albanian wives (as provident as the wives in
Brazil) are in the habit of sewing in their husbands’ gear {130} when
the latter are going from home little objects which they themselves
have worn as talismans, to bring them safely back.[130.1] In Eastern
Africa no Taveta woman will part with her loin-cloth to a man for any
consideration after she has once worn it, for “she would be under some
sexual subjection to him”; he could bewitch her by means of it, and
take her away from her husband and friends.[130.2]
The speaker in the Dialogue I have cited from Lucian goes on to tell
her friend of an easy and efficient method of destroying a rival’s
influence over the beloved. It is to watch the unhappy rival as she
walks and to efface her footprint, immediately it is made, with her
own, taking care to put her right foot in her rival’s left footmark,
and _vice versâ_, and repeating the while: “Now I am over thee, and
thou art under me.” This is not exactly a philtre: it rather belongs
to the practices dealt with in the last chapter. Among the Danubian
peoples, however, love-charms are made from footprints. A Gipsy girl,
for instance, digs up the youth’s footprint made upon Saint George’s
Day, and buries it under a willow (willows are favourite trees in
Gipsy sorcery), saying:
“Earth pairs with the Earth;
He too whom I love shall become mine!
Grow, willow, grow,
Take away my heart’s woe!
He the axe and I the haft,
I the hen and he the cock--
That is my aim.”[130.3]
{131}
In Transylvania a Saxon maid will dig up her lover’s footmark, made on
St. John’s Day, and burn it, to secure his fidelity; or she may obtain
equally good results any other day by burying his footmark in the
churchyard.[131.1] A Magyar lass on Christmas night will dig up her
own footprint and fling it unseen into the courtyard of the lad’s
dwelling: he can never leave her after.[131.2] Among the Southern
Slavs the lady fills a flowerpot with the earth of her swain’s
footstep, and plants in it a common marigold. This flower is said not
to wither; and in German lands it is planted upon graves and called
the flower of the dead. As it grows and blooms and does not fade away,
so will the youth’s love grow and blossom and never fade.[131.3]
The sacramental character of all these philtres is obvious. We saw in
the last chapter that injuries inflicted on detached portions of a
man’s body are felt by the bulk. In the same way, when the detached
portions become incorporated into another body, or are simply brought
into contact with it, by means of the philtres we have been
discussing, the two bodies are united; and their union manifests
itself in sympathy and sexual desire. The greater number of the
foregoing examples have been drawn from the backward classes of the
more civilised peoples, concerning which our information is in many
cases remarkably full. When, however, we come to consider nuptial
rites we shall find the sacramental conception entering into the idea
of sexual union over a much wider area. Meanwhile we proceed to
examine some of its manifestations in other beliefs and practices.
{132}
We will begin by dealing with some of the dangers, apart from
witchcraft, that beset the body by carelessness over its severed
parts.
A belief not uncommon is that great care must be taken in the disposal
of an amputated limb, lest evil consequences to the trunk ensue. Quite
recently in New England a serious consultation was held by the friends
of a man who had had his foot amputated as the result of crushing it
in a railway accident; and it was decided to burn it, “in order that
the stump should not always continue to be painful, and the man
troubled by disagreeable sensations, as would surely follow if the
foot were put into the ground.”[132.1] Similar dangers threaten the
man who clips his hair or cuts his nails. In Sussex the peasantry
allow no portion of their hair to be carelessly thrown away, lest a
bird find it and carry it off to work into its nest; for, until it had
finished, the true owner of the hair would suffer from headache. Or if
a toad get hold of a maiden’s long back hairs, she will have a cold in
her head for so long as the animal keeps the hair in its mouth.[132.2]
In Germany also the action of birds is dreaded--especially theft by a
starling, for then cataract will ensue. Hair is therefore burnt, or
thrown into running water.[132.3] Headache is the result of throwing
away hairs in the Tirol. Wherefore they are burnt, or in the
Unterinnthal, if thrown away, are first spit upon.[132.4] In Norway
the consequences are even worse: there the owner of a hair {133}
obtained by a toad will lose his reason.[133.1] In the Atlantic States
of North America the combings of the hair must not be thrown away, but
burned, for the same reason as in Sussex, or because the birds might
carry them to Hell, and so render it necessary for the owner to go
thither to recover them.[133.2] Among the Danubian Gipsies, hair which
has fallen, or been cut off, is a source of anxiety. Headache will be
caused by the birds working it into their nests, and can only be
relieved by a complicated counter-charm. If a snake be guilty of
carrying hair into its hole, the man from whose head it has come will
continue to lose more, until that in the snake’s hole has decayed
away.[133.3] The Undups of Borneo will not burn their refuse hair, nor
throw it into the water, for fear of headache. But it may be flung to
the winds, or cast on the ground: it is better still to bury it. On
the other hand, the tribes about Lake Nyassa burn their hair; but they
bury the parings of their nails.[133.4] At the other side of the
African continent, among the Bodo, the nails are buried;[133.5] while
the Wayova of the Upper Congo, when they become old or sick, tie the
clippings of their hair and nails with amulets in a string which they
wear wrapped around them.[133.6] In Mashonaland the hair is not cut
until it is long and tangled, and too full of life to be endured any
longer. It is then shaved entirely off and hung to a tree.[133.7] The
practices of the Western world {134} are similar. The natives of the
Youkon river in Alaska hang what they cut from their hair and nails in
packages on the trees.[134.1] The Gauchos of the Pampas of South
America deem it of the utmost imprudence to throw away their hairs,
wherefore they roll them up in a ball and hide them in the walls of
the house.[134.2] In the Cuyabá valley of central Brazil it is
believed that to tread on hair-clippings is to render insane the man
from whose head they came.[134.3] The Maoris attached great importance
to the cutting of the hair. It was always performed with much ceremony
and many spells. In one place the most sacred day of the year was
appointed for it: the people assembled from all the neighbourhood,
often more than a thousand in number. Some of the hair was cast into
the fire. Elsewhere the hair was laid upon the altar in the sacred
grove, and there left.[134.4] Algerian Jews and Arabs and Orthodox
Polish Jews carefully bury or burn their nail-parings.[134.5] A
Galician Jew will not throw away the cuttings of his hair, lest he
suffer from headache.[134.6] It seems, indeed, a general opinion among
Jews, if we may trust an American Jew, that “he who trims his nails
and buries the parings is a pious man; he who burns them is a
righteous man; but he who throws them away is a wicked man, for
mischance might follow should a female step over them.”[134.7] Contact
with menstrual {135} blood, and consequent ceremonial defilement, is
evidently what is dreaded, just as if the blood had touched the man
himself. For some such reason, perhaps, the Flamen Dialis was
required, among the Romans, when he cut his hair or his nails, to bury
the severed portions beneath a lucky tree.[135.1] Ahura Mazda is
gravely represented in the _Vendîdâd_ as telling Zoroaster that when
a man drops his refuse hair or nails in a hole or crack, and observes
not the lawful rites, lice are produced, which destroy the corn in the
field and the clothes in the wardrobe. The prophet is commanded,
therefore, to take these portions of the body, whenever they are
detached, ten paces from the faithful, twenty from the fire, thirty
from the water and fifty from the consecrated bundles of baresma, and
there to dig a hole, drawing three, six or nine furrows around it with
a metal knife, and chanting the _Ahuna-Vairya_ a corresponding number
of times. In the hole he is to bury the hair or nails, saying aloud
the fiend-smiting (though slightly irrelevant) words, in the case of
hair: “Out of him by his piety Mazda made the plants grow up”; or in
the case of nails: “The words that are heard from the pious in
holiness and good thought”; and the nails are to be dedicated to the
Ashô-zusta bird, which is believed to be the owl, as weapons for him
against the Daêvas.[135.2] This elaborate ritual and the belief it
embodies are, of course, comparatively late in civilisation; but they
are an adaptation to Zoroaster’s lofty religion of pre-existing
superstitions. In the _Grihya-Sûtra_, one of the ancient books of the
Hindus, it is enjoined as a religious rite to gather the hair and
nails which have been cut off, mix them with bull’s dung {136} (the
bull was a sacred animal) and bury the whole in a cow-stable, or near
an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. And when a boy
received the tonsure, in the third year of his age, the barber threw
the locks upon the same savoury substance, which was then buried in
the forest. The hair left on the head was arranged according to the
custom of his _gotra_ and of his family.[136.1] The ritual first
shaving now takes place in India at the shrine of some goddess; and
the locks are safely deposited in a place where they are not liable to
be trodden on.[136.2] In Japan, when a boy, at or after the age of
fifteen, receives his permanent name, and is admitted to the
privileges of manhood, his forelock is ceremonially cut. It is taken
by the sponsor to the youth’s guardians, who wrap it in paper and
offer it at the shrine of the family gods; or else it is kept with
care in the house until its owner dies, and then put into the coffin
with him.[136.3] Throughout the East Indian islands much importance is
attached to the first hair-cutting. On Timor it takes place three
months after birth, at new moon. The child’s eldest uncle cuts a lock
from four places on the head with a bamboo knife, and wrapping each of
the locks in a flake of cotton he blows it away from the palm of his
hand into the air. More usually it is carefully preserved. In North
Celebes the rite is performed by a priest. The clippings are put into
a young cocoa-nut and hung up under the thatch of the house. Another
tribe {137} of the same island puts the hair, moistened with
sweet-scented oil, into a young kalapa-fruit, and hangs it before the
house above the ladder until it fall in course of time. The Ambonese
bury the clippings under a sago-palm, or lay them in a silver box with
an amulet against sickness and hang it about the child’s neck. The Aru
Islanders hide them in a pisang- or banana-tree. The inhabitants of
Roti lay them first with water in a cocoa-nut-shell; afterwards the
father stuffs them into a little bag of plaited leaves, which he
fastens in the top of a loutar-palm.[137.1] The Bambaras, a tribe of
the Upper Niger, celebrate the birth of a child by the sacrifice of a
bull or sheep at the door of the mother’s hut. The infant’s head is
then shaved, and the hair is placed in a calabash containing dega, a
composition of millet and milk prepared for the occasion. The friends
invited to the feast then place each one his right hand on the
calabash, while the griot, or medicine-man, pronounces blessings on
the babe. The hairs are afterwards given to the mother, who carefully
preserves them.[137.2] Among the Ictasanda _gens_ of the Omahas of
North America, when a child had reached four years his hair had to be
cut in the customary shape. The proper person to cut the first lock
was the keeper of the sacred pipes. It was done with certain
ceremonies; and the lock was put with those of other children cut at
the same time into a sacred buffalo hide.[137.3] There may have been
more reasons than one for {138} placing hair ceremonially cut on
occasions like these in a sacred receptacle. This is a subject to
which I shall return. But it is clear that one object at all events
was safe custody. The locks thus shorn from the head must be guarded
with care, lest any evil come to them, and through them to the person
of whose body they once formed part.
For many of the practices we are considering no reason is assigned by
the travellers and others who report them. Sometimes fantastic reasons
are given, even by the people who practise them. It is for fear of
ancestral spirits, we are told, that the natives of the lake regions
of Nyassa and Tanganyika bury their hair and nails. The Esthonians are
said to take care of their nails, else the devil will make of them a
visor to his head-gear; and their national poem, the _Kalevipoeg_,
mentions a wishing-hat of the same materials. The dread of the
Samogitians is that the devil will make a hat of their
nail-parings.[138.1] A Basque tale attributes to the same personage
the equally remarkable feat of making a chalice for himself out of the
nails cut by Christians on Sundays.[138.2] Among the ancient
Scandinavians it was a point of religion to die with pared nails, for
of the unpared nails would be constructed the ship Naglfari, to float,
steered by the giant Hrym, over the waters to the combat with the
Anses on the Day of Doom. A modern Icelandic superstition accounts for
the custom of cutting each nail-paring into three pieces, by
explaining that it is to render it useless to the devil, who would
else use it in building the ship of the dead.[138.3] Reasons like
these, though genuine, are only secondary. They are mythological
reasons, more or less remote from the direct interest of the
individual, {139} invented when the original reasons have passed out
of memory, or been dropped from some other cause, as in the case of
the practices adopted into the Zoroastrian religion.
Similar superstitions apply to milk. In Transylvania it is reckoned
dangerous to a woman who has recently been delivered for another
suckling woman even to visit her, lest she take her milk away. To
prevent this the visitor must let a drop or two of her own milk fall
upon the bed where her friend lies.[139.1] At Friuli a woman was
accused before the Holy Inquisition of drying up another by merely
entering her house and kissing her child in the cradle.[139.2] Among
the causes enumerated in Italy for a woman’s milk diminishing or
drying up are--that the placenta has been eaten by some female animal;
that another suckling woman has drunk out of her cup; that the remains
of her food have been thrown to a suckling cat, sow, or bitch. If
either of these contingencies happen, the milk will be transferred to
the other woman or animal. No less disastrous is it to the supply if
any drops fall by chance on the ground and be sucked up by
ants.[139.3] A woman who is suckling must beware of letting a drop of
her milk fall into the fire, for then her breasts would dry up.[139.4]
Contrariwise, if a Magyar mother desire a rich, nourishing milk, she
is advised to drop a little of it at waxing moon upon the blazing
hearth. If she drop some into cow’s milk, the cow will dry up:
apparently the cow’s milk will be thus transferred {140} to the
woman.[140.1] In Warwickshire the burning of cow’s milk will cause the
cow to run dry; and a like belief attaches among various tribes of
Africa, even to the boiling of milk, as well as to its consumption by
“any one who ate the flesh of pigs, fish, fowls, or the bean called
maharagué.”[140.2] In Switzerland it is held that a knife or needle
dipped in the milk reaches the beast which has yielded it, and causes
pain as if wounded in the udder.[140.3] It seems to have been
currently believed in the seventeenth century in France, that if milk
curdled too rapidly, a little of it thrown upon a hawthorn would
retard the process.[140.4] About Chemnitz to mix the milk of two men’s
cows, is to cause the cows of one to dry up.[140.5] In Altmark some
milk of a badly milking cow is poured into the well of a neighbour who
has a good milker, and thereupon the condition of both is
changed.[140.6]
So of saliva. We have seen that, equally with other issues of the
body, saliva is a means of witchcraft, whereby the spitter may be
injured and perhaps done to death. Wherefore all over the world, from
Africa to the Sandwich Islands, from Europe to New Zealand, the
spittle is hidden or erased as soon as it is ejected, so that it can
no longer be discovered or rendered available by sorcerers. By parity
of reasoning, in Sweden and Germany, as well as among the Galician
Jews, one is forbidden to spit in the fire, lest bladders be produced
on the tongue, or other {141} sores in the mouth;[141.1] and in
various parts of France, lest pulmonary consumption result. To spit on
glowing iron, in the department of Aube, is almost as bad; and in the
Gironde it is believed that a cold will be increased by spitting in
the fire.[141.2]
So too of other portions of the body. The Poles say that a girl who
drops tears on a corpse will become consumptive. At Zwickau in the
Erzgebirge any who does so is in danger of an early death.[141.3] A
fine appreciation of the antiseptic properties of tobacco is reputed
to be shown by some French smokers, who preserve in their
tobacco-pouches the teeth lost from their heads, believing by this
means to prevent toothache.[141.4] It used to be the custom in
Derbyshire to preserve all one’s shed teeth in a jar until death, and
then to have them buried in the coffin with their owner; for, it was
said, on reaching heaven the man would be obliged to account for all
the teeth he had upon earth: an obvious afterthought, and not the real
reason.[141.5] I have already mentioned the English superstition that
a child’s cast tooth must not be thrown away, but burnt. The practice
on the Riviera is the same.[141.6] In Piceno the infant is made to
hide the tooth in a crack of the {142} hearth, in the hope of finding
a gift the next morning. In the Abruzzi it is enough to put it into
any hole.[142.1] While among the southern Slavs the child is
instructed to throw it into a dark corner, crying: “Mouse, mouse!
There is a bony tooth; give me an iron tooth instead.” He is then to
spit; and this is done that no more teeth may fall out. Sometimes his
cast tooth is plugged into an old willow, that he may never suffer
from toothache.[142.2] In the Erzgebirge, to attain the same end the
father is told to swallow a daughter’s tooth, and the mother a
son’s.[142.3] The origin of the superstition, widely spread in Europe,
that the mother should bite and not cut a baby’s nails, may possibly
be found in some analogous reason.
The liability to injury in consequence of an accident happening to, or
wilful act inflicted on, a detached portion of the body or its issues,
implies the opposite possibility. Good may be received, health may be
restored by the same means. Hence has arisen a great body of
folk-medicine and surgery. Incidentally we have already noticed some
examples of this; but the most familiar is undoubtedly to be found in
the cure of warts. To rub the warts with a piece of flesh-meat
(various kinds are prescribed--in this country beef or bacon seems the
favourite) usually raw, and {143} then to bury it in the ground, or
throw it where it will speedily rot and disappear; to rub them with an
apple, an onion, a potato, a turnip, a willow-twig whereon a
corresponding number of notches has been cut, peas, beans, knots of
barley-straw, a branch of tamarisk, or some other vegetable substance
easily obtained, and afterwards bury, burn it or throw it away; to tie
knots in string, touch every wart with a knot, and then treat the
string like the meat; to stroke the warts with a corpse’s hand; to
wash them in flowing water, especially at a time when bells are
tolling for the dead, or over which the corpse is carried, or in water
found in a hollow stump or other unexpected place; to rub them with a
snail, and then impale the creature on a thorn or (in Germany) nail it
to the doorpost with a wooden hammer; are remedies known all over
Europe and the United States; and they date back to classical
antiquity. The beef, the apple, the string, the dead hand decay; the
water flows far out of sight, or dries up; and in like manner the
warts they have touched also disappear.
The principle has many other applications. A remedy for fever in use
in the sixteenth century in the Mark of Brandenburg was to cut the
patient’s nails, bind them on the back of a crawfish, and throw the
crustacean back into flowing water.[143.1] In France, and, it seems,
in England also, the remedy recorded a century later for the quartan
ague was to wrap the nail-parings in a portion of a shroud, and fasten
the package around the neck of an eel, which was then {144} returned
to the water.[144.1] In these cases it can hardly be doubted that the
sufferer was to benefit by the cooling influence of the water. In the
north-east of Scotland it was usual to put the nail-parings of a
consumptive patient into a rag from his clothes, the rag was waved
thrice round his head, the operator crying “Deas Soil,” and then
buried in a secret place.[144.2] For ligature, or impotence, believed
to be caused by witchcraft, the cuttings of the hair and nails are, in
Germany, wrapped in a cloth, stuffed into a hole made in an
elder-tree, and the hole closed with a plug of hawthorn.[144.3] For
infantine rupture, in Switzerland, some of the child’s nails and hair,
with a piece of paper inscribed with his name, are put into a hole
bored in a young oak, and the hole is then stopped with wax.[144.4]
Among the Transylvanian Saxons at Kronstadt the hair and nails of an
anæmic patient are buried under a waxing moon beneath a
rose-bush.[144.5] Here the rose is evidently expected to diffuse its
colour in the sick man’s veins. The collection just cited of old
remedies in use in the Mark of Brandenburg directs that when hairs
grow in an ulcer they should be plucked out and nailed up in an elder
or oak-tree towards the east.[144.6] The ancient English leech-book
attributed to one Sextus Placitus prescribes, for a woman suffering
from flux, to comb her hair under a mulberry tree, and hang the
combings on an upstanding twig of the tree. When she is healed she
must gather them again and preserve them. If on the contrary she {145}
desire _ut menstrua fluant_, the combings must be placed upon a twig
hanging downwards.[145.1] The mulberry appears to be chosen because of
the form and colour of its fruit, in accordance with the old doctrine
of Signatures whereby the remedy for a disease was pointed out by some
fancied resemblance of form or colour to the diseased member. To
restore falling hair, Etmuller, writing in the seventeenth century,
advises burying some of the hair in an oak, or, to cure the gout, some
of the toe-nails. Bronchitis in growing children is cured, among the
Pennsylvanian Germans, by making a gimlet-hole in the door-frame at
the exact height of the child’s head. A tuft of his hair is inserted,
and the hole pegged up. As the child grows above the peg he will
outgrow the disease. The door-frame appears to be a mere substitute
for a tree.[145.2]
Specimens of this kind of remedy might be multiplied indefinitely.
They are usually regarded as cases of transplantation. By the process
described the disease is supposed to be transferred, or transplanted,
into the tree, or very often into another human being or one of the
lower animals. This idea is present in a recipe for fever given by
Beckherius, whose medical work was published in London in 1660. He
advises the tying of the patient’s nail-clippings in a rag to the door
of a neighbour’s {146} house:[146.1] a remedy equally known to the
Romans.[146.2] Rupture in a young person is to be cured in Thuringia
by cutting three tufts of hair from the top of the head, binding them
in a clean cloth, carrying the parcel into another parish, and so
burying it in a young willow that the hole may close up and grow
together.[146.3] We can hardly understand apart from transplantation
the direction to carry the parcel into another parish and there plant
it in a tree, or to fasten the rag of nail-clippings to a neighbour’s
door. At other times the hair and nails are given in food to various
animals, or are thrown in the highway to be picked up by any
passer-by, who is supposed to contract the disease and thereby free
the original patient. Many of the cases, however, which have been
classed as transplantation are not really so; for it will be noted
that it is a very common direction (as in the prescription just cited)
to carefully close up the hole made in the tree, and as it heals the
patient’s health will improve. But if the disease were to be
transferred to the tree, the latter could scarcely be expected to
heal; and if it did, there would be ground for suspecting that the
rite had not been properly performed. Formerly it was a very common
remedy for rupture and other infantile complaints to split a tree and
pass the child through it three or seven times. The tree was then
bound up and often plastered with clay, so as to ensure its recovery;
and it was believed that the more rapidly it healed, the more rapidly
the child would be restored to health. In fact, as we have seen, it
thenceforth stood in relation to the child as his External Soul or
Life-token. The earliest mention of this prescription {147} is by
Marcellus of Bordeaux, physician of the Emperor Theodosius I., not
later than the beginning of the fifth century of our era; and it has
continued in use, even in England, down to the present day. From first
to last the importance of the tree’s recovery and preservation has
been a cardinal point.[147.1] It is perfectly clear, therefore, that
whatever the intention of the rite may have been, it was not
transplantation. Transplantation, in fact, seems to be a foreign graft
on many of the old prescriptions. It may be questioned, for example,
whether it is the primitive idea of either Beckherius’ prescription or
the Thuringian; and I cannot help thinking that the doctrine of
Transplantation is a modern interpretation of an older rite, an
interpretation which has in many cases wrought such changes in its
substance that the true and profounder significance of the rite is now
hardly to be recognised. This may not hold good in every instance. The
question, however, is immaterial to my present contention, and cannot
be argued at length here. It is enough for my purpose to prove that a
large class of remedies cannot be explained as Transplantation,
although the theory of Transplantation may have a tendency to
appropriate and modify them. The remarks which follow will, I hope,
make the position clear.
Magyar folk-medicine prescribes a curious remedy for {148} lunacy. The
head of a corpse is wetted with the patient’s blood and saliva, so
that “he may obtain as much intellect as the dead man had”: in other
words, the crazy man is brought into such union with the dead as will
result, not in the transfer to the latter of his lunacy, but the
transfer to the lunatic of the intellect of the dead. Similarly, the
toothache is cured by spitting on a grave-mound, or rubbing the aching
tooth with the tooth of a corpse, which perhaps is sound, or at all
events can no longer suffer.[148.1] If it be desired to render a woman
unfruitful, the organs of a dead man, whose potency is at an end, must
be rubbed with her menses. It is even deemed sufficient for her to
make water on a corpse. For the green-sickness, a few drops of the
sick man’s blood mingled with the excrement of one who is recently
dead, and flung into the open grave just before the body is put in,
will prove a cure.[148.2] To stay bleeding, the Saxons of the Seven
Cities write with the blood the letters INRI on a piece of wood and
throw it into a spring, saying: “Three women of the spring
(_Brunnenfrauen_, spirits of the spring) wish to behold blood. They
say: Blood, stand still, that is God’s will! Out of this wood the
cross whereon Jesus hung, was made. Amen!” A syphilitic patient is
directed, on three several Sundays while the bells are ringing for
divine service, to write his name in his own blood on his drawers,
and, hanging them on a tree, there to leave them permanently.[148.3]
{149} The Gipsies of the same neighbourhood cure pimples by dropping
before sunrise some blood from the ring-finger into flowing water,
that it may be swallowed by a Nivashi, or water-spirit; and they cure
dropsy by letting nine drops of blood from the index-finger fall, by a
waning moon, into flowing water, that the Nivashi may draw the water
from the patient’s body.[149.1] A prescription recorded by Reginald
Scot for a bloody flux runs as follows: “Take a cup of cold water, and
let fall thereinto three drops of the same blood, and betweene each
drop saie a Paternoster and an Ave, then drinke to the patient, and
saie; who shall helpe you? The patient must answer S. Marie. Then saie
you; S. Marie stop the issue of blood.”[149.2] It will be observed
here that the blood is drunk by the operator; and it could not have
been intended to transfer the disease to him. The invocations as given
are certainly not part of the original rite. What that rite was, of
course we do not know. We may conjecture that the primitive operator
was a sort of shaman in special communion with his god. The patient’s
blood, entering him, would be brought into contact with the god; and
the god through it would be united with the patient for his healing.
In the light of examples like these we must interpret many
prescriptions which have been hastily put down as cases of
transplantation, or have been turned by the folk themselves into
transplantation formulæ. For instance, a Gipsy remedy for fever bids
the sufferer go before sunrise to a little tree, scratch his left
little finger, and smear the blood on the tree, saying: “Go away,
fever; go away, pain; {150} go away into the tree, whence thou hast
come; thither go thou, fever!”[150.1] No specific tree is indicated;
and there can be little doubt that the original words of this ban have
been forgotten, and meaningless rhymes substituted--so far at least as
the words “Go away into the tree whence thou hast come,” which rhyme
in the original with the two previous lines. So also, in Dr. Colerus’
collection of remedies from the Mark of Brandenburg, we find that, to
cure the toothache, a splinter must be taken from a willow, and the
teeth pricked with it until they bleed; the blood must be allowed to
drip upon the splinter, which must be then cunningly put back into the
tree, covered with the bark and plastered with mud, that it may grow
together again. This prescription is still current in various parts of
Germany and among some of the non-German populations of Eastern
Prussia. In Pomerania it appears with the addition that the
performance must be in silence, and the variation that the tree must
be one struck by lightning.[150.2] If it were simply intended to
transplant the toothache into the tree, there would be no need to be
careful about the healing of the wound. But here, as in the cases of
children passed through split trees, it is of importance to the
recovery and after-life of the patient that the tree recover and be
allowed to flourish. Moreover, a lightning-struck tree would, in
heathen times, have been sacred; and the requirement of silence
confirms its sacred character. The object of the ceremony, therefore,
is not a transplantation of the disease, but a healing union of the
diseased tooth {151} with the tree. In the province of Liège it is
sufficient to touch the tooth with the splinter.[151.1] The rite there
appears to be in decay, for the real intention to incorporate in the
tree blood from the tooth and surrounding gums is manifest from a
variation current at least as early as the seventeenth century, when
it is mentioned in England by John Aubrey. It consists in scarifying
the gum with an iron nail, and burying the nail in the tree.[151.2]
And Sir Kenelm Digby gravely prescribes it, directing the nail to be
driven up to the head into a wooden beam, which of course is a
makeshift for a tree.[151.3] Kuhn, reporting the same practice from
the Mark, says expressly that the tooth must be bored with the nail
until the blood comes, the nail must then be driven into the north
side of an oak where the sun does not shine, and then so long as the
tree stands the patient will have no more toothache.[151.4] About
Liège the nail is, according to one prescription, to be drawn from a
coffin. According to another it must be a new nail and must be driven
into the first tree you come to.[151.5] At Pforzheim, when a tooth is
drawn, it is to be nailed into a young tree, and the bark drawn over
it; if the tree be cut down the toothache will return.[151.6] At
Agnethlen, in Transylvania, {152} the sufferer bores a hole in a tree,
chews with the aching tooth a piece of bread, swallows half and spits
the rest into the tree, saying: “Tree, I give thee half of what I
have; take away all my pain, and convey it down into the
earth!”[152.1] The consumption of half the bread by the patient is
conclusive against transplantation. And with this we may compare a
recipe against the rickets in use in Schleswig-Holstein. The sick
child is rubbed over with a handful of oats, and the oats are then
sown in a secret place; as they grow the rickets disappear.[152.2]
In view of the cases I have cited it may be doubted whether the
intention (at all events, the original intention) of many of the
prescriptions of hair, saliva, food and other things belonging to the
patient, to be given to the lower animals was transplantation, and not
rather union with another and a healthy body. Thus, in Kerry and
Leitrim a cure for the whooping-cough is to pour some milk into a
saucer, let a ferret drink some of it, and give the rest to the
sufferer. In Antrim the child is passed thrice under a jackass, to
which is afterwards given a bit of oaten bread, and the child is made
to eat what the animal leaves.[152.3] Transplantation in both these
examples is out of the question, because the child does not feed until
the other creature has finished. So in the Panjab stammering is cured
by hanging in a tree a cup, which is kept filled for forty days with
water for the birds. The last few drops they leave every day are drunk
by the patient. And a remedy in the north of India for boils is to
move over the {153} part affected some treacle and parched wheat, and
afterwards distribute these things among some Brahman boys.[153.1] The
food, it will be noted, does not actually touch the diseased part: the
symbol is reckoned sufficient. But the destination of the food for
persons of the sacred caste renders it impossible that transfer of the
disease is intended. A ceremony in use among the Southern Slavs as a
cure for a fretful child directs the drawing of water in a vessel of
greenwood. The mother then, with the child on her arm, dips firebrands
thrice into the water, saying: “The Vila weds her son and invites my
Marko to the wedding. I am sending not my Marko, but his weeping.” The
child is made to drink as much as it can of the water thus brought
into contact with the drying, or perhaps the hallowing, power of the
fire, the rest is poured over the dog or cat of the household, the
vessel is thrown to the ground and left there all night.[153.2] The
entire meaning of this curious ceremony is not very clear; but it can
hardly be intended to transfer the constant weeping of the infant to
the dog, or the cat. In Buffalo Valley, Pennsylvania, certain diseases
are cured by allowing a black cat to eat some of the soup given to the
patient--a remedy probably brought from Germany.[153.3] Here again
transference is improbable, seeing that a black cat is a magical
animal: we should rather apply the reasoning in reference to Reginald
Scot’s remedy for the flux. It is more doubtful whether the same can
be said of a Jewish leechcraft, quoted by Dr. Strack from Tholedoth
Adam, which bids a woman suffering from undue menstruation {154} bake
some of her blood in bread and give it to a pig to devour.[154.1] But
in Tuscany, when one spits blood, ants are to be caught, put into the
blood and left there all night. Mr. Leland, in recording this,
observes that Marcellus quotes a conjuring verse where ants are said
to have no blood.[154.2] If we may look upon the saying as embodying a
general belief, we may suppose that their bloodlessness would be held
to react upon the sufferer.
Marcellus mentions a number of prescriptions which cannot be cases of
transplantation, but rather intended to unite a diseased body with a
sound one for the benefit of the former. Take his remedy for a
gathering in the ear by injecting the warm urine of a boy under the
age of puberty. Or where incontinence of urine is to be cured by
making water in a dog’s sleeping-place, saying the while: “Let me not
make water in my own bed, like a dog.” Or the recommendation to apply
the cut hairs of a boy under puberty to the suffering foot of a gouty
patient. A prescription extolled as _et praesens et maximum_ for
consumptives, even when apparently beyond hope, consists in
administering the saliva or foam of a horse in warm water for three
days: the horse will die, and the sick man recover.[154.3] Even here,
in spite of the horse’s death, we have no warrant for supposing that
the disease is transferred to him. The operation upon him is clearly
to be attributed to the magical principle so fully discussed in this
and {155} the previous chapter. The process is the converse of
transplantation. Nothing that has touched the patient is brought back
to the unfortunate horse. His death is caused by union through his own
saliva with a sick body which absorbs his qualities of health and
strength.
An old French remedy for a cough, and probably also for toothache, is
traceable back to Marcellus. It was to spit in a frog’s mouth--a
method of cure still in vogue in Shropshire and perhaps elsewhere in
England.[155.1] No doubt it was a traditional remedy long before the
Emperor’s physician gravely recorded it, and added that the patient
must stand shod upon the bare earth under the bare heaven, on a
Tuesday or Thursday at waning moon, and repeat seven times: _Argidam,
margidam, sturgidam_. Moreover the patient is solemnly to ask the frog
to take the toothache with her; “and then shalt thou let her go alive;
and this shalt thou do on a fortunate day and at a fortunate hour.” O
learned physician! This does appear, at least as Marcellus understood
it, a case of transplantation; and it is no part of my business to
combat every instance. I only desire to point out that Transplantation
is a theory inadequate to account for many remedies which it has been
dragged in to explain; and to express the doubt whether it be not
after all a comparatively recent development in folk-medicine.
Saliva prescriptions, numerous as they are, need not detain us longer.
Nor will I pause upon those of the fouler excrements. They are made,
as we might expect, to subserve the purposes of healing, as well as
those of witchcraft, {156} and in the same general manner. I shall,
therefore, only add a few references at the foot of the page for the
use of students.[156.1]
For various diseases the patient’s bath-water and fomentations,
wherein are often mingled simples of different sorts, are in Germany,
Hungary and Transylvania poured out upon a tree, into flowing water,
into the churchyard, or upon dead human bones.[156.2] The Magyars, as
a depilatory for children born with much hair on their bodies, put
ashes on the four corners of the bath-tub, and throw into the water
three potatoes, which they fling, after the bath, behind the oven. As
the potatoes dry up, the hair is expected to disappear.[156.3]
Not only the bath-water and fomentations but also cloths and articles
of clothing which have been in contact with {157} the patient, and
especially with the diseased member, are subject to treatment for the
purpose of healing, of causing, or of preventing disease. At Rauen,
near Fürstenwald, in Northern Germany, the remedy for a violent
headache is to bind a cloth round the head at night, and take it on
the following morning to a wise man, who will charm not the head, but
the cloth.[157.1] Among the Transylvanian Gipsies a certain kind of
sore is cured by covering it with a red rag and pegging the rag by
night in a hole in a tree. The words used on the occasion are: “Stay
thou here, until the rag become a beast, the beast a tree, the tree a
man, to strike thee dead!” So far as they have a meaning they point to
transplantation, though not conclusively. Dr. von Wlislocki, who
reports them, suggests they contain a reminiscence of a Gipsy
Creation-myth. If so, they are probably archaic; but this is
doubtful.[157.2] An old physician relates of a patient who had a
violent pain in the arm that it was healed by a plaster of red coral
beaten up with oak-leaves, which was kept on the part until
suppuration and then in the morning put into an auger-hole in the root
of an oak, looking towards the east, and the hole stopped with a peg
of the same tree. The pain ceased, but returned more sharply than
before when the peg was taken out.[157.3] In Middle Silesia plasters
and bandages from wounds must only be thrown into flowing
water--certainly never into the fire, lest the hurt be made
incurable.[157.4] The Masurs in East Prussia, after suffering from an
attack of fever, and not until it is over, take off the patient’s
shirt and carry it, after sunset or before sunrise, if possible on a
{158} Thursday, to a cross-road and suspend it on the
sign-post.[158.1] It is a French prescription for hastening a slow
delivery to bind the woman’s girdle about the church-bell and sound
the bell thrice.[158.2] In 1630 the wife of Francesco Noverta of
Pordenone was brought before the Inquisition in Italy for taking her
husband’s shirt to a wise man to be “signed,” in order to cure him of
some disease. The man signed it with a crown, repeating sacred words
and invoking the saints. He did more. He gave her an oil to anoint the
patient’s back and stomach, a piece of bread for him to eat, and
certain herbs to be put under his bolster, together with a powder. But
when she got home, so she told the holy inquisitors, she threw all
these things on the fire, and kept only the shirt: she had more
confidence in the charm than the simples.[158.3] These cases, in which
there is no transplantation, may perhaps be allowed to interpret the
ambiguity of some of the following. The Saxons of the Seven Cities
cure the swelling of the glands of the neck by stealing a piece of
bacon over night and binding it round the throat with a rag, and the
next morning hanging the bandage on a tree, or throwing it in the
fire. In the former case, the spell to be uttered, while removing the
bandage, is: “Tree, thou hast many knots; take away my knots also.” In
the latter, it is: “The knotman has seven sons; the knotwife has seven
daughters; they married, lived together and did not agree; they parted
and disappeared like the bacon in the fire. So, in God’s name, let the
knots disappear in N. N.’s neck, that he may enjoy pure the Holy
Supper of the Body {159} and Blood of Our Lord. Amen.”[159.1] Galician
Jews cure infantine convulsions by throwing articles of the child’s
clothing into a stream where it divides into two branches, and crying
thrice: “Here hast thou thine; give me mine.” This is, of course, a
prayer for the child’s health. They are also careful not to hang
swaddling clothes out of doors to dry, nor to drop them on the ground,
else the child whose they are will lose its rest.[159.2] The garb of
Italian babies must likewise be tenderly treated in washing, else the
infants will be afflicted with various pains. Abruzzian babe-clothes
must not be washed in the water whence horses have drunk, lest the
babe’s tender skin be heated. A Tuscan baby is cured of a certain
disorder by putting its clothes in boiling water with a nail, some
laurel and garden-flowers, like rose or jasmine, and afterwards
rinsing them in flowing water.[159.3] Against a menstruation too
copious a Galician Jewess washes her own shift together with her
husband’s night-dress.[159.4] The intention here seems to be not to
attempt the absurdity of transferring the menstruation to the husband,
but by uniting the patient to a healthy man through the contact of
their clothing, to obtain for her that quality of his whereof she
stands especially in need. Conversely, one of the remedies of Italian
women for suppressed menstruation is to send the sufferer’s shift to
the wash with the linen of a woman who has just been delivered; and
they firmly believe that a washerwoman may cause them painful
menstruation by beating their linen too hard, or by using burning
coals with the ashes in {160} making the lye.[160.1] Nor must we
forget here the Bosnian rite for procuring conception, referred to in
a previous chapter. The barren woman’s wedding-garment is not worn by
the quick woman wound about her body for the purpose of transferring
the barrenness to herself. On the contrary, she wears it that her
prolific influence may thus be communicated to her friend; and she
continues to wear it until that effect is produced.
Other things that have been brought into contact with the body may
also be efficaciously treated. In Donegal the piece of turf whereon a
sick cow first treads on getting up is cut out and hung against the
wall; and the cow is expected to recover.[160.2] Formerly in France a
limping cow was healed by cutting out the turf whereon the lame foot
had trodden and putting it to dry on a hedge. To cure quartan fever a
certain herb was plucked secretly and in silence, and thrown to the
winds.[160.3] In the seventeenth century a prescription for epilepsy
was three nails made on Midsummer Eve driven over their heads into the
place where the patient had fallen, his name being uttered the
while.[160.4] For spasms at the heart it is recommended in
Transylvania to lie on the back on the turf. The length and breadth of
the patient’s body is then marked, and the turf to the thickness of a
finger cut out, if possible in one piece, and thrown into a brook with
the words: “Spring-wife, spring-wife, take the water from my heart; I
give thee what lay under my heart.”[160.5] In Thuringia, to heal sores
{161} on the body three crosses are made with a bit of comfrey on the
sores before sunrise, and the comfrey is then buried in a place where
it will quickly rot, and whither the patient is not likely soon to
come.[161.1] A like remedy is given in the _Grihya-sutra_ of
Âpastamba. If a wife be affected with consumption, or be otherwise
sick, one who has to observe chastity is to rub her limbs with young
lotus-leaves, still unrolled, and with lotus-roots and certain
formulæ; the leaves and roots are afterwards thrown away towards the
west.[161.2] For whooping-cough, a mother in Norfolk looks for a dark
spider in the house, and having found it holds it over the child’s
head, repeating thrice:
“Spider, as you waste away,
Whooping-cough no longer stay.”
She then hangs the spider in a bag over the mantelpiece--formerly no
doubt it was hung in the chimney--and when it dries up the cough will
be gone.[161.3] A feverish patient, among the Jews of Galicia, wraps a
hair taken from his body about a louse, and throws the creature away.
While, against epilepsy, a black hen is rent in pieces over the sick
man; or a cock is slaughtered and buried, its head being first cut off
on the threshold of a barn: with the decay of its flesh the epileptic
recovers health.[161.4] The old French superstitions recorded by
Thiers prescribe for various diseases a branch of a plum-tree hung to
dry in the chimney, a cabbage stolen from a neighbour’s garden and
hung up to dry, nine grains of barley put into a bottle of {162} clear
water, a hard-cooked egg put into an anthill, certain drugs wrapped in
a piece of new cloth and thrown into the fire. They do not in every
case mention that these articles must be first applied to the patient;
but it is tolerably clear that this is meant.[162.1] And it must also
be inferred that the cock in the Galician prescription was formerly
brought into similar contact, though perhaps in this case, as in many
others throughout Europe, the touching has fallen into disuse. The
black hen, it is obvious, could not be torn in pieces without its
blood falling on the patient and so bringing it into union with the
disease. Remedies of the kind under consideration are naturally most
in vogue for external diseases, such as warts, boils and sties. But
enough: examples of their application to all kinds of disease are
endless.
I have mentioned some cases where corpses have played remedial parts.
A few more illustrations may be added, more clearly to bring out the
real meaning of the prescriptions, which are divisible into two
classes--the one wherein the patient himself is brought into contact
with the body, or with some article that has belonged to it, or been
in contact with it; the other wherein articles belonging to the
patient, or which have been part of, or in contact with, his body are
deposited in the coffin, or the grave, and thus brought into permanent
connection with the dead. The intention of both appears to be the
same, namely, to bring the disease into union with the corpse, in
order that, as the latter suffers decay and dissolution, it also may
decay and perish.
In enumerating a few instances of the former class, let me first refer
to the fact that touching or stroking with {163} the hand of a corpse
is a remedy known in every part of Europe for superficial growths like
wens, tetters, and swollen glands. In September 1892, a fashionably
dressed young woman was one day seen hovering about a physician’s
residence in the north of Berlin. When he went out she met him and
timidly prayed him to take her, when he had an opportunity, to a dead
body. He thought she must be suffering from overstrain or mental
disorder, and brusquely refused her. In nowise daunted, however, she
begged him earnestly to grant her request, explaining that her object
was to remove a deformity. As she said this, she laid bare a delicate
white hand blemished by a bony outgrowth, known among surgeons as
_exostosis_. The medical man became interested; and it was not long
before he stood with her in the presence of a corpse. The lady grasped
the cold right hand and with it repeatedly and silently stroked the
ugly excrescence. Then, without speaking, she left the room in all
haste; nor was the physician able to learn who she was, or what had
led her to seek this means of relief.[163.1] In the good old days,
when what was called Justice was chiefly exhibited in hanging men with
short shrift on every convenient pretext and at every convenient
place, this remedy was much easier to obtain than it is to-day. In
Europe it was universal; and perhaps it was partly the facility for
touching an executed criminal that led to a preference in popular
pharmacopœia for such corpses. Partly also it may have arisen from
another cause. The victims of violence are often regarded as endowed
after {164} death with extraordinary virtue. When that violence took
the form of persecution for adherence to the Church, the Church
herself encouraged and systematised the superstition to her own
profit. Popular sympathy with unmerited suffering extended the
Church’s doctrine to other murders, judicial murders among them. And
often the Church did not hesitate to sanction the popular
canonisation, and appropriate the material gains that followed. But
beyond all that the Church could sanction, there remained a margin
constantly supplied by the bloodthirsty tribunals, as well as by
private enterprise. The former may have been more regular in their
action; but one thing is certain. Their victims were more uniformly
derived from the classes which were chiefly concerned in forming and
preserving tradition. The feeling of oppression would be likely to
generalise all executions into martyrdoms, entailing miraculous powers
analogous to those recognised by the Church. This would be enough to
intensify the operation of any potency believed to be the ordinary
property of a corpse, and so to favour the resort to the bodies of
criminals.[164.1]
Be this as it may, remedies derived from the dead were, and still are,
popular. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure wens and scrofula by
drawing a silken thread through a corpse’s hand and then binding it
round the patient’s neck. They hold that a silken band out of a grave
is a protection against epilepsy. Earth from a sucking infant’s grave
is {165} put upon the mother’s breast to dry up her milk. Gout is
healed by rubbing a rag from a dead man’s clothes on the suffering
parts and hanging it all night upon a tree. Against cramp, a string
wherewith a corpse has been measured is worn on the body next to the
skin. A drunkard’s craving for drink is stayed by giving him some of
what he best loves, poured over a silver coin which has been placed in
a corpse’s mouth. Diseases of the eyes are cured by going early on a
fine Sunday morning in spring to a pious man’s grave, and washing the
eyes in the dew that lies upon it. Herbs grown in the churchyard, and
gathered on Good Friday when the bells are sounding for service, are
good against every kind of sickness.[165.1] Among the Poles and Masurs
it is believed that to smell a flower growing in the churchyard causes
permanent loss of the sense of smell.[165.2] The Negro population of
Barbados resorts to the touch of a dead hand for all swellings and
chronic pains, and believes that to wash the eyes in rum which has
been used to wash a corpse is to be safe from disease of the eyes for
the future.[165.3] In the Abruzzi the hand of a dead priest has
potency against scrofulous tumours, and a certain remedy for headache
is to rub the forehead and temples with the tears of a dying
man.[165.4] A prescription in Middle Silesia, against epilepsy and
against toothache is a ring smithied from a coffin-nail found in a
grave.[165.5] In the Netherlands {166} an aching tooth is rubbed with
a bone from the churchyard; or, in the province of Namur, the sufferer
goes to bite a cross erected on the wayside where a violent death has
occurred.[166.1] The bone, among the Masurs and generally in Prussia,
is replaced by the index-finger of a corpse.[166.2] In old French
belief it should be a tooth, if possible the tooth of a man who has
come to a violent end, as by hanging; and the best time for its
application is on Holy Saturday when the bells are ringing. Other
French prescriptions are: for fever, to hang round the neck a human
bone taken from the graveyard, or the hem torn (not cut) from a
winding-sheet; for colic or _lapsus ani_, to cut the hem from a
winding-sheet, pass it under the loins and wear it as a girdle; for
hydrophobia, pills made of the head of a man who has been
hanged.[166.3] In Silesia water left on tombstones will send freckles
away. At Gernsbach, in the neighbourhood of Spire, to smear a goitre
with the wick of a lamp that has burnt in a dying man’s room will heal
it.[166.4] To cure a Bosnian drunkard, extinguish in brandy one of the
candles burning at the head of a corpse before the funeral, and give
him the brandy to drink. Even a bit of the wick when the candle is put
out in the ordinary course, {167} given in brandy, will be sufficient;
or indeed brandy bought with a coin which has been used to close the
eyes of the dead.[167.1] The last is doubtless a degenerate form of a
superstition akin to that of the Transylvanian Saxons adduced just
now. In the Lettish prescription the corpse’s mouth is to be washed
out, and the water given to the tippler. After drinking it, we are
told, he can never drink again, which is quite likely.[167.2] The
reasoning which has given rise to all these beliefs perhaps applies
also to the tradition in Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man that it is
unlucky to disturb old burial-places and old churches, and utilise
their materials. Professor Rhys relates an example in which a farmer
in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, in the Isle of Man,
carted earth from an old burial-ground and used it to manure his
fields. His cattle died, and every one attributed it to this cause.
The farmer himself was convinced at last, and desisted from the
desecration.[167.3] A similar story is told of a cattle-dealer in the
parish of Templepatrick, near Belfast, who attempted to use the soil
of an ancient fort as a top-dressing for his land.[167.4] We may
compare with these instances a curious Manx curse: “May a stone of the
church be found in the head of thy dwelling!”[167.5] It would seem as
if that which had been part of, or had become by contact united with,
the dead, or had been part of the subject of a taboo, were still,
notwithstanding severance, in indissoluble connection with the
remainder, and thus capable of communicating its evil effects or of
bringing into similar connection any other {168} object. Too much
stress, however, cannot be laid on this conjecture at present. The
question needs further investigation.
The other class of prescriptions consists of such as the following. An
English cure for boils mentioned by Mr. Thiselton Dyer was to poultice
for three days and nights, and then to place the poultices, cloths and
all, in the coffin of a body about to be buried.[168.1] In Germany,
when a sucking babe dies, the mother puts a bottle of her milk in the
coffin, and then the breast dries up without making her ill.[168.2] To
the same end a South Slavonic mother sticks in the infant’s shift over
the breast two pins, probably to be taken from her own. The coffin-lid
must not be nailed at the head and foot, else the mother will bear no
more, or if she bear, it will be a difficult labour.[168.3] In
Silesia, to destroy lice, bugs and moths, it is recommended to catch a
few specimens, bottle them up in a quill and secretly by a waning moon
lay the quill in the coffin of a spotless maiden.[168.4] The
population of North Carolina is mainly of German descent. There, by
the same process of logic, it is forbidden in making garments for the
dead to bite the thread, lest the teeth rot.[168.5] The Transylvanian
Saxons spit into an open grave to heal sore throat.[168.6] In East
Prussia, as in West Sussex, a child is cured of a certain nightly
offence by being taken to an open grave to repeat it.[168.7] In
Donegal, warts are got rid of by throwing some clay from under {169}
your right foot in the path by which a funeral is going, and by
saying: “Corpse of clay, carry my warts away.” This must be done three
times, and as the corpse decays in the grave the warts will
vanish.[169.1] As might be expected, to bring warts into contact with
a corpse is a specially efficacious means of getting rid of them. In
the Obererzgebirge warts or any other superficial ailments are rubbed
with a piece of linen, which is then laid in the coffin with a
corpse.[169.2] To recover from the ague in the Netherlands the
sufferer’s garter used to be tied round a gallows.[169.3] When a death
occurs in Poland, if anything has been stolen from the family, a
similar object, or a piece of the same stuff, is laid in the coffin;
and as it decays the thief withers away and dies. It is even enough,
in case of robbery, to lay a portion of the stolen goods in the
churchyard.[169.4] We considered in the last chapter the
identification of the thief with the property stolen, and no more need
be added on the subject.
The principle which underlies all these practices dictated the
sympathetic treatment of wounds by washing and keeping clean and
bright the instrument inflicting them--a treatment taught by
Paracelsus, believed in by Bacon and proclaimed as a valuable
discovery by Sir Kenelm Digby, who learned it in France. Though long
since discredited by science, it is still in use among the peasantry
of England, and can be traced backwards into savagery. A few instances
will suffice to exhibit the vast area over which it {170} is found,
and the different modes of its application. In Sussex a few years ago
Mrs. Latham saw it actually in use. A man had been accidentally
wounded by a sword-stick, and the whole time he was confined to his
bed the sword-stick was kept hung at his bed’s head, and was polished
at stated intervals day and night, and anxiously examined lest a spot
of rust be found thereon; for that would have been a token that the
wounded man would die.[170.1] In Suffolk, if a horse be lamed by
treading on a nail, the nail must be found, cleaned and kept bright
and well greased; and in dressing a human wound the old plaster must
be buried, not burnt, else the wound will not heal.[170.2] Similar
treatment of a wound by a tool or weapon was practised within the
memory of living men by the descendants of the Dutch settlers in the
Hudson River.[170.3] About Schaffhausen and Solothurn it is held that
if one be pricked with a needle, the wound will heal the sooner if the
needle be at once plunged into wax.[170.4] In the Tirol, in order to
prevent a wound from giving trouble, the weapon that has caused it is
immediately stuck into ash-wood.[170.5] About Siena a nail which has
inflicted any hurt is gently warmed over the fire with a clove of
garlic in oil prepared from herbs gathered on Saint John’s day, and it
is then used to sprinkle the oil about.[170.6] In Esthonia, if you cut
your finger, you are advised to bite the blade of the knife, and the
wound will then cease to bleed.[170.7] Among the Galician Jews, if a
child fall on the floor, the pain will pass away, provided {171} water
be poured on the floor, at the spot where the child came in contact
with it.[171.1] These superstitions are not a whit more civilised than
those of the races we call savage. Dr. Boas mentions a tribe of North
American Indians who are very careful to keep the arrow that has
wounded a friend concealed, and as far from the fire as possible; for
he would be very ill if, while still covered with blood, it were put
into the fire.[171.2] Melanesians keep the arrow, when extracted, in a
damp place, or in cool leaves; then the inflammation will be little
and soon subside. A story is told by Dr. Codrington of a man who aimed
at another with a ghost-shooter, that is to say, a magically prepared
arrow which does not actually reach the foe, but is only believed to
do so by being directed towards him. In this case the man’s next of
kin, his sister’s child, happened to come between him and the object
of his aim, and he felt sure he had hit it full. To prevent
inflammation of the imaginary wound he put the contents of his
ghost-shooter into water, and the child took no hurt. If a Melanesian
have really shot another, and can get back the arrow, he puts it into
the fire. To heat the wound he will keep the bow near the fire; and
the bowstring will be kept taut and occasionally pulled, to bring on
tension of the nerves and tetanus in the wounded man. Or a bundle of
certain leaves, tied on the bow will produce a fatal result. Nor is
this all. The assailant and his friends will drink hot and burning
juices, and chew irritating leaves; they will burn pungent and bitter
herbs to produce an irritating smoke. The wound by his arrow has set
up such union between the shooter and his victim that these
proceedings {172} are expected to react upon the latter.[172.1] The
Zulus are said to have the like belief. They think that if the corpse
of a slain enemy swell up, they themselves will suffer pain in the
intestines. If they have time, therefore, they tear out the entrails
of their fallen foes; if not, they pierce the navel with an assegai,
as was done to the body of young Bonaparte, the Imperialist
Pretender.[172.2]
“A hair of the dog that bit you” is a remedy which has passed into a
proverb. In dealing with witchcraft we had occasion to note some
instances of its application, as when the dust of a witch’s footprint
is rubbed on the bespelled animal. The Abruzzians hold the bite of a
cat to be venomous; and their prescription for it is a bit of the same
cat’s fur applied with pounded garlic. So, for a serpent-bite a
portion of the skin of the creature is put on the wound; but, as
Signor Finamore remarks, the question is to get it.[172.3] In Sicily
the sting of one of the small scorpions found in damp places in the
island is healed by scorpion-oil prepared from the same scorpion. The
mode of preparing the oil is to decapitate the animal and plunge it
into a vessel of oil, which is then closed tightly.[172.4] In
Devonshire a person who is bitten by a viper is advised at once to
kill the creature and rub the wound with its fat; and the flesh of a
rattlesnake is accounted the best cure for its own bite in the
Northern States of America.[172.5] In Belgium a dog’s bite is to be
healed by inducing a bitch to {173} lick the sore.[173.1] The reason
for the treatment is obscure in some of these cases; but we shall
probably be right in referring its origin to the desire to set up
union between the victim and the animal inflicting the wound, by means
of a detached portion of the latter’s substance. This view is
strengthened by the treatment directed, in the neighbourhood of
Masulipatam, for a scorpion which has stung a man. The brute is to be
caught by slipping a noose over its tail, and tied to something to
prevent its wandering. For the more it wanders, the more the poison
will wander in the man’s body; while to kill it may have the effect of
killing its victim. Here the union by means of the injected poison is
already complete, and the scorpion is dealt with accordingly.[173.2]
Folk-leechcraft thus provides us with further illustration of the
theory lying at the foundation of the story-incident of the
Life-token. A severed portion of the body, or any of its issues, or
anything once in contact with it, though now detached, is none the
less believed to continue in real, if unapparent, connection with it.
Whatever, therefore, is undergone by the one, is undergone also by the
other. For the purposes of healing, as of injury, to affect the one is
to affect the other. It is curious that a large number of the remedies
prescribed are of a character that, judging from the examples of
witchcraft in the last chapter, one would suppose calculated to
inflict injury rather than to heal. To hang in the chimney things
which have become united with the patient’s body, or to put them into
a coffin, if done with malicious intent, would certainly result in
evil to the victim. We must, however, be at all times prepared to
{174} find tradition inconsistent. In the cases referred to, the
disease is thought of, rather than the patient, as identified with the
object operated on; and the intention is to destroy the disease by
causing it to waste away. Probably the prescription was at first
applied only to excrescences and other diseased growths, like warts,
tumours and wens. These alone were touched by the dead hand, or by the
cloth, or the spider, which was to be enclosed in the grave, or hung
in the chimney. The remedy having been tried for them, would be
extended to other ailments, without adverting to the reason of its
primitive limitation. So far as regards objects committed to the
keeping of the dead, a comparison of love-charms comprising the same
process will have suggested an alternative explanation, namely, that
they are brought thus into permanent contact with the corpse for the
purpose of putting them under the influence of the departed spirit.
This is a less materialistic explanation, and one that will have
weight with students who can estimate the importance, in savage life,
of the worship of the dead. It is possible that there may be an
element of truth in it, as well as in the explanation which regards
the objects as merely intended to be affected by the physical decay
and corruption of the corpse. But, either way, is clearly necessary
the postulate that the disease in the patient’s body is capable of
being affected by the influence, whatever it may be, on the objects in
contact with the dead,--that in them, and by means of them, the
patient himself is actually in contact also.
CHAPTER XI.
SACRED WELLS AND TREES.
{175}
In the light of the results thus obtained by an examination of
certain of the methods of witchcraft and folk-medicine, we next
approach a group of rites known in one form or other from shore to
shore of the Old World, and the principle of which has regulated
religious observances alike in North and South America. These rites
are very numerous in the British islands; and it will be convenient to
start from some of the most modern forms found in Great Britain.
Professor Rhys, in a paper read a year or two ago before a joint
meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folklore Societies, quotes a
correspondent as saying of Ffynnon Cae Moch, about half-way between
Coychurch and Bridgend, in Glamorganshire: “People suffering from
rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and
afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well.
The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree
for luck. It is a stunted but very old tree, and is simply _covered_
with rags.” In another case, that of Ffynnon Eilian (Elian’s Well),
near Abergele in Denbighshire, of which Professor Rhys was informed by
Mrs. Evans, the late wife of Canon Silvan Evans, some bushes near the
well had once been covered with bits of {176} rags left by those who
frequented it. The rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of
wool--not woollen yarn, but wool in its natural state. Corks with pins
stuck in them were floating in the well when Mrs. Evans visited it,
though the rags had apparently disappeared from the bushes. The well
in question, it is noted, had once been in great repute as “a well to
which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom
they hated.” The Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan
Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of
Bryncroes, in the west of Carnarvonshire, is a resort for the cure of
warts. The sacred character of the well may be inferred from the
silence in which it is necessary to go and come, and from the
prohibition to turn or look back. The wart is to be bathed at the well
with a rag or clout, which has grease on it. The clout must then be
carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. The
Professor, repeating this account of the well, given him by a Welsh
collector of folk-lore, says: “This brings to my mind the fact that I
have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the
water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in
the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.” The Rev.
Elias Owen, writing on the Holy Wells of North Wales, relates that the
patients who came to the Ffynnon Awen, or Muses’ Well, in the upper
part of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, buried under a stone close to or in
the well the pieces of wool they had used in washing their
wounds.[176.1]
Professor Rhys, in the paper just cited, mentions several {177} wells
wherein it was usual to drop pins; but the most detailed account was
afterwards furnished by Mr. T. E. Morris, from a correspondent who
supplied him with the following information relating to Ffynnon Faglan
(St Baglan’s Well) in the parish of Llanfaglan, Carnarvonshire: “The
old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan
have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in
this parish (Llanfaglan), remember the well being used for healing
purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it when he was a
child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a
pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism,
and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for
medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well at
Tan-y-graig, said that he remembered it being cleared out about fifty
years ago, when two basins-full of pins were taken out, but no coin of
any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to
exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped
them in, or, as the Welsh say, _dadwitsio_. No doubt some ominous
words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field
where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in
consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts.
The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent,
was thrown into the well.”[177.1]
In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or
hanging rags torn from the devotee’s {178} clothing upon the
neighbouring bushes and trees.[178.1] But without pausing on English
examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other
places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase,
quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions
the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a
well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of
pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there
is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and
similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from
point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the
recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the
stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the
deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in
Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a
deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in
the roof, were of gold and silver.[178.2] This is a rare case. Quite
recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands,
Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the
holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of
crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at
Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely
Ones.[178.3] Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort
Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various
diseases. Among the offerings left on a {179} bush beside the stream
are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones
picked up from the pool.[179.1] A number of other instances are cited
by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.[179.2] What seems an analogous
custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the
Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin
of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen
from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig
and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some
well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a
solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the
ocean.”[179.3]
In the Isle of Man there is a well called Chibber Unjin, or Ash-tree
Well, which I mention for the sake of calling attention to an
interesting detail of the rite. A patient visiting the well had to
take a mouthful of water, retaining it in his mouth until he had made
the circuit of the well, and then empty it upon a rag of his own
clothing, which he afterwards tied on the hawthorn growing
there.[179.4]
I select a few examples out of a large number from Scotland. Saint
Wallach’s Well and Bath in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire, are
famous for their healing qualities. {180} The former is now dry, save
in rainy weather; but it was frequented by persons with sore eyes,
“and every one who went to it left a pin in a hole which had been cut
either by nature or by art in a stone beside the well.” The bath is a
cavity in the rock, supplied by a spring which flows into it and
overflows into the river Deveron. Children who did not thrive were
brought and dipped in it, “a rag, an old shirt, or a bib from the
child’s body being hung on a tree beside the bath, or thrown into
it.”[180.1] “There is a big rugged rock,” says the Rev. Walter Gregor,
“on the top of Ben Newe in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. On the north side
of this rock, under a projection, there is a small circular-shaped
hollow which always contains water. Every one that goes to the top of
the hill must put some small object into it, and then take a draught
of water off it. Unless this is done the traveller will not reach in
life the foot of the hill. I climbed the hill in June of 1890, and saw
in the well several pins, a small bone, a pill-box, a piece of a
flower, and a few other objects.”[180.2] Saint John’s Well, at
Balmano, in the parish of Marykirk, Kincardineshire, was reputed to
heal sore eyes and rickety children. The “oblations” left here were
generally pins, needles and rags taken from the pilgrim’s clothes. In
the island of St. Kilda is a consecrated well called Tobir-minbuadh,
or Well of diverse Virtues. The votaries laid their offerings on an
“altar” (probably a rock, or perhaps a rude stone monument) that stood
near; and Macaulay in his _History of St. Kilda_ sarcastically
remarks: “The devotees were abundantly frugal.… Shells and pebbles,
rags of linen or stuffs worn out, pins, needles or rusty nails were
generally all the tribute that was paid; and sometimes, though {181}
rarely enough, copper coins of the smallest value.” Of Loch-siant Well
in the island of Skye we read that the sick people who made a
pilgrimage to it, after drinking “move thrice round the well,
proceeding sun-ways,” and it was “a never-failing custom to leave some
small offering on the stone which covers the well. There is a small
coppice near it, of which none of the natives dare venture to cut the
least branch, for fear of some signal judgment to follow upon
it.”[181.1] And Mr. David MacRitchie, recording similar offerings at
Grew’s Well, Stormont, Perthshire, made on the first Sunday of May
(Old Style), and speaking from the information of an old woman on the
spot, says: “No good whatever was expected to result from the bathing
if no offering was left.”[181.2] It is rarely that an offering of
value is recorded at these wells. A spring is, however, mentioned by
Mr. Gregor, called Tobar-fuarmor, in Aberdeenshire, where no cure was
effected unless gold was presented.[181.3] The well and tree on the
island of Maelrubha in Loch Maree are dedicated to Saint Maree, or
Mourie. We need not concern ourselves whether this holy man ever
existed in the flesh. It is clear that he succeeded to the divinity of
an ancient heathen god, and wielded all, and perhaps more than all,
his predecessor’s powers. Whether the mediæval church ever struggled
against the deeply-rooted cult we do not know. Since the Reformation
the Dingwall presbytery has in vain striven to destroy it, though at
last it seems to be dying before the blasts of modern disbelief. {182}
Miss Godden, who visited the shrine in the summer of 1893, describes
the tree--an oak--“as a slight white trunk--bare, branchless,
leafless, with spreading foot, and jagged and broken top. The cracks
and clefts in the stem are studded with coins, nails, screws, and
rusty iron fragments. No sign of leaf or shoot remains to give the
gaunt shaft any touch of common vegetation. It stands alone and
inviolate--a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree’s foot is a
small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones
overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside
it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing well of
power unspeakable in cases of lunacy.… The tree,” she adds, “is now a
Wishing Tree, and the driving in of a bit of metal is the only
necessary act.” The well, in fact, long so famous, is now disused, and
the ritual of the shrine is in the last stage of decay. Formerly, when
an afflicted person was brought thither for the cure of insanity, a
portion of his clothing was attached to a nail, which was driven on
his behalf into the tree. Sir Arthur Mitchell in the year 1860 found
two bone buttons and two buckles nailed to the tree, and a faded
ribbon fluttering from another nail. The tree, now dead as the
superstition which hallowed it, was then living. Countless pennies and
halfpennies had been driven edgewise into it, and the bark was closing
over many of them, while it was believed to have covered many
others.[182.1]
We turn to the continent of Europe. Close parallels to the practices
at the shrine at Maelrubha are found in Germany and Belgium. Such is
the ceremony prescribed for hernia in Mecklenburgh. A cross is made
over the affected part {183} with a nail on a Friday; and the nail is
then driven, in unbroken silence, into a young beech or oak. The
operation is repeated on the two Fridays following. A variant
prescription directs the part to be touched with a coffin-nail, which
is then to be driven over its head into the tree by the sufferer,
barefoot and silent. As the nail is overgrown by the bark, the hernia
will be healed.[183.1] In this case the rite does not seem to be
attached to any specially hallowed tree. I cited some similar
instances in the last chapter, and others will be mentioned presently.
We must first consider, however, some cases where the sacred character
of the object, whether well or tree, is unquestionable.
In Belgium, halfway between Braine l’Alleud and the wood of Le Foriet,
two hollow, and therefore doubtless very ancient, roads cross one
another. Two aged pine-trees are planted at the top of the bank at one
of the corners; and formerly there stood between them a cross, which
has disappeared for some thirty years. It was a very ancient custom to
bury in the pines, and even in the cross, pins or nails, in order to
obtain the cure of persons attacked by fevers of various kinds. The
pins and nails thus employed must have been previously in contact with
the patient or his clothes. If any one took out one of these pins or
nails from the pines or the cross, and carried it home, it was
believed that the disease would certainly have been communicated to
some member of his family. The custom is said to have fallen out of
use. Yet M. Schepers, who visited the place in September 1891, and to
whose article on the subject in _Wallonia_, a periodical published at
Liège, I am indebted for these particulars, found not {184} only
rusty nails in the pines, but also pins quite recently planted. He was
told that it was equally customary to roll round the pines, or the
arms of the cross, some band of cloth or other stuff which had touched
the sufferer. As soon as the nail or pin had been driven in, or the
ribbon fastened, the operator used to run away as hard as he could.
The spot was called _À l’crwe Saint Zè_, St. Etto’s Cross, or _Aux
deux Sapins_, The two Pine-trees. Saint Etto, it seems, was an Irish
missionary to these parts in the seventh century.[184.1] Nor is this
by any means the only instance in Belgium. Two old lime-trees on
either side of a Calvary, near the convent of Soleilmont at Gilly, in
Hainaut, are covered with nails; and a similar tree is found behind a
chapel between Trazegnies and Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont in the same
province. At Chastrés, near Walcourt, a chapel of Our Lady is shown
with pins thrown in through the interstices of the gate by devotees on
reciting their prayers. Numbers of pins have also been taken from the
beds of the Meuse and the Sambre at ancient fords, though whether they
were put into the water for any superstitious purpose is
uncertain.[184.2]
At Croisic, in Upper Brittany, there is a well, called the Well of
Saint Goustan, into which pins are thrown by those who wish to be
married during the year. If the wish be granted, the pin will fall
straight to the bottom. Similar practices are said to be performed in
Lower Brittany, and in Poitou and Elsass.[184.3] Girls used to resort
to the little {185} shrine of Saint Guirec, which stands on an
isolated rock below high-water mark on the beach at Perros Guirec in
Lower Brittany, to pray for husbands. The worshipper, her prayer
concluded, stuck a pin into the wooden statue of the saint; and when I
saw the shrine, in the year 1889, the figure was riddled from top to
toe with pinholes. It was said that the prayer for a husband would
infallibly be granted within a year. On the other side of Brittany, in
the Morbihan, there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Uférier, credited
with a similar reputation. The saint’s foot, if I may be guilty of a
bull, is almost entirely composed of holes. It is, however, necessary
here that the pin should be a new one and quite straight; not that the
prayer will not be granted otherwise, but the husband will be crooked,
humpbacked, and lame. In Upper Brittany, at St. Lawrence’s Chapel near
Quintin and elsewhere, the condition is that the pin be planted at the
first blow; the marriage will then take place within the year.[185.1]
To avoid either the disfigurement or the desecration of this practice
the authorities of the churches of Saint Peter at Louvain and of
Bon-Secours at Brussels thoughtfully provide pincushions to receive
the proofs of the worshippers’ pious enthusiasm;[185.2] but in
Brittany the good priests are less fastidious.
Where the statue is of stone, it is of course impossible to plant the
pins. They are then simply laid upon it, or thrust into cracks or
hollows in the surface. At Loscouët young children are taken to the
Virgin of Menès near the mill of Meu, in order that they may soon
walk. The Virgin in question is nothing but the battered remains of a
mullion {186} from a window in the ruined château of Menès, formerly
the residence of the lords of Loscouët before the signory passed to
the abbé of Saint Méen. This mullion the simple peasants take for a
statue. The children are held by the armpits, and made to walk thrice
round the Virgin, and pins are then placed upon her arms. At Penvenan
the chapel of Notre Dame du Port-Blanc is resorted to for the same
object. The parents exercise themselves in throwing small coins from
the nave into the choir at the statues of the Virgin, and of Saint
Yves of the Poor, and afterwards at those of Dives and Lazarus. The
children are then put to pick the coins up and drop them into the
Virgin’s coffer. Lastly, they are marched round the pavement outside
the chapel; and within a fortnight they will certainly walk.[186.1]
All over France the like practices exist, or have died out only within
comparatively recent years. In the Protestant villages of
Montbéliard, between the Vosges and the Jura, at the moment of
celebration of a wedding a nail was planted in the gallery (or, in
some places, in the floor) of the church, to “nail” or fasten the
marriage. In various parts of the country there are stone or iron
crosses which have doubtless replaced wooden ones. In the case of
these new crosses, votaries must content themselves with depositing
pins upon the arms or the pedestal, or in the joints.[186.2] In the
valley of Lunain there is a menhir called the Pierre Frite, in almost
every hole or fissure of which may be found a pin or a nail, placed
there by the youth of the neighbourhood in the belief that this action
will bring a {187} speedy marriage.[187.1] The well of Moniés in the
department of Tarn had, at the beginning of the present century, a
great renown for the cure of various diseases. The rags which had been
used in bathing with the sacred water the diseased members, were left
stretched out on the neighbouring bushes.[187.2] An instance where the
honour and glory, not to say the substantial gains attendant on the
superstition, were early annexed by the Church is that of St.
Michel-la-Rivière in the diocese of Bordeaux. Both the honour and the
gains were considerable in the seventeenth century, as appears from
quarrels between the curé and the fabriqueur of the church decided by
the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and other orders made by him. The sick man
was required to pass through a hole called a _veyrine_ at the end of
the apse; and the patients left offerings not merely of linen, but
also of money, wax, and other things.[187.3] Nor was this case at all
singular; for similar practices obtained wherever in the diocese was a
church dedicated to St. Michael. In a North German example the object
of veneration was an oak-tree; and the pilgrim, after creeping through
the hole in the prescribed manner, completed the performance by
burying a piece of money under the roots. As many as a hundred
patients a day are said to have visited it.[187.4] Here the Church had
neglected her opportunities.
We have already dealt with the custom of creeping {188} through trees.
Our concern at present is with the offerings. Passing the Pyrenees,
let us note that in the seventeenth century it was usual to stick
needles or pins in a certain tree belonging to the church of Saint
Christopher, situated on a high mountain near the city of
Pampeluna.[188.1] At Naples it used to be the custom to lead a sick
horse round the church of Saint Elias, and afterwards to fasten one of
his shoes on the church-door.[188.2] One who suffers from intermittent
fever will go and hang a small pebble on the inside of the door of
Saint Giles’ church in the Abruzzian commune of Lanciano.[188.3]
A rite hitherto unexplained was practised from very early times at
Rome. From the date of the erection of the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus it was the custom on the festival of the dedication, the
Ides of September, for the highest person of the state to drive a nail
into the right wall of the _Cella Jovis_. This was usually done by the
consuls or prætor; but in case of the appointment of a dictator the
latter performed the ceremony. After it was dropped as an annual
performance, recourse was occasionally had to it for the staying of a
pestilence, or as an atonement for crime. More ancient still was the
corresponding Etruscan practice of sticking a nail every year into the
temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess.[188.4] Curious parallels to this
custom are found in modern Europe. Near Angers was an oak which bore
the singular name of _Lapalud_. It was regarded as of the same
antiquity as the town, and was covered with nails to the height of ten
feet or thereabouts. From {189} time immemorial every journeyman
carpenter, joiner, or mason who passed it, used to stick a nail in it.
Near the cathedral at Vienna was the stock of an old tree, called the
_Stock im Eisen_, said to be the last remnant of an ancient forest
which once covered the neighbourhood. Every workman who passed through
Vienna was expected to fasten a nail in it; and it was in fact
invested with a complete coat of mail, consisting entirely of the
heads of the nails it had thus received.[189.1] These two examples
existed almost down to the present day; elsewhere the rite appears to
be still in full force. At Evessen stands a lime-tree on a barrow
wherein a golden coffin is believed to have been buried. In the trunk
(which is seven mètres in girth at the height of one mètre from the
soil) are driven numbers of nails, some of them recently fixed. This
is often done by travelling apprentices.[189.2]
At Athens, mothers bring their sick children to the little church of
Santa Marina, under the Observatory Hill, and there undress them,
leaving the old clothes behind. There is a dripping well near
Kotzanes, in Macedonia, “said to issue from the Nereids’ breasts, and
to cure all human ills. Those who would drink of it must enter the
cave with a torch or lamp in one hand and pitcher in the other, which
they must fill with the water, and, leaving some scrap of their
clothing behind them, must turn round without being scared by the
noises they may hear within, and quit the cave without ever looking
back.”[189.3] Among the inscriptions discovered at Epidauros,
recording the miraculous cures attributed to Asklepios, is the record
of what happened to {190} Pandaros, a Thessalian who was afflicted
with certain unsightly marks upon his forehead. The god appeared to
him in a dream, pressing a bandage on the spots and directing him when
he left the chamber to take off the bandage and deposit it as an
offering in the temple. When the patient untied the bandage in the
morning, the marks were transferred to it, leaving his forehead free;
and he left the bandage in the temple, with this proof of his
recovery,[190.1] just as crutches are left in modern times at Roman
Catholic shrines by persons who believe themselves healed by the
presiding saint. It is clear from a reference by Aristophanes that the
Greeks were in the habit on certain occasions of hanging articles of
their clothing on, or even nailing them to, sacred trees as an
offering to the god.[190.2] Indeed, allusions to the practice are not
uncommon in Greek poetry. Among the Romans, Pompey is compared by
Lucan to a lofty oak, hung with old clothes and other votive
offerings; and Vergil describes an olive-tree whereon the vests and
votive tablets of mariners who had escaped shipwreck were
suspended.[190.3] To-day in Lesbos sick women vow to walk before Our
Lady, or one of the saints, with bare feet, flowing hair, and their
hands tied behind their backs with a handkerchief which they
subsequently leave suspended on the image. In one of their tied hands
they must contrive to carry a large lighted taper. Lofty sacred trees
are still numerous, frequently growing in {191} the vicinity of some
chapel. The sick suspend on the branches their shirts or their
girdles, in the hope, we are told, of leaving their ailments there.
Feverish patients hang their clothes on a tree near the chapel of
Saint John.[191.1]
In the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire stands a great sacred
aspen near the village of Röiks, which, up to the year 1845 at all
events, was hung with wreaths and many-coloured ribbons to win the
favour of the tree-spirit for sick cattle. Near Pallifer stood in the
seventeenth century two holy elms, which are reported to have been
hung and bound with ribbons, this time for the healing of human
ailments and to obtain good luck. An old lime-tree near the chapel of
Keppo is also held sacred. Passers-by tear off ribbons and rags from
their clothing and nail them upon it. The trees of the sacred woods on
the island of Oesel are hung with rags by the Esthonian inhabitants of
the island.[191.2] In the district of Vynnytzia, government of Podolia
in Ukrainia, there is a mineral spring much resorted to. The sick,
after bathing, hang to the branches of the trees their shirts,
handkerchiefs, and other articles, “as a mark,” says M. Volkov, who
reports the case, “that their diseases are left there.”[191.3]
In the last chapter I mentioned a practice of the Masurs in Eastern
Prussia of taking off the patient’s shirt after an attack of fever,
carrying it to a cross-road and suspending it on a signpost. It is
probable that the signpost represents a sacred tree, or perhaps a
cross. In Hungary there are two fountains resorted to for the cure of
ailing limbs; but it is essential to wait until the water-spirit is in
a good humour and to leave behind as an offering articles of {192}
clothing and hair from the head. These are put upon the trees that
stand around. Both in Hungary and in Transylvania ill-luck is like to
befall one when his name-day happens on a Friday. To avoid the
threatening evil, a rag is torn off the clothing, and hung, in
Transylvania, on a tree before sunrise. The Magyar puts some of his
blood and saliva on the rag and then burns it.[192.1]
Leaving the real meaning of these ceremonies to be considered
hereafter, we go on for the present with the search for parallel
superstitions in other parts of the world. In Hindustan, a festival
called Melá is held at the beginning of the month of Mágha (about
the middle of January) at the island of Ságar, at the mouth of the
Hugli. A temple of Kapila, who is held to be an incarnation of Vishnu,
stands on the island, and in front of it is (or was) a Bur-tree,
beneath which were images of Ráma and Hanumán, while an image of
Kapila, nearly of life-size, was within the temple. The pilgrims who
crowd thither at the festival commonly write their names on the walls,
with a short prayer to Kapila, or suspend a piece of earth or brick
from a bough of the tree, offering at the same time a prayer and a
promise, if the prayer be granted, to make a gift to some
divinity.[192.2] Shreds of clothing and feathers may be seen flying
from the posts erected on the roofs of the Toda temple-huts in the
Neilgherry Hills. The Korwas hang rags on the tree which constitutes
the shrine of their village gods. The Patáris, when attacked by
fever, tie round a pípal-tree a cotton string that has never touched
water, and suspend rags from the branches. Elsewhere in India, as well
as in Arabia and Persia, strips of cloth are {193} suspended from
shrubs and trees, which, for some reason or other, are venerated; and,
in Persia at all events, not only are rags, amulets, and other votive
offerings found upon the trees, but the trees are also covered with
nails.[193.1] At the source of the Jordan, as I am informed by Dr.
Robert Munro, there is a tree hung with rags; and indeed such trees
are not uncommon throughout Asiatic Turkey. Mohammed is said to have
made a pilgrimage to a similar one. At Tyana, in Cappadocia, was a
pillar to which persons used to go to nail their fevers.[193.2] With
this last may be compared an Athenian legend of Saint John, who is
declared to have been a physician especially skilled in the treatment
of fevers. Before his death he set up a column and bound under its
foundations with silken threads all manner of diseases; fevers with a
yellow thread, measles with a red one, and so forth. And he said:
“When I die, let whosoever is sick come and tie to this column a
silken thread with three knots of the colour that his sickness takes,
and say, ‘Dear Saint John, I bind my sickness to the column, and do by
thy favour loose it from me,’ and then he will be healed.”[193.3]
Neither of these is an ordinary case of transference, however it may
look like it at first sight. It falls rather into the category of rags
used to bathe a wounded limb and left in the holy well or on the
bushes adjacent.
{194}
In Tibet there are numerous heaps of stones erected by wayfarers, to
which every one who passes adds, and where he prays. Lamas who come by
set up stakes, fastening thereon a bit of silk or other stuff, so that
they resemble flags. At the tops of the passes in the mountains
between Siam and Burmah are found heaps of stones. Passengers, besides
stones, lay down on them flowers and leaves. Among the Mongols heaps
of this kind are called _obo_; and they are said to be all consecrated
by Buddhist lamas. Pousselgue describes one on a difficult pass
between Urga and Kiachta. A rude image of Buddha was formed of two
roughly chiselled blocks. By it stood a large granite urn for the
burning of incense; and all around were numbers of stakes covered with
offerings of clouts, pieces of paper, prayer-wheels, and even purses
and objects of precious metal. Pousselgue’s guide bowed down before
the obo and offered up a bit of his fur-robe.[194.1] Nobody who has
read Mr. Cooper’s amusing account of his marriage unawares to a girl
in Eastern Tibet will forget how, when he got up to the top of a high
hill, a little later in the day, with his bride, the lady contributed
her quota of stones and prayers at the inevitable cairn, and then
insisted, first, that in order to secure their connubial happiness the
baggage must be unpacked and a couple of Khatah cloths taken out and
fastened by her unwilling bridegroom to the flag-staves, and then that
he must prostrate himself in prayer with her. “And there, on the
summit of a Tibetan mountain, kneeling before a heap of stones, my
hand wet with the tears of a daughter of the country, I muttered
curses on the fate that had placed me in such a position.”[194.2]
Similarly an English traveller in Ladákh was compelled to gratify the
spirits of {195} a certain pass with an offering of the leg of a
worn-out pair of nankin trousers.[195.1] Nor is the custom confined to
Buddhists. Among the Mrús of the Chittagong Hills every one on
reaching the crest of a hill which he is crossing “plucks a fresh
young shoot of grass, and places it on a pile of the withered
offerings of former journeyers who have gone before.”[195.2]
The Karakasses, too, of Eastern Siberia make to the mountains and
rivers which they pass offerings of tobacco, a branch of a tree, a
strip of a pelisse or some other trifle. The Kamtchadales and Teleouts
offer pine-branches, pieces of meat, fish or cheese, packets of hair
or horsehair, little furs or ribbons of cloth. The offerings dedicated
to a mountain are suspended from a tree on some hill or other
conspicuous place. The Tunguz call these trees Nalaktits.[195.3]
Erman, the German traveller in Siberia, records having seen in the
woods between Churopchinsk and Aruilákhinsk trees, at different
points along the road, hung thick with horse-hair. It was an ancient
custom of the nomadic Yakuts, he was told, to put tufts of their
horses’ hair on these trees, and many of the tufts “had so
weather-beaten an appearance, that there could be no doubt of their
antiquity.” Every horseman who passed added to them, and the custom
was called by a name signifying propitiation for the Spirit of the
Woods.[195.4] In the Alazeï Mountains, on the road from Kolymsk to
Verkhoiansk, is the tomb of a famous Tchuktchi sorceress. All who pass
deposit offerings: on the cross they hang strips of cloth and
horsehair; at its foot they lay pieces of meat and fish. {196} He who
forgets this act of homage is always punished. The devils cause him to
lose his way, his horse breaks a limb, or his sledge is
shattered.[196.1] The Kirghiz honour a solitary poplar, said to be the
only tree standing between Fort Orsk on the Ural river and the Sea of
Aral. It is covered with shreds torn from the clothing of the
tribesmen who have worshipped at it. A certain wild plum-tree is also
reverenced in the same way. The number of rags and pieces of
sheep-skin attached to it is constantly increasing.[196.2] Every
traveller from Marco Polo downward speaks of the practice as rife in
Central Asia. Many of the Tartars are Mohammedans; and the shrine of
every Mohammedan saint is adorned with rams’ horns and with long bits
of dirty rag, a pious gift no pilgrim would omit to tie on some
adjacent stick or tree.[196.3]
Sacred trees covered with clouts hung by votaries, as well as piles of
stones cast from the hands of wayfarers, are to be seen everywhere in
Corea.[196.4] We are told that “devils”--probably, as in the Tchuktchi
superstition, a generic term for spirits--“are supposed to inhabit
certain withered trees; and the natives are careful never to pass a
devil-tree without throwing a stone at it, or tying a piece of cloth
to one of its branches. If they omit to do this, evil, they believe,
is sure to come to them and their families.”[196.5] Mr. J. F. Campbell
records having found in Japan “strips of cloth, bits of rope, slips of
paper, writings, bamboo strings, flags, tags, and prayers hanging from
every temple,” and small piles of stones at the foot of every image
{197} and memorial-stone, and on every altar by the wayside; and he
draws attention to the similarity of the practices implied to those of
his native country.[197.1] Another traveller in Japan states that
women who desire children go to a certain sacred stone on the holy
hill of Nikko, and throw pebbles at it. If they succeed in hitting it
their wish is granted. They seem very clever at the game, he says
maliciously. Further, the same writer speaks of a seated statue of
Buddha in the park of Uyeno at Tokio, on whose knees women flung
stones with the same object. Describing a temple elsewhere, he records
that the grotesque figures placed at the door were covered--or, as he
more accurately puts it, constellated--with pellets of chewed paper
shot through the railing that surrounded them by persons who had some
wish to be fulfilled. A successful shot implied the probability of the
attainment of the shooter’s desire.[197.2] Japanese pilgrims also
paste up their cards containing name and address on the doors or
pillars of the shrines they visit.[197.3]
{198}
In another Asiatic island, Borneo, a tree hung with countless rags is
often seen at the cross-ways, and every passenger tears off a piece of
his clothing and fastens it on the tree. The natives who practise it
can give no other account of the custom than that they fear for their
health if they omit it. Dr. Ten Kate lately found twice in the island
of Great Bastard under the branches of a large tree a heap of stones
whereon fishermen were wont to place rags of red, green or
many-coloured calico. In the same way an old tree-trunk, or a stake
propped upright with stones, is found here and there in the Egyptian
desert adorned with shreds and tatters of clothing; for every pilgrim
as he passes adds a rag. Such a tree is a certain ancient
tamarisk-tree, called “the Mother of Clouts,” between Dar-el-beida and
Suez. In the Mohammedan districts of North Africa trees of this kind
are known as Marabout-trees; and it is thought that by tying on one of
them a screed from one’s clothing all evil and sickness passes over to
the tree, which is generally a crippled, miserable specimen.[198.1]
But the custom is not confined in Africa any more than in Asia to
Mohammedan districts. The Shilluk on the White Nile derive their
origin from an ancestor whom they call Niekam; and from his sacred
tree they suspend glass beads and pieces of stuff.[198.2] On the
western side of the continent, Mungo Park found a tree in the kingdom
of Woolli decorated with innumerable rags or scraps of cloth {199}
tied upon its branches at different times by travellers. He
conjectures that it was at first intended as an indication that water
was to be found not far off; but of this there is no evidence. The
custom was, as he says, so greatly sanctioned by time that nobody
presumed to pass without hanging up something; and the intrepid
explorer himself followed the example. A pool was, in fact, found not
far off, as his Negroes predicted.[199.1] A French traveller in the
region of the Congo relates with astonishment concerning the
_n’doké_--which he portrays as “fetishes important enough to occupy a
special hut, and confided to the care of a sort of priests, who alone
are reputed to have the means of making them speak”--that when it is
desired to invoke the fetish, one or more pieces of native cloth, and
the like, are offered to it or to the fetish-priest; and the
worshipper is then admitted to plant a nail in the statue, the priest
meanwhile, or the worshipper himself, formulating his prayer or his
desires.[199.2] Another French traveller in the watershed of the upper
Niger reports the custom of sacrificing animals under sacred trees.
The animal when slain is eaten; its head is placed under the tree, or
suspended from one of the branches, or laid in a fork. Pottery of
various kinds, handles of old agricultural implements, old clothes and
calabashes, cow-tails, and so forth, lie around the fetish-tree; and
under one such tree he saw a piece of {200} hollow wood propped on
forks and filled with grass and other plants.[200.1]
In the New World the practice does not seem so common. Darwin,
however, notes one instance. On the sandstone plain from which the
valley of the Rio Negro has been carved, not far from the town of
Patagones, is a solitary tree reverenced by the aborigines as a god by
the name of Walleechu. The traveller found it leafless, being
winter-time; but from numberless threads were suspended on the
branches cigars, bread, meat, pieces of cloth and other things. “Poor
Indians,” he says, “not having anything better, only pull a thread out
of their ponchos, and fasten it to the tree. Richer Indians are
accustomed to pour spirits and _maté_ into a certain hole, and
likewise to smoke upwards, thinking thus to afford all possible
gratification to Walleechu. To complete the scene, the tree was
surrounded by the bleached bones of horses which had been slaughtered
as sacrifices. All Indians of every age and sex make their offerings;
they then think that their horses will not tire, and that they
themselves shall be prosperous.”[200.2]
To sum up:--We find widely spread in Europe the practice of throwing
pins into sacred wells, or sticking pins or nails into sacred images
or trees, or into the wall of a temple, or floor of a church,
and--sometimes accompanying this, more usually alone--a practice of
tying rags or leaving portions of clothing upon a sacred tree or bush,
or a tree or bush overhanging, or adjacent to, a sacred well, or of
depositing them in or about the well. The object of this rite is
generally the attainment of some wish, or the granting {201} of some
prayer, as for a husband, or for recovery from sickness. In the Roman
instance it was a solemn religious act, to which (in historical times
at least) no definite meaning seems to have been attached; and the
last semblance of a religious character has vanished from the
analogous performances at Angers and Vienna. In Asia we have the
corresponding customs of writing the name on the walls of a temple,
suspending some apparently trivial article upon the boughs of a sacred
tree, flinging pellets of chewed paper or stones at sacred images, and
attaching rags, writings, and other things to the temples, and to
trees. Trees are adorned in the same way with rags and other useless
things in Africa--a practice not unknown, though rare, in America. On
the Congo a nail is driven into an idol in the Breton manner. It
cannot be doubted that the purpose and origin of all these customs are
identical, and that an explanation of one will explain all.
The most usual explanations are, first, that the articles left are
offerings to the god or presiding spirit, and, secondly, that they
contain the disease of which one desires to be rid, and transfer it to
any one who touches or removes them. These two explanations appear to
be mutually exclusive, though Professor Rhys suggests that a
distinction is to be drawn between the pins and the rags. The pins, he
thinks, may be offerings; and it is noteworthy that in some cases they
are replaced by buttons or small coins. The rags, on the other hand,
may be, in his view, the vehicles of the disease. If this opinion were
correct, one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the
same patient at the same well: he would throw in the pin and also
place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The
performance of _both_ ceremonies {202} is, however, I think,
exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the
patient does not trouble about the rag, and _vice versâ_. Professor
Rhys only cites one case to the contrary. There the visit to the well
was prescribed as a remedy for warts. Each wart was to be pricked with
a pin, and the pin bent and thrown into the well. The warts were then
to be rubbed with tufts of wool collected on the way to the well, and
the wool was to be put on the first whitethorn the patient could find.
As the wind scattered the wool the warts would disappear. Upon this
one or two observations may be made. Either the act of affixing the
wool bears the meaning assigned in the last chapter to similar
practices, or the rite only survives in a degraded form, and
originally some definite sacred tree was its object. If the latter,
then the rite is here duplicated. For if the pins were really
offerings, to be distinguished in character from the deposits of wool,
the prescription to touch the warts with them would be meaningless.
But we must surely deem that whatever value attached to the rubbing of
the warts with wool would equally attach to their pricking with the
pins.
Moreover, the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to
the rags tied on the bushes at Elian’s Well--namely, that they must be
tied on with wool--points further to a degradation of the rite in the
case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used, and
simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the
reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see
how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked upon as the
essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so
continue after the disuse of the rags.
{203}
Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of ceremonial
decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags represent entire
articles of clothing, which were at an earlier period deposited. There
is no need to discuss here the principle of substitution and
representation, so familiar to all students of folklore. It is
sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost everywhere in a
state of decay, the presumption is in favour of entire garments having
been originally deposited; and that, in fact, we do find this original
form of the rite in the ancient and several of the modern examples I
have cited on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. Entire articles
of clothing seem also to have been usually left at several Scottish
wells in quite recent times. Such was a chalybeate spring in the
parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was invoked not
only for human beings but for cattle, the tribute consisted of “part
of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness of the
cattle.”[203.1] If we may trust the slovenly compilation of Mr. R. C.
Hope on the holy wells of Scotland, a traveller in 1798, from whom he
professes to quote, but whom he neither names nor identifies, relates
of the Holy Pool of Strathfillan in Perthshire, that “each person
gathers up nine stones in the pool, and after bathing, walks to a hill
near the water, where there are three cairns, round each of which he
performs three turns, at each turn depositing a stone; and if it is
for any bodily pain, fractured limb, or sore, that they are bathing,
they throw upon one of those cairns that part of their clothing which
covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that
is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds
upon, and make it into paste with {204} these waters, and afterwards
give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they
must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he
was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves,
shoes, bonnets, night-caps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats,
garters and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their
halfpence.”[204.1] From this account it appears that stones from the
pool, rags, garments which had covered the diseased parts of the
devotees, and halfpence, had all the same value. The stones could not
have been offerings, and it was evidently not usual to throw away
halfpence. The gifts of rags and articles of clothing are ambiguous.
If we must choose between regarding them as offerings and as vehicles
of disease, the analogy of the gifts at the shrine of Saint
Michel-la-Rivière favours the former. Under ecclesiastical patronage,
however, the rite had doubtless been manipulated to the benefit of the
officials; and we can use the instance no further than as proof that
the deposit of garments was ambiguous enough to develop sometimes into
pious gifts, if it developed at other times into devices for the
shuffling of disease off the patient on another person.[204.2]
Cairns have already been mentioned as occurring in {205} Buddhist
lands, where we found an apparent equality in the offerings of stones
and of other things at these sacred places, just as at Strathfillan.
But the custom of erecting piles of stones is so ancient and
widespread, that it may be worth while looking at it a little more
closely before proceeding with our inquiry. Dr. Andree, whose
ethnographical collections have furnished me with many examples for
the present chapter, has brought together a large number of instances
of cairns from all quarters of the globe. They resolve themselves, on
examination, into three classes.
First are those to which no additions are made and where no rites are
performed. Of such it may be said broadly that they only exist where
the original purpose of the cairn has been forgotten, and probably the
race that erected it has passed away. Of this kind was the cairn at
Gilead, said to have been erected by Jacob and Laban on the scene of
their final reconciliation and parting.[205.1] It is hardly necessary
to say that there is nothing worthy of being called evidence in favour
of the tradition preserved in Genesis. We may conjecture that it was a
place held sacred by the predecessors of the conquering Hebrews. If
the Batoka were not in the habit of adding to the pile {206} mentioned
by Livingstone, that pile must be set down as belonging to the same
class. They declared it was made by their forefathers by way of
protest against the wrong done them by another tribe not named, as an
alternative to fighting.[206.1] The omission of the name of the
offending tribe is an index to their forgetfulness of the real object
of the cairn. Such, too, were the small heaps of stones found by
Darwin on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas in Uruguay. The
Indians are extirpated from the district, and nobody knows the purpose
for which the heaps were erected.[206.2]
Another kind of cairn is that which is piled over the place where
death, especially a violent death, has been suffered. To this every
wayfarer makes his contribution; and doubtless originally the dead
body lay beneath the mass. The most familiar instances are the cairns
raised over Achan and Absalom.[206.3] The custom, however, is by no
means confined to the Hebrews, or to the Semitic race; and in
districts where stones are few, branches and pieces of wood are piled.
Thus, near Leipzig is a heap of boughs to which every passenger adds
three. Elsewhere in Germany, in Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, Lesbos,
Armenia, the upper valley of the Nile, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii,
Wisconsin, South Carolina, Venezuela, the valley of the Plate, and
Patagonia, similar piles are recorded, as well as among the Bushmen
and Amakosa of South Africa. The Bushmen are reported to declare that
the Devil is buried under these heaps; and every Bushman throws a
stone as he passes, that Satan may not rise again. In case of
sickness, pilgrimages are made to them and prayers for help {207}
offered.[207.1] The various graves of Heitsi-eibib, or Tsuni-ǁgoam,
the ancestor-god of the Khoi-khoi, are marked by cairns on which every
one who passes by flings a stone or twig. Sometimes the offering is a
piece of the wayfarer’s clothes, flowers or zebra-dung. A prayer for
success is muttered if the wayfarer be hunting; and occasionally even
honey and honey-beer are offered.[207.2] These graves are, in fact,
shrines of worship. And it is noteworthy that the gifts to the
divinity are in general of no value in themselves, and that prominent
among them are the stones and branches which are thrown, in other
parts of the world, upon grave-cairns to which no other act of worship
is now offered.
The third class of cairns consists of such as are erected on spots
which for any reason are recognised as sacred. To this class belong
the obo of Tibet. In Buddhist lands cairns are to be seen on the top
of every pass and almost of every mountain. Frequently they are
adorned with prayer-streamers and bones of sheep; and flat stones
inscribed with the formula _Om mani padme hum_ are laid upon them by
worshippers. Passengers constantly add to the pile rough stones which
they have picked up in climbing the ascent. In India cairns,
especially cairns of _Kankar_, or calcareous limestone, to which every
one adds, are not uncommon. Such is the shrine of Anktaha Bir, the
hero of the Kankar-heap, in the village of Niámatpur.[207.3] {208}
Among the Dyaks of Batang Lupar the heaps are said to be erected in
memory of great liars. Stones and branches are thrown upon them; and
after the liar’s name has been long forgotten the heap remains. In the
Caucasus the mountain-tops are sacred to the prophet Elijah (who,
there is little reason to doubt, has succeeded to an ancient
thunder-god) or to some other saint. Perilous places and places struck
by lightning are marked by cairns. At the latter a pole is stuck up
from which a black goat-skin flies. Around a certain rock in the
Sinaitic peninsula Professor Palmer found small heaps of stones, said
to have been first erected by the Israelites in memory of the water
obtained from that very rock by Moses. The Arabs retain the practice
in hopes of propitiating the great lawgiver. If any of them have a
sick friend, he throws a stone in his name, and in the expectation of
his speedy recovery. In Arabia, indeed, heaps of this kind are often
to be seen, some of them of enormous size. In South America the passes
of the Cordilleras are marked by cairns originally built before the
Conquest. To this day the Indians fling stones upon them, or lay there
a little offering of fresh coca-leaves, or spit upon them the
coca-quids they have been chewing. Sometimes they stand and pull out a
few of their eyebrow-hairs, blowing them in the direction of the
sun--an ancient rite recorded by the Spanish conquerors among their
observations of the Peruvian cult. In North America piles of stones
are often mentioned, to which every traveller is accustomed to add.
The old inhabitants of Nicaragua threw stones and grass upon them,
believing themselves thereby to be freed from hunger and fatigue. In
Europe, Saint Wolfgang’s chapel and well are renowned among the
shrines of the Salzkammergut. Up the steep {209} stony path on either
side pilgrims carry to the sacred spot heavy stones, which now lie
there in heaps. The story goes that when enough have been gathered,
the saint will build himself a new and larger church; but this is, of
course, a modern theory to account for the practice.[209.1] In the
Aran Islands, though we are not told of any such piles, “numerous
rounded pebbles are placed on the well and on the altar of St. Columb
Kill.”[209.2] On the island of Iniskill, off the coast of Donegal, on
the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage where the last of the
“stations” performed by the pilgrims is a rough pile of stones,
formerly the altar of a now ruined church. On the top of the pile is
laid a flat stone, through which a circular hole about three inches in
diameter has been bored. In this hole Mr. Borlase found shreds of
coloured stuff (doubtless from their own clothes), rosaries and bronze
medals, put there by devotees.[209.3] Lastly, it may be mentioned
that, among the Basuto, heaps of stones are to be found by the wayside
near a village, to which every traveller adds a pebble, on which he
has first spit.[209.4]
Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third
classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places {210} are
sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who
must always be propitiated--all the more if they have died in a manner
unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be
propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured
in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is
a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit
which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to
injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it
with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the
meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the
sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no
valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at
wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an
earlier part of the present chapter. Alike--and this is a point of
cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices--the
gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we
read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring
ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things
of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be,
it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed,
by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from
his mouth. The _Landnámabók_ mentions an early settler of Iceland
named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into
it all remnants had to be thrown.[210.1] This was not a mere paltry
economy of worship; for we are told {211} he was “a great blót-man,”
in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants
into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity;
and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims
at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a
sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.
With the practices at cairns in our mind, then, let us return to the
customs at wells and trees.
M. Monseur, fixing his attention on instances like those of the Croix
Saint Zè and Saint Guirec, in which pins or nails were stuck into the
cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, suggests that the aim was, by
causing pain or inconvenience to the object of worship, to keep in his
memory the worshipper’s prayer. And he refers, by way of illustration,
to the tortures inflicted on children at the beating of boundaries,
and to the flogging said to have been given to children in Lorraine on
the occasion of a capital punishment, the intention of which
incontestably was to preserve a recollection of the place or the
incident.[211.1] M. Gaidoz, dealing with similar cases, and similar
cases only, propounded years ago a theory somewhat different. In
replying recently to M. Monseur, he recalls his previous exposition,
and reiterates it in these words: “The idol is a god who always
appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and,
peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to
understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time a
memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the member
corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is directed to the
prayer. And more than that is done in leaving a nail or a pin in its
body, {212} for this is a material memento for the idol.” In putting
it in this way, the learned professor does not desire to exclude the
ideas of an offering and a transfer of disease, for he expressly adds
that both these ideas are mingled with that of a memento.[212.1]
Let us take stock of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to a
satisfactory solution of the problem. It must be equally applicable to
sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns and temples. It must
account not merely for the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but
also for the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks
hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and
coca-quids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese
idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese
temples, the pilgrims’ names written on the walls of the temple of
Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in
the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors
of Protestant churches in Eastern France. These are the outcome of
equivalent practices, and the solution of their meaning, if a true
one, must fit them all. M. Gaidoz’ suggestion of a memento comes
nearer to this ideal than any other hitherto put forward. But does it
touch cases like those of the Lapalud, the Stock im Eisen, and the
Cella Jovis, where the rite was unaccompanied by any prayer? The two
former cases, indeed, if they stood alone, might be deemed worn and
degraded relics of a rite once gracious with adoration, prayer and
thanksgiving. But nothing of the sort accompanied the driving of a
nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter, nor, so far as we can
learn, the yet older custom observed by the Etruscans at Vulsinii, of
{213} sticking a nail every year in the temple of Nortia, the
fate-goddess. On the contrary, in both these classical instances the
rite was so bare and so ill-understood, that it was looked upon merely
as an annual register or record. Almost as little does M. Gaidoz’
explanation seem to fit the throwing of pins into a well, the burial
of a coin, as in Mecklenburgh, under a tree, or the marriage-nails of
Montbéliard. Like M. Monseur’s theory, it is applicable in its full
significance only to examples of the rite as practised on statues; and
it assumes that trees and crosses and other rude forms are mere
makeshifts for the carven image, deteriorated survivals of idols
strictly so called.[213.1] But this is to put the cart before the
horse. There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have
described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were
at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to
{214} suppose exactly the reverse. And in this connection it is
significant that neither at Rome nor at Vulsinii (the earliest
examples we have in point of time) were the nails fastened into the
image, but into the temple wall.
I believe that a profounder thought forms the common ground in which
all the customs under consideration--or, as I should prefer to say,
all the variations of a single custom--are rooted. They are simply
another application of the reasoning that underlies the practices of
witchcraft and folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters. If an
article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the
same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain,
restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has
pricked my wart, even if not covered with my blood, has by its
contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with
the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction
acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the
rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same
influences are by that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If,
instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the
meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution
of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215}
represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred
well--my name written upon the walls of a temple--a stone or a pellet
from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn--a remnant of
my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a
nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree--is thenceforth in
continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity,
reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I
may become permanently united with the god.
This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. Of course,
it cannot be denied that there are instances, like some of the
Japanese and Breton cases, where, the real object of the rite having
been forgotten, the practice has become to a slight extent deflected
from its earlier form. But it is not difficult to trace the steps
whereby the idea and practice of divination became substituted for
that of union with the object of devotion. Still less can it be denied
that, where the practice has not been deflected, the real intention
has in most places been obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us
everywhere, and will mislead no one who understands that the real
meaning is not what the people who practise a rite say about it, but
that which emerges from a comparison of analogous observances.
A few other customs remain to be considered. Prominent among these is
a rite well known to all students of classical antiquity--that of the
consecration of locks of hair at various shrines. It was usually
performed in consequence of a vow made by the parents at birth. The
actual ceremony took place on arriving at manhood or womanhood. A lock
of the hair and of the sprouting beard of the youth, a tress from the
maiden’s head, was cut off and presented {216} to the god; and in
Greece the youth then received the clothing of an ephebos and was
admitted to such of the privileges of a free citizen as his age
entitled him. The dedication of the hair was regarded as a symbol of
that of the entire person. And this dedication was extended to other
occasions, such as before marriage, before and after childbed, or at
the time of making or fulfilling a vow. Pausanias mentions a statue of
Hygeia hardly to be seen, by reason partly of the hair cut off by
women and bound or placed upon it.[216.1] On the death of one very
dear, a lock of the survivor’s hair was frequently cut off and placed
in the corpse’s hand or upon the grave, as Herakles did to Sostratos,
and Achilles to Patroklos. So Death was said to cut off the hair of
those who were about to die. Euripides represents him as declaring:
“Sacred to us Gods below
That head whose hair this sword shall sanctify.”
Graves and sacred trees were favourite places for the deposit of the
hair. Beneath the olive which grew upon the tomb of Hyperoche and
Laodike, in the entrance of the sanctuary of Artemis at Delos, epheboi
laid the first fruits of their beards, and bridal pairs their hair. At
Megara was the grave of the virgin Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous.
Brides there performed funeral rites, before the wedding ceremony, and
cut off their hair. The Roman Vestals, on attaining womanhood,
consecrated to Juno Lucina and {217} hung upon her tree, which was
older than the temple, the locks of their hair; whence it was called
the _arbor capillata_. At the completion of the mysteries of Cybele
the votaries dedicated locks of their hair at the door of her temple;
and in the same way the Bacchic votaries, when their mysteries were
finished, dedicated their locks at sacred pine-trees. In this
connection, too, we may remember that the Flamen Dialis buried the
clippings of his hair and nails beneath a lucky tree.[217.1]
The usage also extended to the Hebrews. It is referred to in the
legislation on vows and on mourning; and many examples are familiar to
us in the Bible, from Samson and Job to the Apostle Paul. The ancient
Arabs and Egyptians also on similar occasions cut or shaved their
hair.[217.2] Nor was it confined to ancient times. In the seventeenth
century the Serbs used to cut their hair and bind it on the grave of a
dead relative; and among the Albanians the sisters, daughters-in-law,
grown-up daughters and wife of a dead man are said still to cut their
hair in token of grief. The mourning women at Lecce in Apulia pluck
out their hair and strew it on the corpse.[217.3] Zingerle quotes from
an old manuscript in the Franciscan monastery at Botzen in the Tirol a
superstition which directs the hair of a sick man to be cut off,
rolled in wax and afterwards offered at some sacred shrine.[217.4] A
story is told in the province of Posen of the daughter of a
day-labourer who was sick and given up by the physician. She begged
her parents, as they stood by her bed plunged in helpless grief, {218}
to cut off her hair and lay it upon the crucifix in the convent at
Exin. This was done, and she recovered; and, marvellous to state, the
hair grew upon the head of the crucifix until it reached the ground,
to the gratification of the pious from all parts of the
province.[218.1] At Flastroff, in Lorraine, sick or vicious horses are
taken in pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Elias on the 25th June.
After mass, at which the owners of the animals are present, the horses
are paraded round the outside of the chapel. A handful of hairs from
the tail of each of them is deposited on the steps of the altar,
sometimes accompanied by a gift of money; and the owner takes away a
cupful of holy water, made for the purpose, in order to mix it with
the animal’s drink. The custom of taking the horses themselves is now
disappearing. The owners, instead, take their handfuls of horsehair,
make the tour of the altar after mass to kiss the relic of the saint,
and deposit the offerings of hair in a niche in the wall of the apse
on the left side of the altar. And this has probably been found
equally efficacious.[218.2]
In some districts of the Abruzzi there is yet practised a rite that
seems to be a survival of an ancient act of worship such as I have
just referred to. Two or more girls who are desirous of swearing
eternal friendship of the most sacred kind join hands in a church and
compass the altar three times. They afterwards exchange kisses; and
each of them, pulling out a hair, hides it in some hole or dark recess
of the building. One of them then, standing in {219} front of the
altar, lifts her hand as if to count her companions, and solemnly
chants verses, the import of which is to pronounce them henceforth
gossips, spiritual kindred, entitled to share one another’s food, and
further to invoke blessing or ban, according as either of them shall
fulfil or neglect the duties of the relationship.[219.1] Reginald
Scot, apparently quoting Martin of Arles and speaking of the
Spaniards, mentions that “maids forsooth hang some of their haire
before the image of S. Urbane, bicause they would have the rest of
their haire grow long and be yellow.”[219.2] Pettigrew cites Mr. and
Mrs. S. C. Hall as authorities for the statement that pilgrims to
Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, a sacred well dedicated to Saints
Quan and Brogawn, after performing certain circuits and reciting
prayers, go thrice round a tree on their bare knees and then cut off
locks of their hair and tie them on the branches as a specific against
headache. The tree, we are told, was an object of veneration and was
covered with human hair.[219.3] So at the two Hungarian fountains
already mentioned clothes and hair from the patients’ heads are left
on adjacent trees “as gifts for the water-spirit.”[219.4] In Turkey
among the Greek Christians three tiny locks are cut, if they can be
found on a baby’s head at his baptism, and thrown into the font in the
name of the Trinity; and the font is afterwards emptied into a pit or
well under the floor of the church.[219.5]
Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been
found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few
examples, and must content myself {220} with referring the reader for
others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor
Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he
saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to
sticks over the graves of females.[220.1] And Olearius, who was in
Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried
before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr.
Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the
wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.[220.2]
When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of
him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and
among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of
his successor and offering them to his _manes_.[220.3] At the junction
of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage,
Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden
shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the
stream.[220.4] The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines
at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and
sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also
hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.[220.5]
Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in
Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he
learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the
crater.[220.6] About Lake Nyassa, {221} in East Central Africa, one of
the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s
relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken
down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners
are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the
bush.[221.1] On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a
certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath
is administered by the fetish-priest. His _bossum_, or fetish,
consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various
objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and
uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath,
he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every
time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel,
rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round
three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of
the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker,
and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the
vessel.[221.2] The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts
of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux
mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging
them upon the dead body;[221.3] and in various parts of America widows
are required to shave or cut their hair.[221.4] Indeed, haircutting or
shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are
not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall
hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, {222}
it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In
such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original
intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true
rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when
“Round the funeral pyre the populace
Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound
Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped
O’er the dead body of their withered prince.”[222.1]
It was not, however, always possible or convenient to do this; and it
has consequently been dispensed with until the purpose has been
forgotten.
These practices all explain themselves in the same way. The dedication
of the hair at a temple, or the placing of it in the hand of a corpse,
or on the grave, effects union with the divinity, or with the departed
friend. The tress is more than a symbol of devotion; it is more than a
gage of fidelity. The owner of the head whence it has been taken, and
the holder of the severed lock are in actual, though invisible, union.
This accounts for the efficacy of the practice in healing disease:
this accounts for its value as a guard of fidelity to an oath. In the
last chapter we saw that not only hair but nail-parings, teeth and
other things previously part of the patient, or in contact with him,
were plugged into trees, or hung from their branches, for the purpose
of uniting him with a living healthy body, which was believed to react
upon him. Much more powerful would be the action of an object regarded
as the abode of a supernatural being, even if only a departed
friend,--or rather, {223} the action of the supernatural being
himself, thus linked through that object with his worshipper, patient
or friend. Abruzzian girls put themselves in the hands of the saint
when they hide their hairs in his sanctuary, and doubtless feel
abundantly satisfied that he will perform the blessing or the ban they
invoke upon themselves in their rustic ritual. We had occasion in the
last chapter to consider the disposal of the hair when ceremonially
cut off. It will be recollected that the _Grihya-Sûtra_ of
Hiranyakesin directs the clippings of hair, beard and nails, made up
into a lump with bull’s dung, to be buried in a cow-stable, or near an
Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. It is true that the
words accompanying the act of burial were: “Thus I hide the sin of N.
N.” These words were probably not primitive, for the real intention of
the rite is revealed by the places prescribed for the burial. Had it
been meant simply to hide the lump of dung and hair, any secret place
would have sufficed. But the cow-stable, the Udumbara-tree and the
Darbha-grass were all sacred; and the object of placing these
clippings of the person in, or adjacent to, them must have been that
the man from whom the clippings had been taken might be blessed by the
hallowed influences which would surround those portions of himself,
severed indeed to outward appearance, but still subtly connected with
his frame. So also something more than a desire for safety leads the
sponsors of the Japanese boy to deposit his forelock on the family
shrine. And when the Omaha children received the tonsure, the
first-fruits (if I may so call them) of their heads, wrapped in the
sacred buffalo-hide, not merely secured the heads themselves from
harm, but kept them in a perpetual environment of positive good. For
the same reason in Tahiti the {224} child’s navel-string was buried in
the _marae_, or temple.[224.1] In Mecklenburgh and Thuringia the
navel-string, or a piece of it, is taken by the mother to her
churching and laid down behind the altar or elsewhere in the church.
This will keep the child continually surrounded with such holy
influences that he will grow up god-fearing and pious. If, on the
other hand, it be left in a shop, he will--at least in
Thuringia--become courteous and clever in business.[224.2]
Again. Athenian women who for the first time became pregnant used to
hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. So the Spanish women
tied their girdles or shoe-latchets about one of the church-bells, and
struck the bell thrice.[224.3] In the French department of
Côtes-du-Nord, to cure a certain childish disease the infant’s cap is
placed at the foot of the statue of St. Méen in the church of
Plaine-Haute.[224.4] Among the French superstitions enumerated by
Thiers is that of passing a child afflicted with Saint Giles’ sickness
through his father’s shirt, and carrying the shirt afterwards--not the
child--to Saint Giles’ altar, as a means of cure.[224.5] European
settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measure a child for a disease
called “the Go-backs” with a yarn string; and having by this means
diagnosed the disease they hang the string on the hinge of a gate in
the premises of the infant’s parents, believing that the disease will
die away with the decay of the string.[224.6] They have no local
shrines.
{225}
The converse case of measurement as a method of conveying the divine
effluence was a favourite during the Middle Ages, and is still
practised in Roman Catholic countries. It consisted in measuring with
a string or fillet the body of a saint, and passing the string
afterwards round the patient. Many miracles performed in this way were
attributed to Simon de Montfort. Pope Clement VIII. is said to have
given his sanction to a similar measurement purporting to be the “true
and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” found in the Holy
Sepulchre. Copies of this measurement were current in Germany up to a
comparatively late date.[225.1] By an application of the same
reasoning it seems to have been believed up to the seventeenth century
in this country that, to measure a living person with a rope which had
been used in a prescribed manner to measure a corpse, was to inflict
misfortune and misery.[225.2] The object specially in view of the
Athenian women was attained in Germany towards the end of the Middle
Ages by measuring a wick by Saint Sixtus’ image, and wearing it as a
girdle.[225.3] In Japan it is enough to wear, inside the sash, a
coloured strip made in imitation of a temple-flag.[225.4] The
underlying thought in these cases is the same as that of the Breton
girdles of Notre Dame de Délivrance, mentioned in a previous chapter.
And so far is the practice carried in China that a woman who wishes to
bear children will borrow {226} on certain days in the year from the
temple of the goddess of children one of the votive shoes offered
there, and, taking it home, will pay it the same honours as to the
goddess herself; while another woman will take a flower from the hands
of the sacred image, or from a vase beside it, and wear it in her
hair.[226.1] Saint Francis’ girdle and other “blessed girdles” were
formerly worn in Europe for the purpose of facilitating delivery, and
for healing various diseases.[226.2] And still in Mexico the measure
of the head of an image of Saint Francis at Magdalena is sovran for
headache, the measurement of his waist for diseases of the abdomen,
and so on of other parts.[226.3]
In Poitou sick children are taken to the shrine of Saint Roch at
Saint-Rémy, to embrace the Saint’s image. But because it is so
horribly ugly, many children turn away with cries of fright. The
parents then content themselves with passing a handkerchief over the
statue, and afterwards wiping with it the child’s face and
hands.[226.4] Among the Basuto, travellers on entering a strange
country seek to render the indigenous gods propitious to them by
rubbing their foreheads with a little of the dust which they collect
on the road, or by making a girdle of the grass.[226.5] Newcomers to
places lying on the river Körös, in Hungary, used to {227} be dipped
in the water as a sort of baptism.[227.1] Many wells in Ireland are
called by the name of Saint Patrick. In the seventeenth century it
seems to have been a common belief among the Irish that a stranger who
drank at any of these wells would never after forsake the country, or
if he left it he would be sure to return thither.[227.2] At Rome an
old superstition, incidentally noticed in the last chapter, prescribes
for those who desire to return to the city to drink a little of the
Fountain of Trevi and to throw a small offering in the shape of a coin
into the basin. And with a little earth from the churchyard of
Applecross, in Ross-shire, where Saint Maelrubha is buried, a man may
fare the world round and safely come back to the neighbouring
bay.[227.3] Among the North American tribes, figures of sacred animals
and gods are drawn in coloured sand on the floor of the
medicine-lodge. The patient is rubbed with the dust composing the
figures. Applied to dying men, as a Roman Catholic Indian piously told
Captain Bourke, it corresponds to Extreme Unction.[227.4] Those who
doubt whether it be equally efficient may be recommended {228} to try
both. At any rate the parallel is instructive; for in all these cases
a substance which has been hallowed by contact with the divinity, or
with his shrine, brought afterwards into contact with the devotee and
patient, sets up union between the worshipper and his god; a portion
of the sacred earth or water in contact with the traveller or votary,
or united with his person, unites him with the remainder in such a
bond that he is infallibly brought back to it, or else he is endowed
with all the blessings that could be conferred by the touch of the
entirety.
Our examination of the practices of throwing pins into wells, of tying
rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, of
throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the analogous practices
throughout the world, leads to the conclusion that they are to be
interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified
with well, with tree, or stock, or cairn. In course of time, as the
real intention of the rite has been forgotten, it has been resorted to
(in Christian countries at least) chiefly for the cure of diseases,
and the meaning has been overlaid by the idea of the transfer of the
disease. This idea belongs to the same category as that of the union
by means of the nail or the rag with divinity, but apparently to a
somewhat later stratum of thought. Since the spread of Christianity
the reason for the sacredness of many trees or wells has passed from
memory; and it has consequently been natural to substitute any tree or
any well for a particular one. The substitution has favoured the idea
of transfer of disease, which has thus become the ordinary intention
of the rite in later times.[228.1]
{229}
But I cannot close this inquiry without referring to one or two other
ceremonies not quite so easily deciphered. The first is reported by a
German writer whose authority for the statement I have been unable to
trace. He says it is the custom in Wales for a bride and bridegroom to
go and lie down beside a well or fountain and throw in pins as a
pledge of the new relation into which they have entered. And he adds
that in clearing out an old Roman well in the Isle of Wight, about the
year 1840, some bushels of ancient British pins for the clothes were
found.[229.1] Whether or not the British pins are to be connected with
the alleged custom in Wales, it is difficult to account for a
collection of pins in such a situation except upon the supposition
that they were purposely thrown into the well. As in the case of the
pins found in the Meuse and the Sambre, however, we can only guess at
the reason that brought them there. If the alleged Welsh rite be
correctly described, no prayer is offered. Could we find an early
shape of it, we should probably recognise a solemn consecration of the
one spouse to the domestic divinity of the other--a ritual reception
into the kin. The analogy with the marriage custom of the Montbéliard
Protestants is obvious. An instance in which the same analogy lies
even more on the surface is a ceremony in use among the Mohammedan
tribes of Daghestan. Imperfectly civilised, they are still organised
in _gentes_, each of which derives its origin from a mythical
ancestor. But it is possible for a man to break with his _gens_, if he
desire to do so. The desire must be expressed solemnly and publicly at
a meeting in the mosque; and {230} he must announce that every tie is
broken between himself and his _touchoum_, or clan. By way of memorial
a nail is then driven into one of the walls of the mosque.[230.1] It
seems to be unnecessary now to enter another clan in place of the one
renounced; and the words employed express no more than the _detestatio
sacrorum_, or renunciation. But, as we shall see in the next chapter,
this could only have been half the original ceremony. It must once
have been followed by admission into another kin, for no one would be
content to be a kinless man. The ceremony now takes place in a mosque.
Before the conversion to Islam it must have taken place in the hut or
temple where the totem or ancestor-god of the new kin was worshipped.
And the driving of the nail into the wall of the mosque may be
imagined to be the only remaining relic of the rite of admission into
the new _gens_ and of initiation into its cult. If this be so, it
probably expressed and effected the neophyte’s union with the divinity
into whose kin and worship he was entering.
Assuming this conjecture to be correct, we may go a step further. To
anticipate again what I shall have to explain more fully hereafter,
the union with the totem-god would have to be renewed at intervals.
Some such intention perhaps governed the rite at Reggio Emilia, in
Italy, which is now called “burying the old year.” At midnight of the
last day of the year the head of the household goes into the courtyard
of his house and thrusts into the ground a stake.[230.2] Turning back
to Wales, at Gumfreston, in Pembrokeshire, there is a holy well to
which the villagers {231} used to repair on Easter Day, when each of
them would throw a crooked pin into the water. This was called
“throwing Lent away.”[231.1] On the same day at Bradwell, in
Derbyshire, it was the practice for children to drop pins into the
various wells in the town. A fairy was said to preside over each well,
and to know whether a child had deposited a pin in her well, or not.
On Easter Monday every child carried a bottle of sweetmeats all day
long; and if a bottle were broken, it was because the child had
forgotten to drop a pin into one of the wells, “the fairy of the well
being the protector of the bottle.”[231.2] I need hardly pause on the
proof, which the comparison of these rites affords, of the absolute
ritual equivalence of throwing pins into a holy well and driving a
stake, or a nail, into the ground, or into a wall. Nor--even apart
from the evidence of the custom at Bradwell, which is obviously much
degraded--can it be necessary to insist on the improbability that
anything would be thrown into a holy well with the idea of simply
getting rid of it. The pins must have been intended, as elsewhere, to
unite the thrower with the god. And the custom may accordingly be
supposed to be a periodical renewal of union with the divinity,
removed under Christian influences from the day of the pagan festival
(perhaps May-day) to the nearest great feast-day of the Church. In the
same way the Italian peasant in planting a stake in his
courtyard--doubtless in the centre of his dwelling--would be renewing
his union with his household god, and emphatically asserting once more
his ownership of the house and his headship of the household.
CHAPTER XII.
TOTEMISM--THE BLOOD COVENANT--CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.
{232}
Thus far, in pursuing our investigations into the significance of
the Life-token, we have arrived at the conclusion that the reason of
the mysterious sympathy between the hero and an object external to
himself is not merely that, actually or by imputation, the Life-token
has been part of his substance, but further that, notwithstanding
severance, it is still in unapparent but real connection with him, and
consequently any mischance he may suffer will be felt by the
Life-token and reflected in its condition. The converse is also true.
Any portion, actual or imputed, of the hero’s substance, detached from
him in appearance, continues in effect so united to him that injury to
it will redound to his injury and perhaps to his death. The Life-token
and the External Soul are thus equivalent; and they are equivalent not
merely in story, but also, and first of all, in human customs and
belief.
Moreover, the possibility of evil implies the contrary possibility of
good being received by a man through severed pieces of himself. This
belief has led to the practices we have considered in our last two
chapters. Whether for the healing of a specific disease, or for the
more general {233} purpose of promoting his wellbeing, anything which
has once been his, as a scrap of his body, his excrements or his
clothing, or which has simply been in contact, though only for a
moment, with him, is subjected to influences held to be beneficial,
with the expectation that they will in this way act upon him. The
belief and the practices it has engendered have thus to our eyes a
double aspect, physical and spiritual. But we must not forget that
everywhere in the earliest times, and among the lowest races even
yet--nay, the limitation need not be by any means so strict--among
peoples in all but the highest state of civilisation, no substantive
distinction is drawn between the physical and the spiritual. The
abstract entity we call a soul has no existence for them: it is a
philosophical speculation, whereof they have no conception. The soul,
to them, is but another body which quits at times in life this visible
frame, as a man quits his dwelling, on errands of business or
pleasure, and forsakes it finally at death, as a corpse is carried out
of doors. It is but a fragment of the man. It may take a fresh form,
become a new whole, new but the same; for it will differ only in form,
if indeed it will differ so much as in form. And the conception of
divinity current in the lower culture corresponds with that of the
soul. The god is precisely “a magnified, non-natural man,” though not
always in human shape, corporeal and subject to all corporeal wants
and infirmities, but endowed with potencies and privileges far beyond
those of ordinary men: potencies and privileges, however, the like of
which are attained sometimes with much fasting and striving and
patience by the greatest shamans. This corporeal nature of the god
enables man to enter into communion with him, to put and keep himself
in touch with him, to become {234} united with him. In the last
chapter we considered some methods whereby this may be done. Some
other methods remain to be mentioned; but it will be needless to
discuss them at length, because they have not long ago been made the
subject of a brilliant exposition by the late Professor Robertson
Smith, to which little or nothing can be added.
What seems, however, desirable for the purpose of completing our view
of the Life-token and the ideas connected with it, is to turn our
attention to some points in the social organisation of savage races,
and their survivals in societies, like our own, which have long been
organised on principles of a wholly different character. To these
points the next four chapters will be devoted. But the organisation of
archaic communities is bound up with their tribal worship. It is
accordingly necessary to have distinctly before our minds the relation
of the tribe to its god, and some at least of the usages expressive of
that relation. I shall therefore begin by summarising the results of
Professor Robertson Smith’s examination of Semitic institutions, as
far as they are relevant to our present inquiry, contributing only a
few further illustrations drawn from the usages of nations outside the
Semitic sphere.
At a certain period in the evolution of human institutions men are
organised in kindreds, called clans or _gentes_, deriving descent and
reckoning kinship exclusively through the mother. As a matter of fact,
hardly anywhere throughout the world is this organisation found in an
absolutely unadulterated condition; for it seems to have constantly
tended to pass over into an organisation where the kinship was
reckoned exclusively through the father. But in almost all parts of
the world many existing institutions, and institutions described, or
incidentally mentioned, by {235} writers ancient and modern, can only
be accounted for by postulating the former existence of a system of
kinship reckoned exclusively through females. The kindred or clan thus
formed believes itself to be descended from a _totem_, or ancestor to
whom honours are paid of a kind for which we have no other word than
_divine_--a word, however, implying a more exalted conception than any
to which the clan has yet attained. The totem is not in human shape.
Very generally it is an animal, sometimes a tree or other vegetable,
occasionally an inanimate object, such as the sun, the earth, wind,
salt, or even the rain or thunder. For the savage believes in
metamorphosis. We have already investigated at some length this
belief, in so far as it relates to changes effected by death and
birth. But it is by no means confined to these. Broadly speaking,
every object in the universe is regarded as alive; and every object is
capable of changing its shape without losing its identity. Death is
merely one way of doing so. To the savage, therefore, there is no
difficulty in believing that his ancestor is a turtle or a pine-tree,
for he knows no distinction between animal and vegetable, between
genus and genus. Nay, he will even hold with as little difficulty that
the same ancestor is both a turtle and a pine-tree, and will worship
him now under the one, and now under the other, form.
The clan bears a representation of the totem as its symbol or crest;
is usually called after its name; and the individual members dress and
adorn themselves to resemble it in their persons. It is forbidden to
kill, injure or treat with disrespect any animal or vegetable of the
species to which the totem belongs, for they are all akin. But, at
least when an animal, it is customary at stated times to {236} slay
and eat it in solemn festival wherein all the kin join.
The home of the clan is the home of its god; and wherever a society
has passed beyond the nomadic stage it will be found to have a
definite place consecrated to social reunion and worship. There the
totem-god is represented by an idol of some kind--ordinarily, in an
archaic stage of civilisation, by a post or a rough stone. This is his
dwelling-place, or the embodiment he chooses for the convenience of
his worshippers,--the god himself. Later, it becomes by degrees a
simulacrum, a piece of sculpture, until, in the most elevated form to
which paganism has attained, we arrive at masterpieces like those of
Phidias.
The stone god is also at first the altar. There the totem-beast is
slain, some of its blood is dashed upon the stone, and around it the
rest of the blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten by the clansmen.
This is probably the primitive form of sacrifice. It is not a gift to
the god, but a sacrament in which the whole kin--the god with his
clansmen--unites. In partaking of it each member of the kin testifies
and renews his union with the rest. The god himself is eaten, and yet
he is at the same time embodied in the sacred stone. Archaic thought
sees no contradiction in this. Our inquiries into the Life-token have
already shown that a man is separable into portions. The savage
conception of life permits of its division without destroying its
existence or its essential unity. Not only, therefore, is the totem
himself divisible: the kin, including the totem-god in every one of
his forms, is regarded as one entire life, one body, whereof each unit
is literally a member, a limb. The same blood runs through them all;
and elsewhere, as among the Hebrews, “the blood is the life.”
Literally {237} they may not be all descended from a common ancestry.
Descent is the normal, the typical, cause of kinship and a common
blood. It is the legal presupposition, a presumption not to be
rebutted. But kinship may also be acquired; and when it is once
acquired by a stranger he ranks thenceforth for all purposes as one
descended from the common ancestor. In a state of society organised on
the lines of kinship this is an important matter. A man who is not of
the kin is a stranger; and a stranger is a foe. The kinless man has no
rights, no protection: he is an outlaw. His hand is against every
man’s, and every man’s hand against him. To acquire kinship, the blood
of the candidate for admission into the kin must be mingled with that
of the kin. In this way he enters into the brotherhood, is reckoned as
of the same stock, obtains the full privileges of a kinsman.
The mingling of blood--the Blood-covenant as it is called--is a simple
though repulsive ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be made
in the neophyte’s arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of
the clansmen, upon whom the operation is repeated in turn by the
neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook
of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised
almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless
variations. Sometimes the blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with
water or wine. Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the
blood. Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, so
that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared upon them both.
Among the Kayans of Borneo the drops are allowed to fall upon a
cigarette, which is then lighted and smoked alternately by both
parties. But, {238} whatever may be the exact form adopted, the
essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is
mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the
Scythians, the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the
Medes. Many passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian _Book of the
Dead_, are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians are
full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered into the bond, which
means for us that it was customary among the Norsemen--as we know, in
fact, from other sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of
his day. It is described in the _Gesta Romanorum_. It is related of
the Huns or Magyars, and of the mediæval Roumanians. Joinville
ascribes it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi
Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth
century, found it there. In modern times every African traveller
mentions it; and most of them have had to undergo the ceremony. In the
neighbouring island of Madagascar, it is well known. All over the
Eastern Archipelago, in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the
Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian
empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the wild tribes
of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the Bedouins, and among the
autochthonous peoples of North and South America, the rite is, or has
been quite recently, in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in
Europe by the Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the
Abruzzi. The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken up
a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in this way. Most
savage peoples require their youths at the age of puberty to submit to
a ceremony which admits them into the brotherhood of the grown men,
and into all the rights {239} and privileges of the tribe. Of this
ceremony the blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is
also, either actually, or by symbol which represents an act once
literally performed, in the initiation-rite not only of the Mala Vita,
but of almost all secret societies, both civilised and uncivilised. In
the French department of Aube, when a child bleeds, he puts a little
of his blood on the face or hands of one of his playfellows, and says
to him: “Thou shalt be my cousin.” In like manner in New England, when
a school-girl, not many years since, pricked her finger so that the
blood came, one of her companions would say: “Oh, let me suck the
blood; then we shall be friends.”[239.1]
That the blood-covenant, whereby blood-brotherhood is assumed, is not
a primæval rite, is obvious from its artificial character. It has its
basis in ideas which must have been pre-existent, and which I have
endeavoured to make clear in this and the foregoing chapters. At the
same time its barbarism, and the wide area over which it is spread,
point with equal certainty to its early evolution, and to the fact
that it is in unison with conceptions essentially and universally
human. Even among races like the Polynesians and the Turanian
inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, where the rite itself may not
be recorded, there {240} are, as we shall hereafter see, unmistakable
traces of its influence on their customs.
As Society evolved, the clan-system gradually broke up over large
tracts of the earth’s surface. In the same measure as the clan relaxed
its hold upon the individual members, blood-brotherhood assumed a
personal aspect, until, having no longer any social force, it came to
be regarded as merely the most solemn and binding form of covenant
between man and man. For that purpose the gods of one or both were
frequently made party to the contract, and the blood of the
covenanters was smeared upon the idols as well as upon one another.
The deities thus continued to watch over a rite in which they had
originally taken part as members of a clan. For as the bonds of
kinship were loosened the totem developed into a god; and even so the
totem’s interest in the rite as a member of a clan developed into that
of a god as witness and avenger of the covenant. But though the
significance of the rite changed, its evolution was continuous.
Religion, like other forms of human thought and other human
institutions, has been a slow and constant growth. If the whole field
be surveyed, it will be found that there are no yawning chasms
dividing period from period, and cult from cult. Everything evolves by
processes analogous to those with which we are familiar in the
physical world. The totem, released from the bonds of kinship, and
soaring upward to the heaven of Godhead, ceases not to be worshipped
with rites appropriate only to the social reunions of the clan. True,
these rites are gradually modified; but alike by their symbolism and
by their barbarity they bear unfailing testimony to their real birth.
Such was the Hebrew practice of sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice
before the Lord, or {241} upon the mercy-seat, daubing it upon the
horns of the altar, or pouring it out at the base, and the converse
practice of sprinkling it upon the congregation, or putting it upon
the priest at his consecration. Among other nations the practice was
grosser still.
“Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice,”
by no means stood alone. The priest in Guatemala drew blood from his
tongue and other members, and anointed with it the feet and hands of
the image. And a similar custom is described by Spanish writers as
followed in both North and South America.[241.1] When Rome was at the
height of her civilisation Tibullus described the high priestess of
Bellona as lacerating her own arm with the sacrificial axe and
bespattering the goddess with her blood, and then as she stood there
inspired by the goddess with her oracle.[241.2] This doubtless is the
meaning of the passage relating the antics of the priests of Baal in
the contest with Elijah, when they leaped about the altar, crying
aloud, and cut themselves with knives and lances until the blood
gushed out upon them. Their object was not to maim or torture
themselves, but to renew their union with the god, {242} by shedding
their blood upon him. In course of time the rite would cease to be
understood, its practice would change, and then the mere torture, or
the outpouring of the blood without any care to bring it into contact
with the god, would be regarded as its object. This was perhaps the
stage at which Baal-worship had arrived in the time of Ahab. In the
Hebrew ritual it was the blood of the sacrifice and not of the
worshipper which was sprinkled, and so also in many other instances.
But then the victim was identified with the worshipper, or the latter
also partook of it by being himself sprinkled with the blood or eating
its flesh. The Scandinavian custom, for example, as delineated in the
_Heimskringla_ required that the blood should be drained into bowls,
and then with a rod or sprinkler “should the stall of the gods be
reddened, and the walls of the temple within and without, and the
men-folk also besprinkled; but the flesh was to be sodden for the
feasting of men.”[242.1] In either case the worshipper was brought
into union with the god. Elsewhere the same object is effected by the
substitution of some other substance for blood. Among the ceremonies
of purification imposed by certain of the non-Aryan tribes of Bengal
upon women after childbirth, is that of smearing with vermilion the
edge of the village well.[242.2] Vermilion is a very obvious symbol of
blood; and we shall hereafter see that, by these tribes and others, it
is its recognised substitute. Originally the well must have been
smeared with blood, and that {243} blood drawn from the offerer’s
veins. By the ceremonial union thus effected with the deity who dwells
in, or is identified with, the well, the woman would be purified.
The modes of thought portrayed in the ritual of sacrifice are entirely
analogous to those disclosed by the practices we discussed in the last
chapter. Their great aim is union with the deity. It is attained by
placing in contact with him something already part of ourselves, as
our blood, hair, clothing, or other property; or else the blood of a
victim of which we are about to consume the remainder, just as among
medical practices we found that of giving part of the patient’s food
to an animal before partaking of the rest, with the object of being
united with a healthy body. It may, indeed, be, if we were to trace
back the superstition in these medical cases, that the animal made use
of was at first a totem-beast. To investigate this, however, would
require much greater space than I have at command.
I have on an earlier page alluded to the compacts alleged to be made
with the Devil by a writing signed with the blood of the person who
enters into the contract. With this may be compared a practice said to
be sometimes followed on the Riviera, where two lovers write to one
another in their own blood in sign of fidelity.[243.1] A Breton
folktale represents the Devil as aiding the hero on condition of his
giving him a drop of his blood or a lock of his hair.[243.2] According
to an Icelandic saga, witches enter into a still closer relation with
the Father of Evil by {244} giving him of their blood to drink,[244.1]
thus constituting him their blood-brother; and the same belief seems
to be current among the Gipsies of the Danube valley, the Poles and
Esthonians.[244.2] To drink a witch’s blood was also a means of
destroying her witchcraft, and doubtless for the same reason: it
united her with her victim. Mannhardt quotes a case in Germany where,
no longer since than the year 1868, two ignorant men were sent to
prison for three months for assaulting a young woman whom they
believed to have bewitched a friend, drawing blood and compelling her
to drop it into his mouth.[244.3] But in general it is considered
quite sufficient simply to draw blood from her. According to the
Scottish prescription she should be “scored aboon her breath”--that
is, in the upper part of her face.[244.4] The superstition, of course,
has long been in decay. Merely to draw blood does not of itself
constitute blood-relationship; but the barbarous rite of the
blood-covenant having practically died out of north-western Europe,
the real reason of drawing blood has been forgotten. A similar
protection is invoked by Gipsy thieves in Servia. They make a certain
powder with which they mix drops of their own blood and put it into
the food of any one they suspect knows of their crime. In this way the
thief believes that he not merely prevents the person {245} who
consumes the mixture from betraying him, but on the other hand causes
him henceforth to cherish a friendly feeling towards him.[245.1]
More difficult of interpretation is a horrible usage of the Hurons of
North America. Unless they are belied, while torturing a prisoner to
death, they would sometimes open the aorta and mingle the blood that
gushed from it with some of their own, in the hope of being at all
times apprised of an enemy’s approach, and so assuring safety against
a sudden attack.[245.2] Let us compare it, however, with a few cases
of cannibalism. The Botocudos devoured their fallen enemies, in the
belief that they would thus be protected from the revenge of the dead
and would be rendered invulnerable by the arrows of the hostile
tribe.[245.3] The inhabitants of New Britain, notorious cannibals, eat
their enemies, and fix the arm- and leg-bones of the men at the
butt-end of their spears, thinking thus not only to acquire the
strength of the deceased owner of the bone, but also to become
invulnerable by his relatives.[245.4] When the Tchuktchis murder a man
they eat a piece of his heart or liver, in order to make his kindred
sick.[245.5] The Eskimo of Greenland do the like, because then the
relations of the murdered man will lack the courage to revenge his
death.[245.6] Even in the south of Italy it is still believed that a
murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste, or beslubber
himself with, his victim’s blood:[245.7] a superstition {246} which,
in these days, has sometimes the contrary effect of leading to his
discovery. By means of these examples we may perhaps conjecture the
origin of the widely prevalent custom of eating the dead body of an
enemy. Little doubt can at all events remain that the savage Hurons
intended so to unite themselves with their captive that they would be
secured from the blood-revenge of his kindred, and that it was against
the kindred and them only that the precaution was adopted. And if this
result could be attained by commingling the blood in a manner similar
to that of the blood-covenant, it could also be achieved by eating a
portion of the foe. Closely connected with cannibalism of the kind I
am referring to is the custom of _alumbi_ practised by several tribes
in Equatorial West Africa. It consists in serving in food to a guest
powder scraped from the skull of a deceased ancestor. “The idea is,
that by consuming the scrapings of the skull, the blood of their
ancestors enters into your body, and thus, becoming of one blood, you
are naturally led to love them and grant them what they wish.”[246.1]
In other words, a blood-covenant is entered into unwittingly by the
guest with his host; and it need hardly be said that the trick is only
played on those guests whose hearts a greedy host considers it is
worth his while to soften.
Naturally superstition extended the blood-covenant by analogy to the
lower animals, both in their relations with one another and with man,
and utilised it for human profit. Servian Gipsy thieves draw blood
from the left shoulder of a stolen beast, dry it to powder and mix the
powder with the fodder of other beasts which they intend to steal, so
as to be able to capture them without hindrance.[246.2] An {247}
Icelandic story is told of a fairy who used to send her kine to graze
with those of a peasant-farmer. One day the farmer found a fairy cow
in his stable. He cut its ear until it bled, and so appropriated the
animal, to the fairy’s great annoyance.[247.1] The story is incomplete
in not telling us what was done with the blood. It is clear, however,
that a bond of blood was created which, in the stage of civilisation
wherein the story arose, meant, as between man and one of the lower
animals, ownership. From the Arctic circle to the southern Sporades
may seem a far cry; yet it is from the island of Calymnos that we are
able to supply the missing detail. One day in the spring of last year
(1894) Mr. W. R. Paton saw a little girl, the daughter of a shepherd,
with her face besmeared with blood. Her mother told him, by way of
explanation, that the father had been marking the kids in his
daughter’s name. Further inquiry showed that it was the custom to mark
these animals by cutting their ears, every shepherd having his own
distinctive mark, that they were marked in the name of one or other
child of the family, and that some of the blood was smeared on the
face of the child in whose name they were marked.[247.2] A better
illustration could hardly be found of the manner in which the customs
of one country will throw light upon the customs and traditions of
another. Distance in space counts for naught where we are dealing with
similar conditions of culture.
This sketch of totemism, including the means of union and communion
between the clan and its totem on the one hand, and between the
individual members of the clan on the other hand, is hasty and
imperfect. Yet I hope it may {248} prove sufficient for our purpose,
the more so as the writings of Professor Robertson Smith and Mr.
Frazer, who have studied the subject with great detail, are happily
easy of access. Without, therefore, dwelling longer upon it we may
turn to glance at some of the modifications undergone by the ceremony
of the blood-covenant. A rite so barbarous would not maintain itself
unimpaired as culture advanced. Other rites are softened in course of
time; a part is taken for the whole, or a sham for the real thing; and
this is no exception. I have referred to some of the forms it has
assumed, but only to such as bear to the most casual observer the mark
and witness of the original whence they are derived. There remain to
be briefly considered some of the remoter variations.
The sacramental essence of the rite has escaped many modern
travellers. Yet it might have been thought obvious enough. It is,
perhaps, most clearly brought out where the blood is mingled with the
food of the participants. It has been well insisted on, and its
connection with the totem-sacrifice exhibited at length, by Professor
Robertson Smith. Nor, after what has been said about it in the
foregoing pages, and after the analogous superstitions discussed in
preceding chapters, is it necessary to dwell on the point here. But it
can excite no surprise that the rite should have degenerated into a
solemn meal eaten together by the persons entering into the new bond.
In early times no one would have a right to eat together save the
brethren of a clan; and on the other hand, all who ate together would,
presumably at least, be members of the same clan. Hospitality--the
relation of host and guest--would form the only exception; and
hospitality, as practised in savage and barbarous communities, may be
described as a temporary reception into the kin or family. {249} But
none save brethren habitually shared the common meal. To eat together,
therefore, would of itself be a sign, though not an infallible sign,
of kinship. Eating together is--not merely on solemn occasions, as the
sacrifice of the totem-beast, but in a lesser degree at other
times--an act of communion. The sharing of a common substance as food
unites those who partake of it in a common life: it makes them parts
of one another: they incorporate one another’s substance. This is the
significance of eating “things sacrificed to idols,” and of “sitting
at meat in an idol’s temple.” The idol is supposed to have partaken of
the meat; and those who afterwards eat of it share by that act the
idol’s life; they partake of his substance. This is the significance
of the offering of first-fruits; the bulk is holy and fit for the
worshippers’ food, because a portion, and through that portion the
whole, is first united with the god. What is true of special feasts,
and of communion with the god, holds good of everyday meals, and of
communion by the clansmen with one another. To admit a stranger into
the clan, then, it will be enough that he be allowed to partake of the
common meal. If the admission be simply for a temporary purpose as a
guest, it will take place without any extraordinary formalities. If a
permanent union be contemplated, then ceremonies must be performed
indicative of the intention, and uniting the parties in the
unmistakable bond of a common life.
One or two examples will suffice. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal have
now in many instances undergone a transformation, under the influence
of the dominant Aryan religion and organisation, from tribal
organisation and status into that of castes. The Mahilis, “a Dravidian
caste of labourers, palanquin-bearers and workers in bamboo, {250}
found in Chota Nagpur and Western Bengal,” readily admit “men of any
caste ranking higher than their own.” The person seeking admission
“has merely to pay a small sum to the headman of the caste and to give
a feast to the Mahilis of the neighbourhood. This feast he must attend
himself and signify his entrance into the brotherhood by tasting a
portion of the food left by each of the guests on the leaf which on
these occasions serves as a plate.”[250.1] The Máls of Western and
Central Bengal, another tribe which has become converted into a caste,
while still retaining many distinctly tribal practices, also admit
outsiders. The fashion among them is for the neophyte to give a feast
to the Máls of the neighbourhood, and to drink water wherein the
headman of the village has dipped his toes.[250.2] The Mysteries of
Greece and Western Asia were celebrated with the sacrifice and
consumption of the divine animal; and the persons who joined in the
ceremony entered into a brotherhood which, though in the latter times
of classic heathendom regarded as spiritual rather than literal, must
have derived its significance from a more archaic state of society,
when to partake of the totem-animal was to consummate the most sacred
rite of kinship. Among the Battas of Sumatra alliances are concluded
by the slaughter of a hog or cow. As soon as its throat is cut the
heart is torn out and divided into as many pieces as there are chiefs
present. The share of each is put on a pointed stick and roasted by
holding it over the fire. In turn the chiefs then hold up their
respective morsels, saying: “If I should ever violate my oath, I am
willing to be slaughtered like the bleeding animal which lies before
me, and to be {251} devoured like the piece of heart I am about to
eat.”[251.1] This oath, which is reported to be more than a mere form,
points back to an earlier period before the cow or the hog was
substituted for a man. In classical antiquity a blood-rite of this
kind is many times mentioned which not improbably may represent an
early form of the blood-covenant. In the oath said to have been
administered by Catiline to his fellow-conspirators, a slave was put
to death, and every one drank out of the same cup his blood mingled
with wine. The oath they swore was deemed irrevocable: it united them
like the brethren of one blood to support one another in life and
avenge one another’s death. The same is doubtless the meaning of the
act recorded by Herodotus of the Greek and Carian allies of
Psammenitus, when one of their number, Phanes of Halicarnassus,
deserted to Cambyses, the Persian invader of Egypt. They put to death
his sons in Phanes’ sight, drained their blood into a vase, which they
filled up with wine and water, and, having drunk it together, they
rushed madly but vainly on the foe.[251.2] And Diodorus Siculus
relates of Apollodorus, who aspired in the third century before Christ
to the government of the city of Cassandrea in Macedonia, that he slew
a youth to the gods, gave his fellow-conspirators the entrails to eat
and the blood mingled with wine to drink.[251.3] A relic of some such
ceremony is found in India. Among the Saráogi Baniyás, who are
reckoned of the Súdra caste, on the occasion of a marriage the
relatives only of the parties meet in a private apartment around the
figure of a Brahman, made in dough and filled with honey. The
bridegroom’s father, “armed with a miniature bow and arrows, topples
over the effigy, {252} which is then disembowelled, so to speak, of
its honey, into which all present dip a finger and suck it.”[252.1] In
the New World the bloodthirsty Aztecs ate their human sacrifices. The
Yncas, a little more human, offered and ate animals, called by De
Molina sheep. Their sacrament consisted of a pudding of
coarsely-ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the
idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim, before
distributing it to the people.[252.2] A curious rite is reported as
taking place among the Isubus, in the west of Africa, when entering
into a covenant to do some murderous or warlike deed. A pot is placed
upon the fire, and in the pot a stone, supposed to become by cooking
as soft as a plantain. It is then cut with a knife, and each of the
covenanting parties must swallow a piece, binding himself thereby to
do or abet the deed proposed.[252.3] A Danubian Gipsy saga relates the
mode of admission into a tribe. The chief eats with the candidate a
piece of salted bread, and gives him brandy in a glass. When the
brandy is drunk the glass is smashed.[252.4] Drinking, indeed, often
becomes the substitute for eating. Among the aborigines of Formosa the
manner of taking an oath of friendship is by putting their arms round
one another’s necks and drinking simultaneously from the same cup of
wine.[252.5] Among the Slavs the blood-covenant is still practised;
and the Church has taken it under her own protection. In her hands it
has become transformed into the ritual drinking of wine together. Thus
in Crnagora the comrades who are {253} about to enter into the bond of
brotherhood attend the church, where the priest awaits them. He hands
them the chalice, out of which they thrice drink wine together. They
kiss the cross, the gospels and the sacred images, and finally kiss
one another thrice upon the cheek. Afterwards the one on whose
suggestion the league is formed, gives a dinner to the brother of his
choice and adds to it some more valuable gift.[253.1]
But we have seen that an entirely different modification of the rite
early took place. The actual drinking of the blood was dropped in
favour of mixing it by inoculation,[253.2] or outwardly upon the
bleeding flesh. Among the Norsemen in later times the blood was drawn
from each party and simply allowed to flow together in their
footprints.[253.3] Herodotus describes the covenant among the Arabs on
the borders of Egypt. Blood was drawn with a sharp stone from the
thumb of either party. With a shred of each person’s robe it was then
smeared upon seven sacred stones, with an invocation to the divinities
Orotal and Alilat, whom the historian identifies with Dionysos and
Urania.[253.4] Professor Robertson Smith commenting on the passage
observes that the smearing on the stones “makes the gods parties to
the covenant, but evidently the {254} symbolical act is not complete
unless at the same time the human parties taste each other’s blood.”
And he surmises that “this was actually done, though Herodotus does
not say so. But,” he admits, “it is also possible that in the course
of time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed
sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred
stone.”[254.1] I cannot help thinking that what we have learnt in the
course of our previous inquiries may help us to the solution of the
difficulty. When Abruzzian girls hide their hairs in some secret place
of the sanctuary on vowing eternal friendship, they seem at first
sight to be performing an act parallel to that recorded of the Arabs;
and if so we need not suspect that Herodotus has omitted any feature
of the rite. Probably, however, the true explanation does not lie
here. We may suppose that the shreds torn by the master of the
ceremonies from either garment were roughly tied or twisted together
into a wisp, which was then dipped into the flowing blood of both
persons, and the blood thus mingled after the fashion of many tribes
before it was painted on the stones; or, in the alternative, that the
shred from the garment of the one person was dipped in the blood of
the other. We have had abundant evidence that a man’s clothes are
deemed a part of himself, and that what is done to them is done to
him. To dip a portion of my clothes in my friend’s blood, therefore,
is to unite me to him, to make him my blood-brother, without the
necessity of tasting his blood, or even of literally mixing our blood
together. In either way the act would be complete, and the historian’s
accuracy justified. Even less than this is necessary among other {255}
nations. A man is deemed a blood-brother if the blood of another touch
him only by accident and without any outpouring of his own blood. So
Dr. Livingstone involuntarily contracted blood-relationship with a
Balonda woman in opening a tumour in her arm, by the spurting of some
of her blood in his eye.[255.1] Similarly in the Irish saga of _The
Wooing of Emer_ we find Cuchulainn becoming the blood-brother of
Devorgoil by sucking from her wound the stone that had struck her from
his sling.[255.2] An Abruzzian prescription for epilepsy is for some
one on the first attack of the disease to strike the patient on the
ear with something of iron, so that the blood flows. The operator
becomes the “gossip” (_compare o comare_) of the person thus cured.
Here it seems to suffice if the blood simply touch the instrument
used: a much degraded form of the rite, comparable with that in the
Icelandic story of the fairy cow, and with the practice of scoring a
witch. In a variant remedy, however, a person unacquainted with the
patient bites the ear until the blood flows.[255.3]
A further modification of the rite appears in ancient Arabic
literature, whereby the blood shed is not that of one of the
contracting parties but of another human victim slain at the
sanctuary, and the hands of all who shared in the compact were simply
dipped into the gore. At first it would seem likely that the victim
was already a member of one of the clans entering into the alliance.
This was the case in the province of Zacatecas in Central America. The
victim chosen was first mercifully intoxicated to deaden his pain. It
does not appear that he was put to death; {256} but his ears were
pierced in turn by each member of the contracting clans, who rubbed
the spurting blood over his own body.[256.1] After a while, however,
the human victim would be dispensed with, or perhaps among many
nations the victim may always have been a sacred animal, originally of
course a totem-animal. So, among the Dyaks for the purpose of
reconciling two foes, or of welcoming a stranger, a fowl is killed and
its blood sprinkled over the parties and the dwelling.[256.2] In the
Chittagong Hills the Kumi and the Shendoos kill a goat or a heifer and
smear with its blood the feet and foreheads of the contracting
parties. Before doing so, however, the presiding chief takes a
mouthful of liquor from a cup and blows it over one party, blows
another mouthful over the other party and a third over the victim.
Some other ceremonies follow, including the imprecation frequently
occurring on any one who violates the compact.[256.3]
The ritual of other peoples deviates yet more from the type. The
cannibal Bondjos of Africa merely put red ochre on the arms and rub
them together.[256.4] Two men of the Limbu, a Bengali tribe of
Mongolian descent, contract brotherhood by a ceremony at which a
Brahman, or, when the parties are Buddhists, a Lama, presides and
reads mantras or mystic formulæ, while the two friends thrice
exchange rupees, handkerchiefs or scarves, and daub each other between
the eyebrows with a paste made of rice and curds. And the description
of the performance holds good of the Muriari and other tribes of the
same province.[256.5] {257} In other parts of the world the rite
further degenerates into the mere rubbing of noses, or the striking of
one another’s breasts with an exchange of names.[257.1] Our
hand-shaking is a pledge of goodwill and fidelity which, we can hardly
doubt, points to the same course of ceremonial decay. The exchange of
names, practised so frequently among savage peoples by intimate
friends, has no different effect. For the name being part of the
person, to confer it upon another and to take that other’s name in
exchange is to effect union as close as the mixture of one another’s
blood. Among the Abruzzians in Italy, as I mentioned just now, the
blood-rite is not yet extinct. It is practised in a milder form by two
girls who wish to swear eternal friendship after the manner of
maidens. Taking each other by the hand and repeating certain
prescribed rhymes, in which they pray with emphasis that the one who
breaks the bond may go straight to hell, each of them pulls a hair
from her own head and puts it on the other’s. Thenceforth they salute
one another as “Gossip,” and may safely make one another the recipient
of the most sacred confidences.[257.2]
It will readily be understood that the ceremony of the blood-covenant
cannot be thus truncated and altered in a variety of ways without a
corresponding change in the rights and liabilities, the privileges and
disabilities, entailed where the clan system is in the plenitude of
its sway. When a Dyak welcomes a stranger by sprinkling the blood of a
domesticated bird, or when two Italian girls exchange hairs, one party
to the performance is not admitted to the {258} kin of the other. No
legal tie of blood results from the ceremony. For all that, a tie is
formed. The tie of hospitality, or the tie of gossipry, is, in the
contemplation of the Italian peasant, or the Dyak, a tie involving
rights and duties similar within its limits to those of blood. So when
two Slavs enter into adoptive brotherhood, the evolution of society,
which has mollified the rude rite, has also shorn it of many of the
resulting consequences; and kinsmen of this kind often betroth their
children together while yet in the cradle, in order, we are expressly
told, to strengthen the bond between them[258.1]--a betrothal usually
impossible in archaic society, because as a rule marriage within the
kin is forbidden. But it does not come within my design to do more
than point out that these differences arise in the consequences, as
well as in the forms, of the rite, and in both cases from the same
cause--the growth of civilisation.
There is an analogous group of practices the material of which is not
the blood but the saliva. In an able and interesting paper, published
in the _Transactions_ of the International Folklore Congress of 1891,
Mr. J. E. Crombie has investigated the superstitions connected with
the use of saliva. His contention is that it is sometimes believed to
contain the element of life, that to spit upon another person is to
add to the latter’s store of life some of one’s own, and that for two
persons to spit upon one another is to effect an interchange of life.
And he refers in support of his argument to various customs, among
which may be mentioned the following. At the reception held by an
Osmanli mother after childbirth, every visitor who looks at the babe
is expected to spit on it and to {259} conceal her admiration under
such disparaging remarks as “Nasty, ugly little thing!” to show that
she does not envy or ill-wish it. Among the Masai spitting on another
expresses the greatest goodwill and best wishes. Pliny records the
classical habit of spitting on a lame man or an epileptic, the reason
given being to avoid fascination or repel contagion. For diseases of
different kinds fasting spittle is a remedy. To cite Pliny again, he
speaks of ophthalmia and crick in the neck being thus cured. Growing
pains in children are treated in the same manner. Among the Samoans,
when a man was ill his relatives used to assemble, and, after
confessing whether he had wished the sick man any evil, each of them
was required to take some water in his mouth and spurt it out towards
him. In making a bargain or contract of any kind the saliva is
employed. In Masailand the sale of a bullock is concluded by the
seller spitting on the animal’s head and the purchaser on the article
he is going to give in exchange. At Newcastle in old days when the
colliers combined for the purpose of raising their wages they were
said to spit together on a stone by way of cementing their
confederacy. So the Anses and the Wanes in making a covenant of peace
let fall into a vase each of them some of his saliva, out of which a
being was made endowed with the wisdom of them all. And Mr. Henderson
relates that in his school-days the highest pledge of faith two boys
could give to one another was to spit.[259.1]
{260}
The exigencies of a Congress-paper no doubt compelled Mr. Crombie to
shorten his list of examples. His conclusion is in harmony with the
opinions advocated in the present volume. But if those opinions be
correct we may go further than Mr. Crombie has ventured. The transfer
of saliva is more than a gift of a portion of the spitter’s life. It
is a gift of a portion of himself, which is thus put into the power of
the recipient as a pledge of goodwill. Nay, it is a bodily union with
the recipient, such as can be effected by a blood-covenant. Possibly
as Mr. Crombie suggests, it is, where an interchange of saliva occurs,
a form of blood-covenant consequent upon milder manners, like some of
the modifications we have already glanced at. Rather it seems to be a
more evanescent and less solemn, though still emphatic, form, intended
only for temporary purposes. I hope the examples I propose to adduce
will bear out this contention.
Let us first recall the uses to which we have, in previous chapters,
found saliva put. Equally with the other issues of the body, it is a
means of witchcraft whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps
done to death. In the same way it is available as a means of
compelling the love of one of the opposite sex. It is dangerous to
spit into the fire. To spit the half of a piece of bread which the
patient has been chewing, and has therefore {261} mixed with his
saliva, into a tree is in Transylvania a specific against toothache.
And to spit in certain prescribed places is a remedy for various
diseases. The natives of South America spit their coca-quids upon the
cairns in the Cordilleras; and every Basuto traveller spits upon the
pebble he is about to add to the heap outside the village he is
approaching. It is hard to put any meaning into these superstitions,
unless it be one that ignores the separation of the saliva from the
body of which it once formed a part. The _märchen_ cited in Chapter
IX., by causing the heroine’s spittle to answer for her, as if she
were present, after she has in fact fled from the ogre’s thraldom,
exaggerate the identification of the saliva with its owner to the
height of endowing it with a large measure of her consciousness and
personality. The same exaggeration is to be observed in a practice
among children in New England, doubtless derived from the old country,
of divining by means of saliva where a bird’s nest, or something else
for which they are searching, is. A boy will spit into the palm of his
hand and striking the spittle with the forefinger of the other hand
will say:
“Spit, spat, spot,
Tell me where that bird’s nest is,”
(or as the case may be); and the direction in which the spittle flies
will be that in which the search must be pursued.[261.1]
Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the
widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the
custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the
first century of the {262} Christian era, describes with great scorn a
grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle
and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle
finger.[262.1] Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross
on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative
from spells.[262.2] And over the whole of Europe it is the most
ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and
Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is
necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise,
to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents
with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it.
Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well
as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on
the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.[262.3] A visitor to
Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the
peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People
in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought
out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old
women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit
on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.[262.4]
The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the
same thing) of fairies appears, however, {263} to be only a
specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the
meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment
of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in
archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering
words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by
Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In
Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his
child.[263.1] Some such custom would seem to have been known in
Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.[263.2] When Mohammed’s
elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him
Hasan.[263.3] Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western
Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits
thrice in its face.[263.4] In Ashanti the father varies the
performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and
calling it by a name.[263.5] And in the Roman Catholic rite of
baptism--a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common
with these heathenish practices--the person operated on, whether babe
or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.
Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that
the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing
his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his
hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his
tongue.”[263.6] This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the
kissing of the pope’s toe, to express {264} mere subservience; but
other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In
north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by
the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before
punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered
inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense
of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of
his saliva.[264.1] At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the
Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in
one another’s hands.[264.2] On the other side of the continent, a
stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes
as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the
time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the
southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his
right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of
naturalisation.[264.3] Contact with the saliva thus effects union for
the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a
similar meaning {265} to the Somali rule which requires chance
passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.[265.1] If they thus unite
themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through
him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In
the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his
saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The
king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not
swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful
over his fetishes or his amulets.[265.2] And the Basuto diviners
believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose
their power and become like other mortals.[265.3] In these cases the
spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the
supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a
decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling
a drop or two of drink as a libation.
These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an
Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual
heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with
it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish,
and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of
water.[265.4] In Central America, whenever the native traveller came
to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of
travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and,
spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the
altar.[265.5] And in the last chapter I had occasion to {266} refer to
the customs of Basuto travellers, which also present the attempt at
union with the god in a form analogous to those just mentioned of the
Kafirs and Bissagos islanders.
So the custom of spitting on one’s money for luck appears to be an
emphatic way of identifying oneself with it. It is usual in England
for country people attending a market to sell, to spit on the first
money received and put it into a pocket apart; and the object is
rightly suggested in an old dictionary “to render it tenacious that it
may remain with them, and not vanish away like a fairy gift.”[266.1]
A Walloon receiving money from one suspected of sorcery bites it,
otherwise it would return to the sorcerer, together with all the
pieces in contact with it in the pocket.[266.2] The biting is
evidently a method of touching the coin with the saliva. So an Eskimo
licks anything which is given him; while in some parts of England it
is believed that to spit on a gift, such as a piece of money, is to
ensure more.[266.3] For the same reason, as noted in a previous
chapter, the Danubian Gipsy who desires to assure a maiden’s love will
obtain some of her hairs, spit on them, and then hide them in the
coffin of a dead man. A Transylvanian Saxon in a business matter,
before he pays the first money, spits on it, that it may bring him
more.[266.4] An Esthonian, if he be required to empty his purse, will
spit into it.[266.5] A Spaniard, in buying a lottery ticket, spits on
the money before handing it over, in the hope of thus securing the
winning {267} number. Others spit on the ground, put the foot on the
spittle, and only take it off on receiving the ticket.[267.1] The
Persian gamester, who always attributes losses to the Evil Eye, blows
on the cards or the dice, and feigns to spit on his money before
staking it on the game.[267.2] In France a player spits on his
chair.[267.3] The Cherokee fisherman, before baiting his hook, chews a
small piece of Venus’ Flytrap, and spits it upon the bait and the
hook, at the same time repeating an incantation addressed to the fish.
“Our spittle,” he says, “shall be in agreement,” implying, as Mr.
Mooney tells us, “that there shall be such close sympathy between the
fisher and the fish that their spittle shall be as the spittle of one
individual.”[267.4] A Girondin fisherman, having baited his hook,
spits on the worm to make the fish bite better.[267.5] In Norway the
fisherman also spits upon the bait for luck; the tradesman and the
working-man spit on the first money they take. In the Lofoden Islands
the fisherman’s wife accompanies him to the boat, and always spits in
it to bestow luck upon him.[267.6] In Upper Ogowe, in Africa, a
fetish-horn is shaken around a man to bring him luck, a certain herb
is chewed and the quid is spit out upon him; and in the same way
chewed herbs are spit upon a new-born child to preserve it from
spells. Among the Okandas of the same region, in order to assure to a
pirogue a prosperous voyage, the women come with a bouquet of leaves.
Striking the forepart of the vessel with the leaves, they make a noise
as of driving away something, and finally spit upon it.[267.7] Olenda,
the king of the Ashira in {268} Equatorial Africa, when he gave his
parting blessing to his sons and Du Chaillu, whom they were to
accompany on a journey, took a sugar-cane, and biting off a piece of
the pith spat a little of the juice in the hand of each of the party,
at the same time blowing on the hand.[268.1] In his book on the
Highlands of Æthiopia Major Cornwallis Harris describes a search for
a lost camel. The man who was sent on the search was given the rope
wherewith the animal had been fettered; but before it was put into his
hands, spells were muttered over it; and we are told that “the devil
was dislodged by the process of spitting upon the cord at the
termination of each spell.”[268.2] So in the old Roman Catholic
liturgy, when the priest puts his spittle on the ears and nose of the
person he is baptizing he says: “Effeta, quod est adaperire, in odorem
suavitatis; tu autem effugare, diabole, adpropinquavit enim judicium
Dei!”[268.3] This conjuring formula perhaps derives its value from the
blessed word _Effeta_, transliterated in our Bibles as _Ephphatha_,
used by Christ, and having nothing to do with the dislodgment of the
devil to which the latter part of the spell, like those muttered over
the camel-fetter, refers. Moreover, the dislodgement of the devil is
an incomplete explanation in both cases, as we shall see directly.
There is a remarkable method practised among some savages for quelling
a refractory wild animal when caught alive; and here, as in some other
instances, we find Western Africa in curious agreement with North
America. {269} Mr. Kane went out with a Cree Indian to hunt the
buffalo, and killed a cow which was followed by her calf. “Wishing,”
he says, “to take the calf alive, so that it might carry itself to the
camp, I pursued and caught it, and, tying my sash round its neck,
endeavoured to drag it along; but it plunged and tried so violently to
escape that I was about to kill it, when the Indian took hold of its
head, and turning up its muzzle, spat two or three times into it,
when, much to my astonishment, the animal became perfectly docile, and
followed us quietly to the camp, where it was immediately cooked for
supper.”[269.1] There is no ground for doubting the facts related by
the traveller, however we may account for them. The same procedure was
adopted by a turtle-fisher with whom Mr. Winwood Reade went sporting
on one occasion in Western Africa. A turtle was caught, and on being
hauled into the canoe the man “welcomed him by patting him on the head
and spitting down his mouth.” The turtles, however, are not always so
submissive as Mr. Kane’s buffalo-calf; for the fisherman showed Mr.
Reade a scar on his arm, which a turtle had once inflicted in
retribution.[269.2] Exactly the same prescription is adopted by the
Icelandic parson to lay a ghost. He spits down his throat, or in his
face; and the performance is said to be effective.[269.3]
In some of the foregoing illustrations protection against the Evil
Eye, or the driving away of evil spirits, has appeared as the reason
for spitting. The habit is one almost universal as a counter-charm to
witchcraft. If we look at it a little more closely we shall see that
it is ultimately {270} referable to the same idea as other spitting
customs, namely, that of effecting union between the person spitting
and the object on which his saliva falls. This may be done by spitting
upon one’s clothes, money, or other property, so as to guard them
against attack, as in the case of the gamester’s money or his chair.
In Chester County, Pennsylvania, Dr. Brinton records that boys always
used to spit on a pair of new boots; and it was important to prevent
others from doing the same: hence frequent struggles and teasing at
school.[270.1] The superstition is derived from Europe, where Reginald
Scot prescribed, centuries ago, and Pliny centuries before him,
spitting into the right shoe before putting it on: a similar practice
to that said to be still in use in some parts of Scandinavia of
spitting into one’s bed before lying down, spitting upon the floor
before rising, upon the grass before sitting down, or into a spring
before drinking from it.[270.2] Captain Binger’s host in one of the
villages on the tributaries of the upper Niger never put on his
trousers without spitting into them, and never sat down without
spitting on the seat.[270.3] A Clal-lum of North America on meeting an
enemy will spit into his own blanket if he happen to be wearing one at
the time.[270.4] In the same way a maiden in Theocritus, on repelling
a lover who attempted to kiss her, spat thrice in the breast of her
gown.[270.5] Pliny describes the Roman practice of spitting into the
lap as a method of asking pardon of the gods, when indulging in some
extravagant hope. It is {271} more probably to be assigned to the kind
of superstitions we are now dealing with. In the same chapter he
mentions the practice of spitting into one’s urine as a
counter-charm.[271.1] Parallel with the latter practice is that
alluded to by Delrio of spitting thrice on one’s hair-combings before
throwing them away.[271.2] In various parts of Italy, if a stone
become lodged in a horse’s hoof, it is usual to take the precaution of
spitting on it before throwing it away.[271.3] In addition to the
Scandinavian customs just mentioned we also find those of spitting on
throwing water out of doors, of spitting on the straw worn in the shoe
before throwing it away, into the bath-water of a new-born child, into
the water in which another has washed before washing in it oneself (a
practice not unknown in England) and others all referable to the same
purpose.[271.4] The Transylvanian Saxons used to spit on the four
corners of a new house, saying a prayer at each corner and kissing it;
and to protect their belongings from envy they spit and repeat a
certain spell every morning on stepping out over the threshold of the
house.[271.5] In Silesia it is proper to spit into the fodder given to
a horse, so as to protect it from witchcraft.[271.6] In Lesbos it is
customary to spit on beholding a handsome person (man or woman), a
sleek, well-fed horse, cow or sheep, a good milch-goat, or a fruitful
tree, {272} in order to preserve the object in question from the Evil
Eye.[272.1] In America a Negro, on turning back in a path, makes a
cross with his foot and spits in it, lest misfortune overtake him the
next time he passes that way.[272.2]
Another course is to spit on the witch. For this cause the Romans used
to spit on meeting not only a lame man, but apparently also an
epileptic; for although Pliny speaks of the latter habit as intended
to repel contagion, it is more likely a modification of an earlier
habit of spitting on the unfortunate person. In Sicily still it is the
custom to spit behind a hunchback or a sorcerer. A mother will spit at
any one who admires her child, the moment he has turned his back. And
when a woman is in the pains of childbirth, one of her attendant
friends will go to the window and spit thrice, looking sternly all
about, as if she hoped to find and reach with her saliva the witch who
is retarding delivery. The Roman nurses used to spit on the ground
when a stranger entered, or when any one looked at their sleeping
charges.[272.3] A Russian nurse, with less civilised manners, is said
to spit straight in the face of anybody who praises the babe without
adding: “God save the bargain!”[272.4] In Corsica a bewitched child is
made to spit in the witch’s mouth.[272.5] It is a Norse custom to spit
on meeting a witch. In the Gironde people sometimes spit thrice in
passing a witch’s dwelling. In Germany there seems to be a similar
practice when passing any haunted water by night. The Romans spat when
passing a place where they had incurred any danger. The intention here
is by spitting on the evil thing so to bring it on your side as to
prevent its doing you {273} any ill; and the same may be conjectured
of the incident said to occur in a Russian tale where the Devil is
made to flee by spitting upwards, and of the rite of exorcism on the
Gaboon, where the practitioner spits to right and left of the
possessed person. The Conibos of South America spit on the ground when
they meet evil spirits or persons whom they suppose capable of
injuring them.[273.1]
A third course is to get the witch to spit on her victim. This is
considered effective in the Aran Islands, where the possessor of an
evil eye is required to spit on any one whom he may have affected, and
to say: “God bless you!”[273.2] Captain Bourke mentions a Mexican case
where a horse was suffering from the Evil Eye. “The man accused of
casting the spell admitted his guilt, but said that he would cure the
animal at once. He filled his mouth with water, spat upon the horse’s
neck, and rubbed and patted the place until it was dry.” The horse
recovered in due course.[273.3] For the same reason in Italy the dust
of the witch’s footprint is flung over the person or cattle bewitched,
and the Persians scrape the mud from the sorcerer’s shoes and rub the
part affected.[273.4] The principle is that of taking “a hair of the
dog that bit you,” to which I have already sufficiently referred.
The saliva of sacred personages, as we might expect, is of much
importance. In this connection the performances of Christian as well
as heathen priests in exorcism and {274} other rites will be
remembered. The Tunguz shaman, called in to cure a sick man, “takes
the patient’s head between his hands, sucks his brow, spits in his
face, and fixedly looks at the affected part.”[274.1] A Tcheremiss
conjuror pronounces his spells over a vessel of water, beer, milk or
salt and bread, blows or spits upon the contents, and then gives them
to the invalid to drink or eat, as the case may be.[274.2] In Central
Australia the old men are the performers of all important tribal
ceremonies. They are credited with shamanistic powers; and their
treatment of disease is by spurting a mouthful of water over the
stricken member and then sucking it.[274.3] On the Paraguay River, the
Guaná medicine-man, when called to attend a patient, spits in the
course of his ceremonies strenuously on the suffering spot.[274.4]
Spitting, in fact, when performed by properly qualified practitioners,
is a powerful remedy. Vespasian is said to have restored his sight to
an inhabitant of Alexandria by spitting on his eyes.[274.5] The old
thaumaturgists of the Church were not wont to be outdone by any
one--not even by their Lord, still less by a heathen Pontifex Maximus.
Accordingly, we find Hilarion (the saint, it will be recollected, who
had so excellent a nose) repeating Vespasian’s miracle on a woman,
also in Egypt.[274.6] More purely spiritual are some other uses of
spitting. At Foochow, in China, when a family removes to a house
previously occupied {275} by another family, a priest first of all
cleanses the dwelling by spirting water from his mouth, or scattering
it direct from the bowl he carries; and on returning from a funeral
the priest stands at the house-door and spirts from his mouth water
over the members of the bereaved family to purify them, repeating as
he does so a short formula.[275.1] Among the Khonds the Meriah,
previous to his sacrifice, was paraded through the village, when hairs
were plucked from his head by the people, while some begged for a drop
of his saliva, with which they anointed their own heads.[275.2] Dr.
Wolf, when in Abyssinia, being mistaken for the new Abuna, or bishop,
was compelled to spit upon the people, and to have his feet washed
that the devotees might drink the water of ablution.[275.3] Cases like
these are ambiguous: a different and simpler interpretation may be put
upon them. In view, however, of other customs relating to saliva, we
shall probably not be straining the analogy by describing the
fundamental idea rather as the desire for union with the divinity,
than the ascription of an inherent power to his emanations.
Having now sketched the results arrived at by Professor Robertson
Smith and other distinguished anthropologists in reference to the
blood-covenant, and briefly discussed several forms of the rite, I
have endeavoured to put before {276} the reader a series of parallel
usages with saliva. This has led us to other superstitions more
closely related to those of sorcery, medicine and worship earlier
passed in review. In all these alike we have found the same ideas--the
ideas, namely, which form the core of the incident of the Life-token
and the practices it embodies. Armed with the conclusions drawn from
the consideration of the blood-covenant, we will go on to examine some
other social institutions and ceremonies on various planes of
civilisation.
CHAPTER XIII.
FUNERAL RITES.
{277}
If I have made clear the corporate character of the clan, or _gens_,
as conceived by savage thought, the reader will have understood how
completely the clan is regarded as an unity, literally and not
metaphorically one body, the individual members of which are as truly
portions as the fingers or the legs are portions of the external,
visible body of each of them. We saw in previous chapters that a
severed limb, a lock of hair or a nail-clipping, was still regarded as
in some invisible but real union with the body whereof it once, in
outward appearance also, formed part; and any injury inflicted on the
severed portion was inflicted on the bulk. The individual member of a
clan was in exactly the same position as a lock of hair cut from the
head, or an amputated limb. He had no separate significance, no value
apart from his kin. More than that: as we shall see hereafter, injury
inflicted on him was inflicted on, and was felt by, the whole kin,
just as an injury inflicted on the severed lock or limb was felt by
the bulk. This unity of the clan is constantly renewed by the common
meal, where the same food is partaken of, and becomes incorporated
into the essence of all who share it. In strictness commensal rights
belong {278} only to the kin. To eat together means to be of the same
flesh and blood, for none others could do so. Such a rule of course
came to be modified as soon as hospitality was recognised as a duty or
a privilege. But the stranger admitted as a guest to the meal became
by that act a temporary member of the kin. The rights conceded to him
so long as he remained a guest were the rights of kinship, and
entailed corresponding liabilities. He could not, however, share the
common meal in its most solemn form, namely, the totem sacrifice,
without becoming a blood-brother, and thus entering the kin as a
permanent member. In mingling his blood with the blood of the clan,
and feeding with them on the totem-animal, he became one with them as
much as if he had been already united with them in a common descent.
Abandoning his former country and kin and worship, he identified
himself with a new organism having a different domicile with different
rights and interests and a different cult.
The common meal was thus the pledge and witness of the unity of the
kin, because it was the chief means, if not of making, at least of
repairing and renewing it. And its importance is emphasised everywhere
by its repetition upon every solemn occasion, and by its forming the
centre of the entire ritual. This may be taken for granted of many
such occasions; but it may seem strange to assign it a position so
prominent in some. It is not obvious, for instance, how it can be the
most important act of a funeral. The funeral feast, however, is
probably universal; and in savage communities it is difficult to
overrate its significance. The most archaic form, if barbarity be a
test of archaism, in which it is known to us, is where the meat is
nothing less than the corpse of the departed kinsman. Cannibalism in
{279} any form excites so much horror in civilised mankind that we
hesitate to believe it is a stage through which we have all passed.
But it is certainly a custom very widely spread and characteristic of
a low plane of culture. We cannot, and we need not, now discuss
cannibalism in general. Of all the forms it has ever assumed, the most
horrible is that of the eating of the bodies of our nearest and
dearest; and that is the form we have to consider.
In considering it, and recalling, as we must, some of the repulsive
details of the rite, we cannot do better than begin by reminding
ourselves of the anecdote related by Herodotus of the Persian king,
Darius, to illustrate the power of custom. He tells us that the
monarch once called into his presence some Greeks, who were in the
habit of burning their dead, and asked them for what reward they would
be willing to devour the bodies of their parents. They replied, of
course, that nothing would induce them to do such a thing. Then
summoning certain Kalatiai, an Indian people who used to eat their
dead, in the presence of the Greeks (who were informed by an
interpreter of what was being said) he put the converse question to
them, for how much they would burn their deceased parents. They, on
the other hand, broke out into exclamations, begging him to desist
from such ill-omened language. Leaving the moral of this story to be
digested as we proceed, we may review some of the other accounts by
ancient and modern travellers of the practice under consideration. The
Father of History ascribes it not only to the Kalatiai. Among Indian
peoples he mentions the Padaioi, concerning whom he furnishes us with
a little more detail. The Padaioi were a race of nomads alleged to
feed on raw flesh. When any of the tribesmen fell sick they were {280}
mercilessly put to death by their most intimate associates, by which
expression is perhaps meant their fellow-clansmen. The men were killed
by the men, and the women by the women. They sacrificed all who
arrived at old age, and feasted upon them. But these were not
numerous, because they slaughtered every one attacked by disease. That
even the latter were intended to be eaten is clear from the reason for
putting them to death, namely, that otherwise as they were wasted by
sickness their flesh would be utterly spoilt.[280.1] In this respect
they differed for the worse from the Massagetai, the Scythian nation
whose fierce and masculine queen overcame the mighty Cyrus. They only
ate the aged. Those who died of disease they stowed away in the earth,
accounting it a misfortune that they had not come to be sacrificed.
The kindred of an old man would assemble and immolate him, as well as
other animals at the same time; and then boiling the flesh all
together they would feast upon it. The Issedones, also Scythians, seem
to have been somewhat less savage, for we gather that they waited
until a natural death removed the aged. When once a man’s father was
dead, the rite, however, was not different from that of the
Massagetai, save that we are told they preserved the skull, set it in
gold, and used it at their solemn yearly festivals.[280.2] Herodotus
is not the only writer of antiquity who attributes this kind of {281}
cannibalism to savage tribes. The geographer Strabo likewise records
of the Derbikes in the Caucasus that the men of seventy and upwards
were put to death and eaten by their nearest kinsmen, but the women
were buried; for they never used for food the flesh of any female
animal. And the ancient Irish, more savage, he tells us, than the
Britons, considered it praiseworthy to devour their dead fathers,
though he admits very fairly that his authority for the statement is
not decisive.[281.1] In the Middle Ages Marco Polo found a tribe in
Tartary, whose capital he calls Chandul, who used to cook and eat men
condemned to death. Those who died by natural means, on the other
hand, they did not eat.[281.2] It is doubtful whether he refers to
criminals as thus eaten; and he is silent as to who joined in the
feast. No such ambiguity attaches to the usage reported by the
Venetian adventurer as existing in the kingdom of Deragola on the
island of Sumatra. The savages of this kingdom, when any kinsman fell
sick, used to send for their shamans, who made incantations to
ascertain whether he would recover. If the answer were favourable,
nature was left to do her best; if unfavourable, they sent for the
professional slaughterman, by whom he was suffocated and cooked. The
next of kin then assembled and devoured him, afterwards enclosing his
bones in a coffin, which was put away in a mountain cavern.[281.3]
Less authentic are the accounts preserved by the author of Sir John
Maundeville’s travels concerning the East Indian islands. He
attributes a similar practice to the inhabitants of islands he calls
Caffolos and Dondun. Of that of Rybothe he relates that a dead body is
given {282} to the birds of prey, but that the son of the deceased
makes a feast, and serves the flesh of the head to his particular
friends, making a drinking cup of the skull, which he uses for the
rest of his life.[282.1] Other mediæval writers ascribe the same
species of cannibalism to Tibetan tribes.[282.2]
These statements have received confirmation in modern times from the
reports of travellers among tribes in the lower savagery almost
everywhere. As in the older writers, there is some ambiguity on the
question who was expected or entitled to partake of the horrible food.
A comparison, however, of the accounts clearly shows that it was
originally confined to the clan, though possibly the melancholy
satisfaction of uniting oneself with the departed in this manner may,
in different places, have been extended by special favour to intimate
friends not belonging to the kin, or, by a modification of tribal
customs, to the entire local organisation. Not to weary the reader I
have selected in a note at the foot of the page a number of references
to cases where the rite is reported to exist in full force;[282.3] and
I now propose {283} to examine some changes and adaptations of its
form down to its latest survivals in the folklore of civilised Europe.
But first of all we may take note of some observances among the
American aborigines, which, though not connected with funerals, afford
us a glimpse of the sacramental {284} character of a feast upon a
kinsman’s body. The Totonacas, a tribe of the Mexican Chichimecs, used
to slay periodically three of their children and mix the blood with
certain herbs from the temple-garden, and the sap of the _Cassidea
elastica_, into the consistency of dough, which was called _toyoliayt
la quatl_ (Food of our Life). Every six months all adults of the tribe
were required to partake of it as a kind of Eucharist. And the
compiler, from whom I take the account, sarcastically adds: “They thus
partook of human blood without previous miraculous transformation.”
The Cacivos of Peru are also said to sacrifice and eat a voluntary
victim every year.[284.1] The Aztecs and the peoples allied to them
are infamous for the hideous barbarity of their human sacrifices; and
indeed it is incalculable what benefits were conferred on these
unhappy nations in the softening of manners and the refinement of
character, not to mention the salvation of immortal souls, when the
sanguinary rites of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli were swept away,
to make room for the Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass and the hecatombs
of the Holy Inquisition. Among the Aztecs a prisoner of war was
esteemed his captor’s son. He was generally sacrificed at the feast of
Xipetotec, deity of the goldsmiths, and Huitzilopochtli. The body was
returned to the captor, who cut it up and divided it between {285} his
superiors, relations and friends, not tasting it himself, because “he
counted it as the flesh of his own body.” He gave the skin to be worn
for twenty days by another, who went about during that time collecting
gifts for the captor. At another festival of Huitzilopochtli a dough
statue of the god was made with certain seeds and the blood of
children. It was formally “killed” at the conclusion of the
ceremonies, by means of a flint-tipped dart, and then cut up and eaten
by the male part of the population. This was called the killing and
eating of the god.[285.1] Nor can we doubt that we have in these rites
vestiges of totemistic feasts at which the totem-victim was not
improbably represented by a kinsman.
We return to funeral feasts. The Fans of Equatorial West Africa have
repeatedly been charged with this kind of cannibalism, but, while
asserting it of their neighbours, have always denied it of themselves.
The solution seems to lie in the fact that they sell their dead to the
Osebas, who are recognised as a kindred race, and buy in return Oseba
bodies for the purpose of consumption.[285.2] In short, repugnance to
eat their own relatives has sprung up, without entire abandonment of
anthropophagy. A curious compromise between burial in the earth and in
the bodies of living members of the tribe appears in an account of the
ceremonies on the death of a recent king of the Bangala. He was cut in
two lengthwise, and another man slain for the purpose was treated in
like manner. One half of the one, and a half of the other, were then
put together, so as to {286} form an entire man, and buried. The
remaining halves were stewed with manioc and bananas and eaten with
other sacrifices.[286.1] In some cases the flesh of the dead is only
eaten in the delirium of grief, or as a mark of particular affection.
The latter is related to have frequently happened on the demise of a
Hawaiian chief.[286.2] For the same reason mothers, among the
Botocudos of South America, ate their dead children.[286.3] While in
California the Gallinomero burnt the body immediately life became
extinct; and the frenzy of survivors reached such a pitch that one of
them has been seen to rush up to the pyre, snatch a handful of blazing
flesh, and devour it on the spot.[286.4] A method of consuming the
corpse adopted by the savage tribes inhabiting the valley of the
Uaupes, a tributary of the Amazons, is described by Dr. Wallace. Their
houses are generally built to accommodate the entire community; and
the dead are buried beneath the floor. About a month after the
funeral, Dr. Wallace tells us, the survivors “disinter the corpse,
which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan, or oven,
over the fire, till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most
horrible odour, leaving only a black carbonaceous mass, which is
pounded into a fine powder, and mixed in several large _couchés_
(vats made of hollowed trees) of a fermented drink called _caxirí_;
this is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished; they
believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to
the drinkers.” Similar customs are reported of {287} other South
American peoples.[287.1] Among the Koniagas, an Eskimo tribe of Alaska
and the adjacent islands, when a whaler dies, one method of disposing
of his body is to place it in a cave. There his fellow-craftsmen
congregate, before setting out upon a chase. They take the body out,
immerse it in a stream and then drink of the water.[287.2]
Speaking generally, the practice of eating a dead kinsman, which is
probably the earliest form of cannibalism, is also the earliest form
to be abandoned. In the South Sea Islands, for example, where the
custom of eating strangers has continued until recent years, the flesh
of one’s own tribesmen is rejected, save in rare instances, such as
that of Hawaii. In the Banks’ Islands it is occasionally eaten, in
order to establish communion with a dead man for magical purposes: a
practice likewise known in Australia.[287.3] But though the custom
changes, the sacramental idea underlying it is retained; and the
problem would be how to effect the necessary union between the dead
and the living without partaking of the body. On the island of Vate,
in the New Hebrides, the aged were put to death by burying them alive.
A hole was dug, and the victim placed within it in a sitting posture,
a live pig tied to each arm. Before closing the grave, the cords were
cut; and the pigs were afterwards killed and served up at the funeral
feast.[287.4] In this way they seem to be identified with the corpse.
In Europe, where flesh is not consumed ceremonially at {288} the
funeral feast, other means even more expressive are taken to ensure
the same object. In the Balkan peninsula the rites are very
significant. In Albania, cakes of boiled wheat and other ingredients
are carried in the funeral procession, and eaten by the mourners upon
the grave as soon as it is filled up. All expressions of sorrow are
repressed as sinful while it is being eaten; and as each person takes
his share he says: “May he (or she) be forgiven!”[288.1] In some parts
of the peninsula the cakes bear the image of the dead. They are broken
up and eaten upon the tomb immediately after interment, every mourner
pronouncing the words: “God rest him!”[288.2] At Calymnos, among the
Greeks, the funeral, as elsewhere, takes place on the day of death.
Kólyva cakes like those in Albania are then made, and are guarded in
the house of the departed all night, with two lighted candles, by a
watcher who must not go to sleep. The next day they are carried first
to the church and then to the tomb, on which they are set to be
distributed. The eating of Kólyva cakes is repeated with similar
ceremonies on the third, ninth and fortieth days, and again at the end
of three, six and nine months and of one, two and three years, after
death.[288.3] It is impossible to {289} mistake the meaning of these
practices: the image of the dead upon the cakes, the acts of carrying
them in the funeral procession and eating them upon the grave,
elsewhere the night-watching, and everywhere the cessation of mourning
and the pious exclamations during eating, all admit of but one
interpretation.
The ritual eating of special food is used at funerals in many
countries. Pulse is not mentioned as an ingredient of the Kólyva
cakes. It was, however, an important part of the funeral feasts of the
Romans; and Mr. F. B. Jevons, commenting on Plutarch, has quoted
Porphyry’s statement, that Pythagoras bade his followers “abstain from
beans as from human flesh,” and the reason mentioned by Pliny as
entertained by some for the prohibition, namely, that the souls of the
dead are in them.[289.1] The various taboos and other superstitions
connected with beans point to the correctness of this reason, and tend
to show that pulse was in some way identified with human flesh. In the
French provinces of Berry and the Marche, a plate of beans, or of
dried peas, always figures among the provisions of the funeral
banquet.[289.2] In the Marches of Italy the family on returning from
the burial-ground sit down together to a large plate of beans.[289.3]
In some parts of Friuli a soup of beans is distributed; in other
places cakes of barley, or grated cheese. Elsewhere a loaf or cake of
_pan di tremeste_, composed of rye and vetch, is given, with wine or
brandy, to all who come to chant the rosary and other prayers over the
corpse on the evening of death.[289.4] In the neighbourhood {290} of
Rimini the feast consists of a broth of chick-pease.[290.1] But the
form assumed by the ritual food is usually either cakes or fermented
liquor, frequently both. Cakes called _wastê_ are eaten in the
Ardennes.[290.2] In Wales it seems that a hot plum-cake fresh from the
oven used to be handed round to the guests, broken in pieces, not cut
with a knife. In Sardinia, on the seventh or ninth day after death,
savoury cakes are prepared and sent hot from the oven to all the
relatives and neighbours, and to all who have joined in the weeping
for the dead, or accompanied the corpse to the tomb. The family then
gathers at supper, celebrating the virtues of the deceased between the
mouthfuls of food and their tears.[290.3] Dough-nuts, among the Turks,
are sent to friends and to the poor on the third, seventh, and
fortieth days after the funeral; and prayers for the soul are
requested in return.[290.4] Bread carried in the funeral procession is
distributed to the poor by the Tamil population of Ceylon.[290.5] On
one of the Banks’ Islands, “when a great man dies, the people from all
the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to the place
where the dead man lies and eat them there.”[290.6] Among the
Abyssinians the poor receive from the banquet pieces of bread and of
the entrails and liver of the animals which are served up.[290.7]
{291} The Tcheremiss of the Kama and the Volga provide small pancakes,
which they eat as soon as the grave is filled up, every one depositing
three morsels upon the grave, saying: “This is for thee.”[291.1]
In several of the cases cited the eating of the dead has evidently
undergone a natural transformation into eating with the dead. But
wherever a special food is used it may be suspected to represent the
flesh of the deceased. In the funeral cakes of the Balkan peninsula
the identity is manifest. I shall try to show that it is the same
nearer home. In various parts of England and Wales a custom of giving
small sponge-cakes to the guests is yet in force. In Yorkshire and
elsewhere the last part of the funeral entertainment before the
procession started for the churchyard was to hand round glasses of
wine and small circular crisp sponge-cakes, whereof most of the guests
partook. These cakes were called “Avril-bread.” The word _Avril_ is
said to be derived from _arval_, succession-ale, heir-ale, the name of
the feasts given by Icelandic heirs on succeeding to property.[291.2]
Now, although it might be suspected that the avril-bread represented
the corpse, we should not be justified in holding that it did without
more direct evidence. That evidence can fortunately be supplied, from
a funeral which took place near Market Drayton in Shropshire on the
1st {292} July 1893, as described by an eye-witness. “The lady,”
writes Miss Gertrude Hope, “who gave me the particulars, arrived
rather early, and found the bearers enjoying a good lunch in the only
downstairs room. Shortly afterwards the coffin was brought down and
placed on two chairs in the centre of the room, and the mourners
having gathered round it,” a short service was then and there
conducted by the Nonconformist minister, as is frequently done, before
setting out for the grave. “Directly the minister ended, the woman in
charge of the arrangements poured out four glasses of wine and handed
one to each bearer present across the coffin, with a biscuit called a
‘funeral biscuit.’ One of the bearers being absent at the moment, the
fourth glass of wine and biscuit were offered to the eldest son of the
deceased woman, who, however, refused to take it, and was not obliged
to do so. The biscuits were ordinary sponge biscuits, usually called
‘sponge fingers’ or ‘lady’s fingers.’ They are, however, also known in
the shops of Market Drayton as ‘funeral biscuits.’” These cakes are
not exactly of the shape mentioned by Canon Atkinson as used in
Yorkshire, but that is of no importance, because their shape varies
with the place. What follows is enough to show that the scene
described is not a solitary one. “The minister, who had lately come
from Pembrokeshire, remarked to my informant that he was sorry to see
that pagan custom still observed. He had been able to put an end to it
in the Pembrokeshire village where he had formerly been.”[292.1]
Here, it will be observed, the ritual food is handed across the
coffin. Pennant, writing early in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth
century, says that in Wales “previous to a {293} funeral, it was
customary, when the corpse was brought out of the house and laid upon
the bier, for the next of kin, be it widow, mother, sister or daughter
(for it must be a female), to give, over the coffin, a quantity of
white loaves, in a great dish, and sometimes a cheese, with a piece of
money stuck in it, to certain poor persons. After that, they present,
in the same manner, a cup of drink, and require the persons to drink a
little of it immediately.” The Lord’s Prayer was then repeated by the
minister, if present; and the procession started.[293.1] We can have
little doubt that this was the same custom. A hundred years earlier
still it was witnessed by John Aubrey at Beaumaris. He mentions it as
occurring when the corpse is brought out of doors. The food consisted
of cake and cheese, with “a new Bowle of Beere, and another of Milke
with ye Anno Dni ingraved on it, & ye parties name deceased.” And Dr.
Kennett, who annotated his manuscript, refers to a practice at
Amersden, in Oxfordshire, of bringing to the minister in the
church-porch after the interment a cake and a flagon of ale.[293.2] In
Wales and the Welsh border the custom underwent a curious development.
It became, for some cause, a profession to eat this funeral meal, and
thereby, as was believed, to become responsible for the sins of the
deceased. Aubrey describes one of these Sin-eaters, as they were
called. “One of them I remember lived in a Cottage on Rosse-high way.
(He was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal.) The manner was
that when the Corps was brought out of the house and layd on the
Biere, a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the
Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips
bowle) full of beer, wch he was to drinke up, and {294} sixpence in
money, in consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all the
Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they
were dead.”[294.1] The profession of Sin-eater and the full ceremony,
pagan enough in all conscience, have vanished from the earth only
within the lifetime of persons yet living. The most modern account of
it was given by Mr. Matthew Moggridge of Swansea to the Cambrian
Archaeological Association at Ludlow in the year 1852. He said that
“when a person died, the friends sent for the Sin-eater of the
district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of
the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an
incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up
all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s.
6d.” (a modest fee for the service, all things considered, though it
had risen since Aubrey’s day), “and vanished as quickly as possible
from the general gaze; for as it was believed that he really
appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom
he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly detested in the
neighbourhood--regarded as a mere Pariah--as one irredeemably lost.”
Mr. Moggridge specified the neighbourhood of Llandebie, about twelve
or thirteen miles from Swansea, as a place where the custom had
survived to within a recent period.[294.2]
{295}
Thus in our own country we find the relics of a ritual feast, where
food is placed upon the coffin, or rather upon the body itself, or
handed across it, and so in a manner identified with it, and where it
is expressly believed that by the act of eating some properties of the
dead are taken over by the eater. Let us now turn back for a moment to
the East. At a Hindu funeral in Sindh the relations, in the course of
the march to the place of burning, throw dry dates into the air over
the corpse. These, we are told, are considered as a kind of alms, and
are left to the poor. On returning to the house, after the cremation,
the first thing done is to offer the couch, bedding, and some clothes
of the deceased to a Karnigor who is in attendance. A Karnigor is a
low caste-man,--according to some, the offspring of a Brahman father
and a Sudra mother. North of Hydrabad his appearance and conduct
resemble those of the servile, south of that city those of the
priestly, order. The condition of the gift is, that the Karnigor must
eat a certain sweetmeat prepared for the occasion. If he refuse, the
ghost of the dead man would haunt the place. This means that the
funeral rites would have been incomplete. The Karnigor has, therefore,
the game in his own hands; and, rejecting the first advance, he
demands not only all the articles of dress left by the departed, but
fees into the bargain. “When his avarice is satiated, he eats four or
five mouthfuls of the sweetmeat, seldom more, for fear of the spirit.
After this, he carries off his plunder, taking care not to look behind
him, as the Pinniyaworo [head mourner] and the person who prepared the
confectionery {296} wait until he is fifteen or twenty paces off,
break up all the earthen cooking pots that have been used, and throw
three of the broken pieces at him, in token of abhorrence.”[296.1] Can
we fail to be reminded of the Sin-eater? Nor is this the most
remarkable parallel to be found in India. The burning of the corpse of
a king of Tanjore who died in 1801, and of two of his widows chosen
for the purpose by the Brahmans, is described by the abbé Dubois. He
states that a part of the bones which escaped the fury of the flames
was reduced to powder, and this powder, having been mixed with boiled
rice, was eaten by twelve Brahmans. The reason for the proceeding is
put by the abbé almost in the very words I quoted in the last
paragraph. The act “had for its object the expiation of the sins of
the defunct persons: sins which, according to common opinion, are
transmitted into the bodies of those whom the allurement of gain has
induced to surmount the repugnance that a food so detestable should
inspire. Moreover, people are persuaded that the money which is the
price of this base condescension is never of any profit to
them.”[296.2] If any doubt could remain as to the meaning of the Welsh
custom, this would be enough to dissipate it. But in truth it is not
needed; for we have in Europe other usages that set the meaning in the
clearest light. In the Highlands of Bavaria, when the corpse is placed
upon the bier, the room is carefully {297} washed out and cleaned.
Formerly it was the custom for the housewife then to prepare the
_Leichen-nudeln_, or Corpse-cakes. Having kneaded the dough, she
placed it to rise on the dead body, as it lay there enswathed in a
linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the
expected guests. To the cakes so prepared, the belief attached that
they contained the virtues and advantages of the departed, and that
thus the living strength of the deceased passed over, by means of the
corpse-cakes, into the kinsmen who consumed them, and so was retained
within the kindred.[297.1] Here we find ourselves at an earlier stage
in the disintegration of tradition than in the Welsh practice. The
identification of the food with the dead man is not merely symbolic.
The dough in rising is believed actually to absorb his qualities,
which are transmitted to those of his kin who partake of the cakes;
and--consistently with the requirement that the relatives eat the
cakes--the qualities transferred are held to be not evil but good
ones: the living strength, the virtues and so on of the dead are
retained within the kin. Not less striking than the resemblance just
pointed out between the objects of the Hindu and the Welsh rites, is
that between the objects of {298} the Bavarian custom and that of the
Tariánas and other tribes of the Uaupes for consuming the pounded
remains of their kinsmen in their caxirí. In both cases, indeed,
there is more than resemblance. The objects are absolutely the same;
and it is inconceivable that the European usages wherewith we are
dealing had any other origin than a cannibal feast, the material of
which was the very body of the deceased kinsman.
It is natural to inquire whether any trace of this cannibalism lingers
among the Irish, who alone among European races have been charged with
it. There is a trace, though it must be admitted a fainter trace than
we have found on this side of Saint George’s Channel. Yet I think when
we compare it with the latter we shall conclude that it is enough, and
therefore that in all probability Strabo’s accusation was not
unfounded. The drinking which goes on at a wake is of course a relic
of the funeral feast. It takes place in the presence of the corpse. A
foreigner, describing a nobleman’s obsequies which he witnessed at
Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles the Second, states that
the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay,
and “during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of
wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the deceased. This
being finished six men took up the corps, and carried it on their
shoulders to the church.”[298.1] I am not aware whether in Ireland the
whisky is thus brought into immediate contiguity with the bier. In
Connaught it was the custom about a generation ago, and probably still
is, to place a plate of tobacco cut in short lengths, and a plate of
snuff on the breast of the corpse; a boy stood at the door with a
{299} basket of pipes, and each person helped himself according to his
inclination.[299.1] Whatever may be the case as regards tobacco, I am
informed by eye-witnesses that it is still an Irish custom to lay a
plate of snuff on the breast of the dead; and everybody who attends
the funeral is expected to take a pinch. This ceremony must have
assumed its present shape in recent times; but it cannot be doubted
that it represents the more archaic consumption of food or drink
similarly placed.
I mentioned just now that dates were thrown, at a funeral in Sindh,
over the corpse, and left to the poor. Before the funeral at Calymnos,
figs and other fruit contributed by the relatives of the deceased, are
carried from his house to the churchyard and there distributed among
the poor.[299.2] In classic times the Greeks and Romans used to offer
to the manes of the departed on the ninth day after the burial; and on
the steps of the grave-monument a simple meal of milk, honey, oil and
the blood of the sacrificed animals was prepared. If the tomb were
large enough, there was a separate apartment provided, where the meal
was consumed. As numerous guests were impossible in the limited space
ordinarily available, the wealthy used often to distribute flesh-meat
among the people, and in later times money.[299.3] To-day, in the
Abruzzi, when a {300} maiden dies, comfits and money are distributed
during the procession from the house to the church, and in some places
also from the church to the graveyard, just as they are distributed
during a wedding procession. This perhaps has no significance for our
present inquiry; but the funeral feast which follows the burial must
not be left unnoticed. Its material is provided by the most intimate
friend of the dead,[300.1] who sometimes joins in it. No one else is
admitted beside relatives. The table whereon the coffin has rested is
the one used for the meal, and if not large enough, others are added
to it to extend it. On returning to the house the party, after an
interval of solemn silence, begin by telling their beads. The nearest
of kin, one after the other, hand round the food, and the life and
merits of the defunct are the invariable subject of conversation. They
repeatedly press one another to eat and drink. This and the talk about
the departed, from the way they are mentioned, appear to be important
parts of the ceremony. The utensils must be returned empty and
unwashed to the friend who has furnished the meal. Nothing eatable may
be sent back: it must be finished by the servants and those who have
taken part in the preparations for the funeral. Nor may the meal be
taken in the usual room.[300.2]
Several things are noteworthy in the Abruzzian feast; and there are
few readers with the ceremonies we have {301} been discussing in their
minds, who will not come to the conclusion that where the solemn
banquet is spread on the table where the corpse has previously lain,
where there is mutual urging to eat and nothing is permitted to be
left, and where the virtues of the deceased are discussed as part of
the rite, there is a presumption that the feast was originally upon
the flesh of the dead. Among the Masurs, though we hear nothing about
the requirement to finish the food, special food is provided, which we
already know as a suspicious circumstance. Combined with the other
details I am about to give, I venture to think it affords fairly
strong evidence as to the original character of the mortuary feast.
The body is placed on a table in the middle of the room, and the
neighbours and relatives assemble round it. Buns and schnaps are
placed on the table for the men; and the schnaps is drunk in turn out
of the same glass. The women drink it with a spoon from a bowl.
Suitable religious songs are sung. After the funeral, schnaps
thickened with honey is served to the women on the same table; and at
the feast which follows, presumably on the same table, groats mingled
with honey are a special dish. In some districts the body is covered
with a table-cloth, which is afterwards put over the funeral bakemeats
on the table; and no one can take them until it is removed. At the
meal all drink in brandy to the everlasting rest of the
departed.[301.1]
In classical times and classical lands, as we saw, the tables were
spread at the tomb. At Argentière, in the department of the Hautes
Alpes, France, this continues to be done immediately after the burial;
and the table of the curé and the family is placed upon the grave
itself. The dinner {302} ended, every one, led by the next of kin,
drinks the health of the departed. Here the situation of the chief
table is unambiguous. We should hesitate to say so much of the
classical feast, or of the custom prescribed by the ritual of the
monastery of Saint Ouen at Rouen, where after the abbot’s death a
repast of spices and wine was given in his chamber.[302.1] Neither the
celebration of the formal meal in the death-chamber nor at the grave
is conclusive of itself. When once the practice of eating the dead was
abandoned, and only a symbol of the loathsome food remained, the
meaning of the symbol would tend to pass out of memory, and, according
to varying circumstances, sooner or later the symbol itself would
undergo change and disappear. The totem-feast, on the other hand, of
which it may be plausibly maintained the cannibal feast on the dead
kinsman was originally part, shorn of its most savage detail, would
remain in full vigour. So far as it was a funeral observance it would
receive a specific development with appropriate surroundings, and its
totemistic character would gradually be forgotten. Moreover, it is
possible that the cannibal feast was by no means universal at any
time. However this may be, the totem-feast being a sacramental rite, a
communion between the living members of a clan and their totem, one of
the most obvious extensions of the sacramental idea would be that of
communion with the dead. The latter would be supposed to join in the
feast and partake of the food: a portion of which would accordingly be
reserved for them. And as the deceased member of the clan would be
supposed to be sojourning at his grave, it would of course be greatly
for the convenience of all parties that the feast should be held {303}
there, and the portion meant for him deposited in or upon the tomb.
Death had not relieved him of the wants of life; but it had released
him from certain of its limitations. The conditions of his existence
were changed. While in some directions he had been deprived of power,
in others he had become possessed of greater power than during life;
and all beings possessed of extraordinary power were regarded with
distrust. Savage man felt himself capricious, revengeful, envious,
cruel. The feelings he experienced, the feelings he saw manifested in
his fellow-men, he attributed to the mightier creatures of his
imagination. Now life was, in his contemplation, so much more
desirable than death, that the dead would naturally have been supposed
to envy the living. Here was a distinct cause of ill-will. The dead
man must, therefore, be kept from haunting the survivors. To that end
his funeral rites must be fully and properly performed, and every
precaution taken both to persuade him to stay at a distance and to
prevent him from finding his way back. One means to do this was to
provide him with food in or upon his sepulchre. He would thus be
induced to abide there, or, as the case might be, to take his
departure straight thence to the dwelling-place of spirits, and not to
linger among the kindred who were anxious to be rid of him. This
belief gave rise to the repetition of feasts of the dead, for the
needs of the dead must be constantly supplied. Besides, to keep them
in good humour would be to enlist their sympathy and their help; and
who could know how much that help might mean against enemies, or in
the chase, or in the operations of agriculture? Thus, not only love
for the departed, and the desire for communion with them, but every
other motive concurred on the one hand to provide {304} them with
food, and on the other hand to consult their convenience in
facilitating their enjoyment of it. The reasoning was not free from
inconsistencies, because there were cross-currents of tradition. All
of them did not flow from the habit of looking upon the dead as
abiding permanently in their graves. Probably this was the original
faith. But the belief in a separate realm of souls grew up as culture
advanced, and disturbed the earlier tradition. The possibility of
return to life by a new birth into the kin was another opinion that
affected it. And the doctrine of Transformation must, from the most
archaic times, have intervened as a modifying influence, for
transformation implies locomotion. The savage did not always trouble
himself to reconcile inconsistencies. His simple credulity accepted
them all. We need not wonder; for even the mind of civilised and
educated man is built in watertight compartments: whereof no reader
will want examples.
The meal at the grave, then, or in the death-chamber, may be a meal at
which the dead man is one of the convives. Instances are numerous in
the lower culture. Some of them, like that of the Tcheremiss Tartars,
have been mentioned; and I select a few more, out of many, further to
illustrate the practice. It will be convenient to begin with the
Tchuvash, whose seats are on the middle reaches of the Volga, because
their customs, if correctly reported, seem, like those of the
Tcheremiss, to show the eating of the dead passing over into the
eating with the dead. After burial in the public cemetery the
relatives deposit on the grave some cakes and a piece of cooked fowl,
saying, like the Tcheremiss: “This is for thee.” The old clothes of
the deceased are thrown over the tomb; and the rest of the cakes are
eaten by the funeral escort, {305} by whom the repast is regarded as
taken in company with the dead. On the fortieth day after burial an
animal, designated by the deceased in his lifetime for that purpose,
is killed. Libations are made, and half the flesh with other food is
deposited on the grave. This is devoured, amid lamentations of the
relatives, by dogs; “for it is believed that the dogs become the
dwelling-place of the souls of the dead. The feasting then begins, and
eating and drinking continue until all the supplies are
exhausted.”[305.1] The Tchuvash appear to be the same people of whom
Hanway, in the middle of the last century, relates that they throw
their dead into the open field to be devoured by dogs, of which many
run wild, and some are kept for the purpose.[305.2] If the dogs become
the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead by eating of the memorial
banquet, we are presented with a result comparable with that obtained
by the Bavarian Highlanders and the Tariánas; and we may conjecture
that in earlier times the deceased was eaten by the kin.
Immediately before the burial of an Ainu, millet-cakes and wine are
handed round to the assembled relatives and friends. Each person
“offers two or three drops of the wine to the spirit of the dead, then
drinks a little, and pours what is left before the fire as an offering
to the fire-goddess, all the time muttering some short prayer. Then
part of the millet-cake is eaten, and the remainder hidden in the
ashes upon the hearth, each person burying a little piece.” After the
body has been interred these fragments are carried out of the hut and
placed together before the eastern window, which is always a sacred
spot.[305.3] When a {306} dead Chinaman is put into his coffin, a
quantity of food is put before him, and afterwards removed and eaten
by his family; and again at the burial eatables are taken from the
house and set on the tomb, and subsequently brought back to be
consumed at the funeral meal.[306.1] Moreover, at each of the
oft-repeated memorial feasts for the departed, some of the food is
first placed before the ancestral tablets, or the tombs, and then
eaten by the family; and it is believed that the spirits partake of
its “essential and immaterial elements.”[306.2] In the funeral rites
of the Dyaks food is set before the dead ere the coffin is closed. It
is allowed to stand for about an hour by the corpse, and is then
devoured by the next-of-kin.[306.3] On the death of a Hungarian Gipsy
he is carried out of the tent or hut. It is now the duty of the
members of his clan to offer to the deceased gifts, especially food
and drink, which they lay beside the body and later on themselves
consume.[306.4] The Sàkalàva of Madagascar bury in a family
cemetery. “A cup and a plate are placed by the side of the coffin, and
every now and then the friends go in large numbers, and taking rice
and rum with them, hold a feast in these cemeteries, and believe that
the spirits of their dead ancestors and relatives come and join
them.”[306.5] The Hillmen of Rájmahál on the death of a chief, hold
a feast where a part of the provisions is dedicated to their god and
to the spirit of the deceased, and thus becoming forbidden {307} to
the survivors, is thrown away.[307.1] On Florida and San Cristoval,
and possibly other of the Solomon Islands, at the funeral feast a bit
of the food is thrown into the fire for the departed, with the words:
“This is for you.” On Lepers’ Island and the Banks’ Islands, the
feasts are repeated for a long period; and a portion is always set
aside with the words: “This is for thee.” On the Banks’ Islands,
indeed, at ordinary meals when the oven is opened a morsel of food is
put aside for the dead with the words: “This is for you; let our oven
be well cooked.”[307.2] The tribes about Lake Nyassa, in Central East
Africa, hold a memorial feast two or three months after the death, of
which the spirit of the deceased is considered to partake.[307.3]
Among some of the Senegambian tribes, when the grave is filled up, a
fowl, with its legs tied, is laid upon the mound, within reach of some
water and boiled rice, which are placed at the head of the grave. If
it eat any of the rice it is killed, the tomb is sprinkled with its
blood, the flesh cooked and partly eaten, partly left for the dead.
This ceremony is repeated at every renewal of the customary
lamentations.[307.4] The Koiari tribe of New Guinea cook food at
stated times, formally present it to the dead man, and then eat
it.[307.5] The Dorah tribesmen on the same island hold a feast two or
three months after the death of a first-born son, when the skull is
produced, adorned with a wooden pair of ears and nose and with eyes of
coloured {308} seeds. The head thus prepared is honoured with a
portion of all the dishes.[308.1] So on the island of Nagir, in Torres
Straits, at the death-dance held three months after the death of a man
whose skull was afterwards sold to Professor Haddon, the skull being
prepared and adorned was placed on a mat in the midst of the assembly.
Food was provided for the immediate relatives, and laid before the
skull. The feast then began; and it must have been accompanied by much
enjoyment, for we are told that all got very drunk.[308.2] Perhaps
this was the way in which the Issedones used the skulls of their dead.
The same intention is doubtless to be understood of the memorial
feast, or Karmantram ceremony, of the Eastern Kullens of Madura, in
Southern India. After a meal, to which the relatives are invited, in
the evening a bier, followed by the kin, is carried with music to the
grave. The dead man’s wife’s brother digs up the corpse, and removes
the skull, which he washes and smears with sandal-wood powder and
spices. He then seats himself on the bier, holding the skull in his
hand, and is carried without music to a shed in front of the house of
the deceased, where the skull is set down, and the relatives weep and
mourn over it until the following noon. The succeeding twenty-four
hours are given over to drunken revelry. This, it will be observed, is
in the presence or immediate neighbourhood of the skull. It is
afterwards carried back by the person who brought it from the grave,
seated again on the bier and accompanied by music. Arrived once more
at the grave, the son or heir of the deceased, at whose expense the
rite is performed, burns the skull and breaks an earthen pot. The
relatives on {309} returning bathe and then feast together,[309.1]--an
ordinary conclusion to a funeral ceremony. Here, if I am right in my
interpretation, only drink is offered--by no means a solitary
instance. The Livonians used to stand round a corpse drinking,
inviting it to partake, and pouring for that purpose a part of the
liquor over it. The pagan Lapps sprinkle the grave with brandy, part
of which is reserved for the mourners at the funeral feast. However,
they also kill the reindeer that draws the body to the burial-ground,
eat the flesh and bury the bones, but in a separate coffin.[309.2]
Among the Peguenches in the south of Chili, when the body is deposited
in the graveyard, but before it is put into the ground, a feast is
prepared. Every one who partakes, before eating throws a morsel of
food towards the corpse, crying out “_Yuca-pai_.”[309.3] At the other
extremity of the Western Continent the Eskimo sometimes pay a formal
visit to the sepulchre taking pieces of deerskin and fat. Of the fat
they eat a portion, standing round the grave, and talking the while to
the dead. Then each of them lays a piece of deerskin (still covered
with the fur) and a piece of fat under a stone, exclaiming: “Here is
something to eat, and something to keep you warm.”[309.4] The feast
with the dead is common among the North American tribes. It is eaten
at the grave. A fire is kindled; and each person before eating cuts
off a small piece of meat which he casts into the fire. The smoke and
smell of this, they say, attracts the {310} ghost to come and eat with
them. Nor only so. The practice of setting aside a portion of their
food for the ghost whenever they eat or drink is continued, sometimes
for years, until they have an opportunity of sending out this memorial
with a war-party, to be thrown down on the field of battle, when their
obligation to the departed ceases.[310.1]
Among the examples I have given, the skull of the dead man often
appears at the festivity. Other representatives of the deceased are
also found. The Tcheremiss _kart_, or shaman, wears the garments of
the deceased; and when the feast is over it is he who gives what is
left to the dogs.[310.2] The Teng-ger tribes of Java accord the most
conspicuous position to a mannikin about a foot and a half high, made
of leaves, dressed in the clothes of the dead and ornamented with
flowers.[310.3] The practice of making images of the dead and
conjuring the spirits into them is not an uncommon one; and wherever
it exists we are justified in assuming that the images would not be
allowed to go without their due share of nourishment at proper times.
The meaning of some ceremonies may not be quite so clear; as when one
tribe of Tartars, having eaten the favourite horse of the departed,
sticks up its head on the grave; or another tribe, killing and eating
a fat mare, hangs her skin from the branches of the tree that shades
the tomb.[310.4] The southern tribes of British Columbia often killed
the horse of the deceased and decked the grave with its skin.[310.5]
The Yoruba of West Africa collect the bones of the fowls and sheep
eaten by the guests, and of the other {311} victims sacrificed, and
place them over the grave.[311.1] The Kamtchadales eat a fish in
memory of the departed and throw the fins into the fire.[311.2] The
Kirghiz Tartars burn on the tomb the bones of the horse they have
eaten--usually the favourite of the dead man.[311.3] Animal bones,
burnt and unburnt, and especially the head of an ox, are frequently
found in opening barrows in this country, pointing to practices on the
part of the prehistoric inhabitants analogous to these.[311.4]
Probably, in many cases at least, they are the remains of a banquet
common to the living and the dead.
The drink bestowed on the dead in some of the foregoing instances
perhaps represents blood; and blood, it will be remembered, was the
share of the totem-god in the sacrificial feasts. Nothing could,
therefore, more plainly bespeak the meaning of these funeral rites. In
some cases, indeed, as we have seen, the blood is sprinkled upon the
grave. So among the Wanyika the corpse when buried holds in its hand a
piece of skin taken from the head of a goat or cow which has been
killed for the feast, and the grave is sprinkled with the blood before
it is filled up.[311.5] The dead body of a Yoruba is spattered with
the blood of a he-goat slain to propitiate the phallic deity, Elegba;
but whether the mourners partake of the flesh we are not told: most
likely they do.[311.6] In the same way wine was sprinkled on a Roman’s
grave--a ceremony of which we find the relic, after cremation began to
be practised, in the formal extinction {312} of the ashes by the
outpouring of wine. The rites of the Todas and Kotas of the Neilgherry
Hills are complicated; and only a portion of them need be noticed in
this connection. The corpse is burnt; but a piece of the scalp and
some of the finger-nails are first cut off and preserved between two
strips of bark as relics. On the anniversary, or some other suitable
day, buffaloes are sacrificed; the relics are rubbed with their blood
and ceremonially burnt; and their flesh is eaten by the Kotas.[312.1]
We may dismiss funeral banquets with one further observation. The
intention of sharing a common meal with the dead is by no means
abandoned at the completion of the funeral ceremonies. The feasts, as
in several cases we have already noted, are repeated at intervals.
Indeed, at all festivals when the entire kin is assembled the deceased
members are conceived as assembled with them; a portion of the food is
set aside, a portion of the drink is poured out for the departed. The
cult of the dead in this form survives into the higher phases of
civilisation. At various times in the year, particularly at Halloween,
all over Europe, the tables are set, the doors are opened, and the
ghosts are invited to partake of the fare provided by their
descendants and relatives; and it is believed that they actually come
and enjoy the food prepared for them, and warm themselves on the
hearth, which, in the days of their flesh, they used to tend, and
around which they used to gather, when work was over, to eat their
frugal fare, and to rejoice one another with social converse and the
performance of domestic rites. A tender custom! and one that pleads
pathetically for its continuance as a witness to {313} a faith in
comparison wherewith Christianity is a thing of yesterday, a faith not
less true than Christianity itself in its recognition and its
consecration of some of the deepest and most vital emotions of our
nature.
There are other ways of forming a sacramental union with the dead.
Among the Tolkotins of Oregon, who burnt their dead, the widow was
compelled to pass her hands through the flame and collect some of the
liquid fat exuding from the body, wherewith to daub herself. The
Modocs appear to have smeared their persons with the blood of any of
their kindred who died violent deaths.[313.1] On the Gilbert Islands
“the nearest relations,” whatever that expression may include, are
said to rub themselves with the saliva which escapes from the mouth in
the agonies of death.[313.2] Other savages rub themselves with the
liquid flowing from the putrefying corpse. There is no need to dwell
on this loathsome custom. It is reported of tribes extending over a
considerable area of the earth’s surface, namely, of the Krumen near
Sierra Leone, the Antankàrana in Madagascar, the aborigines of
Victoria, the Andrawillas in East Central Australia, the Koiari of New
Guinea, the Laughlan Islanders between New Guinea and the Solomon
Islands, the inhabitants of New Britain and the Similkameens of
British Columbia. Of the last we are told in so many words that they
believe that in this way some portion of the deceased becomes
incorporated in them.[313.3] Nay, some {314} peoples, like the Banks’
Islanders and the Aron Islanders imbibe these fluids; but the Nias
Islanders perform the duty by deputy in the persons of their wretched
slaves, who according to one account are suffocated in the
process.[314.1] Of a party of Tasmanians who were deported to Barren
Island we are told that they were seen to collect the ashes of the
dead after burning, and smear a portion of them every morning on their
faces, singing the while a death-song and weeping.[314.2] Among the
Digger Indians of California the relatives are said to cover their
hands and faces with a mixture of tar and the ashes of the
deceased.[314.3] And the Correguajes Indians of New Granada burn the
bones when the wild beasts have removed the flesh, and use the ashes
as a pigment for painting themselves, “the relatives having the first
right to its use.”[314.4] Earlier in the chapter I mentioned a method
of dealing with the dead body of a Koniaga whaler. An alternative
method is to cut it into small pieces and distribute it among the
other whalers, each of whom rubs the point of his lance upon it, so to
unite the weapon with the skill and power inherent in the deceased,
and preserves the morsel as a permanent talisman.[314.5] Sometimes a
Tchuktchi, tired of life, is put to death by his kinsmen at his own
desire. All who take part in the ceremony bathe their faces and hands
in his blood. They then burn his body on a funeral pyre, {315}
standing around it and praying the departed not to forget them.[315.1]
A Dyak rite identifies the victim at the commemorative festival with
the deceased. The corpse is put into a temporary coffin for
preliminary burial until the _Tiwah_, or Feast of the Dead, can be
held. On that occasion a slave, or prisoner of war, is provided and
dressed in the usual clothing of the deceased. Thus clad, the victim
is wounded by all the assembled guests and finally killed. The
priestesses in attendance then daub the relations of the deceased with
the victim’s blood, “so to reconcile them with the departed and to
give them to understand that they have now fulfilled their obligation
towards his wandering soul.” After a night of debauchery the remains
of the dead man and the victim are placed in one permanent coffin, in
the family dead-house; but the victim’s skull is ranged with others
outside.[315.2] The details of this ceremony are unmistakable, though
it is right to say that the victim is now regarded simply as an
attendant on the departed in the other world.
Other means are also adopted. Among the Andaman Islanders, over a
large part of the Southern Ocean, in various districts of America, and
perhaps among the Wahuma of East Africa, certain of the bones, either
whole or calcined, are worn. Naturally the widow is, above everybody,
expected to do this. Among the Mosquitos of Central America and the
tribes of Honduras the widow took up the bones after burial for a year
and carried them for another year, sleeping with them at night. Not
until she had ceased to do this was she permitted to marry
again.[315.3] In {316} Australia the Kulin widow seems to have carried
the head and arms of her husband for an indefinite time, if not for
the rest of her life.[316.1] Among the Kurnai the mummified corpse was
carried about by the family in its migrations for years under special
charge of the parents, the wife or other near relatives, and finally,
after it was buried or stowed away in a hollow tree, the father or
mother, if living, would carry the lower jaw “as a memento.”[316.2]
The Kiriwina widow in New Guinea hangs from her neck her husband’s
lower jaw richly ornamented with glass and shell beads.[316.3] The
Mincopie widow is said to wear the entire skull.[316.4] Among the
natives of the western districts of Victoria the widow of a chief by
his first marriage wears a bag containing some of his calcined bones
for two years, or until she marries again; and she also gets the lower
bones of the right arm entire, which are carried in an opossum skin
for the same period. Conversely, a widower wears his wife’s calcined
bones in a bag of opossum-skin for twelve moons, and then buries
them.[316.5] The Taw-wa-tins and Tacullies of British Columbia, and
the Tolkotins of Oregon, compel a widow to wear her husband’s calcined
bones for three years, during which time her life is made a burden to
her by his kindred, so that widows marrying again have been known to
commit suicide rather than undergo the suffering a second time.[316.6]
{317} In many cases the bones are permanently worn by the relatives of
the deceased: in other cases, only for a time. Sometimes they are
expressly recognised as charms; but always they seem to be something
more than mere memorials of the dead.[317.1]
The skull and various other bones are yet more frequently kept in the
dwelling.[317.2] The instances to which {318} reference is given in
the note are, with the exceptions of the Issedones in antiquity and
the Krumen of the Grain Coast and the Andaman Islanders among modern
savages, confined to the islanders of the Pacific Ocean, and certain
tribes of North America, Honduras, and the northern parts of South
America. Where the circumstances permit, as in the case of the
Ichthyophagi and other ancient Ethiopian tribes, the old Egyptians,
the Chinese, the Solomon Islanders, the Banks’ Islanders, the
islanders of Ambrym in the New Hebrides, and the Yorubas of the Slave
Coast, the corpse is kept either permanently, or for a lengthened
period in the house unburied.[318.1] And after burning, the ashes are
similarly kept by several of the aboriginal peoples of Bengal and
Assam, until the time arrives when they can be solemnly committed to
the river or put into the family grave.[318.2] The Wakonda burn the
corpse; and the ashes, collected into a jar are preserved by the
family.[318.3] Along the Skeena River in British Columbia the natives
cremated their dead, and sometimes hung the ashes in boxes to the
family totem-pole.[318.4] Like certain Tibetan tribes, and perhaps
{319} the Issedones, some of the native Australians used the skull for
a drinking-cup.[319.1]
A custom more widely spread than that of keeping the bones, because
attended with much less inconvenience, is that of taking and keeping
some of the hair, nails or pieces of garments of the dead. It may,
indeed, be said to prevail through the greater part of the world; nor
has the custom of preserving a lock of hair cut after death as a
memorial of the departed yet vanished from among ourselves. An acute
writer in the _Contemporary Review_ some years ago related that in the
West Indian island of St. Croix those who washed the dead prior to
burial always took a lock of hair, a garment, or at least a fragment
of a garment, in order to prevent the spirit from molesting them for
venturing to tamper with the place of its late habitation. And he
adds: “At first thought, it seems most natural to believe that the
surest way to prevent any visit from a dead man is to take nothing of
his with you. But not so. A liberty has been taken with his body by
one who is probably a total stranger, hired perhaps for the express
purpose of preparing him for his coffin. Now, if you take something of
his, something that is either a part of him, or has been on his
person, you in a sense identify yourself with him; you establish as it
were, a kind of relationship, and thus the liberty you take with him
must seem much less to him.”[319.2] The reader who has followed the
argument of {320} the preceding paragraphs and the preceding chapters
will have no difficulty in admitting that here the true theory has
been touched. The motive that prompts an English mother to wear in a
brooch a lock of hair and the likeness of the darling she will see no
more on earth is the same as induces a Friendly Islander to pass a
braid of the hair of his dead kinsman through his own ear, and to wear
it there for the rest of his life. It is the same as leads a Mosquito
widow to carry about her husband’s bones and to sleep with them.
Consciously or unconsciously, the idea at the root of these and
similar practices is that of sacramental communion with the dead. In
the West Indian Negro practice just cited we see the application of
this idea to the protection of the person who may perchance have
incurred the wrath of the dead. Thus applied, it is analogous to that
of counteracting witchcraft by uniting the witch in blood-brotherhood
with her victim.
Hitherto we have only considered methods of effecting communion with
the dead based on the appropriation by the living of some part of the
corpse. This, however, implies the reciprocal possibility of communion
formed by means of a gift of some portion of the living body to the
{321} dead. Nothing more nor less I take to be the real meaning of the
practice, forbidden to the Hebrews, of cutting oneself for the
dead.[321.1] We find this practice in its most complete form among the
Orang Sakei, a people whose chief seats are about the river Siak on
the eastern side of Sumatra. There, at a funeral the kindred, making a
cross-cut with a knife on their heads, drop the blood on the face of
the corpse. Individuals are found who by repetition of this mutilation
have lost all the hair from their heads.[321.2] They have indeed, in
the words of the Deuteronomist, made a baldness between their eyes for
the dead. At Tahiti, in Captain Cook’s time, mourners were in the
habit of wounding themselves with knives and clubs consisting of canes
or pieces of wood set with sharks’ teeth, and allowing the blood and
tears to drip on small cloths which they threw under the bier. As
described by Mr. Ellis, some half century later, the performance was a
little different. Both sexes cut themselves. The females wore short
aprons of a special kind of cloth, which they held up to catch the
blood until it almost saturated them. The aprons were then dried in
the sun and given to the nearest surviving relatives as proofs of the
affection of the donors, and were preserved by the bereaved family as
tokens of the esteem in which the departed had been held.[321.3] It is
easy to see that this may have been a modification of the rite as it
prevailed in Captain Cook’s day, and that both may have been derived
from a rite similar to that of the Orang Sakei. In Australia the rite
is found both in its original and its {322} degraded forms. When the
body is placed in the ground the practice of several tribes is that
the mourners leap into the grave in turn, and are there cut on the
head with a boomerang, so as to allow the blood to fall over the
corpse. Among the tribes of the Murray river, the kindred of the
deceased, assembled round the corpse, or at all events in its
presence, used to lacerate their thighs, backs and breasts with shells
or flints until the blood flowed in streams. After burial the women
visited the grave at stated intervals, by night or in the early
morning, there to renew their wailings and lacerations. With other
tribes it is enough for the mourners to gash themselves, or be gashed
by others, in sign of grief: the process of ceremonial decay has
caused the need of bringing the blood into contact with the body of
the deceased to be no longer recognised.[322.1] The Mosquito Indians
lacerate and bruise themselves until they bleed in the dead man’s
hut.[322.2] The Bororó women in Central Brazil, at the festival for a
dead man, cause their limbs to be scratched until the blood flows, and
allow it to drip into the basket containing the bones.[322.3] Four
aborigines executed for murder at Helena, on the head waters of the
Missouri, in December 1890, were mourned by two squaws. One of the
squaws cut off two of her fingers and threw them into the grave. The
other gashed her face. Both caused the blood to flow into the grave,
and had previously scalped their children.[322.4] In another case
{323} of which a traveller in the early part of the present century
was a witness, the mourners’ blood was made to flow over the dead man
and over the food that was buried with him. But, though we have
sufficient testimony to the archaic form of the custom among the North
American peoples, that form is far from universal. More usually they
are content with simply wounding themselves, careless where the blood
may fall.[323.1] On the occasion of a burial among the Battas the
wives of the dead not only weep and howl, but scratch their faces and
bodies until the torn skin hangs down in places, and the blood streams
on the earth.[323.2] When an Abyssinian corpse is about to be removed
to its final resting-place some of the mourners “frantically grasp the
bier, as if wishing to retain it by force; others, convulsed by the
throes of agony and despair, rend their clothes, tear their hair,
lacerate their faces and necks with their nails, so that the blood
trickles down in streams.”[323.3] The Abyssinians call themselves
Christians; but in this respect they have hardly advanced beyond many
benighted pagans, like those already mentioned, or like the
Gallinomero of California who burnt the bodies of their dead, and
howled and wounded themselves the while in a manner, we are told, too
terrible for description.[323.4]
Nor is mere cutting and wounding all. Many savages deem it necessary
to inflict permanent mutilations on themselves, like the squaws of
Montana just mentioned. Among {324} the Fiji Islanders, when a king
died, each of the women cut off a finger-joint. These were hung upon
the eaves of the royal house. The amputation of a finger-joint was a
common sign of mourning; and poor people made a business of it,
receiving payment from the relatives of the dead in exchange for their
severed members.[324.1] In numerous cases of mutilation, as of
laceration, however, the evidence is wanting that the amputated
member, like the blood, was brought into contact or proximity with the
corpse. In such the rite is probably in a decayed form. The mere
wounding or amputation had come to be looked upon as enough. With
regard especially to amputation the process is clear. As the totem
developed into a god the idea of sacrifice evolved in like measure
from sacramental communion into a gift, a present to propitiate an
offended being, a substitute for the votary himself who had deserved
death, or (as in the instance of Admetos) whom the divinity was
calling out of life. To save themselves from death, or from calamity,
men offered up something of less value than their own lives, or than
that whose loss or injury they dreaded, but still something of value
and importance. Thus, as Dr. Tylor recalls, mothers in the southern
provinces of India will cut off their own fingers as sacrifices lest
they lose their children; and golden fingers are sometimes
offered--“the substitute of a substitute.”[324.2] At length a virtue
is attached to the mere abnegation. To deprive oneself of what is held
dear, or what is essential to enjoyment, or even to life, is in itself
of merit, {325} quite apart from any thought of benefiting the deity.
The shedding of blood, or the amputation of a finger, for the purpose
of communion with the dead would follow a parallel course, and would
gradually acquire virtue alone as a means of testifying to the
affection and the grief of the survivor, without bringing the survivor
into ritual union with the departed.
In the closest connection with wounding and mutilation for the dead,
is the cutting, tearing or shaving of the hair. We have already
studied gifts of hair to the dead; and if our conclusions as to them
be correct, we must also conclude that the cutting or tearing of the
hair as an expression of mourning is a relic of that custom which led
Hecuba to lay her grey locks upon Hector’s grave and Achilles to
bestrew the body of Patroklos with his shorn tresses. Dr. Wilken
contends that the intention alike of wounding, of mutilation and of
the gift of hair is the dedication of oneself to the dead, a
consecration of the entire person, a pledge of ultimate reunion. That
it is so in some cases seems clear. But this dedication must in a far
greater number of instances be made repeatedly to quite different
personages who have stood during life in a variety of relations to the
mourner. Where only wives devote their hair to their dead husbands and
are not allowed to marry a second time, things would arrange
themselves easily in the next world. But if they shed their blood, or
shear their locks also for fathers and brothers, for kindred and
friends all round--nay, perhaps for another husband or two,--then one
would imagine that even savages might anticipate awkward contingencies
yonder. The truth is that the practice has sprung from a lower plane
of culture than is supposed in a theory of self-dedication and {326}
future reunion. We know little of the belief in a future life
entertained by the Tasmanian aborigines. From what little we do know
it is safe to say that the Tasmanian woman who threw her hair upon the
grave of her mother or her child, had no thought of self-consecration
to the dead or of meeting again in another world. But she cherished
the belief that by means of her hair she could still be in some sort
of union with one she had loved. In short, the radical idea of all the
practices we have discussed in the present chapter is the same,
however much it may be modified with rising civilisation and the
gradual evolution of the conception of deity and spirit and the life
after death. It is grounded in the conviction of the continued, though
mysterious, oneness of a body with its severed parts, and the absence
of any conception of spirit apart from a visible and tangible material
existence.
Other funeral rites point in the same direction. We will confine our
attention to one. The custom of burial in a common grave or at least
in one general cemetery, is very widespread. It is found in all
quarters of the globe. The reason is given by Sir Richard Burton in
describing the practices in Sindh. “They believe that by interring
corpses close to the dust of their forefathers, the _ruha_, or souls
of the departed, will meet and commune together after death.”[326.1]
This is a belief that could not have arisen, save at a time when no
sharp division had been drawn between body and spirit. Mr. Crawfurd
says: “When a Javanese peasant claims to be allowed to cultivate the
fields occupied by his forefathers, his chief argument always is that
near them are the tombs of his progenitors. A Javanese, as I have
remarked in another place, cannot endure to be removed {327} from
these objects of his reverence and affection: and when he is taken ill
at a distance, begs to be carried home, at all the hazards of the
journey, that he may ‘sleep with his fathers.’ The bodies of some of
the princes who died in banishment at Ceylon, I perceive, were, at
their dying request, conveyed to their native island.”[327.1] I need
not dwell on the practice itself of burying the kindred in one place.
It is well known, and even among ourselves is not destitute of force,
appealing as it does to our most sacred feelings. As little need I
dwell upon the belief underlying it. But some of the modes of giving
effect to it may detain us for a few moments.
Even if already buried in another place the Sindhi and their
neighbours, the Yusufzais of Afghanistan, will exhume the bones and
bring them home for a fresh burial.[327.2] So do the natives of the
Gold Coast, even though years have elapsed since the death.[327.3] Dr.
Brinton tells us that “the custom of common ossuaries for each gens
appears to have prevailed among the Lenâpe”; and he quotes Gabriel
Thomas as relating that “if a person of note dies very far away from
his place of residence, they will convey his bones home some
considerable time after, to be buried there.” The Nanticokes buried
their corpses for some months, and then, taking up the bones, they
cleaned them and deposited them in a common ossuary. When they removed
to another place these bones were carried with them.[327.4] Common
ossuaries were very usual among the North American tribes; and in the
Ohio mounds is evidence that the {328} custom dates back to a
considerable antiquity.[328.1] These are only a few of the examples
that might be given. It is thus by no means necessary that the entire
body should be buried in the common ground: the bones only were
sufficient. But sometimes it is not practicable to bury the whole
skeleton; nor is it necessary. If what is done to a detached portion
of the body be done to the whole, all that is necessary is to make a
selection. The bones usually chosen are those of the skull; the
reasons for the choice being probably those which determine the choice
of the skull as a keepsake, according to a custom considered a few
pages back. When the Samoans made war at a distance from their homes,
they brought back, in returning, the skulls of their dead to the
ancestral graves.[328.2] Among the villagers of the Wanyika, in the
highlands of Eastern Africa, the head is dug up some time after
interment and sent to the capital to be buried, for there was formerly
the general cemetery of the whole tribe, and there still its councils
are held.[328.3] It is the custom of the Greeks and the Orthodox
Albanians, as of the Bretons and other European peoples, to dig up the
bones after a certain period of burial, wash them in wine, and deposit
them in an ossuary. But, because the Albanians lead a migratory life,
a large proportion of the male population dies abroad. “The bones of
these wanderers are afterwards collected and sent home; or, at any
rate, a portion of them--a skull or a single bone--is brought back to
their native place.”[328.4] Among the {329} ancient Romans a bone of
such as died abroad or in war was sent home to the relatives for
burial. This usage was expressly recognised by a law of the Twelve
Tables which abolished in all other cases the pre-existing custom of
cutting out a bone in order to bury it when the rest of the body was
burnt.[329.1] At the cremation the hot ashes were extinguished in
wine, collected by the relatives and deposited in an urn in the
grave-chamber. At Kalna, near Calcutta, is a place called Samáj Bati,
where a bone of every deceased member of the family of the Rajah of
Bardwan is deposited.[329.2] Various tribes of Bengal, among which are
the Santals, Oraons and Garos, ultimately commit some of the burnt
fragments of bone to the river, where they are carried down by the
current to the far-off eastern land whence, if we may trust the
national traditions, their ancestors originally came, thus “uniting
the dead with the fathers.” Instances, we are told, have been known of
a Santal “son following up the traces of a wild beast which had
carried off his parent, and watching, without food or sleep, during
several days for an opportunity to kill the animal, and secure one of
his father’s bones to carry to the {330} river.”[330.1] The Khási of
Assam, on the other hand, place the ashes in the family
bone-receptacle; and it is worthy of note that those of husband and
wife are never placed in the same, because they belong to different
clans, and the ashes of the children are put in that of their mother.
Major Godwin-Austen says “that the collection of the bones into one
vault, as it may be termed, is done under the impression that the
souls of the departed may all mingle together again in one large
family without trouble or suffering. The idea of a member of a family
being a wanderer in the other world, cut off from, and unable to join,
the circle of the spirits of his own clan is most repugnant to the
feelings of a Khási or Sinteng.” Consequently great efforts are made
to recover, even after the lapse of many years, the calcined bones of
any member of the gens who may have died at a distance.[330.2] Some of
the Garos, neighbours of the Khási, seem to follow this custom, while
others put the ashes into the river like the Santals.[330.3] The
Bhumij of Bengal inter some of the unconsumed fragments of bone at the
foot of a tulsi-plant in the courtyard of the dead man’s house, and
the rest in the original cemetery of the family. “The theory is that
the bones should be taken to the village in which the ancestors of the
deceased had the status of _bhuinhárs_, or first clearers of the
soil; but this is not invariably acted up to, and the rule is held to
be sufficiently complied with if a man’s bones are buried in a village
where he or his ancestors have been settled for a tolerably long
time.”[330.4]
Dr. Henrici brought from the Little Popo region of West {331} Africa
to Berlin some Negroes, among whom was one who was a great favourite
in the explorer’s family. Unfortunately he died; and his brother, who
was with him, cut off, before burial, “a lock of hair and some
finger-nail of the dead man to send to his parents in Africa in proof
of his death.”[331.1] Not merely in proof of his death was this done,
as the newspaper reports; for here we have what is called “the Yoruba
custom of Ettá.” It is practised by the tribes of the Slave Coast.
When a man dies away from home the greatest exertions are made by his
family to obtain something belonging to him, to be buried with the
usual rites in his native place. Clippings of the hair and nails are
usually carried home by his companions, if he have any. But these do
not constitute an irreducible minimum; for if they cannot be obtained,
a portion of his clothing is, as we might expect from our study of
other superstitions, enough.[331.2] So among the Dyaks (who, it will
be remembered, have family mortuaries), if any one be murdered, eaten
by a crocodile, or suffer some such misfortune, so that his body
cannot be found, all his clothing obtainable is tied up in a bundle
and buried.[331.3] Similarly, if a Khási corpse cannot be recovered,
as would happen, for example, if he were drowned in one of the large
rivers in the plains, his kinsmen assemble on some prominent rock or
hill overlooking the low country. One of them, taking in his hand some
money-cowries, “and looking towards the site of the accident, shouts
out the name of the deceased and calls on him to return; his spirit
having been supposed to do so, they proceed to burn the cowries, which
are symbolical of his bones, and any clothes {332} of the deceased
they may possess.” The ashes are placed in the bone-depository.[332.1]
When a Chinaman dies in battle, or at a distance from home, and his
body cannot be obtained, an effigy of paper or wood is made, his soul
is summoned to enter it, and it is then buried by his family with all
the usual obsequies, as if it were his body.[332.2] In Samoa, if it
were impossible to recover the body, or at least (as we have seen) the
skull, there was still a method left of performing the all-important
rites for the dead. The relatives would go to the battle-field, or, if
the man had died at sea, to the shore, and, spreading a cloth or fine
mat, would watch until some reptile or insect crawled upon it. They
would then quickly enclose the creature, take up the mat and bury it
in the proper manner, as if they had the corpse.[332.3] The luckless
insect is, in fact, identified with the departed, in accordance with
the beliefs discussed in an earlier chapter.
Here, though the subject be far from exhausted, we may terminate our
inquiry concerning funeral ceremonies based on the conception of
sacramental union, on the one side with the survivors, on the other
side with the forefathers of the clan. They afford ample evidence that
death, as the most solemn and mysterious fact of our existence, has
exercised the thoughts of men from the remotest ages. When they arose
the idea of a soul or spirit, as distinct from its corporeal tenement,
had hardly yet been evolved. Reason, as well as feeling, could do no
otherwise than cling to the bodily relics of the dead. And still it
clings, even in the highest plane of culture. And still--whatever
hopes may linger in the recesses of the mind of reunion, in {333} some
brighter and more lasting state of being, with those whom we have
loved--we cannot but cherish the relics left to us of their bodily
presence and think of the departed as yet about us while we hold these
treasures; and there is consolation, albeit a dreary one, in the
expectation that when we can hold these treasures no longer, the dust
which has been dearest will be that which mingles with our own.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARRIAGE RITES.
{334}
Marriage, or sexual union of a more or less permanent character,
from the intimate connection which it creates, has obvious analogies
to the admission of a new member into a clan. In early stages of
culture it was not, however, deemed to constitute admission into the
clan; and to the present day, in English law, husband and wife, though
united by the closest of all ties, are not reckoned among the next of
kin to one another. Still it inaugurates a new relationship, not only
as between the immediate parties, but also as between their respective
kindred. As doing so, it is an occasion on which the consent and
concurrence of the kindred are required, and it is appropriately
solemnised by rites bearing a close resemblance to the blood-covenant.
An examination of some of these rites will be useful in strengthening
our apprehension of the sacramental ideas of savages, and will help to
complete our view of the savage conception of life.
Among several of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal a curious ceremony is
practised. It is known as _sindúr_ (or _sindra_) _dán_, and consists
in the bridegroom’s marking his bride with red lead. This ceremony is
the essential part {335} of the entire performance, which renders the
union indissoluble, in the same way as the putting on of the ring in
the marriage service of this country. The _sindúr_, or red lead, is
generally smeared on the bride’s forehead and the parting of her hair,
but sometimes on her neck. It is usually done either with the little
finger or with a knife.[335.1] In either case this detail is
significant, because it points to the origin of the custom. There can
be no doubt that vermilion is a well-recognised symbol of blood. I
have already mentioned the primitive usage of daubing the stone which
was both god and altar with the blood of the sacrificed victim.
Everywhere in India the idol, whether a finished simulacrum or a rude
unchiselled stone, is dashed with vermilion. Sometimes the object of
worship is a tree; and its stem in the same way is streaked with red
lead. Sir William Hunter lays it down that the worship of the Great
Mountain, the national god of the Santals, “is essentially a worship
of blood.” Human sacrifices were common, until put down by the
British. At the present day, “if the sacrificer cannot afford an
animal, it is with a red flower or a red fruit that he approaches the
divinity.”[335.2] Nor is red as a symbol of blood confined to India.
We do not need to go further afield than the Roman Catholic Church, or
even certain sections of the English Church, to find red worn in
ecclesiastical ceremonies on the day of a martyr’s commemoration,
expressly as an allusion to the outpouring of that martyr’s blood. The
use of the colour in the wedding ceremony has reference also to blood.
{336} Among the Dom, the Muchi, the Sánkhári and other Bengali
tribes red is the bridal colour;[336.1] as it is likewise in China, at
least where the bride is a maiden.[336.2] In Ukrainia at a certain
stage of the proceedings a red flag is hoisted and red ribbons adorn
the dresses of the bride and other members of the party. The meaning
attached to them in this case does not admit of doubt;[336.3] and it
may be legitimately inferred in the others.
But the proof of the significance of the _sindra dán_ rests not on
the antecedent probability afforded by the use of red in rites of
worship and marriage. Among the Bírhors the wedding ceremony is very
simple. It consists entirely in drawing blood from the little fingers
of the bride and bridegroom, and smearing it on one another.[336.4]
The ritual, on the other hand, of the Káyasth, or writer caste of
Behar, is as complex as that of the Bírhors is simple; and it bears
at every stage the marks of antiquity. After the bridegroom arrives
with his procession at the bride’s house, but before he is allowed to
see her, her nails are solemnly cut. The opportunity is taken to draw
from her little finger a drop of blood, which is received upon a piece
of cotton soaked in red dye. Later on, after the bridegroom has
formally rubbed her forehead with the _sindúr_, his neck is touched
with this piece of cotton; and the bride’s neck is also touched with a
similar piece brought by the bridegroom, but not containing any of his
blood.[336.5] Here we seem to {337} have the ceremony in a double, if
not a triple form. The dye on the cotton would represent blood. Nor is
it unimportant that the bridegroom having previously plastered the
_sindúr_, which stands for his blood, on the bride, does not need to
bring his blood into contact with her. Among the Kewat, another caste
of Behar, the ceremony is also duplicated. After the _sindúr dán_ a
tiny scratch is made on the little finger of the bridegroom’s right
hand and of the bride’s left. Blood is drawn from each and mingled
with a dish of boiled rice and milk; and either party then eats the
food containing the other’s blood.[337.1] Similarly in the Rájput
ritual the family priest of the bride’s household fills the
bridegroom’s hand with _sindúr_ and marks the bride’s forehead with
it. This is done on the first day. The next morning they are brought
together, and each of them is made to chew betel with which a drop of
blood from the other’s little finger has been mixed. The bride is then
conducted to the bridegroom’s house, and the marriage is
consummated.[337.2] Among the Kharwár blood mixed with _sindúr_ is
exchanged, although what is now the final and binding act of smearing
the _sindúr_ is performed by the bridegroom alone.[337.3] The Kurmi
bridegroom also touches the bride between the breasts with a drop of
his own blood, drawn from his little finger and mixed with lac-dye,
prior to the performance of the _sindra dán_.[337.4] Among the
Rautiá, as among the Birhors, the _sindra dán_ is effected with one
another’s blood taken from the little fingers.[337.5]
The meaning of the ceremony therefore cannot be mistaken. It is
precisely parallel to the blood-covenant: it {338} constitutes a
permanent bodily union between the parties. Oriental scholars regard
it as in origin Dravidian. It is, however, now practised also by the
Aryan Hindus, and its survival among many aboriginal tribes in a
double form is ingeniously attributed by Mr. Risley to its readoption
by them from the Hindus in the later form of smearing with vermilion,
after the connection between the red lead and the blood had been lost
sight of.[338.1] It is certain that many customs have been taken in
recent times by the Dravidian populations from the Hindus; and the
theory of readoption is confirmed by the fact that the red lead is
usually smeared only by the bridegroom on the bride, as if it were an
act of ownership, whereas the blood-smearing is done by both parties.
Beyond the limits of Bengal, blood is not often a prominent feature in
marriage rites. Yet some significant instances may be cited. We cannot
reckon that of the ancient Aztecs among these. When, after the
marriage feast, the Aztec bridal pair retired to their chamber, it was
only to fast and pray during four days, and to draw blood from various
parts of their bodies. The object of this bleeding, however, is said
to have been the propitiation of their cruel gods. In fact, the idea
of propitiation seems to have entered into the rite, and to have
ousted what probably was the original intention--that, namely, of
sacramental communion with the divinities. Such communion with the
divinities may, of course, have been indirect communion with one
another; though there is not sufficient evidence to warrant our
asserting that this was meant, and still less that direct communion of
the same kind was effected. But we are not left without {339} examples
elsewhere. The ceremonies of the Wukas, a tribe inhabiting the
mountains of New Guinea, are exactly in point. Their weddings begin
with an elopement, followed by pursuit and capture of both fugitives.
The next step is to bargain for the price of the bride. When this is
settled the marriage is performed by mutual cuts made by husband and
wife in one another’s foreheads, so that the blood flows. The other
members of both families then do likewise--a proceeding, we are told,
“which binds together all the relations on both sides in the closest
fraternal alliance.”[339.1] The writer I am quoting does not, indeed,
mention any daubing or exchange of blood; but it is clear that this
must be understood. On the island of Banguey, off the northernmost
point of Borneo, is a tribe of Dusuns. Mr. Creagh, the governor of
British North Borneo, visiting them a year or two ago, found that
their marriage-rite consisted in transferring a drop of blood from a
small incision made with a wooden knife in the calf of the man’s leg
to a similar cut in the woman’s leg.[339.2] An Annamite story points
to a ceremony in which the blood was drunk. A husband and wife swore
that when one of them died the other would preserve the body until it
came to life again, and would not marry a second time. The wife died,
and the husband kept her corpse for seven months. At length the
village elders remonstrated, fearing that the dead woman would become
a demon and haunt {340} the village. Rather than bury his wife, the
husband arranged that they should help him to make a raft, and he
would put the body upon it and float with it whithersoever the winds
and the waves would take him. The raft was borne to the eastern
paradise; and there Buddha, touched by the man’s story, raised his
wife from the dead, and asked her if she loved her husband truly and
constantly. She vowed she did. Whereupon Buddha directed him to draw
a cupful of blood from his finger, and give it to her to drink: which
was done. It is sad to relate that after all this she proved
unfaithful, and, when she died, was changed by Buddha into a mosquito,
which is always sucking blood, but never can get enough to restore to
her husband, in accordance with Buddha’s command, the entire cupful of
blood she had taken from him.[340.1] A tale from Mota, one of the
Banks’ Islands, relates that certain women, who desire to become the
hero’s wives, make him give them some of his liver to eat.[340.2]
On these two stories it would be easy to lay a stress greater than
they will bear. But if they have any meaning it is in the direction we
are seeking. Coming to Europe, however, we find a tale where we are on
firmer ground. A Norwegian youth was curious to see if it were really
true that the Huldren, or wood-women (a kind of supernatural beings),
occupied the mountain-dwelling in the autumn, after it was deserted by
the family for the lowlands. The story runs that he crept under a
large upturned tub, and there waited until it began to grow dark. Then
he heard a noise of coming and going; and it was not long before the
house was filled with Huldre-folk. They immediately {341} smelt
Christian flesh, but could not find the lad, until at length a maiden
discovered him beneath the tub, and pointed at him with her finger. He
drew his knife and scratched her finger, so that the blood flowed.
Scarcely had he done it, when the whole party surrounded him; and the
girl’s mother, supported by the rest, demanded that he must now marry
her daughter, _because he had marked her with blood_. There were
several objections to marrying a Huldre-woman: among others, that she
had a tail. But there was nothing else for it; and happily, when she
had been instructed in the Word of God and baptized, she lost the
undesirable appendage, and made the youth a faithful and loving
spouse.[341.1] Now it may very well be that the reason for compelling
this marriage is incomprehensible to the modern teller of the story,
at least as a serious one. Yet the story can hardly have arisen and
been propagated, with the incident in question as its catastrophe,
unless a custom of marking with blood in connection with a wedding
ceremony had been known to the original tellers. The barbarous nature
of the custom is indicative of a much lower grade of civilisation than
the Norwegian people have now, and long since, attained. And its
ascription to the Huldre-folk suggests that it was practised by a
non-Aryan race rather than by the Norsemen. It was certainly practised
by the Finns; for a Finnish poem, entitled _The Sun’s Son_, describes
its hero’s wedding ceremony in the following terms:--The bride’s
father “leads and places them on the whale’s, the sea-king’s, hide. He
scratches them both on their little fingers, mixes the blood together,
lays hand in hand, unites breast to breast, knits the kisses together,
bans the knots that jealousy has conjured, {342} separates the hands,
and looses the knots of the espousal.”[342.1] The correspondence of
this rite with that of the aborigines of Bengal extends to the fingers
whence the blood is drawn; and it cannot be doubted that we have here
in full the ceremony referred to in the Norwegian tale. It will be
remembered that the Icelandic saga of the farmer who appropriated a
fairy cow stops short in its description of the act with the drawing
of blood. The story now before us has suffered a similar
curtailment.[342.2]
In other parts of the world we find red paint of some kind used
apparently as a substitute for blood. An Australian bridegroom in the
neighbourhood where Sydney now stands used to spit on his bride, and
then with his right thumb and forefinger he took red powder and
streaked her all over the face and body down to the navel.[342.3] The
Caribs are reported to have had no specific rites of marriage. But a
full-grown man would sometimes betroth himself to an unborn child,
conditionally on its proving a girl. When this was done the custom was
for him to mark the mother’s body with a {343} red cross.[343.1] This
is an act hardly susceptible of more than one interpretation. The red
mark over the mother’s womb was no doubt originally made with the
man’s blood, and, since the child itself could not be reached, was the
expedient for effecting the union between him and the unborn infant.
The blood of a fowl often takes the place of that of the parties, in
the East Indies. Among the aborigines of Southern India a fowl is
sacrificed at the threshold of the bride’s room, and the foreheads of
bride and bridegroom are marked with its blood; while among the
Káháyáns of Borneo a cock and a hen are slaughtered, their blood
received in a cup, and the happy pair are marked from head to foot
with it.[343.2]
Out of many other ceremonies expressive of union I select for
illustration that familiar to us in the Roman law under the name of
_Confarreatio_. This solemn form of marriage took its name from the
central rite, in which the man and woman seem to have eaten together
of the round sacrificial cake, called the _panis farreus_. At all
events, in the corresponding Greek ceremony they partook together of a
sesamum-cake. In one shape or other this rite is found in many lands,
perhaps over the greater portion of the globe. It has been too often
described to need an extended notice here; but a few of its various
forms may be mentioned, before we pass on to consider some of the
analogies between the effects of marriage and of the blood-covenant.
We may as well begin with the Santals, one of the tribes of Bengal of
which I have already spoken. Among them the {344} couple to be married
fast on the wedding-day until after the _sindra dán_, when they sit
down together and eat. Colonel Dalton, in describing the custom,
reminds us that it is the more remarkable because the Hindu husband
and wife never eat together, and tells us that this meal is the first
time the maiden is supposed to have sat with a man at his food, and
that it “is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act the
girl ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of
her husband’s family.”[344.1] Among the Santals, in fact, marriage is
admission into the kin. None but members of a kin have, we know,
commensal rights; and admission frequently takes the form of a
ceremonial common meal, which probably is a modification of the
blood-covenant. Among the Khyoungtha, one of the Chittagong
Hill-tribes, the bride and bridegroom are tied together with a
new-spun cotton thread, and the _poongyee_, or priest, muttering
prayers, takes a handful of cooked rice in each hand, and crossing and
re-crossing his arms he gives seven alternate mouthfuls to each. Then
he hooks the little finger of the bridegroom’s left hand into the
little finger of the bride’s right, and with some further mutterings
the ceremony is concluded. The Chukma, a neighbouring tribe, bind the
couple together with a muslin scarf; and in that position they have to
feed one another. Their hands are guided by the bridesmaid and best
man to one another’s mouths amid general hilarity.[344.2] Father
Bourien was present at several marriages of Mantras or wild tribes of
the Malay peninsula. According to his report, “a plate containing
small packages of rice wrapped up in banana-leaves having been
presented, the husband offered one to his future wife, who showed
herself eager to {345} accept it, and ate it; she then in her turn
gave some to her husband, and they afterwards both assisted in
distributing them to the other members of the assemblage.” In the
feast which followed the remaining ceremonies husband and wife ate
from one dish.[345.1] Eating from one dish, or one leaf--a more
archaic form of dish--is in fact the usual rite all over south-eastern
Asia and the East Indian islands; and although the Hindu husband and
wife now never eat together, the ancient ritual prescribed that they
should do so at the marriage ceremony.[345.2] Boiled rice appears to
have been the food, as it is in Dardistan at the present day, where a
dish of rice boiled in milk is brought in, and the boy and girl take a
spoonful each.[345.3] Married couples of Kafa, in the north-eastern
corner of Africa, are only allowed to eat out of the same dish and
drink out of the same horn or glass. And the etiquette is more
rigorous than that of Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig; for they are
expected to eat as well as to “drink fair.”[345.4] The custom of
eating together as a marriage rite is recorded as in use by the
aborigines of the greater part of America. The simple ceremony is thus
related in a Pawnee legend: “He entered his tent. She made a very good
bed for him. She was sitting with him. She married him. She had food
with him. And the young men said as follows: ‘Why friends, the chief’s
daughter has married the Orphan.’”[345.5] It is the same among the
Polynesians. On the island of Mangaia, in the Hervey Group, the pair
sit to eat together in the presence of their friends on a single piece
of the finest native cloth, just as in the {346} Finnish lay they sat
on the whale’s hide, and at Rome they sat, during one portion of the
proceedings, on the fell of a sheep which had been slain in
sacrifice.[346.1] Among the tribes of New Guinea, when the bride is
brought to her husband’s dwelling a dish of food is presented to them,
out of which they both eat. In some cases a roasted banana is eaten
half by the bride, the other half by the bridegroom.[346.2] So, after
getting into bed the South Slavonic bride from her bosom takes an
apple which has been given to her by the bridegroom in the course of
the day, eats one half of it and hands the other to him.[346.3] One of
the Epirote ceremonies is the eating of a cake made of flour, butter
and cheese. It is cut into slices; and the husband taking one dips it
in honey and eats, afterwards giving to his wife. This is repeated
thrice. Then, after eating some fruit, a round loaf with a hole in the
middle is brought to them. Putting their fingers into the hole, they
pull against one another until the loaf is torn in two; after which
they and their nearest relatives eat it.[346.4] Bread and honey are
eaten together in alternate bites by a Greek, or an Albanian,
pair.[346.5] In the Obererzgebirge before setting out for church the
bride and bridegroom eat from the same dish; and in some districts of
Thuringia they partake of soup from one plate.[346.6] In Provence, as
also in Esthonia, this is done after the return; and in Esthonia a
piece of bread and butter, or a little bread with salt, is also
eaten.[346.7] At the same point {347} in the province of Berry,
France, and in the Jura, a piece of bread and wine are offered to the
young couple. The husband takes the first bite out of the bread; and
his example is followed by his wife.[347.1] The Wallon practice is for
the bride to eat half a tart and give her husband the rest: this
ensures his affection.[347.2] In the old Parisian marriage rite the
betrothal took place at the church-door. The priest then led the newly
wedded into the church, and said mass. After mass he blessed a loaf
and wine. The loaf was bitten and a little of the wine drunk by each
of the spouses, one after the other; and the officiating priest then
taking them by the hands led them home.[347.3] In the celebration of a
Yezidi wedding a loaf of consecrated bread is handed to the husband;
and he and his wife eat it between them. The Nestorians, their near
neighbours, require the pair to take the communion.[347.4] Nor is this
requirement by any means confined to the Nestorians among Christian
sects; and even until the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer
the Church of England herself commanded, in the final rubric of the
solemnisation of matrimony, that “the new married persons _the same
day of their marriage_ must receive the holy communion”:--a practice
which continues to be recommended and is occasionally followed.
Many of the foregoing ceremonies include a drink out of the same
vessel. Either alone or accompanied by eating, it is usual from Italy
to Norway, from Brittany to {348} Russia; and traces of it have been
found even in Scotland.[348.1] According to the old Lombardic laws no
further ceremony was necessary to constitute a valid marriage than a
kiss and a drink together. The Church long struggled against this
rule, but was in the end obliged to sanction it, subject to the
condition that a priest should be present to impart the benediction
and a “spousal sermon.” It has been adopted into the rites of the
Greek Church in Russia, where the priest in the course of the ceremony
solemnly blesses a small silver ladle, called the Common Cup, filled
with wine and water, and holds it to the lips of the pair, who sip it
alternately each three times. In the West of England there is evidence
which a careful examination of ecclesiastical records would probably
extend to other parts of the country that at the time of the
Reformation formal betrothals were usually performed by any
respectable friend of both parties. He joined their hands; they gave
their faith and troth in his presence; and after the betrothal gift,
or token, had been handed over, or else promised, or acknowledged as
already received, they kissed and drank together. This seems to have
been considered as a binding union, though the banns and religious
ceremony generally followed shortly after. To this day in Hesse the
custom is preserved in the _Weinkauf_ (literally, wine-purchase), or
assembly of relatives on both sides. At this assembly the conditions
are fixed on which the bride is to be discharged from her native kin
to enter the kindred and protection of the bridegroom. When these are
arranged {349} she drinks to her bridegroom in token of her consent,
and both then drink out of the same glass. From that moment they are
regarded as practically husband and wife; and it only remains to
obtain ecclesiastical sanction for the union. This usually follows
shortly after; and between the _Weinkauf_ and the wedding it was
formerly not thought proper for a virtuous maiden to go out of
doors.[349.1]
Going eastward we may note a few out of many other instances. The
loving cup is part of the Jewish and Armenian ceremonies.[349.2] Among
the Mohammedan Yusufzais of Afghanistan it is the bride’s father and
the bridegroom that drink out of the same vessel;[349.3] obviously a
change of the earlier practice to suit the faith of Islam. In
Singbhúm, among the Hos and other tribes, the young couple are given
beer, which they proceed to mix, the bridegroom pouring some of his
into the bride’s cup, and she in turn pouring from her cup into his.
They then drink, “and thus become of the same _kili_, or clan.”[349.4]
Rice is sprinkled over the heads of a Lepcha pair; they eat {350}
together and drink _maruá_ beer out of the same cup.[350.1] Among the
Tipperahs of the Chittagong Hill districts, “the girl’s mother pours
out a glass of liquor and gives it to her daughter, who goes and sits
on her lover’s knee, drinks half and gives him the other half; they
afterwards crook together their little fingers.”[350.2] The Annamite
youth and maiden being placed on either side of the ancestors’ altar,
they help one another to drink, exchanging cups and then putting them
back one on the other. This is said to be the relic of a very ancient
rite which consisted in fitting together the two halves of a calabash,
used no doubt for the drink.[350.3] It was the ancient custom in China
for bride and bridegroom to eat together of the same sacrificed
animal, and to drink out of cups made of the two halves of the same
melon, the bride drinking from the bridegroom’s half and he from hers:
thus showing, as we are expressly told in the _Lî_ K_î_, “that they
now formed one body, were of equal rank and pledged to mutual
affection.”[350.4] At present, about Foochow, and possibly in other
parts of the empire, the ceremonial drink is sometimes taken by bride
and bridegroom out of the same goblet; where two are used they are
often tied together with red cord.[350.5] In Korea the lady hands a
gourd-bottle of rice-wine, adorned with red and blue thread to her
spouse, and they drink together out of one little cup several times
filled by the bridesmaids who stand beside them.[350.6] And in general
we {351} may say that, as the eating from one vessel, so the drinking
together, is found all over the East Indies, on the islands as well as
on the continent, and as far to the south as Fiji, save where in the
East Indian islands it is replaced by the parallel custom of chewing a
quid of betel together.[351.1] Whatever shapes the practice takes,
they all resolve themselves into the thought presented on another side
to us by the tale, said to be of Oriental origin, that on the first
day Allah took an apple and cut it in two, giving one half to Adam and
the other to Eve, and directing each at the same time to seek for the
missing half. That is why one half of humanity has ever since been
seeking its corresponding half.[351.2]
But here we must go a step further. The remains of the cake, which, in
the Roman ceremony of _Confarreatio_, seems to have been broken and
eaten by the bride and bridegroom, were distributed among the guests;
just as our own bride-cake, after being cut by the bride and
bridegroom, is shared with the entire wedding party. The ritual
distribution of cakes or drink is common in Europe from one end to the
other. The Esthonian bride gives to each guest of the bread and salt
whereof she and her husband have just partaken.[351.3] At a marriage
in the Ukrainian provinces a cake called the _korovaï_ is made with
a number of formalities. Immediately before the bride is conducted to
her husband’s house this cake is solemnly cut. The moon which crowns
it is divided between the happy pair; and the rest is distributed
among the relatives in order of age, great care being manifested that
every one {352} shall have his due portion. The cutting and
distribution are performed with ceremonies showing the importance
attached to the act; and we learn from an ancient song that it was
formerly the custom to light a candle and search diligently every
corner to make sure that no one had been overlooked.[352.1] A bridal
pair of La Creuse, in the south of France, on arriving at their home
from the church, find at the door a soup-tureen filled with a certain
broth or porridge, of which they are required to taste with the same
spoon. The soup-tureen is then passed round to all the guests; after
which a glass of wine is taken in the same manner, and the soup-tureen
and wine-glass are broken to ward off witchcraft.[352.2] In
Caltanisetta, Italy, the ritual food consists of toasted almonds and
honey. An eye-witness at a wedding some five-and-thirty years ago
describes a boy, with a towel hung round his neck like a sacerdotal
stole, who mounted the table, took a silver spoon, and after blessing
the basin in dumb show, tasted the sweet compound within it. The table
was then removed; and the boy carried round the basin, while the
bride’s mother put a spoonful of the almonds and honey in the mouth of
every one present, beginning with the happy couple, and wiped their
lips with the towel.[352.3] As with other rites already referred to,
this is one regarded not only among comparatively civilised peoples.
Backward races, as convivial in their instincts as the most
enlightened, join indeed in feasting on these occasions; but they also
join in ceremonially partaking with the newly-made spouses of a
special article of food or drink. Such is the Mantra rite already
mentioned; {353} such also is the striking ceremony of the Saráogi
Baniyás, referred to in a previous chapter, at which a Brahman is
slain in effigy and the contents of the figure shared among the
kinsmen present. It will be enough to recall two others. Among the
Garos of North-eastern India the married couple complete their wedding
festivities by each drinking a bowl of rice-beer and presenting a cup
to every guest.[353.1] On the Kingsmill Islands bride and bridegroom
are led to their hut by an old woman who spreads for them a new mat of
cocoa-palm leaves, and makes around them a circle of cooked
pandanus-fruits. Of these she takes two and hands them to the pair,
having first called on the goddess Eibong to take them under her
protection, and bless their union richly with children. When these two
fruits have been eaten the others are divided among the relatives and
friends, who are waiting outside to receive them.[353.2]
The meaning of this extension of the rite must be interpreted by its
meaning when limited to husband and wife, and both by reference to the
rites of kinship. It is not merely assent to the marriage on the part
of the guests. It is indeed that; but assent, though, as we shall see,
very necessary, may be obtained and given in other ways. To understand
its full force we must turn back to some of the examples I have cited.
By sitting and eating with her husband, the Santal maiden “ceases to
belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s
family.” The Ho and the Múnda bride and bridegroom, drinking the
blended liquor from their two cups, become of one _kili_. But the
woman who enters her husband’s _kili_, or clan, {354} becomes related
to all its members. Becoming of one flesh with him, she becomes of one
flesh with all of his kindred. This is implicitly recognised among the
Amils of Sindh, where the bridegroom and all his female friends are
marked with vermilion by the officiating Brahman.[354.1] Among the
Bodos and the Kochh of Bengal it would seem to be the rule for two
women to accompany the bridegroom and his friends in their procession
to the bride’s house. These women it is who, penetrating to her
apartment, anoint her head with oil mixed with red lead, prior to her
being presented to her husband.[354.2] Conversely, the Santal
bridegroom in some districts, after reaching the bride’s village, is
stripped by her clanswomen, and by them bathed and dressed in new
garments properly stained with vermilion.[354.3] When, among the Mál
Paháriás, the bridegroom has daubed the bride with _sindur_, the
compliment is returned not by her but by her maidens, who adorn his
forehead with seven red spots.[354.4] The analogy to the
blood-covenant is in these cases carried to the point of identity. The
same may be conjectured with some probability to be the effect of
marriage on the island of Bonabe in Micronesia, where the wife is
tattooed with the marks representing her husband’s ancestors.[354.5]
Ellis describes the female relatives of a bride and bridegroom in the
Society Islands as cutting their faces, receiving the flowing blood on
a piece of native cloth, {355} and depositing the cloth, “sprinkled
with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet
of the bride.” And he tells us in so many words that the rite removed
any inequality of rank that might have existed between them, and that
“the two families to which they respectively belonged were ever
afterwards regarded as one.”[355.1]
But even when marriage does not amount to reception into the kin, it
constitutes a quasi-relationship with the entire kindred; and the
ceremony initiates, or at least expresses, this. A crude instance is
afforded by the Wukas of New Guinea, already cited. A hideous rite
susceptible of no other interpretation is performed by the Kingsmill
Islanders immediately upon the consummation of a marriage; and a
similar one is mentioned by a Chinese traveller at the end of the
thirteenth century as taking place in Cambodia.[355.2] On Teressa, one
of the Nicobar Islands, a pig is killed and the faces of the guests
are smeared with its blood.[355.3] Here the pig’s blood is doubtless a
substitute for that of the bridal pair. In the south of India the
Wadders use for the wedding feast the rice which has been poured over
the new husband and wife: a practice to which a similar intention must
probably be ascribed.[355.4]
For the effect of marriage is to give the kindred of the husband or
the wife new rights over the person of the spouse. There are in Europe
some very general usages pointing to the rights which must once have
been exercised by the husband’s kin over the wife. Among the
Esthonians, {356} when the bride has at length been brought into the
bridegroom’s house a repast is served, and the day is concluded with a
dance, wherein all the guests in turn dance with her, for which she is
entitled to a piece of money from each of them.[356.1] The custom of
the Polish inhabitants of the Prussian province of Posen is the
same.[356.2] Du Chaillu witnessed a similar wedding dance in
Dalecarlia, Sweden. It appears to have taken place in the bridegroom’s
father’s house.[356.3] In the Tirol, and among the Masurs, the bride
has to dance the Bride-dance with every one of the guests. In
Transylvania she begins with the _beistand_, or best man; and after
every dance she must drink a glass of wine with her partner, who
throws a piece of money into a plate ready for the purpose.[356.4]
Among the Wends, every male guest is expected to dance with the bride,
formal permission being first obtained from the _brautführer_. The
bridegroom, and this is an important point, is sent away the while;
and the dances are continued until midnight, when he is brought back.
They take place, unlike the Dalecarlian ceremony, in the bride’s
house.[356.5] In the Lowlands of Scotland, after the wedding ceremony,
which was usually performed at the bride’s residence, she was expected
to go round the room with her bridesmaids and kiss every male in the
company. “A dish was then handed round, in which every one placed a
sum of money, to help the young couple to commence
housekeeping.”[356.6] Dr. Gregor describes a similar dance as {357}
performed in the north-east of Scotland. It was opened by the bride
and her best maid dancing with the two _sens_, officials sent by the
bridegroom on the wedding morning formally to demand the bride. The
dance began and ended with a kiss, and when it was over the bride
fixed a favour on her partner’s right arm, and the bridesmaid one on
her partner’s left arm. “The two _sens_ then paid the fiddler.
Frequently the bride and her maid asked if there were other young men
who wished to win favours. Two jumped to the floor, danced with the
bride and her maid, and earned the honour on the left arm. Dancing was
carried on far into the morning with the utmost vigour, each dance
being begun and ended by the partners saluting each other.”[357.1] At
Bourges it was the custom for brides on coming out of church to
embrace indifferently all whom they met in the street; and still in
country places of the province of the Marche the practice is said to
be followed, with the variation that it is done before the marriage
service. Generally in the province of Berri the guests after the feast
approach in turn and deposit an offering (formerly gifts in kind
proper for setting up housekeeping), receiving in return a kiss from
the bride.[357.2] In the valley of Pragelato, near Pinerolo, the
festivities are held in a large outhouse, the rooms in the house being
usually too small. The bride is the first to enter. She stands on the
threshold, holding a platter covered with a small cloth. Every one
entering, without distinction of age, embraces {358} and kisses her,
and drops a piece of money clinking under the cloth.[358.1] Similar
customs obtain in other parts of Italy, sometimes repeated more than
once during the festivities.[358.2] The bride-dance is also practised
in Provence. And at the village of Fours, near Barcelonnette, on
leaving the church the bride is conducted to a rock (possibly, an
erratic boulder) called the Bride-stone, whereon she is made to sit
with one foot in a certain hollow of the rock. While in this position
each of the relatives and guests comes in turn, kisses her and gives
her a ring.[358.3]
We must look back to savage customs to discover the origin and meaning
of the European rites I have here set forth; and I think we must
connect them with those of the Nasamonians mentioned by Herodotus, the
Auziles, an Ethiopian tribe mentioned by Pomponius Mela, and the
Balearic Islanders, among all of whom in ancient times the bride was,
on the wedding-night, considered as common property.[358.4] The
information we have about these peoples is meagre and fragmentary.
About the Kurnai of Australia, however, we have full and precise
statements, extending, far beyond the act of marriage, to all their
connubial relations. Their only recognised form of marriage was by a
species of elopement or capture, performed with the aid of the other
unmarried youths of the tribe. With all these youths the unfortunate
bride had to observe the Nasamonian rite. She then went off with her
new husband. This process {359} had to be repeated once, if not twice
again, before her relatives could be got to sanction the match; and
meantime both bride and bridegroom incurred their wrath, which was
much more than a mere form. But when once the elopement had been
condoned, if the bride had an unmarried sister, it is said that she
also would be handed over to the husband; and in any case on his
wife’s death he had a right to her. Moreover, on his death, his widow,
if he left but one, went by right to his brother; if more than one,
they went to his brothers in order of seniority. If the wife ran away
from her husband with another man, “all the neighbouring men might
turn out and seek for her, and in the event of her being discovered,
she became common property to them until released by her husband or
her male relatives.” Further, the husband was obliged to supply his
wife’s parents with the best of the food he killed; but on the other
hand he was free to hunt over their country as well as the country of
his own ancestors.[359.1]
In considering these particulars we must remember that the
constitution of society among the Australian aborigines is in process
of transformation. They had a system of group-marriage, whereby every
tribe consisted of certain classes, all exogamous. Their table of
prohibited affinities is highly complex, and need not be here
discussed. It is enough to say that the members of each class were
looked upon among themselves as brothers and sisters; but {360}
towards the class into which they could marry they were husbands and
wives; and they were entitled to act accordingly whenever they met any
members of the latter class. No sexual relations were permitted with
any other class. The system has been in a state of decadence--greater
in some tribes, like the Kurnai, less in others--from a time probably
anterior to the English settlement. A custom had arisen, it matters
not from what causes, of appropriating one woman, or more, to one man.
This custom, if not interfered with, would have issued in the
evolution of a different idea of kinship, and ultimately of the true
family. In group-marriage the wives were not regarded as akin to the
husbands. Marriage was the status into which husbands and wives alike
were born. The union required no ceremonies to its consummation,
because no relationships were changed by it. But with the rise of
monopoly by individuals of one another, the unappropriated women would
be kept at a greater distance from the men, and the act of
appropriation would gradually assume a ceremonial form. The kindred
would be called upon to take part in it, both as assistants and as
witnesses. From Mr. Howitt’s account it seems likely that the
evolution would be in the direction of patriarchal clans. If so, the
woman would be introduced by marriage into a special relation with her
husband’s kin. The exogamous classes would ultimately be effaced; a
new idea of the clan would supersede them; and the act of marriage
would at length operate as admission into the clan.
Now it is clear from Mr. Howitt’s statement that, by the marriage,
rights were acquired on the part of the husband’s kin in the wife and
on the part of the wife’s kin in the husband. The decaying system
would doubtless at that {361} stage operate to permit only members of
the husband’s class to take part in the capture of a bride, or of a
runaway wife; and they would as yet be all reckoned of his kin. The
rights they then exercised would afterwards be held in abeyance; but,
subject to the husband’s monopoly, those rights would survive, to
reappear upon his death, if not upon any other occasion in his
lifetime. The gradual circumscription of the kindred, by the
recognition of closer ties than those of the exogamous class, is
indicated by the duty laid upon the husband to supply his wife’s
parents with food, as well as by the limitation to his brothers of the
right to his widows. The peoples referred to by the classical writers
I have cited were probably in the stage in which group-marriage had
died, or was dying, out in favour of individual unions. The bride was
hardly yet conceived of as taken into the kindred. The Nasamonian
habits in particular, as recorded by Herodotus, appear little, if at
all, advanced beyond those of the Kurnai. Both among the Nasamonians,
however, and the Auziles it was the practice for each of the guests
who had taken part in the rite to reward the bride with a gift, just
as among European peoples the bride is rewarded for her dance or her
kiss: an indication that her compliance was becoming something more
than the guests could demand,--something they had, therefore, to
purchase. This does not appear to have been the case with the Balearic
Islanders: at least Diodorus Siculus, who mentions the custom, says
nothing about any gift. A similar usage is reported by Garcilasso of
some of the aborigines of Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest.
Here we are expressly told what we may probably assume to have been
the case among the Nasamonians, namely, that it was only the relatives
and friends of the bridegroom {362} who shared in the rite; and from
the historian’s expressions we may infer that no payment was
made.[362.1] Nor is it found in an account of the marriages of the
Wa-taveta given by a lady who has recently travelled in Eastern
Africa. In other respects the Wa-taveta would appear to be somewhat
higher in the scale of civilisation than the Kurnai or the Baleares.
The bridegroom’s friends are limited to four in number. The capture of
the bride, in which they aid him, is a mere ceremony followed by a
five days’ feast, during which they participate in the Nasamonian
rite.[362.2] More remarkable than any of these, however, as attesting
the rights of the bridegroom’s kindred, is a custom of the Eesa and
Gadabursi, two of the western Somali tribes. When the bride enters the
hut which is to be her new home, she is followed by the bridegroom and
some of his nearest male relatives. He takes a leathern horsewhip and
with it inflicts three severe blows upon his wife; and his example is
followed by his {363} companions, “who by this act obtain ever
afterwards peculiar rights and power over the bride, which her husband
dare not dispute.”[363.1]
I might rest on these examples the case for the real meaning of the
bride-dance and the kiss which the European bride bestows upon the
guests (or rather, of course, on the masculine guests) at the wedding.
But it is not necessary to do so; for we find even in Europe a
practice of which the significance is unmistakable. The most important
official at a marriage among the Southern Slavs is the _djever_ (in
German, _brautführer_) bride-leader, or bride-carrier. One only
appears to be necessary, but commonly the bridegroom appoints two.
They are chosen from his own brothers, or adoptive brothers, or his
most intimate and trusty friends; or the chief _brautführer_ may be
his godfather. Adoptive brotherhood and godfatherhood are very sacred
ties, at least as close as natural relationships; and the duties they
impose are rarely violated. It is for this reason that such persons
are selected for the office of _djever_. For the _djever_ is allowed
to relieve the tedious festivities of the wedding (and Slav weddings
are tedious indeed) as often as he likes by kissing the bride and
taking other liberties with her. And in the Bocca and Herzegovina,
when the night at length arrives, he sleeps beside her “as a brother
with a sister”; or if there be two, they both occupy the room with
her. The latter custom is now falling into disuse; and the _djever’s_
place is taken by the bridegroom’s mother and sister, the happy man
himself not being permitted to obtain possession of his bride for two,
or sometimes three, nights.[363.2] It needs {364} no words of mine to
drive home the conclusion that here we have a survival of a rite
identical with that of the Kurnai. The _djeveri_ are the
representatives of the entire band of the bridegroom’s brethren and
assistants, whose rights are concentrated in their hands. The
connection between this usage and those in other parts of Europe comes
to the surface in the Wendish requirement that permission for the
bride-dance be obtained from the _brautführer_.
If this conclusion be correct, the ancestors of the European nations
must have passed through a stage of society wherein group-marriage was
the rule, the groups on either side probably consisting of husbands
reckoned, according to the standard of savage kinship, as brothers,
and wives reckoned as sisters, among themselves. The limited
promiscuity thus established would be entirely in harmony with--nay,
it would be a consequence of--the conception of gentile solidarity
which I have endeavoured to summarise in a previous chapter. This is
what the late Mr. Lewis Morgan called the Punaluan Family. Starting
from the kindred-names and customs of Hawaii, he traced it over a
large part of the Old and New Worlds, and successfully vindicated its
existence against the criticisms of Mr. MacLennan. The most striking
piece of evidence in favour of Mr. Morgan’s theory that has come to
light since he wrote is perhaps to be found among the inhabitants of
the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides. Their rules of marriage and
terms of relationship may be studied in detail in a paper by the Rev.
William Gray, read at a meeting of the Australasian Association, held
at Hobart in January 1892, and published in the report of the meeting.
It will suffice here to say that in the laws and language of the {365}
Tannese no distinctions are drawn between a wife and a wife’s sister,
between a husband and a husband’s brother; all a man’s brother’s
children are his own; all his wife’s children and his wife’s sisters’
children are alike his; the relation of uncle or aunt and nephew or
niece does not exist, for the person whom we should call uncle or aunt
is recognised by a Tannese as his father or mother, or else the term
is indistinguishable from those for wife’s or husband’s father or
mother; in like manner the terms for nephew and niece are the same as
those for son-in-law and daughter-in-law; and the children of a man’s
father’s brothers, or of his mother’s sisters, are regarded as his
brothers and sisters equally with the children of his own
parents.[365.1] For such a condition of society any explanation is
impossible, unless it be that an entire band of brethren is--or was
down to a recent period, yesterday if not to-day--actually or
potentially married to an entire band of sisters. The Punaluan Family
is thus Australian group-marriage surviving into a somewhat higher
stage of culture, but surviving, of course, in a more restricted form.
The sense of solidarity has become stronger, but more circumscribed.
When in the progress of culture group-marriage began to give way to
individual appropriation, and inroads were made upon the totemistic
clan, the clan-brethren would not immediately cease to be specially
interested in the marriage of one of their number. Their rights would
not be extinguished all at once; they would only become dormant. They
might never be exercised during the continuance of the marriage.
Probably they never would be, at all events without the individual
husband’s assent. {366} But, whether exercised or not, there the
rights would be, ready to arise upon a favourable opportunity. Rights
thus in abeyance would be likely to be exercised at the entrance upon
marriage, prior to the husband’s sole ownership, if the assistance of
the clan-brethren were required to obtain the bride. They might be
exercised also during the marriage, if the wife ran away and the
clan-brethren helped to recover her. The opportunity for asserting the
rights would come with the call for assistance.
In the most archaic period, such as may be represented for us by the
Kurnai, the assistance would take the form of physical force. But
after a while purchase began to supersede violence as the method of
bride-winning, and capture dwindled to a form. The help of the
clansmen would be equally required in purchase as in capture. I select
a few examples from different parts of the world. Among the
Nestorians, relatives and friends are called on to contribute to the
dowry and wedding-dress given by the bridegroom to the bride, and the
presents he has to make to her parents, as well as the expenses of the
feast.[366.1] The tribes of the Caucasus are divided into exogamous
clans; and when a member of a clan marries, all the brethren
contribute to the ransom paid for the bride. Every member of a Kurdish
commune pays a share of the purchase-money. A similar collection is
made among the comrades of the Lithuanian bridegroom. In Ukrainia,
before the bridegroom and his suite set out for the bride’s dwelling,
each of the suite is called upon by the best man to make a
contribution towards the sum which is afterwards paid to the brothers
of the bride.[366.2] Among the Khonds of Orissa a {367} large price in
cattle and money is paid for a wife; and this is chiefly subscribed,
as among others of the aboriginal tribes, by the bridegroom’s “near
relatives and his branch of the tribe.”[367.1] The inhabitants of
Sumatra buy their wives; but the debt is often allowed to remain for
many years undischarged. “Sometimes it remains unadjusted,” says
Marsden, “to the second and third generation, and it is not uncommon
to see a man suing for the _jujur_ (or price) of the sister of his
grandfather.” And he adds that “in Passummah, if the race of a man is
extinct, the _dusun_ or village to which the family belonged must make
it good to the creditor.”[367.2] This implies that the _dusun_ was
originally collectively liable for the payment. The Melanesian custom
seems to be for the youth’s kindred and friends to contribute to the
sum he is called on to pay.[367.3] Among the Basutos a marriage is an
affair of much concern to the relatives of the young people on both
sides. The bridegroom’s relatives furnish the cattle he gives for her,
and go in a body to make the bargain and present the beasts.[367.4] On
the western continent the Araucanian aspirant for matrimony takes
counsel with his friends and relatives, who inform him what
contributions they are prepared to make towards the amount of the
purchase-money. Among the Peguenches the relatives negotiate the
marriage and collect the articles of value to be paid for the
damsel.[367.5] In Guatemala the price was furnished by the
bridegroom’s clansmen.[367.6] In what is now Los Angeles County,
California, {368} the male relatives “proceeded in a body to the
girl’s dwelling, and distributed small sums in shell-money among her
female kinsfolk, who were collected there for the occasion,” and who
afterwards returned the visit and gave baskets of meal to the
bridegroom’s kindred.[368.1]
From these examples, and many more might be cited, it is obvious that
the purchase was made by the clan, just as the capture was probably
made by the clan. And we might well expect to find that the clan, and
not merely the individual, acquired by the act rights over the bride,
such as would be expressed in the rude Nasamonian custom, and in the
Bride-dance and other survivals of modern Europe. I have only space
for a few examples indicating community of wives or of husbands. But
the subject has been so exhaustively treated by anthropologists of
distinction that little more than a passing notice is needful. An
observation or two must, however, be made first of all, in reference
alike to the examples that follow, and to those I have cited in
previous pages. When we read, whether in classical writers or in the
works of modern travellers, of community of women, we must always
beware of giving the words the meaning of absolute promiscuity. Very
strong evidence, and not merely that of writers imperfectly acquainted
with the language and customs of a savage people, is called for to
establish absolute promiscuity. But limited promiscuity among the
members of a clan is a different matter. As a savage practice it is
beyond doubt; and I have already pointed out that it owes its origin
to the solidarity of the kindred in the lower culture. We must fully
grasp the meaning of this solidarity if we would avoid the twofold
chance of error in descriptions of savage life {369} and the
inferences to be drawn from them. The chance of error too, it may be
parenthetically observed, is not confined to marriage ceremonies, nor
to the abiding customs of the conjugal relation; but we must guard
against it on many other occasions, as for instance those described in
the last chapter. Travellers having but a superficial knowledge of the
peoples they describe--especially in the days before savage kinship
had become the subject of scientific investigation--are not careful to
define, because they do not understand, the relationship of members of
a tribe to one another. Their vague expressions “relatives” and
“friends” are therefore subject to interpretation by what has been
ascertained of clan-organisation, if we would avoid one source of
error. But there is a further consideration which ought not to be
overlooked. The clan system has rarely been found complete and
unimpaired. The evolution of civilisation is always modifying it,
sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. Consequently
ceremonies limited in theory to the clan-brethren display a constant
tendency on the one side to limitation to the smaller circle of the
family, as the family is evolved from the clan; and on the other side
to extension among the intimate friends and relatives of the person
chiefly concerned, as blood-relationship begins to be recognised
outside the clan, and as the ties of friendship are knit between man
and man regardless of kinship. Herein lies our other difficulty. The
criticism that the privileges we are discussing are not recorded as
belonging to the members of one group only, though it applies with
greater force to the instances mentioned by classical writers, who
understood the gentile system, than to modern writers who do not
understand it, is by no means enough to dispose of the evidence where
{370} such record is wanting. Unfortunately we cannot cross-examine
the writers. We can, however, and we must, read their accounts by the
light of more accurate investigations. We shall then be inclined to
admit that most of the cases alleged are not referable to phallic
worship, nor to an outbreak of indiscriminate licence occurring in the
midst of long-established monogamy, to which they are sometimes
ascribed.[370.1]
Turning now to the privileges themselves, it must be remembered that
we have not to deal with cases in which polyandry is still open and
avowed, but to customs which indicate its former existence.
Group-marriage, like that of the Australians, the more limited
polyandry of the Tibetan peoples, and the ruder polyandry like that of
the Nairs, whether it be the remains of a more savage and unorganised
society before the rise of the clan, or a sporadic degradation of
clan-marriage, may be studied in the writings of MacLennan, Morgan,
and Robertson Smith. Group-marriage and Tibetan polyandry, indeed, we
must assume as the precursors of the state of barbarous culture where
the marriage is primarily between individuals, but in which the kin
still have certain rights over the spouse. And in dealing with the
rights of the husband’s kin we are not required to take into account
whether his marriage be polygynous or no.
Bearing these things in mind then, let us consider a few examples.
Among the Santals, it is said, “a man’s younger brother may share his
wife with impunity; only they must {371} not go about it very
openly.”[371.1] In dealing with women taken in adultery the main point
considered by the Dhobás of Orissa is whether the paramour be a
member of the caste.[371.2] For, while a slight penance is deemed
sufficient penalty for such a lapse of virtue, and the husband by no
means invariably insists on divorce, the offence committed with an
outsider is incapable of atonement, and the offending woman is turned
out of the caste. Here, although the limits of the _gotra_ are not
coextensive with those of the more venial sin, it is to be observed
that the Dhobás all claim descent from a common ancestor, and they
eat and drink together indiscriminately. It is not considered any
offence among the Bhuiyars of South Mirzapur for a married woman to
grant her favours to her husband’s brothers. More distant relatives
must give a tribal feast; or, if the kindred be very remote, the
paramour must repay to the husband the cost of her marriage.[371.3]
Similarly, in Southern India a Cunian woman who has been guilty of an
intrigue with a lover of her own tribe is not disgraced thereby; and
if her husband desire to get rid of her she will have no difficulty in
finding another.[371.4] Among the Thlinkits of North America a wife
has the privilege of selecting as her lover a brother or near kinsman
of her husband; and such a man is required to contribute towards her
maintenance. On the other hand, a seducer who is no relation may be
slain by the outraged husband, or compelled {372} to submit to a heavy
fine.[372.1] The right loosely described by Herodotus as exercised by
the Massagetai over other men’s wives must probably be understood as
limited to kinsmen.[372.2] In the island of Timor a brother made by
the blood-covenant coming to the house of one of the brothers of the
same covenant or clan “is in every respect regarded as free and as
much at home as its owner. Nothing is withheld from him”: not even the
wife. “And a child born of such a union would be regarded by the
husband as _his_.” For, as Dr. Trumbull appositely comments, “are
not--as they reason--these brother-friends of one blood--of one and
the same life?”[372.3]
The common meal, as we have seen, implies brotherhood. The rites of
hospitality among many nations constitute a temporary brotherhood, and
confer on the guest many of the privileges of a kinsman. This, it
seems reasonable to think, may have been the ground of that widely
extended custom of offering the host’s wife to his guest. The custom
is too well known to require more than a passing reference. Nor do I
propose to give more to another custom, that, namely of the exchange,
temporary or permanent, of wives. Where it is not dictated by mere
occasional wantonness, but is a regular institution, it is usually
limited to brethren of the blood. These cases may not go very far: to
understand the true value of their evidence they must be placed side
by side with cases where the husband’s prior right is determined
either by his death or divorce. Among the Arabs, if a man divorced his
wife, his heirs had a right to take her. “That implies,” as Professor
Robertson Smith points out with unanswerable force, “that the kin had
an interest in {373} the woman’s marriage even while her husband
lived, and that their interest became active as soon as he divested
himself of his special claims on his wife. In short, the right of the
heir is a modification of the older right of kinsmen to share each
other’s marriages; and as soon as the exclusive right conferred on the
husband by more modern law ceases and determines, whether by marriage
[? death] or divorce, the older right of the kin revives.”[373.1]
Although it does not appear that a similar privilege is exercised by
the kindred among the Bengali tribes, their rights over a woman are
usually guarded by the requirement that divorce can only take place
with the consent of a council of relatives or a _panchayat_ of the
village or caste.[373.2] It is generally admitted now that the
institution of the Levirate is traceable to polyandry wherein the
husbands were united among themselves by the ties of blood. The
Levirate was an institution deeply rooted in Hebrew polity,
consecrated, if we may believe the traditions preserved in the most
ancient Hebrew book now extant, by divine sanction under the
tremendous penalty of death, and even in historic times enforceable by
the public disgrace of a man who refused compliance.[373.3] It has
only become obsolete among the Jews in Europe during the last three
centuries, while those of Palestine still hold to it.[373.4] When a
man died married but childless, leaving brothers, it was the duty of
the eldest of the survivors to take the widow {374} and beget issue
for the deceased; nor was any form of marriage necessary between him
and her. The same rule was prescribed in the _Laws of Manu_ to the
Hindu Aryans. There a brother or some other kinsman, not merely of a
dead man, but also of a man who, in consequence of disease or
mutilation, was incapable of himself begetting issue, might be
appointed for the purpose; and the reason is expressly declared in the
_Apastamba_ to be that the bride is given to the husband’s family, and
not to the husband alone. Moreover, logically following out the idea
of solidarity, Manu declares that if only one among brothers have a
son, all have male offspring through that son; and conversely, if only
one of all the wives of one husband bear a son, all are mothers of
male children through that son.[374.1] If a Malagasy die childless,
his next younger brother “must marry the widow to keep his brother in
remembrance; the children of such marriages being considered as the
elder brother’s heirs and descendants.”[374.2] The Basuto custom is
the same.[374.3] But the Levirate is only a specialised form of a more
general rule. It was developed when society had passed into the
patriarchal phase, in order to preserve due succession. It shows how
strong the feeling of solidarity of the kindred was. And that the wife
was not regarded as no more than heritable property is brought into
clear relief in the Hebrew and Hindu laws, where cohabitation ceased
on the birth of a boy. Though this limitation be not observed by the
Malagasy and Basutos, at least we cannot forget that the children
begotten by the levir (that is, the man who took the widow) rank as
his brother’s, and are entitled to his brother’s property. If the wife
were {375} simply inherited, both she and the children she afterwards
bore would become the property of the man to whom she passed.
Omitting as equivocal the numberless and widespread instances where
the heir takes possession of his predecessor’s wives with the rest of
his property, we may take note of some whose interpretation is less
open to question. Usually among the aboriginal people of Bengal the
younger brother, or cousin, of the deceased husband has the first
claim on the widow, a claim which must be released before she is at
liberty to wed any other person. The cases are few where, as among the
Santals, the consent of the younger brother’s first wife must be
procured; and they only exist where such consent would be necessary in
any case to his second marriage.[375.1] Several tribes of the
North-west Provinces practise the custom. Indeed, it seems usual among
the aborigines over the greater part of India; and frequently no
ceremony of any kind is necessary. Where, as among the Játs of the
Panjáb, a ceremony is performed, it is of the simplest kind. The
husband’s brother simply throws his scarf or cloak over the widow’s
head.[375.2] If a Ját youth die betrothed, but before consummating
the marriage, his father can claim the girl for another son, or, in
default of a son, for any male relation in that degree.[375.3] A
virgin widow among the Baiswars of South Mirzapur can be married, but
it is usual to give some remuneration to the family of the deceased
husband.[375.4] When a Habura is sentenced to a long term of
imprisonment, or is transported for life, his {376} wives are taken by
his brothers.[376.1] In the Hindu Koosh, while a man’s property passes
to his children, his brother takes the widows. It is disgraceful to
refuse them; and they can marry nobody else without the consent of
their husband’s brothers.[376.2] An Afghan ought to marry his
brother’s childless widow. If any other man offer first it is a grave
insult to him.[376.3] Among the Ostiaks and other Turanian tribes, a
younger brother is bound to marry his elder brother’s widow.[376.4] On
the island of Sumatra, while the inheritance descends to the sons, the
brothers in order of age have a right to the widow married by _jujur_,
or purchase. In the event of their declining her successively they may
give her in marriage to any relation on the father’s side, the person
who takes her replacing the deceased. If she marry a stranger, the new
husband may be adopted into the family to replace the deceased, or she
may be married by purchase, as the relatives please.[376.5] On the
adjacent island of Nias one of the sons may marry all the widows save
his own mother; and if no son exercise this right, they pass to a
brother. If they do not marry they must be maintained by the family of
their dead consort.[376.6] On Engano a man in marrying pays the value
of two hundred cocoa-nuts to the bride’s family. Yet he does not
thereby acquire her for himself. On the contrary, he becomes part of
her family; and if she die and he marry again, an indemnity must be
paid to her relatives. If he die, however, {377} the widow must offer
herself to his brothers; nor can she wed any one else until they have
refused her.[377.1] The widow of a Gilbert Islander is taken by his
surviving brother into his own hut, and she can then marry no one
else.[377.2] A bachelor or widower among the Andaman Islanders is
expected to marry his brother’s widow; and the term _brother_, as in
most savage lands, includes what we call a cousin. Of the property of
the deceased the widow retains as much as she requires for her
personal use, dividing the rest between his male relatives.[377.3]
Among the Sihanaka, one of the aboriginal tribes of Madagascar, a
widow is stripped and in various ways ill-treated for several months,
and only allowed to return home to her own kindred after having
obtained a formal divorce from her husband’s family.[377.4] In Africa,
individual property is hardly recognised by the Krumen of the Grain
Coast: almost everything is possessed by the family community. When a
Kruman dies his wife passes over to his brother or some other near
relation. An Oromó widow can only marry with the consent of her
husband’s brother. A Zulu is obliged to cohabit with all the widows of
an elder brother. Among the Tedas in Sahara, if an affianced
bridegroom die before completion of the marriage, his place is taken
by his brother or nearest kinsman.[377.5] On the Slave Coast a younger
brother was formerly compelled to marry the headwife of his elder
brother deceased, while the subordinate wives devolved with the rest
of the inheritance on the sons. {378} Compulsion has now become
obsolete; but the headwife still resides with her husband’s relatives;
and if she marry any other man than her first husband’s brother, the
second husband repays to the relatives (apparently not to the heirs as
such) of the first the amount originally paid for her.[378.1] In
Natal, when a Kafir dies, “those wives who have not left the kraal
remain with the eldest son. If they wish to marry again, they must go
to one of their late husband’s brothers.” Children born of such a
marriage, however, belong to the son.[378.2] On the western continent
the Thlinkit, among whom we have already found traces of
clan-marriage, require the eldest brother or nephew to marry the
widow.[378.3] In Guatemala, where, as we know, the kindred of the
husband bought the wife, she passed over into her husband’s clan, and
was taken on his death by his brother or her stepson.[378.4] Among the
Hidatsas it is a common practice for a man to marry his brother’s
widow; but apparently this is subject to her consent.[378.5] When one
of the Blackfeet, or one of the Omahas, died, his wives became the
potential wives of his eldest brother, while his property passed to
his sons, though a few horses were generally given to his
brothers.[378.6] An Ojibway widow may be taken by her husband’s
brother, or apparently by any one of the clan; and this is sometimes
done at the grave by the ceremony of walking her over it, in which
event she {379} is not required to undergo the terrible ordeal of
mourning. Or she has a right to go to him, and he is bound to support
her.[379.1] The Miwok of California destroy the property of the dead;
but the eldest brother is entitled to the widow.[379.2] The Aztecs
regarded it as a duty to marry a brother’s widow; and the reason given
is that her children, if she had any, might not remain fatherless--a
reason, however, which would not apply where she had none.[379.3] In
Samoa, where property belonged to the kin, one of the brothers, or
some other relative, took the wife; and her children were taught to
regard him as their father. The reason here alleged was the desire to
preserve the woman and her children to the family, whose number and
influence were thus maintained.[379.4] In New Caledonia, where the
property seems to descend to the eldest son, the husband’s brother is
bound to marry the widow.[379.5] In the Loyalty Islands she could not
marry again without the consent of her first husband’s family.[379.6]
A Tasmanian woman became common property; but she might be given in
marriage again.[379.7] In some at least of the islands of New Britain
also, a widow became common property;[379.8] and a similar custom
seems to have been followed by the Eskimo.[379.9] The natives of the
west of Victoria divided the property of a departed tribesman equally
among his widow and his children; but it was his brother’s duty to
marry the widow if she had offspring, because he was bound to protect
her {380} and rear the children. He seems to have been at liberty to
marry her also if she were childless.[380.1] The duty or the right of
a deceased husband’s brother to take the widow seems, in fact, to be
general among the aborigines of Australia, and to be wholly
disconnected with the right of succession to property. And the
evidence that it is a survival of group-marriage is confirmed by the
custom of the Gippsland tribes, which, there is reason to believe,
sanctioned the occasional cohabitation of a single man with his living
brother’s wife, and of a married man with his wife’s sister. “A man
spoke of his sister-in-law as _puppar-worcat_, which means _another
wife_; and when a wife died her sister not infrequently took her
place.” In Europe, among the Moslem Albanians the sons succeed to the
property, but the brother has a right to the widow with or without her
consent. Nor can she marry any one else in the same village save with
his consent. If, however, she marry into another family, her husband’s
heirs are entitled to half the dowry. The brother of an affianced
husband who dies is entitled to the bride on paying additional
dowry.[380.2] A trace of the right of a surviving brother to the widow
is perhaps found among the Scandinavians; and the conjecture derives
some support from the conduct imputed to Frigg, the wife of Odin, who
is accused by Loki of laying her husband’s two brothers in her
bosom.[380.3]
{381}
I have mentioned some cases in which payment for the widow who marries
out of her husband’s kin, is made to the kin. A few others may be
added. This is the custom of the Toaripi, Dori, and Koiari tribes of
New Guinea. If she belong to the first-named tribe she remains with
her husband’s relatives until her second marriage, only when she has
children; if she belong to either of the latter she remains, whether
with or without children.[381.1] In Kulu, Ladák, the widow could be
sold by her husband’s relatives into a second marriage; but so long as
she did not quit her husband’s house she was at liberty to keep a
paramour.[381.2] Among the Smoos of Central America we are told that
widows are the property of the husband’s relatives, to whom
“widow-money” must be paid before they are allowed to marry.[381.3] In
the western provinces of China, Mr. Cooper tells us, when a widow
signifies her intention of marrying again, her deceased husband’s
relations generally dispose of her to the highest bidder; but she
cannot be forced to marry against her will: by which I understand that
it rests with her to say whether she will marry or not; but if she
decide to marry, her deceased husband’s relations have the right to
determine whom she shall marry, and to receive the bride-price.[381.4]
The foregoing examples all show the wife as bound to the husband’s
kin. The right of a man to his wife’s sister, either in his wife’s
lifetime, or after her death, or, as it is found among some races, the
right of a woman to share her sister’s husband even in her lifetime,
is equally widespread. I have incidentally alluded to it as practised
by the {382} Gippsland tribes of Australia. Among the North American
Indians, who preserve many traces of mother-right, the usage was
common. The Blackfeet regarded all the younger sisters of a man’s wife
as his potential wives. If he did not care to marry them they could
not be married to any other man without his consent.[382.1] Among the
Root-Diggers of California to a whole family of sisters the happy
husband often added their mother; and the Seminole and Carib customs
were the same. The Pawnee who had married an elder sister might demand
all the younger ones as they arrived at maturity. An Osage was obliged
to wait two years after his first marriage before demanding another of
the same family; and after complying with this demand the parents
might refuse him any more. Among the Hidatsas, as probably among other
tribes, the wife’s sisters included her cousins according to our
reckoning. A Mutsun wife would often press her husband to wed her
sister or even her mother.[382.2] An Omaha can marry three wives, who
are generally related. Sometimes a wife invites her husband to wed her
sister, her aunt or her niece, because “she and I are one
flesh.”[382.3] Among the Sioux and some other tribes the lover would
attach to another man’s tent as many horses as corresponded in value
to the daughters he desired to marry; and if the proposition were
accepted they were all married at once.[382.4] In other cases it seems
that marriage with one daughter only gave a right of preemption over
the others.[382.5] Among some of {383} the tribes of Guiana the
husband has to wait until his first wife is dead before marrying her
sisters.[383.1] Similar regulations are found among the aborigines of
Bengal. In many of their tribes a man may marry two sisters; but, in
accordance with the rule as to marriage of a widow with a deceased
husband’s brother, the second wife must be a younger sister of the
first, not an elder. A second sister, however, cannot always be
married during the lifetime of the first.[383.2] Among the Todas a
woman became wife to several brothers, and her younger sisters, on
attaining maturity, became successively her fellow-wives.[383.3] An
Ostiak is allowed to take several sisters.[383.4] In the _Laws of
Manu_ it is provided that, “if, after one damsel has been shown,
another be given to the bridegroom, he may marry them both for the
same price.”[383.5] This refers, of course, to two damsels in the same
family. Among the Somali of Eastern Africa a widower commonly marries
his deceased wife’s sister.[383.6] On the other side of the continent
a folktale from Angola represents the eldest of four sisters as
replying to an offer of marriage: “Very well. Thou shalt marry me, if
thou marriest us all, the four of us. If thou thinkest that thou wilt
have me alone, the eldest, thou canst not marry me. It must be that we
marry our one man, the four of us in the fourhood of one mother.” And
the gallant had no choice but to fall in with her terms.[383.7] In
historical times the Israelites were forbidden to take a {384} woman
to her sister to be a rival to her in her lifetime;[384.1] but the
more ancient practice, if we may judge by the legend of their
eponymous hero as well as by analogies in other parts of the world,
permitted it. Under supernatural guidance the Church has bettered the
prohibition, so as to prevent the posthumous vexation of a wife by the
succession of her sister to her husband’s affections, and has been at
pains to give it the logical extension to marriage with a deceased
husband’s brother, in the very teeth of the divine institution of the
Levirate. It would be profane to call a bargain the provision whereby
the English bishops once compounded for the sin of assenting to a
nobleman’s union with his deceased wife’s sister, by condemning all
such unions for the future. Among the heathen Hovas of Madagascar the
first wife might at any time be divorced, unless she allowed her
husband to marry her younger sisters and younger cousins. A Gilbert
Islander had a right to dispose of his wife’s younger sisters.[384.2]
In Samoa a younger sister often accompanied the bride and became an
inferior wife to the bridegroom.[384.3] On the island of Mangaia, “if
a man of position married the eldest girl of a slave family, the
younger sisters became his as a matter of course, being only too glad
to have a protector. Even amongst those of equal rank a man often had
two or three sisters to wife at the same time. Even now, in Christian
times, a woman feels herself to be deeply injured if her
brother-in-law does not, on the death of his wife, ask her to become a
mother to his children.”[384.4] How greatly it is to be regretted that
they who have professed to christianise these poor, {385} benighted
Polynesians have disregarded the Church’s canon against such
marriages, and permitted so-called Christian homes to be contaminated
by the presence of a deceased wife’s sister in the capacity of wife!
Until group-marriage had practically passed away, and society had
organised itself into true clans, there could be no actual reception
of the wife into the kin. We must therefore not look to so archaic a
condition as group-marriage for rites of reception, or for the
resulting status of the wife. Where the clan has been most completely
organised, we may expect to find its results most logically carried
out; and some of the most logical results will often remain even when
society has passed into a still higher development. So it was in Rome,
where the wife entered into the _familia_ of her husband, or, if her
husband had a father living and were still in his power, into that of
her husband’s father. Her offering, on the day following her marriage,
to her husband’s Penates seems to have been a solemn initiation, in so
far at least as that had not been effected by the ceremonies of the
_confarreatio_. This is also the meaning of somewhat similar rites
performed by a bride in Ukrainia on entering her new home, where she
is first welcomed by all the female neighbours of her bridegroom’s
family,[385.1]--and of many ceremonies of the same kind elsewhere,
notably the Brahman rites in India. A Chinese married woman is taught
to regard her husband’s parents and his remoter ancestors in every
respect as if they were her own; while she ceases, on the other hand,
to have any but a secondary interest in her own relatives. According
to Confucius the very object of marriage was to furnish those who
should preside at the sacrifices, among {386} which a prominent place
is given to the ancestral offerings. This was indeed expressed in the
formula of demand for the hand of a maiden in ancient times. And just
as at Rome the bride offered sacrifices to her husband’s Penates, so
in China, on the day after the wedding, she prepared and presented a
sucking-pig to her husband’s parents, and when they had done eating
she finished what was left.[386.1] In this way among the polite
Chinese the union of the bride with her husband’s parents is signified
and completed. I have already mentioned the Santali and other customs
of Bengal, as well as that of the more barbarous islanders of Bonabe,
who tattoo the wife with marks representing her husband’s ancestors.
Sometimes a man on marrying was received into the clan of the wife. It
is now generally recognised that the words “Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and
they shall be one flesh” could have originated only at a period when
it was customary for a husband to go and dwell with his wife’s kin:
that is to say, before the development of the patriarchal system on
which the Hebrews in later times were organised. Professor Robertson
Smith suggests, ingeniously and with probability, that the expression
implies “that the husband is conceived as adopted into his wife’s
kin”; for, as he has previously pointed out, both in Arabic and in
Hebrew (notably in the priestly legislation of the latter) the word
for flesh is equivalent to _kindred_ or _clan_.[386.2] Residence is
indeed one of the tests of kindred. But it is only one, and by no
means a conclusive one. For this reason the stories of Isaac’s
marriage and those of Jacob cannot safely be cited in support of {387}
this suggestion. The curious incident of the bargain with Shechem is
more to the point; for in that case a rite was to be undergone which
would have the effect of making Shechemites and Israelites “one
people.” If, however, we find cases of marriage where not only does
the husband dwell with his wife and her family, but his property and
earnings also go to them, or are shared in common with them, this will
be further evidence of reception into the kin. Among the Kochh a man
is taken on marriage to live with his wife and her mother, and all his
property is made over to her.[387.1] The Bayaga, a tribe of dwarfs in
Equatorial Africa, require the husband to live with his wife’s family,
and all the produce of his hunting belongs to them. He may, however,
return to his own community and take his wife, but only when he has a
son, and that son has killed an elephant. And then he leaves the son
behind to fill the place of the daughter taken away.[387.2] This
appears to be an instance of the archaic system of mother-right in
process of decay. Neither the case of the Bayaga nor that of the Kochh
goes quite far enough to be decisive. The North American Indians had
customs in their various tribes, which exhibited almost all gradations
between the complete absorption of the husband in his wife’s clan, and
the last stages of dissolution of the system of mother-right. Without
discussing them we may turn to two examples in the East Indies where
the matter is put beyond doubt. According to Brahman law the wife now
enters the _gotra_ {388} of her husband. The ceremonies are very
elaborate, and include of course a solemn procession on the
bridegroom’s part to fetch the bride. He is formally welcomed first by
the bride’s father, and then by her mother. Follows a rite which, if
it mean anything, is a survival of reception into the wife’s kin once
practised either by the Aryan invaders of India, or the aboriginal
tribes with whom they intermarried. It is called “_Satusi_ or the
seven lights of Hymen. Seven married ladies (including the bride’s
mother or, if she be a widow, one of the bride’s aunts) in their best
attire, each with a small torch made of _chita_-twig and cotton
steeped in oil, go round the bridegroom in succession, led by the
bride’s mother, who carries on her head a _kulá_ or flat
bamboo-basket, on which are placed twenty-one small lights made of
_dhatura_-fruits. As they go round, they sprinkle libations of water,
one of them blows a shell-trumpet, and all vociferate the hymeneal cry
of _ulu-ulu_. After going seven times round the bridegroom, the lights
are thrown one by one over his head, so that they fall behind him. The
_kulá_ is then picked up and placed in front of the bridegroom, and
the bride’s mother takes her stand upon it, and touches the forehead
of the bridegroom with water, paddy and _durba_-grass, betel and areca
nut, white mustard-seed, curds, white sandal-paste, vermilion, a
looking-glass, a comb, a bit of clay from the bed of the Ganges, a
yak’s tail, shells, a cluster of plantains, and certain other odds and
ends, while the rest of the women keep up the cry of _ulu-ulu_. The
bridegroom’s height is measured with a thin thread, which the bride’s
mother eats in a bit of plantain. She then places a weaver’s shuttle
between his folded hands and ties them together with thread, and calls
upon him, now that he has {389} been bound hand and foot, to bleat
once like a sheep to signify his humility and subjection. Last of all,
she touches his breast with a padlock and turns the key, whereby the
door of speech is closed to the passage of hard words against the
bride.”[389.1] Later accretions are obvious here, but the substance of
the ceremony is ancient and can only be explained in one way. In
Sumatra there was an old form of marriage, which has been prohibited
for a century past, called _ambel anak_. A man thus married paid no
money to the wife’s father, but entered his family on the footing of a
son. He became entirely separated from his own kin, who renounced all
interest in him, and he lost his right of inheritance. All his
earnings belonged to his wife’s family, who became liable to any debts
he might contract after marriage and responsible for his crimes, just
as his own family were before. His wife’s family might divorce him, in
which case he went forth naked as he came. The custom was evidently in
decay long before its abolition, for the husband’s status was in some
respects hardly so good as that of a natural-born son, while on the
other hand there were provisions for enabling him to redeem himself,
his wife and children, by paying her _jujur_ or bride-price, and an
additional sum for any daughters who had been born. But this could
only be accomplished with the goodwill of his wife’s family, because
he was incapable of accumulating any property apart from the common
stock of the family.[389.2]
The severance of the married person from the clan of which he or she
has been previously a member is, as might be expected, sometimes the
subject of a special symbol in {390} marriage ceremonies. Thus, among
the Santals, when the clothes of a married pair have been tied
together (the symbol among many peoples of their union), burning
charcoal is pounded with the household pestle, and the glowing embers
are extinguished with water. In this way the old household fire of the
bride is, so far as she is concerned, put out for ever.[390.1] In
Nepal the Sinuwár bride’s parents wash her feet when they give her to
the bridegroom, and splash the water over their own heads. By doing
this they believe that they wash from her, and as it were take back,
the quality of membership of her original sept, and transfer her to
the sept of the bridegroom. On the next morning the bride washes the
bridegroom’s feet, and drinks the water, saying at the time that she
does this as a sign that she has entered his sept, and is truly his
wife.[390.2] Among the Wends there are traces of mother-right, though
it is no longer the system on which their society is organised. The
first night of marriage is always spent at the bride’s house; and
sometimes, it would seem, the bridegroom takes up his permanent
residence with his wife’s family. On such occasions he bids a solemn
farewell, and says to his parents: “Henceforth you will see me no
more, nor speak to me; for I am leaving you. Amen.”[390.3] The
separation of a Chinese woman from her family on marriage is so
complete, that when she returns home on a visit, no brother, nor even
her father, may sit with her on the same mat, nor eat with her from
the same dish.[390.4] The Marri of Manbhum do not even allow their
{391} married daughters to enter the house.[391.1] Among the Rájputs
a married daughter may never return to her father’s house without his
special leave. He is not likely to send for her, because he must then
give her a fresh dower. Conversely, neither he nor any of her near
elder relations may go to the village whereinto she is married, nor
even drink water from the village well; and though more distant
relations taboo not the whole village, they may not eat or drink from
her husband’s house.[391.2] Among the Hebrews a priest was forbidden
to defile himself for the dead, except for his own kin. His married
sister was not one of these, only a sister “a virgin which hath had no
husband.” A stranger outside the priest’s kindred, though his guest or
hired servant, was not permitted to eat of the heave-offering of the
holy things. If a priest’s daughter were married to a stranger, she
could not eat of it. But in this respect her separation seems not to
have been absolute; for if she were divorced or became a widow, being
childless, and so returned “unto her father’s house as in her youth,”
she might “eat of her father’s bread.”[391.3] The change of kin was so
marked among the Romans that one of their lawyers explained the word
_soror_, a sister, as “_quasi scorsum nata_, because she is separated
from the family wherein she was born, and passes to another.”[391.4]
When the consequences of marriage are the severance from the family or
clan of one of its members, and the union of that member to another
family or clan, so as to become one flesh with it, and hardly less
where, though the member in question be not lost to the clan, a
special relationship is about to be entered upon with the other {392}
clan for the purpose of producing new members for it to the exclusion
of the former clan, it is obvious that each of the two families, or
clans, has a very important interest in the transaction. The marriage
would affect not only the two principals; it would extend to every
member of the family, or clan, diminished, and every member of the
family, or clan, thus enlarged and strengthened. Such an interest as
this would entitle every member of both to be consulted; and their
assent would be required to its validity. Such assent would be shown,
as we have already noted, by the presence and assistance of the
kindred at the act of marriage; or it might be signified by gifts.
But, however shown, it would in many cases have to be purchased by
gifts. I have already mentioned a number of instances where the price,
or dowry, of the bride is contributed by the bridegroom’s kinsmen. We
are about to deal with the converse case, wherein the price, however
made up, is divided between the bride’s relatives.
Bride-purchase has been, at some time or other, practised almost all
over the world; and where we do not find it still in all its ancient
force we frequently find the relics of it. As, in the progress of
civilisation, the bonds of the family are drawn tighter, the power of
the father over his children increases, and that of the more distant
kinsfolk decreases. The substantial price in such cases is paid to the
parent; and the other kinsmen are recognised only by a smaller,
frequently a nominal, present. Lastly, the gifts on both sides are
transformed into a dowry for the bride, and into wedding presents
intended for the behoof of the happy couple. In various nations the
application of the marriage gifts is found in all stages of
transition, from the rudest bargain and sale up to the settlements so
dear to {393} English lawyers, and the useless toys which the
resources of the newest culture enable us to bestow upon our friends
on these interesting occasions, to assist their early efforts in
housekeeping. The examples following are drawn, of course, from
conditions of barbarism when purchase prevails, or when survivals of
its former practice have not yet been all swept away. Into the general
question of the extent of the kindred whose assent is necessary in
early stages of civilisation I have no space to go. But incidentally
we shall find evidence that the entire clan must have had a voice in
the matter. Inasmuch, however, as this chapter has already trespassed
on the reader’s patience to so great a length, I shall confine myself
to a few of the more indisputable and pertinent instances. To attempt
more would be to travel over ground which it would be impossible to
survey in a satisfactory manner, without a discussion interesting
indeed to the student of institutions, but altogether disproportionate
to the present work.
Among races whose customs point unimpeachably to the need of obtaining
the consent of the general body of the bride’s kinsmen we may begin
with the Turanians. A bridegroom of the Hill tribes of Rajmahál is
required to present not only a turban and a rupee to his
father-in-law, and a piece of cloth and a rupee to his mother-in-law,
but also to several of the nearest relations.[393.1] Striking are the
ceremonies performed by two of the northern branches of this
widespread race. After the purchase-money has been agreed upon, but
before it is paid, among the Kirghiz the bridegroom is allowed to
visit the bride. This is done by some tribes with great formality. The
young man presents himself first to the oldest member of the bride’s
family, and {394} asks permission to pitch his tent at the encampment.
“This request being granted, he distributes presents among the members
of the family, and begs them to use their efforts in persuading the
bride to pay him a visit in his tent. As success always crowns their
efforts, the bride makes her appearance in the tent, where the young
couple are left alone. During this interview the marriage is
consummated, though the union is not yet formally consecrated. They
are now bound to each other, and neither can withdraw from the mutual
obligation they have contracted without being exposed to the vengeance
of the injured party.” Further presents are given to the relatives on
the formal celebration of the marriage after the purchase-money has
been paid.[394.1] Among the tribes of Turkestan the wedding takes
place after the payment of the purchase-money to the father. Each
party is represented by two witnesses at the wedding ceremony, and a
_mollah_ is employed to legalise the contract. All goes on smoothly
until “the bride’s witnesses suddenly raise some objection, pretending
that they are unwilling to deliver up the bride who is intrusted to
their keeping, unless some suitable present is offered for renouncing,
on their part, the great treasure placed in their custody.” Nor can
the marriage proceed until they are satisfied.[394.2]
The same part is played in Central Europe by the Wendish bridesmaids.
The bride awaits her bridegroom sitting at a table by herself. When
his procession arrives, the _brautführer_ advances to the table and
begs her politely to follow him to the wedding. The bridesmaids
interfere, and refuse to give her up without being paid for it: they
must have the whole table full of gold! After an {395} amount of
haggling, which depends on the persuasive powers of the damsels and
the wealth of the bridegroom, they are at length satisfied; and
sometimes the business is not concluded until a considerable sum has
been paid.[395.1] At an Ukrainian marriage, presents are made with
ritual formalities to every one of the bride’s relations by name; and
a formal agreement is entered into by which the number, and even the
value, of these presents is declared. Among the persons present are
women who are strangers to the immediate family. When the presents to
the relatives have been settled, these women climb on a bench beside
the family hearth, taking a sieve which they beat like a tambourine,
clamouring also for their share of the ransom. And the bridegroom is
compelled to throw some small pieces of money into the sieve for them.
As M. Volkov, in detailing the proceedings, says, it is clear that all
this represents a payment in respect of the bride for the benefit of
her whole clan. Among the Bulgarians a like payment, distinguished
from that to the father, is made in money for all the members of the
family, or rather for the family-community. The father usually gives
what he receives to his daughter by way of dowry.[395.2] The usage
probably differs to some extent in various parts of Bulgaria. In
Bessarabia the money paid to the father is used to defray the cost of
the bride’s wardrobe, but clothing is also purchased for the bride’s
relations. If I read the account correctly, the bridegroom also pays
the bride’s mother a few ducats and presents articles of clothing to
her sisters. Among other members of the South Slavonic stock the
custom likewise varies, but all agree in requiring {396} presents to
be made to all the near kindred of the bride. The minimum payment is
set down by one reporter, writing of the practice in his own district,
as twelve florins to the bride, ten to her father, two to her mother,
six to each of her brothers, and to the other relations seven florins
each.[396.1]
The final difficulties on the part of the Wendish bridesmaids may be
compared with the conduct of the women of the bride’s party at a
marriage of the Banks’ Islanders. When the last instalments of the
purchase-money have been paid, and the bridegroom’s father and his
party, after the interposition of all sorts of difficulties, are on
the point of succeeding in obtaining delivery of the bride, the women
step in and refuse to give her up until an extra sum has been made
over to them to induce them to let her go.[396.2] In Sindh also, as
the bridegroom is about to enter the nuptial chamber, his bride’s
sister, or a female cousin, opposes him and demands a gift of a few
rupees, which he must pay ere he is allowed to pass.[396.3]
A traveller in the earlier half of the last century relates that to a
native of Cape Coast the cost of his wedding was seldom more than an
ounce of gold among the bride’s relations, two suits of new clothes
for the bride, and a fat goat and some palm-wine and brandy for the
entertainment.[396.4] In the Zambesi basin to-day the matter is
arranged by “the so-called brothers or next of kin,” who alone have
the right to consent, the father having no voice in the matter. But
what, if anything, is paid to them as the price of their goodwill,
beyond a plentiful supply of pombe, {397} which is drunk together by
the brethren on both sides after the wedding, I am not able to
say.[397.1] It seems clear at all events that in many places the price
may be commuted for a feast, or a feast may be added to it, and after
the custom of purchase has died out the feast only may remain. So
among the Arabs, for example, the stipulated sum which forms the dowry
and belongs to the bride is paid to her father; but before the husband
can claim his rights he has to feast the maiden and her relations and
friends.[397.2]
Further illustrations are hardly needed. The custom may be summed up
in the words of Professor Hickson, describing what he observed in
Minahassa, Celebes, where women enjoy an exceptionally high position:
“It might seem also that the _harta_ which is paid by the bridegroom
for his bride is of a similar nature to the price paid for a slave, a
beast of burden, or any other piece of property. The _harta_, however,
should not be considered as a ‘price,’ it has rather the nature of a
‘compensation’ paid to the bride’s family for the loss of one of its
working and child-producing members.”[397.3]
The subject of the ceremonies and institutions of marriage is one of
profound interest. It has engrossed the attention of many
anthropologists and filled many volumes. The sketch, therefore, that I
have here attempted of only one aspect of the subject is obviously
meagre and imperfect. Yet I venture to hope that I have succeeded in
throwing some further light upon the savage conception of a kindred as
an undivided entity--a conception which has survived in a more or less
complete form into high planes of civilisation. Rites analogous to
that of the blood-covenant are found not merely to bind together {398}
the individual husband and wife, but to unite the incoming member to
the whole kindred. And although in the most archaic period whose
remains are accessible to us it does not appear that these rites meant
actual admission into the kin, their analogy easily lent itself to
that construction as the organisation of society into clans drew
closer and closer together, and especially as the patriarchal clan
developed; and marriage at length came in many cases to operate as an
actual severance from one kin and an entrance into another. The reason
for the rights and privileges acquired by the whole kindred, alike
whether marriage operated as a blood-covenant or not, is founded on,
and springs directly from, the conception of the kin as one body
whereof all the brethren were as literally members as the hand and the
foot are members of the physical body of each man. To graft a new
member upon such a body, or even to introduce a stranger into a
special relation with a member of such a body, is to introduce him or
her to a corresponding relation with all. Their rights may for the
time be overridden by the paramount claim of the member for whose
special behoof the stranger is introduced--a claim enforced often by
strength, more often, perhaps, by custom; yet the moment the claim
paramount is withdrawn, or suspended, the rights of the remaining
members of the kindred arise and are capable of enforcement. They are
sometimes also asserted on special occasions even against the claim
paramount.
Society has developed, among almost all the higher races, into and
through the patriarchal clan. Among many of the lower races who have
not, when brought into contact with European culture, already thrown
off their original social constitution, a marked tendency to develop
in the {399} same direction has been found. Consequently most of our
illustrations have been drawn from a condition of things where the
bride has been transferred to the bridegroom’s home and has entered
into special relations with the bridegroom’s kin. Of the converse case
many examples which might have been adduced are complicated by the
developing patriarchalism. Inquiry into these complications would have
necessitated a volume rather than a chapter. Hence I have been
compelled to pass over many a problem not only interesting but
important to solve. But wherever I have found it possible to deal
within the limits at my command with the case of a bridegroom entering
into special relations with the bride’s kin, the same general
principles have been observed to govern it.
CHAPTER XV.
THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE
BLOOD-TIE--CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE
LIFE-TOKEN.
{400}
In the last three chapters we have discussed some savage customs
founded on the belief that the members of a kin are parts of an entire
body and connected with one another by an indissoluble tie, so long as
they remain members of that body and are not cut off by formal
expulsion or renunciation, either with or without union to another
similar body. Many other practices are derived from the same notion. I
select a few of them for notice in the present chapter.
Prominent among them is the custom to which the name of the Couvade
has been given: a name too deeply rooted now to be changed, albeit one
founded on a mistake as to the use of the word and a limitation,
untenable on scientific grounds, though inevitable in the then state
of our knowledge, to certain remarkable developments of the usage. Dr.
Tylor was the first to examine the custom in a critical manner. Since
the publication of his _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_,
it has been considered by numerous anthropologists, notably by Dr.
Ploss, Dr. {401} Wilken, Mr. im Thurn, and more recently by Dr. von
Dargun and Mr. Ling Roth; while Dr. J. A. H. Murray in his letters to
_The Academy_ has once for all disposed of the evidence for its
existence in modern Europe and for the use of the word by the
Béarnese, or by any French writers of authority, as a technical term
in describing the alleged Béarnese custom. Mr. Ling Roth’s
comprehensive paper on the subject happily relieves me from the
necessity of dealing with it at length here.[401.1]
The Couvade as generally explained is the custom which requires the
father of a child, immediately after its birth, to lie-in as if he
were a woman in childbed, while his wife, who has actually given birth
to the babe, goes about her ordinary work, and of course waits upon
her husband in his feigned sickness. But this definition is inadequate
and misleading. In order to attain a true conception of the custom it
is not enough to limit our observation to a small number of cases and
in those cases to regard only the most prominent phenomena, because
they strike us as the most ridiculous. We must clear our minds of the
notion that the father takes the mother’s place, in the sense, at all
events, that he is made to undergo the treatment she is entitled to,
and at her expense. Whether from living a more active and open-air
life than her more civilised sisters, or from physical causes more
deeply seated, the ease with which a savage woman gives birth is much
more like that of a wild beast. She will often deliver herself without
aid; and, subject to the ceremonial rules of the tribe concerning
{402} uncleanness, in a very little time she is ready to return to her
usual occupations. Simulation of her sufferings, not to say disregard
of them, by the husband is therefore in most cases out of the
question.
Moreover, the lying-in of the husband, so far as it can be so termed,
is only part of a large number of observances, by which he is bound,
in the more fully developed forms of the custom, from the moment his
wife conceives, or occasionally before, until the child is able to
speak, or to digest the usual food of the tribe; and in many of these
observances both before and after childbirth the wife is included;
while she on her part is bound by other observances of a similar
character. Thus, Signor Modigliani, sojourning with a native of Nias
whose wife was in “an interesting condition,” was the innocent cause
of an amusing domestic squabble. For his host in leaving his room one
day stepped across the traveller’s outspread legs. This was a serious
matter, because it was apt to cause misfortune to the unborn child.
The wife did not fail to remind her imprudent husband of his folly,
and carried her anger to such a height that he was glad to flee from
the blows administered by means of the firewood intended for the
domestic hearth. Nor was the quarrel made up without a gift from the
traveller of one of his bags of rice. While staying at the house
Signor Modigliani frequently obtained from the natives by barter
serpents for his collection; and this was a continual cause of
difficulties to his host, who was divided between his curiosity and
desire to assist at the transaction on the one side, and on the other
his dread of the consequences of seeing a dead snake--consequences
only to be averted by running away at once to find and burn a living
one. At length, however, Signor Modigliani {403} convinced him that it
would be enough, when he found a snake, to seize it and simulate
burning by passing it over a fire kindled for the purpose, and then to
kill it in some other manner, as by suffocating it in alcohol for
scientific purposes. Other acts too the Niasese father-expectant must
avoid, as talking with Malays or Chinese, lest the child be unable to
speak his own tongue, splitting a piece of wood or the _atap_-leaves
wherewith the houses are roofed, lest the infant be born with harelip,
eating of a pig found dead, lest the fœtus be born without attaining
proper development, killing or cutting up chickens or pigs, lest the
babe feel the wounds, eating of the great beetles of which the natives
are very fond, lest the little one catch a cough. As reported by other
travellers, both parents must abstain before the birth from some of
these acts, as well as from passing over a spot where a man has been
murdered, or a buffalo slain, or where a dog has been burnt for the
purpose of giving effect to certain imprecations, else the child will
be affected by the contortions of the dying man or beast. Nor dare
they build a house, or thatch it, nor drive nails; and before breaking
tobacco or siri it must be drawn out of the bag which contains it, or
the babe cannot be born. They look in no mirror or bamboo-tube, lest
the child squint. They eat no _bujuwu_ (a kind of bird) or owl, lest
he croak or whoop instead of speaking. They touch no monkey, lest the
infant get eyes and forehead like a monkey’s. They enter no house
where a corpse lies, else he will die. They eat of no pig killed for a
funeral feast, lest he get the itch. They plant no _pisang_-trees,
lest he suffer from ulcers. The consequence of eating a certain fish
or striking a snake is indigestion to the child, of expressing or
boiling-out oil is headache to him, of passing {404} over a place
struck by lightning is to make his body black, of firing a field for
agricultural purposes, or throwing salt into the pig’s food, or of
swearing, is sickness to him; and to eat out of the vessel in which
the food is cooked is to cause the babe to adhere to the
after-birth.[404.1]
This long list exhausts not the prohibitions in force on the island of
Nias; but we may treat it as a sample not merely for that one island
but for many other places, and pass on to a few instances of rules
imposed at and after the time of delivery. On the Melanesian island of
Saa, both before and after the birth, the father “will not eat pig’s
flesh, and he abstains from movements which are believed to do harm,
upon the principle that the father’s movements affect those of the
child. A man will not do hard work; he keeps quiet lest the child
should start, should overstrain itself, or should throw itself about
as he paddles.” In the Banks’ Islands when the child is born both
parents eat only what it could digest. “After the birth of the first
child, the father does no heavy work for a month; after the birth of
any of his children he takes care not to go into those sacred places
into which the child could not go without risk.” In the New Hebrides
“he does work in looking after his wife and child, but he must not eat
shell-fish and other produce of the beach, for the infant would suffer
from ulcers if he did. In Lepers’ Island the father is very careful
for ten days; he does no work, will not climb a tree, or go far into
the sea to bathe, for if he exert himself the child will
suffer.”[404.2] Turning to the American continent, we will take the
report of the latest traveller in the interior of Brazil, Dr. Karl von
den Steinen. Here let it be noted that the father is so far {405} from
imitating childbed, that the mother is, all over South America,
usually delivered on the ground, whereas the father lies in his
hammock. So it is among the Schingù Indians visited by Dr. von den
Steinen. Their opinion was that the father lay in the hammock because
he was obliged to fast, and that he took care of the child because he
was obliged to remain at home, while the mother went out to her work,
rather than from any intention to simulate the natural conduct of the
mother. The father it is who cuts the navel-string; and he is not a
free man until the string falls off the child. By these and other
American peoples fish, flesh and fruit are tabooed to the father
expressly on the ground that for him to eat them is all one as if the
babe itself ate them. Among the Ipurina he is forbidden to taste
tapir-flesh or pork for a whole year. On the other hand, what very
much astonished the worthy apothecary of the Brazilian military
colony, the Bororó father, when his child is sick, is in the habit of
himself taking the medicine provided for the patient. The Bororó
father and mother eat nothing for two days after the birth; and on the
third day they may only take warm water: if the father ate anything
both he and the infant would sicken. The mother, though she attends to
her work, must not bathe until her menstruation has returned. The
Paressí parents remain in the hut for five days, until the
navel-string falls off; and the father is only allowed to taste water
mingled with _beijú_, otherwise the baby would die.[405.1] The
humorous accounts of the practice among the Tamanacs and Abipones,
quoted at length by Dr. Tylor from the Abate Gilij and the Jesuit
missionary Dobrizhoffer, need only be referred to here to emphasise
the reason given in {406} both cases, namely, that the abstinence
described is for the benefit of the offspring. To partake of certain
food, to kill any animal, to sneeze, or to commit some other act,
would injure the little one.
Readers who have followed the facts and arguments in the earlier
chapters of this volume set forth will have no difficulty in arriving
at the true interpretation of the usage. It is founded on the belief
that the child is a part of the parent; and, just as even after
apparent severance of hair or nails from the remainder of the body,
the bulk is affected by anything which happens to the severed portion,
so as well after as before the infant has been severed from the
parent’s body, and in our eyes has acquired a distinct existence, he
will be affected by whatever operates on the parent; and, conversely,
the parent will feel whatever happens to him, as in some parts of
England a mother absent for a while from her child is believed to feel
her breasts painful when he cries.[406.1] The separation is only in
appearance; the connection is preserved in spite of it. Hence whatever
the parent ought for the child’s sake to do or avoid before severance
it is equally necessary to do or avoid after. Gradually, however, as
the infant grows and strengthens he becomes able to digest the same
food as his parents, and to take part in the ordinary avocations of
their lives. Precaution then may be relaxed, and ultimately remitted
altogether. But the observance is attended with inconveniences. The
parents’ labour is required in hunting, in agriculture, in warfare, in
all the various ways in which the {407} life of a household or of a
tribe is maintained. The custom therefore is liable to gradual
diminution. It is worn away slowly, and compressed into a shorter
period. With the tardy and half-unconscious recognition of natural
laws it loses bit by bit its importance, until it fades away into
little more than a ceremony. In spite of decay, however, and indeed in
consequence of it, it may acquire another significance; and among a
few tribes, as, for example, the Mundurucus, it becomes “the legal
form by which the father recognises the child as his.” This result
would have the effect of renewing its vitality. The change of
intention is rare, and where the custom is found in its fullest
development it is unknown. Accordingly, I venture with all respect to
think it is a mistake to see in this legal form the origin of the
Couvade, as Dr. Tylor has done, plausible though the explanation
seems. Its origin really lies deeper; it lies in the widely pervasive
conception of life I have endeavoured to exhibit in these chapters on
the Life-token.
This mode of accounting for the practice may seem defective in that it
fails to explain the martyrdom suffered by the Carib father, as
detailed by Du Tertre. After the unfortunate father has endured a
course of fasting for forty days the relatives and best friends, we
are told, are invited to a feast, which they preface by scarifying him
with agouti-teeth, and then having mashed in water sixty or eighty
grains of strong pimento, or Indian pepper, they wash his wounds with
the infusion. Not a sound, however, must be drawn from him by his
agony, if he would not be deemed a coward and despised by all.[407.1]
In like manner, among the aboriginal inhabitants of Celebes, if the
first-born be a son the mother bathes the child in the nearest
water-course, while the {408} father, fully armed and dressed in his
finest garb, awaits her return. In his turn he then goes to bathe, and
when he steps out of the water his neighbours are waiting for him to
beat him with reeds all the way back to his dwelling. On arriving
there, he seizes his bow and shoots three reed arrows over the hut,
saying: “I wish much happiness to my son: may he grow up to be a
valiant man.”[408.1] I do not know whether the Carib ceremony was
performed on the birth of a girl, but the Minahassee ceremony is
entirely omitted; and the extreme severities of the Carib fast were at
all events confined to the first child. The object of the Minahassee
father is unquestionable; and from it we may infer that of the Carib.
In his person his son undergoes the first tests of his endurance,
valour and skill. Success in this is doubtless the guarantee of the
child’s courage and of his value to the tribe as hunter and warrior.
If this be so, the Carib tortures, it is evident, spring from the same
root as other observances comprehended under the general name of the
Couvade. Both in the Carib and Minahassee forms we find the tendency
to emphasise the birth of the first child, or perhaps I should rather
say, to relax the requirements in the case of after-born children. The
tendency is not to be looked upon as a recognition of heirship, but as
one arising naturally in the course of ceremonial decay. The first
child is the most important; for it is a pledge of the continuance of
the family or kindred, and brings very often an accession of honour,
or at least of consideration, to its parents. Among peoples where
conjugal fidelity is imperfectly developed, moreover, it is the one of
whose parentage the father is best assured, and consequently the one
on whose health and strength his {409} conduct will be likely, if not
certain, to have influence. Thus the motives for the care of the
offspring, and therefore for the special observance of all
precautions, concentrate upon the first child; and if the custom be
found irksome, or for any other reason be liable to loosen its hold,
it will generally continue to be fully observed in respect of the
first child, long after it has begun to fall into neglect on
subsequent births.
The racial and geographical distribution of the practice is a more
difficult question than it might at first sight appear, considering
the number of authorities who have examined it. If we limit not the
definition of the Couvade to the cases where the father actually lies
down, but extend it, as it seems proper to do, to all those where he
has before as well as after the birth to observe various taboos, in
which the mother is often included--then we may find either the custom
itself or relics of it over the greater part of the world. America,
inhabited by a homogeneous race, displays it everywhere, even among
the Eskimos of Greenland, save apparently in Tierra del Fuego. On the
eastern continent Mr. Ling Roth puts the matter somewhat strongly when
he says that it “is only met with in isolated and widely separated
localities.” In Australia it is unknown; nor is there any record of it
among the extinct Tasmanians. Summing up the facts, the same writer
says: “The custom does not appear to exist or to have existed among
those people to whom the term ‘most _degraded_’ is erroneously
applied, people which were better described as savages living in the
lowest known forms of culture, such as the Australians, Tasmanians,
Bushmen, Hottentots, Veddahs, Sakeys, Aetas, and Fuegians. Neither
does the custom exist among the so-called civilised portion of
mankind. In {410} other words, Couvade appears at first sight to be
limited to peoples who hold an intermediate position between those in
the highest and those in [the] lowest states of culture. As such it
may be said to represent an intermediate or transition state of mental
development.”
We have no need to be surprised that the Couvade is not found in the
lowest stage of savagery. The reckoning of kinship through the mother
only, and the stories and superstitions which attribute impregnation
to other causes than coition, point alike to an imperfect recognition
in archaic times of the natural fact of fatherhood. It may further be
suggested that where the claim of a father upon his child is still
rather that of owner than of begetter, the recognition of the
counter-claim of the child upon the father, and the application as
between father and child of the belief underlying and directing other
magical practices, will not yet have developed. It is probable,
indeed, that the customs we include under the generic name of the
Couvade would begin with the mother, and that when the fact of
paternity was completely recognised, although legal kinship may not
yet have come to be reckoned through the father, they would be
extended to him. Their disappearance as men advanced in civilisation
would, like that of all other customs, be a gradual one; and if they
had become at all general we should be likely to discover relics of
them among nations in the higher ranks of culture. Accordingly,
although there is no authentic record of the existence of the
masculine childbed in modern Europe, a number yet lingers of
superstitions only referable to the Couvade. For example, just as in
the island of Celebes we found the Minahassee father performing a rite
intended to secure to his son the qualities of bravery and skill, so
among the Esthonians the {411} father runs rapidly round the church
during the baptismal service, that his child may be endowed with
swiftness of foot.[411.1] In Altmark the mother busily reads her Bible
and hymn-book while the child is being baptized, so that he may be
able to learn easily; and with the same object the godparents must
repeat together after the minister the passages from the Bible he
brings into his exhortation.[411.2] The husband among the mixed
population of East Prussia seems to have been limited in his choice of
drink while his wife was lying-in.[411.3] Over a wide area of the
Continent the mother is allowed to do very little work before her
churching. In Altmark she must not spin; for in spinning she will wet
her finger with her saliva, and that will cause the babe to
slaver.[411.4] The reason assigned in Switzerland for a similar taboo
is that she will spin the material for a rope for her child.[411.5] At
the baptismal feast in Altmark the mother must taste of all the dishes
if she wish the infant to thrive.[411.6] Galician Jews permit no
member of a household where there is a young child to stay out after
sunset, else the little one will be deprived of its rest.[411.7] In
the last illustration we have an extension of the superstition beyond
the immediate parents--an extension of which there are traces among
savage peoples, like the Abipones, who are reported to have put other
relatives as well as the parents upon restricted diet during a baby’s
illness.
An interesting form of this extension has been referred to by Dr.
Tylor in the third edition of the important work {412} in which he
discusses the Couvade, where he notes that in Germany “it is believed
that the habits and proceedings of the godfather and godmother affect
the child’s life and character. Particularly, the godfather at the
christening must not think of disease or madness lest this come upon
the child; he must not look round on the way to church lest the child
should grow up an idle stare-about; nor must he carry a knife about
him for fear of making the child a suicide; the godmother must put on
a clean shift to go to the baptism, or the baby will grow up untidy,
etc. etc.”[412.1] I have already mentioned another instance from a
land which, to-day at all events, is German in language and polity.
There the duty of godparents is exactly parallel with that prescribed
for the mother. So too it is held in the Erzgebirge and in Thuringia
that the godfather must eat of all the dishes at the feast, for the
babe will get a dislike to those left untasted; and in Thuringia he
must not only not look about him in returning from church, but he must
hasten back to the house, that the child may learn the sooner to
run.[412.2] In the Sollingerwald each of the godparents must hold the
babe for a little while; but the youngest of them presents it at the
font, doubtless to ensure it a longer life.[412.3] In the Upper
Palatinate even the priest’s conduct at the baptism will affect the
child. If he stumble or stutter during the reading of the service,
{413} the consequences are serious: the boy will become silly, the
girl a nightmare; or if he leave a word out, the infant will never
rest quietly in bed, but will be found feet uppermost. In Bohemia, the
priest in stumbling as he reads will cause the child to talk in its
sleep.[413.1] In the province of Posen, forgetfulness or mistake on
the part of the priest results as in the Palatinate; and the only
remedy is rebaptism.[413.2] The superstition, as we see, is not
confined to Germany, though it may be more fully developed there than
elsewhere; and without delaying upon examples drawn from Germany and
Germanised lands, I proceed to cite a few from other countries before
closing what I have to say on the Couvade. Among the Huzules, to have
a Gipsy as godparent is to be lucky in horse-breeding and
horse-dealing; and by the same people it is considered that if there
be a difficulty in putting out the godparents’ candles after the
service, the little newly made Christian will have a long life.[413.3]
The peasantry of the Valsesia at the foot of Monte Rosa deem that if
the godparents do not recite the creed with a clear voice the little
one will stammer all its life. And whoever carries it to the church to
be baptized must on no account look back, or the babe will always be
timid and easily frightened.[413.4] In Provence on the other side of
the Alps, as well as in Germany and Belgium, the opinion is widely
prevalent that the child will resemble, morally and physically, his
godparents. Hence great anxiety as to the choice of these important
personages. They must be healthy in mind and body, and without any
physical defect; for if either of them should be one-eyed, a
stammerer, bandy-legged or a hunchback, nobody, in Provence at least,
doubts {414} that the poor baby would suffer the like
misfortune.[414.1] In Central France, if a godfather wish his godson
to become an excellent and indefatigable singer, he has a ready way to
realise the wish; for he has only to set the bells ringing full peal
during the baptismal service, and the longer and more vigorously they
dance and swell, the more skilful will the neophyte become in striking
up an air or in leading a jig. The godfather, however, must not forget
on leaving the church to imprint a chaste kiss on both cheeks of the
godmother, else there is too much reason to fear the boy will grow up
dumb, or at least a stammerer.[414.2] In the _arrondissement_ of
Corte, on the island of Corsica, if either of the sponsors forgets a
single word in reciting the creed, the child becomes a wizard or
witch, or else a _mortolaio_, that is to say, a ghost-seer.[414.3] The
latter result also follows in Friuli;[414.4] while the Irish peasantry
hold that if either of the sponsors fails to repeat _verbatim_ after
the priest the prayers and promises, the child will always have the
power to see fairies or ghosts--which is reckoned unfortunate.[414.5]
Among the Walloons the omission by the priest of certain of the
sacramental words seems to have a similar effect.[414.6] It is a
superstition scattered over a large part of Italy that if the priest
make any mistake in the baptismal service, or omit to comply with
every ritual prescription in baptizing a girl, she will become a
witch;[414.7] and that stupidity or stammering will be the consequence
of defects in the recitation {415} of the creed or prayers by the
_padrini_ is also commonly believed.[415.1]
The fact is that in the popular mind sponsorship creates a new and
real kindred between the godparent and the god-child, and not only
between the godparent and god-child, but between the godparent and the
godchild’s relations. The effect seems analogous to that of the
blood-covenant. Among the wandering Gipsies of southern Hungary a rite
similar to that of the blood-covenant is actually performed. The day
when the child’s hair is first cut is kept as a festival. The
godparents let some drops of their blood fall into a glass of brandy
and some on a small piece of bread. The father then pours the brandy
on the child’s head and crumbles the bread upon it, “that the child
may grow and thrive.” In the same way when the tortures of the Carib
father came to an end, the infant was sprinkled with some drops of
blood from his wounds, with the object, we are told, of imparting his
courage and spirit. So, too, some of the wandering Gipsies of northern
Hungary wrap the babe after its birth in rags bedropt with some of the
father’s blood.[415.2] The object in all these cases is to unite the
child in the closest bond with the person whose blood is shed. Even
where that person is the father himself the rite may perhaps be
regarded as a formal adoption into the kin. More likely it is intended
to promote the growth and health of the child by renewing the
corporeal union already in existence by virtue of the natural
blood-tie, or of the equivalent mystical bond forged, as between
sponsor and child, by the sacrament of baptism. It would then
correspond to one of those periodical renewals {416} of
blood-brotherhood which we have dealt with on a former page. Some
countenance is perhaps given to this suggestion by a practice of the
Southern Slavs. The relationship of godfather and godchild is often
created among them by the formal cutting of the child’s hair, as it
seems also to have been among the ancient Germans. The ceremony can
only take place once. The godfather cuts the hair in the form of a
cross and drops it into a cup of water, into which he puts some money
as a gift for the child; and the parent then entertains him at a feast
and presents him with gifts in return. As the ceremony is not
distinctive of any religious denomination, Christian and Moslem do not
scruple to enter into the relationship of hair-cutting sponsorship
with one another. It unites the families in ties so close as to
involve them in one another’s blood-feuds; and a Moslem woman unveils
before her child’s godfather, though a stranger and even a Christian.
But, important as are the social and political effects of such an
institution, it is not to them that I desire specially to direct
attention in this connection; rather I desire to compare it with the
Gipsy practices just mentioned. It is in great request in Bosnia as
remedial treatment for a sickly child. The child is taken to a
crossway; and the first passer-by is expected to cut the hair and thus
become godfather.[416.1] Here it is surely intended to enter into a
new corporeal union with an entire stranger, and so acquire a fresh
stock of health. The objection to this explanation is that the
godparent does not seem to take the hair away with him. I do not know
if we can suppose that the ceremony has undergone deterioration, and
that this part {417} of the proceeding has been lost because its exact
reason has been forgotten. I am unable otherwise to account for it. In
any case it is unquestionable that the relationship of gossipry in
many countries is fully as intimate and sacred as that of blood.
Amongst the Southern Slavs, we know, a godfather or an adoptive
brother is often the person chosen in preference to any one, even a
natural brother, to fill the delicate office of _brautführer_ at a
wedding. The Huzules regard sponsors as veritable additions to the
family circle. They never choose them from among their neighbours; for
there is often strife between neighbours; and strife between gossips,
or persons related by the bond of sponsorship, would be a sin.[417.1]
In some parts of Italy the godmother drinks at the baptismal feast out
of the same cup with the mother:[417.2] clear evidence of the intimacy
of their union.
One consequence of the relationship thus created is the prohibition of
intermarriage. In comparatively early times the Church took over from
the Roman law the interdiction of marriage between persons who were
only akin by adoption. That interdiction was the direct and necessary
result of the recognition of adoption as constituting a true kinship.
The analogy of sponsorship at the font was too great to be overlooked;
and in following the prohibition into the relationship between persons
by this new tie the Church was merely reflecting the opinion of the
people, who saw in it a fresh and solemn form of the adoption to which
they had been accustomed from the days of savagery. Their horror of
such marriages wherever sponsorship is yet a living reality may be
illustrated by the superstition recorded in Berri not many years ago,
that the fruit of the {418} union was not children but hairy monsters,
which when disengaged from their mother’s womb would instantly take
refuge under the bed, and when thence dislodged with a pitchfork would
fly to the hearth, and after grinning and mowing at their persecutors
for a while from the pot-hook above the hearth would eventually
disappear, to the relief of every one, up the chimney.[418.1]
The custom of Adoption seems to have arisen with the appearance of the
true family. The mode of admission into a totem-kin is by the
blood-covenant, and the neophyte becomes a blood-brother. But when the
smaller circle of the family emerges, containing only the parents and
their descendants either by monogamic or polygynic marriage, adoption
by the head of the family of a child from without is found a
convenient means of recruiting its numbers. For a long time adoption
into the family goes on side by side with admission by blood-covenant
into the kin. The object of both rites, though similar, is not
identical, inasmuch as the bodies into which admission is obtained are
not the same. The blood-covenant, therefore, is not ousted by
adoption, and only tends to disappear with the abandonment of the
clan-organisation. In fact, in the custom of Adoptive Brotherhood it
has continued among the Slavs to the present day. Adoption seems to
attain its greatest strength where what we may term legal kinship is
reckoned only on one side, whether through the father only or the
mother only. When legal kinship comes to coincide with natural kinship
the circle of the kin widens, and the organisation of society changes,
so as to render less needful the strengthening of the family by adding
artificially to its numbers; testamentary rights come into existence;
the {419} feeling of natural kinship dominates the legal idea; and
kinship by adoption ultimately vanishes. For this reason Adoption is
unknown to the English law, and the same may probably be said of other
modern nations, notwithstanding their ancestors may have practised it,
even where their law is an ancient system, adapted from time to time
to the development of national requirements, and not based upon a
revolutionary subversion of older institutions.
The ceremony of Adoption is sometimes found as a simulation of the act
of birth, at other times as suckling or a simulation of suckling.
Diodorus relates a legend of the adoption of Herakles by Hera which
doubtless exhibits the ceremony as practised by the prehistoric
Greeks. The scene, it will be remembered, is laid in Heaven; for it
was to make things agreeable there after the hero’s apotheosis that
Zeus persuaded his jealous and vindictive consort to take this course.
We are told that Hera having gone to bed, Herakles was brought close
to her body, in order to imitate a real birth; and she then dropped
him down from under her clothes to the ground. The writer adds that
even in his own day this was the rite of adoption observed by the
barbarians;[419.1] nor have we any reason to disbelieve him, seeing
that it is still practised by the Turks in Bosnia. In Dalmatia the man
who intends to adopt a son (the ceremony is the same if it be
performed by a woman) girds the son with one end of his girdle and
himself with the other, saying in the presence of witnesses: “This is
my son. I make over to him after my life my whole property.” A
Slavonic folksong represents an empress as taking the son {420} to be
adopted into the palace and passing him through her silken vest that
he might be called her heart’s child.[420.1] Here we are reminded of a
mediæval usage at weddings in France and Germany. In the former
country a canopy, or veil, was (and perhaps still is) held suspended
over the heads of the pair to be married while the service is being
performed. It bears the significant name of _abrifou_, or
fool-shelter. The Hessian practice, now extinct, was more picturesque.
The bridegroom wore a large black mantle; and as he stood with his
bride before the altar he flung with one strong sweep its ample folds
around her, so that both of them were covered by it. If the bride, or
her husband, had any child, born before marriage, and she took it
there and then under the canopy or the mantle, this act was sufficient
to render it legitimate.[420.2] The same usage may once have prevailed
in England; for a belief is said to have lingered into recent times
among “the folk” here that a mother might legitimate her children born
before marriage, by taking them under her clothes during the
ceremony.[420.3] Though the object of the practice is said to be
legitimation, the rite is that of adoption. Legitimation and Adoption
are in this connection convertible terms.
Elsewhere suckling is represented in the rite. Sir John Lubbock
mentions that “in Circassia the woman offered her breast to the person
she was adopting.” This was probably the form among the ancient
Egyptians. At all {421} events, they esteemed the milk-tie a very
sacred one;[421.1] as did the ancient Irish, with whom, and with the
Scandinavians, fosterage had a sanctity equal, if not superior, to the
tie of blood, without, however, involving the renunciation of the
original kin.[421.2] At the present time at Kambât, in the Eastern
Horn of Africa, the son to be adopted sucks blood from the breast of
his adoptive father.[421.3] In Abyssinia, “if a man wishes to be
adopted as the son of one of superior station or influence, he takes
his hand, and, sucking one of his fingers, declares himself to be his
‘child by adoption,’ and his new father is bound to assist him as far
as he can.”[421.4]
In general, the effect of Adoption was to transfer the adopted child
from his own family to that of the adoptive parent. At Rome the rite
included the _detestatio sacrorum_, or relinquishment of the original
household, and the _transitio in sacra_, or initiation into the new
worship. By these means the child was discharged from his natural
family and received into the new one.[421.5] The change of worship is,
in that plane of civilisation where the custom of adoption is most
fully developed, of the essence of the proceeding. Its very object
often is to preserve the ancestral cult by artificially providing
persons to carry it on. This is the most prominent idea in the _Laws
of Manu_.[421.6] Annexed to the ancestral cult was the inheritance.
Whosoever performed the one was entitled to the other, or {422} at
least to a share in the other. In course of time, as the duty decayed
and ceased to be acknowledged, the rights of property remained: an
excellent precedent for the English House of Lords in insisting on the
rights of property while looking askance at its duties. The adopted
child is in fact regarded exactly as a natural-born child; he obtains
all the privileges, and is charged with all the duties, restrictions
and disabilities of a natural-born child. He becomes of one flesh with
his new parents and their other offspring, whether natural or adopted.
He is entitled to support, to maintenance in his quarrels, to
protection, to his fair and equal share of the inheritance. He is
liable to obedience, to maintain the family quarrels, to assist in
paying the family debts and obligations, to unite in the family
worship; and he is debarred from marrying all whom the members of his
adopted family are restricted from marrying. As a consequence,
adoption can only take place with the assent of both families, or of a
council of elders or some more formal tribunal on behalf of the
community. Such a tribunal exercises the functions, not merely of
judge of the propriety of the adoption, but also of the necessary
witness to its validity. And if we do not find the formality always
complied with in the punctilious manner of the Roman law, we may
usually trace it with greater or less distinctness wherever the custom
of adoption has obtained.[422.1]
Passing, with this hasty sketch of Adoption, away from {423} the inner
circle of family relationships, let us look at one or two aspects of
the wider clan-life, illustrating the strength of the blood-tie.
“The birth-ties of kindred are reckoned the only strong ones,” says
Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, speaking of folksongs; and the
observation might be extended with hardly any qualification to every
species of tradition. The bond of blood has always proved stronger
than any other force that can sway human nature, until it encounters
the overmastering energy of one of the great world-religions, or
becomes distracted and spent amid the complexities of modern life.
Weakened as it is in Europe nowadays, it is yet not entirely
dissipated. Its claims are put forth more timidly, but they are still
within certain limits respected. To the utmost of those limits they
are still efficient instruments in the hands of the poet, the
playwright and the novelist,--and that not only on the moral side,
where we are accustomed to appeals founded upon kinship, but also on
what I may call the physical side. An unaccountable thrill, we are
told, shoots through a father who meets unwittingly a child whom he
has never seen, or has seen but for a moment long years before. This
involuntary recognition of the same blood is a convention not yet
wholly discarded by the writers who thus aim at affecting our
emotions, because it has not quite passed out of the shadowy region
bordering our clear beliefs into the limbo {424} of things that
neither prescribe our action nor convince and captivate our
imagination. But the Italian peasant, a thousand years behindhand, a
thousand leagues deeper in the realm where faith and fancy reign in
indissoluble consort on a double throne, undisturbed by the far-off
frontier raids of criticism and doubt,--the Italian peasant admits the
extreme demands of blood in the _vendetta_, and believes that when a
bottle supposed to contain a portion of the blood of Saint Januarius
“was presented to the body such joy was evinced that the blood had
nearly burst from the bottle.”[424.1] If such were the conduct of
blood severed for, say, fifteen centuries from the body of which it
had once formed part, what may not be expected of blood still flowing
in the veins of living men, themselves both parts of one body, the
kin,--blood whose stream has welled from the same fount only a
generation or so ago? In _The Book of the Pious_ by Jehuda ben Samuel
the Pious, who lived at Ratisbon about the year 1200, a story is told,
founded on the idea of the physical unity of a kindred. A rich man
died while travelling abroad, having at the time of his death a large
sum of money in his possession. The servant stole this money and gave
himself out as his master’s son. Shortly after the rich man’s
departure from home, however, a son was born to him, who, when grown
up, sought the aid of the Gaon Saadja. Saadja, it appears, was an
historical personage who flourished at Sura in the former half of the
tenth century. He advised the youth to apply to the king; and the king
commissioned Saadja to decide the matter. The Gaon, accordingly,
having the son {425} and the servant both brought before him, caused a
vein of each of them to be opened, and one of the bones of the dead
man to be fetched from his grave. He laid the bone first in the
servant’s blood, but without effect. He then laid it in the son’s
blood, which it immediately sucked up; for the bone and the blood, we
are told, were of one body. Saadja, therefore, gave judgment in favour
of the son, directing the estate to be restored to him.[425.1]
Two other examples may be given of widely sundered peoples among whom
essentially the same superstition is current. It is believed in the
west of Europe--certainly in Brittany and Flanders--that the body of
one drowned will bleed on the approach of a kinsman.[425.2] The Zulus
speak of sympathy by the navel. It is their conviction that a man will
recognise his kindred by some mysterious influence of the navel. “A
man,” they say, “knows one of his blood-relations by the navel. We
have been wondering at the treatment of the man by So-and-so. We
thought he knew him; yet he did not know him; he sympathised with him
by the navel only.”[425.3] Obviously this is the birth-tie.
The most instructive application of the doctrine that the kin is, in
much more than a metaphorical sense, one body, is to be found in the
collective responsibility of the clan. Illustrations might be cited
from every corner of the known world. But to do so would be to repeat
the same evidence, frequently in the same words, over and over again.
I shall, therefore, give only a few of the more striking instances.
I mentioned a page or two back the extreme demands of {426} blood as
found in the Italian _vendetta_. The words were only just written,
when I took up the newspaper of the day, and read an account of a
trial for murder arising out of a blood-feud in Dalmatia. The actors
in the tragedy were not Italians, but Slavs. The facts were shortly
these. Two brothers, having quarrelled with a neighbour about some
goats, threw themselves upon him with their daggers; but he defended
himself with his pistol, and, having killed one, was tried for murder.
The jury properly acquitted him, on the ground that he was only acting
in self-defence. Hardly had he left the prison when his surviving
assailant, with another brother, hastened to his house. They found
there only their foe’s wife and daughters; and they waited and
watched. Soon they espied the acquitted man’s younger brother, a boy
of fourteen, carrying a pitcher of water. Crying “The devil threw thee
in our way,” they seized him, and stabbed him so quickly that he had
no time even to cry out. They were speedily arrested, tried, found
guilty of murder, and condemned, the one to death, and the other to
eighteen years’ penal servitude. They protested against the sentence,
and appealed to the Court of Cassation at Vienna. There their counsel
had the assurance to plead that “in Dalmatia it is every man’s duty to
take vengeance where blood has been shed; and that the people feel it
right to pursue a family, one of whose members has killed a connection
of their own, as long as there is a male descendant.” This was a
little more than a civilised court of justice could stand; and it will
be no fault of the judges if the Dalmatian savages do not learn that
the unity of the kin is not a doctrine of modern jurisprudence.[426.1]
{427}
The story shows that we must regard the collective responsibility of
the clan as twofold; first looking at the offended clan, and then at
the offending. What Professor Robertson Smith points out concerning
the Semites is universally true, namely, that when a member of the
clan has been slain, the others say, not “The blood of such an one has
been spilt,” but “_Our_ blood has been spilt.” The injury is felt by
the entire body; and it is the business of the entire body to revenge
it. Conversely, not merely the man who commits the wrong is liable for
it. His whole kin is involved in the guilt, and must suffer for it
until atonement shall have been made. Colonel Ellis, writing of the
peoples of the Slave and Gold Coasts, lays down this rule in distinct
terms. “The family collectively,” he says, “is responsible for all
crimes and injuries to person or property committed by any one of its
members, and each member is assessible for a share of the compensation
to be paid. On the other hand, each member of the family receives a
share of the compensation paid to it for any crime or injury committed
against the person or property of any one of its members. Compensation
is always demanded from the family instead of from the individual
wrong-doer, and is paid to the family instead of to the individual
wronged.” And he draws attention to the resemblance of this custom of
collective responsibility and indemnification to that enunciated in
the old Welsh laws.[427.1]
Happily for mankind the blood-feud is not everywhere so relentless as
it is presented to us in Dalmatia. Even savages cannot afford to be
for ever engaged in warfare to the death; and that is what would
happen if blood were only to be wiped out by blood. The practice of
commuting {428} revenge for payment has therefore very generally
arisen. The distinction between crimes, as wrongs committed against
the State, and private injuries classed by lawyers as torts and
breaches of contract, is unknown in the lower stages of civilisation.
There was at first no State, and when the State came into existence it
was but loosely constituted. Public crimes were confined to treason
and the like: robbery and murder were nothing more than private
wrongs. Commutation for these was precisely on the same footing as for
insult or debt. It was no more unnatural to take payment for the
murder of a blood-brother than for a sheep; it no more interfered with
the course of justice or the rights of the State than the barter for a
tusk of ivory or a bag of gold-dust. To omit to pay the price of the
ivory or the gold-dust was as much a wrong against a clan to which, or
to one member of which, it was due, as to commit murder. The price of
a murder might be heavier, or it might not. But, alike, the price of
the goods or of the blood must be paid by the clan of the man indebted
or offending. To draw a line between wrongs done to the clan and
wrongs done to the individual required a much greater development, on
the one side, of the individual, on the other side, of the State, at
the expense of the clan or the family. Until that point had been
reached, whenever compensation was accepted for a wrong to the kin,
every member of the kin, as in the West African custom depicted by
Colonel Ellis, was entitled to his share; because the wrong to the kin
had reached and was shared by all. Among the Garos of Bengal,
proposals of marriage must come from the woman. If a man make the
first advances it is an insult, not to the individual woman, but to
the whole _mahári_ (literally, motherhood) or kin, “a {429} stain
only to be obliterated by the blood of pigs and liberal libations of
beer at the expense,” not of the individual offender, but of the
_mahári_ to which he belongs.[429.1] Going back to West Africa, we
find that on the river Comoe, as on the Slave Coast, where a man of
one community is indebted to a man of another community, the latter
has the right to seize the goods of any member of his debtor’s
community, on the ground that the group is collectively responsible
for the debts of its members.[429.2] Examples might be added from
every part of the globe; but they can be all summed up in the Fijian
philosophy as expressed by an old resident to Mr. Fison, while
explaining a bloody feud which lasted for years in reference to the
shooting of a dog. “It’s just like this, sir; in a manner o’ speakin’,
say as me and Tom Farrell here has a difficulty, and gets to punchin’
one another. If he plugs me in the eye, I don’t feel duty bound to hit
him back azackly on the same spot. If I can get well in on him
anywheres handy, I ain’t partickler. And that’s how these niggers
reckons it.”[429.3]
Nor does the solidarity of the kin for this purpose disappear without
difficulty even after the State has come into existence and
established its sole cognisance of crime. The offender’s relatives
continue liable with himself to punishment. This explains the
wholesale punishment of barbarous nations, involving persons whom we
should regard as absolutely innocent. Achan’s sons and daughters were
stoned with their father. The customs of the Habura in the North-west
Provinces of India require that when a crime has been committed by
members of a certain horde, {430} the chief shall determine who are to
be given up. “Usually a compromise is made with the police; two out of
six, or three out of eight, are made over to justice, the rest
escaping. All the chief does is to repeat a certain form of words, and
then, taking two of the grains of wheat offered to their god, he
places them on the head of the scapegoat. The oath of the brotherhood
is upon him, and whether he be guilty or not he confesses to the
police magistrate, or judge, and goes to the gallows or a life-long
exile, confident that his chief and brethren will, as they are bound,
feed and protect the wife and children he leaves behind, even before
their own.”[430.1] The ancient laws of Ireland provide elaborately for
the responsibility of the clan in respect of crimes committed by
members. In their case, however, the conception of the crime as a debt
due to the injured clan had not yet been wholly effaced; for the
provisions for sharing the compensation are equally elaborate.[430.2]
The customs of the Teutons recognised the same responsibility; and in
the corruption of blood and forfeiture of property to the crown which,
until the legislation of about a quarter of a century ago, were
entailed in this country by conviction not only for treason but for
any felony, we may discover the last remnant in modern laws of the
ancient rule of visiting the sins of the individual upon the whole of
his kindred.[430.3]
{431}
The forms of medical treatment examined in a former chapter exhibited
the connection which remained unsevered when portions of the body, or
of its issues, or clothing, had been detached; so that it was
sufficient to subject these objects to healing or sacred influences in
order to effect the cure of the man himself. But if the kin together
form one body in any substantial sense, the treatment of other members
than the one actually suffering, if not sufficient to restore him to
health, will at all events help his recovery. Among the Dieyerie of
South Australia, if a child meet with an accident, all its relations
are struck over the head with sticks or boomerangs until the blood
flows. And this blood-letting by deputy is held to alleviate the
infant’s pain.[431.1] In civilised times, when the feeling of kindred
has become attenuated and the real reason for this vicarious treatment
consequently lost, an intimate friend may sometimes take the place of
a relative. He may perform the pilgrimage, or undergo the remedy. A
Devonshire prescription for curing a friend of boils is to go into a
churchyard on a dark night and walk six times round the grave of a
person who has been interred the previous day, and crawl over it three
times. If the sufferer be a man the ceremony {432} must be performed
by a woman, and _vice versâ_.[432.1] Parallel with this are
pilgrimages made by a friend or relative in the name of a sick person,
of which I have cited some instances in a former chapter; and possibly
the same principle dictated the early Christian practice of “baptism
for the dead.”
I am not aware whether it is deemed enough by many savage peoples to
apply the remedy in this way, without also treating the patient
himself. That it is considered necessary in various parts of the world
to treat not only the sufferer but other members of his tribe,
presumably kinsmen, is quite certain. Among the Buryats of Siberia the
patient’s tribesmen take part in the ceremony of healing performed by
the shaman, and share the wine, tea and sour cream which is drunk by
the shaman and the patient.[432.2] The Wakuni, who inhabit a district
of Unyamwezi, treat a victim of witchcraft by killing a cow and
spotting with the blood his forehead, the root of his neck, his
insteps and the palms of his hands; and such of his kinsmen as are
present are similarly marked.[432.3] Dr. Matthews describes the mode
of cure he witnessed among the Navajo Indians of New Mexico. At one
stage of the ceremonies the sick woman and a companion were brought
into the medicine-lodge and made to sit on the divine portraits in dry
pigment which covered the floor. The medicine-man, having made a cold
infusion in an earthen bowl, dipped a brush, or sprinkler, made of
feathers, in the solution, sprinkled the picture, {433} touched the
figure of each divinity on the brow, mouth and chest with the brush,
and then administered the contents of the bowl to both women, in two
alternate draughts to each. What was left he himself drank, and handed
the bowl to the bystanders, “that they might finish the dregs, and let
none of the precious stuff go to waste”:[433.1] a pious economy, the
like of which is prescribed to one Christian sect in England by the
schedule to an Act of Parliament. In this Navajo ceremony, in addition
to the lady-companion and the bystanders, who perhaps were
blood-relations of the patient, the shaman himself partook of the
sacred beverage. It is not at all impossible, though no stress can be
laid upon the conjecture, that he also may have been of the woman’s
kin. Many North American tribes attach great importance to the
co-operation of kindred in the cure, and that to the exclusion of
other persons. The Cherokees, for instance, do not allow a
medicine-man to treat his own wife. Nay, they will not permit the
husband or wife of any sick person to send for a medicine-man. The
call must come from one of the sufferer’s blood-relations, among whom
wife or husband could not of course be. Their spells for the treatment
of rheumatism--the Crippler, as they appropriately call it--are very
elaborate; and in order to success the doctor is subjected to the same
taboos as the patient. Neither of them must touch a squirrel, a dog, a
cat or a mountain trout. Neither of them, if married, may approach his
wife for four nights. And according to another formula, the ceremony
must be performed by both shaman and patient fasting.[433.2]
It is, however, unnecessary to suppose that the medicine-man {434}
must be a kinsman of the sufferer. His very office brings him for the
time into sacramental relations with him, which would be quite
sufficient to account for his sharing both the potion and the taboos.
A curious parallel to the Navajo rite is found in a leech-book of our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers dating from the tenth century. To heal a man
of fever certain crosses and letters are directed to be written upon
the holy paten, and the opening words of Saint John’s Gospel are to be
sung over the writing. It is then to be washed off the paten with holy
water into the medicine. The creed, the paternoster, fourteen psalms
(including the hundred and nineteenth) and a solemn adjuration of the
fever are then to be sung over it. When all this conjuring was
finished, the leech and the sick man were each directed to sip thrice
of the drink thus sanctified.[434.1]
The rite of healing in which the kin are required to join is found in
every quarter of the globe. A common form is the slaughter of a beast
or fowl, or perhaps of several, as a sacrifice, followed of course by
a feast. Peoples as far apart in locality as they are in race are
recorded to have practised this mode of cure. It has been witnessed
alike among the Yakuts of Siberia, the Peguenches of Southern Chili,
the islanders of Luçon and Mindanos in the East Indies, the heathen
Dinkas of Central Africa and the Mohammedan inhabitants of
Timbuctoo.[434.2] At Ballyvorney in county Cork less than two
centuries ago an image of wood about two feet high, carved and painted
like a woman, was kept by one of the family of the O’Herlehys; and, we
are told, “when any one is sick of the small-pox {435} they send for
it, sacrifice a sheep to it, and wrap the skin about the sick person,
and the family [that is, as I understand it, the family of the sick
person] eat the sheep. But this idol hath now much lost its
reputation, because two of the O’Herlehys died lately of the
small-pox.”[435.1] An analogous rite is found in China. Ten men of ten
different families of the patient’s relatives and friends (formerly,
doubtless, of his kin only) become “security” for him. Each family
contributes one hundred cash, which go towards the expenses of the
feast, the remainder being found by the patient’s own family. The
feast is spread in a temple, when the food is first presented to the
idol, and the names of the “sureties” are written on a piece of paper
and burned before the god. Among other ceremonies, after the feast the
representative of the family carries home some of the rice, which is
made into congee for the sick man to eat.[435.2]
I have mentioned, in treating of witchcraft, a Dyak practice which
exhibits close connection between the house and absent members of the
family. It perhaps goes further, and displays the belief that the
conduct of a family at home affects an absent member. Similar customs,
pointing to such a belief, are recorded of the Thugs.[435.3] And
conversely, a tribesman of Lake Nyassa will eat no salt while on a
journey, lest his wife misconduct {436} herself at home.[436.1] This
mysterious effect can be due to nothing less than the essential
solidarity of the family. The matter is put plainly by the _I li_, one
of the sacred books of the Chinese, in the declaration that “father
and son are only one body, and so are husband and wife, and elder and
younger brothers.” And for this reason, we are told, the possessions
of a family are held in common[436.2]--a subject on which I have no
space to enter.
In strict analogy, it may be remarked, to the human kin is the view
entertained in the lower culture of the kinship of some orders of
brutes. Every species is a kindred united by a bond as close as that
which binds a human clan, so that sorcery may be wrought on all the
members by operating on one or two specimens. Is a garden in Hesse
infested with caterpillars, it suffices to go round it and crush a
caterpillar at each of three corners. From the fourth corner another
is taken and hung up in the chimney to dry in the smoke. As it dries
up, the caterpillars in the garden will wither and die.[436.3]
Possibly this mode of treatment only applies to such creatures as it
would be difficult to deal with individually. The subject may be worth
further inquiry: I can do no more than allude to it here in passing.
Connection as close as that of kindred could not be terminated by
death. We have already considered the efforts made to renew by
sacramental means the union with the dead. It remains to refer to a
superstition which regards the tie as indissoluble even in the grave.
Upon the lowest step of civilisation the Ainu of Yezo are very jealous
of their burial-places. They hide them in the depths of the forest, or
in some other spot, remote, unlikely {437} to be discovered, and
difficult to reach. Nothing angers them more than to know that a
stranger has been near their tombs.[437.1] The Tanalas of Madagascar
enclose the bodies of their dead in little huts erected in
inaccessible parts of the forest, and the living are forbidden to
intrude into the thickets where these huts are found.[437.2] The
Haidahs of British Columbia used to cremate their dead, because they
feared that their enemies would else get hold of the body and make
charms from it.[437.3] No reason is assigned by the traveller who
reports it for the Ainu feeling; none is assigned for the Tanala
practice; but we have perhaps the clue to both here, as well as to the
oft-sought origin of cremation among the prehistoric tribes of Europe.
If the dead man be a part of the whole body of the clan in anything
like a material sense, for a foe to obtain possession of any part of
the corpse would be a serious danger for the survivors. The belief of
the Narrinyeri of Australia was that if a sorcerer obtained a bone of
the totem animal of a hostile clan he could afflict the clan with
sickness.[437.4] In the Banks’ Islands burials are often secret, and
care is taken to prevent the bones from being dug up for arrows and
for charms.[437.5] In Equatorial Africa the Mpongwe kings are always
interred secretly, for fear that other tribes should dig up the head
to make a powerful fetish of the brains.[437.6] The precautions in the
last two cases depend, it may be, on the intrinsic value of the relics
of an able or powerful man rather than his relation to {438} those who
are in terror of the charms that may be made of his corpse. In the
higher civilisation of China, however, it is quite clear that the
condition of a corpse is of the greatest moment to the health and
prosperity of his descendants. Wherefore small iron nails are
scattered in the coffin, also hempseeds, peas and millet, and red
yeast, to cause the sons and grandsons of the dead to beget numerous
sons and become the ancestors of remoter progeny, and to provide them
with plenty of food for all time to come. Pith and rice-paper, which
will absorb the fluid products of decay, are scattered to cause the
descendants to become grand and of high rank. Two pairs of trousers
are spread over the corpse, stuffed with ingots of gold- and
silver-paper. “These are expected to enormously enrich the dead and
his offspring.” On the other hand, metal buttons are avoided on the
grave-clothes, because they will injure the body while it is decaying,
“and consequently cause great injuries also” to the posterity of the
deceased. And while the coffin, having been made and brought to the
house, is being prepared for the reception of the body, the mourners
abstain from wailing, “because manifestations of woe and distress
might cause real woe and distress to be enclosed in the coffin, and so
bring bad luck not only on the dead, but also on his descendants, the
fate of whom is most intimately bound up with the grave of their
ancestor.”[438.1] More than this, necromancers profess to be able to
tell the fortunes of the living by inspection of the bodies of their
dead ancestors, which, if not among the Chinese themselves, at all
events among certain of the wild tribes, are dug up for the purpose.
And it is on record that, in the various revolutions which have from
time to time convulsed {439} the country, the imperial mausolea have
been broken open “and the entombed corpses mangled and destroyed with
the object of bringing ruin on the imperial descendant seated on the
tottering throne.” The aboriginal Luh-N’zehtsze believe that health
depends on the cleanness of the bones of departed kinsmen.
Accordingly, when a man has been in the grave a year he is exhumed and
his bones are carefully washed; and whenever any of his family are
sick the same operation is at once performed, no matter how long or
how short the time since he was buried.[439.1] Even in Europe we have
the well-known superstition that the state and appearance of a corpse
before burial indicate whether other deaths in the family are to
follow, as if it be limp, or the eyes cannot be closed, and so forth.
According to Corean opinion, the prosperity of a dead man’s
descendants depends solely on the right choice of the place where he
is buried. Hence the utmost care is taken in its selection, and the
art of divining the proper spot is a special profession in the
country.[439.2] The Maori sentiment, it may be added, which regards as
one of the most frightful insults that can be flung at a man to tell
him to cook his great-grandfather, seems to spring from the same root.
The Maoris do not eat their relations: hence to bid a man cook his
father would be a great curse. But to tell him to cook his
great-grandfather would be far worse, because it would include “every
individual who has sprung from him.”[439.3] In other words, a man is
looked upon as one with all his {440} descendants. The belief in an
indissoluble corporal union must have preceded such an interpretation
of language which in terms only mentions the ancestor.
We may now sum up the results of our inquiry into the theory of the
Life-token. The length of the investigation is justified by the
importance of the subject in the long and wonderful history of
civilisation. I do not pretend here to give a complete account of
savage philosophy. In spite of the investigations of anthropologists
during the last thirty years, we are as yet far from being in a
position to form a satisfactory synthesis--a synthesis which will
reckon with the many-sided activity of the human mind, even in the
lower stages of its development, and will estimate at its due value
every influence, material as well as intellectual, which, entering in
early times into the stream of culture, deflected its current or added
to its volume, until it at last attained that irresistible force whose
direction we know though its issue remains dark and uncertain. My own
object is much humbler. And if I have succeeded in laying with any
measure of clearness before the reader the sacramental conception of
life underlying the incident of the Life-token, I must not be supposed
to depreciate as factors in savage culture other conceptions with
which I am not immediately concerned. I am quite aware, too, that much
that I have put forward, in so far as I have put forward anything new,
must be considered as yet only tentative and conjectural. Tradition,
conservative as it is, is in its nature shifting and liable to endless
combinations. It is, therefore, compounded of elements not merely
various, but often contradictory. This renders the task of
disentangling peculiarly difficult, needing patience that cannot be
discouraged, and an insight that long {441} familiarity with the ideas
of the uncivilised will not always give.
Starting from his personal consciousness, the savage attributes the
like consciousness to everything he sees or feels around him. And
holding that outward form is by no means of the essence of existence
or of individuality, he looks upon transformation as an ordinary
incident, happening to all men at death, happening to many men and
other creatures whensoever they will. From the capacity of
transformation to the capacity of division the step is not a long one.
To be transformed into a pomegranate or a heap of grain is to have
one’s life equally diffused through a thousand seeds, each of which is
endowed with the powers and possibilities of the whole. Scattered,
they may re-unite; and if all but one be destroyed, from that one a
new whole can be reproduced, or some other shape may be assumed
wherein will reside, undiminished and unobscured, all the
consciousness and all the power of the original. But what was regarded
as true of one shape was regarded as true of another. It was deemed to
be practicable so to sever one’s own personality as to secrete and
safeguard one’s life. This severed portion we call--we have no better
word--the External Soul. So long as the External Soul was unharmed the
man could not be slain. And conversely, its condition would be an
index of his. This perhaps is an inconsistency; but logical
consistency is not always important to savages. It is evident that if
the life be bound up with an object outside the man, the two will
decay and die together. The Life-token, therefore, or the External
Soul, must be carefully tended and watched, so as to preserve it and
promote its growth and prosperity, and through it the growth and
prosperity of {442} the person to whom it belongs, and of whom it is a
part. Any severed fragment of the substance of a man then assumes
importance. Though severed, it is, notwithstanding, inseparably
connected with him; and injury inflicted upon it would be felt by him.
On the other hand, care bestowed upon it and the promotion of its
well-being would redound to his advantage. Hence one of the methods of
witchcraft was to injure the severed portion of his substance, and one
of the methods of defence, both against witchcraft and more direct
attack, was to unite the severed portion with some divinity. But the
conception of life which regarded it as severable could not be
confined to actual portions of the substance. Whatever was closely
bound up with a man’s personality would be looked upon as part of
himself. His clothing and weapons, constantly associated with him,
would attract a measure of the consideration due to himself, would be
deemed fragments of his identity, would be filled with his life. And
as his property increased with civilisation it would all be included
in the same manner, until at last his mere appointment, the exercise
of that will and of that power which had been instrumental in
acquiring and guarding his property, became sufficient to create any
object his External Soul or Life-token.
Whether observation of the natural phenomenon of birth--the separation
of a child from its mother’s body--contributed to the evolution of
this train of superstition we do not know. We know, however, that,
parallel with the mode of thought which thus represented the
personality as divisible, and, so far as we can ascertain, on the same
plane of culture with it, a kindred descended in fact or by reputation
from a single mother, was held to be, in much more than a metaphorical
sense, one body. The kinsmen {443} were one flesh, members one of
another, by virtue of their common parent. That parent was, in the
lowest stage of civilisation in which we can trace it, generally held
to be a brute, a tree or some other vegetable, occasionally one of the
heavenly bodies, or even a rock. No difficulty would be felt in this
by a people who believed in the doctrine of Transformation. The object
so regarded as parent was the name and emblem of the kin. It was
sacred; and where, as it usually was, it was fit for food, it was
never eaten, save on certain solemn occasions when the kinsmen met to
signify and renew their union by partaking of a sacramental meal. When
the object was not eatable, it was represented on these occasions by
another which could be eaten. As civilisation advanced, the rites of
totemism gave place to, or grew into, the worship of anthropomorphic
gods, and the sacred ancestral object, or _totem_ as it is called,
sank into a symbol, or attendant, or into a special property of the
god who had superseded it.
I have endeavoured to trace the conception of the kindred, or clan, as
one body in a number of archaic practices. Beginning from the formal
reception into the kin by the blood-covenant, which has been fully
treated by Professor Robertson Smith, whose untimely death
anthropological science will long deplore, and by Dr. Trumbull, we
have devoted special attention to sacramental rites of burial and of
marriage. Other rites and superstitions have come under notice; nor
have we by any means exhausted the subject. We have found the unity of
the kin a vital conception penetrating savage life to its core. In the
words of Mr. Fison: “To the savage, the whole gens is the individual,
and he is full of regard for it. Strike the gens anywhere, and every
member of it considers himself {444} struck, and the whole body
corporate rises up in arms against the striker. The South Australian
savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose
divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and inanimate,
which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he
himself is part. They are ‘almost parts of himself,’ as Mr. Stewart
shrewdly remarks.”[444.1] Mr. Stewart would not have erred had he put
it more strongly still; and the South Australian savages are only in a
stage through which, there is reason to believe, every other people in
the world has passed or is passing: so many and so widely scattered
are its traces, and so deeply impressed are they upon human
institutions and beliefs.
The last part of our inquiry has not been useless to our more
immediate subject. It has not only shown us how consonant to other
human institutions and human thoughts is the belief in the Life-token
and the divisibility of the personality; but it has also furnished us
with the reason why the life-token was left behind when the hero
started on his adventures, why his brothers followed him, and why in
many cases the slaughtered dragon found an avenger. The hero and his
brothers were one body. The Medusa-witch, in striking him, struck
them; and their plain duty was revenge. So likewise when the hero slew
the dragon, the surviving kin of the dragon, whether mother or
brother, must in return compass the hero’s death. Moreover, we may see
in the same conception of life the reason why the mere appointment by
a kinsman is sufficient to create a life-token for the hero. If the
kinsman be of one body with the hero, separate yet united, his
appointment would be equivalent to that of the hero himself. He could
therefore {445} at any time divine with accuracy as to the condition
of his absent relative.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to insist on the universality of the
chain of beliefs discussed in the present volume. I have tried to put
before the reader instances from every quarter of the globe; and
though of course I have not literally proved the beliefs to be
universal, I think I have shown a distribution so wide and general as
to induce a very strong presumption of their existence among tribes
that have passed without mention, and even among tribes of whose
culture and modes of thought we are as yet ignorant. A conception of
life which we know to be held from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to
the islands of the Southern Seas we may reasonably believe to be
inseparable from human thought, at least until it has reached the
highest levels of culture; and we may therefore predicate it with
every probability not merely of living races whose traditions have yet
to be explored, but also of the prehistoric dead whose barrows, dumb
on this question, often betray only that other belief to which human
nature clings everywhere so pathetically--the belief in the life after
death. That belief, we may be sure, was not held alone. As we find it
in man to-day, so doubtless it was to be found ages ago: only one of a
cycle of beliefs which we may hope soon to be able to reconstruct, as
the geologist builds again a primæval monster from a single bone.
[End of vol. II]
ENDNOTES
CHAPTER VIII NOTES
[4.1]
Day, 71. Here what is probably the more archaic form of the incident,
namely, the gift of the life-token to at least one of the kin, is
preserved. The hero of one of Afanasief’s Russian tales gives a cup or
basin to his six companions. When the cup fills with blood they are to
come in search of him. ii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 376. The gift to other
than a kinsman is rare; but it occurs in the story of Prince
Lionheart, and in a Karen tale mentioned just below.
[5.1]
Steel and Temple, 47.
[5.2]
Day, 189; _Siddhi-Kür_, 55; Busk, _Sagas_, 106.
[5.3]
i. Cosquin, 26, quoting xxxiv. _Journ. As. Soc. Bengal_, pt. 2, 225.
In a Kabyle tale, apparently a variant of that given _supra_, vol. i.
p. 60, the hero plants two rods, telling his half-brother to visit
them every day: “if thou find mine dried up, know that I am dead.” De
Charencey, _Folklore_, 142, citing René Basset, in vi. _Giornale
della Società asiatica italiana_.
[5.4]
ii. _F.L. Journ._, 52.
[5.5]
Curtin, _Russians_, 239.
[5.6]
i. Cosquin, 220, citing _Indian Ant._ (1872), 115.
[6.1]
i. Cosquin, 248.
[6.2]
Rodd, 249.
[7.1]
Chatelain, 85, 278.
[7.2]
Legrand, 191.
[7.3]
Schneller, 68, Story No. 26.
[7.4]
Codrington, 401.
[8.1]
ii. _F.L. Journ._, 130.
[8.2]
Clouston, i. _Pop. Tales_, 171, citing Wilson’s _Descr. Catalogue of
Col. Mackenzie’s Oriental MSS._; Swynnerton, _Ind. Nights_, 336;
Spitta Bey, 125.
[8.3]
_Early Ideas_, 130.
[8.4]
Leskien, 547; Wenzig, 140; Wratislaw, 55 (Story No. 9), from Kulda’s
Moravian collection.
[8.5]
Denton, 273.
[8.6]
Jones and Kropf, 257, from Erdélyi.
[9.1]
Köhler, in a note, ii. Gonzenbach, 230, citing Simrock, No. 40.
[9.2]
iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 510; _El Folk-lore Andaluz_, 307; Maspons,
_Cuentos Pop. Cat._ 82 (it is here given by an old man, not by the
hero); i. _Rond._, 109; ii. Powell and Magnússon, 431; i. _Rivista_,
759.
[9.3]
i. _Mélusine_, 209.
[9.4]
Theal, 77.
[9.5]
ii. Von Hahn, 215.
[9.6]
Spitta Bey, _loc. cit._; Maspons, i. _Rond._, _loc. cit._; i.
_Mélusine_, 210, 214; v. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 737; Visentini, 206.
[9.7]
Burton, iv. _Suppl. Nights_, 245; Spitta Bey, _loc. cit._
[9.8]
Garnett, i. _Wom._, 23.
[10.1]
i. Cosquin, 71; Imbriani, 88, 106, 108 (Stories Nos. 6 and 7); i.
Comparetti, 27 (i. _F.L. Record_, 206), 274; Webster, 169; iv. Pitrè,
350. (In the last three cases the ring is the gift of the Beast to
Beauty.) Leskien, 548. Clouston also refers to a ballad by Leyden. i.
_Pop. Tales_, 171.
[10.2]
iv. Pitrè, 319 (Story No. 36); Crane, 17.
[10.3]
i. Comparetti, 26; Imbriani, 388; Leskien, 547; Jones and Kropf, 54,
from Kriza.
[10.4]
ii. Von Hahn, 45.
[10.5]
Leskien, 372.
[10.6]
Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 66, from Afanasief.
[11.1]
Leskien, 548, citing Nowosielsky. The dish appears elsewhere in
Russian tales for the same purpose in connection with a knife and a
handkerchief. One would hardly have given the Russian peasantry credit
for being so fastidious; but the explanation must be sought in the
beliefs discussed in the following chapters.
[11.2]
_Kalevala_, runes 12, 15.
[11.3]
Rand, 83.
[11.4]
ii. Von Hahn, 15.
[11.5]
_Popol Vuh_, 79.
[11.6]
i. _Folklore_, 65.
[12.1]
Erminnie A. Smith, in ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 94.
[12.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Armenier_, 146.
[12.3]
Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 89, from Afanasief.
[12.4]
Zingerle, _K.- und H.-Märchen_, 116. A candle is often found as the
life itself. Cf. i. _Bib. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 176, and a number of
tales of Godfather Death.
[13.1]
iv. Pitrè, 329.
[13.2]
Leskien, 548, citing Afanasief, etc.
[13.3]
Leskien, 547.
[13.4]
Denton, 266.
[13.5]
Wardrop, 53.
[14.1]
Featherman, _Papuo- and Malayo-Melanesians_, 283.
[15.1]
_The Fables and Rites of the Yncas_, by Christoval de Molina, in
Markham, _Rites and Laws_, 12.
[15.2]
Clouston, Lane’s _Squire’s Tale_, 299. This book was issued by the
Chaucer Society. The Folk-Lore Society has obtained the right of
reissuing it, with additions by Mr. Clouston; and it is to be hoped
that this will be done ere long. As to modern practices in India, see
also Burton, _Sindh_, 180; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._ 85; iv. 51.
[16.1]
Apuleius, _Discourse on Magic_; Pröhle, _Sagen_, 232 (Story No. 173);
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 1770, 1773, 1774, 1775, quoting Hartlieb’s _Book
of All Forbidden Arts_ (1455); Kohlrusch, 260, note, quoting the same.
See also Scot, 211; ii. Brand, 604, note; Caxton, ii. _Recuyell_, 414;
Ostermann, 151.
[16.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Transs. Zig._, 112 (Story No. 47).
[16.3]
Pröhle, _Sagen_, 32 (Story No. 6). A mirror in a Chinese tale had the
property of fixing, or photographing, the face of any woman who looked
into it. The image could only be obliterated by another woman, or the
same woman in another dress, looking into it. ii. Giles, 32.
[16.4]
Lubbock, 253, quoting De Faira. Compare a Swedish tale in which a
lover is shown his sweetheart, by a Lapp magician, in a bucket of
water. Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 55, from Afzelius.
[16.5]
Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 378.
[17.1]
A. W. Moore, in v. _Folklore_, 214, citing _N. and Q._ (1852).
[17.2]
Winwood Reade, 252; Du Chaillu, _Ashangoland_, 173.
[17.3]
H. Ling Roth, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 118.
[17.4]
Brinton, _Cakchiquels_, 43, 69, 27.
[17.5]
J. G. Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 461.
[17.6]
v. _Am Urquell_, 163; H. Carrington Bolton, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._,
25. Mr. Andrew Lang, in _Cock Lane and Common Sense_ (London, 1894),
212, _et sqq._, has examined the practice of crystal-gazing. He brings
his wide knowledge of savage and other superstitious purposes to bear
upon the evidence, and comes to the conclusion that “we can scarcely
push scepticism so far as to deny that the facts exist, that
hallucinations are actually provoked,” by gazing into a ball of
crystal or glass. Indeed, he suggests that something more than
hallucination is provoked; but perhaps that is “only his fun.” He does
not _say_ it.
[18.1]
i. Comparetti, 269.
[18.2]
ii. Parkinson, 242. The story connected with this belief is, as Mr.
Parkinson reproduces it, anything but traditional, and I lay no stress
on it.
[18.3]
Pausanias, iii. 25; vii. 21.
[18.4]
Turner, _Samoa_, 101.
[19.1]
Busk, _F.L. Rome_, 117.
[19.2]
Cavallius, 81.
[19.3]
i. Crantz, 214.
[19.4]
iv. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 287.
[19.5]
Hunt, 290, note, quoting Gilbert, ii. _Parochial Hist. of Cornwall_,
121. Montluck Well, Logan, and Saint Mary’s Well, Kilmorie, both in
Wigtownshire, are resorted to for water for the sick. The waters of
both have the property of appearing in abundance if the augury be
favourable; if not, of diminishing. R. C. Hope, in xxviii.
_Antiquary_, 68, quoting Symson’s _Description of Galloway_ and iv.
_Statistical Account of Scotland_.
[20.1]
ii. Brand, 263, note, quoting xii. _Stat. Acc. Scot._, 464. The
spirits of wells often appear in animal form. See, for example, Von
Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 21. Cf. the water-bull and water-kelpie of
Scotland.
[20.2]
ii. Brand, 272, note, quoting _The Living Librarie, or Historical
Meditations_ (1621), 284.
[21.1]
Dalyell, 506, quoting Gordon, _MS. Notes and Observations_.
[21.2]
Lubbock, 244.
[21.3]
Pausanias, vii. 21.
[21.4]
Rodd, 185.
[22.1]
Southey, iv. _Commonplace Book_, 240, quoting an article in the
_Monthly Magazine_, March 1801, on Cambray’s _Voyage dans le
Finisterre_.
[22.2]
ii. Brand, 267, note.
[22.3]
Drayton, _Polyolbion_, ix. 90; Sir Philip Sidney, _The Seven Wonders
of England_, in Arber, ii. _Eng. Garner_, 183. Allusions to it by
Burton, Increase Mather, and others, are quoted, v. _N. and Q._, 8th
ser., 408; vi. 54.
[23.1]
Leonard Vair is quoted viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 122; and Wolf, _Nied.
Sag._, 259 (Story No. 162). Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 244,
quotes the same story from another writer, doubtless copied from Vair.
To dream of a dead fish is in Germany and Austria a presage of death.
Compare also with the superstitions mentioned in the above paragraph
the parallel superstition, of which effective use is often made in
modern literature, and which represents a household clock stopping
when the head of the family dies. At Pforzheim it was believed that
when the palace clock was out of order one of the reigning family
died. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1756, 1806, 1801.
[23.2]
Grimm, i. _D. Sagen_, 162.
[23.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 22.
[24.1]
vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 760, quoting Rev. James Sibree in _Proc. R.
Geog. Soc. of London_, Aug. 1891.
[25.1]
i. _Tutinameh_, 109.
[25.2]
i. _Kathá_, 86.
[25.3]
Swynnerton, _Ind. Nights_, 188.
[25.4]
Arany, cited by Köhler in his notes to _Posilecheata_, 209.
[25.5]
Rodd, 266.
[26.1]
ii. Risley, 89.
[26.2]
Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 244, quoting a note to Boswell’s
Shakespeare. The editor, Rev. J. W. Warter, says that the custom was
common enough within his recollection in Shropshire and Staffordshire.
[26.3]
Gerv. Tilb., 223, Liebrecht’s Appendix containing extracts from Jean
Baptiste Thiers, _Traité des Superstitions_, 2nd ed., Paris, 1697.
[26.4]
x. _Archivio_, 30.
[27.1]
i. Child, 187, 201. Both variants of the Scottish ballad of _Bonny Bee
Horn_ also include the incident; and in one of them, not only does the
ring change colour, but the stone bursts in three. ii. Child, 318.
[27.2]
Thorpe, _Yule-tide Stories_, 438, from Müllenhoff. It is a German
superstition that if a woman lose her garter in the street her husband
or lover is untrue. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1782, 1824. To lose the
wedding-ring is a presage of death. _Ibid._, 1808.
[27.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 19.
[30.1]
Compare Sir John Lubbock’s remarks on the relation between divination
and sorcery. Lubbock, 245.
[31.1]
_Popol Vuh_, 141, 191.
[31.2]
i. Cosquin, 71, citing Guérin, _Vies des Saints_.
[31.3]
Ellis, iii. _Polyn. Res._, 107.
[31.4]
Suet., _Vesp._, 5.
[31.5]
Taylor, 184.
[32.1]
Hooker, recording the evidence of a resident at Waimate, in i. _Journ.
Ethn. Soc., N.S._, 72, 73.
[32.2]
Frazer, ii. _Golden Bough_, 329, citing Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de
Ethn. van Zuid-Celebes_.
[32.3]
Burton, _Wit and Wisd._, 411.
[32.4]
Dr. A. Haas, in v. _Am Urquell_, 253; ii. Bartsch, 43. It seems that
according to an old German superstition the water in which a baby is
washed for the first time must be poured on trees. In the Canton of
Berne it must be poured on a fruitful, or a young, tree; and the
person charged with this duty must sing or shout, that the child may
learn to sing or shout well. Ploss, i. _Kind_, 79, citing Rothenbach,
_Volksthüml. aus d. Canton Berne_. A similar practice is found in
Austria. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1807. As a provision against ill-luck
and witches among the Magyars, the water is thrown half on a crossway
and half on a willow-tree. Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 69. The
Transylvanian Saxons, on the other hand, will not throw it where it
may be trodden on, lest the child die, or at least lose its sleep. The
proper place is beneath a tree, that the babe may strengthen. _Ibid._,
_Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 154.
[33.1]
ii. Brand, 453, citing Grose.
[33.2]
J. M. Currier, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 69.
[34.1]
Ploss, i. _Kind_, 79, citing Williams and Calvert; Featherman,
_Papuo-Mel._, 204.
[34.2]
Stoll, 68; Dorman, 293.
[34.3]
ii. Bancroft, 276. Was the future battlefield ascertained by
divination? Or how could it be known? Or is there some
misunderstanding on the part of the reporter? Compare the custom at
Tashkend, whereby, at the birth of a boy, the father buries a
mutton-bone, or, in the case of a girl, a rag-doll, under the floor of
the room where the birth has taken place. Schuyler, i. _Turkistan_,
140.
[35.1]
ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 369, citing Jacobs and Meyer, _Les Badoujs_.
[35.2]
Rev. J. Macdonald, in xx. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 132; Frazer, ii.
_Golden Bough_, 329, citing several authorities. See also Andree, ii.
_Ethnog. Par._, 21.
[35.3]
Sibree, 278.
[36.1]
Quoted by Singer, ii. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 300.
[36.2]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 85.
[36.3]
Ploss, i. _Kind_, 78, 79, citing Rochholz, _Alemann. Kinderlied und
Kinderspiel_. See also Mannhardt, i. _Baumcultus_, 49, _et seqq._ A
custom similar to the Piedmontese is practised by the Mohammedans of
Malabar, who plant a number of seeds of the Brazil-wood (_Cæsalpinia
Sappan_) at the birth of a daughter, whose dowry the trees become when
grown to maturity. Yule, ii. _Marco Polo_, 315, note.
[37.1]
De Gubernatis, i. _Myth. Plantes_, xxviii.
[37.2]
Monseur, 37; ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 148.
[37.3]
Norman G. Mitchell-Innes, in v. _F.L. Journ._, 223. Compare the
related superstition mentioned _ante_, vol. i., p. 179. We perhaps
find in Tirolese folklore a relic of the same superstition in the
belief that children are fetched from a sacred tree. Zingerle,
_Sitten_, 2, 100; _Sagen_, 110. I have already (_ante_, vol. i., p.
154, note) referred to the English saying that children come out of
the parsley-bed, and (_ibid._, p. 151, note) to the fancy of mothers
in the New Hebrides that a child is connected in origin with a
cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, or some such object.
[37.4]
Mrs. F. D. Bergen, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 152. Mrs. Bergen informs
me she obtained this on “the eastern peninsula of Maryland, near
Chestertown, opposite Baltimore.”
[38.1]
Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 53. Compare a German superstition, Grimm, _Teut.
Myth._, 1818 (956).
[38.2]
Gregor, 148.
[38.3]
The shrubbery grew from a laurel wreath dropped, in a chicken’s beak,
by an eagle into Livia’s bosom after her marriage. Suet., _Galba_, 1.
[38.4]
Yule, i. _Marco Polo_, 394 (bk. ii., ch. 28).
[39.1]
Bernau, 59.
[39.2]
Mannhardt, i. _Baumcultus_, 48.
[39.3]
Frazer, ii. _Golden Bough_, 329. Mr. Frazer also notices that in the
Cameroons the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound
up with that of a tree; but it does not appear how this is believed to
arise. Here, perhaps, I may call the attention of students to the
following superstitions as yet unexplained. The Makololo of the
Zambesi Valley object to plant mangoes, lest they die. (Does the mango
in growing absorb the planter’s life?) The native Portuguese of Tette
think that a man who plants coffee will never be happy after.
Livingstone, _Zambesi_, 47. In Southern India the person who sows
cocoa-nut seed is expected to die when the trees which grow from the
seeds he has planted bear fruit. Pandit Natesa Sastri, in i. _N. Ind.
N. and Q._, 101. On Bowditch Island in the South Pacific Ocean
cocoa-nuts could only be planted on the king’s death: he who planted
them at other times would die. Lister, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,
54. In Devonshire and Gloucestershire parsley must not be
transplanted. Dyer, 3; _County F.L., Gloucestershire_, 54. I have
found the superstition still rife in Gloucestershire.
[39.4]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 152.
[40.1]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 9.
[40.2]
Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221.
[40.3]
Prof. V. M. Mikhailovskii, translated by O. Wardrop, in xxiv. _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, 83.
[41.1]
ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 187.
[41.2]
v. _Records of the Past, N.S._, ix. Prof. Sayce has some little doubt
about the reading; but the sense appears clear enough.
[41.3]
“The squaws generally agreed that they had discovered life enough in
them [the portraits he had painted] to render my _medicine_ too great
for the Mandans, saying that such an operation could not be performed
without taking away from the original something of his existence,
which I put in the picture, and they could see it move, could see it
stir.… A great many have become again alarmed, and are unwilling to
sit, for fear, as some say, that they will die prematurely if painted;
and as others say, that if they are painted the picture will live
after they are dead, and they cannot sleep quiet in their graves.” i.
Catlin, 107, 109.
[42.1]
ii. Witzschel, 251. Cf. the superstition known from Britain to
Transylvania, that if bread in baking start, or a glass in the house
break without apparent cause, there will be a death.
[42.2]
Backhouse, 104.
[43.1]
i. Cosquin, 71.
[43.2]
Ostermann, 476.
[43.3]
Jones and Kropf, lxiv.
[43.4]
Tanner, 155.
[44.1]
Miss Owen, _Old Rabbit_, 178, 169.
[44.2]
i. Giles, 306.
[44.3]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xxix. 22; Jevons, Plutarch’s _Romane Questions_,
xlvii. See a curious tale pointing to a modern survival of this
belief, Pigorini-Beri, 58. In Switzerland at the present day, if a
peasant have a son born and a foal or lamb dropped at the same time,
the same name is given to both. Ploss, i. _Kind_, 189. Among the Poles
(who have, it may be remarked, a great regard for snakes) a secret
connection is believed to exist between cattle and lizards. Every cow
is held to have a particular lizard as its guardian. If the lizard be
killed, the cow will die, or at least will give blood instead of milk.
iii. _Am Urquell_, 272. This can hardly be said to favour Mr. Frazer’s
totemistic theory. See also vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 152; Burton, _Wit
and Wisd._, 390. The belief in widely separated countries like
Sardinia and India that it is lucky to have a snail in the house
appears to be connected with this superstition. See i. _Rivista_, 221.
[45.1]
Rev. J. Macdonald, in xx. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 131; Lubbock, 245,
quoting Arbousset’s _Tour to the Cape of Good Hope_.
[45.2]
Le Page Renouf, in xi. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, 185, citing
Amélineau’s translation. Compare the life-token in the story of _The
Two Brothers, suprà_, vol. i., p. 183.
[46.1]
Prof. Haddon, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 326.
[46.2]
Le Braz, 6.
[47.1]
Banks, _The Albion Queens_, quoted by Prof. Dr. George Stephens in ii.
_F.L. Record_, 200; Gregor, 204; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb.
Sachs._, 190. In an Icelandic tale three drops of blood fall on the
knife while eating, to announce a brother’s death. iii. _Am Urquell_,
5, citing Arnason.
[47.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1837; Thorpe, ii. _Northern Myth._, 273: both
quoting Thiele.
[47.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1744, 1745.
[48.1]
Kuhn und Schwartz, 436.
[48.2]
_Suffolk County F.L._, 30.
[48.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1788. Compare the Sardinian augury from piles of
salt. i. _Rivista_, 221.
[48.4]
Herrmann, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 310, 311.
[48.5]
L. L. Duncan, in v. _Folklore_, 192; vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 261.
[48.6]
ii. Witzschel, 254. Auguries as to the following harvest are drawn by
the Huzules from the burning of fruit with beechen brands on New
Year’s Night. Kaindl, 73. As to auguries at a baptism from the putting
out of the candle, see xii. _Archivio_, 530.
[49.1]
Kuhn und Schwartz, 431; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 160. At Buvrinner in
Hainaut pilgrimages are often made on behalf of the sick. On such an
occasion candles are lighted on the altar of the saint invoked. If the
flame be steady, it is a good sign; if it be wavering, a bad sign. ix.
_Rev. Trad. Pop._, 489.
[49.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1790, 1793.
[49.3]
ii. Powell and Magnússon, 641, from Arnason.
[49.4]
Plutarch, _Rom. Quest._, No. 75.
[49.5]
ii. Witzschel, 226, 231; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1843, 1794; Finamore,
_Trad. Pop. Abr._, 52; Ostermann, 348, 476; Krauss, _Sitte und
Brauch_, 396; Le Braz, 5. Compare the “wedding candlestick” at an
Irish wedding, v. _Folklore_, 188. In the province of Siena the
chances of life are calculated according as the candle in the church
gives greater or less light. xiii. _Archivio_, 412.
[50.1]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1835; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 271: both quoting
Thiele.
[50.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 56, 75; iv. _Zeits. des
Vereins_, 316.
[50.3]
Taylor, 205 (cf. also, 178); Lubbock, 245, citing Yate’s _New
Zealand_.
[51.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 148.
[51.2]
Moore, 125, 140; v. _Folklore_, 214.
CHAPTER IX NOTES
[56.1]
ii. Von Hahn, 33, referred to _suprà_, vol. i., p. 81.
[56.2]
_Suprà_, vol. i., p. 213; Jülg, 53; Ovid, _Metam._, viii. 848. So in
the island of Florida, when a man sells a pig he takes back its
_tarunga_, or soul, in a dracæna-leaf, which he hangs up in his
house, not, however, to recall the identical animal sold, but to
animate another pig, when littered. Codrington, 249. This explains a
custom in the south of France. When a farmer sells a calf he cuts off
a piece of its hair and makes the cow swallow it, “so that she may not
regret her calf, and that a better price may be got for it.” ix. _Rev.
Trad. Pop._, 581. The original reason doubtless was that the calf
might be born again of her.
[57.1]
See, among others, Schott, 198 (Story No. 18); Pineau, _F.L._, 145
(Story No. 5); Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 95 (Story No. 5); Coelho, 33
(Story No. 15); Luzel, _Le Magicien_, 28, citing Straparola, Night
viii., Story 5; Visentini, 37 (Story No. 8).
[57.2]
Steel, 15; Gibb, 255.
[57.3]
Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 56; Rand, 196, 248; vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 210.
[58.1]
See, among others, Dozon, 89 (Story No. 12); Von Wlislocki, _Transs.
Zig._, 111 (Story No. 47); _Volksdicht._, 286 (Story No. 44); Romero,
4 (Story No. 1); ii. Stumme, 62 (Story No. 4); Büttner, 122;
Georgeakis, 72 (Story No. 11); Wardrop, 30. In many cases the severed
member has the power, which would have belonged to its owner, of
changing the hero, so long as it is in his possession, into an animal
of the same kind. For instance, Wolf, _Deutsche Märchen_, 88 (Story
No. 20); Poestion, 212 (Story No 51); i. Cosquin, 166 (Story No. 15);
Carnoy, _Contes Franç._, 276; i. Comparetti, 240 (Story No. 55); v.
Pitrè, 215 (variant of Story No. 81), 386 (Story No. 106); i.
Finamore, pt. i., 90 (Story No. 19).
[58.2]
Schneller, 47 (Story No. 21). The spell is more usually performed by
the aid of some toy given by the hero, as in iv. Pitrè, 342 (Story
No. 38).
[59.1]
Jahn, _Volkssagen_, 148 (Story No. 182). In a Micmac legend the hero
is bidden to take a handful of hair of the moose or any other animal
rolled up between fingers and thumb, and blow it away. He will then be
able to see all the animals of that kind for a long distance around.
Rand, 358.
[60.1]
H. Ling Roth, in xxi. _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 112. The Kayans, one of
the peoples of Borneo, employ the teeth of tiger-cats in taking an
oath. The person swearing holds the teeth in his hand and calls on
them to harm him if he be not speaking the truth. This seems to be
another example of the same superstition. C. Hose, in xxiii. _ibid._,
165.
[60.2]
ii. Grundtvig, 115.
[61.1]
Wratislaw, 115 (Story No. 17), from Glinski.
[61.2]
Woycicki, 128. The story is a fragment. The incident it contains
usually forms the opening of the Catskin type of Cinderella stories.
See Miss Cox’s _Cinderella, passim_.
[62.1]
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 414, 224 (Story No. 56 and variant).
[62.2]
Theal, 123, 118. Compare the power of self-reconstitution from a
feather in the Cegiha tale referred to on p. 57.***
[62.3]
Dorsey, 18. Parallel with the development of the Life-token, we find
the spittle or blood sometimes omitted, and objects, which have never
been part of the heroine, endowed at her command with the power of
answering in her name. See vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 29; Rand, 163.
[63.1]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 66.
[63.2]
Grimm, ii. _Tales_, 10 (Story No. 89).
[65.1]
The Earl himself presided at some of the examinations, though it is
fair to say that, so far as appears, the charges of bewitching his
children were not gone into before him. The British Solomon, his royal
master, was not so scrupulous. ii. Nichols, pt. i., App. ix., 70,
reprinting a pamphlet of 1619, giving a full report of the case.
[65.2]
G. B. Corsi, in x. _Archivio_, 30; Leland, _Etruscan_, 329. An
extraordinary ritual for this purpose is quoted by De Mensignac from
Éliphas Lévi. De Mensignac, 45. Another prescription quoted by
Leland (_Etruscan_, 241) is for the maiden to take some of her
faithless lover’s hair and to invoke the aid of Saint Elisha against
him, at midnight in a cellar.
[66.1]
Felicina Giannini-Finucci, in xi. _Archivio_, 448. It seems enough in
Lucca for a deserted girl to wind her own hair round the toad’s legs,
or to introduce it into a cigar, in order to cause anguish to her
betrayer. _Ibid._, 453.
[66.2]
xvii. Pitrè, 115. See also Zanetti, 234; i. _Rivista_, 134, 319;
Ostermann, 511; De Mensignac, 48, note; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._,
11, 12; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1799, 1836; Zingerle, _Sitten_, 28.
[66.3]
Leland, _Etruscan_, 328. (The other substance was illegible in the
manuscript charm supplied to Mr. Leland. Compare the Tirolese tale
cited above, p. 58.) Ostermann, 517.
[66.4]
Addy, 74. Bodin, 369, relates a curious tale of a lascivious devil who
got a girl into his power by inducing her to give him a lock of her
hair. Barham has made powerful use of this incident in the _Ingoldsby
Leg._ (“A Passage in the Life of the late H. Harris, D.D.”).
[67.1]
Monseur, 91; i. _Mélusine_, 79, citing Auguste Hock; E. Polain, in
ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 145; J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._,
256. In the Tirol hairs not spit upon before being thrown away are
used by witches in the manufacture of hailstones and storms. Zingerle,
_Sitten_, 28.
[67.2]
O. Schell, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 211; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.
Siebenb. Sachs._, 150.
[67.3]
Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 151, citing Federowski.
[67.4]
Featherman, _Turanians_, 510.
[68.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. der Mag._, 136; _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._,
201.
[68.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleben Mag._, 78.
[68.3]
W. J. Hoffman, M.D., in ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 32.
[68.4]
Kane, 216.
[68.5]
Mrs. S. S. Allison, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 314. On the Rio
Grande people are warned to burn their hair, and not to throw it in
the path of others, lest it do the latter harm, and never to pick up
human hair lying in the road, especially women’s. J. G. Bourke, in
vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 136. This is an inversion of the ordinary
superstition.
[68.6]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 447.
[69.1]
Lieut. Musters, in i. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 197; Featherman,
_Chiapo-Mar._, 499; Bourke, 346.
[69.2]
Von den Steinen, 343.
[69.3]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 14.
[69.4]
Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 364.
[69.5]
E. Tregear, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 116; Featherman,
_Oceano-Mel._, 213.
[70.1]
Rev. Dr. Codrington, in x. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 283.
[70.2]
Codrington, 203; Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 93.
[70.3]
Lubbock, 246, quoting _Fiji and the Fijians_.
[70.4]
H. O. Forbes, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 17.
[71.1]
Dawson 36, 55.
[71.2]
A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 27; i. Curr, 46; iii.
178, 547; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 14; Roth, 77. Cf. Bourke, 146.
[72.1]
xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 17.
[72.2]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 13; Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80; both citing
Riedel.
[72.3]
iv. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 35, quoting _Settlement Report_ by Mr. F. C.
Channing.
[72.4]
Burton, _Sindh_, 179.
[72.5]
ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 252, citing _Voyages d’Ali Bey el Abassi_.
[72.6]
ii. Risley, 208.
[73.1]
Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 99.
[73.2]
Livingstone, _Zambesi_, 46.
[73.3]
Casalis, 292. For similar superstitions see Featherman, _Nigr._, 185,
475; v. _Mélusine_, 258; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 13, citing
Buchner, Fritsch and Hildebrandt; Du Chaillu, _Equat. Afr._, 427.
[73.4]
ii. _Antigua_, 65.
[74.1]
_Congress Report_ (1891), 244, 235.
[74.2]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 5.
[74.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1822.
[74.4]
Von Wlislocki, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 69. In Hungary the sole of the
corpse’s left foot must be rubbed with the blood.
[75.1]
A. F. Dörfler, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 268, 269, 270; Von Wlislocki,
_Volksleb. Mag._, 70, 71.
[75.2]
iv. _Folklore_, 358, 361.
[75.3]
But why, as in India, should stolen images of gods be held more
valuable than any others? See iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 118.
[76.1]
vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 392.
[76.2]
Ensign Niblack, in _Rep. Nat. Mus._ (1888), 354, quoting Dunn’s
_History of the Oregon Territory_.
[76.3]
See, in addition to cases already cited, Kane, 216; De Mensignac, 47,
_et seqq._; E. Tregear, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 123; i. Binger,
113.
[76.4]
Codrington, 203. Even a stone drawn out of a sick man’s body by a
medicine-man among the aborigines of Hayti seems to have been regarded
in the same magical light. The patient was adjured to “keep it safe.”
H. Ling Roth, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 254.
[77.1]
Dawson, 12, 54; iii. Curr, 178, 547; Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 93;
_Papuo-Mel._, 479; Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 99; iii. _Am
Urquell_, 150, 269 (a Magyar belief as to the cause of a woman’s
barrenness; see also Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 76); iv., 211;
Zingerle, _Sitten_, 73; ii. Witzschel, 270; i. _Mélusine_, 348;
Monseur, 92; Bourke, 146, 153, 378, 390, 465; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.
Siebenb. Sachs._, 52; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 11, 16. The same
superstition seems referred to in an ancient Egyptian festival song,
lii. _Archæologia_, 408, 471.
[77.2]
F. Bonney, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 128.
[78.1]
A. W. Howitt, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 456.
[78.2]
E. Polain, in ii. _Bulletin de Folklore_, 10.
[78.3]
Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 44; _County F.L., Suffolk_, 132.
[78.4]
For a similar reason Pythagoras also directed his disciples on rising
from bed to shake out the impress of the body. Clem. Alex.,
_Stromata_, v. See also Diog. Laert., _Vita Pyth._, xvii.
[79.1]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 8, 9, 11, 12; P. Sartori, in iv. _Zeits.
des Vereins_, 42, 43, citing various authorities; _Am Urquell_, 289;
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1747, 1798, 1799, 1814, 1819. A horse may be
lamed by thrusting a knife or nail into his fresh footprint. _Ibid._,
1821, 1823.
[79.2]
xii. _Archivio_, 536; Leland, _Etruscan_, 301; iv. _Zeits. des
Vereins_, 42, 43. There is a curious Assyrian incantation from
Assurbanipal’s collection, the translation of which is uncertain, but
which appears to refer to these practices. Lenormant renders the line:
“He has torn my garment and dragged it in the dust of my feet.” This
is not a sorcerer’s proceeding; and it is of a sorcerer that complaint
is made. Dr. Bartels gives, I know not whence, the more probable
reading: “He has torn my clothes and mixed his magical herb with the
dust of my feet.” Lenormant, 61; Bartels, 34. Dr. Bartels deliberately
deprives his works of the greater part of their value by his omission
of references.
[80.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 81.
[80.2]
ii. Train, 157.
[80.3]
Moore, 95. Cf. Prof. Rhys, in ii. _Folklore_, 298.
[80.4]
_County F.L., Suffolk_, 201.
[80.5]
iv. _Journ. Amer. F.L._, 254, 152.
[81.1]
J. H. Porter, in vii. _Journ. Amer. F.L._, 113.
[81.2]
Tylor, _Early Hist._, 119. They are said also to stick poisoned claws
of animals into the footprints. iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 43.
[81.3]
H. Ling Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 235, citing A. R.
Colquhoun, _Amongst the Shans_.
[81.4]
Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 94.
[81.5]
A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 26.
[81.6]
Dawson, 54.
[82.1]
Hoffman, in vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 221.
[82.2]
F. H. Cushing, in ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 120.
[82.3]
iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 43.
[82.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 120.
[82.5]
i. _Sax. Leechd._, 392. The words “into the hoof-track,” are not
expressed; but the translator is almost certainly right in supplying
them.
[83.1]
Powell, 171.
[83.2]
Codrington, 183, 188; iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 711. Cf. Codrington, 49,
52 note, 203; B. T. Somerville, in xxiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 19.
[84.1]
Codrington, in x. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 309.
[84.2]
See for example Dawson, 54; i. Curr, 46, 49; ii. 245, 247; iii. 547;
A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 29; Featherman,
_Papuo-Mel._, 53, 76, 179, 222; _Oceano-Mel._, 55, 93, 213; Turner,
_Polynesia_, 89; Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 364; viii. _Rev. Trad.
Pop._, 59; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 15, 16; Letourneau, _L’Év.
Rel._, 39, citing Taplin; Lubbock, 246, 250. Was not some reason of
this kind at the bottom of the taboo mentioned by Lubbock, 453?
[84.3]
Rev. J. Batchelor, in vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 36.
[84.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 84, 88.
[85.1]
i. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 189.
[85.2]
Knoop, _Posen_, 88.
[85.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1784, 1805.
[85.4]
Monseur, 90; Ostermann, 515. Cf. _Science of Fairy Tales_, 142, _et
seqq._ There is a custom almost universal among the aborigines of
America of preserving the bones of animals eaten; but it cannot at
present be certainly ascribed to the order of ideas treated of in this
chapter. I reserve it, therefore, for further investigation.
[86.1]
viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 331, quoting Gmelin, _Voyage en Sibérie_.
[86.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 160.
[86.3]
W. J. Hoffman, M.D., in ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 32.
[86.4]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 12.
[87.1]
xviii. Pitrè, 129.
[87.2]
J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 255.
[87.3]
Leland, _Etruscan_, 354.
[87.4]
G. Sajaktzis, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 142. The Belgian
prescription is to throw the babe’s first bathwater on the fire, never
into the street or the ordinary sewer, for fear of spells. ii. _Bull.
de F.L._, 144. Cf. the German superstition that to rock an empty
cradle deprives the baby of rest. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1778.
[87.5]
J. Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 108, 115. In Posen a shred of the
bedclothes of the supposed witch is hung in the chimney. If a child be
the victim, a bit of the witch’s clothing is burnt and the child
fumigated with the smoke. Knoop, _Posen_, 87, 88. In the Abruzzi, a
portion of the witch’s dress is simply put on the affected animal.
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 178.
[88.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 154.
[88.2]
Featherman, _Nigritians_, 347.
[88.3]
Theal, 78.
[88.4]
xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 29; i. Curr, 46; Dawson, 54.
[88.5]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 213; Lubbock, 247, quoting Tanner. Similar
was the belief of the people of the New Hebrides. xxiii. _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, 19.
[89.1]
iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 653.
[89.2]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 137.
[89.3]
Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, 242.
[89.4]
ii. Witzschel, 252, 258, 260; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1823, 1837; Von
Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 196; Strack, 56, quoting
Mannhardt. Especially, says Witzschel, if the survivor have perspired
in it.
[90.1]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 53; Töppen, 101.
[90.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 199, 200, 195.
[90.3]
ii. Witzschel, 258.
[90.4]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 277.
[90.5]
Reclus, 103.
[91.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 504. Compare with this the Austrian superstition
that if women come in while another is in labour they shall quickly
take their aprons off and tie them round her, _or they will be barren
themselves_. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1806. That is to say, the aprons
will, when restored to their owners, be a bond of connection between
them and the child-bearing woman, so as to communicate to them her
virtue.
[92.1]
De Acosta, 378.
[92.2]
Ellis, iii. _Polyn. Res._, 108. Cf. Murdoch, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._,
438; Turner, _Polynesia_, 338; Roth, 76; Bourke, in vii. _Journ. Am.
F.L._, 120.
[93.1]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 111.
[93.2]
Speke, 531.
[93.3]
Prof. Rhys, in iii. _Folklore_, 84.
[93.4]
Moore, 82.
[93.5]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1830, 1846.
[93.6]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 11.
[94.1]
Zingerle, _Sitten_, 73; Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 222. At Mentone,
sorcery upon cattle may be counteracted by making the animal eat
vegetables stolen from the witch. ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 255.
[94.2]
Bartels, 31.
[94.3]
Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 56.
[95.1]
i. Brand, 11, note; Henderson, 74; Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_,
357; ii. Witzschel, 278; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1781, 1798, 1812;
Töppen, 72, 91; Wolf, _Niederl. Sag._, 475 (Story No. 391).
Illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely.
[95.2]
i. Crantz, 215.
[95.3]
Chandra Roy’s English translation of the _Mahabh._, quoted by
Clouston, iv. _Folklore_, 256.
[95.4]
Turner, _Polynesia_, 319.
[96.1]
iii. Bancroft, 507.
[96.2]
i. Garcilasso, 220.
[96.3]
Dr. Meyners d’Estrey, in iv. _L’Anthropologie_, 625, citing and
reviewing Baron van Hœvell, _Todjo, Posso, et Saousou_.
[96.4]
Josh. vii. 24-26.
[97.1]
i. De Groot, 60.
[97.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1780, 1782, 1803, 1806.
[99.1]
Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 95, 98.
[99.2]
Lubbock, 246, quoting Pinkerton.
[99.3]
_Ibid._, citing Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_.
[99.4]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Assn._, 341.
[100.1]
xvii. Pitrè, 129.
[100.2]
Dr. Krauss, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 174. The words of the spell indicate
a wider object than the specific one mentioned.
[101.1]
Bodin, 337, 367, citing Saint Jerome’s _Life of Saint Hilarion_.
Concerning Hilarion’s sense of smell, see Middleton, 89.
[101.2]
Turner, _Polynesia_, 394.
[101.3]
i. Macdonald, 204.
[101.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 118.
[101.5]
B. W. Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 200.
[102.1]
Töppen, 101.
[102.2]
vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 617.
[103.1]
Henderson, 223, 175. See also Addy, 73, 79, 80, for analogous examples
in this country.
[103.2]
Scot, 219.
[104.1]
Quoted by Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 119, 220, from Jean Bapt. Thiers,
_Traité des Superstitions_, 1697. Modern examples may be found in
iii. _Am Urquell_, 84; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 75; vi.
_Mélusine_, 32. The psalm is cix. in our Bibles.
[105.1]
I have given two versions of this legend, vi. _F.L. Journal_, 125. See
also iv. _Mélusine_, 122; Sauvé, 238; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 9,
from Müllenhoff; Müller, _Siebenb. Sagen_, 148.
[105.2]
Knoop, in iii. _Zeits. des Volksk._, 233.
[107.1]
Emma Altmann, in iv. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 271.
[107.2]
Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 189, from Thiele. An analogous case is given
by Ostermann, 515, as occurring at Friuli.
[107.3]
ii. _Folklore_, 292.
[107.4]
Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 51.
[108.1]
C. A. Frazer, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 191.
[108.2]
ii. Witzschel, 267; Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 343; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._,
1803. The superstition has been carried in this form by Germans across
the Atlantic. iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 324; vii. 114.
[108.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 111.
[109.1]
_County F.L., Suffolk_, 190, quoting Zincke’s _Materials for the
History of Wherstead_.
[109.2]
Edward Peacock, in ii. _F.L. Journ._, 122, quoting Drakard’s _Stamford
News_ for 15th Oct. 1833.
[110.1]
vi. _N. and Q._, 8th ser., 6, quoting letter from Mr. W. H. Berry in
the _Diss Express_ of 23rd March 1894.
[110.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1800, 1803.
[110.3]
J. Tuchmann, in iv. _Mélusine_, 320, citing Wuttke.
[110.4]
_Ibid._, citing a variety of cases; Monseur, 92; Liebrecht, _Gerv.
Tilb._, 219, quoting Thiers, _Traité des Superstitions_; ii.
Witzschel, 270; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1805, 1824; Atkinson, 104;
Henderson, 218, 221; F. Starr, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 324; J. H.
Porter, in vii. _ibid._, 116. Cf. Knoop, _Posen_, 79.
[111.1]
Scot, 230, quoting _M. Mal._ Bodin gives from Spranger substantially
the same account. Bodin, 334. See also iv. _Mélusine_, 320.
[111.2]
vi. _Mélusine_, 229; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 156; ii.
Witzschel, 270; iii. _Am Urquell_, 238. Cf. a weird story, _ibid._,
317.
[111.3]
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 229.
[111.4]
iv. _Mélusine_, 320; vi. 89; ii. Witzschel, 265; iv. _Journ. Am.
F.L._, 126.
[112.1]
iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 126; vi. 70; Bodin, 333; vi. _Mélusine_, 228.
[112.2]
ii. Dobrizhoffer, 267.
[112.3]
Töppen, 35.
[112.4]
Henderson, 187.
[112.5]
_County F.L., Suffolk_, 192, 202. See an elaborate spell, Henderson,
220.
[113.1]
Nichols, _loc. cit._
[113.2]
Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 376, quoting De Lancre, _Tableau de l’inconstance
des mauvais anges et démons_ (Paris, 1613), 348.
[113.3]
iv. _Zeits. f. Volksk._ 257.
[114.1]
R. Scot, 66; Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 346; Monseur, 92; Harou, 54;
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 89; iv., 320; C. Dirksen, in iv. _Zeits.
des Vereins_, 324. An Italian woman whose milk was deficient enclosed
a drop or two in a nutshell, with similar results on the witch.
Ostermann, 376.
[114.2]
Georgeakis, 342.
[114.3]
i. _Rivista_, 386, 462, 935; vi. _Mélusine_, 108.
[115.1]
Leland, _Etruscan_, 360, quoting the _Secolo_ of Milan for 3rd March
1891. See also _ibid._, 282, 359, 361; Ostermann, 519. Midnight is in
general the proper time for performing the ceremony of boiling.
CHAPTER X NOTES
[118.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134.
[118.2]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 24.
[118.3]
H. Prahn, in i. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 182.
[119.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134.
[119.2]
_Ibid._, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34; iv. Kobert, 82.
[119.3]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80. For the Wendish maiden an alternative is
“eine unpaarige Zahl Haare vom Gemächte ganz klein zu schneiden, dass
sie nicht mehr sichtbar sind, und in Kartoffelen den Geliebten
genieszen zu lassen.” Conversely, “wenn bei den Wenden ein Bursche von
einem Mädchen geliebt sein will, so soll er sich Haare von ihrem
Gemächte verschaffen, sie in eine Nähnadel einfädeln und so bei
sich tragen.” _Ibid._
[119.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 57.
[119.5]
Bourke, 219, quoting a story from Paullini, _Dreck Apotheke_
(Frankfort, 1696).
[120.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 82, 203. The last seems also a
Transylvanian Saxon charm. _Ibid._, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 203.
[120.2]
_Ibid._, _Volksleb. Mag._, 78; ii. Brand, 605, quoting _The Comical
Pilgrim’s Pilgrimage into Ireland_.
[121.1]
A. F. Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269. A still more repulsive
Gipsy charm is reported by Dr. von Wlislocki, in which the hair,
saliva, blood, nail-parings, etc., of the man are worked up into a
dough and formed into a rough figure supposed to represent him. The
treatment of the figure is analogous to the other cases cited.
_Volksgl. Zig._, 104.
[121.2]
Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 134. I have not traced the authority for this:
probably it is Dr. von Wlislocki.
[121.3]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 79, citing Von Schulenburg, _Wendisches
Volksthum_.
[121.4]
F. Starr, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 323.
[121.5]
Apuleius, _Golden Ass_, iii.
[122.1]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 79, citing Wuttke. Wilken also mentions, but does
not detail, a hair-philtre among the Alfurs of Buru, in the East
Indies.
[122.2]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 168, citing Vuk.
[122.3]
Julie Filippi, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 462. The same tale is told at
Friuli concerning the amours of a Benedictine monk of the abbey of
Moggio. Ostermann, 317. See also _supra_, p. 66.***
[122.4]
i. Mannhardt, 48.
[122.5]
Von den Steinen, 558.
[123.1]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80 notes, citing Wuttke.
[123.2]
Gregor, 86; Monseur, 34; ii. Witzschel, 286; Prahn, in i. _Zeits. des
Vereins_, 182; iii. _Am Urquell_, 59; v., 81; Von Wlislocki,
_Volksleb. Mag._ 76; Bourke, 216.
[123.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34.
[123.4]
Tuchmann in vi. _Mélusine_, 110.
[123.5]
Bourke, 223.
[124.1]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1747; W. R. Paton, in v. _Folklore_, 277, citing
three MSS. in his own possession. Aubrey (_Gentilisme_, 43)
conjectures with plausibility that the sport called _cocklebread_ is a
relic of this.
[124.2]
Owen, 142; Harou, 17.
[124.3]
Feilberg, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 4.
[124.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 57; iii. _Am Urquell_, 62.
[124.5]
Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 367; Ostermann, 310.
[125.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134; _Volksdicht._, 150; iii. _Am
Urquell_, 12, 62, 93.
[125.2]
Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269, 270. Cf. _ibid._, 3.
[125.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 141. Cf. Ostermann, 316.
[125.4]
Von Henrici, in iv. Kobert, 92, 96; iii. _Am Urquell_, 4, 12, 13; iv.,
98; Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 69, 70, 71; _Volksgl. Zig._, 133;
_Volksgl. Mag._, 142; _Siebenb. Sachs._, 203; Felicina
Giannini-Finucci, in xi. _Archivio_, 453; Ostermann, 310; Rev. W.
Gregor in letter to me dated 8th Sept. 1893; Bourke, 217, 218; i.
_Sax. Leechd._, xlv., quoting the Italian philosopher Cæsalpinus;
Strack, 8, 15, 17, quoting a medical work of the seventeenth century
and other authorities; Leland, _Etr. Rom._, 294; v. _Folklore_, 277;
Von den Steinen, 558. An analogous superstition at Siena, see G. B.
Corsi, in xiii. _Archivio_, 475.
[125.5]
i. _Sax. Leechd._, xlv., quoting the Shrift-book of Ecgbert,
Archbishop of York; Strack, 15, quoting that of Theodore of
Canterbury; Bourke, 217, 219, citing various authors; iii. _Am
Urquell_, 268, 269; Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 71; Rev. W.
Gregor, in the above-cited letter, explains that this is the philtre
referred to by him, _op. cit._, 86.
[126.1]
Scot, 63; Bourke, 216, 217, citing various authors; vii. _Journ. Am.
F.L._, 133; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 167; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.
Zig._, 82, 104. Aubrey (_Gentilisme_, 44) notices in Burchard’s
Decrees a reference to a custom on the part of women for the purpose
of awakening love, analogous to the nasty Annamite story (Landes, 150)
cited _suprà_, vol. i., p. 76. Among the authorities cited in this
and preceding notes may also be found details of the means of
destroying the charms by burning, treading out, and otherwise treating
the substances referred to.
[126.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 76.
[126.3]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 12.
[126.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 132.
[126.5]
Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 72 note, apparently quoting Fin Magnussen;
De Mensignac, 19.
[127.1]
Gigli, 83.
[127.2]
vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 380. A similar ceremony with different words,
_ibid._, 383.
[127.3]
Aug. Baumgart, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 83; Pigorini-Beri, 64.
[127.4]
Similarly for a cat. Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 231, 232; De
Mensignac, 76.
[127.5]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1785.
[128.1]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1828; Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 108.
[128.2]
iii. _L’Anthropologie_, 194. Another food-philtre is mentioned by Von
den Steinen, 558.
[128.3]
Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 268.
[128.4]
Von Wlislocki, iii. _Am Urquell_, 12. Another Gipsy charm applied to
clothing is given by Dr. von Wlislocki, _Volkgsl. Zig._, 134. I need
not detail it. In a Chaldean incantation already quoted, the victim
complains: “He has taken the enchanted philtre and has soiled my
garment with it.” Lenormant, 61. We may surmise that it consisted of
some of the nasty compounds referred to in previous paragraphs; but
the translation is too uncertain to lay any stress on it.
[129.1]
iv. _Zeits des Vereins_, 159, citing Wuttke.
[129.2]
Lucian, _Hetairai_, Dial. iv.
[129.3]
P. Sartori, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 159.
[129.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 77.
[130.1]
Garnett, ii. _Wom. Turk._, 237.
[130.2]
Mrs. French-Sheldon, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 364. The power of
a white man is especially dreaded; but, as I understand Mrs.
French-Sheldon, the objection to part with the cloth applies to all
men, irrespective of colour.
[130.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 133.
[131.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 75, 203.
[131.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34.
[131.3]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 165.
[132.1]
vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 69.
[132.2]
Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 44; Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, 235. Elsewhere in England you are advised to burn your hair
when cut off, lest the birds carry it away; but what the result of
their doing so would be I do not know. Addy, 142.
[132.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1804, 1822.
[132.4]
Zingerle, _Sitten_, 28.
[133.1]
Liebrecht, 333.
[133.2]
Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 153. Brain fever was
even feared in Massachusetts. Sarah B. Farmer, in vii. _Journ. Am.
F.L._, 252.
[133.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 81. This is the belief concerning
birds in Swabia. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1804.
[133.4]
xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 42, 116.
[133.5]
i. Binger, 371.
[133.6]
vi. _Mélusine_, 46.
[133.7]
Bent, 274.
[134.1]
Whymper, in viii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 174.
[134.2]
i. _Mélusine_, 583, quoting _Le Tour du Monde_.
[134.3]
Von den Steinen, 558.
[134.4]
Taylor, 206 note, 207.
[134.5]
ii. _Mélusine_, 360.
[134.6]
B. W. Schiffer. in iv. _Am Urquell_, 74.
[134.7]
Hershon, _Talmudic Miscellany_ (Boston, 1880), quoted by Bourke, 347.
Compare the reason for the Australian native’s objection to passing
under a leaning tree, or to being stepped over, when lying down, by a
woman. iii. Curr, 179; ii. 301.
[135.1]
Aulus Gellius, x. 15.
[135.2]
iv. _Sacred Books of the East_, 186.
[136.1]
xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 164, 62. Cf. iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 190.
[136.2]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 76.
[136.3]
ii. Mitford, 266. So, too, in Korea, “old gentlemen keep a little bag
in which they assiduously collect the combings of their hair, the
strokings of their beard, and parings of their nails, in order that
all that belongs to them may be duly placed in their coffin at death.”
Griffis, 271.
[137.1]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 52, 50, 51.
[137.2]
De Mensignac, 9, citing Anne Raffenel, _Nouveau Voyage dans les Pays
des Nègres_, and Hovelacque, _Les Nègres de l’Afrique
sus-Equatoriale_. Mungo Park, 246, also describes the ceremony, but
does not mention the special point now under consideration.
[137.3]
Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, 249.
[138.1]
i. _Mélusine_, 549; i. Kirby, 91.
[138.2]
Webster, 71.
[138.3]
Arnason, ii. _Sagen_, 250.
[139.1]
Hillner, 21.
[139.2]
Ostermann, 375.
[139.3]
Zanetti, 145; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 69, 161, 163; ii. De Nino,
29. On the other hand, if a suckling woman give bread to a she-goat
and eat what the latter leaves, the milk passes from the goat to her.
Finamore, _op. cit._, 167.
[139.4]
ii. De Nino, 30; Zanetti, 148; Ostermann, 378.
[140.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleben Mag._, 81.
[140.2]
Timmins, 213; Featherman, _Nigritians_, 364; Speke, 163, 205; Moore,
_Africa_, 35.
[140.3]
Kohlrusch, 340.
[140.4]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 240, quoting Thiers.
[140.5]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1795.
[140.6]
Temme, _Volkss. Altm._, 77.
[141.1]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 55, 212; iv., 274. Hot embers on other _excreta_
cause diarrhœa, in Italy at least. Zanetti, 58.
[141.2]
De Mensignac, 110.
[141.3]
Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 53; Spiess, _Obererz._, 38.
[141.4]
viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 546.
[141.5]
Addy, 125. The same superstition has recently been reported in the
case of an old woman who died a few years ago at Mawgan in Cornwall.
v. _Folklore_, 343. Compare the mythological reasons as to
nail-parings, _suprà_, p. 138, as to hair, p. 133, and the Korean
practice, p. 136, note.***
[141.6]
J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 113.
[142.1]
M. Angelini, in xiii. _Archivio_, 21; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._,
129.
[142.2]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 546. At Lesbos he throws it behind the
oven, and asks the oven for an iron tooth to crunch marbles and eat
biscuits. Georgeakis, 331. To the same order of ideas belongs the
custom, said to prevail among the Hindus, of throwing their milk-teeth
into a dung-pit and praying that their new teeth may grow as fast as a
dung-heap does. i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 102, citing G. T. Lushington,
in _Journ. As. Soc. Bengal_, 1833.
[142.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1797.
[143.1]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 198, from the collection of Dr. Colerus of Berlin.
The same remedy is prescribed by Etmuller (_Opera_, Lyons, 1690),
quoted Bourke, 412. It is also mentioned by Pettigrew, 97.
[144.1]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 245, quoting Thiers; vii. _N. and Q._,
8th ser., 6.
[144.2]
ii. Brand, 589, citing Shaw, _History of the Province of Moray_.
[144.3]
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 86.
[144.4]
Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221.
[144.5]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 85.
[144.6]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 198.
[145.1]
i. _Sax. Leechd._, 333.
[145.2]
Bourke, 425, 421. For further examples, see Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221;
Black, 39; Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cul._, 364. In reference to the case,
cited from Bastian by Dr. Tylor, of the ceremony in Malabar for
expelling a demon by flogging the patient to a tree, nailing him there
by the hair, and then cutting him loose, it may be interesting to
mention that, at a recent meeting of the Folklore Society, a nail with
hair still attached was exhibited from Ceylon; and it was stated by
the exhibitor that the usual practice was to _tear_ the patient loose.
[146.1]
Bourke, 413. A similar prescription used by the Transylvanian Saxons.
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 86.
[146.2]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xxviii. 23.
[146.3]
ii. Witzschel, 273.
[147.1]
Marcellus, xxxiii. 26. I have thought it needless to discuss the rite
at length, as it is well known. In England, the tree usually chosen is
an ash. The best account of the rite that I know is given by Gaidoz,
_Vieux Rite_, 15. See also White, _Nat. Hist. Selborne_, letter
xxviii. to Daines Barrington; Kuhn und Schwartz, 443; _County
Folklore, Suffolk_, 26; Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221; ii. Brand, 590. It is
also in use for sick sheep. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1816.
[148.1]
A. F. Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.
Mag._, 140.
[148.2]
A. F. Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269. A parallel remedy is
prescribed to _heal_ a _man_ of impotence. Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.
Mag._, 140. The strength of the dead man is here probably intended to
pass into the living.
[148.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 85, 97.
[149.1]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 11.
[149.2]
R. Scot, 222. Scot suggests, in one of his sarcastic asides, that
Saint Mary “perhaps hath the curing thereof by patent.”
[150.1]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 11.
[150.2]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 197; i., 19; ii., 27; Töppen, 45; Strack, 25; ii.
Witzschel, 283; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1802. In Alabama, the splinters
are buried at the foot of the tree. v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 21.
[151.1]
ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 8.
[151.2]
Aubrey, _Miscellanies_, 138. Compare the direction in Maine, New
England, to cure a wart by crossing it with a knife until the blood
comes, and then cross the bark of an apple-tree with the bloody knife.
v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 320.
[151.3]
Black, 39. He notes a further modern degradation of the rite in
Scotland, where it was not thought necessary even to touch the tooth
with the nail. Compare the practice with regard to warts. Northall,
139.
[151.4]
Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen_, 384.
[151.5]
ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 7; Harou, 32.
[151.6]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1802.
[152.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 107.
[152.2]
H. Volksmann, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 278.
[152.3]
Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_, 351, 356; L. L. Duncan, in v.
_ibid._, 199.
[153.1]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 70; iv., 78.
[153.2]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 547.
[153.3]
J. G. Owens, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 124.
[154.1]
Strack, 88.
[154.2]
Leland, _Etr. Rom._, 287.
[154.3]
Marcellus, ix. 106; xxvi. 129; xxxvi. 28; xvi. 88. Plenty of such
prescriptions are to be found in Marcellus. Prescriptions like the
first are common in folk-medicine, and have been gravely prescribed by
physicians of repute. The earliest example is found in Herod. ii. 111,
prescribed by an oracle.
[155.1]
Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 245, quoting Thiers; Black, 35; Marcellus,
xii. 24.
[156.1]
Bourke, 412, _et seqq._; Strack, 88; Sauvé, 271; Pettigrew, 75, 76;
Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221; Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 242, 243, quoting
Thiers; De Gubernatis, _Trad. Pop._, 27; Zanetti, 59, 63; i. Laisnel,
155; Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 86, 91, 95; iv. _Am Urquell_,
141; i. _F.L. Record_, 49; x. _Archivio_, 411 (cf. Zanetti, 58; iii.
_Am Urquell_, 247); Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abruz._, 160; Zingerle,
_Sagen_, 470; Ostermann, 439; Pluquet, 43; ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 708.
[156.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1813; Von Wlislocki, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 70;
iii., 11; _Siebenb. Sachs._, 67, 86, 201; _Volksgl. Mag._, 140;
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 534. The German settlers in the Land
beyond the Forest forbid a child’s bath-water to be thrown out of
doors at night; nor may it be thrown where it may be trodden on, else
the child will lose its sleep, or, as some say, die. Nor must it have
been boiled, else the child will get pimples. Hillner, 51, 52. Why
must water that has been used for bathing the feet, in the west of
Ireland, be put outside the door at night “for fear of the fairies”?
Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_, 351. Apparently the fairies here are
the house-spirits. Might they otherwise tumble in? Is the water to be
thrown away or put outside in the tub?
[156.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 138.
[157.1]
Kuhn und Schwartz, 443.
[157.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 152.
[157.3]
Black, 37, quoting Salmuth.
[157.4]
A. Baumgart, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 85.
[158.1]
Töppen, 44.
[158.2]
Hillner, 26, note, quoting J. W. Wolf, _Beiträge_.
[158.3]
Ostermann, 469.
[159.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 95.
[159.2]
B. W. Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 170, 171.
[159.3]
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 78; De Gubernatis, _Trad. Pop._, 24.
[159.4]
Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 272.
[160.1]
Zanetti, 96, 97.
[160.2]
Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_, 351.
[160.3]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 243, 244, quoting Thiers.
[160.4]
ii. Brand, 598, note, quoting Lupton, _Second Book of Notable Things_
(1660).
[160.5]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 96.
[161.1]
ii. Witzschel, 289.
[161.2]
xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 270.
[161.3]
Northall, 137, quoting the _Norfolk Garland_.
[161.4]
Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 273.
[162.1]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 236, 237, 244.
[163.1]
_Berliner Tageblatt_, 18th Sept. 1892, quoted on the cover of iv. _Am
Urquell_, No. 12. For similar prescriptions, chiefly German, see
Strack, 34, 84. Pettigrew, 80, quotes Sir Thomas Browne, but omits the
reference.
[164.1]
This is a mere suggestion, of the value of which I am doubtful.
Tertullian, retorting against the heathen the charge of blood, speaks
of the drinking for epilepsy of the fresh blood of criminals killed in
the arena at gladiatorial shows. _Apol._, ix. Perhaps, therefore,
belief in the power of the blood of criminals, _as such_, may go back
to an earlier date.
[165.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 201.
[165.2]
Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 200; Töppen, 102. In Transylvania, by
a complementary belief akin to those discussed in the next paragraph,
to lay a flower on the dead causes the stalk whence it has been
plucked to wither. iv. _Am Urquell_, 52.
[165.3]
Rev. C. J. Branch, in _Contemp. Rev._, Oct. 1875, 761.
[165.4]
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 201, 85, 135.
[165.5]
Baumgart, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 83.
[166.1]
Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 329, quoting Wolf, _Wodana_; E. Polain, in
ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 7.
[166.2]
Töppen, 98; Strack, 34, quoting Frischbier, who also notes the remedy
as in use for tetters and moles.
[166.3]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 236, 237, 241, 244, 245, quoting Thiers.
One is reminded of the Irish phrase meaning that a man is dead: He
hasn’t got the toothache. A similar prescription for toothache in the
old collection from the Mark of Brandenburg, iii. _Am Urquell_, 197.
And see _antè_, p. 148.***
[166.4]
Emma Altmann, in iv. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 270; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._,
1822, 1800.
[167.1]
Dr. Krauss, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 303.
[167.2]
iv. Kobert, 193.
[167.3]
Prof. Rhys, in iii. _Folklore_, 82.
[167.4]
F. J. Bigger, in iii. _Proc. Belfast Nat. Field Club_, 3rd ser.
(1892-3), 545.
[167.5]
G. W. Wood, in v. _Folklore_, 232.
[168.1]
Dyer, 171. His authority is not given.
[168.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1819.
[168.3]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 545.
[168.4]
Karl Knauthe, in v. _Am Urquell_, 34.
[168.5]
N. C. Hoke, in v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 114.
[168.6]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 95.
[168.7]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 247; Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 49.
[169.1]
Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_, 355. Analogous prescriptions are
given from various sources, Black, 43. See also Grimm, _Teut. Myth._,
1809.
[169.2]
Spiess, _Obererz._, 27.
[169.3]
Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 328, quoting Wolf.
[169.4]
Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 200.
[170.1]
Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 43.
[170.2]
_Suffolk County F.L._, 25, 132.
[170.3]
Mary H. Skeel, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 165.
[170.4]
Kohlrusch, 340.
[170.5]
Zingerle, _Sitten_, 103.
[170.6]
T. Nencini, in i. _Rivista_, 887.
[170.7]
iv. Kobert, 208.
[171.1]
Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 170.
[171.2]
Dr. A. F. Chamberlain, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 65, quoting Boas.
[172.1]
Codrington, 310, 205.
[172.2]
vi. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 185, quoting Conte d’Hérisson, _Le Prince
Imperial_.
[172.3]
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 182.
[172.4]
S. Raccuglia, in i. _Rivista_, 727.
[172.5]
Miss Gordon-Cumming, in _Nineteenth Century_, June 1887, 917.
[173.1]
Harou, 17.
[173.2]
H. G. Prendergast, in i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 104.
CHAPTER XI NOTES
[176.1]
_Transactions of the Liverpool Welsh National Society_, 8th session
(1892-3), 93.
[177.1]
iv. _Folklore_, 55. Sikes, 351 _et seqq._, mentions several other
Welsh examples; but they present no special features.
[178.1]
See a number of examples referred to in Gomme, _Ethn._, 83 _et seqq._
Also the case of Saint Oswald’s Well, referred to, _antè_, p. 22.***
[178.2]
_Athenæum_, 1st April 1893, 415.
[178.3]
_Proc. Roy. Ir. Acad._ (1892), 818.
[179.1]
W. Gray, in iv. _Proc. Belfast Nat. Field Club_, 2d ser., 94.
[179.2]
Gomme, _Ethn._, 91 _et seqq._ See also vi. _N. and Q._, 8th ser., 113.
[179.3]
iv. _N. and Q._, 8th ser., 246.
[179.4]
Prof. Rhys, in iii. _Folklore_, 75. Mr. Moore is quoted as giving a
slightly different version of the ritual. I think his version probably
describes a more recent and degraded form of the ceremony. In any
case, the rag had to be wetted with water from the well. Other Manx
wells are discussed by Mr. Moore in an article on “Water and
Well-worship in Man,” v. _Folklore_, 212. See particularly pp. 217,
219, 222, 224, 226.***
[180.1]
x. _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, 606.
[180.2]
iii. _Folklore_, 69.
[181.1]
ii. Brand, 269 note, 268 note, 270 note, quoting xviii. _Statistical
Account of Scotland_, 630, Macaulay, _Hist. St. Kilda_, 95, and
Martin, _Western Islands_, 140. A similar account is given of a well
in the island of Islay.
[181.2]
xxvi. _Antiquary_, 30.
[181.3]
iii. _Folklore_, 67.
[182.1]
Miss Godden, in iv. _Folklore_, 399; Sir Arthur Mitchell, in vi.
_Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._, 253.
[183.1]
Bartsch, ii. _Sagen_, 104.
[184.1]
_Wallonia_, No. 3, 1893.
[184.2]
E. Monseur, in i. _Bull. de F.L._, 250, citing Van Bastelaer.
[184.3]
Sébillot, _Coutumes_, 96. According to M. Certeux, the pins are to be
thrown through a hole in the window into the chapel. ix. _Rev. Trad.
Pop._, 288.
[185.1]
Sébillot, _Coutumes_, 97, quoting Fouquet, _Légendes du Morbihan_.
As to St. Guirec’s shrine, see also ii. _Arch. Camb._, 5th ser., 175.
[185.2]
E. Monseur, in i. _Bull. de F.L._, 250, citing Van Bastelaer.
[186.1]
G. Le Calvez, in vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 92.
[186.2]
Gaidoz, in vi. _Rev. de l’Hist. des Rel._, 10, 12. See also iv. _N.
and Q._, 8th ser., 186.
[187.1]
Volkov, in viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 448.
[187.2]
Gaidoz, _Vieux Rite_, 29, quoting Clos, _Mémoires de la Soc. des
Antiquaires de France_. The same is done at the well of Saint Gobrien
at Camors. ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 490.
[187.3]
Gaidoz, _Vieux Rite_, 41, quoting _Mémoires de la Soc. Archéologique
de Bordeaux_.
[187.4]
i. Bartsch, 418.
[188.1]
Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 244, quoting Thiers, _Traité des
Superstitions_. See also Scot, 165, quoting Martin of Arles.
[188.2]
G. Amalfi, in i. _Rivista_, 294.
[188.3]
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 147.
[188.4]
Preller, i. _Röm. Myth._, 258.
[189.1]
Gaidoz, in vii. _Rev. de l’Hist. des Rel._, 9.
[189.2]
Grabowsky, in _Globus_ lxvii. No. 1. I am indebted to M. Schmeltz for
this reference.
[189.3]
Rodd, 165, 176.
[190.1]
i. _Bull. F.L._, 228, citing the Ἐφημερὶς
ἀρχαιολογική.
[190.2]
Aristophanes, _Plut._, 840, 937. Initiates at the Mysteries, explains
the scholiast on the former passage, consecrated at some shrine the
garments they had worn during the ceremony. And see Anrich, 211.
[190.3]
Lucan, _Phars._, i. 135; Vergil, _Æn._, xii. 766. Bötticher, 62, _et
seqq._, mentions other instances, and in his illustrations gives
several figures showing the custom.
[191.1]
Georgeakis, 348, 349.
[191.2]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 29.
[191.3]
vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 56, citing Boijdowsky, _Kievskaïa Starina_.
[192.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 22, 70.
[192.2]
H. H. Wilson, ii. _Works_, 169.
[193.1]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 50, 61; Burton, _Sindh_, 177; i. _N. Ind.
N. and Q._, 39, 88, 174; Dalpatrám Dayá, 19, 20; i. Hanway, 260;
Yule, i. _Marco Polo_, 128; i. Ouseley, 313, 369, _et seqq._, ii. 83;
iii. 532. The Turks tear off strips of their robes and tie them to the
railing surrounding a saint’s tomb. Featherman, _Turanians_, 398.
[193.2]
Robertson Smith, _Rel. Sem._, 170; Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 60, 34.
[193.3]
Rodd, 167, quoting Kamporoglou, _Hist. Ath._
[194.1]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 52.
[194.2]
Cooper, 275.
[195.1]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 76, quoting Moorcroft and Trebeck, _Trav. in
the Himalayas_.
[195.2]
Lewin, 232.
[195.3]
Georgi, 25, 156.
[195.4]
ii. Erman, 409.
[196.1]
vii. _Mélusine_, 135.
[196.2]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 61.
[196.3]
i. Schuyler, 138; ii. 113.
[196.4]
A. H. Savage Landor, in _Fortnightly Rev._, Aug. 1894, 186.
[196.5]
H. S. Sanderson, in xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 311.
[197.1]
Campbell, i. _Circular Notes_, 350.
[197.2]
vi. _Mélusine_, 154, 155, quoting the _Temps_. I have referred to
these performances by women in an earlier chapter, and compared them
with a similar practice in Glamorganshire. Perhaps I may be allowed to
refer to the case of St. Oswald’s Well at Oswestry, where the wish is
to be obtained by flinging on a certain stone the remainder of the
water in one’s hand after drinking. It must be done at midnight.
Burne, 428. The Japanese practice is also referred to by Chamberlain,
xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 357. Compare with the rite at Penvenan,
_suprà_, p. 186.***
[197.3]
xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 359. See also 356. “In some of the
Louisiade group there are certain very large well-known trees under
which” the natives “have their feasts. These trees appear to be
credited with possessing souls, as a portion of the feast is set aside
for them, and bones, both pigs’ and human, are everywhere deeply
imbedded in their branches.” _Report of Special Commission for_ 1887
_on British New Guinea_, quoted in iii. _Arch. Rev._, 416. This
custom, though not precisely the one now under discussion, is closely
related.
[198.1]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 61, 60; vii. _Internat. Archiv._, 145.
Crooke, 105, describing several rag-shrines in India, notes that they
are generally called “Our Lady of Tatters.” One in Berár is called
“The Lord of Tatters.”
[198.2]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 60.
[199.1]
Mungo Park, 38.
[199.2]
Gaidoz, in vii. _Rev. de l’hist. des Rel._, 7, quoting Charles de
Rouvre, _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Oct. 1880. M. Schmeltz has
figured in vii. _Internat. Archiv_, 144, two specimens of the
_n’doké_ from the Congo and the Cameroon now in the National Museum
of Ethnography at Leiden. They are stuck with pins and pieces of iron.
Another from West Africa covered with nails may be seen in the British
Museum. See also Herbert Ward, in xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 288.
[200.1]
i. Binger, 212. See also Mungo Park, 250.
[200.2]
Darwin, _Journ._, 68.
[203.1]
ii. Brand, 268 note, quoting _Statistical Account_.
[204.1]
xxvii. _Antiquary_, 169. Heron (_Journey through the Western Counties
of Scotland_, 282) gives a less complete account of the practices at
Strathfillan. In his time (1792) the offerings consisted of clothes,
or a small bunch of heath. He asserts, I know not on what authority,
that “more precious offerings used once to be brought. But these being
never left long in the unmolested possession of the saint, it has
become customary to make him presents which may afford no temptation
to theft.”
[204.2]
At a sacred cave in Kumaon is a pool where the worshipper must bathe
with his clothes on, and then leave them for the priest. iii. _N. Ind.
N. and Q._, 147. An instance is recorded of a spring in Italy where it
was believed that a child bathed before its seventh year would be
healed of all diseases. The parents left the child’s clothes to be
distributed among the poor. A bishop, however, positively put an end
to the superstition; and the spring has since been called “Acqua
Scommunicata.” Ramage, 274. This bishop was perhaps eccentric. The
bishop of Girgenti does not seem to have prohibited the practice, at
the church of San Calogero in that city, of bringing children,
stripping them naked in pursuance of a vow, and leaving their best
clothes hung on a stick before the altar. i. _Rivista_, 790.
[205.1]
Gen. xxxi. 44.
[206.1]
Livingstone, _Zambesi_, 229.
[206.2]
Darwin, _Journ._, 46.
[206.3]
Josh. vii. 25; 2 Sam. xviii. 17.
[207.1]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 46, 47, 49, 50, 55, quoting various
writers; De Gubernatis, i. _Myth. Plantes_, 160 note, citing
Mantegazza; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 100; v. _Am Urquell_, 235;
Georgeakis, 323; i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 132; xiii. _Archivio_, 260; Le
Braz, 230, 307; Thomas, _Prob. Ohio Mounds_, 12, citing Smith’s
_History of Wisconsin_; Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 495.
[207.2]
Hahn, _Tsuni_-ǁ_goam_, 45, 46, 47, 52, 56, 69, quoting various
writers.
[207.3]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 40; Dalpatrám Dayá, 19, 20.
[209.1]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 46, 49, 55. Cf. with the Dyak custom that
of the Esthonians on the island of Oesel. _Ibid._, 47. As to the
Peruvian rite, i. Garcilasso, 131. Compare with it a Malabar custom of
taking a shred from the clothes and presenting it to the new moon when
first seen. i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 88.
[209.2]
_Proc. Roy. Ir. Acad._ (1892), 819.
[209.3]
_Athenæum_, 1st April 1893, 415.
[209.4]
Casalis, 287. A parallel practice would seem to be that of putting mud
in a niche above the well at the Chapel of the Seven Saints, Plédran,
Côtes-du-Nord--not on the child--to cure the mumps. Dr. Aubry, in
vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 599.
[210.1]
W. A. Craigie, in iv. _Folklore_, 223, quoting the _Landnámabók_.
Cf. the custom in the Louisiade Islands cited _antè_, p. 197, note,
and several African customs also cited above.***
[211.1]
i. _Bull. F.L._, 250.
[212.1]
vi. _Mélusine_, 155.
[213.1]
It is fair to M. Monseur to say that he recognises expressly (_loc.
cit._) the priority of trees as objects of worship, in point of time,
to fetishes of wood; and M. Gaidoz, of course, would admit the same.
But I do not think this affects my criticism. Elsewhere the former
refers to two cases, which by no means stand alone, as instances of
maltreated divinities. The remedy prescribed for toothache at Warnaut
and Bioulx, in the province of Namur, is to bite, as noted in the last
chapter, one of the crosses placed on the wayside in memory of persons
who have died violent deaths in the neighbourhood. And at Herve, a
girl who desires to be married goes to pray at Saint Joseph’s Chapel.
She must bite the iron trellis-work around the saint’s statue--of
course, because she cannot get at the saint himself. ii. _Bull. F.L._,
7, 56. It seems to me, however, that the object is, in both cases, to
bring the sufferer or suppliant into union with the deceased or with
the saint. So, to cure the fever, we find among the French
superstitions of the seventeenth century the prescription to bind the
patient for a while with a cord, or fasten him with wood or straw to a
certain tree; and it was the opinion of some that it must be done
early in the morning, that the patient must be fasting and must bite
the bark of the tree before being released. Liebrecht, in _Gerv.
Tilb._, 238, quoting Thiers. In Transylvania, one who suffers from
toothache bites the bell-rope while the church-bells are ringing,
saying:--
“The free masses are sung,
The bells have rung,
The Gospel is read,
The worm in my teeth shall be dead.”
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 106. This is neither Transplantation
nor the ill-using of a god.
[216.1]
Pausanias, ii. 11. A representation of the dedicated lock was
sometimes carved in stone upon a tablet and presented to the shrine.
In the Mausoleum Room of the British Museum is a marble slab found in
Thessaly, whereon are carved two tresses offered to Poseidon. I am
indebted to Mr. W. H. D. Rouse for drawing my attention to this.
[217.1]
As to the dedication of hair, see Bötticher, 92 _et seqq._, to which
I am indebted for most of the above illustrations.
[217.2]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 39, 40, 56; Robertson Smith, _Rel. Sem._, 305.
[217.3]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 150.
[217.4]
Zingerle, _Sagen_, 470.
[218.1]
Knoop, _Sagen aus Posen_, 182. According to another story, this
wonderful hair was the gift of a noble lady as the most beautiful
thing she had.
[218.2]
Gaidoz, in vii. _Mélusine_, 84, quoting M. Auricoste de Lazarque, an
eye-witness.
[219.1]
i. De Nino, 49.
[219.2]
Scot, 165 (l. xi., c. 15).
[219.3]
Pettigrew, 40.
[219.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 22.
[219.5]
Garnett, i. _Wom._, 73.
[220.1]
i. Ainsworth, 260.
[220.2]
De Gubernatis, i. _Myth. Plantes_, 160 note.
[220.3]
Crooke, 231, quoting Col. Tod’s _Annals_.
[220.4]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 55, citing Sir Monier Williams, _Religious Life
and Thought in India_, 375.
[220.5]
Featherman, _Turanians_, 269.
[220.6]
Ellis, _Tour_, 325.
[221.1]
i. Macdonald, 109, 111.
[221.2]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 162.
[221.3]
i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 159.
[221.4]
Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 151, 152; i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, _passim_.
[222.1]
Browning, _Artemis Prologizes_.
[224.1]
Ploss, i. _Kind_, 15, citing Mörenhout.
[224.2]
ii. Bartsch, 45; ii. Witzschel, 249.
[224.3]
Scot, 165, quoting, apparently, Martin of Arles. Compare the Bosnian
customs, mentioned _suprà_, vol. i. p. 152.
[224.4]
Dr. Paul Aubry, in vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 599.
[224.5]
Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 240, quoting Thiers.
[224.6]
v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 108, 242; ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 572.
[225.1]
ii. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 168. See the monkish MS. of the miracles of
Simon de Montfort, printed by the Camden Soc., _passim._
[225.2]
C. A. White, in vii. _N. and Q._, 8th ser., 6, quoting a book the
authorship and bibliography of which are still to seek.
[225.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1757. A votive offering still not uncommon is a
candle of the size or weight of the person who, or on whose behalf,
the vow is made. See for example i. _Rivista_, 790.
[225.4]
B. H. Chamberlain, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 364.
[226.1]
i. Doolittle, 115.
[226.2]
Capt. Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 556, quoting several
authorities.
[226.3]
_Ibid._, 572. Saint Francis’ is not the only image thus made useful.
See v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 242; vii. 135.
[226.4]
Pineau, 508. In Brittany, bread rubbed on the statue of Saint Gildas
is given to cattle and horses, and even eaten by human beings as a
preventive against the bites of mad dogs. Le Calvez, in vii. _Rev.
Trad. Pop._, 93.
[226.5]
Casalis, 267.
[227.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 22.
[227.2]
_Journal of Thomas Dineley_, in i. _Journ. Kilk. Arch. Soc._, N.S.,
180.
[227.3]
Miss Godden, in iv. _Folklore_, 502, quoting Dr. Reeves. In Iceland, a
preventive of sea-sickness is a sod from the churchyard worn in the
shoe. ii. Powell and Magnússon, 644; ii. Lehmann-Filhés, 252; both
from Arnason.
[227.4]
v. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 426; ix. 473; ii. _Folklore_, 442. Compare the
Apache use of hoddentin, the pollen of the tule-rush. ix. _Rep. Bur.
Ethn._, 500, _et seqq._ Compare also the consecration of the Hindu
votaries of Devi, by the smearing of their foreheads with a portion of
the red powder which has marked an earthenware pitcher containing
water and other things infused, by means of _mantrás_, with the
spirit of the goddess. iv, _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 19.
[228.1]
This intention, however, is by no means universal. Some instances to
the contrary have already been given. I may add to them that in
Belgium, in spite of certain examples like that of Saint Etto’s Cross,
it seems to be believed that a nail found, _especially in a tree_,
brings good luck. i. _Bull. de F.L._, 250. In such a case there can be
no transfer of disease.
[229.1]
Kolbe, 163.
[230.1]
My authority for this statement is a paper read by Professor
Kovalevsky at the British Association meeting at Oxford, August 1894,
and not yet printed.
[230.2]
G. Ferraro, in xiii. _Archivio_, 3.
[231.1]
ii. _F.L. Journ._, 349.
[231.2]
Addy, 115.
CHAPTER XII NOTES
[239.1]
On the blood-covenant, the three chief authorities are Robertson
Smith, _Kinship_; and _Rel. Sem._; Trumbull; and Strack. Prof.
Robertson Smith and Dr. Trumbull, approaching the subject from
different points of view, arrived at similar conclusions independently
and simultaneously. I have a long list of examples not mentioned by
these writers; but I forbear to load the page with them, as they add
nothing to the ample proofs of the meaning, and but little to those of
the wide distribution, of the rite. By far the most exhaustive
examination of totemism is that of Mr. Frazer in his book on the
subject, an expansion of his article in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.
[241.1]
Stoll, 47; iii. Bancroft, 486, citing Carta; Trumbull, 90, citing
various authorities. Similarly, De Acosta describes the practice when
at a funeral human beings were sacrificed to the dead to be their
slaves in the other world; the victim’s blood was smeared on the
corpse’s face from ear to ear. De Acosta, 314. A writer of the last
century describes the Nogats of the Bouraits and other peoples of
Eastern Siberia as _idoles en peinture_, representing the contour of a
naked human figure, six to eight inches long, painted with the heart’s
blood of the victims, or with some other red material. Georgi, 150.
[241.2]
Tibullus, i. _Eleg._, vi. 45.
[242.1]
i. _Heimskringla_, 165.
[242.2]
i. Risley, 504, 535, and other places. The daubing of the wooden
casing of the well with red lead is one of the village ceremonies at
the Sarhúl festival. iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 180, quoting L. R.
Forbes’ Report.
[243.1]
J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 115.
[243.2]
P. Sébillot, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 170.
[244.1]
Arnason, i. _Sagen_, 192. Feilberg, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 5, quotes it
as menstrual blood. Very likely this is correct; but the German
version, to which alone I have access, does not specify it.
[244.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 110, 123, 124; Schiffer, in iii. _Am
Urquell_, 200, citing Rulikowski; viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 487.
[244.3]
Strack, 51, quoting Mannhardt.
[244.4]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1833 (a Swedish prescription from Hülphers,
given in English by Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 113). Several modern
English cases given by Henderson, 181.
[245.1]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 64.
[245.2]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 60.
[245.3]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 355.
[245.4]
Powell, 92. Cf. the Australian custom. ii. Curr, 52.
[245.5]
H. Vos, in iii. _Internat. Arch._, 72.
[245.6]
i. Crantz, 193.
[245.7]
Dr. M. Pasquarelli, in i. _Rivista_, 640, citing several cases.
[246.1]
Du Chaillu, _Ashango-land_, 199, 201.
[246.2]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 64.
[247.1]
Arnason, i. _Sagen_, 20.
[247.2]
Mr. Paton, in letter to me dated 25th May 1894.
[250.1]
ii. Risley, 41.
[250.2]
ii. Risley, 49.
[251.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 333.
[251.2]
Herod. iii. 11.
[251.3]
Diodorus, xxii.
[252.1]
i. _Panjab N. and Q._, 122.
[252.2]
Markham, _Rites and Laws_, 25, 28.
[252.3]
Burton, _Wit and Wisd._, 450.
[252.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 250.
[252.5]
v. _L’Anthropologie_, 352, citing and reviewing E. C. Taintor, _Les
aborigènes du nord de Formose_.
[253.1]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 630. The old Norsemen seem to have made
leagues by drinking together. See Morris, ii. _Heimskringla_, 105.
[253.2]
i. Casati, 217.
[253.3]
Saxo, 23; Elton’s version, xxxiii and 28; Du Chaillu, ii. _Viking
Age_, 64, quoting the saga of _Egil and Asmund_.
[253.4]
Herod. iii. 8. It may be observed, in reference to Herodotus’
identification of Alilat with Urania, that Allatu (? = Alilat) appears
to be the more correct transliteration of the name of the Babylonian
goddess of the Underworld, given by Smith (_Chald. Gen._, 230) as
Ninkigal. Jeremias, _Höllenfahrt, passim._
[254.1]
Robertson Smith, _Rel. Sem._, 297.
[255.1]
Livingstone, _Miss. Travels_, 489.
[255.2]
Kuno Meyer, in i. _Arch. Rev._, 304, translating the saga.
[255.3]
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 172.
[256.1]
i. Bancroft, 636, citing Father Joseph Arlegui.
[256.2]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 281.
[256.3]
Lewin, 228, 315, 322.
[256.4]
vii. _Mélusine_, 76, quoting _Annales Apostoliques_, July 1894.
[256.5]
i. Risley, lviii. ii. 16, 111.
[257.1]
Caroline Islanders, Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 348; La Pérouse
Islanders, _Ibid._, _Papuo-Mel._, 95.
[257.2]
i. De Nino, 51. As to the blood-rite in modern Italy, see Strack, 12;
Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abruz._, 101.
[258.1]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 633.
[259.1]
_Congress Report_ (1891), 249, _et seqq._ Cf. the Apache ceremony of
spitting in a hole made in the ground at concluding a peace. iii.
_Journ. Am. F.L._, 54. I add a few references here in support of the
opinion that the saliva contains the life, and the recipient’s life is
enhanced by a portion of the giver’s. The examples given subsequently
in the text are directed to the further point raised in the following
paragraph. iii. _Am Urquell_, 9, 54, 56, 58; iv. 170, 274; v. 20;
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 548; vi. _Mélusine_, 251; Blunt, 166;
Marcellus, viii. 166, 172, 191; ix. 107; xxxvi. 70; Finamore, _Trad.
Pop. Abruz._, 79, 135, 170, 191, 203; De Mensignac, 80, _et seqq._;
iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 84; i. _Rivista_, 222. (Cf. Zanetti, 59, 63;
Von den Steinen, 335; Hodgkinson, 227.)
[261.1]
Mrs. F. D. Bergen, in iii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 51.
[262.1]
Persius, _Sat._ ii. 31. Lustration with spittle was also part of the
rites of purification in the Mysteries. Anrich, 211.
[262.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 144.
[262.3]
De Mensignac, 59, 61, 58; Garnett, ii. _Wom._, 475; Hillner, 21;
Kaindl, 5; Sajaktis, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 139.
[262.4]
Extracts from the Journal of Thomas Dineley, Esq., in i. _Journ. Kilk.
Arch. Soc._, N.S., 182; Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_, 361, 358; Dr.
C. R. Browne, in iii. _Proc. Roy. Ir. Ac._, 3rd Ser., 358.
[263.1]
iv. _Folklore_, 357.
[263.2]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 55.
[263.3]
Ockley, 351.
[263.4]
Mungo Park, 246; De Mensignac, 10, citing Anne Raffenel, _Nouveau
Voyage_, and Abel Houvelacque, _Les Nègres_.
[263.5]
Winwood Reade, 46.
[263.6]
Burton, i. _Gelele_, 259.
[264.1]
De Mensignac, 12, quoting Anne Raffenel. Mr. Crombie cites from
Burckhardt, a similar custom among the Bedouin. If a thief be caught
and abused by the man he has wronged, and can manage to spit on
another, the latter must defend him, even against a fellow-tribesman,
and may kill the assailant in his defence. _Congress Report_ (1891),
257.
[264.2]
De Mensignac, 22. A similar record by Peters is quoted by W. Simpson,
_Sikh Initiation_, 5.
[264.3]
Paulitschke, 246. Cf. the Pueblo story of the reason why all the Hano
can talk Hopí and none of the Hopitah can talk Hano. viii. _Rep. Bur.
Ethn._, 36. The language of some of the lower animals is acquired in
folktales elsewhere by the creature spitting into the hero’s mouth. In
Ashango-land guests are given red powder to rub themselves with. Du
Chaillu, _Ashango-land_, 341. This appears to be a modified form of
the blood-covenant.
[265.1]
Paulitschke, 206.
[265.2]
De Mensignac, 9.
[265.3]
Casalis, 306.
[265.4]
Addy, 59.
[265.5]
De Mensignac, 12, citing Réville. I have mislaid a reference to a
more direct authority. Cf. the practice in the Cordilleras mentioned
on p. 208.
[266.1]
ii. Brand, 572 note. The practice is a very familiar one. A variant
practice is to spit on the first money received in the New Year. This
is also practised in France. De Mensignac, 69.
[266.2]
Monseur, 90.
[266.3]
Lubbock, 97, citing Franklin; Addy, 94.
[266.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 159.
[266.5]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1847.
[267.1]
De Mensignac, 66.
[267.2]
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 231.
[267.3]
De Mensignac, 66.
[267.4]
vi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 374.
[267.5]
De Mensignac, 77.
[267.6]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 55, 56.
[267.7]
De Mensignac, 54, 69.
[268.1]
Du Chaillu, _Equatorial Africa_, 430. Blowing alone appears in the
Bakalai ceremony. _Ibid._, 393. Blowing here, as in other cases, seems
a substitute for spitting.
[268.2]
ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 574, quoting Major Cornwallis Harris.
[268.3]
Anrich, 210.
[269.1]
Kane, 407. Cf. the charms for rendering dogs faithful given _ante_,
pp. 124, 127.***
[269.2]
Winwood Reade, 131.
[269.3]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 57.
[270.1]
v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 183.
[270.2]
Scot, 219; iii. _Am Urquell_, 56; Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._ 220;
Pliny, xxviii. 7.
[270.3]
i. Binger, 194.
[270.4]
Kane, 216.
[270.5]
Theocritus, xx. Cf. vi., where the object is expressly to ward off the
Evil Eye.
[271.1]
Pliny, xxviii. 7. Cf. the Italian custom mentioned by De Mensignac,
56.
[271.2]
ii. Brand, 573 note. See _ante_, pp. 67, 132.***
[271.3]
i. _Rivista_, 618; ii. 155.
[271.4]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 57. The Girondins also spit on the wads of their
wooden shoes before flinging them out, to avoid the fourcat, a kind of
corn which grows in the fork of the great toe. De Mensignac, 54.
[271.5]
Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 110, 116.
[271.6]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 108.
[272.1]
Georgeakis, 343.
[272.2]
v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 63.
[272.3]
Pliny, xxviii. 7; xvii. Pitrè, 243; xv. 136.
[272.4]
De Mensignac, 61.
[272.5]
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 86.
[273.1]
iii. _Am Urquell_, 57; De Mensignac, 54; Pliny, xxviii. 7. An
elaborate counter-spell to the Evil Eye still extant in Calabria is
detailed by Sig. A. Renda, in i. _Rivista_, 290.
[273.2]
Haddon and Browne, in ii. _Proc. Roy. Ir. Ac._, 3rd ser., 819.
[273.3]
vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 126.
[273.4]
Pigorini-Beri, 40; Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 108.
[274.1]
Prof. Mikhailovskii, translated by O. Wardrop, in xxiv. _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, 97.
[274.2]
Emil Hassler, in _Mem. Cong. Anthr._, 356.
[274.3]
S. K. Kusnezow, in viii. _Internat. Arch._, 21.
[274.4]
F. H. Wells, in v. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 518.
[274.5]
Suetonius, _Vit. Vesp._, vii.; Tacitus, _Hist._, iv. 81.
[274.6]
Dalyell, 76, citing St. Jerome’s _Life of Saint Hilarion_.
[275.1]
ii. Doolittle, 373, 374.
[275.2]
Campbell, _Khondistan_, 112.
[275.3]
Simpson, _Sikh Initiation_, 5, quoting Wolf. Dr. Karl Piehl gives two
curious extracts from the inscription on the tomb of Pepi II., an
Egyptian monarch of the sixth dynasty, xv. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._,
250. They appear to belong to the order of thought under discussion;
but in the absence of the context it is impossible to determine their
exact meaning. Spitting is mentioned as a charm against rain in the
Obererzgebirge, Spiess, _Obererz._, 34. It is probably an extension of
the idea of spitting on a witch.
CHAPTER XIII NOTES
[280.1]
Herod., iii. 38, 99.
[280.2]
_Ibid._, i. 216; iv. 26. Father Favre identifies the Padaioi with the
Battas of Sumatra (Favre, _Wild Tribes_, 5), and Major Rennell the
Issedones with the Oigurs or Eluths, a Mongol tribe conquered in the
last century by the Chinese (G. Busk in ii. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N.S.,
80, citing Rennell’s _Geographical System of Herodotus_). These
identifications, however, must be regarded as doubtful.
[281.1]
Strabo, xi. 11, § 8; iv. 5, § 4.
[281.2]
Marco Polo, lxi.
[281.3]
Marco Polo, clxxvi.
[282.1]
Maundeville, xviii., xix., xxxi.
[282.2]
iii. _Mélusine_, 505, citing Friar Jean du Plan de Carpin and others;
Vos, in iii. _Internat. Archiv_, 70, citing Plan de Carpin and another
Franciscan, W. Rubruk.
[282.3]
In Asia. Certain tribes of the interior of Siam, Barbosa, 190; the
Birhors of Chutia Nágpúr (Bengal), Dalton, 158, 220; iii.
_Mélusine_, 409; the Gonds, Featherman, _Tur._, 117 note, citing
Rowney’s _Wild Tribes of India_; the Samoyeds of Siberia, iii.
_Internat. Arch._, 71.
In the East Indian Islands. Sumatra, the Battas, Favre, _Wild Tribes_,
5; viii. _Mélusine_, 410; ii. Churchill’s _Voyages_, 180; Featherman,
_Papuo-Mel._, 336 note (Marsden, however, says nothing about it, and
the most recent traveller denies it. Modigliani, _Batacchi_, 152,
181); Philippine Islands, the Montescos, Featherman, _ibid._, 499;
Floris, the Rakka, ii. _Journ. Ind. Arch._, 174 (these statements are
discredited in a note by the editor of the _Journ. Ind. Arch._, I do
not know on what ground); ii. Yule, 236, 240, citing various
authorities.
In Australia. Dawson, 67; iii. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, 29; ii. _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, 179; xiii. _ibid._, 135, 298; xxiv. 171, 182; iii.
_Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 248; Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 157, 160
note, 161; Letourneau, _L’Év. Rel._, 35, citing Taplin; ii. Curr, 18,
63, 119, 331, 341, 346, 361, 367, 404, 432, 449; iii. 21, 138, 147,
159.
In Africa. Congo tribes, iii. _Mélusine_, 433; Maniana, Winwood
Reade, 160, citing Mollien; Manyuema, Andree, _Anthropophagie_, 41,
citing Wissmann.
In South America. Various tribes in Brazil, ii. Churchill’s _Voy._,
133, 135; ii. Dobrizhoffer, 271; iii. _Mélusine_, 459; Featherman,
_Chiapo-Mar._, 332, 344, 348, 355; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 248,
249, 253; of Peru, i. Garcilasso, 56; ii. 274; i. _Anthr. Rev._, 38;
Brinton, _Amer. Race_, 290; Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 423; of Guiana,
Featherman, _ibid._, 221.
There is a Gipsy tradition of a supernatural race of cannibals of this
kind, where the habit may be a trait borrowed from some tribe with
which they have actually come into contact in their wanderings. Von
Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 31.
Let me add an observation here. Among many savage nations it is not
usual to wait the convenience of the aged before dining off their
bodies. They are slain for the purpose. Relics of the custom of
putting the aged to death are still found in Europe. It is remarkable
that in Scandinavia, as witnessed by Du Chaillu, the displacement of
the old man in favour of his son takes place _at the table_. This,
though not a funeral rite, points to cannibalism of the kind discussed
in the text. Du Chaillu, i. _Midnight Sun_, 393. See also Gomme, in i.
_Folklore_, 197; vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 153, 287; xii. _Archivio_,
504; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 205.
[284.1]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 31, 417. Mr. Featherman throws doubt on
this latter instance, because it “is reported by a Jesuit missionary.”
Surely this is carrying scepticism to an unwarranted length. The
report of an objective fact like this by no means stands on the same
footing as another, by apparently the same missionary, that “the
Ucayali Indians believe in a creator of the universe,” to which he
takes exception, probably with greater justice. In neither case is
there, so far as I know, any reason to suspect that the missionary is
intentionally misleading his readers.
[285.1]
iii. Bancroft, 414, citing various authorities; 297 _et seqq._,
quoting Torquemada.
[285.2]
Winwood Reade, 160; Featherman, _Nigritians_, 260, 262; Du Chaillu,
_Eq. Africa_, 84, 88.
[286.1]
Schneider, 135, apparently quoting the report of an English engineer,
not named, from _Das Ausland_, 1888.
[286.2]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 243.
[286.3]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 355.
[286.4]
Powers, 181.
[287.1]
Wallace, 346. See also Brinton, _Amer. Race_, 267; Müller, _Amer.
Urrel._, 289; iii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 158, 193.
[287.2]
i. Bancroft, 76.
[287.3]
Codrington, 221; x. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 285; F. Bonney, in xiii.
_ibid._, 135; A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _ibid._, 30, 35. The Koniaga
practice also perhaps has its basis in magic.
[287.4]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 74.
[288.1]
Garnett, ii. _Women_, 263.
[288.2]
Statements of Miss Garnett and the Rev. Dr. Gaster, cited iii.
_Folklore_, 154.
[288.3]
Mr. W. R. Paton in a letter to me dated 17th June 1892. As to
repetition of the Kólyva cakes, see Rodd, 126; Garnett, i. _Wom._,
99. The times of the commemorative repetition _vary_ a little in
different places. Compare with this the Sicilian custom of eating on
the second of November (the festival of All Souls) sweetmeats
impressed with images of skulls, bones, skeletons, souls in Purgatory
and the like. This is called _eating the dead_. i. _Rivista_, 239. A
similar custom at Perugia. _Ibid._, 322.
[289.1]
Plutarch, _Rom. Quest._, 65; Jevons, xci.; De Gubernatis, ii. _Myth.
Plantes_, 134; Pliny, xviii. 30.
[289.2]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 83.
[289.3]
ii. _Rivista_, 65.
[289.4]
Ostermann, 489, 482.
[290.1]
C. Guerrieri, in i. _Rivista_, 314. A plateful is set aside for the
dead, and afterwards eaten by one of the family.
[290.2]
Monseur, 41. My knowledge of the Welsh custom depends on the statement
of a Radnorshire woman to my brother-in-law, the Rev. W. E. T. Morgan,
Vicar of Llanigon. It perhaps requires confirmation.
[290.3]
O. Nemi, in i. _Rivista_, 959.
[290.4]
Garnett, ii. _Women_, 496.
[290.5]
Featherman, _Tur._, 205.
[290.6]
Codrington, 272.
[290.7]
Featherman, _Aram._, 621. In Barbary cooked food is distributed among
the poor on the evening of the burial. This is called the supper of
the grave. _Ibid._, 511.
[291.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 540. To these we may perhaps add the Patagonian
custom of killing the horses of the deceased and distributing their
flesh among his relations. _Ibid._, _Chiapo-Mar._, 495.
[291.2]
Atkinson, 227; iii. _Arch. Cambr._, 4th ser., 332; _Gent. Mag. Lib._
(Manners and Cust.), 70; ii. _Cymru Fu N. and Q._, 271, 275. See also
ii. _Antigua_, 188, where “dyer bread” and “biscuit cakes” (species of
pastry) are said to have been formerly handed round at Negro funerals
on the island, enveloped in white paper and sealed with black wax.
[292.1]
iv. _Folklore_, 392.
[293.1]
iii. Pennant, 150.
[293.2]
Aubrey, _Remaines_, 23, 24.
[294.1]
Aubrey, _Remaines_, 35. Ellis reprints from Leland’s _Collectanea_ a
letter from a Mr. Bagford, dated 1st Feb. 1714-15, giving a slightly
varied account, also professedly derived from Aubrey, of the rite as
practised in Shropshire. The fee is stated as a groat. ii. Brand, 155.
[294.2]
iii. _Arch. Cambr._, N.S., 330. Traces of a similar custom are found
in Derbyshire. There no wine is drunk at a funeral until after the
party has returned from the church. Wine is then offered first to the
bearers. This order is strictly observed; and it is believed that
“every drop that you drink is a sin which the deceased has committed.
You thereby take away the dead man’s sins and bear them yourself.”
Addy, 123, 124.
[296.1]
Burton, _Sindh_, 350, 354.
[296.2]
iii. _Mélusine_, 409, quoting M. Dubois’ work as cited in the
_Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_ for 1830. Mr. Frazer cites this
case (ii. _Golden Bough_, 155) and some others from India, all of
which I believe are referable to the same origin, though he interprets
them by reference to the idea expressed in the Mosaic Scapegoat. His
attention probably had not been drawn to the parallel cases I cite
above and below.
[297.1]
Dr. M. Hoefler, in ii. _Am Urquell_, 101. In an article on the
Sin-eater in iii. _Folklore_, 150, I quoted Wilkie’s description of
the Lowland Scottish rite called Dishaloof, and expressed the opinion
that it belonged to the same order of thought as the rites now under
discussion. Though I adhere to that opinion, I have not met with any
thing which illustrates the mysterious details of the rite; and I
have, therefore, thought it well to avoid burdening these pages with
particulars that I cannot correlate. Mrs. Gomme has exhaustively
analysed a children’s game called Green Grass, apparently connected
with the Lowland rite; but the results attained do not help here. i.
_Traditional Games_, 153. See Henderson, 53.
[298.1]
Quoted in ii. Brand, 153 note.
[299.1]
Denis H. Kelly, in i. _Journ. Kilkenny Arch. Soc._, N.S., 31 note.
Smoking round the corpse was a part of the ceremony in North Wales in
the last century. Owen, _Crosses_, 56.
[299.2]
Mr. W. R. Paton, in letters to me as before, and in letter dated 25th
May 1894. Bread or money is distributed by the beadle at the gate of
the cemetery on the island of Lesbos. Georgeakis, 321. In Sardinia
grain or money is given to the poor who assist at the funeral mass. G.
Calvia, in i. _Rivista_, 953.
[299.3]
Guhl and Koner, 594.
[300.1]
Possibly this is because no fire is lighted in the house of death, as
in Calabria, where all food for this reason is provided by the
relations and friends for a whole month, i. _Rivista_, 383.
[300.2]
i. De Nino, 130; Finamore, _Trad. Pop._, 94. In country-places of
Sanseverino, when the relatives and neighbours have wept over the
body, as soon as it is taken out of the house they sit down to table,
talking the while of the virtues and defects of the dead. i.
_Rivista_, 79.
[301.1]
Töppen, 95, 103.
[302.1]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 81, 82.
[305.1]
Featherman, _Turanians_, 520.
[305.2]
i. Hanway, 101.
[305.3]
Batchelor, 205.
[306.1]
i. De Groot, 115, 197, 227, 229; i. Doolittle, 180.
[306.2]
ii. Doolittle, _passim_.
[306.3]
F. Grabowsky, in ii. _Internat. Archiv_, 180; iii. _Journ. Ind.
Arch._, 150.
[306.4]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 99.
[306.5]
Sibree, 240, quoting Rev. R. T. Batchelor, in _Antananarivo Annual_.
[307.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 108.
[307.2]
Codrington, 255, 259, 271, 284.
[307.3]
i. Macdonald, 111.
[307.4]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 375. Why the fowl should be spared if it refuse
to eat I do not quite understand. Compare, however, similar divination
in India. Crooke, 164; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 33.
[307.5]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 322.
[308.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 34.
[308.2]
Prof. Haddon, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 421.
[309.1]
F. Fawcett, in v. _Folklore_, 30.
[309.2]
Featherman, _Tur._, 506 note, quoting Fahne’s _Livland_; _ibid._, 459.
The Koraiks of Siberia also kill and eat the reindeer which have drawn
the body to the funeral pile, throwing the remains of the repast into
the fire. Georgi, 99.
[309.3]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 461.
[309.4]
vi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 614, quoting Hall.
[310.1]
Tanner, 288, 293.
[310.2]
Featherman, _Tur._, 541.
[310.3]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 399.
[310.4]
Featherman, _Tur._, 230, 244.
[310.5]
Julian Ralph, in lxxxiv. _Harper’s Mag._, 176.
[311.1]
Ellis, _Yoruba_, 159.
[311.2]
Georgi, 92.
[311.3]
Featherman, _Tur._, 265.
[311.4]
Sir J. Lubbock, in iii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 318; Canon
Greenwell, in lii. _Archæologia, passim_.
[311.5]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 694.
[311.6]
Ellis, _Yoruba_, 158.
[312.1]
Marshall, 177, 185.
[313.1]
i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 145, 200.
[313.2]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 406.
[313.3]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 291; Sibree, 241, quoting Guillain, _Documents
sur la partie occid. de Madagascar_; Bourke, 263, quoting Smyth,
_Aborig. of Victoria_; ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 322; xxi. _Journ.
Anthr. Inst._, 484, 356, 316; Fison and Howitt, 243.
[314.1]
Codrington, 268; iii. _L’Anthropologie_, 349, citing and reviewing Van
Hoevell in the _Tijdschrift voor indische taal-land- en volkenkunde_;
Modigliani, 281, citing Rosenberg and quoting Piepers.
[314.2]
Backhouse, 105.
[314.3]
Dr. Sims in _Anthropologia_, 213; i. Bancroft, 347; i. _Rep. Bur.
Ethn._, 151.
[314.4]
Stevens, 373 note, citing _Bull. Amer. Ethnol. Soc._
[314.5]
i. Bancroft, 76.
[315.1]
A. Skrzyncki, in v. _Am Urquell_, 208.
[315.2]
F. Grabowsky, in ii. _Internat. Arch._, 199, citing several
authorities.
[315.3]
i. Bancroft, 731, 744.
[316.1]
A. W. Howitt, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 190.
[316.2]
Fison and Howitt, 244. Other Australian examples may be found in i.
Curr, 89, 272; ii. 249, 476; iii. 22, 28, 65, 79, 147, 273; xxiv.
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 182, 185, 195.
[316.3]
xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 482, citing a Government despatch.
[316.4]
Mouat, 327.
[316.5]
Dawson, 65, 63.
[316.6]
Kane, 243; i. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, 249; i. Bancroft, 126; i. _Rep.
Bur. Ethn._, 145.
[317.1]
Mouat, 327; E. H. Man, in xii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 86, 142, 401,
402; Prof. Owen, in ii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 37; E. Palmer, in
xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 298; Prof. Haddon, in v. _Folklore_, 320,
citing _Annals de la Propag. de la Foi_; ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 485,
citing Smyth; Dawson, 65; Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 157, 162; Roth,
76; Backhouse, 84; ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 605; Featherman,
_Oceano-Mel._, 193. The widow of an Uraba preserved the hinder part of
his skull; but did she wear it? i. Bancroft, 783. In the same way
Speke, 500, leaves us in doubt whether the lower jaw of a chief of the
Wahuma, and the finger-bones and hair of an officer of state, were
worn by anybody. Probably the former was, as it was adorned with
beads. M. Du Chatellier gives an account of a skull of the bronze age
unearthed in Brittany, from which a considerable piece had been cut
after death on the right side. E. Cartailhac, in v. _L’Anthropologie_,
266, citing and reviewing an article by the learned Breton antiquary.
This is not quite a singular case, and probably points to the
antiquity of the practice under discussion.
[317.2]
Issedones, Herod. iv. 26. Krumen of the Grain Coast, W. Africa,
Featherman, _Nigr._, 291. Andaman Islanders, ii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._,
N.S., 37. Dorah Papuans, Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 34. Islanders of
New Britain and adjacent islands, Powell, 10, 165, 251. Torres Straits
Islanders, Prof. Haddon, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 307, 405, 416,
421, 422, and vi. _Internat. Arch._, 153, 159, 161; _Fur. Corresp._,
April 1891, 198. Admiralty Islanders, xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 5.
Philippine Islanders, Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 475. Santa Cruz
Islanders, Codrington, 264. Banks’ Islanders, _ibid._, 267. Solomon
Islanders, _ibid._, 254, 257, 262. People of Ambrym, New Hebrides,
_ibid._, 288 note. Loyalty Islanders, Turner, _Nineteen Years_, 400,
463. New Caledonians, _ibid._, 425. Maories, Featherman,
_Oceano-Mel._, 194. Gilbert Islanders, ii. _Internat. Arch._, 43.
Tahitians, Ellis, i. _Pol. Res._, 401, 406, 270, 272. Sandwich
Islanders, Ellis, iv. _ibid._, 359. Mosquito Indians, Featherman,
_Chiapo-Mar._, 154. Caribs, _ibid._, 277; Sir R. Schomburgk, in i.
_Journ. Ethn. Soc._, 276. Orinoco tribes, Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._,
301. Vancouver Islanders, Bogg, in iii. _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, 265.
Congarees of South Carolina, i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 132, citing
Schoolcraft. Iroquois, _ibid._, 169, citing Morgan.
[318.1]
Herod. iii. 24; Strabo, xvii. 11, § 5; v. Wilkinson, 389; i. De
Groot, 127; Codrington, 262, 268, 288 note; Ellis, _Yoruba_, 161.
[318.2]
i. Risley, 331; ii. 71; Dalton, in vi. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 37;
Featherman, _Tur._, 42, 89.
[318.3]
Wissmann, 275.
[318.4]
Julian Ralph in lxxxiv. _Harper’s Mag._, 177.
[319.1]
iii. _Internat. Arch._, 70, citing Rubruk and Plan Carpin; iii.
_Journ. Ethn. Soc._, 29; ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 485, citing Smyth,
_Aborigines of Victoria_; i. Curr, 89, 272; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, 186.
[319.2]
C. J. Branch, in xxvi. _Contemp. Rev._, 761, 762. A few references
follow, but many might be added. Featherman, _Nigr._, 345, 358;
_Oceano-Mel._, 65, 306, 393; _Papuo-Mel._, 71, 157; _Chiapo-Mar._,
277; i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 108; i. Macdonald, 228; Ellis, iv. _Pol.
Res._, 178; Codrington, 262; Speke, 500; vi. _Internat. Arch._, 129
note, quoting Wilson, _A Missionary Voyage_; vii. _ibid._, 228 note;
i. Doolittle, 175; Dr. J. Shortt, in vii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S.,
244; Turner, _Nineteen Years_, 338, 400, 425, 463. “In the island of
Soa near Skye, it was customary when the head of a family died to have
a large lock of hair cut off his head and nailed fast to the
door-lintel, to keep off the fairies.” Mackenzie, 131. Was this the
true reason? A handful of earth from the grave is prescribed, among
the Negroes of South Carolina, to prevent being haunted by the spirit.
vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 318. And the same in Tashkend to assuage
grief. i. Schuyler, 151.
[321.1]
Deut. xiv. 1.
[321.2]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 19, citing _Tijdschr. v. h. Aardrijksk. Gen._,
and _Tijdschr. v. Ind. T. L. en Vk_.
[321.3]
Andree, i. _Ethn. Par._, 148; Ellis, i. _Pol. Res._, 407, 410.
[322.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 155, 157; i. Curr, 272; ii. 179, 203, 249,
346, 443; iii. 21, 29, 165, 549; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 178,
181, 185, 187, 195.
[322.2]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 153.
[322.3]
Von den Steinen, 507.
[322.4]
Letourneau, _L’Év. Rel._, 187, citing the _Dix-neuvième Siècle_ for
26th Dec. 1890.
[323.1]
i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 190, 124, 100, 109, 112, 143, 159, 164, 183.
[323.2]
Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 19, citing Francis, _Herinneringen uit den
levensloop van een Indisch Ambtenaar_.
[323.3]
Featherman, _Aram._, 620.
[323.4]
Powers, 181. The Greeks also scratched their faces until they bled, as
a token of mourning. Robertson Smith, _Rel. Sem._, 304.
[324.1]
Andree, i. _Ethn. Par._, 150. Other instances of similar mutilation
are given by Andree.
[324.2]
Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cult._, 364. The evolution of sacrifices from gifts
upwards is treated by Dr. Tylor in the context.
[326.1]
Burton, _Sindh_, 281.
[327.1]
i. Crawfurd, 97.
[327.2]
Burton, _Sindh_, 281; Bellew, 226.
[327.3]
Dr. Daniell, in iv. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, 19.
[327.4]
Brinton, _Lenâpe_, 54, 23.
[328.1]
Cyrus Thomas, _Ohio Mounds_, 11, 19, 22; i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 127,
169, 170.
[328.2]
Turner, _Nineteen Years_, 230.
[328.3]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 694.
[328.4]
Rodd, 127. Mr. Rodd goes on to notice “that MM. Pottier and Reinach in
their work on The Necropolis of Myrina draw attention to the fact that
in the course of their excavations they came upon a number of
skeletons in which the skull was absent, while in certain cases both
the skull and the feet were missing”; and they conclude that the
graves in question “are those of strangers, and that the missing
bones, like those of the Albanians of to-day, had been restored to the
countries of their origin.” This may be so, though the absence of
these bones may point to other customs, such as I have already
discussed in this chapter. General Pitt-Rivers reported to the British
Association at Oxford last year (1894) that he had also found bodies
buried without the head at Cranborne Chase.
[329.1]
Cicero, _Leg._ ii. 24, 60.
[329.2]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 45, quoting ii. _Calcutta Review_, 419.
[330.1]
Hunter, _Rur. Bengal_, 153, 210; and the authors cited above, p. 318.***
[330.2]
i. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 131.
[330.3]
Featherman, _Tur._, 88.
[330.4]
i. Risley, 125.
[331.1]
_Daily News_, 20th Feb. 1892.
[331.2]
Burton, ii. _Gelele_, 78 note; Ellis, _Ewe_, 159; _Yoruba_, 163.
[331.3]
ii. _Internat. Arch._, 181.
[332.1]
i. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 183.
[332.2]
i. Gray, 295.
[332.3]
Rev. S. Ella, in iv. _Rep. Aust. Ass._, 641.
CHAPTER XIV NOTES
[335.1]
Dalton, 160, 216, 252, 273, 317, 321; Risley, _passim_.
[335.2]
Hunter, _Rur. Bengal_, 188. No one reading the Indian evidence can be
left in any uncertainty as to the meaning of the red lead. See Crooke,
197, 294; _N. Ind. N. and Q._, _passim_.
[336.1]
i. Risley, 243; ii. 96, 222, 263. Cf. i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 152.
[336.2]
i. Doolittle, 67-105; i. Gray, 193-209.
[336.3]
Th. Volkov, in iii. _L’Anthropologie_, 541, 544, 545. A red cloth hung
on a girl’s tent constitutes an offer of marriage among the
Transylvanian Gipsies. Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 351.
[336.4]
Dalton, 220; i. Risley, 138.
[336.5]
i. Risley, 449, 450.
[337.1]
i. Risley, 456, citing Grierson’s _Behar Peasant Life_.
[337.2]
ii. Risley, 189.
[337.3]
i. Risley, 475.
[337.4]
_Ibid._ 532.
[337.5]
ii. Risley, 201.
[338.1]
i. Risley, 532.
[339.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 32.
[339.2]
_The Weekly Sun_, 28 Jan. 1893, quoting from Mr. Creagh’s notes of his
visit contributed to a newspaper published in British North Borneo. I
am indebted to Mr. Edward Clodd for calling my attention to this.
Zipporah’s expression in Exodus iv. 25, 26, points to a similar
ceremony among the early Hebrews. See Trumbull, 222.
[340.1]
Landes, _Contes Annam._, 207 (Story No. 84).
[340.2]
Codrington, 395 note.
[341.1]
H. F. Feilberg, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 3, citing Haukenaes.
[342.1]
Castrén, _Vorlesungen_, 323.
[342.2]
_Antè_, p. 247. In a Lapp story the hero, betrothed to the sun’s
sister and separated from her, goes in search of her. When he finds
her she is at the point of death from sorrow. He pricks her in the
hand, and sucks her blood; whereupon she revives, and they are happily
married. Poestion, 233. In Bret Harte’s story of _Sally Dows_, the
heroine sucks the hero’s blood from a snake-wound, and is told by an
old Negress that this has bound them together, so that she can marry
nobody else. We cannot doubt that the author found this in Negro
superstitions. Contrast, however, the effect of this incident with
that of the Irish tale of _The Wooing of Emer_, already referred to,
p. 255.***
[342.3]
De Mensignac, 21, quoting Arago’s _Voyage autour du Monde_. As to the
use of red paint, meaning blood, by Australian natives, see decisive
examples in ii. Curr, 36; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 171.
[343.1]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 267.
[343.2]
F. Fawcett, in v. _Folklore_, 24; ii. _Journ. Ind. Arch._, 358.
[344.1]
Dalton, 216.
[344.2]
Lewin, 129, 177.
[345.1]
iii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 81.
[345.2]
xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 49.
[345.3]
Dr. Leitner, in v. _Asiatic Q. Rev._, 2d ser., 153.
[345.4]
Paulitschke, 248, citing Massaja.
[345.5]
Dorsey, _Cegiha Lang._, 342.
[346.1]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 330.
[346.2]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 314, 319; Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 32, 33.
[346.3]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 275-6, 459.
[346.4]
A. G. Contis, in iv. _Mélusine_, 125.
[346.5]
Rodd, 105; Schroeder, 83.
[346.6]
ii. Witzschel, 235; Spiess, _Obererz._, 37.
[346.7]
Bérenger-Féraud, 195; Schroeder, 82, 235.
[347.1]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 46.
[347.2]
Monseur, 36.
[347.3]
vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 682, citing _Manuel des Cérémonies_ (1494);
Schroeder, 83.
[347.4]
Featherman, _Aram._, 62, 75.
[348.1]
Schroeder, 82; Pigorini-Beri, 14; Ralston, _Songs_, 269; vii.
_Mélusine_, 4; viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 542; iii. _Zeits. des
Vereins_, 267; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 356, 386; Trumbull, 73;
Kolbe, 171; Töppen, 81; ii. _Heimskringla_, 153.
[349.1]
Kolbe, 147; Winternitz, in _Congress_ (1891) _Report_, 281, quoting
Romanoff, _Rites of the Greek Church_; _Odd Ways_, 82, 87, 102, 108.
[349.2]
See an account of an Armenian wedding in London, according to the
rites of the Armenian National Church, _Daily News_, 28 Jan. 1892.
[349.3]
Bellew, 222.
[349.4]
Dalton, 193; i. Risley, 325. Among some allied tribes, when the bride
is conducted to her husband’s dwelling she is seated on a pile of
unhusked rice. Oil is then poured over her head, and she is presented
with some boiled rice and meat cooked in her new home. This she simply
touches with her hand, and declares herself to belong to her husband’s
_kili_. Featherman, _Tur._, 60. The touching is doubtless the
simplified equivalent of tasting, the simplification being accompanied
by words explanatory of the intention of the rite. Compare the
Abruzzian ceremony, ii. De Nino, 10.
[350.1]
ii. Risley, 8.
[350.2]
Lewin, 202.
[350.3]
G. Dumoutier, in viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 405.
[350.4]
xxvii. _Sacred Bks._, 441; xxviii. 429.
[350.5]
i. Doolittle, 86.
[350.6]
Griffis, 249. This does not appear to be now, at all events, the
operative part of the ceremony. Similar variations have affected the
ceremony elsewhere.
[351.1]
vi. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 26; iii. _Journ. Ind. Arch._, 490; iv.
431; iii. _L’Anthropologie_, 193; Trumbull, 192, 193; ii. Risley, 325.
[351.2]
iv. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 362.
[351.3]
Schroeder, 235.
[352.1]
Th. Volkov, in ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 558.
[352.2]
A. de Lazarque, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 580.
[352.3]
F. Pulci, in xiii. _Archivio_, 417.
[353.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 88.
[353.2]
R. Parkinson, in ii. _Internat. Archiv._, 38.
[354.1]
Burton, _Sindh_, 345.
[354.2]
Featherman, _Tur._, 30; i. Risley, 497; Hodgson, 178. So among the
Mussulman Malabars of Ceylon the bridegroom’s sister ties a
consecrated cord around the bride’s neck. Featherman, _Tur._, 203.
[354.3]
Hunter, _Rur. Bengal_, 207.
[354.4]
ii. Risley, 69.
[354.5]
Lubbock, 84, citing Hale’s _United States Exploring Exped._ Compare
the Kewat ceremony, i. Risley, 456.
[355.1]
Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 272.
[355.2]
R. Parkinson, in ii. _Internat. Archiv_, 39; Hertz, 38 note, citing
Abel Rémusat.
[355.3]
Dr. W. Svoboda, in v. _Internat. Arch._, 193, citing the Jesuit Barbe.
[355.4]
F. Fawcett, in v. _Folklore_, 23.
[356.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 490.
[356.2]
O. Knoop, in iii. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 230.
[356.3]
Du Chaillu, ii. _Midnight Sun_, 240.
[356.4]
Zingerle, _Sagen_, 457; Töppen, 76; A. Herrmann, in v. _Am Urquell_,
110.
[356.5]
Schwela, in iii. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 478.
[356.6]
Rogers, 112.
[357.1]
Gregor, 95.
[357.2]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 66, 50. At Nagialmagy, in Hungary, young
married women assemble on Saint Joseph’s day and the day following, on
the market-place and sell their kisses to all comers. ix. _Rev. Trad.
Pop._, 359.
[358.1]
Filippo Seves, in xii. _Archivio_, 527.
[358.2]
Ostermann, 347; i. _Rivista_, 560.
[358.3]
Bérenger-Féraud, 200, 194. A species of bride-dance seems to be
practised at Heideboden, in Hungary, and perhaps also in various
places of Italy and Greece. De Gubernatis, _Usi Nuz._, 189.
[358.4]
Herod. iv. 172; Lubbock, 535, quoting Mela; Diodorus Sic. v. 1.
[359.1]
Fison and Howitt, 201-5. The punishment for a guilty wife among some
of the North American tribes was similar to that of the Kurnai. See
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 161. Cf. Robertson Smith, _Kinship_, 137.
Other traces of the Nasamonian rite are to be found among the North
American Indians. See, for example, a curious Ponka legend given by
Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 616.
[362.1]
ii. Garcilasso, 442. Elsewhere (i. 59) he speaks of the participants
as “the nearest relations of the bride and her most intimate friends.”
He only refers vaguely to the peoples addicted to this form of the
rite, and cites Pedro de Cieza as making the same assertion. I have
not seen De Cieza’s work; but Mr. Markham observes that he refers to
New Granada, not Peru. I am strongly inclined to suspect, on more
grounds than one, that Garcilasso’s information is not to be relied
on; and that, wherever the custom was followed, it was the
bridegroom’s rather than the bride’s relations who took part. Did a
somewhat similar custom obtain in Paraguay? See Featherman,
_Chiapo-Mar._, 435. It is to be distinguished from a well-known East
Indian custom which springs from a different motive. See Hertz, 41.
[362.2]
Mrs. French Sheldon, in xxi. _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 365. A relic of
the same custom is found in Guatemala, where the marriage is
consummated, not by the bridegroom, but by a kinsman, to whom the
bride is brought by the bridegroom’s mother for the purpose. Stoll, 8.
[363.1]
Capt. J. S. King, in vi. _F.L. Journ._, 124.
[363.2]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 382, 456, 608.
[365.1]
iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 672. See Morgan, _Anc. Soc._, 424.
[366.1]
Featherman, _Aram._, 75.
[366.2]
Volkov, in ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 538, 539 note, quoting several
authorities.
[367.1]
Macpherson, 133. Cf. the customs of other tribes, i. _N. Ind. N. and
Q._, 124, 139, 177.
[367.2]
Marsden, 256.
[367.3]
Codrington, 238.
[367.4]
Casalis, 207; Featherman, _Nigr._, 642.
[367.5]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 472, 459.
[367.6]
Stoll, 8. See note, _ante_, p. 362.***
[368.1]
i. Bancroft, 411.
[370.1]
See Lubbock, 131, 535; MacLennan, 341; Westermarck, 72. An exception
must be made for the Babylonian and similar cases which do not appear
referable to the exercise of communal marriage-rights.
[371.1]
i. Risley, 229.
[371.2]
i. Risley, 231. A similar distinction of guilt is drawn by the
Dhánuks (i. _ibid._, 221), the Ghasiyas of South Mirzapur (i. _N.
Ind. N. and Q._, 167), the Dusadhs (ii. _ibid._, 32), the Kharwars
(ii. _ibid._, 34), the Bhuts, though nominally Mohammedan (ii.
_ibid._, 50), and other tribes. So also in Ladák, iii. _N. Ind. N.
and Q._, 168.
[371.3]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 168.
[371.4]
Featherman, _Drav._, 184.
[372.1]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 590.
[372.2]
Herod. i. 216.
[372.3]
Forbes, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 426; Trumbull, 54.
[373.1]
Robertson Smith, _Kinship_, 137.
[373.2]
Risley, _passim_. So also the Chukmas of the Chittagong Hills; Lewin,
187. And the Chinese; i. Gray, 219.
[373.3]
Gen. xxxviii. 8; Deut. xxv. 5.
[373.4]
B. W. Schiffer, in v. _Am Urquell_, 224: Dalyell, 313, citing Leo of
Modena.
[374.1]
_Sacred Bks._, xxv., 337, 361, 365; ii., 164.
[374.2]
Sibree, 246.
[374.3]
Casalis, 199.
[375.1]
Risley, _passim_; Dalton, 16, 63, 138, 273, 321.
[375.2]
Elliot, i. _N.-W. Prov._, 136. See also, _ibid._, 5, 121, 274, 326;
_N. Ind. N. and Q._, _passim_.
[375.3]
ii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 24.
[375.4]
i. _Ibid._ 157.
[376.1]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 84.
[376.2]
Biddulph, 76, 82; iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 168.
[376.3]
Fosberry, in i. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 189.
[376.4]
Featherman, _Drav._, 558, 244. See Marco Polo, li., as to another
Tartar tribe.
[376.5]
Marsden, 220, 228. Cf. ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 257.
[376.6]
Modigliani, 553.
[377.1]
Modigliani, _Isola delle Donne_, 212, 215.
[377.2]
Parkinson, in ii. _Internat. Arch._, 39.
[377.3]
Man, in xii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 139, 141.
[377.4]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 308.
[377.5]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 288, 290, 596, 762; Paulitschke, 205.
[378.1]
Ellis, _Yoruba_, 185.
[378.2]
Westermarck, 513, 514, quoting Shooter.
[378.3]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 390. This liability is perhaps annexed to
the inheritance; but it is certainly regarded as a liability rather
than a right. _Rep. Nat. Mus._ (1888), 254.
[378.4]
Stoll, 7.
[378.5]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 319.
[378.6]
Grinnell, _Blackfeet L.T._, 218; Dorsey, _Omaha Soc._, 258, 367.
[379.1]
i. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 184, 185.
[379.2]
Powers, 356.
[379.3]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 100.
[379.4]
Turner, _Samoa_, 98; iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 642.
[379.5]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 87.
[379.6]
iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 628.
[379.7]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 601.
[379.8]
Rev. B. Danks, in xviii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 292.
[379.9]
Boas, in vi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 615, quoting Lyon.
[380.1]
Dawson, 7, 27. See as to the natives of Northern Queensland, xiii.
_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 298; as to various tribes of South Australia
and its northern territory, xxiv. _ibid._, 170, 178, 181, 194; as to
other tribes, ii. Curr, 197, 425, 474; iii. 21, 546.
[380.2]
Garnett, ii. _Wom._, 234.
[380.3]
Saxo, 87; Elton’s version, 106; i. _Corp. Poet. Bor._, 105. These
mythological cases as testimony to an obsolete custom of polyandry may
be compared with similar references in ancient Hindu writings quoted
by Westermarck, 457.
[381.1]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 314, 320; vi. _Journ. Ind. Arch._, 319.
[381.2]
iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 168.
[381.3]
i. Bancroft, 731.
[381.4]
Cooper, 153.
[382.1]
Grinnell, _Blackfeet L.T._, 217.
[382.2]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 213, 175, 274, 308, 319; _Chiapo-Mar._, 268,
16, 168; Brinton, _Amer. Race_, 96.
[382.3]
Dorsey, _Omaha Soc._, 261.
[382.4]
Fisher, in i. _Journ. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 286. As to the Walla-Wallas,
see Kane, 267, 270.
[382.5]
Brinton, _Amer. Race_, 48.
[383.1]
iv. _L’Anthropologie_, 641.
[383.2]
i. Risley, 6, 17, 32, 135, 170, 192, 268, 307, 416; ii., 65, 69, 96,
186, 229, 293.
[383.3]
Shortt, in vii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 240.
[383.4]
Featherman, _Tur._, 558.
[383.5]
xxv. _Sacred Bks._, 291.
[383.6]
Paulitschke, 204.
[383.7]
Chatelain, 119.
[384.1]
Lev. xviii. 18.
[384.2]
Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 297, 406.
[384.3]
Rev. S. Ella, in iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 628.
[384.4]
ii. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 331.
[385.1]
Volkov, in ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 568.
[386.1]
i. De Groot, 3; xxviii. _Sacred Bks._, 238, 264; xxvii. 442.
[386.2]
Robertson Smith, _Kinship_, 148, 176; cf. 66.
[387.1]
MacLennan, _Studies_, 103, citing Latham’s _Descriptive Ethnology_.
[387.2]
ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 117, quoting a communication by M. Crampe to
the Société de Géographie. Cf. the customs of giving up a child or
paying for him mentioned by Paulitschke, 202; xxiii. _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, 4.
[389.1]
i. Risley, 150.
[389.2]
Marsden, 225, 236, 262; Modigliani, _Batacchi_, 35.
[390.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 63.
[390.2]
ii. Risley, 282.
[390.3]
iii. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 391, 479.
[390.4]
xxvii. _Sac. Bks._, 77; xxviii., 299. In case of divorce, however, she
returns to the parental home, ii. De Groot, 507.
[391.1]
ii. Risley, 80; App., 97.
[391.2]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 132.
[391.3]
Lev. xxi. 1-4; xxii. 10-13.
[391.4]
Aulus Gellius, xiii. 10.
[393.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 107.
[394.1]
Featherman, _Tur._, 263.
[394.2]
_Ibid._, _Tur._, 283.
[395.1]
iii. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 433.
[395.2]
Volkov, in ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 553.
[396.1]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 278, 275, 277.
[396.2]
Codrington, 237.
[396.3]
Burton, _Sindh_, 272.
[396.4]
Smith, _Guinea_, 144.
[397.1]
ii. Kerr, 237.
[397.2]
Featherman, _Aram._, 422.
[397.3]
Hickson, 282.
CHAPTER XV NOTES
[401.1]
On the Couvade generally the reader may consult Tylor, _Early Hist._,
291; H. Ling Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 204; Ploss, i.
_Kind_, 143; Von Dargun, 18; and the correspondence in _The Academy_
for 29th Oct., 5th, 12th, 19th Nov., 10th, 17th Dec. 1892.
[404.1]
Modigliani, 555; Ploss, i. _Kind_, 36.
[404.2]
Codrington, 228.
[405.1]
Von den Steinen, 334, 338, 503, 434.
[406.1]
Addy, 91. Compare the tale, cited _suprà_, p. 11, of the mother whose
digging-stick broke when her child was taken away. In a Chinese tale a
grown-up son feels pain when his mother bites her finger. i.
Doolittle, 454.***
[407.1]
Tylor, _Early Hist._, 292, quoting Du Tertre.
[408.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 64.
[411.1]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1845.
[411.2]
Temme, _Altmark_, 87, 78.
[411.3]
ii. _Am Urquell_, 123.
[411.4]
De Zmidgrodzki, in vi. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 40; Temme, _Altmark_, 88.
[411.5]
i. Kohlrusch, 340.
[411.6]
Temme, _Altmark_, 74.
[411.7]
Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 170.
[412.1]
Tylor, _Early Hist._, 304, citing Wuttke.
[412.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1796; ii. Witzschel, 249. Other German examples
will be found in Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1779, 1786, 1799, 1845; Temme,
_Altmark_, 74, 88; ii. Witzschel, 244, 250; Ploss, i. _Kind_, 213,
216; Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 152; Hillner, 38; vi. _Am
Urquell_, 93; Spiess, _Obererz._, 36.
[412.3]
ii. _Am Urquell_, 198.
[413.1]
Ploss, i. _Kind_, 216.
[413.2]
Knoop, _Posen_, 116.
[413.3]
Kaindl, 6.
[413.4]
Marchesa di Villamarina, in i. _Rivista_, 72.
[414.1]
Bérenger-Féraud, 171; i. Strackerjan, 48; vi. _Am Urquell_, 93; ii.
_Bull. de F.L._, 151.
[414.2]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 9.
[414.3]
Julie Filippi, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 465.
[414.4]
Ostermann, 381.
[414.5]
viii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 22.
[414.6]
ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 152.
[414.7]
Lady Vere de Vere, in i. _Rivista_, 447.
[415.1]
Ostermann, 381; i. _Rivista_, 635; ii. 45.
[415.2]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 93.
[416.1]
Dr. Krauss, in vii. _Internat. Archiv_, 168, 188, 191, 193, 196. See
also Wilken, ii. _Haaropfer_, 68, quoting Grimm.
[417.1]
Kaindl, 25, 40.
[417.2]
Pigorini-Beri, 287.
[418.1]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 9.
[419.1]
Diod. Sic., iv. The Roman form seems to have been similar; Lubbock,
96, citing Müller, _Das Mutterrecht_.
[420.1]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 600, quoting Jukic; 599.
[420.2]
ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 13, 39; Kolbe, 176.
[420.3]
Brayley, 36. A Swedish superstition requires a mother of a child
begotten before marriage, herself to hold the child at the font,
otherwise it will not be legitimate. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1830,
quoting Fernow’s _Beskrifning öfver Wärmeland_.
[421.1]
A. Weidemann, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 259.
[421.2]
Girald. Cambr., _Topog._ xxiii.; Saxo, 82, 200; Elton’s version, 99,
245.
[421.3]
Paulitschke, 193, citing Abbadie, _Géog. de l’Ethiopie_.
[421.4]
Lubbock, 97, quoting Parkyn.
[421.5]
Hearn, 105.
[421.6]
xxv. _Sac. Bks._ 352.
[422.1]
As to adoption generally, in addition to the citations above, see,
among others, Paulitschke, 209; Robertson Smith, _Kinship_, 44, 149;
Aulus Gellius, v. 19; Hunter, _Captivity_, 19, 35, 249; ii. Domenech,
324, 350; Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 184, 310, 320; _Chiapo-Mar._, 274;
Codrington, 42; Marsden, 229; vi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 580; ix., 419; i.
Crantz, 165; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 152, 204; D’Arbois, i. _Droit
Celt._, 251; Kaindl, 26. Biddulph, 82, describes fosterage in the
Hindoo Koosh. Mr. Parkinson, in ii. _Internat. Arch._, 33, speaks of
adoptive parents and children in the Kingsmill Islands. Adoption,
however, seems there rather of the nature of sponsorship. It creates
rights and duties, but does not involve detachment from the family of
birth. A similar custom appears elsewhere in Polynesia.
[424.1]
Ramage, 241. Mr. Ramage’s journey took place in 1828, and the incident
referred to occurred at some previous date not indicated. May we hope
the Italian peasant knows better by this time?
[425.1]
Strack, 86, citing _The Book of the Pious_.
[425.2]
L. F. Sauvé, in ii. _Mélusine_, 254; Le Braz, 231; A. de Cock, in x.
_Rev. Trad. Pop._, 249.
[425.3]
Callaway, _Tales_, 284.
[426.1]
_Daily News_, 14th July 1894.
[427.1]
Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 208; _Yoruba_, 176, 300.
[429.1]
Dalton, 64.
[429.2]
ii. Binger, 260; Ellis, _Yoruba_, 299.
[429.3]
Fison and Howitt, 157 note.
[430.1]
i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 82.
[430.2]
The provisions of the Irish laws are carefully analysed, D’Arbois, i.
_Droit Celt_.
[430.3]
Professor Kovalevsky, in the interesting paper mentioned _ante_, p.
230 note, which he read to the British Association at Oxford last
year, gave some account of the _Lex Barbarorum_ of Daghestan, a code
written down in the last century, but embodying the ancient customs of
the Chevsurs, Pschavs and Touchains of Daghestan, who speak a dialect
of Georgian. The population is organised in _gentes_, called
_touchoum_; and every _touchoum_ incurs joint responsibility for the
acts of its members. “Consanguinity,” says the professor, “to the
remotest degree makes a man jointly responsible.… In case of murder or
wounding, not only the trespasser but each one of the members of his
_touchoum_, or gens, has to expect vengeance on the part of the
_touchoum_ to which the victim belonged. The same mutual
responsibility exists in the case of forcible entry.” It is noteworthy
that each _touchoum_ claims descent from some mythical ancestor.***
[431.1]
Bartels, 205, quoting some writer I have not traced. The want of exact
references is too frequently a serious blot on German scholarship. Dr.
Bartels is shamefully guilty in this respect.
[432.1]
Dyer, 171, quoting a paper by Mr. Chanter in ii. _Report and
Transactions of the Devonshire Association_ (1867), 39.
[432.2]
Prof. Mikhailovskii, in xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 126.
[432.3]
Featherman, _Nigr._, 134, citing _A Walk across Africa_, by J. A.
Grant (1803).
[433.1]
v. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 426.
[433.2]
vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 338, 350, 346.
[434.1]
ii. _Sax. Leechd._, 136.
[434.2]
Featherman, _Drav._, 246; _Chiapo-Mar._, 464; _Papuo-Mel._, 502;
_Nigr._, 36, 750; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 66.
[435.1]
Richardson, _The Folly of Pilgrimages_, 70.
[435.2]
i. Doolittle, 149. In Sardinia it is a common remedy, not merely in
cases of bite by the famous spider, but for other diseases also, to
bury the sick man up to his neck in earth, and to cause seven maidens,
seven wives or seven widows, according as he is a bachelor, a married
man or a widower, to dance round him. F. Valla, in xiv. _Archivio_,
40, 49. This seems referable to the same order of ideas.
[435.3]
_Suprà_, p. 94; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 6.***
[436.1]
E. Regàlia, in xiii. _Archivio_, 489.
[436.2]
ii. De Groot, 507, 621.
[436.3]
Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 11, citing Wuttke.
[437.1]
Landor, 225, 227. See Batchelor, 211, as to other Ainu tribes.
[437.2]
Anthony Jully, in v. _L’Anthropologie_, 400.
[437.3]
Julian Ralph, in lxxxiv. _Harper’s New Monthly Mag._, 177.
[437.4]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 179.
[437.5]
Codrington, 269.
[437.6]
Du Chaillu, _Eq. Afr._, 18.
[438.1]
i. De Groot, 90, 93, 64, 89.
[439.1]
ii. De Groot, 441; ii. Gray, 25, 305.
[439.2]
iv. _Internat. Arch._, 9. The Hawaiian practice of flinging the dead
into a volcano or into the sea perhaps belongs to the class of
superstitions dealt with in the above paragraph. Ellis, _Hawaii_, 336.
[439.3]
Taylor, 208.
[444.1]
Fison and Howitt, 170.
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ERRATA
[_Copied from volume III in the series_]
p. 147, note, after _letter xxviii._ insert _to Daines Barrington_
p. 271, note 4, for 68 read 57.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The title page is used as a cover.
Chapter numbering continues from the previous volume.
Page numbers are given in {curly} brackets. Endnote markers are
given in [square] brackets in the plain text version.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ anthill/ant-hill,
conjurer/conjuror, drinking-cup/drinking cup, etc.) have been
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Alterations to the text:
Convert footnotes to endnotes. Relabel note markers: append the
original note number to the page number.
Create errata page and copy corrigenda from volume III. Apply errata.
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[Chapter VIII]
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_difficulty_.
[Chapter XII]
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_wherever_.
[Chapter XIV]
(entered his sept, and is truly his wife.” Among the) delete quotation
mark.
[Endnotes]
A few trivial punctuation and italics corrections.
(p. 290, note 2) “the Welsh custom depends on _he_ statement of a” to
_the_.
[End of text]
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