A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION

In this concluding part of The Golden Bough I have discussed the problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood, Diana's priest at Aricia, kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse god Balder, who was worshipped in a sacred grove beside the beautiful Sogne fiord of Norway and was said to have perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood personified in a sense the sacred oak of our Aryan forefathers, and both had deposited their lives or souls for safety in the parasite which sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on an oak and by the very rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and stimulates the devotion of ignorant men. Though I am now less than ever disposed to lay weight on the analogy between the Italian priest and the Norse god, I have allowed it to stand because it furnishes me with a pretext for discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the Arician grove. Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is little more than a stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box.

To drop metaphor, while nominally investigating a particular problem of ancient mythology, I have really been discussing questions of more general interest which concern the gradual evolution of human thought from savagery to civilization. The enquiry is beset with difficulties of many kinds, for the record of man's mental development is even more imperfect than the record of his physical development, and it is harder to read, not only by reason of the incomparably more subtle and complex nature of the subject, but because the reader's eyes are apt to be dimmed by thick mists of passion and prejudice, which cloud in a far less degree the fields of comparative anatomy and geology. My contribution to the history of the human mind consists of little more than a rough and purely provisional classification of facts gathered almost entirely from printed sources. If there is one general conclusion which seems to emerge from the mass of particulars, I venture to think that it is the essential similarity in the working of the less developed human mind among all races, which corresponds to the essential similarity in their bodily frame revealed by comparative anatomy. But while this general mental similarity may, I believe, be taken as established, we must always be on our guard against tracing to it a multitude of particular resemblances which may be and often are due to simple diffusion, since nothing is more certain than that the various races of men have borrowed from each other many of their arts and crafts, their ideas, customs, and institutions. To sift out the elements of culture which a race has independently evolved and to distinguish them accurately from those which it has derived from other races is a task of extreme difficulty and delicacy, which promises to occupy students of man for a long time to come; indeed so complex are the facts and so imperfect in most cases is the historical record that it may be doubted whether in regard to many of the lower races we shall ever arrive at more than probable conjectures.

Since the last edition of The Golden Bough was published some thirteen years ago, I have seen reason to change my views on several matters discussed in this concluding part of the work, and though I have called attention to these changes in the text, it may be well for the sake of clearness to recapitulate them here.

In the first place, the arguments of Dr. Edward Westermarck have satisfied me that the solar theory of the European fire-festivals, which I accepted from W. Mannhardt, is very slightly, if at all, supported by the evidence and is probably erroneous. The true explanation of the festivals I now believe to be the one advocated by Dr. Westermarck himself, namely that they are purificatory in intention, the fire being designed not, as I formerly held, to reinforce the sun's light and heat by sympathetic magic, but merely to burn or repel the noxious things, whether conceived as material or spiritual, which threaten the life of man, of animals, and of plants. This aspect of the fire-festivals had not wholly escaped me in former editions; I pointed it out explicitly, but, biassed perhaps by the great authority of Mannhardt, I treated it as secondary and subordinate instead of primary and dominant. Out of deference to Mannhardt, for whose work I entertain the highest respect, and because the evidence for the purificatory theory of the fires is perhaps not quite conclusive, I have in this edition repeated and even reinforced the arguments for the solar theory of the festivals, so that the reader may see for himself what can be said on both sides of the question and may draw his own conclusion; but for my part I cannot but think that the arguments for the purificatory theory far outweigh the arguments for the solar theory. Dr. Westermarck based his criticisms largely on his own observations of the Mohammedan fire-festivals of Morocco, which present a remarkable resemblance to those of Christian Europe, though there seems no reason to assume that herein Africa has borrowed from Europe or Europe from Africa. So far as Europe is concerned, the evidence tends strongly to shew that the grand evil which the festivals aimed at combating was witchcraft, and that they were conceived to attain their end by actually burning the witches, whether visible or invisible, in the flames. If that was so, the wide prevalence and the immense popularity of the fire-festivals provides us with a measure for estimating the extent of the hold which the belief in witchcraft had on the European mind before the rise of Christianity or rather of rationalism; for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, accepted the old belief and enforced it in the old way by the faggot and the stake. It was not until human reason at last awoke after the long slumber of the Middle Ages that this dreadful obsession gradually passed away like a dark cloud from the intellectual horizon of Europe.

Yet we should deceive ourselves if we imagined that the belief in witchcraft is even now dead in the mass of the people; on the contrary there is ample evidence to show that it only hibernates under the chilling influence of rationalism, and that it would start into active life if that influence were ever seriously relaxed. The truth seems to be that to this day the peasant remains a pagan and savage at heart; his civilization is merely a thin veneer which the hard knocks of life soon abrade, exposing the solid core of paganism and savagery below. The danger created by a bottomless layer of ignorance and superstition under the crust of civilized society is lessened, not only by the natural torpidity and inertia of the bucolic mind, but also by the progressive decrease of the rural as compared with the urban population in modern states; for I believe it will be found that the artisans who congregate in towns are far less retentive of primitive modes of thought than their rustic brethren. In every age cities have been the centres and as it were the lighthouses from which ideas radiate into the surrounding darkness, kindled by the friction of mind with mind in the crowded haunts of men; and it is natural that at these beacons of intellectual light all should partake in some measure of the general illumination. No doubt the mental ferment and unrest of great cities have their dark as well as their bright side; but among the evils to be apprehended from them the chances of a pagan revival need hardly be reckoned.

Another point on which I have changed my mind is the nature of the great Aryan god whom the Romans called Jupiter and the Greeks Zeus. Whereas I formerly argued that he was primarily a personification of the sacred oak and only in the second place a personification of the thundering sky, I now invert the order of his divine functions and believe that he was a sky-god before he came to be associated with the oak. In fact, I revert to the traditional view of Jupiter, recant my heresy, and am gathered like a lost sheep into the fold of mythological orthodoxy. The good shepherd who has brought me back is my friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler. He has removed the stone over which I stumbled in the wilderness by explaining in a simple and natural way how a god of the thundering sky might easily come to be afterwards associated with the oak. The explanation turns on the great frequency with which, as statistics prove, the oak is struck by lightning beyond any other tree of the wood in Europe. To our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the gloomy depths of the primaeval forest, it might well seem that the riven and blackened oaks must indeed be favourites of the sky-god, who so often descended on them from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder.

This change of view as to the great Aryan god necessarily affects my interpretation of the King of the Wood, the priest of Diana at Aricia, if I may take that discarded puppet out of the box again for a moment. On my theory the priest represented Jupiter in the flesh, and accordingly, if Jupiter was primarily a sky-god, his priest cannot have been a mere incarnation of the sacred oak, but must, like the deity whose commission he bore, have been invested in the imagination of his worshippers with the power of overcasting the heaven with clouds and eliciting storms of thunder and rain from the celestial vault. The attribution of weather-making powers to kings or priests is very common in primitive society, and is indeed one of the principal levers by which such personages raise themselves to a position of superiority above their fellows. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that as a representative of Jupiter the priest of Diana enjoyed this reputation, though positive evidence of it appears to be lacking.

Lastly, in the present edition I have shewn some grounds for thinking that the Golden Bough itself, or in common parlance the mistletoe on the oak, was supposed to have dropped from the sky upon the tree in a flash of lightning and therefore to contain within itself the seed of celestial fire, a sort of smouldering thunderbolt. This view of the priest and of the bough which he guarded at the peril of his life has the advantage of accounting for the importance which the sanctuary at Nemi acquired and the treasure which it amassed through the offerings of the faithful; for the shrine would seem to have been to ancient what Loreto has been to modern Italy, a place of pilgrimage, where princes and nobles as well as commoners poured wealth into the coffers of Diana in her green recess among the Alban hills, just as in modern times kings and queens vied with each other in enriching the black Virgin who from her Holy House on the hillside at Loreto looks out on the blue Adriatic and the purple Apennines. Such pious prodigality becomes more intelligible if the greatest of the gods was indeed believed to dwell in human shape with his wife among the woods of Nemi.

These are the principal points on which I have altered my opinion since the last edition of my book was published. The mere admission of such changes may suffice to indicate the doubt and uncertainty which attend enquiries of this nature. The whole fabric of ancient mythology is so foreign to our modern ways of thought, and the evidence concerning it is for the most part so fragmentary, obscure, and conflicting that in our attempts to piece together and interpret it we can hardly hope to reach conclusions that will completely satisfy either ourselves or others. In this as in other branches of study it is the fate of theories to be washed away like children's castles of sand by the rising tide of knowledge, and I am not so presumptuous as to expect or desire for mine an exemption from the common lot. I hold them all very lightly and have used them chiefly as convenient pegs on which to hang my collections of facts. For I believe that, while theories are transitory, a record of facts has a permanent value, and that as a chronicle of ancient customs and beliefs my book may retain its utility when my theories are as obsolete as the customs and beliefs themselves deserve to be.

I cannot dismiss without some natural regret a task which has occupied and amused me at intervals for many years. But the regret is tempered by thankfulness and hope. I am thankful that I have been able to conclude at least one chapter of the work I projected a long time ago. I am hopeful that I may not now be taking a final leave of my indulgent readers, but that, as I am sensible of little abatement in my bodily strength and of none in my ardour for study, they will bear with me yet a while if I should attempt to entertain them with fresh subjects of laughter and tears drawn from the comedy and the tragedy of man's endless quest after happiness and truth.

J.G. FRAZER.

CAMBRIDGE, 17th October 1913.

PREFACE, Pp. v-xii

CHAPTER I.—BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH, Pp. 1-21

§ 1. Not to touch the Earth, pp. 1-18.—The priest of Aricia and the Golden Bough, 1 sq.; sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, 2-4; certain persons on certain occasions forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, 4-6; sacred persons apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue which will run to waste or explode by contact with the ground, 6 sq.; things as well as persons charged with the mysterious virtue of holiness or taboo and therefore kept from contact with the ground, 7; festival of the wild mango, which is not allowed to touch the earth, 7-11; other sacred objects kept from contact with the ground, 11 sq.; sacred food not allowed to touch the earth, 13 sq.; magical implements and remedies thought to lose their virtue by contact with the ground, 14 sq.; serpents' eggs or snake stones, 15 sq.; medicinal plants, water, etc., not allowed to touch the earth, 17 sq.

§ 2. Not to see the Sun, pp. 18-21.—Sacred persons not allowed to see the sun, 18-20; tabooed persons not allowed to see the sun, 20; certain persons forbidden to see fire, 20 sq.; the story of Prince Sunless, 21.

CHAPTER II.—THE SECLUSION OF GIRLS AT PUBERTY, Pp. 22-100

§ 1. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in Africa, pp. 22-32.—Girls at puberty forbidden to touch the ground and see the sun, 22; seclusion of girls at puberty among the Zulus and kindred tribes, 22; among the A-Kamba of British East Africa, 23; among the Baganda of Central Africa, 23 sq.; among the tribes of the Tanganyika plateau, 24 sq.; among the tribes of British Central Africa, 25 sq.; abstinence from salt associated with a rule of chastity in many tribes, 26-28; seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes about Lake Nyassa and on the Zambesi, 28 sq.; among the Thonga of Delagoa Bay, 29 sq.; among the Caffre tribes of South Africa, 30 sq.; among the Bavili of the Lower Congo, 31 sq.

§ 2. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in New Ireland, New Guinea, and Indonesia, pp. 32-36.—Seclusion of girls at puberty in New Ireland, 32-34; in New Guinea, Borneo, Ceram, and the Caroline Islands, 35 sq.

§ 3. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in the Torres Straits Islands and Northern Australia, pp. 36-41.—Seclusion of girls at puberty in Mabuiag, Torres Straits, 36 sq.; in Northern Australia, 37-39; in the islands of Torres Straits, 39-41.

§ 4. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of North America, pp. 41-55.—Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of California, 41-43; among the Indians of Washington State, 43; among the Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island, 43 sq.; among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 44 sq.; among the Tlingit Indians of Alaska, 45 sq.; among the Tsetsaut and Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia, 46 sq.; among the Tinneh Indians of British Columbia, 47 sq.; among the Tinneh Indians of Alaska, 48 sq.; among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, 49-52; among the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia, 52 sq.; among the Shuswap Indians of British Columbia, 53 sq.; among the Delaware and Cheyenne Indians, 54 sq.; among the Esquimaux, 55 sq.

§ 5. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty among the Indians of South America, pp. 56-68.—Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and Lengua Indians, 56 sq.; among the Yuracares of Bolivia, 57 sq.; among the Indians of the Gran Chaco, 58 sq.; among the Indians of Brazil, 59 sq.; among the Indians of Guiana, 60 sq.; beating the girls and stinging them with ants, 61; stinging young men with ants and wasps as an initiatory rite, 61-63; stinging men and women with ants to improve their character or health or to render them invulnerable, 63 sq.; in such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification, not a test of courage and endurance, 65 sq.; this explanation confirmed by the beating of girls among the Banivas of the Orinoco to rid them of a demon, 66-68; symptoms of puberty in a girl regarded as wounds inflicted on her by a demon, 68.

§ 6. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in India and Cambodia, pp. 68-70.—Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Hindoos, 68; in Southern India, 68-70; in Cambodia, 70.

§ 7. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in Folk-tales, pp. 70-76.—Danish story of the girl who might not see the sun, 70-72; Tyrolese story of the girl who might not see the sun, 72; modern Greek stories of the maid who might not see the sun, 72 sq.; ancient Greek story of Danae and its parallel in a Kirghiz legend, 73 sq.; impregnation of women by the sun in legends, 74 sq.; traces in marriage customs of the belief that women can be impregnated by the sun, 75; belief in the impregnation of women by the moon, 75 sq.

§ 8. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty, pp. 76-100.—The reason for the seclusion of girls at puberty is the dread of menstruous blood, 76; dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the aborigines of Australia, 76-78; in Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea, Galela, and Sumatra, 78 sq.; among the tribes of South Africa, 79 sq.; among the tribes of Central and East Africa, 80-82; among the tribes of West Africa, 82; powerful influence ascribed to menstruous blood in Arab legend, 82 sq.; dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Jews and in Syria, 83 sq.; in India, 84 sq.; in Annam, 85; among the Indians of Central and South America, 85 sq.; among the Indians of North America, 87-94; among the Creek, Choctaw, Omaha and Cheyenne Indians, 88 sq.; among the Indians of British Columbia, 89 sq.; among the Chippeway Indians, 90 sq.; among the Tinneh or Déné Indians, 91; among the Carrier Indians, 91-94; similar rules of seclusion enjoined on menstruous women in ancient Hindoo, Persian, and Hebrew codes, 94-96; superstitions as to menstruous women in ancient and modern Europe, 96 sq.; the intention of secluding menstruous women is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are thought to emanate from them in that condition, 97; suspension between heaven and earth, 97; the same explanation applies to the similar rules of seclusion observed by divine kings and priests, 97-99; stories of immortality attained by suspension between heaven and earth, 99 sq.

CHAPTER III.—THE MYTH OF BALDER, Pp. 101-105

How Balder, the good and beautiful god, was done to death by a stroke of mistletoe, 101 sq.; story of Balder in the older Edda, 102 sq.; story of Balder as told by Saxo Grammaticus, 103; Balder worshipped in Norway, 104; legendary death of Balder resembles the legendary death of Isfendiyar in the epic of Firdusi, 104 sq.; the myth of Balder perhaps acted as a magical ceremony; the two main incidents of the myth, namely the pulling of the mistletoe and the burning of the god, have perhaps their counterpart in popular ritual, 105.

CHAPTER IV.—THE FIRE FESTIVALS OF EUROPE, Pp. 106-327

§ 1. The Lenten Fires, pp. 106-120.—European custom of kindling bonfires on certain days of the year, dancing round them, leaping over them, and burning effigies in the flames, 106; seasons of the year at which the bonfires are lit, 106 sq.; bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent in the Belgian Ardennes, 107 sq.; in the French department of the Ardennes, 109 sq.; in Franche-Comté, 110 sq.; in Auvergne, 111-113; French custom of carrying lighted torches (brandons) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent, 113-115; bonfires on the first Sunday of Lent in Germany and Austria, 115 sq.; "burning the witch," 116; burning discs thrown into the air, 116 sq.; burning wheels rolled down hill, 117 sq.; bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent in Switzerland, 118 sq.; burning discs thrown into the air, 119; connexion of these fires with the custom of "carrying out Death," 119 sq.

§ 2. The Easter Fires, 120-146.—Custom in Catholic countries of kindling a holy new fire on Easter Saturday, marvellous properties ascribed to the embers of the fire, 121; effigy of Judas burnt in the fire, 121; Easter fires in Bavaria and the Abruzzi, 122; water as well as fire consecrated at Easter in Italy, Bohemia, and Germany, 122-124; new fire at Easter in Carinthia, 124; Thomas Kirchmeyer's account of the consecration of fire and water by the Catholic Church at Easter, 124 sq.; the new fire on Easter Saturday at Florence, 126 sq.; the new fire and the burning of Judas on Easter Saturday in Mexico and South America, 127 sq.; the new fire on Easter Saturday in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, 128-130; the new fire and the burning of Judas on Easter Saturday in Greece, 130 sq.; the new fire at Candlemas in Armenia, 131; the new fire and the burning of Judas at Easter are probably relics of paganism, 131 sq.; new fire at the summer solstice among the Incas of Peru, 132; new fire among the Indians of Mexico and New Mexico, the Iroquois, and the Esquimaux, 132-134; new fire in Wadai, among the Swahili, and in other parts of Africa, 134-136; new fires among the Todas and Nagas of India, 136; new fire in China and Japan, 137 sq.; new fire in ancient Greece and Rome, 138; new fire at Hallowe'en among the old Celts of Ireland, 139; new fire on the first of September among the Russian peasants, 139; the rite of the new fire probably common to many peoples of the Mediterranean area before the rise of Christianity, 139 sq.; the pagan character of the Easter fire manifest from the superstitions associated with it, such as the belief that the fire fertilizes the fields and protects houses from conflagration and sickness, 140 sq.; the Easter fires in Münsterland, Oldenburg, the Harz Mountains, and the Altmark, 141-143; Easter fires and the burning of Judas or the Easter Man in Bavaria, 143 sq.; Easter fires and "thunder poles" in Baden, 145; Easter fires in Holland and Sweden, 145 sq.; the burning of Judas in Bohemia, 146.

§ 3. The Beltane Fires, pp. 146-160.—The Beltane fires on the first of May in the Highlands of Scotland, 146-154; John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, his description of the Beltane fires and cakes and the Beltane carline, 146-149; Beltane fires and cakes in Perthshire, 150-153; Beltane fires in the north-east of Scotland to burn the witches, 153 sq.; Beltane fires and cakes in the Hebrides, 154; Beltane fires and cakes in Wales, 155-157; in the Isle of Man to burn the witches, 157; in Nottinghamshire, 157; in Ireland, 157-159; fires on the Eve of May Day in Sweden, 159; in Austria and Saxony to burn the witches, 159 sq.

§ 4. The Midsummer Fires, pp. 160-219.—The great season for fire-festivals in Europe is Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day, which the church has dedicated to St. John the Baptist, 160 sq.; the bonfires, the torches, and the burning wheels of the festival, 161; Thomas Kirchmeyer's description of the Midsummer festival, 162 sq.; the Midsummer fires in Germany, 163-171; burning wheel rolled down hill at Konz on the Moselle, 163 sq.; Midsummer fires in Bavaria, 164-166; in Swabia, 166 sq.; in Baden, 167-169; in Alsace, Lorraine, the Eifel, the Harz district, and Thuringia, 169; Midsummer fires kindled by the friction of wood, 169 sq.; driving away the witches and demons, 170; Midsummer fires in Silesia, scaring away the witches, 170 sq.; Midsummer fires in Denmark and Norway, keeping off the witches, 171; Midsummer fires in Sweden, 172; Midsummer fires in Switzerland and Austria, 172 sq.; in Bohemia, 173-175; in Moravia, Austrian Silesia, and the district of Cracow, 175; among the Slavs of Russia, 176; in Prussia and Lithuania as a protection against witchcraft, thunder, hail, and cattle disease, 176 sq.; in Masuren the fire is kindled by the revolution of a wheel, 177; Midsummer fires among the Letts of Russia, 177 sq.; among the South Slavs, 178; among the Magyars, 178 sq.; among the Esthonians, 179 sq.; among the Finns and Cheremiss of Russia, 180 sq.; in France, 181-194; Bossuet on the Midsummer festival, 182; the Midsummer fires in Brittany, 183-185; in Normandy, the Brotherhood of the Green Wolf at Jumièges, 185 sq.; Midsummer fires in Picardy, 187 sq.; in Beauce and Perche, 188; the fires a protection against witchcraft, 188; the Midsummer fires in the Ardennes, the Vosges, and the Jura, 188 sq.; in Franche-Comté, 189; in Berry and other parts of Central France, 189 sq.; in Poitou, 190 sq.; in the departments of Vienne and Deux-Sèvres and in the provinces of Saintonge and Aunis, 191 sq.; in Southern France, 192 sq.; Midsummer festival of fire and water in Provence, 193 sq.; Midsummer fires in Belgium, 194-196; in England, 196-200; Stow's description of the Midsummer fires in London, 196 sq.; John Aubrey on the Midsummer fires, 197; Midsummer fires in Cumberland, Northumberland, and Yorkshire, 197 sq.; in Herefordshire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, 199 sq.; in Wales and the Isle of Man, 200 sq.; in Ireland, 201-205; holy wells resorted to on Midsummer Eve in Ireland, 205 sq.; Midsummer fires in Scotland, 206 sq.; Midsummer fires and divination in Spain and the Azores, 208 sq.; Midsummer fires in Corsica and Sardinia, 209; in the Abruzzi, 209 sq.; in Sicily, 210; in Malta, 210 sq.; in Greece and the Greek islands, 211 sq.; in Macedonia and Albania, 212; in South America, 212 sq.; among the Mohammedans of Morocco and Algeria, 213-216; the Midsummer festival in North Africa comprises rites of water as well as fire, 216; similar festival of fire and water at New Year in North Africa, 217 sq.; the duplication of the festival probably due to a conflict between the solar calendar of the Romans and the lunar calendar of the Arabs, 218 sg.; the Midsummer festival in Morocco apparently of Berber origin, 219.

§ 5. The Autumn Fires, pp. 220-222.—Festivals of fire in August, 220; "living fire" made by the friction of wood, 220; feast of the Nativity of the Virgin on the eighth of September at Capri and Naples, 220-222.

§ 6. The Halloween Fires, pp. 222-246.—While the Midsummer festival implies observation of the solstices, the Celts appear to have divided their year, without regard to the solstices, by the times when they drove their cattle to and from the summer pasture on the first of May and the last of October (Hallowe'en), 222-224; the two great Celtic festivals of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe'en (the last of October), 224; Hallowe'en seems to have marked the beginning of the Celtic year, 224 sq.; it was a season of divination and a festival of the dead, 225 sq.; fairies and hobgoblins let loose at Hallowe'en, 226-228; divination in Celtic countries at Hallowe'en, 228 sq.; Hallowe'en bonfires in the Highlands of Scotland, 229-232; Hallowe'en fires in Buchan to burn the witches, 232 sq.; processions with torches at Hallowe'en in the Braemar Highlands, 233 sq.; divination at Hallowe'en in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, 234-239; Hallowe'en fires in Wales, omens drawn from stones cast into the fires, 239 sq.; divination at Hallowe'en in Wales, 240 sq.; divination at Hallowe'en in Ireland, 241-243; Hallowe'en fires and divination in the Isle of Man, 243 sq.; Hallowe'en fires and divination in Lancashire, 244 sq.; marching with lighted candles to keep off the witches, 245; divination at Hallowe'en in Northumberland, 245; Hallowe'en fires in France, 245 sq.

§ 7. The Midwinter Fires, pp. 246-269.—Christmas the continuation of an old heathen festival of the sun, 246; the Yule log the Midwinter counterpart of the Midsummer bonfire, 247; the Yule log in Germany, 247-249; in Switzerland, 249; in Belgium, 249; in France, 249-255; French superstitions as to the Yule log, 250; the Yule log at Marseilles and in Perigord, 250 sq.; in Berry, 251 sq.; in Normandy and Brittany, 252 sq.; in the Ardennes, 253 sq.; in the Vosges, 254; in Franche-Comté, 254 sq.; the Yule log and Yule candle in England, 255-258; the Yule log in the north of England and Yorkshire, 256 sq.; in Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire, 257 sq.; in Wales, 258; in Servia, 258-262; among the Servians of Slavonia, 262 sq.; among the Servians of Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro, 263 sq.; in Albania, 264; belief that the Yule log protects against fire and lightning, 264 sq.; public fire-festivals at Midwinter, 265-269; Christmas bonfire at Schweina in Thuringia, 265 sq.; Christmas bonfires in Normandy, 266; bonfires on St. Thomas's Day in the Isle of Man, 266; the "Burning of the Clavie" at Burghead on the last day of December, 266-268; Christmas procession with burning tar-barrels at Lerwick, 268 sq.

§ 8. The Need-fire, pp. 269-300.—Need-fire kindled not at fixed periods but on occasions of distress and calamity, 269; the need-fire in the Middle Ages and down to the end of the sixteenth century, 270 sq.; mode of kindling the need-fire by the friction of wood, 271 sq.; the need-fire in Central Germany, particularly about Hildesheim, 272 sq.; the need-fire in the Mark, 273; in Mecklenburg, 274 sq.; in Hanover, 275 sq.; in the Harz Mountains, 276 sq.; in Brunswick, 277 sq.; in Silesia and Bohemia, 278 sq.; in Switzerland, 279 sq.; in Sweden and Norway, 280; among the Slavonic peoples, 281-286; in Russia and Poland, 281 sq.; in Slavonia, 282; in Servia, 282-284; in Bulgaria, 284-286; in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 286; in England, 286-289; in Yorkshire, 286-288; in Northumberland, 288 sq.; in Scotland, 289-297; Martin's account of it in the Highlands, 289; the need-fire in Mull, 289 sq.; in Caithness, 290-292; W. Grant Stewart's account of the need-fire, 292 sq.; Alexander Carmichael's account, 293-295; the need-fire in Aberdeenshire, 296; in Perthshire, 296 sq.; in Ireland, 297; the use of need-fire a relic of the time when all fires were similarly kindled by the friction of wood, 297 sq.; the belief that need-fire cannot kindle if any other fire remains alight in the neighbourhood, 298 sq.; the need-fire among the Iroquois of North America, 299 sq.

§ 9. The Sacrifice of an Animal to stay a Cattle-plague, pp. 300-327.—The burnt sacrifice of a calf in England and Wales, 300 sq.; burnt sacrifices of animals in Scotland, 301 sq.; calf burnt in order to break a spell which has been cast on the herd, 302 sq.; mode in which the burning of a bewitched animal is supposed to break the spell, 303-305; in burning the bewitched animal you burn the witch herself, 305; practice of burning cattle and sheep as sacrifices in the Isle of Man, 305-307; by burning a bewitched animal you compel the witch to appear, 307; magic sympathy between the witch and the bewitched animal, 308; similar sympathy between a were-wolf and his or her human shape, wounds inflicted on the animal are felt by the man or woman, 308; were-wolves in Europe, 308-310; in China, 310 sq.; among the Toradjas of Central Celebes, 311-313 sq.; in the Egyptian Sudan, 313 sq.; the were-wolf story in Petronius, 313 sq.; witches like were-wolves can temporarily transform themselves into animals, and wounds inflicted on the transformed animals appear on the persons of the witches, 315 sq.; instances of such transformations and wounds in Scotland, England, Ireland, France, and Germany, 316-321; hence the reason for burning bewitched animals is either to burn the witch herself or at all events to compel her to appear, 321 sq.; the like reason for burning bewitched things, 322 sq.; similarly by burning alive a person whose likeness a witch has assumed you compel the witch to disclose herself, 323; woman burnt alive as a witch in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, 323 sq.; bewitched animals sometimes buried alive instead of being burned, 324-326; calves killed and buried to save the rest of the herd, 326 sq.

CHAPTER V.—THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRE-FESTIVALS, Pp. 328-346

§ 1. On the Fire-festivals in general pp. 328-331.—General resemblance of the fire-festivals to each other, 328 sq.; two explanations of the festivals suggested, one by W. Mannhardt that they are sun-charms, the other by Dr. E. Westermarck that they are purificatory, 329 sq.; the two explanations perhaps not mutually exclusive, 330 sq.

§ 2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 331-341.—Theory that the fire-festivals are charms to ensure a supply of sunshine, 331; coincidence of two of the festivals with the solstices, 331 sq.; attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by kindling sticks, 332 sq.; the burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun, 334; the wheel which is sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an imitation of the sun, 334-336; the influence which the bonfires are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may be thought to be due to an increase of solar heat produced by the fires, 336-338; the effect which the bonfires are supposed to have in fertilizing cattle and women may also be attributed to an increase of solar heat produced by the fires, 338 sq.; the carrying of lighted torches about the country at the festivals may be explained as an attempt to diffuse the sun's heat, 339-341.

§ 3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 341-346.—Theory that the fires at the festivals are purificatory, being intended to burn up all harmful things, 341; the purificatory or destructive effect of the fires is often alleged by the people who light them, and there is no reason to reject this explanation, 341 sq.; the great evil against which the fire at the festivals appears to be directed is witchcraft, 342; among the evils for which the fire-festivals are deemed remedies the foremost is cattle-disease, and cattle-disease is often supposed to be an effect of witchcraft, 343 sq.; again, the bonfires are thought to avert hail, thunder, lightning, and various maladies, all of which are attributed to the maleficent arts of witches, 344 sq.; the burning wheels rolled down hill and the burning discs thrown into the air may be intended to burn the invisible witches, 345 sq.; on this view the fertility supposed to follow the use of fire results indirectly from breaking the spells of witches, 346; on the whole the theory of the purificatory or destructive intention of the fire-festivals seems the more probable, 346.

[Transcriber's Note: The brief descriptions often found enclosed in square brackets are "sidenotes", which appeared in the original book in the margins of the paragraph following the "sidenote." Footnotes were originally at the bottoms of the printed pages.]

[The priest of Aricia and the Golden Bough]

We have travelled far since we turned our backs on Nemi and set forth in quest of the secret of the Golden Bough. With the present volume we enter on the last stage of our long journey. The reader who has had the patience to follow the enquiry thus far may remember that at the outset two questions were proposed for answer: Why had the priest of Aricia to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough?¹ Of these two questions the first has now been answered. The priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred kings or human divinities on whose life the welfare of the community and even the course of nature in general are believed to be intimately dependent. It does not appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual potentate form to themselves any very clear notion of the exact relationship in which they stand to him; probably their ideas on the point are vague and fluctuating, and we should err if we attempted to define the relationship with logical precision. All that the people know, or rather imagine, is that somehow they themselves, their cattle, and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their divine king, so that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy or sickly, the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the fields yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to [pg 2] sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions; fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth would refuse her increase, nay the very frame of nature itself might be dissolved. To guard against these catastrophes it is necessary to put the king to death while he is still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, may renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations may remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security that men and animals shall in like manner renew their youth by a perpetual succession of generations, and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, and rain and sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is right, was why the priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had regularly to perish by the sword of his successor.

[What was the Golden Bough?]

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

[Sacred kings and priests forbidden to touch the ground with their feet.]

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.² Montezuma, emperor of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he was always carried on the shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for him to walk upon.³ For the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful [pg 3] degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.⁴ The king and queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these sanctified attendants; and when it became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the ground.⁵ It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an expiatory ceremony.⁶ Within his palace the king of Persia walked on carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of it he was never seen on foot but only in a chariot or on horseback.⁷ In old days the king of Siam never set foot upon the earth, but was carried on a throne of gold from place to place.⁸ Formerly neither the kings of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor their queens might walk on foot outside of the spacious enclosures in which they lived. Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of men of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of these royal personages on a journey and took it in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the bearer's arms. When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king on to the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch the ground. In this way they went at a great pace and travelled long distances in a day, when the king was on a journey. The bearers had a special hut in the [pg 4] king's enclosure in order to be at hand the moment they were wanted.⁹ Among the Bakuba or rather Bushongo, a nation in the southern region of the Congo, down to a few years ago persons of the royal blood were forbidden to touch the ground; they must sit on a hide, a chair, or the back of a slave, who crouched on hands and feet; their feet rested on the feet of others. When they travelled they were carried on the backs of men; but the king journeyed in a litter supported on shafts.¹⁰ Among the Ibo people about Awka, in Southern Nigeria, the priest of the Earth has to observe many taboos; for example, he may not see a corpse, and if he meets one on the road he must hide his eyes with his wristlet. He must abstain from many foods, such as eggs, birds of all sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and so forth. He may neither wear nor touch a mask, and no masked man may enter his house. If a dog enters his house, it is killed and thrown out. As priest of the Earth he may not sit on the bare ground, nor eat things that have fallen on the ground, nor may earth be thrown at him.¹¹ According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet.¹²

[Certain persons on certain occasions forbidden to touch the ground with their feet.]

But besides persons who are permanently sacred or tabooed and are therefore permanently forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, there are others who enjoy the character of sanctity or taboo only on certain occasions, and to whom accordingly the prohibition in question only applies at the definite seasons during which they exhale the odour of sanctity. Thus among the Kayans or Bahaus of Central [pg 5] Borneo, while the priestesses are engaged in the performance of certain rites they may not step on the ground, and boards are laid for them to tread on.¹³ At a funeral ceremony observed by night among the Michemis, a Tibetan tribe near the northern frontier of Assam, a priest fantastically bedecked with tiger's teeth, many-coloured plumes, bells, and shells, executed a wild dance for the purpose of exorcising the evil spirits; then all fires were extinguished and a new light was struck by a man suspended by his feet from a beam in the ceiling; "he did not touch the ground," we are told, "in order to indicate that the light came from heaven."¹⁴ Again, newly born infants are strongly tabooed; accordingly in Loango they are not allowed to touch the earth.¹⁵ Among the Iluvans of Malabar the bridegroom on his wedding-day is bathed by seven young men and then carried or walks on planks from the bathing-place to the marriage booth; he may not touch the ground with his feet.¹⁶ With the Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, two districts of Dutch Borneo, it is a custom that for a certain time after marriage neither bride nor bridegroom may tread on the earth.¹⁷ Warriors, again, on the war-path are surrounded, so to say, by an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North America might not sit on the bare ground the whole time they were out on a warlike expedition.¹⁸ In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with his foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the others spread a carpet of leaves for him to step upon.¹⁹ German wiseacres recommended that when witches were led to the block or the stake, they should not be allowed to touch the bare [pg 6] earth, and a reason suggested for the rule was that if they touched the earth they might make themselves invisible and so escape. The sagacious author of The Striped-petticoat Philosophy in the eighteenth century ridicules the idea as mere silly talk. He admits, indeed, that the women were conveyed to the place of execution in carts; but he denies that there is any deep significance in the cart, and he is prepared to maintain this view by a chemical analysis of the timber of which the cart was built. To clinch his argument he appeals to plain matter of fact and his own personal experience. Not a single instance, he assures us with apparent satisfaction, can be produced of a witch who escaped the axe or the fire in this fashion. "I have myself," says he, "in my youth seen divers witches burned, some at Arnstadt, some at Ilmenau, some at Schwenda, a noble village between Arnstadt and Ilmenau, and some of them were pardoned and beheaded before being burned. They were laid on the earth in the place of execution and beheaded like any other poor sinner; whereas if they could have escaped by touching the earth, not one of them would have failed to do so."²⁰

[Sacred or tabooed persons apparently thought to be charged with a mysterious virtue like a fluid, which will run to waste or explode if it touches the ground.]

Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden jar is charged with electricity; and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical virtue in the man can be discharged and drained away by contact with the earth, which on this theory serves as an excellent conductor for the magical fluid. Hence in order to preserve the charge from running to waste, the sacred or tabooed personage must be carefully prevented from touching the ground; in electrical language he must be insulated, if he is not to be emptied of the precious substance or fluid with which he, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for [pg 7] since the virtue of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest touch may detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to keep it within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast, blight, and destroy whatever it comes into contact with.

[Things as well as persons can be charged with the mysterious quality of holiness or taboo; and when so charged they must be kept from contact with the ground.]

But things as well as persons are often charged with the mysterious quality of holiness or taboo; hence it frequently becomes necessary for similar reasons to guard them also from coming into contact with the ground, lest they should in like manner be drained of their valuable properties and be reduced to mere commonplace material objects, empty husks from which the good grain has been eliminated. Thus, for example, the most sacred object of the Arunta tribe in Central Australia is, or rather used to be, a pole about twenty feet high, which is completely smeared with human blood, crowned with an imitation of a human head, and set up on the ground where the final initiatory ceremonies of young men are performed. A young gum-tree is chosen to form the pole, and it must be cut down and transported in such a way that it does not touch the earth till it is erected in its place on the holy ground. Apparently the pole represents some famous ancestor of the olden time.²¹

[Festival of the wild mango tree in British New Guinea.]

Again, at a great dancing festival celebrated by the natives of Bartle Bay, in British New Guinea, a wild mango tree plays a prominent part. The tree must be self-sown, that is, really wild and so young that it has never flowered. It is chosen in the jungle some five or six weeks before the festival, and a circle is cleared round its trunk. From that time the master of the ceremonies and some eight to twenty other men, who have aided him in choosing the tree and in clearing the jungle, become strictly holy or tabooed. They sleep by themselves in a house into which no one else may intrude: they may not wash or drink water, nor even allow it accidentally to touch their bodies: they are forbidden to eat boiled food and the fruit of mango trees: they may drink only the milk of a young coco-nut which has been baked, and they may eat certain fruits and vegetables, such as paw-paws [pg 8] (Carica papaya) and sugar-cane, but only on condition that they have been baked. All refuse of their food is kept in baskets in their sleeping-house and may not be removed from it till the festival is over. At the time when the men begin to observe these rules of abstinence, some six to ten women, members of the same clan as the master of the ceremonies, enter on a like period of mortification, avoiding the company of the other sex, and refraining from water, all boiled food, and the fruit of the mango tree. These fasting men and women are the principal dancers at the festival. The dancing takes place on a special platform in a temporary village which has been erected for the purpose. When the platform is about to be set up, the fasting men rub the stepping posts and then suck their hands for the purpose of extracting the ghost of any dead man that might chance to be in the post and might be injured by the weight of the platform pressing down on him. Having carefully extracted these poor souls, the men carry them away tenderly and set them free in the forest or the long grass.

[The wild mango tree not allowed to touch the ground.]

On the day before the festival one of the fasting men cuts down the chosen mango tree in the jungle with a stone adze, which is never afterwards put to any other use; an iron tool may not be used for the purpose, though iron tools are now common enough in the district. In cutting down the mango they place nets on the ground to catch any leaves or twigs that might fall from the tree as it is being felled and they surround the trunk with new mats to receive the chips which fly out under the adze of the woodman; for the chips may not drop on the earth. Once the tree is down, it is carried to the centre of the temporary village, the greatest care being taken to prevent it from coming into contact with the ground. But when it is brought into the village, the houses are connected with the top of the mango by means of long vines decorated with the streamers. In the afternoon the fasting men and women begin to dance, the men bedizened with gay feathers, armlets, streamers, and anklets, the women flaunting in parti-coloured petticoats and sprigs of croton leaves, which wave from their waistbands as they dance. The dancing stops at sundown, and when the full moon rises over the shoulder of the [pg 9] eastern hill (for the date of the festival seems to be determined with reference to the time of the moon), two chiefs mount the gables of two houses on the eastern side of the square, and, their dusky figures standing sharply out against the moonlight, pray to the evil spirits to go away and not to hurt the people. Next morning pigs are killed by being speared as slowly as possible in order that they may squeal loud and long; for the people believe that the mango trees hear the squealing, and are pleased at the sound, and bear plenty of fruit, whereas if they heard no squeals they would bear no fruit. However, the trees have to content themselves with the squeals; the flesh of the pigs is eaten by the people. This ends the festival.

[Final disposition of the wild mango tree.]

Next day the mango is taken down from the platform, wrapt in new mats, and carried by the fasting men to their sleeping house, where it is hung from the roof. But after an interval, it may be of many months, the tree is brought forth again. As to the reason for its reappearance in public opinions are divided; but some say that the tree itself orders the master of the ceremonies to bring it forth, appearing to him in his dreams and saying, "Let me smell the smoking fat of pigs. So will your pigs be healthy and your crops will grow." Be that as it may, out it comes, conducted by the fasting men in their dancing costume; and with it come in the solemn procession all the pots, spoons, cups and so forth used by the fasting men during their period of holiness or taboo, also all the refuse of their food which has been collected for months, and all the fallen leaves and chips of the mango in their bundles of mats. These holy relics are carried in front and the mango tree itself brings up the rear of the procession. While these sacred objects are being handed out of the house, the men who are present rush up, wipe off the hallowed dust which has accumulated on them, and smear it over their own bodies, no doubt in order to steep themselves in their blessed influence. Thus the tree is carried as before to the centre of the temporary village, care being again taken not to let it touch the ground. Then one of the fasting men takes from a basket a number of young green mangoes, cuts them in pieces, and places them with his own hands in the mouths of his fellows, the other [pg 10] fasting men, who chew the pieces small and turning round spit the morsels in the direction of the setting sun, in order that "the sun should carry the mango bits over the whole country and everyone should know." A portion of the mango tree is then broken off and in the evening it is burnt along with the bundles of leaves, chips, and refuse of food, which have been stored up. What remains of the tree is taken to the house of the master of the ceremonies and hung over the fire-place; it will be brought out again at intervals and burned bit by bit, till all is consumed, whereupon a new mango will be cut down and treated in like manner. The ashes of the holy fire on each occasion are gathered by the people and preserved in the house of the master of the ceremonies.²²

[The ceremony apparently intended to fertilize the mango trees.]

The meaning of these ceremonies is not explained by the authorities who describe them; but we may conjecture that they are intended to fertilize the mango trees and cause them to bear a good crop of fruit. The central feature of the whole ritual is a wild mango tree, so young that it has never flowered: the men who cut it down, carry it into the village, and dance at the festival, are forbidden to eat mangoes: pigs are killed in order that their dying squeals may move the mango trees to bear fruit: at the end of the ceremonies pieces of young green mangoes are solemnly placed in the mouths of the fasting men and are by them spurted out towards the setting sun in order that the luminary may carry the fragments to every part of the country; and finally when after a longer or shorter interval the tree is wholly consumed, its place is supplied by another. All these circumstances are explained simply and naturally by the supposition that the young mango tree is taken as a representative of mangoes generally, that the dances are intended to quicken it, and that it is preserved, like a May-pole of old in England, as a sort of general fund of vegetable life, till the fund being exhausted by the destruction of the tree it is renewed by the importation of a fresh young tree from the forest. We can therefore understand why, as a storehouse of vital energy, the tree should be carefully kept from [pg 11] contact with the ground, lest the pent-up and concentrated energy should escape and dribbling away into the earth be dissipated to no purpose.

[Sacred objects of various sorts not allowed to touch the ground.]

To take other instances of what we may call the conservation of energy in magic or religion by insulating sacred bodies from the ground, the natives of New Britain have a secret society called the Duk-duk, the members of which masquerade in petticoats of leaves and tall headdresses of wickerwork shaped like candle extinguishers, which descend to the shoulders of the wearers, completely concealing their faces. Thus disguised they dance about to the awe and terror, real or assumed, of the women and uninitiated, who take, or pretend to take, them for spirits. When lads are being initiated into the secrets of this august society, the adepts cut down some very large and heavy bamboos, one for each lad, and the novices carry them, carefully wrapt up in leaves, to the sacred ground, where they arrive very tired and weary, for they may not let the bamboos touch the ground nor the sun shine on them. Outside the fence of the enclosure every lad deposits his bamboo on a couple of forked sticks and covers it up with nut leaves.²³ Among the Carrier Indians of North-Western America, who burned their dead, the ashes of a chief used to be placed in a box and set on the top of a pole beside his hut: the box was never allowed to touch the ground.²⁴ In the Omaha tribe of North American Indians the sacred clam shell of the Elk clan was wrapt up from sight in a mat, placed on a stand, and never suffered to come in contact with the earth.²⁵ The Cherokees and kindred Indian tribes of the United States used to have certain sacred boxes or arks, which they regularly took with them to war. Such a holy ark consisted of a square wooden box, which contained "certain consecrated vessels made by beloved superannuated women, and of such various antiquated forms, as would have puzzled Adam to have given significant names to each." The [pg 12] leader of a war party and his attendant bore the ark by turns, but they never set it on the ground nor would they themselves sit on the bare earth while they were carrying it against the enemy. Where stones were plentiful they rested the ark on them; but where no stones were to be found, they deposited it on short logs. "The Indian ark is deemed so sacred and dangerous to be touched, either by their own sanctified warriors, or the spoiling enemy, that they durst not touch it upon any account. It is not to be meddled with by any, except the war chieftain and his waiter, under the penalty of incurring great evil. Nor would the most inveterate enemy touch it in the woods, for the very same reason." After their return home they used to hang the ark on the leader's red-painted war pole.²⁶ At Sipi, near Simla, in Northern India, an annual fair is held, at which men purchase wives. A square box with a domed top figures prominently at the fair. It is fixed on two poles to be carried on men's shoulders, and long heavily-plaited petticoats hang from it nearly to the ground. Three sides of the box are adorned with the head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a black yak's tail. Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his right hand. They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the music of drums and a pipe. The dance goes on for hours and is thought to avert ill-luck from the fair. It is said that the box is brought to Simla from a place sixty miles off by relays of men, who may not stop nor set the box on the ground the whole way.²⁷ In Scotland, when water was carried from sacred wells to sick people, the water-vessel might not touch the earth.²⁸ In some parts of Aberdeenshire the last bunch of standing corn, which is commonly viewed as very sacred, being the last refuge of the corn-spirit retreating before the reapers, is not suffered to touch the ground; the master or "gueedman" sits down and receives each handful of corn as it is cut on his lap.²⁹

[Sacred food not allowed to touch the earth.]

Again, sacred food may not under certain circumstances be brought into contact with the earth. Some of the aborigines of Victoria used to regard the fat of the emu as sacred, believing that it had once been the fat of the black man. In taking it from the bird or giving it to another they handled it reverently. Any one who threw away the fat or flesh of the emu was held accursed. "The late Mr. Thomas observed on one occasion, at Nerre-nerre-Warreen, a remarkable exhibition of the effects of this superstition. An aboriginal child—one attending the school—having eaten some part of the flesh of an emu, threw away the skin. The skin fell to the ground, and this being observed by his parents, they showed by their gestures every token of horror. They looked upon their child as one utterly lost. His desecration of the bird was regarded as a sin for which there was no atonement."³⁰ The Roumanians of Transylvania believe that "every fresh-baked loaf of wheaten bread is sacred, and should a piece inadvertently fall to the ground, it is hastily picked up, carefully wiped and kissed, and if soiled, thrown into the fire—partly as an offering to the dead, and partly because it were a heavy sin to throw away or tread upon any particle of it."³¹ At certain festivals in south-eastern Borneo the food which is consumed in the common house may not touch the ground; hence, a little before the festivals take place, foot-bridges made of thin poles are constructed from the private dwellings to the common house.³² When Hall was living with the Esquimaux and grew tired of eating walrus, one of the women brought the head and neck of a reindeer for him to eat. This venison had to be completely wrapt up before it was brought into the house, and once in the house it could only be placed on the platform which served as a bed. "To have placed it on the floor or on the platform behind the fire-lamp, among the walrus, musk-ox, and polar-bear meat which occupy a goodly portion of both of these places, would have horrified the whole town, as, according to the actual [pg 14] belief of the Innuits, not another walrus could be secured this year, and there would ever be trouble in catching any more."³³ But in this case the real scruple appears to have been felt not so much at placing the venison on the ground as at bringing it into contact with walrus meat.³⁴

[Magical implements and remedies thought to lose their virtue by contact with the ground.]

Sometimes magical implements and remedies are supposed to lose their virtue by contact with the ground, the volatile essence with which they are impregnated being no doubt drained off into the earth. Thus in the Boulia district of Queensland the magical bone, which the native sorcerer points at his victim as a means of killing him, is never by any chance allowed to touch the earth.³⁵ The wives of rajahs in Macassar, a district of southern Celebes, pride themselves on their luxuriant tresses and are at great pains to oil and preserve them. Should the hair begin to grow thin, the lady resorts to many devices to stay the ravages of time; among other things she applies to her locks a fat extracted from crocodiles and venomous snakes. The unguent is believed to be very efficacious, but during its application the woman's feet may not come into contact with the ground, or all the benefit of the nostrum would be lost.³⁶ Some people in antiquity believed that a woman in hard labour would be delivered if a spear, which had been wrenched from a man's body without touching the ground, were thrown over the house where the sufferer lay. Again, according to certain ancient writers, arrows which had been extracted from a body without coming into contact with the earth and laid under sleepers, acted as a love-charm.³⁷ Among the peasantry of the north-east of Scotland the prehistoric [pg 15] weapons called celts went by the name of "thunderbolts" and were coveted as the sure bringers of success, always provided that they were not allowed to fall to the ground.³⁸

[Serpents eggs or Snake Stones.]

In ancient Gaul certain glass or paste beads attained great celebrity as amulets under the name of serpents' eggs; it was believed that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated them from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws. If a man was bold and dexterous enough to catch one of these eggs in his cloak before it touched the ground, he rode off on horseback with it at full speed, pursued by the whole pack of serpents, till he was saved by the interposition of a river, which the snakes could not pass. The proof of the egg being genuine was that if it were thrown into a stream it would float up against the current, even though it were hooped in gold. The Druids held these beads in high esteem; according to them, the precious objects could only be obtained on a certain day of the moon, and the peculiar virtue that resided in them was to secure success in law suits and free access to kings. Pliny knew of a Gaulish knight who was executed by the emperor Claudius for wearing one of these amulets.³⁹ Under the name of Snake Stones (glain neidr) or Adder Stones the beads are still known in those parts of our own country where the Celtic population has lingered, with its immemorial superstitions, down to the present or recent times; and the old story of the origin of the beads from the slaver of serpents was believed by the modern peasantry of Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland as by the Druids of ancient Gaul. In Cornwall the time when the serpents united to fashion the beads was commonly said to be at or about Midsummer Eve; in Wales it was usually thought to be spring, especially the Eve of May Day, and even within recent years persons in the Principality have affirmed that they witnessed the great [pg 16] vernal congress of the snakes and saw the magic stone in the midst of the froth. The Welsh peasants believe the beads to possess medicinal virtues of many sorts and to be particularly efficacious for all maladies of the eyes. In Wales and Ireland the beads sometimes went by the name of the Magician's or Druid's Glass (Gleini na Droedh and Glaine nan Druidhe). Specimens of them may be seen in museums; some have been found in British barrows. They are of glass of various colours, green, blue, pink, red, brown, and so forth, some plain and some ribbed. Some are streaked with brilliant hues. The beads are perforated, and in the Highlands of Scotland the hole is explained by saying that when the bead has just been conflated by the serpents jointly, one of the reptiles sticks his tail through the still viscous glass. An Englishman who visited Scotland in 1699 found many of these beads in use throughout the country. They were hung from children's necks to protect them from whooping cough and other ailments. Snake Stones were, moreover, a charm to ensure prosperity in general and to repel evil spirits. When one of these priceless treasures was not on active service, the owner kept it in an iron box to guard it against fairies, who, as is well known, cannot abide iron.⁴⁰

[Medicinal plants, water, are not allowed to touch the earth.]

Pliny mentions several medicinal plants, which, if they were to retain their healing virtue, ought not to be allowed to touch the earth.⁴¹ The curious medical treatise of Marcellus, a native of Bordeaux in the fourth century of our era, abounds with prescriptions of this sort; and we can well believe the writer when he assures us that he borrowed many of his quaint remedies from the lips of common folk and peasants rather than from the books of the learned.⁴² Thus he tells us that certain white stones found in the stomachs of young swallows assuage the most persistent headache, always provided that their virtue be not impaired by contact with the ground.⁴³ Another of his cures for the same malady is a wreath of fleabane placed on the head, but it must not touch the earth.⁴⁴ On the same condition a decoction of the root of elecampane in wine kills worms; a fern, found growing on a tree, relieves the stomach-ache; and the pastern-bone of a hare is an infallible remedy for colic, provided, first, it be found in the dung of a wolf, second, that it docs not touch the ground, and, third, that it is not touched by a woman.⁴⁵ Another cure for colic is effected by certain hocus-pocus with a scrap of wool from the forehead of a first-born lamb, if only the lamb, instead of being allowed to fall to the ground, has been caught by hand as it dropped from its dam.⁴⁶ In Andjra, a district of Morocco, the people attribute many magical virtues to rain-water which has fallen on the twenty-seventh day of April, Old Style; accordingly they collect it and use it for a variety of purposes. Mixed with tar and sprinkled on the door-posts it prevents snakes and scorpions from entering the house: sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye: mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable medicine for sick cows: poured over a [pg 18] plate, on which a passage of the Koran has been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who drink it; and if you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings with the mixture round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on Midsummer Day, you may depend on it that the trees will bear an excellent crop and will not shed their fruit untimely on the ground. But in order to preserve these remarkable properties it is absolutely essential that the water should on no account be allowed to touch the ground; some say too that it should not be exposed to the sun nor breathed upon by anybody.⁴⁷ Again, the Moors ascribe great magical efficacy to what they call "the sultan of the oleander," which is a stalk of oleander with a cluster of four pairs of leaves springing from it. They think that the magical virtue is greatest if the stalk has been cut immediately before midsummer. But when the plant is brought into the house, the branches may not touch the ground, lest they should lose their marvellous qualities.⁴⁸ In the olden days, before a Lithuanian or Prussian farmer went forth to plough for the first time in spring, he called in a wizard to perform a certain ceremony for the good of the crops. The sage seized a mug of beer with his teeth, quaffed the liquor, and then tossed the mug over his head. This signified that the corn in that year should grow taller than a man. But the mug might not fall to the ground; it had to be caught by somebody stationed at the wizard's back, for if it fell to the ground the consequence naturally would be that the corn also would be laid low on the earth.⁴⁹

[Sacred persons not allowed to see the sun.]

The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the divine person. This rule was observed [pg 19] both by the Mikado and by the pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter "was looked upon as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon."⁵⁰ The Japanese would not allow that the Mikado should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun was not thought worthy to shine on his head.⁵¹ The Indians of Granada, in South America, "kept those who were to be rulers or commanders, whether men or women, locked up for several years when they were children, some of them seven years, and this so close that they were not to see the sun, for if they should happen to see it they forfeited their lordship, eating certain sorts of food appointed; and those who were their keepers at certain times went into their retreat or prison and scourged them severely."⁵² Thus, for example, the heir to the throne of Bogota, who was not the son but the sister's son of the king, had to undergo a rigorous training from his infancy: he lived in complete retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor converse with a woman: he was surrounded by guards who observed his conduct and noted all his actions: if he broke a single one of the rules laid down for him, he was deemed infamous and forfeited all his rights to the throne.⁵³ So, too, the heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso, before succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or light.⁵⁴ The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a month without seeing light.⁵⁵ On [pg 20] the day when a Brahman student of the Veda took a bath, to signify that the time of his studentship was at an end, he entered a cow-shed before sunrise, hung over the door a skin with the hair inside, and sat there; on that day the sun should not shine upon him.⁵⁶

[Tabooed persons not allowed to see the sun; certain persons forbidden to see fire.]

Again, women after childbirth and their offspring are more or less tabooed all the world over; hence in Corea the rays of the sun are rigidly excluded from both mother and child for a period of twenty-one or a hundred days, according to their rank, after the birth has taken place.⁵⁷ Among some of the tribes on the north-west coast of New Guinea a woman may not leave the house for months after childbirth. When she does go out, she must cover her head with a hood or mat; for if the sun were to shine upon her, it is thought that one of her male relations would die.⁵⁸ Again, mourners are everywhere taboo; accordingly in mourning the Ainos of Japan wear peculiar caps in order that the sun may not shine upon their heads.⁵⁹ During a solemn fast of three days the Indians of Costa Rica eat no salt, speak as little as possible, light no fires, and stay strictly indoors, or if they go out during the day they carefully cover themselves from the light of the sun, believing that exposure to the sun's rays would turn them black.⁶⁰ On Yule Night it has been customary in parts of Sweden from time immemorial to go on pilgrimage, whereby people learn many secret things and know what is to happen in the coming year. As a preparation for this pilgrimage, "some secrete themselves for three days previously in a dark cellar, so as to be shut out altogether from the light of [pg 21] heaven. Others retire at an early hour of the preceding morning to some out-of-the-way place, such as a hay-loft, where they bury themselves in the hay, that they may neither see nor hear any living creature; and here they remain, in silence and fasting, until after sundown; whilst there are those who think it sufficient if they rigidly abstain from food on the day before commencing their wanderings. During this period of probation a man ought not to see fire, but should this have happened, he must strike a light with flint and steel, whereby the evil that would otherwise have ensued will be obviated."⁶¹ During the sixteen days that a Pima Indian is undergoing purification for killing an Apache he may not see a blazing fire.⁶²

[The story of Prince Sunless.]

Acarnanian peasants tell of a handsome prince called Sunless, who would die if he saw the sun. So he lived in an underground palace on the site of the ancient Oeniadae, but at night he came forth and crossed the river to visit a famous enchantress who dwelt in a castle on the further bank. She was loth to part with him every night long before the sun was up, and as he turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties to linger, she hit upon the device of cutting the throats of all the cocks in the neighbourhood. So the prince, whose ear had learned to expect the shrill clarion of the birds as the signal of the growing light, tarried too long, and hardly had he reached the ford when the sun rose over the Aetolian mountains, and its fatal beams fell on him before he could regain his dark abode.⁶³

Notes:

[Girls at puberty forbidden to touch the ground and to see the sun; seclusion of girls at puberty among the A-Kamba; seclusion of girls at puberty among the Baganda.]

Now it is remarkable that the foregoing two rules—not to touch the ground and not to see the sun—are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at puberty in many parts of the world. Thus amongst the negroes of Loango girls at puberty are confined in separate huts, and they may not touch the ground with any part of their bare body.⁶⁴ Among the Zulus and kindred tribes of South Africa, when the first signs of puberty shew themselves "while a girl is walking, gathering wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day, so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, as would result from exposure to the sun's beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded" in a hut for some time.⁶⁵ During her seclusion, which lasts for about a fortnight, neither she nor the girls who wait upon her may drink any milk, lest the cattle should die. And should she be overtaken by the first flow while she is in the fields, she must, after hiding in the bush, scrupulously avoid all pathways in returning home.⁶⁶ A [pg 23] reason for this avoidance is assigned by the A-Kamba of British East Africa, whose girls under similar circumstances observe the same rule. "A girl's first menstruation is a very critical period of her life according to A-Kamba beliefs. If this condition appears when she is away from the village, say at work in the fields, she returns at once to her village, but is careful to walk through the grass and not on a path, for if she followed a path and a stranger accidentally trod on a spot of blood and then cohabited with a member of the opposite sex before the girl was better again, it is believed that she would never bear a child." She remains at home till the symptoms have ceased, and during this time she may be fed by none but her mother. When the flux is over, her father and mother are bound to cohabit with each other, else it is believed that the girl would be barren all her life.⁶⁷ Similarly, among the Baganda, when a girl menstruated for the first time she was secluded and not allowed to handle food; and at the end of her seclusion the kinsman with whom she was staying (for among the Baganda young people did not reside with their parents) was obliged to jump over his wife, which with the Baganda is regarded as equivalent to having intercourse with her. Should the girl happen to be living near her parents at the moment when she attained to puberty, she was expected on her recovery to inform them of the fact, whereupon her father jumped over her mother. Were this custom omitted, the Baganda, like the A-Kamba, thought that the girl would never have children or that they would die in infancy.⁶⁸ Thus the pretence of sexual intercourse between the parents or other relatives of [pg 24] the girl was a magical ceremony to ensure her fertility. It is significant that among the Baganda the first menstruation was often called a marriage, and the girl was spoken of as a bride.⁶⁹ These terms so applied point to a belief like that of the Siamese, that a girl's first menstruation results from her defloration by one of a host of aerial spirits, and that the wound thus inflicted is repeated afterwards every month by the same ghostly agency.⁷⁰ For a like reason, probably, the Baganda imagine that a woman who does not menstruate exerts a malign influence on gardens and makes them barren⁷¹ if she works in them. For not being herself fertilized by a spirit, how can she fertilize the garden?

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of the Tanganyika plateau.]

Among the Amambwe, Winamwanga, Alungu, and other tribes of the great plateau to the west of Lake Tanganyika, "when a young girl knows that she has attained puberty, she forthwith leaves her mother's hut, and hides herself in the long grass near the village, covering her face with a cloth and weeping bitterly. Towards sunset one of the older women—who, as directress of the ceremonies, is called nachimbusa—follows her, places a cooking-pot by the cross-roads, and boils therein a concoction of various herbs, with which she anoints the neophyte. At nightfall the girl is carried on the old woman's back to her mother's hut. When the customary period of a few days has elapsed, she is allowed to cook again, after first whitewashing the floor of the hut. But, by the following month, the preparations for her initiation are complete. The novice must remain in her hut throughout the whole period of initiation, and is carefully guarded by the old women, who accompany her whenever she leaves her quarters, veiling her head with a native cloth. The ceremonies last for at least one month." During this period of seclusion, drumming and songs are kept up within the mother's hut by the village women, and no male, except, it is said, the father of twins, is allowed to enter. The directress of the rites and the older women instruct the [pg 25] young girl as to the elementary facts of life, the duties of marriage, and the rules of conduct, decorum, and hospitality to be observed by a married woman. Amongst other things the damsel must submit to a series of tests such as leaping over fences, thrusting her head into a collar made of thorns, and so on. The lessons which she receives are illustrated by mud figures of animals and of the common objects of domestic life. Moreover, the directress of studies embellishes the walls of the hut with rude pictures, each with its special significance and song, which must be understood and learned by the girl.⁷² In the foregoing account the rule that a damsel at puberty may neither see the sun nor touch the ground seems implied by the statement that on the first discovery of her condition she hides in long grass and is carried home after sunset on the back of an old woman.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of British Central Africa.]

Among the Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, in British Central Africa, when a young girl finds that she has become a woman, she stands silent by the pathway leading to the village, her face wrapt in her calico. An old woman, finding her there, takes her off to a stream to bathe; after that the girl is secluded for six days in the old woman's hut. She eats her porridge out of an old basket and her relish, in which no salt is put, from a potsherd. The basket is afterwards thrown away. On the seventh day the aged matrons gather together, go with the girl to a stream, and throw her into the water. In returning they sing songs, and the old woman, who directs the proceedings, carries the maiden on her back. Then they spread a mat and fetch her husband and set the two down on the mat and shave his head. When it is dark, the old women escort the girl to her husband's hut. There the ndiwo relish is cooking on the fire. During the night the woman rises and puts some salt in the pot. Next morning, before dawn, while all is dark and the villagers have not yet opened their doors, the young married woman goes off and gives some of the relish to her mother and to the old woman who was mistress of the ceremony. This relish she sets down at the doors of their [pg 26] houses and goes away. And in the morning, when the sun has risen and all is light in the village, the two women open their doors, and there they find the relish with the salt in it; and they take of it and rub it on their feet and under their arm-pits; and if there are little children in the house, they eat of it. And if the young wife has a kinsman who is absent from the village, some of the relish is put on a splinter of bamboo and kept against his return, that when he comes he, too, may rub his feet with it. But if the woman finds that her husband is impotent, she does not rise betimes and go out in the dark to lay the relish at the doors of her mother and the old woman. And in the morning, when the sun is up and all the village is light, the old women open their doors, and see no relish there, and they know what has happened, and so they go wilily to work. For they persuade the husband to consult the diviner that he may discover how to cure his impotence; and while he is closeted with the wizard, they fetch another man, who finishes the ceremony with the young wife, in order that the relish may be given out and that people may rub their feet with it. But if it happens that when a girl comes to maturity she is not yet betrothed to any man, and therefore has no husband to go to, the matrons tell her that she must go to a lover instead. And this is the custom which they call chigango. So in the evening she takes her cooking pot and relish and hies away to the quarters of the young bachelors, and they very civilly sleep somewhere else that night. And in the morning the girl goes back to the kuka hut.⁷³

[Abstinence from salt associated with a rule of chastity in many tribes.]

From the foregoing account it appears that among these tribes no sooner has a girl attained to womanhood than she is expected and indeed required to give proof of her newly acquired powers by cohabiting with a man, whether her husband or another. And the abstinence from salt during the girl's seclusion is all the more remarkable because as soon as the seclusion is over she has to use salt for a particular purpose, to which the people evidently attach very great importance, since in the event of her husband proving impotent she is even compelled, apparently, to commit [pg 27] adultery in order that the salted relish may be given out as usual. In this connexion it deserves to be noted that among the Wagogo of German East Africa women at their monthly periods may not sleep with their husbands and may not put salt in food.⁷⁴ A similar rule is observed by the Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, with whose puberty customs we are here concerned. Among them, we are told, "some superstition exists with regard to the use of salt. A woman during her monthly sickness must on no account put salt into any food she is cooking, lest she give her husband or children a disease called tsempo (chitsoko soko) but calls a child to put it in, or, as the song goes, 'Natira nichere ni bondo chifukwa n'kupanda mwana' and pours in the salt by placing it on her knee, because there is no child handy. Should a party of villagers have gone to make salt, all sexual intercourse is forbidden among the people of the village, until the people who have gone to make the salt (from grass) return. When they do come back, they must make their entry into the village at night, and no one must see them. Then one of the elders of the village sleeps with his wife. She then cooks some relish, into which she puts some of the salt. This relish is handed round to the people who went to make the salt, who rub it on their feet and under their armpits."⁷⁵ Hence it would seem that in the mind of these people abstinence from salt is somehow associated with the idea of chastity. The same association meets us in the customs of many peoples in various parts of the world. For example, ancient Hindoo ritual prescribed that for three nights after a husband had brought his bride home, the two should sleep on the ground, remain chaste, and eat no salt.⁷⁶ Among the Baganda, when a man was making a net, he had to refrain from eating salt and meat and from living with his wife; these restrictions he observed until the net took its first catch of fish. Similarly, so long as a fisherman's nets or traps were in the water, he must live apart from his wife, and neither he nor she nor their children might eat salt or [pg 28] meat.⁷⁷ Evidence of the same sort could be multiplied,⁷⁸ but without going into it further we may say that for some reason which is not obvious to us primitive man connects salt with the intercourse of the sexes and therefore forbids the use of that condiment in a variety of circumstances in which he deems continence necessary or desirable. As there is nothing which the savage regards as a greater bar between the sexes than the state of menstruation, he naturally prohibits the use of salt to women and girls at their monthly periods.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes about Lake Nyassa and on the Zambesi.]

With the Awa-nkonde, a tribe at the northern end of Lake Nyassa, it is a rule that after her first menstruation a girl must be kept apart, with a few companions of her own sex, in a darkened house. The floor is covered with dry banana leaves, but no fire may be lit in the house, which is called "the house of the Awasungu," that is, "of maidens who have no hearts."⁷⁹ When a girl reaches puberty, the Wafiomi of Eastern Africa hold a festival at which they make a noise with a peculiar kind of rattle. After that the girl remains for a year in the large common hut (tembe), where she occupies a special compartment screened off from the men's quarters. She may not cut her hair or touch food, but is fed by other women. At night, however, she quits the hut and dances with young men.⁸⁰ Among the Barotse or Marotse of the upper Zambesi, "when a girl arrives at the age of puberty she is sent into the fields, where a hut is constructed far from the village. There, with two or three companions, she spends a month, returning home late and starting before dawn in order not to be seen by the men. The women of the village visit her, bringing food and honey, and singing and dancing to amuse her. At the end of a month her husband comes and fetches her. It is only after this ceremony that women have the right to smear themselves with ochre."⁸¹ We may suspect that the chief reason why [pg 29] the girl during her seclusion may visit her home only by night is a fear, not so much lest she should be seen by men, as that she might be seen by the sun. Among the Wafiomi, as we have just learned, the young woman in similar circumstances is even free to dance with men, provided always that the dance is danced at night. The ceremonies among the Barotse or Marotse are somewhat more elaborate for a girl of the royal family. She is shut up for three months in a place which is kept secret from the public; only the women of her family know where it is. There she sits alone in the darkness of the hut, waited on by female slaves, who are strictly forbidden to speak and may communicate with her and with each other only by signs. During all this time, though she does nothing, she eats much, and when at last she comes forth, her appearance is quite changed, so fat has she grown. She is then led by night to the river and bathed in presence of all the women of the village. Next day she flaunts before the public in her gayest attire, her head bedecked with ornaments and her face mottled with red paint. So everybody knows what has happened.⁸²

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Thonga on Delagoa Bay.]

Among the northern clans of the Thonga tribe, in South-Eastern Africa, about Delagoa Bay, when a girl thinks that the time of her nubility is near, she chooses an adoptive mother, perhaps in a neighbouring village. When the symptoms appear, she flies away from her own village and repairs to that of her adopted mother "to weep near her." After that she is secluded with several other girls in the same condition for a month. They are shut up in a hut, and whenever they come outside they must wear a dirty greasy cloth over their faces as a veil. Every morning they are led to a pool and plunged in the water up to their necks. Initiated girls or women accompany them, singing obscene songs and driving away with sticks any man who meets them; for no man may see a girl during this time of seclusion. If he saw her, it is said that he would be struck blind. On their return from the river, the girls are again imprisoned in the hut, where they remain wet and shivering, for they may not go near the fire to warm themselves. During their seclusion they listen to lascivious songs sung by [pg 30] grown women and are instructed in sexual matters. At the end of the month the adoptive mother brings the girl home to her true mother and presents her with a pot of beer.⁸³

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Caffre tribes of South Africa.]

Among the Caffre tribes of South Africa the period of a girl's seclusion at puberty varies with the rank of her father. If he is a rich man, it may last twelve days; if he is a chief, it may last twenty-four days.⁸⁴ And when it is over, the girl rubs herself over with red earth, and strews finely powdered red earth on the ground, before she leaves the hut where she has been shut up. Finally, though she was forbidden to drink milk all the days of her separation, she washes out her mouth with milk, and is from that moment regarded as a full-grown woman.⁸⁵ Afterwards, in the dusk of the evening, she carries away all the objects with which she came into contact in the hut during her seclusion and buries them secretly in a sequestered spot.⁸⁶ When the girl is a chief's daughter the ceremonies at her liberation from the hut are more elaborate than usual. She is led forth from the hut by a son of her father's councillor, who, wearing the wings of a blue crane, the badge of bravery, on his head, escorts her to the cattle kraal, where cows are slaughtered and dancing takes place. Large skins full of milk are sent to the spot from neighbouring villages; and after the dances are over the girl drinks milk for the first time since the day she entered into retreat. But the first mouthful is drunk by the girl's aunt or other female relative who had charge of her during her seclusion; and a little of it is poured on the fire-place.⁸⁷ Amongst the Zulus, when the girl was a princess royal, the end of her time of separation was celebrated by a sort of saturnalia: law and order were for the time being in abeyance: every man, woman, and child might appropriate any article of property: the king abstained from interfering; and if during this reign of misrule he was robbed of anything he valued he could only [pg 31] recover it by paying a fine.⁸⁸ Among the Basutos, when girls at puberty are bathed as usual by the matrons in a river, they are hidden separately in the turns and bends of the stream, and told to cover their heads, as they will be visited by a large serpent. Their limbs are then plastered with clay, little masks of straw are put on their faces, and thus arrayed they daily follow each other in procession, singing melancholy airs, to the fields, there to learn the labours of husbandry in which a great part of their adult life will be passed.⁸⁹ We may suppose, though we are not told, that the straw masks which they wear in these processions are intended to hide their faces from the gaze of men and the rays of the sun.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in the Lower Congo.]

Among the tribes in the lower valley of the Congo, such as the Bavili, when a girl arrives at puberty, she has to pass two or three months in seclusion in a small hut built for the purpose. The hair of her head is shaved off, and every day the whole of her body is smeared with a red paint (takulla) made from a powdered wood mixed with water. Some of her companions reside in the hut with her and prepare the paint for her use. A woman is appointed to take charge of the hut and to keep off intruders. At the end of her confinement she is taken to water by the women of her family and bathed; the paint is rubbed off her body, her arms and legs are loaded with brass rings, and she is led in solemn procession under an umbrella to her husband's house. If these ceremonies were not performed, the people believe that the girl would be barren or would give birth to monsters, that the rain would cease to fall, the earth to bear fruit, and the fishing to be successful.⁹⁰ Such serious importance do these savages [pg 32] ascribe to the performance of rites which to us seem so childish.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in New Ireland.]

In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. "I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly 'tabu.' Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus-tree, sewn quite close together so that no light and little or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief, and told him that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that I might make them a present of a few beads. He told me that it was 'tabu,' forbidden for any men but their own relations to look at them; but I suppose the promised beads [pg 33] acted as an inducement, and so he sent away for some old lady who had charge, and who alone is allowed to open the doors. While we were waiting we could hear the girls talking to the chief in a querulous way as if objecting to something or expressing their fears. The old woman came at length and certainly she did not seem a very pleasant jailor or guardian; nor did she seem to favour the request of the chief to allow us to see the girls, as she regarded us with anything but pleasant looks. However, she had to undo the door when the chief told her to do so, and then the girls peeped out at us, and, when told to do so, they held out their hands for the beads. I, however, purposely sat at some distance away and merely held out the beads to them, as I wished to draw them quite outside, that I might inspect the inside of the cages. This desire of mine gave rise to another difficulty, as these girls were not allowed to put their feet to the ground all the time they were confined in these places. However, they wished to get the beads, and so the old lady had to go outside and collect a lot of pieces of wood and bamboo, which she placed on the ground, and then going to one of the girls, she helped her down and held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. The girls are never allowed to come out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to each cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast provided for them. One of them was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and the chief told us that she had been there for five years, but would soon be taken out now. The other two were about eight and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several years [pg 34] longer."⁹¹ A more recent observer has described the custom as it is observed on the western coast of New Ireland. He says: "A buck is the name of a little house, not larger than an ordinary hen-coop, in which a little girl is shut up, sometimes for weeks only, and at other times for months.... Briefly stated, the custom is this. Girls, on attaining puberty or betrothal, are enclosed in one of these little coops for a considerable time. They must remain there night and day. We saw two of these girls in two coops; the girls were not more than ten years old, still they were lying in a doubled-up position, as their little houses would not admit of them lying in any other way. These two coops were inside a large house; but the chief, in consideration of a present of a couple of tomahawks, ordered the ends to be torn out of the house to admit the light, so that we might photograph the buck. The occupant was allowed to put her face through an opening to be photographed, in consideration of another present."⁹² As a consequence of their long enforced idleness in the shade the girls grow fat and their dusky complexion bleaches to a more pallid hue. Both their corpulence and their pallor are regarded as beauties.⁹³

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in New Guinea, Borneo, Ceram and Yap.]

In Kabadi, a district of British New Guinea, "daughters of chiefs, when they are about twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two or three years, never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from the house, and the house is so shaded that the sun cannot shine on them."⁹⁴ Among the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of German New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat on. Moreover, she may not touch the ground with her feet; hence if she is obliged to quit the house for a short time, she is muffled up in mats and walks on two halves of a coconut shell, which are fastened like sandals to her feet by creeping plants. During her seclusion she is in charge of her aunts or other female relatives. At the end of the time she bathes, her person is loaded with ornaments, her face is grotesquely painted with red stripes on a white ground, and thus adorned she is brought forth in public to be admired by everybody. She is now marriageable.⁹⁵ Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years are shut up in a little room or cell of the house, and cut off from all intercourse with the world for a long time. The cell, like the rest of the house, is raised on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single small window opening on a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total darkness. She may not leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the most necessary purposes. None of her family may see her all the time she is shut up, but a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During her lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the long want of exercise, and [pg 36] when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shewn the sun, the earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born. Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared with his blood.⁹⁶ In Ceram girls at puberty were formerly shut up by themselves in a hut which was kept dark.⁹⁷ In Yap, one of the Caroline Islands, should a girl be overtaken by her first menstruation on the public road, she may not sit down on the earth, but must beg for a coco-nut shell to put under her. She is shut up for several days in a small hut at a distance from her parents' house, and afterwards she is bound to sleep for a hundred days in one of the special houses which are provided for the use of menstruous women.⁹⁸

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in Mabuiag, Torres Straits.]

In the island of Mabuiag, Torres Straits, when the signs of puberty appear on a girl, a circle of bushes is made in a dark corner of the house. Here, decked with shoulder-belts, armlets, leglets just below the knees, and anklets, wearing a chaplet on her head, and shell ornaments in her ears, on her chest, and on her back, she squats in the midst of the bushes, which are piled so high round about her that only her head is visible. In this state of seclusion she must remain for three months. All this time the sun may not shine upon her, but at night she is allowed to slip out of the hut, and the bushes that hedge her in are then changed. She may not feed herself or handle food, but is fed by one or two old women, her maternal aunts, who are especially appointed to look after her. One of these women cooks food for her at a special fire in the forest. The girl is forbidden to eat turtle or [pg 37] turtle eggs during the season when the turtles are breeding; but no vegetable food is refused her. No man, not even her own father, may come into the house while her seclusion lasts; for if her father saw her at this time he would certainly have bad luck in his fishing, and would probably smash his canoe the very next time he went out in it. At the end of the three months she is carried down to a fresh-water creek by her attendants, hanging on to their shoulders in such a way that her feet do not touch the ground, while the women of the tribe form a ring round her, and thus escort her to the beach. Arrived at the shore, she is stripped of her ornaments, and the bearers stagger with her into the creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches back to the village in a single rank, the girl walking in the centre between her two old aunts, who hold her by the wrists. The husbands of her aunts now receive her and lead her into the house of one of them, where all partake of food, and the girl is allowed once more to feed herself in the usual manner. A dance follows, in which the girl takes a prominent part, dancing between the husbands of the two aunts who had charge of her in her retirement.⁹⁹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in Northern Australia.]

Among the Yaraikanna tribe of Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland, a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man may see her, though any woman may. She stays in a hut or shelter specially made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine. She may not see the sun, and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down, otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased. During her seclusion [pg 38] she may eat nothing that lives in salt water, or a snake would kill her. An old woman waits upon her and supplies her with roots, yams, and water.¹⁰⁰ Some tribes are wont to bury their girls at such seasons more or less deeply in the ground, perhaps in order to hide them from the light of the sun. Thus the Larrakeeyah tribe in the northern territory of South Australia used to cover a girl up with dirt for three days at her first monthly period.¹⁰¹ In similar circumstances the Otati tribe, on the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula, make an excavation in the ground, where the girl squats. A bower is then built over the hole, and sand is thrown on the young woman till she is covered up to the hips. In this condition she remains for the first day, but comes out at night. So long as the period lasts, she stays in the bower during the day-time, but is not again covered with sand. Afterwards her body is painted red and white from the head to the hips, and she returns to the camp, where she squats first on the right side, then on the left side, and then on the lap of her future husband, who has been previously selected for her.¹⁰² Among the natives of the Pennefather River, in the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, when a girl menstruates for the first time, her mother takes her away from the camp to some secluded spot, where she digs a circular hole in the sandy soil under the shade of a tree. In this hole the girl squats with crossed legs and is covered with sand from the waist downwards. A digging-stick is planted firmly in the sand on each side of her, and the place is surrounded by a fence of bushes except in front, where her mother kindles a fire. Here the girl stays all day, sitting with her arms crossed and the palms of her hands resting on the sand. She may not move her arms except to take food from her mother or to scratch herself; and in scratching herself she may not touch herself with her own hands, but must use for the purpose a splinter of wood, which, when it is not in use, is stuck in her hair. She may speak to nobody but her mother; indeed nobody else would [pg 39] think of coming near her. At evening she lays hold of the two digging-sticks and by their help frees herself from the superincumbent weight of sand and returns to the camp. Next morning she is again buried in the sand under the shade of the tree and remains there again till evening. This she does daily for five days. On her return at evening on the fifth day her mother decorates her with a waist-band, a forehead-band, and a necklet of pearl-shell, ties green parrot feathers round her arms and wrists and across her chest, and smears her body, back and front, from the waist upwards with blotches of red, white, and yellow paint. She has in like manner to be buried in the sand at her second and third menstruations, but at the fourth she is allowed to remain in camp, only signifying her condition by wearing a basket of empty shells on her back.¹⁰³ Among the Kia blacks of the Prosperine River, on the east coast of Queensland, a girl at puberty has to sit or lie down in a shallow pit away from the camp; a rough hut of bushes is erected over her to protect her from the inclemency of the weather. There she stays for about a week, waited on by her mother and sister, the only persons to whom she may speak. She is allowed to drink water, but may not touch it with her hands; and she may scratch herself a little with a mussel-shell. This seclusion is repeated at her second and third monthly periods, but when the third is over she is brought to her husband bedecked with savage finery. Eagle-hawk or cockatoo feathers are stuck in her hair: a shell hangs over her forehead: grass bugles encircle her neck and an apron of opossum skin her waist: strings are tied to her arms and wrists; and her whole body is mottled with patterns drawn in red, white, and yellow pigments and charcoal.¹⁰⁴

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in the islands of Torres Straits.]

Among the Uiyumkwi tribe in Red Island the girl lies at full length in a shallow trench dug in the foreshore, and sand is lightly thrown over her legs and body up to the breasts, which appear not to be covered. A rough shelter of boughs is then built over her, and thus she [pg 40] remains lying for a few hours. Then she and her attendant go into the bush and look for food, which they cook at a fire close to the shelter. They sleep under the boughs, the girl remaining secluded from the camp but apparently not being again buried. At the end of the symptoms she stands over hot stones and water is poured over her, till, trickling from her body on the stones, it is converted into steam and envelops her in a cloud of vapour. Then she is painted with red and white stripes and returns to the camp. If her future husband has already been chosen, she goes to him and they eat some food together, which the girl has previously brought from the bush.¹⁰⁵ In Prince of Wales Island, Torres Strait, the treatment of the patient is similar, but lasts for about two months. During the day she lies covered up with sand in a shallow hole on the beach, over which a hut is built. At night she may get out of the hole, but she may not leave the hut. Her paternal aunt looks after her, and both of them must abstain from eating turtle, dugong, and the heads of fish. Were they to eat the heads of fish no more fish would be caught. During the time of the girl's seclusion, the aunt who waits upon her has the right to enter any house and take from it anything she likes without payment, provided she does so before the sun rises. When the time of her retirement has come to an end, the girl bathes in the sea while the morning star is rising, and after performing various other ceremonies is readmitted to society.¹⁰⁶ In Saibai, another island of Torres Straits, at her first monthly sickness a girl lives secluded in the forest for about a fortnight, during which no man may see her; even the women who have spoken to her in the forest must wash in salt water before they speak to a man. Two girls wait upon and feed the damsel, putting the food into her mouth, [pg 41] for she is not allowed to touch it with her own hands. Nor may she eat dugong and turtle. At the end of a fortnight the girl and her attendants bathe in salt water while the tide is running out. Afterwards they are clean, may again speak to men without ceremony, and move freely about the village. In Yam and Tutu a girl at puberty retires for a month to the forest, where no man nor even her own mother may look upon her. She is waited on by women who stand to her in a certain relationship (mowai), apparently her paternal aunts. She is blackened all over with charcoal and wears a long petticoat reaching below her knees. During her seclusion the married women of the village often assemble in the forest and dance, and the girl's aunts relieve the tedium of the proceedings by thrashing her from time to time as a useful preparation for matrimony. At the end of a month the whole party go into the sea, and the charcoal is washed off the girl. After that she is decorated, her body blackened again, her hair reddened with ochre, and in the evening she is brought back to her father's house, where she is received with weeping and lamentation because she has been so long away.¹⁰⁷

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of California]

Among the Indians of California a girl at her first menstruation "was thought to be possessed of a particular degree of supernatural power, and this was not always regarded as entirely defiling or malevolent. Often, however, there was a strong feeling of the power of evil inherent in her condition. Not only was she secluded from her family and the community, but an attempt was made to seclude the world from her. One of the injunctions most strongly laid upon her was not to look about her. She kept her head bowed and was forbidden to see the world and the sun. Some tribes covered her with a blanket. Many of the customs in this connection resembled those of the North Pacific Coast most strongly, such as the prohibition to the girl to touch or scratch her head with her hand, a special implement being furnished her for the purpose. Sometimes [pg 42] she could eat only when fed and in other cases fasted altogether. Some form of public ceremony, often accompanied by a dance and sometimes by a form of ordeal for the girl, was practised nearly everywhere. Such ceremonies were well developed in Southern California, where a number of actions symbolical of the girl's maturity and subsequent life were performed."¹⁰⁸ Thus among the Maidu Indians of California a girl at puberty remained shut up in a small separate hut. For five days she might not eat flesh or fish nor feed herself, but was fed by her mother or other old woman. She had a basket, plate, and cup for her own use, and a stick with which to scratch her head, for she might not scratch it with her fingers. At the end of five days she took a warm bath and, while she still remained in the hut and plied the scratching-stick on her head, was privileged to feed herself with her own hands. After five days more she bathed in the river, after which her parents gave a great feast in her honour. At the feast the girl was dressed in her best, and anybody might ask her parents for anything he pleased, and they had to give it, even if it was the hand of their daughter in marriage. During the period of her seclusion in the hut the girl was allowed to go by night to her parents' house and listen to songs sung by her friends and relations, who assembled for the purpose. Among the songs were some that related to the different roots and seeds which in these tribes it is the business of women to gather for food. While the singers sang, she sat by herself in a corner of the house muffled up completely in mats and skins; no man or boy might come near her.¹⁰⁹ Among the Hupa, another Indian tribe of California, when a girl had reached maturity her male relatives danced all night for nine successive nights, while the girl remained apart, eating no meat and blindfolded. But on the tenth night she entered the house and took part in the last dance.¹¹⁰ Among the Wintun, [pg 43] another Californian tribe, a girl at puberty was banished from the camp and lived alone in a distant booth, fasting rigidly from animal food; it was death to any person to touch or even approach her.¹¹¹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of Washington State.]

In the interior of Washington State, about Colville, "the customs of the Indians, in relation to the treatment of females, are singular. On the first appearance of the menses, they are furnished with provisions, and sent into the woods, to remain concealed for two days; for they have a superstition, that if a man should be seen or met with during that time, death will be the consequence. At the end of the second day, the woman is permitted to return to the lodge, when she is placed in a hut just large enough for her to lie in at full length, in which she is compelled to remain for twenty days, cut off from all communication with her friends, and is obliged to hide her face at the appearance of a man. Provisions are supplied her daily. After this, she is required to perform repeated ablutions, before she can resume her place in the family. At every return, the women go into seclusion for two or more days."¹¹² Among the Chinook Indians who inhabited the coast of Washington State, from Shoalwater Bay as far as Grey's Harbour, when a chief's daughter attained to puberty, she was hidden for five days from the view of the people; she might not look at them nor at the sky, nor might she pick berries. It was believed that if she were to look at the sky, the weather would be bad; that if she picked berries, it would rain; and that when she hung her towel of cedar-bark on a spruce-tree, the tree withered up at once. She went out of the house by a separate door and bathed in a creek far from the village. She fasted for some days, and for many days more she might not eat fresh food.¹¹³

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island.]

Amongst the Aht or Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island, when girls reach puberty they are placed in a sort of gallery in the house "and are there surrounded [pg 44] completely with mats, so that neither the sun nor any fire can be seen. In this cage they remain for several days. Water is given them, but no food. The longer a girl remains in this retirement the greater honour is it to the parents; but she is disgraced for life if it is known that she has seen fire or the sun during this initiatory ordeal."¹¹⁴ Pictures of the mythical thunder-bird are painted on the screens behind which she hides. During her seclusion she may neither move nor lie down, but must always sit in a squatting posture. She may not touch her hair with her hands, but is allowed to scratch her head with a comb or a piece of bone provided for the purpose. To scratch her body is also forbidden, as it is believed that every scratch would leave a scar. For eight months after reaching maturity she may not eat any fresh food, particularly salmon; moreover, she must eat by herself, and use a cup and dish of her own.¹¹⁵

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands.]

Among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands girls at puberty were secluded behind screens in the house for about twenty days. In some parts of the islands separate fires were provided for the girls, and they went out and in by a separate door at the back of the house. If a girl at such a time was obliged to go out by the front door, all the weapons, gambling-sticks, medicine, and other articles had to be removed from the house till her return, for otherwise it was thought that they would be unlucky; and if there was a good hunter in the house, he also had to go out at the same time on pain of losing his good luck if he remained. During several months or even half a year the girl was bound to wear a peculiar cloak or hood made of cedar-bark, nearly conical in shape and reaching [pg 45] down below the breast, but open before the face. After the twenty days were over the girl took a bath; none of the water might be spilled, it had all to be taken back to the woods, else the girl would not live long. On the west coast of the islands the damsel might eat nothing but black cod for four years; for the people believed that other kinds of fish would become scarce if she partook of them. At Kloo the young woman at such times was forbidden to look at the sea, and for forty days she might not gaze at the fire; for a whole year she might not walk on the beach below high-water mark, because then the tide would come in, covering part of the food supply, and there would be bad weather. For five years she might not eat salmon, or the fish would be scarce; and when her family went to a salmon-creek, she landed from the canoe at the mouth of the creek and came to the smoke-house from behind; for were she to see a salmon leap, all the salmon might leave the creek. Among the Haidas of Masset it was believed that if the girl looked at the sky, the weather would be bad, and that if she stepped over a salmon-creek, all the salmon would disappear.¹¹⁶

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Tlingit Indians of Alaska.]

Amongst the Tlingit (Thlinkeet) or Kolosh Indians of Alaska, when a girl shewed signs of womanhood she used to be confined to a little hut or cage, which was completely blocked up with the exception of a small air-hole. In this dark and filthy abode she had to remain a year, without fire, exercise, or associates. Only her mother and a female slave might supply her with nourishment. Her food was put in at the little window; she had to drink out of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time of her seclusion was afterwards reduced in some places to six or three months or even less. She had to wear a sort of hat with long flaps, [pg 46] that her gaze might not pollute the sky; for she was thought unfit for the sun to shine upon, and it was imagined that her look would destroy the luck of a hunter, fisher, or gambler, turn things to stone, and do other mischief. At the end of her confinement her old clothes were burnt, new ones were made, and a feast was given, at which a slit was cut in her under lip parallel to the mouth, and a piece of wood or shell was inserted to keep the aperture open.¹¹⁷

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Tsetsaut and Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia.]

In the Tsetsaut tribe of British Columbia a girl at puberty wears a large hat of skin which comes down over her face and screens it from the sun. It is believed that if she were to expose her face to the sun or to the sky, rain would fall. The hat protects her face also against the fire, which ought not to strike her skin; to shield her hands she wears mittens. In her mouth she carries the tooth of an animal to prevent her own teeth from becoming hollow. For a whole year she may not see blood unless her face is blackened; otherwise she would grow blind. For two years she wears the hat and lives in a hut by herself, although she is allowed to see other people. At the end of two years a man takes the hat from her head and throws it away.¹¹⁸ In the Bilqula or Bella Coola tribe of British Columbia, when a girl attains puberty she must stay in the shed which serves as her bedroom, where she has a separate fireplace. She is not allowed to descend to the main part of the house, and may not sit by the fire of the family. For four days she is [pg 47] bound to remain motionless in a sitting posture. She fasts during the day, but is allowed a little food and drink very early in the morning. After the four days' seclusion she may leave her room, but only through a separate opening cut in the floor, for the houses are raised on piles. She may not yet come into the chief room. In leaving the house she wears a large hat which protects her face against the rays of the sun. It is believed that if the sun were to shine on her face her eyes would suffer. She may pick berries on the hills, but may not come near the river or sea for a whole year. Were she to eat fresh salmon she would lose her senses, or her mouth would be changed into a long beak.¹¹⁹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Tinneh Indians of British Columbia.]

Among the Tinneh Indians about Stuart Lake, Babine Lake, and Fraser Lake in British Columbia "girls verging on maturity, that is when their breasts begin to form, take swans' feathers mixed with human hair and plait bands, which they tie round their wrists and ankles to secure long life. At this time they are careful that the dishes out of which they eat, are used by no other person, and wholly devoted to their own use; during this period they eat nothing but dog fish, and starvation only will drive them to eat either fresh fish or meat. When their first periodical sickness comes on, they are fed by their mothers or nearest female relation by themselves, and on no account will they touch their food with their own hands. They are at this time also careful not to touch their heads with their hands, and keep a small stick to scratch their heads with. They remain outside the lodge, all the time they are in this state, in a hut made for the purpose. During all this period they wear a skull-cap made of skin to fit very tight; this is never taken off until their first monthly sickness ceases; they also wear a strip of black paint about one inch wide across their eyes, and wear a fringe of shells, bones, etc., hanging down from their foreheads to below their eyes; and this is never taken off [pg 48] till the second monthly period arrives and ceases, when the nearest male relative makes a feast; after which she is considered a fully matured woman; but she has to refrain from eating anything fresh for one year after her first monthly sickness; she may however eat partridge, but it must be cooked in the crop of the bird to render it harmless. I would have thought it impossible to perform this feat had I not seen it done. The crop is blown out, and a small bent willow put round the mouth; it is then filled with water, and the meat being first minced up, put in also, then put on the fire and boiled till cooked. Their reason for hanging fringes before their eyes, is to hinder any bad medicine man from harming them during this critical period: they are very careful not to drink whilst facing a medicine man, and do so only when their backs are turned to him. All these habits are left off when the girl is a recognised woman, with the exception of their going out of the lodge and remaining in a hut, every time their periodical sickness comes on. This is a rigidly observed law with both single and married women."¹²⁰

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Tinneh Indians of Alaska.]

Among the Hareskin Tinneh a girl at puberty was secluded for five days in a hut made specially for the purpose; she might only drink out of a tube made from a swan's bone, and for a month she might not break a hare's bones, nor taste blood, nor eat the heart or fat of animals, nor birds' eggs.¹²¹ Among the Tinneh Indians of the middle Yukon valley, in Alaska, the period of the girl's seclusion lasts exactly a lunar month; for the day of the moon on which the symptoms first occur is noted, and she is sequestered until the same day of the next moon. If the season is winter, a corner of the house is curtained off for her use by a blanket or a sheet of canvas; if it is summer, a small tent is erected for her near the common one. Here she lives and sleeps. She wears a long robe and a large [pg 49] hood, which she must pull down over her eyes whenever she leaves the hut, and she must keep it down till she returns. She may not speak to a man nor see his face, much less touch his clothes or anything that belongs to him; for if she did so, though no harm would come to her, he would grow unmanly. She has her own dishes for eating out of and may use no other; at Kaltag she must suck the water through a swan's bone without applying her lips to the cup. She may eat no fresh meat or fish except the flesh of the porcupine. She may not undress, but sleeps with all her clothes on, even her mittens. In her socks she wears, next to the skin, the horny soles cut from the feet of a porcupine, in order that for the rest of her life her shoes may never wear out. Round her waist she wears a cord to which are tied the heads of femurs of a porcupine; because of all animals known to the Tinneh the porcupine suffers least in parturition, it simply drops its young and continues to walk or skip about as if nothing had happened. Hence it is easy to see that a girl who wears these portions of a porcupine about her waist, will be delivered just as easily as the animal. To make quite sure of this, if anybody happens to kill a porcupine big with young while the girl is undergoing her period of separation, the foetus is given to her, and she lets it slide down between her shirt and her body so as to fall on the ground like an infant.¹²² Here the imitation of childbirth is a piece of homoeopathic or imitative magic designed to facilitate the effect which it simulates.¹²³

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia.]

Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when a girl attained puberty, she was at once separated from all the people. A conical hut of fir branches and bark was erected at some little distance from the other houses, and in it the girl had to squat on her heels during the day. Often a deep circular hole was dug in the hut and the girl squatted in the hole, with her head projecting above the surface of the ground. She might quit the hut for various purposes in the early morning, but had always to be back at sunrise. On the first appearance of the symptoms her face was [pg 50] painted red all over, and the paint was renewed every morning during her term of seclusion. A heavy blanket swathed her body from top to toe, and during the first four days she wore a conical cap made of small fir branches, which reached below the breast but left an opening for the face. In her hair was fastened an implement made of deer-bone with which she scratched herself. For the first four days she might neither wash nor eat, but a little water was given her in a birch-bark cup painted red, and she sucked up the liquid through a tube made out of the leg of a crane, a swan, or a goose, for her lips might not touch the surface of the water. After the four days she was allowed, during the rest of the period of isolation, to eat, to wash, to lie down, to comb her hair, and to drink of streams and springs. But in drinking at these sources she had still to use her tube, otherwise the spring would dry up. While her seclusion lasted she performed by night various ceremonies, which were supposed to exert a beneficial influence on her future life. For example, she ran as fast as she could, praying at the same time to the Earth or Nature that she might be fleet of foot and tireless of limb. She dug trenches, in order that in after life she might be able to dig well and to work hard. These and other ceremonies she repeated for four nights or mornings in succession, four times each morning, and each time she supplicated the Dawn of the Day. Among the Lower Thompson Indians she carried a staff for one night; and when the day was breaking she leaned the staff against the stump of a tree and prayed to the Dawn that she might be blessed with a good husband, who was symbolized by the staff. She also wandered some nights to lonely parts of the mountains, where she would dance, imploring the spirits to pity and protect her during her future life; then, the dance and prayer over, she would lie down on the spot and fall asleep. Again, she carried four stones in her bosom to a spring, where she spat upon the stones and threw them one after the other into the water, praying that all disease might leave her, as these stones did. Also she ran four times in the early morning with two small stones in her bosom; and as she ran the stones slipped down between her bare body and her clothes and fell to the [pg 51] ground. At the same time she prayed to the Dawn that when she should be with child, she might be delivered as easily as she was delivered of these stones. But whatever exercises she performed or prayers she offered on the lonely mountains during the hours of darkness or while the morning light was growing in the east, she must always be back in her little hut before the sun rose. There she often passed the tedious hours away picking the needles, one by one, from the cones on two large branches of fir, which hung from the roof of her hut on purpose to provide her with occupation. And as she picked she prayed to the fir-branch that she might never be lazy, but always quick and active at work. During her seclusion, too, she had to make miniatures of all the articles that Indian women make, or used to make, such as baskets, mats, ropes, and thread. This she did in order that afterwards she might be able to make the real things properly. Four large fir-branches also were placed in front of the hut, so that when she went out or in, she had to step over them. The branches were renewed every morning and the old ones thrown away into the water, while the girl prayed, "May I never bewitch any man, nor my fellow-women! May it never happen!" The first four times that she went out and in, she prayed to the fir-branches, saying, "If ever I step into trouble or difficulties or step unknowingly inside the magical spell of some person, may you help me, O Fir-branches, with your power!" Every day she painted her face afresh, and she wore strings of parts of deer-hoofs round her ankles and knees, and tied to her waistband on either side, which rattled when she walked or ran. Even the shape of the hut in which she lived was adapted to her future rather than to her present needs and wishes. If she wished to be tall, the hut was tall; if she wished to be short, it was low, sometimes so low that there was not room in it for her to stand erect, and she would lay the palm of her hand on the top of her head and pray to the Dawn that she might grow no taller. Her seclusion lasted four months. The Indians say that long ago it extended over a year, and that fourteen days elapsed before the girl was permitted to wash for the first time. The dress which she wore during her time of separation was [pg 52] afterwards taken to the top of a hill and burned, and the rest of her clothes were hung up on trees.¹²⁴

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia.]

Among the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia, neighbours of the Thompsons, the customs observed by girls at puberty were similar. The damsels were secluded for a period of not less than one year nor more than four years, according to their own inclination and the wishes of their parents. Among the Upper Lillooets the hut in which the girl lodged was made of bushy fir-trees set up like a conical tent, the inner branches being lopped off, while the outer branches were closely interwoven and padded to form a roof. Every month or half-month the hut was shifted to another site or a new one erected. By day the girl sat in the hut; for the first month she squatted in a hole dug in the middle of it; and she passed the time making miniature baskets of birch-bark and other things, praying that she might be able to make the real things well in after years. At the dusk of the evening she left the hut and wandered about all night, but she returned before the sun rose. Before she quitted the hut at nightfall to roam abroad, she painted her face red and put on a mask of fir-branches, and in her hand, as she walked, she carried a basket-rattle to frighten ghosts and guard herself from evil. Among the Lower Lillooets, the girl's mask was often made of goat-skin, covering her head, neck, shoulders and breast, and leaving only a narrow opening from the brow to the chin. During the nocturnal hours she performed many ceremonies. Thus she put two smooth stones in her bosom and ran, and as they fell down between her body and her clothes, she prayed, saying, "May I always have easy child-births!" Now one of these stones represented her future child and the other represented the afterbirth. Also she dug trenches, praying that in the years to come she might be strong and tireless in digging roots; she picked leaves and needles from the fir-trees, praying that her fingers might be nimble in picking berries; and she tore sheets of birch-bark into [pg 53] shreds, dropping the shreds as she walked and asking that her hands might never tire and that she might make neat and fine work of birch-bark. Moreover, she ran and walked much that she might be light of foot. And every evening, when the shadows were falling, and every morning, when the day was breaking, she prayed to the Dusk of the Evening or to the Dawn of Day, saying, "O Dawn of Day!" or "O Dusk," as it might be, "may I be able to dig roots fast and easily, and may I always find plenty!" All her prayers were addressed to the Dusk of the Evening or the Dawn of Day. She supplicated both, asking for long life, health, wealth, and happiness.¹²⁵

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Shuswap Indians of British Columbia.]

Among the Shuswap Indians of British Columbia, who are neighbours of the Thompsons and Lillooets, "a girl on reaching maturity has to go through a great number of ceremonies. She must leave the village and live alone in a small hut on the mountains. She cooks her own food, and must not eat anything that bleeds. She is forbidden to touch her head, for which purpose she uses a comb with three points. Neither is she allowed to scratch her body, except with a painted deer-bone. She wears the bone and the comb suspended from her belt. She drinks out of a painted cup of birch-bark, and neither more nor less than the quantity it holds. Every night she walks about her hut, and plants willow twigs, which she has painted, and to the ends of which she has attached pieces of cloth, into the ground. It is believed that thus she will become rich in later life. In order to become strong she should climb trees and try to break off their points. She plays with lehal sticks that her future husbands might have good luck when gambling."¹²⁶ During the day the girl stays in her hut and occupies herself in making miniature bags, mats, and baskets, in sewing and embroidery, in manufacturing thread, twine, and so forth; in short she makes a beginning of all kinds of [pg 54] woman's work, in order that she may be a good housewife in after life. By night she roams the mountains and practises running, climbing, carrying burdens, and digging trenches, so that she may be expert at digging roots. If she has wandered far and daylight overtakes her, she hides herself behind a veil of fir branches; for no one, except her instructor or nearest relatives, should see her face during her period of seclusion. She wore a large robe painted red on the breast and sides, and her hair was done up in a knot at each ear.¹²⁷

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Delaware and Cheyenne Indians.]

Ceremonies of the same general type were probably observed by girls at puberty among all the Indian tribes of North America. But the record of them is far less full for the Central and Eastern tribes, perhaps because the settlers who first came into contact with the Red Man in these regions were too busy fighting him to find leisure, even if they had the desire, to study his manners and customs. However, among the Delaware Indians, a tribe in the extreme east of the continent, we read that "when a Delaware girl has her first monthly period, she must withdraw into a hut at some distance from the village. Her head is wrapped up for twelve days, so that she can see nobody, and she must submit to frequent vomits and fasting, and abstain from all labor. After this she is washed and new clothed, but confined to a solitary life for two months, at the close of which she is declared marriageable."¹²⁸ Again, among the Cheyennes, an Indian tribe of the Missouri valley, a girl at her first menstruation is painted red all over her body and secluded in a special little lodge for four days. However, she may remain in her father's lodge provided that there are no charms ("medicine"), no sacred bundle, and no shield in it, or that these and all other objects invested with a sacred character have been removed. For four days she may not eat boiled meat; the flesh of which she partakes must be roasted over coals. Young men will not eat from the dish nor drink from the pot, which has been used by her; because [pg 55] they believe that were they to do so they would be wounded in the next fight. She may not handle nor even touch any weapon of war or any sacred object. If the camp moves, she may not ride a horse, but is mounted on a mare.¹²⁹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Esquimaux.]

Among the Esquimaux also, in the extreme north of the continent, who belong to an entirely different race from the Indians, the attainment of puberty in the female sex is, or used to be, the occasion of similar observances. Thus among the Koniags, an Esquimau people of Alaska, a girl at puberty was placed in a small hut in which she had to remain on her hands and knees for six months; then the hut was enlarged a little so as to allow her to straighten her back, but in this posture she had to remain for six months more. All this time she was regarded as an unclean being with whom no one might hold intercourse. At the end of the year she was received back by her parents and a great feast held.¹³⁰ Again, among the Malemut, and southward from the lower Yukon and adjacent districts, when a girl reaches the age of puberty she is considered unclean for forty days and must therefore live by herself in a corner of the house with her face to the wall, always keeping her hood over her head and her hair hanging dishevelled over her eyes. But if it is summer, she commonly lives in a rough shelter outside the house. She may not go out by day, and only once at night, when every one else is asleep. At the end of the period she bathes and is clothed in new garments, whereupon she may be taken in marriage. During her seclusion she is supposed to be enveloped in a peculiar atmosphere of such a sort that were a young man to come near enough for it to touch him, it would render him visible to every animal he might hunt, so that his luck as a hunter would be gone.¹³¹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Guaranis, Chiriguanos, and Lengua Indians of South America.]

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the Guaranis of Southern Brazil, on the borders of Paraguay, used to sew her up in her hammock, leaving only a small opening in it to allow her to breathe. In this condition, wrapt up and shrouded like a corpse, she was kept for two or three days or so long as the symptoms lasted, and during this time she had to observe a most rigorous fast. After that she was entrusted to a matron, who cut the girl's hair and enjoined her to abstain most strictly from eating flesh of any kind until her hair should be grown long enough to hide her ears. Meanwhile the diviners drew omens of her future character from the various birds or animals that flew past or crossed her path. If they saw a parrot, they would say she was a chatterbox; if an owl, she was lazy and useless for domestic labours, and so on.¹³² In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of southeastern Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month: the second month the hammock was let half-way down from the roof; and in the third month old women, armed with sticks, entered the hut and ran about striking everything they met, saying they were hunting the snake that had wounded the girl.¹³³ The Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco under similar circumstances hang the girl in her hammock from the roof of the house, but they leave her there only three days and nights, during which they give her nothing to eat but a little Paraguay tea or boiled maize. Only her mother or grandmother has access to her; nobody else approaches or speaks to her. If she is obliged to leave the hammock for a little, [pg 57] her friends take great care to prevent her from touching the Boyrusu, which is an imaginary serpent that would swallow her up. She must also be very careful not to set foot on the droppings of fowls or animals, else she would suffer from sores on the throat and breast. On the third day they let her down from the hammock, cut her hair, and make her sit in a corner of the room with her face turned to the wall. She may speak to nobody, and must abstain from flesh and fish. These rigorous observances she must practise for nearly a year. Many girls die or are injured for life in consequence of the hardships they endure at this time. Their only occupations during their seclusion are spinning and weaving.¹³⁴

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Yuracares of Bolivia.]

Among the Yuracares, an Indian tribe of Bolivia, at the eastern foot of the Andes, when a girl perceives the signs of puberty, she informs her parents. The mother weeps and the father constructs a little hut of palm leaves near the house. In this cabin he shuts up his daughter so that she cannot see the light, and there she remains fasting rigorously for four days. Meantime the mother, assisted by the women of the neighbourhood, has brewed a large quantity of the native intoxicant called chicha, and poured it into wooden troughs and palm leaves. On the morning of the fourth day, three hours before the dawn, the girl's father, having arrayed himself in his savage finery, summons all his neighbours with loud cries. The damsel is seated on a stone, and every guest in turn cuts off a lock of her hair, and running away hides it in the hollow trunk of a tree in the depths of the forest. When they have all done so and seated themselves again gravely in the circle, the girl offers [pg 58] to each of them a calabash full of very strong chicha. Before the wassailing begins, the various fathers perform a curious operation on the arms of their sons, who are seated beside them. The operator takes a very sharp bone of an ape, rubs it with a pungent spice, and then pinching up the skin of his son's arm he pierces it with the bone through and through, as a surgeon might introduce a seton. This operation he repeats till the young man's arm is riddled with holes at regular intervals from the shoulder to the wrist. Almost all who take part in the festival are covered with these wounds, which the Indians call culucute. Having thus prepared themselves to spend a happy day, they drink, play on flutes, sing and dance till evening. Rain, thunder, and lightning, should they befall, have no effect in damping the general enjoyment or preventing its continuance till after the sun has set. The motive for perforating the arms of the young men is to make them skilful hunters; at each perforation the sufferer is cheered by the promise of another sort of game or fish which the surgical operation will infallibly procure for him. The same operation is performed on the arms and legs of the girls, in order that they may be brave and strong; even the dogs are operated on with the intention of making them run down the game better. For five or six months afterwards the damsel must cover her head with bark and refrain from speaking to men. The Yuracares think that if they did not submit a young girl to this severe ordeal, her children would afterwards perish by accidents of various kinds, such as the sting of a serpent, the bite of a jaguar, the fall of a tree, the wound of an arrow, or what not.¹³⁵

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of the Gran Chaco.]

Among the Matacos or Mataguayos, an Indian tribe of the Gran Chaco, a girl at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies covered up with branches or other things in a corner of the hut, seeing no one and speaking to no one, and during this time she may eat neither flesh nor fish. Meantime a man beats a drum in front of the house.¹³⁶ [pg 59] Similarly among the Tobas, another Indian tribe of the same region, when a chief's daughter has just attained to womanhood, she is shut up for two or three days in the house, all the men of the tribe scour the country to bring in game and fish for a feast, and a Mataco Indian is engaged to drum, sing, and dance in front of the house without cessation, day and night, till the festival is over. As the merrymaking lasts for two or three weeks, the exhaustion of the musician at the end of it may be readily conceived. Meat and drink are supplied to him on the spot where he pays his laborious court to the Muses. The proceedings wind up with a saturnalia and a drunken debauch.¹³⁷ Among the Yaguas, an Indian tribe of the Upper Amazon, a girl at puberty is shut up for three months in a lonely hut in the forest, where her mother brings her food daily.¹³⁸ When a girl of the Peguenches tribe perceives in herself the first signs of womanhood, she is secluded by her mother in a corner of the hut screened off with blankets, and is warned not to lift up her eyes on any man. Next day, very early in the morning and again after sunset, she is taken out by two women and made to run till she is tired; in the interval she is again secluded in her corner. On the following day she lays three packets of wool beside the path near the house to signify that she is now a woman.¹³⁹ Among the Passes, Mauhes, and other tribes of Brazil the young woman in similar circumstances is hung in her hammock from the roof and has to fast there for a month or as long as she can hold out.¹⁴⁰ One of the early settlers in Brazil, about the middle of the sixteenth century, has described the severe ordeal which damsels at puberty had to undergo among the Indians on the south-east coast of that country, near what is now Rio de Janeiro. When a girl had reached this critical period of life, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head. [pg 60] Then she was placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal from the shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood. Next the ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot, and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no one could see her. Here she had to stay for three days without eating or drinking. When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl's body. Being replaced in her hammock, she was now allowed to get some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh. Thus she continued to the end of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back. During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as usual.¹⁴¹

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Indians of Guiana; custom of beating the girls and of causing them to be stung by ants.]

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shews the first signs of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut. For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts of her body. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner of the hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel of her own. After about ten days the magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has come in contact. [pg 61] The pots and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and the fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now "clean," and can mix again with people.¹⁴² Other Indians of Guiana, after keeping the girl in her hammock at the top of the hut for a month, expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.¹⁴³ Sometimes, in addition to being stung with ants, the sufferer has to fast day and night so long as she remains slung up on high in her hammock, so that when she comes down she is reduced to a skeleton. The intention of stinging her with ants is said to be to make her strong to bear the burden of maternity.¹⁴⁴ Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl at puberty is secluded in the house for a month, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken out into the midst of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her four or five blows with pieces of sipo (an elastic climber), till she falls senseless or dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four times at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been made ready; the sipos are dipped into them and then given to the girl to lick, who is now considered a marriageable woman.¹⁴⁵

[Custom in South America of causing young men to be stung with ants as an initiatory rite.]

The custom of stinging the girl at such times with ants or beating her with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the malignant influences with which a girl in this condition is believed to be beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, by beating, by incisions in the flesh, and by [pg 62] stinging with ants, have already come before us.¹⁴⁶ In some Indian tribes of Brazil and Guiana young men do not rank as warriors and may not marry till they have passed through a terrible ordeal, which consists in being stung by swarms of venomous ants whose bite is like fire. Thus among the Mauhes on the Tapajos river, a southern tributary of the Amazon, boys of eight to ten years are obliged to thrust their arms into sleeves stuffed with great ferocious ants, which the Indians call tocandeira (Cryptocerus atratus, F.). When the young victim shrieks with pain, an excited mob of men dances round him, shouting and encouraging him till he falls exhausted to the ground. He is then committed to the care of old women, who treat his fearfully swollen arms with fresh juice of the manioc; and on his recovery he has to shew his strength and skill in bending a bow. This cruel ordeal is commonly repeated again and again, till the lad has reached his fourteenth year and can bear the agony without betraying any sign of emotion. Then he is a man and can marry. A lad's age is reckoned by the number of times he has passed through the ordeal.¹⁴⁷ An eye-witness has described how a young Mauhe hero bore the torture with an endurance more than Spartan, dancing and singing, with his arms cased in the terrible mittens, before every cabin of the great common house, till pallid, staggering, and with chattering teeth he triumphantly laid the gloves before the old chief and received the congratulations of the men and the caresses of the women; then breaking away from his friends and admirers he threw himself into the river and remained in its cool soothing water till nightfall.¹⁴⁸ Similarly among the Ticunas of the Upper Amazon, on the border of Peru, the young man who would take his place among the [pg 63] warriors must plunge his arm into a sort of basket full of venomous ants and keep it there for several minutes without uttering a cry. He generally falls backwards and sometimes succumbs to the fever which ensues; hence as soon as the ordeal is over the women are prodigal of their attentions to him, and rub the swollen arm with a particular kind of herb.¹⁴⁹ Ordeals of this sort appear to be in vogue among the Indians of the Rio Negro as well as of the Amazon.¹⁵⁰ Among the Rucuyennes, a tribe of Indians in the north of Brazil, on the borders of Guiana, young men who are candidates for marriage must submit to be stung all over their persons not only with ants but with wasps, which are applied to their naked bodies in curious instruments of trellis-work shaped like fantastic quadrupeds or birds. The patient invariably falls down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his hammock, where he is tightly lashed with cords. As they come to themselves, they writhe in agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to and fro, causing the hut to shake as if it were about to collapse. This dreadful ordeal is called by the Indians a maraké.¹⁵¹

[Custom of causing men and women to be stung with ants to improve their character and health or to render them invulnerable.]

The same ordeal, under the same name, is also practised by the Wayanas, an Indian tribe of French Guiana, but with them, we are told, it is no longer deemed an indispensable preliminary to marriage; "it is rather a sort of national medicine administered chiefly to the youth of both sexes." Applied to men, the maraké, as it is called, "sharpens them, prevents them from being heavy and lazy, makes them active, brisk, industrious, imparts strength, and helps them to shoot well with the bow; without it the Indians would always be slack and rather sickly, would always have a little fever, and would lie perpetually in their hammocks. As for the women, the maraké keeps them from going to sleep, renders them active, alert, brisk, [pg 64] gives them strength and a liking for work, makes them good housekeepers, good workers at the stockade, good makers of cachiri. Every one undergoes the maraké at least twice in his life, sometimes thrice, and oftener if he likes. It may be had from the age of about eight years and upward, and no one thinks it odd that a man of forty should voluntarily submit to it."¹⁵² Similarly the Indians of St. Juan Capistrano in California used to be branded on some part of their bodies, generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the leg also, not as a proof of manly fortitude, but because they believed that the custom "added greater strength to the nerves, and gave a better pulse for the management of the bow." Afterwards "they were whipped with nettles, and covered with ants, that they might become robust, and the infliction was always performed in summer, during the months of July and August, when the nettle was in its most fiery state. They gathered small bunches, which they fastened together, and the poor deluded Indian was chastised, by inflicting blows with them upon his naked limbs, until unable to walk; and then he was carried to the nest of the nearest and most furious species of ants, and laid down among them, while some of his friends, with sticks, kept annoying the insects to make them still more violent. What torments did they not undergo! What pain! What hellish inflictions! Yet their faith gave them power to endure all without a murmur, and they remained as if dead. Having undergone these dreadful ordeals, they were considered as invulnerable, and believed that the arrows of their enemies could no longer harm them."¹⁵³ Among the Alur, a tribe inhabiting the south-western region of the upper Nile, to bury a man in an ant-hill and leave him there for a while is the regular treatment for insanity.¹⁵⁴

[In such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification; at a later time it is interpreted as a test of courage and endurance.]

In like manner it is probable that beating or scourging as a religious or ceremonial rite was originally a [pg 65] mode of purification. It was meant to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion, whether personified as demoniacal or not, which was supposed to be adhering physically, though invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.¹⁵⁵ The pain inflicted on the person beaten was no more the object of the beating than it is of a surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that was all. In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the pain, from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony, which was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons at critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never primitive. [pg 66] The savage, it is true, in certain circumstances will voluntarily subject himself to pains and privations which appear to us wholly needless; but he never acts thus unless he believes that some solid temporal advantage is to be gained by so doing. Pain for the sake of pain, whether as a moral discipline in this life or as a means of winning a glorious immortality hereafter, is not an object which he sets himself deliberately to pursue.

[This explanation confirmed with reference to the beating of girls at puberty among the South American Indians; treatment of a girl at puberty among the Banivas of the Orinoco; symptoms of puberty in a girl regarded as wounds inflicted by a demon.]

If this view is correct, we can understand why so many Indian tribes of South America compel the youth of both sexes to submit to these painful and sometimes fatal ordeals. They imagine that in this way they rid the young folk of certain evils inherent in youth, especially at the critical age of puberty; and when they picture to themselves the evils in a personal form as dangerous spirits or demons, the ceremony of their expulsion may in the strict sense be termed an exorcism. This certainly appears to be the interpretation which the Banivas of the Orinoco put upon the cruel scourgings which they inflict on girls at puberty. At her first menstruation a Baniva girl must pass several days and nights in her hammock, almost motionless and getting nothing to eat and drink but water and a little manioc. While she lies there, the suitors for her hand apply to her father, and he who can afford to give most for her or can prove himself the best man, is promised the damsel in marriage. The fast over, some old men enter the hut, bandage the girl's eyes, cover her head with a bonnet of which the fringes fall on her shoulders, and then lead her forth and tie her to a post set up in an open place. The head of the post is carved in the shape of a grotesque face. None but the old men may witness what follows. Were a woman caught peeping and prying, it would go ill with her; she would be marked out for the vengeance of the demon, who would make her expiate her crime at the very next moon by madness or death. Every participant in the ceremony comes armed with a scourge of cords or of fish skins; some of them reinforce the virtue of the instrument by tying little sharp stones to the end of the thongs. Then, to the dismal and deafening notes of shell-trumpets blown by two or three supernumeraries, the men circle round and round the [pg 67] post, every one applying his scourge as he passes to the girl's back, till it streams with blood. At last the musicians, winding tremendous blasts on their trumpets against the demon, advance and touch the post in which he is supposed to be incorporate. Then the blows cease to descend; the girl is untied, often in a fainting state, and carried away to have her wounds washed and simples applied to them. The youngest of the executioners, or rather of the exorcists, hastens to inform her betrothed husband of the happy issue of the exorcism. "The spirit," he says, "had cast thy beloved into a sleep as deep almost as that of death. But we have rescued her from his attacks, and laid her down in such and such a place. Go seek her." Then going from house to house through the village he cries to the inmates, "Come, let us burn the demon who would have taken possession of such and such a girl, our friend." The bridegroom at once carries his wounded and suffering bride to his own house; and all the people gather round the post for the pleasure of burning it and the demon together. A great pile of firewood has meanwhile been heaped up about it, and the women run round the pyre cursing in shrill voices the wicked spirit who has wrought all this evil. The men join in with hoarser cries and animate themselves for the business in hand by deep draughts of an intoxicant which has been provided for the occasion by the parents-in-law. Soon the bridegroom, having committed the bride to the care of his mother, appears on the scene brandishing a lighted torch. He addresses the demon with bitter mockery and reproaches; informs him that the fair creature on whom he, the demon, had nefarious designs, is now his, the bridegroom's, blooming spouse; and shaking his torch at the grinning head on the post, he screams out, "This is how the victims of thy persecution take vengeance on thee!" With these words he puts a light to the pyre. At once the drums strike up, the trumpets blare, and men, women, and children begin to dance. In two long rows they dance, the men on one side, the women on the other, advancing till they almost touch and then retiring again. After that the two rows join hands, and forming a huge circle trip it round and round the blaze, till the post with its grotesque face is consumed in the flames [pg 68] and nothing of the pyre remains but a heap of red and glowing embers. "The evil spirit has been destroyed. Thus delivered from her persecutor, the young wife will be free from sickness, will not die in childbed, and will bear many children to her husband."¹⁵⁶ From this account it appears that the Banivas attribute the symptoms of puberty in girls to the wounds inflicted on them by an amorous devil, who, however, can be not only exorcised but burnt to ashes at the stake.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the Hindoos; seclusion of girls at puberty in Southern India.]

When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for four days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no one may touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk, sugar, curd, and tamarind without salt. On the morning of the fifth day she goes to a neighbouring tank, accompanied by five women whose husbands are alive. Smeared with turmeric water, they all bathe and return home, throwing away the mat and other things that were in the room.¹⁵⁷ The Rarhi Brahmans of Bengal compel a girl at puberty to live alone, and do not allow her to see the face of any male. For three days she remains shut up in a dark room, and has to undergo certain penances. Fish, flesh, and sweetmeats are forbidden her; she must live upon rice and ghee.¹⁵⁸ Among the Tiyans of Malabar a girl is thought to be polluted for four days from the beginning of her first menstruation. During this time she must keep to the north side of the house, where she sleeps on a grass mat of a particular kind, in a room festooned with garlands of young coco-nut leaves. Another girl keeps her company and sleeps with her, but she may [pg 69] not touch any other person, tree or plant. Further, she may not see the sky, and woe betide her if she catches sight of a crow or a cat! Her diet must be strictly vegetarian, without salt, tamarinds, or chillies. She is armed against evil spirits by a knife, which is placed on the mat or carried on her person.¹⁵⁹ Among the Kappiliyans of Madura and Tinnevelly a girl at her first monthly period remains under pollution for thirteen days, either in a corner of the house, which is screened off for her use by her maternal uncle, or in a temporary hut, which is erected by the same relative on the common land of the village. On the thirteenth day she bathes in a tank, and, on entering the house, steps over a pestle and a cake. Near the entrance some food is placed and a dog is allowed to partake of it; but his enjoyment is marred by suffering, for while he eats he receives a sound thrashing, and the louder he howls the better, for the larger will be the family to which the young woman will give birth; should there be no howls, there will be no children. The temporary hut in which the girl passed the days of her seclusion is burnt down, and the pots which she used are smashed to shivers.¹⁶⁰ Similarly among the Parivarams of Madura, when a girl attains to puberty she is kept for sixteen days in a hut, which is guarded at night by her relations; and when her sequestration is over the hut is burnt down and the pots she used are broken into very small pieces, because they think that if rain-water gathered in any of them, the girl would be childless.¹⁶¹ The Pulayars of Travancore build a special hut in the jungle for the use of a girl at puberty; there she remains for seven days. No one else may enter the hut, not even her mother. Women stand a little way off and lay down food for her. At the end of the time she is brought home, clad in a new or clean cloth, and friends are treated to betel-nut, toddy, and arack.¹⁶² Among the Singhalese a girl at her first menstruation is confined to a room, where she may neither see nor be seen by any male. After being thus secluded for two weeks she is taken out, with her face covered, and is bathed by women at the back [pg 70] of the house. Near the bathing-place are kept branches of any milk-bearing tree, usually of the jak-tree. In some cases, while the time of purification or uncleanness lasts, the maiden stays in a separate hut, which is afterwards burnt down.¹⁶³

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in Cambodia.]

In Cambodia a girl at puberty is put to bed under a mosquito curtain, where she should stay a hundred days. Usually, however, four, five, ten, or twenty days are thought enough; and even this, in a hot climate and under the close meshes of the curtain, is sufficiently trying.¹⁶⁴ According to another account, a Cambodian maiden at puberty is said to "enter into the shade." During her retirement, which, according to the rank and position of her family, may last any time from a few days to several years, she has to observe a number of rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state of seclusion is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth.¹⁶⁵ This permission to break her rule of retirement and appear abroad during an eclipse seems to shew how literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on womanhood to look upon the sun.

[Traces of the seclusion of girls at puberty in folk-tales. Danish story of the girl who might not see the sun.]

A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. In a Danish story we read of a princess who was fated to be carried off by a warlock if ever the sun shone on her before she had passed her thirtieth year; so the king her father kept her shut up in the palace, and had all the windows on the east, south, and west sides blocked up, lest a sunbeam should fall on his darling child, and he [pg 71] should thus lose her for ever. Only at evening, when the sun was down, might she walk for a little in the beautiful garden of the castle. In time a prince came a-wooing, followed by a train of gorgeous knights and squires on horses all ablaze with gold and silver. The king said the prince might have his daughter to wife on condition that he would not carry her away to his home till she was thirty years old but would live with her in the castle, where the windows looked out only to the north. The prince agreed, so married they were. The bride was only fifteen, and fifteen more long weary years must pass before she might step out of the gloomy donjon, breathe the fresh air, and see the sun. But she and her gallant young bridegroom loved each other and they were happy. Often they sat hand in hand at the window looking out to the north and talked of what they would do when they were free. Still it was a little dull to look out always at the same window and to see nothing but the castle woods, and the distant hills, and the clouds drifting silently over them. Well, one day it happened that all the people in the castle had gone away to a neighbouring castle to witness a tournament and other gaieties, and the two young folks were left as usual all alone at the window looking out to the north. They sat silent for a time gazing away to the hills. It was a grey sad day, the sky was overcast, and the weather seemed to draw to rain. At last the prince said, "There will be no sunshine to-day. What if we were to drive over and join the rest at the tournament?" His young wife gladly consented, for she longed to see more of the world than those eternal green woods and those eternal blue hills, which were all she ever saw from the window. So the horses were put into the coach, and it rattled up to the door, and in they got and away they drove. At first all went well. The clouds hung low over the woods, the wind sighed in the trees, a drearier day you could hardly imagine. So they joined the rest at the other castle and took their seats to watch the jousting in the lists. So intent were they in watching the gay spectacle of the prancing steeds, the fluttering pennons, and the glittering armour of the knights, that they failed to mark the change, the fatal change, in the [pg 72] weather. For the wind was rising and had begun to disperse the clouds, and suddenly the sun broke through, and the glory of it fell like an aureole on the young wife, and at once she vanished away. No sooner did her husband miss her from his side than he, too, mysteriously disappeared. The tournament broke up in confusion, the bereft father hastened home, and shut himself up in the dark castle from which the light of life had departed. The green woods and the blue hills could still be seen from the window that looked to the north, but the young faces that had gazed out of it so wistfully were gone, as it seemed, for ever.¹⁶⁶

[Tyrolese story of the girl who might not see the sun.]

A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden with golden hair to be transported into the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her. Hearing of the fame of her beauty the king of the country sent for her to be his bride, and her brother drove the fair damsel to the palace in a carefully closed coach, himself sitting on the box and handling the reins. On the way they overtook two hideous witches, who pretended they were weary and begged for a lift in the coach. At first the brother refused to take them in, but his tender-hearted sister entreated him to have compassion on the two poor footsore women; for you may easily imagine that she was not acquainted with their true character. So down he got rather surlily from the box, opened the coach door, and in the two witches stepped, laughing in their sleeves. But no sooner had the brother mounted the box and whipped up the horses, than one of the two wicked witches bored a hole in the closed coach. A sunbeam at once shot through the hole and fell on the fair damsel. So she vanished from the coach and was spirited away into the belly of a whale in the neighbouring sea. You can imagine the consternation of the king, when the coach door opened and instead of his blooming bride out bounced two hideous hags!¹⁶⁷

[Modern Greek stories of the maid who might not see the sun.]

In a modern Greek folk-tale the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun [pg 73] shine on her, for if this were to happen she would be turned into a lizard.¹⁶⁸ In another modern Greek tale the Sun bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on condition of taking the child back to himself when she is twelve years old. So, when the child was twelve, the mother closed the doors and windows, and stopped up all the chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun from coming to fetch away her daughter. But she forgot to stop up the key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed through it and carried off the girl.¹⁶⁹ In a Sicilian story a seer foretells that a king will have a daughter who, in her fourteenth year, will conceive a child by the Sun. So, when the child was born, the king shut her up in a lonely tower which had no window, lest a sunbeam should fall on her. When she was nearly fourteen years old, it happened that her parents sent her a piece of roasted kid, in which she found a sharp bone. With this bone she scraped a hole in the wall, and a sunbeam shot through the hole and got her with child.¹⁷⁰

[The story of Danae and its parallel in a Kirghiz legend.]

The old Greek story of Danae, who was confined by [pg 74] her father in a subterranean chamber or a brazen tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who reached her in the shape of a shower of gold,¹⁷¹ perhaps belongs to the same class of tales. It has its counterpart in the legend which the Kirghiz of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked the old woman, "Where do you go so often?" "My child," said the old dame, "there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go." The maiden said, "Good mother, I will tell nobody, but shew me that bright world." So the old woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived. Her angry father put her in a golden chest and sent her floating away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide sea.¹⁷² The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun.

[Impregnation of women by the sun in legends.]

The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in legends. Thus, for example, among the Indians of Guacheta in Colombia, it is said, a report once ran that the sun would impregnate one of their maidens, who should bear a child and yet remain a virgin. The chief had two daughters, and was very desirous that one of them should conceive in this miraculous manner. So every day he made them climb a hill to the east of his house in order to be touched by the first beams of the rising sun. His wishes were fulfilled, for one of the damsels conceived and after nine months gave birth to an emerald. So she wrapped it in cotton and placed it in her bosom, and in a few days it turned into a child, who received the name of Garanchacha and was universally recognized as a son of the sun.¹⁷³ Again, the Samoans tell of a woman named Mangamangai, [pg 75] who became pregnant by looking at the rising sun. Her son grew up and was named "Child of the Sun." At his marriage he applied to his mother for a dowry, but she bade him apply to his father, the sun, and told him how to go to him. So one morning he took a long vine and made a noose in it; then climbing up a tree he threw the noose over the sun and caught him fast. Thus arrested in his progress, the luminary asked him what he wanted, and being told by the young man that he wanted a present for his bride, the sun obligingly packed up a store of blessings in a basket, with which the youth descended to the earth.¹⁷⁴

[Traces in marriage customs of the belief that women can be impregnated by the sun.]

Even in the marriage customs of various races we may perhaps detect traces of this belief that women can be impregnated by the sun. Thus amongst the Chaco Indians of South America a newly married couple used to sleep the first night on a mare's or bullock's skin with their heads towards the west, "for the marriage is not considered ratified till the rising sun shines on their feet the succeeding morning."¹⁷⁵ At old Hindoo marriages the first ceremony was the "Impregnation-rite" (Garbh[=a]dh[=a]na); during the previous day the bride was made to look towards the sun or to be in some way exposed to its rays.¹⁷⁶ Amongst the Turks of Siberia it was formerly the custom on the morning after the marriage to lead the young couple out of the hut to greet the rising sun. The same custom is said to be still practised in Iran and Central Asia under a belief that the beams of the rising sun are the surest means of impregnating the new bride.¹⁷⁷

[Belief in the impregnation of women by the moon.]

And as some people think that women may be gotten with child by the sun, so others imagine that they can conceive by the moon. According to the Greenlanders [pg 76] the moon is a young man, and he "now and then comes down to give their wives a visit and caress them; for which reason no woman dare sleep lying upon her back, without she first spits upon her fingers and rubs her belly with it. For the same reason the young maids are afraid to stare long at the moon, imagining they may get a child by the bargain."¹⁷⁸ Similarly Breton peasants are reported to believe that women or girls who expose their persons to the moonlight may be impregnated by it and give birth to monsters.¹⁷⁹

[The reason for the seclusion of women at puberty is the dread of menstruous blood.]

The motive for the restraints so commonly imposed on girls at puberty is the deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of menstruous blood. He fears it at all times but especially on its first appearance; hence the restrictions under which women lie at their first menstruation are usually more stringent than those which they have to observe at any subsequent recurrence of the mysterious flow. Some evidence of the fear and of the customs based on it has been cited in an earlier part of this work;¹⁸⁰ but as the terror, for it is nothing less, which the phenomenon periodically strikes into the mind of the savage has deeply influenced his life and institutions, it may be well to illustrate the subject with some further examples.

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the aborigines of Australia.]

Thus in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia there is, or used to be, a "superstition which obliges a woman to separate herself from the camp at the time of her monthly illness, when, if a young man or boy should approach, she calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. If she is neglectful upon this point, she exposes herself to scolding, and sometimes to severe beating by her husband or nearest relation, because the boys are told from their infancy, that if they see the blood they will early become grey-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely."¹⁸¹ And [pg 77] of the South Australian aborigines in general we read that there is a "custom requiring all boys and uninitiated young men to sleep at some distance from the huts of the adults, and to remove altogether away in the morning as soon as daylight dawns, and the natives begin to move about. This is to prevent their seeing the women, some of whom may be menstruating; and if looked upon by the young males, it is supposed that dire results will follow."¹⁸² And amongst these tribes women in their courses "are not allowed to eat fish of any kind, or to go near the water at all; it being one of their superstitions, that if a female, in that state, goes near the water, no success can be expected by the men in fishing."¹⁸³ Similarly, among the natives of the Murray River, menstruous women "were not allowed to go near water for fear of frightening the fish. They were also not allowed to eat them, for the same reason. A woman during such periods would never cross the river in a canoe, or even fetch water for the camp. It was sufficient for her to say Thama, to ensure her husband getting the water himself."¹⁸⁴ The Dieri of Central Australia believe that if women at these times were to eat fish or bathe in a river, the fish would all die and the water would dry up. In this tribe a mark made with red ochre round a woman's mouth indicates that she has her courses; no one would offer fish to such a woman.¹⁸⁵ The Arunta of Central Australia forbid menstruous women to gather the irriakura bulbs, which form a staple article of diet for both men and women. They believe that were a woman to break this rule, the supply of bulbs would fail.¹⁸⁶ Among the aborigines of Victoria the wife at her monthly periods had to sleep on the opposite side of the fire from her husband; she might partake of nobody's food, and nobody would partake of hers, for people thought that if they ate or drank anything that had been touched by a woman in her courses, it would make them weak or ill. Unmarried girls [pg 78] and widows at such times had to paint their heads and the upper parts of their bodies red,¹⁸⁷ no doubt as a danger signal.

[Severe penalties inflicted for breaches of the custom of seclusion.]

In some Australian tribes the seclusion of menstruous women was even more rigid, and was enforced by severer penalties than a scolding or a beating. Thus with regard to certain tribes of New South Wales and Southern Queensland we are told that "during the monthly illness, the woman is not allowed to touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a path that any man frequents, on pain of death."¹⁸⁸ Again, "there is a regulation relating to camps in the Wakelbura tribe which forbids the women coming into the encampment by the same path as the men. Any violation of this rule would in a large camp be punished with death. The reason for this is the dread with which they regard the menstrual period of women. During such a time, a woman is kept entirely away from the camp, half a mile at least. A woman in such a condition has boughs of some tree of her totem tied round her loins, and is constantly watched and guarded, for it is thought that should any male be so unfortunate as to see a woman in such a condition, he would die. If such a woman were to let herself be seen by a man, she would probably be put to death. When the woman has recovered, she is painted red and white, her head covered with feathers, and returns to the camp."¹⁸⁹

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women in the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea, Galela, and Sumatra.]

In Muralug, one of the Torres Straits Islands, a menstruous woman may not eat anything that lives in the sea, else the natives believe that the fisheries would fail. Again, in Mabuiag, another of these islands, women who have their courses on them may not eat turtle flesh nor turtle eggs, probably for a similar reason. And during the season when the turtles are pairing the restrictions laid on [pg 79] such a woman are much severer. She may not even enter a house in which there is turtle flesh, nor approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the sea and she should not walk on the beach below high-water mark. Nay, the infection extends to her husband, who may not himself harpoon or otherwise take an active part in catching turtle; however, he is permitted to form one of the crew on a turtling expedition, provided he takes the precaution of rubbing his armpits with certain leaves, to which no doubt a disinfectant virtue is ascribed.¹⁹⁰ Among the Kai of German New Guinea women at their monthly sickness must live in little huts built for them in the forest; they may not enter the cultivated fields, for if they did go to them, and the pigs were to taste of the blood, it would inspire the animals with an irresistible desire to go likewise into the fields, where they would commit great depredations on the growing crops. Hence the issue from women at these times is carefully buried to prevent the pigs from getting at it. And conversely, if the pigs often break into the fields, the blame is laid on the women who by the neglect of these elementary precautions have put temptation in the way of the swine.¹⁹¹ In Galela, to the west of New Guinea, women at their monthly periods may not enter a tobacco-field, or the plants would be attacked by disease.¹⁹² The Minangkabauers of Sumatra are persuaded that if a woman in her unclean state were to go near a rice-field, the crop would be spoiled.¹⁹³

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the tribes of South Africa.]

The Bushmen of South Africa think that, by a glance of a girl's eye at the time when she ought to be kept in strict retirement, men become fixed in whatever position they happen to occupy, with whatever they were holding in their hands, and are changed into trees that talk.¹⁹⁴ Cattle-rearing [pg 80] tribes of South Africa hold that their cattle would die if the milk were drunk by a menstruous woman;¹⁹⁵ and they fear the same disaster if a drop of her blood were to fall on the ground and the oxen were to pass over it. To prevent such a calamity women in general, not menstruous women only, are forbidden to enter the cattle enclosure; and more than that, they may not use the ordinary paths in entering the village or in passing from one hut to another. They are obliged to make circuitous tracks at the back of the huts in order to avoid the ground in the middle of the village where the cattle stand or lie down. These women's tracks may be seen at every Caffre village.¹⁹⁶

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the tribes of Central and East Africa.]

Similarly among the Bahima, a cattle-breeding tribe of Ankole, in Central Africa, no menstruous woman may drink milk, lest by so doing she should injure the cows; and she may not lie on her husband's bed, no doubt lest she should injure him. Indeed she is forbidden to lie on a bed at all and must sleep on the ground. Her diet is restricted to vegetables and beer.¹⁹⁷ Among the Baganda, in like manner, no menstruous woman might drink milk or come into contact with any milk-vessel;¹⁹⁸ and she might not touch anything that belonged to her husband, nor sit on his mat, nor cook his food. If she touched anything of his at such a time it was deemed equivalent to wishing him dead or to actually working magic for his destruction.¹⁹⁹ Were she to handle any article of his, he would surely fall ill; were she to handle his weapons, he would certainly be killed in the next battle. Even a woman [pg 81] who did not menstruate was believed by the Baganda to be a source of danger to her husband, indeed capable of killing him. Hence, before he went to war, he used to wound her slightly with his spear so as to draw blood; this was thought to ensure his safe return.²⁰⁰ Apparently the notion was that if the wife did not lose blood in one way or another, her husband would be bled in war to make up for her deficiency; so by way of guarding against this undesirable event, he took care to relieve her of a little superfluous blood before he repaired to the field of honour. Further, the Baganda would not suffer a menstruous woman to visit a well; if she did so, they feared that the water would dry up, and that she herself would fall sick and die, unless she confessed her fault and the medicine-man made atonement for her.²⁰¹ Among the Akikuyu of British East Africa, if a new hut is built in a village and the wife chances to menstruate in it on the day she lights the first fire there, the hut must be broken down and demolished the very next day. The woman may on no account sleep a second night in it; there is a curse (thahu) both on her and on it.²⁰² In the Suk tribe of British East Africa warriors may not eat anything that has been touched by menstruous women. If they did so, it is believed that they would lose their virility; "in the rain they will shiver and in the heat they will faint." Suk men and women take their meals apart, because the men fear that one or more of the women may be menstruating.²⁰³ The Anyanja of British Central Africa, at the southern end of Lake Nyassa, think that a man who should sleep with a woman in her courses would fall sick and die, unless some remedy were applied in time. And with them it is a rule that at such times a woman should not put any salt into the food she is cooking, otherwise the people who partook of the food salted by her would suffer from a certain disease called [pg 82] tsempo; hence to obviate the danger she calls a child to put the salt into the dish.²⁰⁴

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the tribes of West Africa.]

Among the Hos, a tribe of Ewe negroes of Togoland in West Africa, so long as a wife has her monthly sickness she may not cook for her husband, nor lie on his bed, nor sit on his stool; an infraction of these rules would assuredly, it is believed, cause her husband to die. If her husband is a priest, or a magician, or a chief, she may not pass the days of her uncleanness in the house, but must go elsewhere till she is clean.²⁰⁵ Among the Ewe negroes of this region each village has its huts where women who have their courses on them must spend their time secluded from intercourse with other people. Sometimes these huts stand by themselves in public places; sometimes they are mere shelters built either at the back or front of the ordinary dwelling-houses. A woman is punishable if she does not pass the time of her monthly sickness in one of these huts or shelters provided for her use. Thus, if she shews herself in her own house or even in the yard of the house, she may be fined a sheep, which is killed, its flesh divided among the people, and its blood poured on the image of the chief god as a sin-offering to expiate her offence. She is also forbidden to go to the place where the villagers draw water, and if she breaks the rule, she must give a goat to be killed; its flesh is distributed, and its blood, diluted with water and mixed with herbs, is sprinkled on the watering-place and on the paths leading to it. Were any woman to disregard these salutary precautions, the chief fetish-man in the village would fall sick and die, which would be an irreparable loss to society.²⁰⁶

[Powerful influence ascribed to menstruous blood in Arab legend.]

The miraculous virtue ascribed to menstruous blood is well illustrated in a story told by the Arab chronicler Tabari. He relates how Sapor, king of Persia, besieged the strong city of Atrae, in the desert of Mesopotamia, for several years without [pg 83] being able to take it. But the king of the city, whose name was Daizan, had a daughter, and when it was with her after the manner of women she went forth from the city and dwelt for a time in the suburb, for such was the custom of the place. Now it fell out that, while she tarried there, Sapor saw her and loved her, and she loved him; for he was a handsome man and she a lovely maid. And she said to him, "What will you give me if I shew you how you may destroy the walls of this city and slay my father?" And he said to her, "I will give you what you will, and I will exalt you above my other wives, and will set you nearer to me than them all." Then she said to him, "Take a greenish dove with a ring about its neck, and write something on its foot with the menstruous blood of a blue-eyed maid; then let the bird loose, and it will perch on the walls of the city, and they will fall down." For that, says the Arab historian, was the talisman of the city, which could not be destroyed in any other way. And Sapor did as she bade him, and the city fell down in a heap, and he stormed it and slew Daizan on the spot.²⁰⁷

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Jews and in Syria.]

According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning of her period passes between two men, she thereby kills one of them; if she passes between them towards the end of her period, she only causes them to quarrel violently.²⁰⁸ Maimonides tells us that down to his time it was a common custom in the East to keep women at their periods in a separate house and to burn everything on which they had trodden; a man who spoke with such a woman or who was merely exposed to the same wind that blew over her, became thereby unclean.²⁰⁹ Peasants of the Lebanon think that menstruous women are the cause of many misfortunes; their shadow [pg 84] causes flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the movements of serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal might die or at least be disabled for a long time.²¹⁰ In Syria to this day a woman who has her courses on her may neither salt nor pickle, for the people think that whatever she pickled or salted would not keep.²¹¹ The Toaripi of New Guinea, doubtless for a similar reason, will not allow women at such times to cook.²¹²

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women in India.]

The Bhuiyars, a Dravidian tribe of South Mirzapur, are said to feel an intense dread of menstrual pollution. Every house has two doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.²¹³ The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women at such seasons in the outer verandah of the house for eight days, and will not let them enter the kitchen or the cowhouse; during this time the unclean woman may not cook nor even touch the cooking vessels. When the eight days are over, she bathes, washes her clothes, and returns to family life.²¹⁴ Hindoo women seclude themselves at their monthly periods and observe a number of rules, such as not to drink milk, not to milk cows, not to touch fire, not to lie on a high bed, not to walk on common paths, not to cross the track of animals, not to walk by the side of flowering plants, and not to observe the heavenly bodies.²¹⁵ The motive for these [pg 85] restrictions is not mentioned, but probably it is a dread of the baleful influence which is supposed to emanate from women at these times. The Parsees, who reverence fire, will not suffer menstruous women to see it or even to look on a lighted taper;²¹⁶ during their infirmity the women retire from their houses to little lodges in the country, whither victuals are brought to them daily; at the end of their seclusion they bathe and send a kid, a fowl, or a pigeon to the priest as an offering.²¹⁷ In Annam a woman at her monthly periods is deemed a centre of impurity, and contact with her is avoided. She is subject to all sorts of restrictions which she must observe herself and which others must observe towards her. She may not touch any food which is to be preserved by salting, whether it be fish, flesh, or vegetables; for were she to touch it the food would putrefy. She may not enter any sacred place, she may not be present at any religious ceremony. The linen which she wears at such times must be washed by herself at sunrise, never at night. On reaching puberty girls may not touch flowers or the fruits of certain trees, for touched by them the flowers would fade and the fruits fall to the ground. "It is on account of their reputation for impurity that the women generally live isolated. In every house they have an apartment reserved for them, and they never eat at the same table as the men. For the same reason they are excluded from all religious ceremonies. They may only be present at family ceremonies, but without ever officiating in them."²¹⁸

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Indians of South and Central America.]

The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think that when a woman has her courses, everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man treads on the place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell up.²¹⁹ Among the Guaraunos of the same great river, women at their periods are regarded as unclean and kept apart in special huts, where [pg 86] all that they need is brought to them.²²⁰ In like manner among the Piapocos, an Indian tribe on the Guayabero, a tributary of the Orinoco, a menstruous woman is secluded from her family every month for four or five days. She passes the time in a special hut, whither her husband brings her food; and at the end of the time she takes a bath and resumes her usual occupations.²²¹ So among the Indians of the Mosquito territory in Central America, when a woman is in her courses, she must quit the village for seven or eight days. A small hut is built for her in the wood, and at night some of the village girls go and sleep with her to keep her company. Or if the nights are dark and jaguars are known to be prowling in the neighbourhood, her husband will take his gun or bow and sleep in a hammock near her. She may neither handle nor cook food; all is prepared and carried to her. When the sickness is over, she bathes in the river, puts on clean clothes, and returns to her household duties.²²² Among the Bri-bri Indians of Costa Rica a girl at her first menstruation retires to a hut built for the purpose in the forest, and there she must stay till she has been purified by a medicine-man, who breathes on her and places various objects, such as feathers, the beaks of birds, the teeth of beasts, and so forth, upon her body. A married woman at her periods remains in the house with her husband, but she is reckoned unclean (bukuru) and must avoid all intimate relations with him. She uses for plates only banana leaves, which, when she has done with them, she throws away in a sequestered spot; for should a cow find and eat them, the animal would waste away and perish. Also she drinks only out of a special vessel, because any person who should afterwards drink out of the same vessel would infallibly pine away and die.²²³

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Indians of North America.]

Among most tribes of North American Indians the custom was that women in their courses retired from the camp or the village and lived during the time of their uncleanness in special huts or shelters which were appropriated to their use. There they dwelt apart, eating and sleeping by themselves, warming themselves at their own fires, and strictly abstaining from all communications with men, who shunned them just as if they were stricken with the plague. No article of furniture used in these menstrual huts might be used in any other, not even the flint and steel with which in the old days the fires were kindled. No one would borrow a light from a woman in her seclusion. If a white man in his ignorance asked to light his pipe at her fire, she would refuse to grant the request, telling him that it would make his nose bleed and his head ache, and that he would fall sick in consequence. If an Indian's wooden pipe cracked, his friends would think that he had either lit it at one of these polluted fires or had held some converse with a woman during her retirement, which was esteemed a most disgraceful and wicked thing to do. Decent men would not approach within a certain distance of a woman at such times, and if they had to convey anything to her they would stand some forty or fifty paces off and throw it to her. Everything which was touched by her hands during this period was deemed ceremonially unclean. Indeed her touch was thought to convey such pollution that if she chanced to lay a finger on a chief's lodge or his gun or anything else belonging to him, it would be instantly destroyed. If she crossed the path of a hunter or a warrior, his luck for that day at least would be gone. Were she not thus secluded, it was supposed that the men would be attacked by diseases of various kinds, which would prove mortal. In some tribes a woman who infringed the rules of separation might have to answer with her life for any misfortunes that might happen to individuals or to the tribe in consequence, as it was supposed, of her criminal negligence. When she quitted her tent or hut to go into retirement, the fire in it was extinguished and the ashes thrown away outside of the village, and a new fire was kindled, as if the old one had been defiled by her presence. At the end of their [pg 88] seclusion the women bathed in running streams and returned to their usual occupations.²²⁴

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Creek, Choctaw, Omaha, and Cheyenne Indians.]

Thus, to take examples, the Creek and kindred Indians of the United States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at some distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk of being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought "a most horrid and dangerous pollution" to go near the women at such times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by means of certain sacred herbs and roots.²²⁵ Similarly, the Choctaw women had to quit their huts during their monthly periods, and might not return till after they had been purified. While their uncleanness lasted they had to prepare their own food. The men believed that if they were to approach a menstruous woman, they would fall ill, and that some mishap would overtake them when they went to the wars.²²⁶ When an Omaha woman has her courses on her, she retires from the family to a little shelter of bark or grass, supported by sticks, where she kindles a fire and cooks her victuals alone. Her seclusion lasts four days. During this time she may not approach or touch a horse, for the Indians believe that [pg 89] such contamination would impoverish or weaken the animal.²²⁷ Among the Potawatomis the women at their monthly periods "are not allowed to associate with the rest of the nation; they are completely laid aside, and are not permitted to touch any article of furniture or food which the men have occasion to use. If the Indians be stationary at the time, the women are placed outside of the camp; if on a march, they are not allowed to follow the trail, but must take a different path and keep at a distance from the main body."²²⁸ Among the Cheyennes menstruous women slept in special lodges; the men believed that if they slept with their wives at such times, they would probably be wounded in their next battle. A man who owned a shield had very particularly to be on his guard against women in their courses. He might not go into a lodge where one of them happened to be, nor even into a lodge where one of them had been, until a ceremony of purification had been performed. Sweet grass and juniper were burnt in the tent, and the pegs were pulled up and the covering thrown back, as if the tent were about to be struck. After this pretence of decamping from the polluted spot the owner of the shield might enter the tent.²²⁹

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Indians of British Columbia.]

The Stseelis Indians of British Columbia imagined that if a menstruous woman were to step over a bundle of arrows, the arrows would thereby be rendered useless and might even cause the death of their owner; and similarly that if she passed in front of a hunter who carried a gun, the weapon would never shoot straight again. Neither her husband nor her father would dream of going out to hunt while she was in this state; and even if he had wished to do so, the other hunters would not go with him. Hence to keep them out of harm's way, the women, both married and unmarried, were secluded at these times for four days in shelters.²³⁰ Among the Thompson [pg 90] Indians of British Columbia every woman had to isolate herself from the rest of the people during every recurring period of menstruation, and had to live some little way off in a small brush or bark lodge made for the purpose. At these times she was considered unclean, must use cooking and eating utensils of her own, and was supplied with food by some other woman. If she smoked out of a pipe other than her own, that pipe would ever afterwards be hot to smoke. If she crossed in front of a gun, that gun would thenceforth be useless for the war or the chase, unless indeed the owner promptly washed the weapon in "medecine" or struck the woman with it once on each principal part of her body. If a man ate or had any intercourse with a menstruous woman, nay if he merely wore clothes or mocassins made or patched by her, he would have bad luck in hunting and the bears would attack him fiercely. Before being admitted again among the people, she had to change all her clothes and wash several times in clear water. The clothes worn during her isolation were hung on a tree, to be used next time, or to be washed. For one day after coming back among the people she did not cook food. Were a man to eat food cooked by a woman at such times, he would have incapacitated himself for hunting and exposed himself to sickness or death.²³¹

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Chippeway Indians.]

Among the Chippeways and other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory, menstruous women are excluded from the camp, and take up their abode in huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the head and breast. They may not touch the household furniture nor any objects used by men; for their touch "is supposed to defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune," such as disease or death. They must drink out of a swan's bone. They may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals. They "are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where a fishing-net is set, for fear of averting [pg 91] their success. They are also prohibited at those times from partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance; because they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from having an equal success in his future excursions."²³² So the Lapps forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish;²³³ and the Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that if hunters were to come near women in their courses they would catch no game.²³⁴

[Dread and seclusion of menstruous women among the Tinneh or Déné Indians; customs and beliefs of the Carrier Indians in regard to menstruous women.]

But the beliefs and superstitions of this sort that prevail among the western tribes of the great Déné or Tinneh stock, to which the Chippeways belong, have been so well described by an experienced missionary, that I will give his description in his own words. Prominent among the ceremonial rites of these Indians, he says, "are the observances peculiar to the fair sex, and many of them are remarkably analogous to those practised by the Hebrew women, so much so that, were it not savouring of profanity, the ordinances of the Déné ritual code might be termed a new edition 'revised and considerably augmented' of the Mosaic ceremonial law. Among the Carriers,²³⁵ as soon as a girl has experienced the first flow of the menses which in the female constitution are a natural discharge, her father believed himself under the obligation of atoning for her supposedly sinful condition by a small impromptu distribution of clothes among the natives. This periodical state of women was considered as one of legal impurity [pg 92] fateful both to the man who happened to have any intercourse, however indirect, with her, and to the woman herself who failed in scrupulously observing all the rites prescribed by ancient usage for persons in her condition.

[Seclusion of Carrier girls at puberty.]

"Upon entering into that stage of her life, the maiden was immediately sequestered from company, even that of her parents, and compelled to dwell in a small branch hut by herself away from beaten paths and the gaze of passers-by. As she was supposed to exercise malefic influence on any man who might inadvertently glance at her, she had to wear a sort of head-dress combining in itself the purposes of a veil, a bonnet, and a mantlet. It was made of tanned skin, its forepart was shaped like a long fringe completely hiding from view the face and breasts; then it formed on the head a close-fitting cap or bonnet, and finally fell in a broad band almost to the heels. This head-dress was made and publicly placed on her head by a paternal aunt, who received at once some present from the girl's father. When, three or four years later, the period of sequestration ceased, only this same aunt had the right to take off her niece's ceremonial head-dress. Furthermore, the girl's fingers, wrists, and legs at the ankles and immediately below the knees, were encircled with ornamental rings and bracelets of sinew intended as a protection against the malign influences she was supposed to be possessed with.²³⁶ To a belt girding her waist were suspended two bone implements called respectively Tsoenkuz (bone tube) and Tsiltsoet (head scratcher). The former was a hollowed swan bone to drink with, any other mode of drinking being unlawful to her. The latter was fork-like and was called into requisition whenever she wanted to scratch her head—immediate contact of the fingers with the head being reputed injurious to her health. While thus secluded, she was called asta, that [pg 93] is 'interred alive' in Carrier, and she had to submit to a rigorous fast and abstinence. Her only allowed food consisted of dried fish boiled in a small bark vessel which nobody else must touch, and she had to abstain especially from meat of any kind, as well as fresh fish. Nor was this all she had to endure; even her contact, however remote, with these two articles of diet was so dreaded that she could not cross the public paths or trails, or the tracks of animals. Whenever absolute necessity constrained her to go beyond such spots, she had to be packed or carried over them lest she should contaminate the game or meat which had passed that way, or had been brought over these paths; and also for the sake of self-preservation against tabooed, and consequently to her, deleterious food. In the same way she was never allowed to wade in streams or lakes, for fear of causing death to the fish.

"It was also a prescription of the ancient ritual code for females during this primary condition to eat as little as possible, and to remain lying down, especially in course of each monthly flow, not only as a natural consequence of the prolonged fast and resulting weakness; but chiefly as an exhibition of a becoming penitential spirit which was believed to be rewarded by long life and continual good health in after years.

[Seclusion of Carrier women at their monthly periods; reasons for the seclusion of menstruous women among the Indians.]

"These mortifications or seclusion did not last less than three or four years. Useless to say that during all that time marriage could not be thought of, since the girl could not so much as be seen by men. When married, the same sequestration was practised relatively to husband and fellow-villagers—without the particular head-dress and rings spoken of—on the occasion of every recurring menstruation. Sometimes it was protracted as long as ten days at a time, especially during the first years of cohabitation. Even when she returned to her mate, she was not permitted to sleep with him on the first nor frequently on the second night, but would choose a distant corner of the lodge to spread her blanket, as if afraid to defile him with her dread uncleanness."²³⁷ Elsewhere the same writer tells us that most of [pg 94] the devices to which these Indians used to resort for the sake of ensuring success in the chase "were based on their regard for continence and their excessive repugnance for, and dread of, menstruating women."²³⁸ But the strict observances imposed on Tinneh or Déné women at such times were designed at the same time to protect the women themselves from the evil consequences of their dangerous condition. Thus it was thought that women in their courses could not partake of the head, heart, or hind part of an animal that had been caught in a snare without exposing themselves to a premature death through a kind of rabies. They might not cut or carve salmon, because to do so would seriously endanger their health, and especially would enfeeble their arms for life. And they had to abstain from cutting up the grebes which are caught by the Carriers in great numbers every spring, because otherwise the blood with which these fowls abound would occasion haemorrhage or an unnaturally prolonged flux in the transgressor.²³⁹ Similarly Indian women of the Thompson tribe abstained from venison and the flesh of other large game during menstruation, lest the animals should be displeased and the menstrual flow increased.²⁴⁰ For a similar reason, probably, Shuswap girls during their seclusion at puberty are forbidden to eat anything that bleeds.²⁴¹ The same principle may perhaps partly explain the rule, of which we have had some examples, that women at such times should refrain from fish and flesh, and restrict themselves to a vegetable diet.

[Similar rules of seclusion enjoined on menstruous women in ancient Hindoo, Persian, and Hebrew codes.]

The philosophic student of human nature will observe, or learn, without surprise that ideas thus deeply ingrained [pg 95] in the savage mind reappear at a more advanced stage of society in those elaborate codes which have been drawn up for the guidance of certain peoples by lawgivers who claim to have derived the rules they inculcate from the direct inspiration of the deity. However we may explain it, the resemblance which exists between the earliest official utterances of the deity and the ideas of savages is unquestionably close and remarkable; whether it be, as some suppose, that God communed face to face with man in those early days, or, as others maintain, that man mistook his wild and wandering thoughts for a revelation from heaven. Be that as it may, certain it is that the natural uncleanness of woman at her monthly periods is a conception which has occurred, or been revealed, with singular unanimity to several ancient legislators. The Hindoo lawgiver Manu, who professed to have received his institutes from the creator Brahman, informs us that the wisdom, the energy, the strength, the sight, and the vitality of a man who approaches a woman in her courses will utterly perish; whereas, if he avoids her, his wisdom, energy, strength, sight, and vitality will all increase.²⁴² The Persian lawgiver Zoroaster, who, if we can take his word for it, derived his code from the mouth of the supreme being Ahura Mazda, devoted special attention to the subject. According to him, the menstrous flow, at least in its abnormal manifestations, is a work of Ahriman, or the devil. Therefore, so long as it lasts, a woman "is unclean and possessed of the demon; she must be kept confined, apart from the faithful whom her touch would defile, and from the fire which her very look would injure; she is not allowed to eat as much as she wishes, as the strength she might acquire would accrue to the fiends. Her food is not given her from hand to hand, but is passed to her from a distance, in a long leaden spoon."²⁴³ The Hebrew lawgiver Moses, whose divine legation is as little open to question as that of Manu and Zoroaster, treats the subject at still greater length; but I must leave to the reader the task of comparing the inspired ordinances [pg 96] on this head with the merely human regulations of the Carrier Indians which they so closely resemble.

[Superstitions as to menstruous women in ancient and modern Europe.]

Amongst the civilized nations of Europe the superstitions which cluster round this mysterious aspect of woman's nature are not less extravagant than those which prevail among savages. In the oldest existing cyclopaedia—the Natural History of Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended from menstruation is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.²⁴⁴ Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer will turn sour; if she touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she makes jam, it will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she touches buds, they will wither; if she climbs a cherry tree, it will die.²⁴⁵ In Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing of a pig, the pork will putrefy.²⁴⁶ In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such times may not [pg 97] go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms.²⁴⁷

[The intention of secluding menstruous women is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are thought to emanate from them in that condition; suspension between heaven and earth.]

Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralize the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first menstruation appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls at this crisis. Two of these precautions have been illustrated above, namely, the rules that the girl may not touch the ground nor see the sun. The general effect of these rules is to keep her suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or raised above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by being, in electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others. For it is thought that she herself would suffer if she were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as we have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were to shine on them at puberty, and in some Brazilian tribes the young women think that a transgression of the rules would entail sores on the neck and throat. In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove destructive both to herself and to all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question.

[The same explanation applies to the similar rules of seclusion observed by divine kings and priests; suspension between heaven and earth.]

The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ materially from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same mysterious energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good [pg 98] nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.²⁴⁸ Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other hand, an apprehension that the divine being, thus drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those magical functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of the people and even of the [pg 99] world is believed to hang. Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second part of this work;²⁴⁹ they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought, can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible, suspended between the two.²⁵⁰

[Stories of immortality attained by suspension between heaven and earth.]

In legends and folk-tales, which reflect the ideas of earlier ages, we find this suspension between heaven and earth attributed to beings who have been endowed with the coveted yet burdensome gift of immortality. The wizened remains of the deathless Sibyl are said to have been preserved in a jar or urn which hung in a temple of Apollo at Cumae; and when a group of merry children, tired, perhaps, of playing in the sunny streets, sought the shade of the temple and amused themselves by gathering underneath the familiar jar and calling out, "Sibyl, what do you wish?" a hollow voice, like an echo, used to answer from the urn, "I wish to die."²⁵¹ A story, taken down from the lips of a German peasant at Thomsdorf, relates that once upon a time there was a girl in London who wished to live for ever, so they say:

And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a church, and every St. John's Day, about the hour of noon, she eats a roll of bread.²⁵² Another German story tells of a lady who [pg 100] resided at Danzig and was so rich and so blest with all that life can give that she wished to live always. So when she came to her latter end, she did not really die but only looked like dead, and very soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church, half standing and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but they saw quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this blessed day. Every New Year's Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven.²⁵³ A third German story tells of a noble damsel who cherished the same foolish wish for immortality. So they put her in a basket and hung her up in a church, and there she hangs and never dies, though many a year has come and gone since they put her there. But every year on a certain day they give her a roll, and she eats it and cries out, "For ever! for ever! for ever!" And when she has so cried she falls silent again till the same time next year, and so it will go on for ever and for ever.²⁵⁴ A fourth story, taken down near Oldenburg in Holstein, tells of a jolly dame that ate and drank and lived right merrily and had all that heart could desire, and she wished to live always. For the first hundred years all went well, but after that she began to shrink and shrivel up, till at last she could neither walk nor stand nor eat nor drink. But die she could not. At first they fed her as if she were a little child, but when she grew smaller and smaller they put her in a glass bottle and hung her up in the church. And there she still hangs, in the church of St. Mary, at Lübeck. She is as small as a mouse, but once a year she stirs.²⁵⁵

Notes:

[How Balder, the good and beautiful god, was done to death by a stroke of the mistletoe.]

A deity whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor on earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful god, the son of the great god Odin, and himself the wisest, mildest, best beloved of all the immortals. The story of his death, as it is told in the younger or prose Edda, runs thus. Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad. Only Loki, the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an old woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki asked, "Have all things sworn to spare Balder?" She answered, "East of Walhalla grows a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to swear." So Loki went and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly of the gods. There he found the blind god Hother standing at the outside of the circle. Loki asked him, "Why do you not shoot at Balder?" Hother answered, "Because I do not see where [pg 102] he stands; besides I have no weapon." Then said Loki, "Do like the rest and shew Balder honour, as they all do. I will shew you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this twig." Hother took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befell gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. They took Balder's body and brought it to the sea-shore. There stood Balder's ship; it was called Ringhorn, and was the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to launch the ship and to burn Balder's body on it, but the ship would not stir. So they sent for a giantess called Hyrrockin. She came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. Then Balder's body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his ship. When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died. So she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it. Balder's horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.²⁵⁶

[Tale of Balder in the older Edda.]

In the older or poetic Edda the tragic tale of Balder is hinted at rather than told at length. Among the visions which the Norse Sibyl sees and describes in the weird prophecy known as the Voluspa is one of the fatal mistletoe. "I behold," says she, "Fate looming for Balder, Woden's son, the bloody victim. There stands the Mistletoe slender and delicate, blooming high above the ground. Out of this shoot, so slender to look on, there shall grow a harmful fateful shaft. Hod shall shoot it, but Frigga in Fen-hall shall weep over the woe of Wal-hall."²⁵⁷ Yet looking far into [pg 103] the future the Sibyl sees a brighter vision of a new heaven and a new earth, where the fields unsown shall yield their increase and all sorrows shall be healed; then Balder will come back to dwell in Odin's mansions of bliss, in a hall brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, where the righteous shall live in joy for ever more.²⁵⁸

[The story of Balder as related by Saxo Grammaticus.]

Writing about the end of the twelfth century, the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells the story of Balder in a form which professes to be historical. According to him, Balder and Hother were rival suitors for the hand of Nanna, daughter of Gewar, King of Norway. Now Balder was a demigod and common steel could not wound his sacred body. The two rivals encountered each other in a terrific battle, and though Odin and Thor and the rest of the gods fought for Balder, yet was he defeated and fled away, and Hother married the princess. Nevertheless Balder took heart of grace and again met Hother in a stricken field. But he fared even worse than before; for Hother dealt him a deadly wound with a magic sword, which he had received from Miming, the Satyr of the woods; and after lingering three days in pain Balder died of his hurt and was buried with royal honours in a barrow.²⁵⁹

[Balder worshipped in Norway.]

Whether he was a real or merely a mythical personage, Balder was worshipped in Norway. On one of the bays of the beautiful Sogne Fiord, which penetrates far into the depths of the solemn Norwegian mountains, with their sombre pine-forests and their lofty cascades dissolving into spray before they reach the dark water of the fiord far below, Balder had a great sanctuary. It was called Balder's Grove. A palisade enclosed the hallowed ground, and within it stood a spacious temple with the images of many gods, but none of them was worshipped with such devotion as Balder. So great was the awe with which the heathen regarded the place that no man might harm another there, nor steal his cattle, nor defile himself with women. But women cared for the images of the gods in the temple; they warmed them at the fire, anointed them with oil, and dried them with cloths.²⁶⁰

[The legendary death of Balder resembles the legendary death of the Persian hero Isfendiyar in the epic of Firdusi.]

It might be rash to affirm that the romantic figure of Balder was nothing but a creation of the mythical fancy, a radiant phantom conjured up as by a wizard's wand to glitter for a time against the gloomy background of the stern Norwegian landscape. It may be so; yet it is also possible that the myth was founded on the tradition of a hero, popular and beloved in his lifetime, who long survived in the memory of the people, gathering more and more of the marvellous about him as he passed from generation to generation of story-tellers. At all events it is worth while to observe that a somewhat similar story is told of another national hero, who may well have been a real man. In his great poem, The Epic of Kings, which is founded on Persian traditions, the poet Firdusi tells us that in the combat between Rustem and Isfendiyar the arrows of the former did no harm to his adversary, "because Zerdusht had charmed his body against all dangers, so that it was like unto brass." But Simurgh, the bird of God, shewed Rustem the way he should follow in order to vanquish his redoubtable foe. He rode after her, and they halted not till they came to the sea-shore. There she led him into a garden, where grew a [pg 105] tamarisk, tall and strong, and the roots thereof were in the ground, but the branches pierced even unto the sky. Then the bird of God bade Rustem break from the tree a branch that was long and slender, and fashion it into an arrow, and she said, "Only through his eyes can Isfendiyar be wounded. If, therefore, thou wouldst slay him, direct this arrow unto his forehead, and verily it shall not miss its aim." Rustem did as he was bid; and when next he fought with Isfendiyar, he shot the arrow at him, and it pierced his eye, and he died. Great was the mourning for Isfendiyar. For the space of one year men ceased not to lament for him, and for many years they shed bitter tears for that arrow, and they said, "The glory of Iran hath been laid low."²⁶¹

[The myth of Balder was perhaps acted as a magical ceremony. The two chief incidents of the myth, namely the pulling of the mistletoe and the death and burning of the god, have perhaps their counterparts in popular ritual.]

Whatever may be thought of an historical kernel underlying a mythical husk in the legend of Balder, the details of the story suggest that it belongs to that class of myths which have been dramatized in ritual, or, to put it otherwise, which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of producing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language. A myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is, so to speak, the book of the words which are spoken and acted by the performers of the sacred rite. That the Norse story of Balder was a myth of this sort will become probable if we can prove that ceremonies resembling the incidents in the tale have been performed by Norsemen and other European peoples. Now the main incidents in the tale are two—first, the pulling of the mistletoe, and second, the death and burning of the god; and both of them may perhaps be found to have had their counterparts in yearly rites observed, whether separately or conjointly, by people in various parts of Europe. These rites will be described and discussed in the following chapters. We shall begin with the annual festivals of fire and shall reserve the pulling of the mistletoe for consideration later on.

Notes:

[European custom of kindling bonfires on certain days of the year, dancing round them and leaping over them. Effigies are sometimes burnt in the fires.]

All over Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round or leap over them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on historical evidence to the Middle Ages,²⁶² and their analogy to similar customs observed in antiquity goes with strong internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a period long prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest proof of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.²⁶³ Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A general survey of the customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and will serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.²⁶⁴

[Seasons of the year at which the bonfires are lit.]

The seasons of the year when these bonfires are most commonly lit are spring and midsummer; but in some places they are kindled also at the end of autumn or during the [pg 107] course of the winter, particularly on Hallow E'en (the thirty-first of October), Christmas Day, and the Eve of Twelfth Day. We shall consider them in the order in which they occur in the calendar year. The earliest of them is the winter festival of the Eve of Twelfth Day (the fifth of January); but as it has been already described in an earlier part of this work²⁶⁵ we shall pass it over here and begin with the fire-festivals of spring, which usually fall on the first Sunday of Lent (Quadragesima or Invocavit),²⁶⁶ Easter Eve, and May Day.

[Custom of kindling bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent in the Belgian Ardennes.]

The custom of kindling bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent has prevailed in Belgium, the north of France, and many parts of Germany. Thus in the Belgian Ardennes for a week or a fortnight before the "day of the great fire," as it is called, children go about from farm to farm collecting fuel. At Grand Halleux any one who refuses their request is pursued next day by the children, who try to blacken his face with the ashes of the extinct fire. When the day has come, they cut down bushes, especially juniper and broom, and in the evening great bonfires blaze on all the heights. It is a common saying that seven bonfires should be seen if the village is to be safe from conflagrations. If the Meuse happens to be frozen hard at the time, bonfires are lit also on the ice. At Grand Halleux they set up a pole called makral or "the witch," in the midst of the pile, and the fire is kindled by the man who was last married in the village. In the neighbourhood of Morlanwelz a straw man is burnt in the fire. Young people and children dance and sing round the bonfires, and leap over the embers to secure good crops or a happy marriage within the year, or as a means of guarding themselves against colic. In Brabant on the same Sunday, down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, women and men disguised in female attire used to go with burning torches to the fields, where they danced and sang comic songs for the purpose, as they alleged, of driving away "the wicked sower," who is mentioned in the Gospel for the day. At Maeseyck and in many villages of Limburg, [pg 108] on the evening of the day children run through the streets carrying lighted torches; then they kindle little fires of straw in the fields and dance round them. At Ensival old folks tell young folks that they will have as many Easter eggs as they see bonfires on this day.²⁶⁷ At Pâturages, in the province of Hainaut, down to about 1840 the custom was observed under the name of Escouvion or Scouvion. Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, which was called the Day of the Little Scouvion, young folks and children used to run with lighted torches through the gardens and orchards. As they ran they cried at the pitch of their voices,

At these words the torch-bearer whirled his blazing brand and hurled it among the branches of the apple-trees, the pear-trees, and the cherry-trees. The next Sunday was called the Day of the Great Scouvion, and the same race with lighted torches among the trees of the orchards was repeated in the afternoon till darkness fell. The same custom was observed on the same two days at Wasmes.²⁶⁸ In the neighbourhood of Liège, where the Lenten fires were put down by the police about the middle of the nineteenth century, girls thought that by leaping over the fires without being smirched they made sure of a happy marriage. Elsewhere in order to get a good husband it was necessary to see seven of the bonfires from one spot. In Famenne, a district of Namur, men and cattle who traversed the Lenten fires were thought to be safe from sickness and witchcraft. Anybody who saw seven such fires at once had nothing to fear from sorcerers. An old saying ran, that if you do not light "the great fire," God will light it for you; which seems to imply that the kindling of the bonfires was deemed a protection against conflagrations throughout the year.²⁶⁹

[Bonfires on the first Sunday of Lent in the French department of the Ardennes.]

In the French department of the Ardennes the whole village used to dance and sing round the bonfires which were lighted on the first Sunday in Lent. Here, too, it was the person last married, sometimes a man and sometimes a woman, who put the match to the fire. The custom is still kept up very commonly in the district. Cats used to be burnt in the fire or roasted to death by being held over it; and while they were burning the shepherds drove their flocks through the smoke and flames as a sure means of guarding them against sickness and witchcraft. In some communes it was believed that the livelier the dance round the fire, the better would be the crops that year.²⁷⁰ In the Vosges Mountains it is still customary to light great fires on the heights and around the villages on the first Sunday in Lent; and at Rupt and elsewhere the right of kindling them belongs to the person who was last married. Round the fires the people dance and sing merrily till the flames have died out. Then the master of the fire, as they call the man who kindled it, invites all who contributed to the erection of the pile to follow him to the nearest tavern, where they partake of good cheer. At Dommartin they say that, if you would have the hemp tall, it is absolutely necessary that the women should be tipsy on the evening of this day.²⁷¹ At Épinal in the Vosges, on the first Sunday in Lent, bonfires used to be kindled at various places both in the town and on the banks of the Moselle. They consisted of pyramids of sticks and faggots, which had been collected some days earlier by young folks going from door to door. When the flames blazed up, the names of various couples, whether young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, were called out, and the persons thus linked in mock marriage were forced, whether they liked it or not, to march arm in arm round the fire amid the laughter and jests of the crowd. The festivity lasted till the fire died out, and then the spectators dispersed through the streets, stopping under the windows of the houses and proclaiming the names of the [pg 110] féchenots and féchenottes or Valentines whom the popular voice had assigned to each other. These couples had to exchange presents; the mock bridegroom gave his mock bride something for her toilet, while she in turn presented him with a cockade of coloured ribbon. Next Sunday, if the weather allowed it, all the couples, arrayed in their best attire and attended by their relations, repaired to the wood of Saint Antony, where they mounted a famous stone called the danserosse or danseresse. Here they found cakes and refreshments of all sorts, and danced to the music of a couple of fiddlers. The evening bell, ringing the Angelus, gave the signal to depart. As soon as its solemn chime was heard, every one quitted the forest and returned home. The exchange of presents between the Valentines went by the name of ransom or redemption (rachat), because it was supposed to redeem the couple from the flames of the bonfire. Any pair who failed thus to ransom themselves were not suffered to share the merrymaking at the great stone in the forest; and a pretence was made of burning them in small fires kindled before their own doors.²⁷²

[Bonfires on the First Sunday of Lent in Franche-Comté.]

In the French province of Franche-Comté, to the west of the Jura Mountains, the first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of the Firebrands (Brandons), on account of the fires which it is customary to kindle on that day. On the Saturday or the Sunday the village lads harness themselves to a cart and drag it about the streets, stopping at the doors of the houses where there are girls and begging for a faggot. When they have got enough, they cart the fuel to a spot at some little distance from the village, pile it up, and set it on fire. All the people of the parish come out to see the bonfire. In some villages, when the bells have rung the Angelus, the signal for the observance is given by cries of, "To the fire! to the fire!" Lads, lasses, and children dance round the blaze, and when the flames have died down they vie with each other in leaping over the red embers. He or she who does so without singeing his or her garments will be married within the year. Young folk also carry lighted torches about the streets or the fields, and when they pass [pg 111] an orchard they cry out, "More fruit than leaves!" Down to recent years at Laviron, in the department of Doubs, it was the young married couples of the year who had charge of the bonfires. In the midst of the bonfire a pole was planted with a wooden figure of a cock fastened to the top. Then there were races, and the winner received the cock as a prize.²⁷³

[Bonfires on the first Sunday of Lent in Auvergne; the Granno invoked at these bonfires may be the old Celtic god Grannus, who was identified with Apollo.]

In Auvergne fires are everywhere kindled on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent. Every village, every hamlet, even every ward, every isolated farm has its bonfire or figo, as it is called, which blazes up as the shades of night are falling. The fires may be seen flaring on the heights and in the plains; the people dance and sing round about them and leap through the flames. Then they proceed to the ceremony of the Grannas-mias. A granno-mio²⁷⁴ is a torch of straw fastened to the top of a pole. When the pyre is half consumed, the bystanders kindle the torches at the expiring flames and carry them into the neighbouring orchards, fields, and gardens, wherever there are fruit-trees. As they march they sing at the top of their voices,

that is, "Grannus my friend, Grannus my father, Grannus my mother." Then they pass the burning torches under the branches of every tree, singing,

that is, "Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful!" In some villages the people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches on the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls' nests, in order that the hens may lay plenty of eggs throughout the year. When all these ceremonies have been performed, everybody goes home and feasts; the special dishes of the evening are fritters and pancakes.²⁷⁵ Here the application of the fire to the fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests of the poultry is clearly a charm intended to ensure fertility; and the Granno to whom the invocations are addressed, and who gives his name to the torches, may possibly be, as Dr. Pommerol suggests,²⁷⁶ no other than the ancient Celtic god Grannus, whom the Romans identified with Apollo, and whose worship is attested by inscriptions found not only in France but in Scotland and on the Danube.²⁷⁷ If the name Grannus is derived, as the learned tell us, from a root meaning "to glow, burn, shine,"²⁷⁸ the deity who bore the name and was identified with Apollo may well have been a sun-god; and in that case the prayers addressed to him by the peasants of the Auvergne, while they wave the blazing, crackling torches about the fruit-trees, would be eminently appropriate. For who could ripen the fruit so well as the sun-god? and what better process could be devised to draw the blossoms from the bare boughs than the application to them of that genial warmth which is ultimately derived from the solar beams? Thus the fire-festival of the first Sunday in Lent, as it is observed in Auvergne, may be interpreted very naturally and simply as a religious or rather perhaps magical ceremony designed to procure a due supply of the sun's heat for plants and animals. At the same time we should remember that the employment of fire in this and kindred ceremonies may have been designed originally, not so much to stimulate growth and reproduction, as to burn and destroy all agencies, [pg 113] whether in the shape of vermin, witches, or what not, which threatened or were supposed to threaten the growth of the crops and the multiplication of animals. It is often difficult to decide between these two different interpretations of the use of fire in agricultural rites. In any case the fire-festival of Auvergne on the first Sunday in Lent may date from Druidical times.

[French custom of carrying lighted torches (brandons) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent.]

The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (brandons) about the orchards and fields to fertilize them on the first Sunday of Lent seems to have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the practice of kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy "on the first Sunday of Lent people carried torches through the fields, exorcising the field-mice, the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that they did much good to the gardens and caused the onions to grow large. Children ran about the fields, torch in hand, to make the land more fertile. All that was done habitually in Picardy, and the ceremony of the torches is not entirely forgotten, especially in the villages on both sides the Somme as far as Saint-Valery."²⁷⁹ "A very agreeable spectacle, said the curate of l'Étoile, is to survey from the portal of the church, situated almost on the top of the mountain, the vast plains of Vimeux all illuminated by these wandering fires. The same pastime is observed at Poix, at Conty, and in all the villages round about."²⁸⁰ Again, in the district of Beauce a festival of torches (brandons or brandelons) used to be held both on the first and on the second Sunday in Lent; the first was called "the Great Torches" and the second "the Little Torches." The torches were, as usual, bundles of straw wrapt round poles. In the evening the village lads carried the burning brands through the country, running about in disorder and singing,

From time to time the bearers would stand still and smite [pg 114] the earth all together with the blazing straw of the torches, while they cried, "A sheaf of a peck and a half!" (Gearbe à boissiaux). If two torchbearers happened to meet each other on their rounds, they performed the same ceremony and uttered the same words. When the straw was burnt out, the poles were collected and a great bonfire made of them. Lads and lasses danced round the flames, and the lads leaped over them. Afterwards it was customary to eat a special sort of hasty-pudding made of wheaten flour. These usages were still in vogue at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but they have now almost disappeared. The peasants believed that by carrying lighted torches through the fields they protected the crops from field-mice, darnel, and smut.²⁸¹ "At Dijon, in Burgundy, it is the custom upon the first Sunday in Lent to make large fires in the streets, whence it is called Firebrand Sunday. This practice originated in the processions formerly made on that day by the peasants with lighted torches of straw, to drive away, as they called it, the bad air from the earth."²⁸² In some parts of France, while the people scoured the country with burning brands on the first Sunday in Lent, they warned the fruit-trees that if they did not take heed and bear fruit they would surely be cut down and cast into the fire.²⁸³ On the same day peasants in the department of Loiret used to run about the sowed fields with burning torches in their hands, while they adjured the field-mice to quit the wheat on pain of having their whiskers burned.²⁸⁴ In the department of Ain the great fires of straw and faggots which are kindled in the fields at this time are or were supposed to destroy the nests of the caterpillars.²⁸⁵ At Verges, a lonely village surrounded by forests between the Jura and the Combe d'Ain, the torches used at this season were kindled in [pg 115] a peculiar manner. The young people climbed to the top of a mountain, where they placed three nests of straw in three trees. These nests being then set on fire, torches made of dry lime-wood were lighted at them, and the merry troop descended the mountain to their flickering light, and went to every house in the village, demanding roasted peas and obliging all couples who had been married within the year to dance.²⁸⁶ In Berry, a district of central France, it appears that bonfires are not lighted on this day, but when the sun has set the whole population of the villages, armed with blazing torches of straw, disperse over the country and scour the fields, the vineyards, and the orchards. Seen from afar, the multitude of moving lights, twinkling in the darkness, appear like will-o'-the-wisps chasing each other across the plains, along the hillsides, and down the valleys. While the men wave their flambeaus about the branches of the fruit-trees, the women and children tie bands of wheaten-straw round the tree-trunks. The effect of the ceremony is supposed to be to avert the various plagues from which the fruits of the earth are apt to suffer; and the bands of straw fastened round the stems of the trees are believed to render them fruitful.²⁸⁷ In the peninsula of La Manche the Norman peasants used to spend almost the whole night of the first Sunday in Lent rushing about the country with lighted torches for the purpose, as they supposed, of driving away the moles and field-mice; fires were also kindled on some of the dolmens.²⁸⁸

[Bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent in Germany and Austria; burning the witch; burning discs thrown into the air; burning wheels rolled down hill; bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent in Switzerland.]

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at the same season similar customs have prevailed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from house to house. These they carried to an eminence and piled up round a tall, slim beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at [pg 116] right angles to form a cross. The structure was known as the "hut" or "castle." Fire was set to it and the young people marched round the blazing "castle" bareheaded, each carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes a straw-man was burned in the "hut." People observed the direction in which the smoke blew from the fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was a sign that the harvest would be abundant. On the same day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was made of straw and dragged by three horses to the top of a hill. Thither the village boys marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling down the slope. Two lads followed it with levers to set it in motion again, in case it should anywhere meet with a check. At Oberstattfeld the wheel had to be provided by the young man who was last married.²⁸⁹ About Echternach in Luxemburg the same ceremony is called "burning the witch"; while it is going on, the older men ascend the heights and observe what wind is blowing, for that is the wind which will prevail the whole year.²⁹⁰ At Voralberg in the Tyrol, on the first Sunday in Lent, a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and firewood. To the top of the tree is fastened a human figure called the "witch," made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing rhymes in which the words "corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the earth" may be distinguished.²⁹¹ In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure called the "witch" or the "old wife" or "winter's grandmother" is made up of clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood, to which fire is applied. While the "witch" is burning, the young people throw blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the [pg 117] rays of the sun or stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off, and mounting high into the air, describes a long fiery curve before it reaches the ground. A single lad may fling up forty or fifty of these discs, one after the other. The object is to throw them as high as possible. The wand by which they are hurled must, at least in some parts of Swabia, be of hazel. Sometimes the lads also leap over the fire brandishing lighted torches of pine-wood. The charred embers of the burned "witch" and discs are taken home and planted in the flaxfields the same night, in the belief that they will keep vermin from the fields.²⁹² At Wangen, near Molsheim in Baden, a like custom is observed on the first Sunday in Lent. The young people kindle a bonfire on the crest of the mountain above the village; and the burning discs which they hurl into the air are said to present in the darkness the aspect of a continual shower of falling stars. When the supply of discs is exhausted and the bonfire begins to burn low, the boys light torches and run with them at full speed down one or other of the three steep and winding paths that descend the mountain-side to the village. Bumps, bruises, and scratches are often the result of their efforts to outstrip each other in the headlong race.²⁹³ In the Rhön Mountains, situated on the borders of Hesse and Bavaria, the people used to march to the top of a hill or eminence on the first Sunday in Lent. Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down [pg 118] the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap, and standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of running about the fields with the blazing torches was to "drive away the wicked sower." Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them.²⁹⁴ In neighbouring villages of Hesse, between the Rhön and the Vogel Mountains, it is thought that wherever the burning wheels roll, the fields will be safe from hail and storm.²⁹⁵ At Konz on the Moselle, on the Thursday before the first Sunday in Lent, the two guilds of the butchers and the weavers used to repair to the Marxberg and there set up an oak-tree with a wheel fastened to it. On the following Sunday the people ascended the hill, cut down the oak, set fire to the wheel, and sent both oak and wheel rolling down the hillside, while a guard of butchers, mounted on horses, fired at the flaming wheel in its descent. If the wheel rolled down into the Moselle, the butchers were rewarded with a waggon-load of wine by the archbishop of Treves.²⁹⁶

[Burning discs thrown into the air.]

In Switzerland, also, it is or used to be customary to kindle bonfires on high places on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, and the day is therefore popularly known as Spark Sunday. The custom prevailed, for example, throughout the canton of Lucerne. Boys went about from house to house begging for wood and straw, then piled the fuel on a conspicuous mountain or hill round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called "the witch." At nightfall the pile was set on fire, and the young folks danced wildly round it, some of them cracking whips or ringing bells; and when the fire burned low enough, they leaped over it. This [pg 119] was called "burning the witch." In some parts of the canton also they used to wrap old wheels in straw and thorns, put a light to them, and send them rolling and blazing down hill. The same custom of rolling lighted wheels down hill is attested by old authorities for the cantons of Aargau and Bâle. The more bonfires could be seen sparkling and flaring in the darkness, the more fruitful was the year expected to be; and the higher the dancers leaped beside or over the fire, the higher, it was thought, would grow the flax. In the district of Freiburg and at Birseck in the district of Bâle it was the last married man or woman who must kindle the bonfire. While the bonfires blazed up, it was customary in some parts of Switzerland to propel burning discs of wood through the air by means of the same simple machinery which is used for the purpose in Swabia. Each lad tried to send his disc fizzing and flaring through the darkness as far as possible, and in discharging it he mentioned the name of the person to whose honour it was dedicated. But in Prättigau the words uttered in launching the fiery discs referred to the abundance which was apparently expected to follow the performance of the ceremony. Among them were, "Grease in the pan, corn in the fan, and the plough in the earth!"²⁹⁷

[Connexion of these bonfires with the custom of "carrying out Death;" effigies burnt on Shrove Tuesday.]

It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of "carrying out Death." We have seen that at Spachendorf, in Austrian Silesia, on the morning of Rupert's Day (Shrove Tuesday?), a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a fur cap, is laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that while it is blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he fastens to a branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field, believing that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is known as the "burying of Death."²⁹⁸ Even [pg 120] when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the meaning of the observance is probably the same; for the name Death, as I have tried to shew, does not express the original intention of the ceremony. At Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday. The effigy is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap over it.²⁹⁹ In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make long bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burned a straw-man on the field.³⁰⁰ In the district of Düsseldorf the straw-man burned on Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn.³⁰¹ On the first Monday after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls carry about a May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned.³⁰² In the district of Aachen on Ash Wednesday a man used to be encased in peas-straw and taken to an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out of his straw casing, which was then burned, the children thinking that it was the man who was being burned.³⁰³ In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made up of straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman, and the ceremony "burning the Old Woman."³⁰⁴

[Fire-festivals on Easter Eve. Custom in Catholic countries of kindling a holy new fire at the church on Easter Saturday; marvellous properties ascribed to the embers of the fire; the burning of Judas.]

Another occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is [pg 121] Easter Eve, the Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in Catholic countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then to make a new fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a burning-glass. At this fire is lit the great Paschal or Easter candle, which is then used to rekindle all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of Germany a bonfire is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open space near the church. It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of oak, walnut, and beech, which they char in the fire, and then take home with them. Some of these charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a newly-kindled fire, with a prayer that God will preserve the homestead from fire, lightning, and hail. Thus every house receives "new fire." Some of the sticks are kept throughout the year and laid on the hearth-fire during heavy thunder-storms to prevent the house from being struck by lightning, or they are inserted in the roof with the like intention. Others are placed in the fields, gardens, and meadows, with a prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such fields and gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the plants that grow in them are not beaten down by hail, nor devoured by mice, vermin, and beetles; no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close and full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of the Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated palm-branches, are mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called Judas is sometimes burned in the consecrated bonfire, and even where this custom has been abolished the bonfire itself in some places goes by the name of "the burning of Judas."³⁰⁵

[Easter fires in Bavaria and the Abruzzi.]

In the Hollertau, Bavaria, the young men used to light their lanterns at the newly-kindled Easter candle in the church and then race to the bonfire; he who reached it first set fire to the pile, and next day, Easter Sunday, was rewarded at the church-door by the housewives, who presented him with red eggs. Great was the jubilation while the effigy of the traitor was being consumed in the flames. The ashes were carefully collected and thrown away at sunrise in running water.³⁰⁶ In many parts of the Abruzzi, also, pious people kindle their fires on Easter Saturday with a brand brought from the sacred new fire in the church. When the brand has thus served to bless the fire on the domestic hearth, it is extinguished, and the remainder is preserved, partly in a cranny of the outer wall of the house, partly on a tree to which it is tied. This is done for the purpose of guarding the homestead against injury by storms. At Campo di Giove the people say that if you can get a piece of one of the three holy candles which the priest lights from the new fire, you should allow a few drops of the wax to fall into the crown of your hat; for after that, if it should thunder and lighten, you have nothing to do but to clap the hat on your head, and no flash of lightning can possibly strike you.³⁰⁷