The
Legend of Perseus

A STUDY OF TRADITION IN STORY
CUSTOM AND BELIEF: BY

Edwin Sidney Hartland
F.S.A

VOL. II.
THE LIFE-TOKEN

Published by David Nutt
in the Strand, London
1895

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

The discussion of the Life-token has proved so important, going down to the very foundations of the savage philosophy of life, that I have found it impossible to bring to a close this study of the Legend of Perseus within the compass of two volumes. A third, however, will complete the task, and will also include a supplementary Bibliographical List and an Index.

I desire to add to the names of friends who have so kindly extended to me their assistance in various ways, those of Mr. Edward Clodd, now president of the Folklore Society, the Rev. W. Gregor, LL.D., Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, M. J. D. E. Schmeltz, the learned Curator of the Ethnographical Museum at Leiden, and editor of the Internationales Archiv, and Mr. W. R. Paton. To Mr. W. H. D. Rouse I have had occasion to refer so frequently for assistance of various kinds, constantly and ungrudgingly rendered, that I hardly know how to thank him.

Highgarth, Gloucester,
May 1895.

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CHAPTER VIII

The Life-token in Tale and Custom

Two classes of life-tokens; the one, originally connected with the hero; the other, arbitrary—Examples given in previous chapters—Examples from märchen outside the Perseus cycle—The magical mirror—The Life-token in mirror and well—Tokens of Fidelity—Connection of the Life-token and External Soul—Birth Ceremonies—Planting of trees and other life-tokens in custom—Divination.

CHAPTER IX

Witchcraft: Sympathetic Magic

Folktale incidents presenting the divisibility of a person, continued sympathy of severed portions of a person with the bulk, and the endowment of the severed portions with consciousness—Modes of witchcraft—Witchcraft upon objects identified with the victim—Severed portions of the body—Footprints—Food—Dress—Objects more remotely associated with the victim—Witchcraft upon arbitrary objects—Name—Defences against witchcraft.

CHAPTER X

Witchcraft: Philtres—Preventive and remedial Leechcraft

Different kinds of love-potions—Hair and other substances taken from the body—Clothing—Footprints—Dangers {vii} of carelessness over severed parts of the body—Cure for warts—Doctrine of Transplantation—Mistaken applications of—Doctrine of Sympathy—Remedies derived from the dead—“A hair of the dog that bit you.”

CHAPTER XI

Sacred Wells and Trees

Ceremonies at wells and trees in the British Islands—On the Continent of Europe—Nails driven into trees and images—Analogous rites elsewhere—Usual explanations discussed—Rites at cairns—True meaning of the rites—Dedication of hair at sacred shrines and graves—Other votive offerings.

CHAPTER XII

Totemism—The Blood Covenant—Customs connected with Saliva

Recapitulation—Union with the god—Totemism—Sacrifices—The Blood Covenant—Its evolution—Its sacramental character—Its decay—Changes in its effect—Saliva customs—Analogy to the Blood Covenant—Spitting on infants—Spitting on various occasions—Against witchcraft—Saliva of sacred personages.

CHAPTER XIII

Funeral Rites

The clan one body—The common meal—Eating the dead in antiquity—Among modern savages—Survivals in modern Europe—Funeral feasts—The Sin-eater—Similar customs in other countries—Eating with the dead—Sacramental union with the dead—Smearing with ashes, etc.—Wearing bones and other relics of {viii} the dead—Cutting oneself for the dead—Mutilation—Gifts of hair to the dead—Burial in a common grave—Custom of Ettá.

CHAPTER XIV

Marriage Rites

Analogy of marriage with admission into the clan—Custom of Sindra-dán—Blood-rites—Confarreatio—Ritual food shared by all guests—Meaning of the rite—Marriage constitutes a new relationship on the part of the entire kin—Bridal dance and kiss—Nasamonian rite—Group-marriage—Rights of the kin over husband or wife—The Levirate—Reception by marriage into the kin—Consent of the kin.

CHAPTER XV

The Couvade and other illustrations of the strength of the Blood-tie—Conclusion of the inquiry into the theory of the Life-token

The Couvade—Its true meaning—Not found among the lowest savages—Sponsorship—Adoption—Collective responsibility of the clan—The Blood-feud—Medical treatment of the kin for the disease of one member—Solidarity of the family—Cannot be terminated even by death—Sacramental conception of a kindred—The theory of life underlying the Life-token—Conclusion of the inquiry into the Life-token.

Endnotes

Press Notices

Errata

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The life-tokens we have met with in previous chapters may be divided into two classes, namely, such as have some original connection with the hero, and such as are merely arbitrary. Of the first, the most widespread and important is the tree that grows up from some portion of the magical fish. In The King of the Fishes and in the corresponding Norman tale the tree is a rose-tree growing, in the one case from the buried scales, in the other from the buried bones. In one of the stories from Lorraine it will be remembered that some of the fish’s bones were buried under a rose-tree, and there the babes are subsequently found. Their life-tokens are not the tree, but three roses growing upon it. In one of Grimm’s German tales we find two golden lilies growing from two pieces of the fish. Two cypresses arise from the fish’s tail in the Greek story. In the Hungarian Gipsy tale, where the mother becomes pregnant by drinking from an urme’s breast, the urme drops of her milk into two holes in the ground, whence the life-tokens, two oak-trees, spring. The mermaid, in a Highland märchen, gives twelve grains, of which three are for the fisher’s wife and produce three boys, and three are to be planted and produce trees of a kind unspecified. Equally, {4} doomed to death at the hands of a Rakshasi, her fellow-wife, gives her son in a golden vessel a small quantity of her own breast-milk, which will become red if his father be killed, and more deeply red if she herself be slain.^4.1

In both these cases there has been originally an organic connection between the token and the person whose condition is indicated. Such a connection is not common outside the Perseus cycle. Usually there is no more connection traceable between the hero and his life-token than that subsisting between an owner and his property, sometimes not so much. At most it is founded in the planting by him, or at the time of his birth, of the tree that serves as the token. A remnant of organic connection, however, appears in the Panjâbi story about Prince Lionheart. This personage was born in consequence of his mother’s eating some barleycorns given her by a fakir. When the prince bids farewell to his retainer, the knife-grinder, on whom he has bestowed a kingdom and a bride, he gives him a barley-plant as a life-token. He afterwards gives, in similar circumstances, a barley-plant each to his other retainers, the blacksmith and the carpenter. His instructions are that these plants be carefully tended and watered, for so long as they flourish he will be alive and well; but if they droop, misfortune will be at hand. The prince’s life is dependent on his sword. When the sword is thrown into the fire, a burning fever comes over him: when the hilt {5} comes off, his head rolls off; and at the same moment every one of the barley-plants snaps, so that the ears fall to the ground.^5.1 In a Bengali tale, and in the first of the tales in the Siddhi-Kür, each of the heroes plants a “life-tree.”^5.2 In a Karen tale the hero sets two plants, and directs his comrades, if the plants wither, to come and seek for him.^5.3 Ibonia, a Malagasy hero, plants arums and plantain-trees, saying to his parents: “If these grow withered, then I am ill; and if they die, that is a sign that I also am dead.”^5.4 The princess in a Russian tale, when her husband leaves her, gives him a sackful of seeds, telling him to throw them on either side of the road he travels: “Wherever they fall, that moment trees will spring up; on the trees precious fruit will be hanging in beauty, various birds will sing songs, and tom-cats from over the sea will tell tales.” When he is drugged, the tree-tops begin to wither; and the princess sets out after him.^5.5 An Indian story shows us the lame prince, on undertaking an adventure, giving his mother a plant as his life-token.^5.6 Apparently the plant is a growing one, but it does not appear whether the prince had himself set it. A curious example is found in a variant of Cinderella, collected by M. Cosquin in Lorraine. Florine was a king’s only daughter. Her mother in dying had commended above all things to her {6} daughter’s care a little white lamb. This lamb gives her magical food. When her stepmother discovers this, she feigns to be sick and persuades the king to kill the lamb that she may eat of it. Ere it dies the lamb directs Florine to gather its bones and put them on the pear-tree, whose branches will thenceforward be adorned with pretty little golden bells, ringing ceaseless chimes: if these bells be ever silent, it will be a sign of misfortune. By her command over this magical tree Florine is enabled to pluck and give to a certain king some of the bells, which her stepsister cannot do. The king, therefore, marries her. In his absence her stepmother throws the bride into the river and puts her own daughter in her place. Forthwith the golden bells cease to chime. Now, their sound could be heard two hundred leagues around. The king, remarking that they have stopped, hastens home, and arrives just in time to save the drowning heroine.^6.1 There is little doubt that the tale in its more archaic shape exhibited both the lamb and the pear-tree as transformations of the heroine’s mother, and in this way connected with the heroine by a tie of blood.

It is not uncommon for the plants to be set by natural or adoptive parents. The young Klepht in a modern Greek folksong begs his mother:

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A Negro story from Angola represents one of the heroes, immediately on his birth, as directing his parents to plant his kilembe, or life-tree, at the back of the house.^7.1

The Smyrnæan tale I have already mentioned in Chapter IV. brings before us a childless queen, who is gifted by a dervish with three apples. These she must eat, and she will then give birth to three boys. At the birth of each a pumpkin is to be planted in the garden: it will bring forth one fruit, wherein the child’s strength will reside. Afterwards, when one of the pumpkins is cut and carried away, the corresponding youth falls ill, until it is recovered.^7.2 Here the pumpkin is rather the life itself than the life-token; but the distinction, as we shall hereafter see, is not very important. A Tirolese variant of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette describes the gardener who rescues the children as planting a gilliflower for each of the two boys, and a rose for the girl. Apparently this is done at the time he finds and adopts the babe. The boys grow up and go away successively to seek the Three Beauties of the World; and their flowers wither when they themselves are changed into marble by the Medusa-witch.^7.3

Often, however, the original planting is not mentioned. The twins, in a Melanesian story from the island of Aurora, simply set a taboo upon a banana belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu: “If you go into the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at the top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us; but if you see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is ripening upwards, we shall have killed him.”^7.4 A banana {8} growing by the hero’s hut is also his life-token, in a Malagasy story.^8.1

There is a large number of cases which need not detain us now, where on departure the hero gives a flower that will continue fresh and flourishing so long as he is hale and prosperous, but will fade on misfortune or death happening to him. This is a markedly oriental form of the Life-token, occurring repeatedly in India and among the Arabs of modern Egypt.^8.2 In the Sinhasana Dwatrinsatika, or Thirty-two Stories of the Speaking Statues, a Sanskrit work, Siva gives to Vikram a lotus-flower, saying: “When this flower withers, then you will know that you must die in six months, and prepare accordingly.”^8.3 Here the ideas of the Life-token, the life itself, and a prophetic message are all mixed up.

The knife stuck into a tree, to drip with blood, or to rust, if the owner die, is a commonplace of Slavonic stories.^8.4 In a Serbian tale the knife falls out when the hero is overpowered by the witch.^8.5 When three brothers part on the search for a magical pelican, in a Hungarian märchen, they mark a finger-post at the cross-roads. Blood will ooze out of it, on the return of any of them, if the absent one be in misery or captivity; but milk will flow if he be well.^8.6 A German tale represents the brothers as each cutting a tree. The cut becomes blood-red if either {9} of them be dead or in need.^9.1 In the Arabian Nights Bahman gives his hunting-knife to Perizadah: it will become blood-stained on his death. The same incident is found in Spain, in Iceland, and in Italy.^9.2 Elsewhere other weapons are named. So long as a poniard can be drawn from its sheath, in a tale obtained by M. Luzel at Plouaret in Lower Brittany, no ill has happened to its owner; but if it stick, he is dead.^9.3 Sikulume, in a Kaffir story, sticks his assagai in the ground before he ventures among some cannibals, saying: “If it stands still, you will know I am safe; if it shakes, you will know I am running; if it falls down, you will know I am dead.”^9.4 An Epirote story makes one of the twins say, when they part: “If the sword of either of us become bloody, that will be a sign that the other one lies dying.”^9.5

Among other articles of property, a rosary, or a ring, is the favourite. Parwez, in the Arabian Nights, gives his sister a string of one hundred pearls: while they run loose on the string, he is living. The rosary also appears in a modern Arab folktale from Egypt (already cited), in Catalonia, in Brittany, and in tales obtained at Troyes in Champagne and at Mantua.^9.6 In Arab tales the ring tightens round the finger when the giver of the ring suffers mishap.^9.7 In a Vlach ballad it rusts.^9.8 More usually the {10} stone it contains changes colour. This is the case in the old French romance of Flores et Blanchefleur; and it reappears among the Basques, in Italy, and, though rarely, in Russia.^10.1 In Sicily the ring is originally the gift of a fairy, or rather a Fate, at the birth of the three children borne by the heroine of a variant of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette.^10.2 The virtues ascribed of old to precious stones were many; and we should have had cause for surprise if we had not found gems in the list of life-tokens.

A handkerchief is a frequent gift. It becomes black, or more usually besmirched with blood.^10.3 In a Vlach ballad just referred to, the lady delivers to her husband her veil, adorned with a border of golden broidery. “When the gold shall melt,” she says, “know thou that I am dead.” In a modern Greek tale from the island of Syra, two brothers, starting to seek for the magical bird Dikjeretto, leave their shirts with their sister. If misfortune meet them, the shirts will turn black.^10.4 Each of three brothers in a Lithuanian story sets up at the crossway, ere they part, a blue banner, which will be stained with red—in other words, with blood—in the event of his death.^10.5 In a story from Southern Russia, Ivan Popyaloff, going to fight the snake that withheld the daylight, hung up his gloves, desiring his brothers to hasten to his help if blood dropped from them.^10.6 In {11} another Russian story the hero thoughtfully puts a plate beneath, to catch the blood.^11.1 Lemminkäinen, in the Kalevala, having brushed his beautiful hair, flings the brush upon the oven-posts, and declares that on harm’s happening to him it will shed blood. Accordingly, when he is done to death in the Underworld, his wife is made aware of the fact by the bristles dripping with gore.^11.2 Mats made from the skins of beasts he has slain, and a pipe, are left behind with his foster-mother by a young Micmac brave, who goes to make war on the savage Culloos: she will see blood on them if he be killed.^11.3 Strong Hans, in a tale from Syra, cannot be got to do anything but play his cither. When he sallies forth to fight the ogre, who has ravished away the king’s daughter, he tells his mother: “If you see that the strings of my cither are broken, then up and seek me!”^11.4 In an obscure passage of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché, the heroes Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu appear to leave as their life-token with their mother the india-rubber ball with which they loved to play.^11.5 One of the Torres Straits islanders told Professor Haddon a tale wherein a mother, while at work, breaks her digging-stick, and at once concludes that something has happened to her baby-boy. Sure enough it has; for a gust of wind had blown down his basket-cradle, and a man and his wife passing by have found the child in the grass and taken him away.^11.6 Here the instrument neither belongs to, nor {12} is it indicated by, the person affected. So in an Iroquois legend, when the hero starts in search of the daughter of a neighbouring chief, his uncle, under whose tutelage he is, brings out “a curious thing made of coloured string and elk-hair of deep red, about a foot long. ‘I shall keep this by me,’ said he, ‘and so long as you are doing well it will hang as it is; but if you are in danger it will come down itself almost to the ground, and if it does reach the ground you will die.’ ”^12.1

According to a märchen told by the Transylvanian Armenians, a maiden presses a gold coin into her lover’s hand and tells him that when it is rusty she will be dead.^12.2 In the Russian tale of Marya Morevna, the hero leaves successively his silver spoon, fork and snuff-box with his three Animal Brothers-in-law, when he goes on the perilous adventure of rescuing his fair wife from Koshchei the Deathless. When he is killed and chopped into pieces by the ogre, all the silver turns black.^12.3 The hero of a Tirolese tale and his sister kindle two lights; and he declares that if one of them go out, she must take it as a sign that something has happened to him and he will nevermore return.^12.4 A candle is combined with the handkerchief which becomes bloody in a Russian story. The youngest brother going away in a Sicilian märchen touches a vase of cloves and utters the warning that the drying up of the cloves will be a signal of his having been {13} turned to marble by the Medusa-witch.^13.1 In Russian tales the hero’s horse stands in blood up to his knees, or even up to his neck, or up to his ankles in tears, when his master is dead.^13.2 In another Russian tale a glass of water becomes tinged with blood.^13.3 And in a Servian tale the eldest brother, on going out with the second, directs the youngest to put a kettle on the fire to boil, and to keep stirring the fire beneath it. If the water turn to blood, he is to let a little dog out of the cellar, and bid it follow the way the two elder brothers have taken.^13.4 Similarly in a Georgian story the prince fills a cup with water and puts it near the fire. So long as it remains pure he will be alive; but on its changing to blood he will be dead.^13.5 In the Egyptian manuscript the elder brother is warned of his younger’s fate by the beer he is about to drink turning into froth. Here again, it will be noted, there is no apparent connection with the hero, save that he has previously appointed this sign.

One of the magical objects most famous in tradition and in romantic literature is the mirror wherein the beholder can see any object at will. It became prominent in the dreams of science during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when it is said to have figured among the properties of astrologers. In English literature the Enchanted Mirror is best remembered from the Squire’s Tale of Cambuscan Bold, and by the admirable use of it in one of the Ingoldsby Legends. I do not propose to discuss it here further than is necessary to show its relations with the Life-token. The first time we meet with it in literature is in Lucian’s True History. It is found in the {14} moon, of enormous dimensions, lying over a well. Anybody, we are told, who enters the well hears whatever is said upon the earth; and anybody looking into the mirror sees as in a panorama all the cities and nations of the world. The Greek Munchausen declares that he saw his family and his entire fatherland; and whoever does not believe him can go there and look for himself! A singular parallel is found among the Dyaks of Borneo. According to their traditions, one of the ancient fathers of the race climbed upon a gigantic tree to the Pleiades, where he was hospitably entertained by a friendly being, who introduced him to rice—a food until then unknown on earth. Being left alone for a short time, the visitor peeped into a big jar, and there, to his astonishment, saw, as in a mirror, his father’s house, with the whole family party gathered in animated discussion. His spirits fell, for he feared he should never return home from that immense distance. But his host cheered him up; and after giving him a good dinner, and some rice to plant, with full instructions as to its cultivation and other hints on husbandry, he let him down by a rope to the earth again. The adventurer, having thus got back in safety, taught his people the lessons he had learned in the Pleiades; and he is still venerated as the father of agriculture.^14.1 In the far west the Ynca Yupanqui, if we may trust the Peruvian legend reported by Molina, once went to visit his father Viracocha Ynca. Coming to a certain fountain, he saw a piece of crystal fall into it; and within the crystal he beheld the figure of a man dressed like an Ynca. From the back of his head issued three brilliant rays like those of the sun. The royal fringe was upon his head, and {15} ear-pieces, like those of the Yncas, adorned his ears. Serpents twined around his arms and shoulders. Upon his shoulders there was a lion, while the head of another lion appeared between his legs. Yupanqui fled; but from within the fountain the apparition called him by name. “Come hither,” it said, “my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt conquer many nations: therefore be careful to pay great reverence to me, and remember me in thy sacrifices.” Saying this, the apparition vanished; but the crystal remained. The Ynca took care of it, and we are told that thenceforth he saw in it everything he wanted.^15.1

Mr. Clouston, in his notes to John Lane’s feeble continuation of the Squire’s Tale, has brought together a large number of instances of magical mirrors, beginning with Vergil the Magician and coming down to the practices recorded by Mr. E. W. Lane and others in modern Egypt and India.^15.2 A boy is ordinarily the agent in the last-mentioned practices, and a spot of ink in the hollow of his hand the mirror. The same practices were employed in classical antiquity, and were not unknown during the Middle Ages. A German saga relates that a jewel of crystal was by a mysterious stranger left as a gift with a burgess of Nuremberg who had shown him hospitality for three days. If a chaste boy looked into the crystal he would see a little man, who would show him everything it was desired to know. So great was the reputation of the {16} glass, that people used to threaten one another: “Speak the truth, or I’ll go to the little man.”^16.1 In a Gipsy story from Transylvania a king’s daughter possesses a mirror wherein she can see everything in the world.^16.2 Another mirror with somewhat more limited capacity was the gift of a mountain spirit in a German tale; but it had other powers that resulted at last in a curse.^16.3 When Vasco da Gama was sailing towards India, some of the Indian wizards are said to have shown the people at Calicut in basins of water his three ships.^16.4 The Egyptian and modern Indian practices are ordinarily used for discovering thefts; and this was often the purpose in Europe. In Tahiti and Hawaii the priest was sent for on similar occasions. After some prayers he caused a hole to be dug in the floor of the house, and filled with water. He continued his incantations with a young plantain in his hand until he observed the image of the thief in the water.^16.5 In the Isle of Man a notorious witch is reported to have made use of a bowl of {17} water in order to divine as to the safety of a herring-fleet.^17.1 The Otando fetish-man of Equatorial Africa also uses a vessel of water; the Mpongwe fetish-man uses a mirror.^17.2 In Borneo the manang, or medicine-man, is frequently provided with a magical stone into which he can look and see what is ailing a sick man, and prescribe for him accordingly.^17.3 The Cakchiquels of Central America had a sacred obsidian stone, which was their national oracle, and was mysteriously connected with the origin of mankind. A stone, apparently identified with this, is preserved in the church of Tecpan, Guatemala. It was shown to Mr. Stephens, who describes it as “a piece of common slate, fourteen inches by ten, and about as thick as those used by boys at school, without characters of any kind upon it.”^17.4 No doubt the eye of faith was required to see anything in it. Crystals are used by the medicine-men of the Apaches for divining.^17.5 The Urim and Thummim of Hebrew antiquity seem to have been objects of the same kind of superstition. The “Mirror of Light” is not unknown even in these days, and has been honoured with the attention of the Society for Psychical Research.^17.6

Lucian, in placing the mirror in a well, was probably {18} satirising the belief in sacred wells which had properties like those he attributed to the mirror. Such wells and pools are still to be found, both in stories and in fact. A fairy in an Italian tale points out to the hero a fountain which will be a mirror for him, into which he can look, and to which he can give commands, and they will be obeyed.^18.1 It was formerly believed at York that he who flung, on May morning before the Minster clock struck one, five white stones into a certain part of the Ouse near the city, would see in the water, as in a mirror, whatever he might desire, whether past, present, or future.^18.2 On the promontory of Tænarum, now Cape Matapan, Pausanias tells us, was a famous fountain. In his day there was nothing remarkable to be seen in it; but anciently those who pried into its depths might see views of ports and ships. In the Cyaneæ, hard by Lycia, too, there was a spring, into which whoso descended saw whatever he wished to behold.^18.3 And there is a wonderful well in Samoa, wherein a variety of scenes may be perceived by those who will undertake the risk of being enticed into its stony depths.^18.4

So far we have found no Life-token in mirror or well. A mirror or well, however, which reveals to the inquirer only the health of one in whom he has an interest, is obviously nothing more than a special variety of the mirror {19} or well revealing anything or everything. This is the variety mentioned in a Roman variant of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty, on taking leave of the Beast for a short time, is given a mirror, into which she can look and see how he is.^19.1 In a Swedish märchen already cited, on the two comrades parting at a crossway, one of them dips his knife into the fountain adjacent, and says to the other: “It shall be to thee a sign that I am living so long as the water of this spring is clear; but if it be red and turbid, then I shall be dead, and I certainly expect that thou wilt avenge my death.”^19.2

This convenient way of obtaining news of absent friends is said to be still in use. The Eskimo of Greenland, when a man has not returned in due time from an expedition in his kayak, hold the head of his nearest relation over a tub of water, and judge from the reflection beneath whether the absent person has been upset, or is still sitting in the boat, rowing.^19.3 In the island of Tahiti, if one, looking at the water of certain springs, chance to see it tinged with blood, it is a sign that one of the beholder’s friends is about to die.^19.4 Nor is it different in our own country. Gulval Well, in Cornwall, answers inquiries put with the proper formula. If the person asked after be alive and well, the quiet water will instantly boil and bubble clear and pure; if he be sick, the water becomes foul and puddled; if he be dead, it remains calm and lifeless.^19.5 The legends accounting for these phenomena in Tahiti and Cornwall are unrecorded. In the parish of Kirkmichael, in the county of Banff, there {20} is a fountain dedicated to St. Michael, and famous for its healing virtues. The guardian of the well appears in the shape of a fly which, it is believed, never dies. “To the eye of ignorance,” we are told, “he might sometimes appear dead; but agreeably to the Druidic system, it was only a Transmigration into a similar form, which made little alteration on the real identity.” He was, in former days at all events, constantly on duty. “If the sober matron wished to know the issue of her husband’s ailment, or the love-sick Nymph that of her languishing Swain, they visited the Well of St. Michael. Every movement of the sympathetic Fly was regarded in silent awe; and as he appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their presages; their breasts vibrated with correspondent emotions.”^20.1 Brand and Ellis quote from an old writer a passage concerning fountains which prognosticate plenty or famine. The writer concludes by saying: “Myselfe know some Gentlemen that confesse, if a certaine Fountaine (being otherwise very cleane and cleare) be suddenly troubled by meanes of a Worme unknowne, that the same is a personall Summons for some of them to depart out of the world.”^20.2 These superstitions frequently degenerated into mere divination. Dalyell records that auguries as to the fate of {21} any one were drawn from the finding of a dead or a living worm in a well in the parish of Strathdon, and also in the well at Ardnacloich in Appin, Argyllshire.^21.1 Sir John Lubbock quotes a striking instance from Dr. Anderson’s account of the expedition to Western Yunnan. Three men having gone to the Kakhyen hills, a report reached their families that one of them had died. To ascertain which of them it was, the old women were divining by means of needles and cotton-wool. Each needle representing one of the absent men, threaded with a piece of cotton-wool to act as a float, was let down gently into the water. As the floats got thoroughly wetted, the needles would sink one after another; and the man whose needle sank first would be the dead one.^21.2 The water there was probably contained in a vessel; but the principle, as we see from several instances already cited, is the same. Before the temple of Demeter at Patras there was a spring that was consulted on the issue of any disease. The method (and here, perhaps, we touch the object of Lucian’s satire) was to let down a mirror suspended by a cord so as just to allow the water lightly to touch its edges, but not its face. After praying and clearing the air with incense, the performers (probably priests) looked down into the mirror, and thence perceived whether the patient would live or die.^21.3 On the isle of Andros it is still the practice for Greek maidens to hold a mirror over a well and to look in it for the face of their future husbands reflected from the well below.^21.4 In Brittany there are certain wells wherein children’s shirts are dipped. If a shirt sink to the bottom, it is a sign of the child’s death within a year. Contrariwise, {22} if the shirt swim, the child will live; and to ensure its living and to preserve it from every kind of evil the wet garment is immediately put on.^22.1 After that, nobody would deny the child’s continued health to be a miracle. The superstition was not by any means confined to Brittany; but it will suffice to give one more example of it here. “Between the towns of Alten and Newton,” says one of the Cottonian Manuscripts, “near the foot of Rosberrye Toppinge, there is a Well dedicated to St. Oswald. The neighbours have an opinion that a Shirt or Shift taken off a sick person and thrown into that Well, will show whether the person will recover or die: for, if it floated, it denoted the recovery of the party; if it sank, there remained no hope of their life; and to reward the Saint for his intelligence, they tear off a Rag of the Shirt, and leave it hanging on the Briars thereabout; where I have seen such numbers as might have made a fayre Rheme in a Paper Myll.”^22.2

For divination of this kind no special connection would be necessary between the life and the pool or fountain, such as is hinted at in the quotation concerning the “Worme unknown.” This is not always so. At Brereton, in Cheshire, is a lake whereon floating logs betokened the death of the head of the family of Brereton.^22.3 Leonard Vair in his book on charms and sortileges mentions a very curious case communicated to him by Cardinal Granvelle. {23} At the monastery of Saint Maurice on the borders of Burgundy, near to the Rhone, was a fish-pond which was kept stocked with as many fish as there were monks. When any of the monks fell sick (we are bound to believe it on the authority of a bishop and cardinal), one of the fish floated on the surface of the water, half dead; and if the monk were going to die, the fish would die three or four days before him.^23.1 In like manner, on a mountain in Franconia a fountain issues near the cradle (Stammhaus) of an ancient noble family. The clear stream gushes forth incessantly the whole year round; and it was believed to fail only when one of the family was about to die.^23.2 It is reported of the holy spring of Szörény that its water becomes blood-red as often as a King of Hungary dies.^23.3 There is a crater-lake in Madagascar, about eighty miles south-south-west of Antanánarívo, called Tritriva. It is of a deep green colour, almost black. The natives hold that there is an intimate and secret relation between the lake and the members of a neighbouring tribe, the Zanatsara. When a tribesman is taken ill, the waters of the lake are at once examined. If they are troubled and become of a brown colour, it is a presage of death: if they remain clear, {24} the patient will have a chance of life.^24.1 In these cases we have precisely the conditions of the Life-token; and we may be allowed to conjecture that other cases of inquiry after absent friends, or divination for the sick, were originally limited to persons believed to stand in some special relation with the fountain consulted. Further, the stories and superstitions regarding mirrors have evidently been transferred from pools and springs, to which they must have originally attached. And in the Eskimo practice, and the divination at Patras, and elsewhere, in the performances of Indian and Egyptian conjurers and of the fetish-men and priests of Equatorial Africa and the Pacific Islands, we may perhaps trace some of the intermediate stages.

These pools and mirrors have led me to anticipate somewhat. And before returning to Life-tokens a few words must be spent upon the cognate subject of Tokens of Fidelity. The extension of the idea of a life-token to a faith-token is obvious where the persons parted are lovers or spouses. In such cases it would not be enough for one to know that the other was living: constant assurance of the absent one’s fidelity would be as necessary to the other’s happiness as his life. There is another magical object, familiar in certain stages of civilisation, with which the Faith-token may easily be confounded. I mean the Test of Chastity, like the mirror in the beautiful tale of Zayn al-Asnam, or Florimel’s girdle in the Faerie Queene. With this test of chastity in a general sense we have not here to do; nor is it necessary to discuss the Faith-token itself at any length.

In Eastern tales the Faith-token ordinarily assumes the {25} form of a flower. In the Tutinameh, a soldier’s wife gives her husband on his departure a rose which will remain fresh while she preserves her purity.^25.1 In the Kathá-sarit-Ságara, the god Siva appears in a dream to Guhasena and his wife Devasmitá when they are about to part, and gives them a red lotus apiece, saying: “Take each of you one of these lotuses in your hand. And if either of you shall be unfaithful during your separation, the lotus in the hand of the other shall fade, but not otherwise.” When they awoke, each beheld in the other’s hand a red lotus, “and it seemed as if they had got one another’s hearts.”^25.2 In a modern folktale obtained in the Panjáb the kind of flower is not specified, but the incident is the same.^25.3 The token appears also as a flower or a garland in several of the European romances of chivalry; and in a Hungarian märchen a king, going to war, gives to his two daughters two wreaths which will wither if they lose their maidenhood.^25.4 In a modern folksong of one of the Greek islands, an apple-tree, questioned why it withers, replies:

These stories have their counterpart in practice. Siva, the Hindu god who is the agent in one of the stories just quoted, is a phallic deity. Among the Mech of Bengal, a Mongoloid tribe just now in a transitional state of religion between animism and the Hinduism which is macadamising the innumerable aboriginal cults of India, a sij plant {26} (Euphorbia Indica) grows in the courtyard of every house. This plant is carefully tended as the abode of Siva and the emblem of conjugal fidelity. If its leaves wither, something is wrong with one of the women of the household.^26.1 A curious superstition of an analogous kind was commonly practised among our own countrymen within the memory of men only a few years dead. Lovers who desired to know how they should succeed in their suit carried flowers called bachelors’ buttons in their pockets, and judged of their good or bad success by the flowers’ growing or not growing there.^26.2 So it is noted among the superstitions prevalent in France two hundred years ago, that, in order to know which of three or four persons loved one the best, a corresponding number of thistles should be taken, the buds cut off, and to each plant should be imputed the name of one of the persons concerning whom it was intended to inquire. The thistles were then to be placed under the head of the inquirer’s bed; and the one representing the person who had most affection would put forth new buds.^26.3 At Siena a maiden who wished to know how her love progressed kept and tended a plant of rue. While it flourished all went well; but if it withered it was a sign that the love she desired had failed her.^26.4

In the ballad of Hind Horn the king’s daughter gives the hero a jewelled ring. As long as the stone keeps its {27} colour, he may know that she is faithful; but if it change its hue, he may ken she loves another man. Professor Child, commenting on the ballad, adduces not merely several variants and romances on the same subject, but also a Roumanian ballad wherein a prince going to war gives his wife a ring which will rust if he be dead, and a Silesian story and another British ballad where the ring breaks in twain.^27.1 In these ballads and stories we probably have the real meaning of plighting the troth in the marriage service with a ring. Bacon, somewhere discussing the superstition, gravely suggests that a trial should be made by two persons of the effect of compact and agreement; that a ring should be put on for each other’s sake, to try whether, if one should break his promise, the other would have any feeling of it in his absence. The hero of a North German tale receives from his bride the day after marriage a snow-white shirt, which will turn black if she die, and become stained and spotted if she be untrue.^27.2 A Hungarian tradition speaks of a carbuncle which lighted up the neighbourhood of a lake in the Carpathians while the consort of the king of the water-fays was true to him; but when she fell in love with a mortal prince it lost its splendour, and the king with his golden palace and all his treasures sank into the black depths of the lake.^27.3 The Faith-token is a piece of machinery too suggestive to be {28} overlooked by poets and dramatists of more refined art than the mediæval romancers. Davenant mentions an emerald, not set like the Carpathian carbuncle on a palace tower, but worn by a lady, and growing pale when her husband is unfaithful. Massinger’s play of The Picture turns upon a portrait of his wife given to the parting knight, Mathias, by “a great scholar,” or magician, with these instructions:

I do not propose, however, to trace the Faith-token through literature. If a gift of doubtful benefit to a jealous lover, many a literary artist in search of a plot has found it useful. Our business is with the Life-token, to which we may now return. Tales of life-tokens credited as facts are not very numerous. Perhaps one or two of the stories already mentioned may be included in that category. The rest may be treated together with superstitions and customs.

In many variants of the Perseus cycle, as well as in many of the märchen cited in the present chapter, we have found the life-token to be a tree planted before or at the time of the hero’s birth, or sometimes planted by himself or merely indicated by him. In the Smyrnæan tale, it will be {29} remembered, the queen plants a pumpkin on the birth of each of her sons. The pumpkin brings forth one fruit, wherein the strength of the boy resides; and when it is cut the boy falls ill. As I have already pointed out, the pumpkin would seem here to be the life itself, and not merely the life-token. A distinction between the life and the life-token is generally observed in märchen. On the one hand, we have the story of Punchkin with his hidden soul, in which the magician, or demoniacal enemy of the hero, cannot be slain by any evil inflicted on his own body. His soul, or life, must be sought out in a distant spot where, enveloped in various coverings and protected by numerous defences, is a parrot, or an egg, to destroy which is to kill the magician. On the other hand, we have in the variants of The King of the Fishes and other types the mysterious token left at home while its owner sallies forth in search of adventures. If he fall, or suffer reverses, the token at home, if a tree or a flower, withers; if a knife, or a phial of liquid, or some other article, it drops blood, or rusts, or changes colour, or indicates in some other manner its sympathy with the hero’s fortunes.

This broad distinction is natural in a story the plot of which is made to depend upon it. It is easy to understand, however, that the distinction could not be maintained in any corresponding practical superstition. To assume, for instance—what is quite possible—that the lives of the monks of Saint Maurice were actually believed to be bound up with those of the fishes in the fishpond of the monastery, how could it be determined whether a fish’s death caused the death of one of the brethren or only betokened it? In the course of the following pages we shall meet with many cases of sympathy between a child {30} and a tree or other object. The child’s death and the withering of the tree, or some other corresponding change, are believed to be coincident. Experience will very soon show that sometimes the injury may happen to the child, sometimes to the life-token. If the superstition survive, it can only do so by supposing that both alike are vulnerable, and that the consequences of an injury to either are mysteriously transmitted to the other.^30.1 Even in a story, however, the distinction between the Life-token and the “External Soul,” as Mr. Frazer calls it, is not always maintained. In the tale of Prince Lionheart, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the hero derives his origin from a barleycorn. His life-token, multiplied in a lavish oriental manner by three, consists of three barley-plants. It is noteworthy that he directs that every one of them shall be carefully tended, for so long as they flourished he would be alive and well, and, on the contrary, if they drooped, misfortune would be at hand: implying that his life and prosperity were dependent upon them. His external soul proper is a sword. When its hilt comes off, his head falls, and at the same instant the ear of each of the barley-plants snaps. Other stories may easily be recalled where a plant as the hero’s life-token is commended to the special care of the friend or kinsman left behind, as if injury to the plant would affect its absent owner. We shall, accordingly, be justified in treating the Life-token and the External Soul as almost always one and the same thing in belief and custom.

In the Popol Vuh, the twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, whose birth I have already described in Chapter v., on starting for the realm of Xibalba to avenge their {31} father’s death, plant each a cane in the midst of their grandmother’s dwelling, that she may know by its flourishing or fading whether they are alive or dead.^31.1 According to a tradition of the province of Berri, in central France, a local saint, Honoré de Buzançais, who flourished at the end of the thirteenth century, in setting forth on a journey told his mother that, by means of a certain laurel which had been planted the day he was born, she would at any time be able to learn how he fared. The tree would languish if he were ill, and wither if he died. He was murdered, and the laurel withered at the same instant.^31.2 On the island of Tahiti, a sacred tree, resembling the banian of India, was said to have shot forth a new tendril at the birth of one of the kings whose inauguration is described by Ellis; and this branch reached the ground when the inauguration took place.^31.3 So Suetonius tells us that thrice when the mother of the Emperor Vespasian gave birth to a boy a certain ancient oak-tree belonging to the Flavian gens and sacred to Mars put forth a new shoot; and when the Emperor himself was born the shoot was of such vitality that it grew to the size of the old trunk itself.^31.4

These are legends. In actual life, among the Maori, when the navel-string came off a newborn child, the child was carried to a priest. The cord was buried in a sacred place; and over it a young sapling was planted, which was expressly regarded as the babe’s “Sign of Life,” or life-token.^31.5 Another account states that the placenta was buried and a tree planted over the spot. “Instances have been known of territorial right being claimed in consequence {32} of the placenta and umbilical cord having been buried in the vicinity, the tree being pointed to as evidence.” Elsewhere in New Zealand the cord was buried by the mother at the foot of some out-of-the-way tree or bush, with certain mystic words. If the tree or bush decayed or died, the child would not be expected to live long.^32.1 In Southern Celebes a cocoa-nut is planted at the child’s birth, and watered with the water in which the cord and after-birth have been washed. The tree, as it grows up, is called the “contemporary” of the child.^32.2 In Old Calabar a palm-tree is planted, so as to grow with the child, and the after-birth is buried beside it.^32.3 The superstition is not confined to these distant lands. In Pomerania the after-birth is buried at the foot of a young tree; in Mecklenburg it is merely cast there; in either case the child will grow with the tree, and thrive as it thrives.^32.4

{33}

It is obvious that in all these cases there is a connection established between the child and the tree by means of the placenta. The reasons for planting a tree are probably twofold. Not only is it difficult to preserve the after-birth itself; it is also desired to bring to bear upon the child all the gracious influences of Nature, to aid in his growth and development. This is done by the intervention of the young tree, which thus becomes more than a mere index of his fortunes. The placenta is, in fact, a portion of the child incorporated in the tree. A caul, which is as much a portion of the child as the placenta, and which, unlike the latter, is easy of preservation, was formerly regarded in this country as an index of the health of the person who was so lucky as to be born with it. While he remained alive and well, it was firm and crisp; if he sickened or died, it became flaccid and relaxed.^33.1 Any fragment of a human being may, indeed, become his life-token. A pathetic instance is on record of a boy in Grafton County, New Hampshire, who, early in the present century, was badly scalded, so that a piece of his skin, fully one inch in diameter, sloughed off, and was carefully treasured by his mother. When the boy came of age he left home, and was never heard of after; but his mother used from time to time to examine the skin, persuaded that so long as it was sound her son was alive and well, and that it would not begin to decay until his death. She died about 1843; and thenceforth her daughters kept the skin for their brother’s sake as she had done, and with the same notions about its preservation and decay.^33.2 In these examples we do not find the idea of the External Soul. {34} The object, whether caul or skin, is kept merely to obtain tidings of the absent. It is not united for his benefit to any living organism like a tree; nor does it seem to be necessary to his life to preserve it from harm.

Sometimes, however, the belief connected with the rite of planting at a birth is more obscure, whether from the fault of those who have recorded it, or because it has faded out of the memory of those who perform it. The Fiji islanders bury the navel-string with a cocoa-nut, which is intended to germinate and grow. The tree produced is considered the property of the child.^34.1 Among the tribes of Guatemala, and also of Virginia, the cord was cut upon an ear of maize, and the grains thus besprent with blood were sown in the infant’s name.^34.2 The umbilical cord of an Aztec boy was buried with mimic weapons in a place where a battle might be expected to take place on a future day. A girl’s cord, with domestic implements proper to her sex, was buried under a metate, or stone whereon the maize was crushed.^34.3 The interpretation of none of these presents any difficulty, save that of the Aztec boy. But if we regard the cord as his external soul, we may suppose that it was either put into a safe place, or was expected to strengthen and encourage its owner on the day of battle. The Badouj husband, in Java, buries the placenta in the forest. We are told nothing as to {35} the situation in which it is buried; if not at the foot of a tree, it is probably intended to be hidden securely away.^35.1

In other cases there appears no physical contact with the infant, or with the accompaniments of its birth, though the intention is plain. On the island of Bali, in the East Indies, a cocoa-palm is simply planted. It is called the child’s “Life-plant,” and is believed to grow up equally with him. When twins are born, in some Zulu tribes, the father plants two euphorbia-trees near the door of the hut. Among the Mbengas of Western Africa, when two babes are born on the same day, two trees of the same kind are planted, and the people dance round them. “The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies, or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will die soon.” The life of a newborn child is united by some of the Papuans with that of the tree by driving a pebble into the bark. “This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child’s life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.”^35.2 Among the Sakalava of Madagascar, a tree called Hàzomànitra (Fragrant Wood) is planted at the birth of a first child. This is said to be a witness that the father acknowledges it as his own.^35.3 But had he not acknowledged it, the child must presumably have been put to death, so that this can hardly be the real reason. According to the Babylonian Talmud it was a Hebrew practice to plant a cedar at the birth of a boy, and {36} a pine at the birth of a girl.^36.1 On the New Marquesas Islands a breadfruit-tree is set apart for the use of every infant at its birth; or, if the parents be too poor to do this, a sapling is immediately planted. The fruit of the tree is taboo to every one save the child; even the parents dare not touch it.^36.2 Among several European nations it is, or has been up to recent times, the custom to plant a tree at the birth of a child. When the poet Vergil was born, his parents are said to have planted a poplar, in the hope that, as that tree overtopped all the rest, their son’s greatness would outstrip all others’. Poplars are still set in the neighbourhood of Turin when a girl is born; and they become in after-years the maiden’s dower. In Switzerland an apple-tree is set for a boy, a pear or a nut for a girl; and it is believed that as the young tree flourishes, so will the child. In Aargau, in particular, it was the custom, not many years back, to plant a fruit-tree on the land of the commune for every infant that was born; and if a father were enraged with a son who was at a distance, and therefore out of his reach, he would go to the field and cut down the tree planted at his son’s birth.^36.3 In England we still hear sometimes of trees being planted at a birth. Count de Gubernatis, I know not on what authority, asserts that there are families in Russia, Germany, England, France, and Italy, whose practice it is to plant at the birth of a {37} child a fruit-tree, which is loved and tended with special care as the symbol of the child and of the child’s fate.^37.1 Only thirty years ago it was the custom of the good folk of Liége to plant a tree in the garden when a child was born: a custom which, it seems, is still continued in some parts of Belgium.^37.2 In the province of Canton, in China, although we are not informed that trees are planted on the like occasions, we seem to have a relic of some such practice in the superstition requiring a child’s fortune to be told, in order to ascertain the particular idol or tree to which he belongs. It is thought that a tree is planted in the spirit-world to represent the life in this world, “and that the child is as much the fruit of the tree as it is that of the womb.”^37.3 It is difficult to see how such a thought could have originated, unless it were connected with the planting of a tree in this world when the babe was born.

Nor is it only at a birth that the life-token is planted. Among the English-speaking population on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, when one of a family leaves home, a bit of live-for-ever is stuck in the ground to indicate the fortune of the absent one. It will flourish if he prosper; otherwise it will wither or die.^37.4 An Italian {38} work falsely attributed to Cornelius Agrippa gives the following prescription for divining the health of a person far distant: Gather onions on the Eve of Christmas, and put them on an altar, and under every onion write the name of one of the persons as to whom information is desired. When planted, the onion that sprouts the first will clearly announce that the person whose name it bears is well.^38.1 In the north-east of Scotland, when potatoes were dug for the first time in the season a stem was put for each member of the family, the father first, the mother next, and the rest in order of age. Omens of the prosperity of the year were drawn from the number and size of the potatoes growing from each stem.^38.2 Every Roman emperor solemnly planted on the Capitol a laurel, which was said to wither when he was about to die. It was the custom, too, of a successful general at his triumph to plant in a shrubbery set by Livia a laurel which was believed to fade after his death.^38.3 Marco Polo records that the Great Khan planted the highways through his realm with rows of trees, for the purpose of marking the roads; and that he did it all the more readily because his astrologers and diviners told him that he who planted trees lived long.^38.4 Why, unless his life were bound up with the trees he planted? In British Guiana, when young children are betrothed, as is the custom among the aborigines, trees are planted by the respective parties in witness of the contract. {39} If either tree happen to fade, the child it belongs to will die.^39.1 The custom exists also in Germany. At Hochheim, Einzingen, and other places in the neighbourhood of Gotha, a bridal pair plants at the wedding, or shortly after, two young trees on the land of the commune. If either of the trees perish, the spouse who planted it will shortly die.^39.2 “On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo,” says Mr. Frazer, quoting Professor Wilken, “plant a palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes they reckon on good fortune, but if it withers or dies they expect misfortune.”^39.3 What else than this can be the true meaning of the ceremony practised by some of the Australian blacks when a boy attains puberty? His two upper front teeth are knocked out, and his mother carefully inserts them in the fork of the topmost branches of a young gum-tree, which thereupon becomes taboo.^39.4 {40} The tree is not, indeed, newly planted, but, as in the Papuan practice cited just now, the boy’s fate is united with it. If a gipsy babe do not thrive in Transylvania, the mother drops a little of her own blood in its mouth, and rubs its saliva in the hole of a tree, repeating a rhyming formula adjuring the child to grow like that tree.^40.1 When a child has been passed, for hernia or some other disease, through a young tree split for the purpose, the tree is forthwith bound up and plastered with mud or clay so that it may grow together again; and according as this treatment is successful on the tree, the child is expected to recover. This, I need hardly remind the reader, is a superstition very widely spread in Europe. In Mecklenburg, and most likely elsewhere, it is believed that if the tree be felled the child will die.^40.2 So, too, among the Buryats of Siberia, a shaman on the eve of his first dedication cuts a magical stick from a growing birch. It must be of some size, since a horse’s head is required to be carved at the top, and a horse’s knee and hoof at the lower end. It must be so cut that the birch will not wither from the excision, for that would be an ill omen for the shaman.^40.3 His life, or at least his professional success, is thus bound up with the life of the tree.

Of other species of life-tokens we may note the following. A tradition of the Mojave Indians of Arizona relates that two twin brothers, in starting to hunt, hung a quiver up by the lodge fire, and each tied a long hair (no doubt one of his own) across the doorway. “If you see that quiver fall,” they said to their wives, “that is a sign we are dead; and {41} if the hairs break, we die.” The brothers are treacherously murdered; the quiver falls and the hairs are broken.^41.1 In this case we have the hairs originally part of the heroes’ bodies, and the quiver was their property. Thus the reason why these objects could be made life-tokens was the sympathy they retained from their erewhile close connection with the brothers. This is, however, by no means a necessity: the mere superscription of the name is sufficient, as in the onion-charm cited a page or two back, to establish the requisite sympathy. Tiglath-Uras, an Assyrian king, caused a seal of crystal to be engraven with his name and title, and with the words: “Whosoever buries my writing and my name, may Assur and Rimmon destroy his name and his land! Whoever makes the seal legible ensures the preservation of my life.”^41.2 Here the seal, with its inscription, bears the aspect of the king’s external soul; and it must be remembered in this connection that archaic belief regards the name as a part of its owner. A similar character attaches, in the opinion of many savages, to a portrait. This is the foundation of the belief in witchcraft by means of a puppet or picture.^41.3 But if the writing of a name or the accuracy of a likeness were {42} important, it is clear that the superstition could not be traced far back into the lower culture, and witchcraft could only be practised by accomplished artists. Accordingly, it is enough to attribute the name of the man to the object whereby it is proposed to represent him. In Thuringia, if it be desired to know whether absent children or other kinsmen be still living, all that is necessary is to stick a loaf of bread with ears of corn before putting it into the oven to bake. Each of the ears is designated by the name of one of the absent concerning whom inquiry is made. If any of the ears be scorched in the process of baking, the person symbolised is assuredly dead; if not, he is living.^42.1 Either some such divination, or that lively presentation which is but a step short of it, was recorded by Mr. Backhouse, who, in visiting Tasmania, noticed one day a native woman arranging some flat oval stones, about two inches wide and marked with black and red lines. He learned that these represented absent friends, and one larger than the rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinders Island, known by the name of Mother Brown.^42.2

As in the märchen we have reviewed, so in sagas and in practical superstition, mere ownership or the wearing of an object sets up a connection with it, which remains even after parting with its possession, and will render it an efficient life-token. This has been already illustrated in the quiver of the Mojave saga. In a legendary history of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Duke Lewis, her husband, when setting out for the Crusade, sent her a ring, the stone of {43} which would break when misfortune happened to him. It is curious that in fact, if the Count de Montalembert’s investigations may be trusted, the duke told his wife that if he sent her his ring it would be a token that some misfortune had occurred.^43.1 In Italy it is believed that if a woman take off her wedding-ring, her husband will run some serious risk.^43.2 A Hungarian superstition declares that a garnet remains of a beautiful red colour when its wearer is well, but turns pale if he be sick or ailing.^43.3 But here the line between the Life-token, or the External Soul, and the Fetish becomes very narrow. So a Shawnee prophet tried to persuade Tanner that the fire in his lodge was intimately connected with his life. At all seasons and in all weathers it was to remain alight; for if he suffered it to be extinguished, his life would be at an end.^43.4 Of a similar character is the Negro luck-ball, so graphically described, with the making thereof, by Miss Owen, and of which a specimen was obtained by her for Mr. Leland. We will not here inquire into the composition of this nasty but magical article; we will rest satisfied with knowing that it receives the name of the person for whom it is intended, and contains his soul. It is usually carried about by its owner; and the agonies of a Negress who thought she had lost her ball are set forth in Miss Owen’s book with humour. “No ball could be found. Then Aunt Mymee went wild. Her morning duties were forgotten, she ran hither and thither looking in all possible and impossible places of concealment, and obstinately refusing to state what she had lost. Finally, with a groan of despair, she flung herself down on her cabin floor in a {44} cowering heap and quavered out that she would be better off in her grave, for an enemy had stolen her luck-ball, and her soul as well as her luck was in it.”^44.1 The North American Indians and many other savages carry such objects; and of the same kind would appear to have been that wonderful stone in the Chinese story, which contained ninety-two grottoes representing the allotted years of its owner’s life.^44.2

Mr. Frazer, in the remarkable work to which I have been indebted for numerous illustrations in the course of this chapter, refers to the belief on the part of many peoples in the lower culture that the lives of individual men and women are bound up with those of various animals. In Rome the animals in question were snakes; and the superstition was so widely spread that, according to Pliny, they multiplied to an extent which would have rendered it impossible to make head against their fecundity, if their numbers had not been kept down by occasional conflagrations. The snake was, in fact, the genius of a man—his external soul, and therefore was carefully guarded from all harm.^44.3 The Zulus also believe in an ihlozi, or mysterious serpent, belonging to every man. It is usually invisible, underground; but it may be killed, and then the man must die. In other parts of the {45} world there is no such monopoly: all sorts of animals are looked upon by different members of the same clan as their second selves. Mr. Frazer frames from this a theory of totemism which it is foreign to my present purpose to examine. Whatever may be thought of the theory, it is clear that some aspects of the Totem, the External Soul, and the Fetish approach one another very nearly, and require a closer study than they have yet received from any scientific anthropologist, with the exception of the distinguished author of The Golden Bough.

Coming back to the Life-token proper, it would seem that it is sometimes connected, not with the individual concerned, but with the relative or friend left behind. When a Zulu warrior goes on a hostile expedition his wife hangs up her own sleeping-mat against the door or wall of the hut. If the shadow be cast sharp and clear, her husband is well; if otherwise, “he will never look upon the sun again.”^45.1 The Coptic Christian legends contain the same plentiful supply of miracles which the accounts of other saints furnish. The life of the Coptic saint Shnudi, by his disciple Visa, relates that another saint, Mar Thomas, foretold to Shnudi that the latter should be informed of Mar Thomas’s death by the breaking in two of the stone whereon Shnudi used to sit and meditate.^45.2 In this case {46} Mar Thomas appoints the life-token; and he displays a lofty recklessness about the condition of furniture which does not belong to him. But the appointment by the person whose life is the subject of inquiry is not usual, where the token is in no way connected with him. The friend left behind can generally manage a life-token without his assistance. Frequently, however, the aid of a sorcerer is called in. Among the western islanders of Torres Straits the sorcerer on these occasions goes through some jugglery with a crocodile’s tooth, which he pretends to swallow and bring out again through his hand. After this he sends it on a journey in the direction where the man is supposed to be, and divines his life or death by the condition of the tooth when it returns.^46.1 In Brittany a sailor’s wife who has been long without tidings of her husband makes a pilgrimage to one of the shrines innumerable in that country, and lights before the saints a taper wherewith she has provided herself. If her husband be yet alive and well, it burns with a clear, steady flame; otherwise the flame will be poor and intermittent, and will go out.^46.2 John Banks, a dramatist of the Restoration, refers to one form of the superstition still, or very lately, living in Scotland, as well as in other parts of Europe. The passage runs as follows:—

Strictly speaking, this only announces the deaths of near relations: it would be too dreadful if a man’s whole acquaintance made known their deaths by bleeding him, or, as it is believed in Denmark, by pinching him and thereby causing blue spots on his body.^47.2 Second sight, however, also well known in Scotland, was not confined to kindred; but it is of a ghostly nature, not dependent on material objects.

Closely connected with the Life-token, as we have already seen, is divination concerning the prospects of life of persons who are not absent. This is a wide subject; and here we can only select a few examples among those whose form is similar to those of the Life-token. The Thuringian practice of divining as to absent members of the family seems to be one of several Teutonic methods of divination by the baking of bread. The decrees of Burchard of Worms, issued probably early in the eleventh century, refer to the omen drawn on the first of January by baking a loaf of bread in the name of any one and noting how it rises and whether it becomes compact and light. Another practice is described, of sweeping the hearth and placing grains of barley on the heated place: if the grains popped, they indicated danger; otherwise, if they remained quiet.^47.3 {48} At Rauen, in the north of Germany, if a newly baked loaf have a crack, one of the family will die.^48.1 In Suffolk, to overturn a loaf in the oven is to have a death in the house.^48.2 In Saxony on the Bohemian border the same augury is obtained by making as many little cakes as there are persons in the house, giving to each cake the name of one of the persons, and punching a hole in it with your finger. He whose hole closes up in baking will die.^48.3 In Hungary on Saint Lucien’s Day a feather is stuck in each cake, and the death-augury is drawn if the feather be burnt in baking. On Christmas Eve in many places every one eats a nut and fills the shell with water. If the shell be dry by the next morning he must die during the year.^48.4

Divination from the burning of candles is well known. On Twelfth Night, in some parts of Ireland, as for example in Leitrim and Roscommon, rushes were gathered and made into rushlights, each of the length of six inches. They were stuck into a cake of cow-dung and named from the members of the family. Then they were all lighted, and the family knelt around them, telling their beads. The taper that burnt out first indicated who should die soonest.^48.5 So Meleager’s life, according to the classical story, departed when the brand expired whereon it depended. In Thuringia, if an altar-light go out of itself, one of the priests will die; but it does not appear whether the candle must be entirely consumed.^48.6 In some towns of {49} North Germany it is a common practice on a child’s birthday to give him a cake with a “Life-light” placed on it. The light must not be blown out, but suffered to burn to the end.^49.1 This is contrary to the general rule at Chemnitz, and elsewhere, which declares that when a candle goes out of itself, some one in the house will die—a superstition especially regarded on Christmas Eve.^49.2 In Iceland, if a man let a light die out slowly, he will have a long death-struggle.^49.3 On the other hand, the Romans, if we may trust Plutarch, never extinguished a lamp, but suffered it to burn out.^49.4 Omens of this kind are frequently drawn at weddings. Two candles represent the bride and bridegroom: the one whose candle first expires will die first. Such is the belief in Thuringia and Esthonia, as well as in Italy. Among the Southern Slavs and among the Bretons the altar-candle opposite either of the spouses during the ceremony is the one whose conduct in this respect is regarded. At Chemnitz it was customary to allow the light to burn clean out in the bride-chamber, perhaps for the same reason.^49.5

{50}

In Denmark, Saint John’s-wort (hypericum) is gathered on Saint John’s Day, and the plants are set between the beams under the roof. If one of them grow upwards toward the roof, he whom it represents will have a long life; if downward, sickness and death are betokened.^50.1 The Saxons of Transylvania, and the Hungarians, are said to place as many billets of wood as there are members of the family present on Saint Sylvester’s Night (New Year’s Eve) in the open air on or against a wall or a tree, giving each billet the name of a person. Any of them falling before the morning forecasts the death of him whose billet falls. Or a rag is thrown on a tree, and if it be there in the morning the thrower expects luck in the coming year. On Saint John’s Day wreaths are made of marsh-marigolds and thrown singly thrice on the roof. If anybody’s wreath remain up, he will die before the next summer.^50.2 The same principle is embodied in the Maori custom of divining by means of sticks. Before they go to war they put up two sticks, or two rows of sticks, with certain ceremonies. From the way in which the wind blows the sticks or the manner in which they fall, if thrown, omens are drawn as to the success of the war, or the fate of the inquirer.^50.3 The Gipsies of the Danubian countries divine as to the fate of their relatives by putting flowers—apparently willow flowers—in a sieve on Saint George’s Eve, one for each {51} member of the family. He whose flower is found withered the next morning will die first.^51.1 In the Isle of Man, at Hollantide, “as well as on the last night of the year, ivy-leaves marked with the name of the family were put into water, and if one of the leaves withered it was supposed that the person whose name was on it would die before the end of the year.”^51.2

The tales and superstitions we have examined in this chapter are conclusive as to the wide range of a belief in the mysterious connection of a man’s life and health with some object external to himself. And they point with equal certainty to the belief that this connection originates in some relationship, either natal or established subsequently to birth by possession or ownership, or by appointment of the person concerned. In other words, the external object is believed to be, or to contain, a part of the man himself, or the man and the external object are regarded as two parts of a greater whole. This is the reason why, in märchen belonging to The King of the Fishes and other types, the tree growing in the garden at home is an index of the adventurer’s fate in the palace of the Medusa-witch. Both the tree and the hero are sprung from the magical fish; both are of his substance; and hence their sympathy. So, among the Maories and in Pomerania, when the navel-string or after-birth is buried and a tree planted over it, the latter would be conceived to absorb the substance of the object at its root—that is to say, of something which is already part of the child himself—and in that way become connected with him. Our evidence, though extending from Polynesia and Melanesia {52} to the East Indies, though good for Germany and for portions of the American continent, does not directly establish the practice of such burials as universal. But such a custom is a fair inference wherever we find the planting of a tree at birth, especially where, as in the majority of cases, the tree is looked upon as betokening the child’s fate. Yet the custom could not have been one of the most archaic. It must have been unknown so long as mankind were wanderers having no settled places of abode or defined territory. Earlier than this, therefore, must have been the belief that some other relic such as hair, weapons, ornaments or clothes, which had been in contact with their owner’s body, or even some more arbitrary thing appointed by him, acquired the mysterious connection of which I am speaking. By constant use, or by habitual wear, things not originally part of a man would become inseparably associated with him in the minds of all his acquaintance, impregnated with his personality, identified with his corporeal presence. After a while mere ownership would be enough to warrant the ascription of this quality, at least to any portable object. The Maori claims of territorial right, based upon the burial of the claimant’s after-birth and navel-string, are instances of the subtle bond in native thought between ownership and a personal substance like that which was supposed to penetrate the trees whose existence was appealed to as evidence. True, these claims could only be made by members of a settled community, or of one whose limits of wandering were fixed. But the state of thought they disclose is thoroughly archaic, rooted in a still ruder past.

Not only, however, is a man’s property credited with the mysterious sympathy which enables it to become his life-token. {53} It is not even necessary for him to appoint a life-token for himself, whether part of his property or not. Both in the stories and in actual life, and that very low down in savagery, a kinsman is represented as able to appoint a life-token, or at all events to divine, by the condition of a perfectly arbitrary object, what is the fate of an absent person. This power is with one exception limited to a kinsman. In the last resort it is possible to obtain tidings of a distant friend through a sorcerer. Here other beliefs are brought into play. Setting this exceptional case aside, we may class all the others together under the heads of Life-tokens—

The appointment of a life-token not belonging to the person concerned, or his kinsman, was, we may assume, at first by a magical formula, as in the instance of the taboo set upon the banana by the twins in the Melanesian story. In this way a consecration to the speaker, an ἀνάθεμα, was performed, which would have the effect of ownership. In course of time, and of the changes wrought by advancing civilisation, the taboo would be forgotten; and a simple declaration of the intention to make the object his life-token would remain. The cases of appointment thus resolve themselves into ownership; and ownership, as we have seen, is nothing but an extension of the idea of {54} corporeal connection. The reason why the corporeal connection with a kinsman, or his ownership of the life-token, is equivalent to that of the absent hero, is because the kinsman, being of the same stock as the hero, is deemed to have an original corporeal bond with him like that of the tree in the märchen growing from the bones or scales of the fish from whose flesh the hero is sprung. They are both of the same substance, two parts of a greater whole. This will be brought out more clearly as we proceed. We are then face to face with the question why separated portions of the same substance should remain in such sympathy with one another that the condition of the one will betoken the condition of the other. To explain this we must enter upon a wider survey of savage customs and superstitions.

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There are certain common folktale incidents we must first of all notice, though it is unnecessary to do so at any great length. One of them is found in a group of tales which I have elsewhere ventured to classify under the name of The Teacher and his Scholar. A Greek variant of these, from the island of Syra, referred to in an earlier chapter, runs thus: A disguised demon promises children to a childless king on condition of his repaying him with the eldest. The demon thereupon gives the king an apple, to be eaten, one half by himself and the other half by the queen. Three sons are born; and the eldest is, notwithstanding all precautions, carried off by the demon. After some time he finds means to escape from his master’s clutches, accompanied by a princess whom the demon has held captive. During his term of service he has learned how to transform himself at will; and on parting for a while from the princess he takes lodgings with an old woman. To make money, he changes into a mule, which his hostess offers for sale; but he charges her to retain the halter. Afterwards he changes into a bath-house, whereof she is to keep the key. By this precaution he is able to return to his own form. Finally he changes into a pomegranate, {56} which his father plucks; but the demon by a trick nearly succeeds in getting possession of it. It falls in pieces, and the seeds are scattered. The demon then takes the shape of a hen and chickens; whereupon the hero becomes a fox and kills the hen and chickens, but loses his eyes, for the hen has eaten two of the seeds. He afterwards recovers his sight and marries the princess.^56.1

The incident, here found, of the Transformation-fight occurs all over Europe, and as far to the east as India. Its best-known variant is embodied in the story of the Second Calender in the Arabian Nights; but the Siddhi-Kür contains one far more ancient, if we have regard to the time when it was written down, though more modern in form than many of the most recently collected folktales. Welsh tradition, as we have seen, identifies the incident with the name of Taliessin. Ovid describes metamorphoses undergone by Metra, daughter of Erisichthon, in her flight from the successive masters to whom her ravenous father sold her in order to procure himself food.^56.2 But all these tales ignore the point which is important for our present inquiry, namely, the divisibility of the hero’s person. It comes out, however, quite clearly in the story just quoted, {57} and is exhibited in a twofold manner. There is, first, the halter, or bridle, which must be retained by the vendor, else the horse, or mule, will not be able to escape and return to human form. Here the halter is probably the external soul. So long as it is free its owner cannot be held within the purchaser’s power. Secondly, there is the pomegranate, which falls into a thousand pieces. In northern and western Europe, where the pomegranate grows not, a heap of grain takes its place.^57.1 In Cashmere it becomes a rose. In the Turkish romance of The Forty Vezirs, the rose, in falling, changes to millet.^57.2 The pomegranate bursts, and its seeds are scattered; the petals of the rose drop in a shower; the grains of corn or millet are shed abroad. But the hero is still in existence although divided thus. He cannot be destroyed until every seed, every petal, every grain has been devoured. So long as a single seed, petal, or grain escapes he can be restored to his pristine form. In the same way in a North American tale the hero in the shape of an eagle is killed, and repeatedly restored from a single feather. The power of self-reconstitution from a fragment is frequently attributed to wizards, not merely in tales but in living superstitions, and in both tales and superstitions affords a reason for the entire destruction of a magical foe.^57.3 For this cause, too, the hero of the Greek story kills the hen and all the chickens into which the demon transforms himself—a third example in the same tale of personal divisibility.

{58}

The Helpful Beasts, to whom so many adventurers are indebted in our Nursery Tales, furnish another incident illustrative of the same faculty. In the Transformation-fight it is not necessary to manifest the continued sympathy of the divided personality; but it is different when a Helpful Beast offers one of its own limbs as the summons for aid. Thus an ant will give one of its legs, a bird will give a feather, or a lion one of its hairs, to be burnt, or fumigated, or simply rubbed. On this being done the owner forthwith appears and performs the necessary services.^58.1 In a Tirolese tale the power is extended to a human being. A merchant’s daughter having fallen in love with a golden-haired prince, is advised by a great sorceress to procure three hairs from his head and beard, lay them in a jar with warm ashes, and boil the contents a little. The prince would then change into a dove, and fly hurriedly through the window into her room, where she must have a basin of water ready for him. In this he would dip himself and return to his proper form. The spell is successful; but we need not follow the lady’s further fortunes.^58.2

{59}

Nor is the incident restricted to märchen. A Pomeranian saga records that a supernatural boar which haunted a pool in the forest of Kehrberg once fell into a wolf-pit and could not get out. A courageous man, hearing its grunting, approached; and the monster begged for help. When it was released it tore three bristles from its hide, and, giving them to its deliverer, said: “When thou art in deadly peril, rub these three bristles between thy fingers, and I will be with thee forthwith and save thee.” The man was the lord of a manor. He might have been an Irish landlord for harshness; and this promise made him worse than ever. Many of his serfs in desperation joined the robber-bands that infested the forest; and one day they caught him in an ambush. Nor would he have escaped the punishment of his misdeeds, had he not quickly rubbed the bristles between his fingers. The boar was at his side in an instant, and not one of his enemies escaped. I wish I could add that the adventure made him repent of his evil ways. His godless, frantic life continued to the end; and after death he naturally found no rest in the grave. Wherefore, ever since, in company with his friend the boar, he dwells in the pool and ranges the forest, to the no small terror and danger of wayfarers.^59.1

A belief of the kind of which these are the remains is put to a practical use by the natives of Borneo, where it is said that the gift of a tiger’s tooth to a chief of the Kinah tribe will make him a friend for life. He will not dare to {60} fail the giver, or to turn false to him, for fear of being devoured by the beast.^60.1 Here, and in the stories, the portion of the animal’s body given away is still linked by sympathy with the rest. What happens to it is felt by the bulk. The apparent severance is continuous and real union.

A third incident found in European folktales endows the heroine’s saliva with consciousness like her own. In a Danish tale, when Maiden Misery is about to elope with Prince Wanderer from the Kobold who has them both in his power, she heats the oven and puts two pieces of wood to stand, one on either side. Then she spits on each of them and whispers something to it. After she and the prince have started, the Kobold wakes up and inquires: “Is the oven hot, Maiden Misery?” “No, not yet,” answers one of the pieces of wood, but it sounded as if it were she who answered. The Kobold turned over and went to sleep again. After a while he awoke again and repeated the question. He got the same answer and went to sleep once more. When he called out again there was no reply. He got up and found the oven quite cold; but Maiden Misery and Prince Wanderer had vanished, and so had the Kobold’s wonderful steed.^60.2 The same device for delaying pursuit appears in the Polish märchen of Prince Unexpected. There the maiden spits on one of the window-panes, and her spittle freezes. Then she {61} locks up the room and escapes with the prince. When they are well on their way King Bony awakes, and sends his servants for the prince. The spittle answers in his voice: “Anon.” They are thus put off twice before the door is broken open, and the spittle on the window splits with laughter at the disappointed messengers.^61.1 In another story from Poland, a brother desires to wed his sister, and makes her various presents of robes, and a magical car. She shuts herself in her room, puts on the dresses, and mounts the car. She spits on the ground and commands the saliva to answer with the voice of her maid, whom she has secretly sent away. The earth then opens at her request and swallows her up. When the brother sends to know if she be ready, the saliva replies: “She has just drawn one stocking on.” The next time it answers: “She has just put her dress on: she will be quite ready directly.” When the impatient brother himself comes, the spittle taunts him in the most intelligent way:—

In a story from Hesse, Hänsel and Grethel are in a witch’s power. They run away, but before going Grethel spits in front of the hearth. So when the sleepy witch cries out to ask whether the water will soon be hot, to cook Hänsel in, the saliva replies: “I am just fetching it”; and to subsequent inquiries: “It’s boiling now,” {62} and “I am just bringing it.” At last the spittle is dried up; and, receiving no further answer, the witch gets out of bed, discovers the real state of the case, and follows the children.^62.1 Among the Kaffirs, an equivalent incident represents the misleading agent as tufts of hair. The hero, rescuing his sister and her child from a band of cannibals, directed her to pluck the hair from her head and scatter it about in different directions. When the cannibals, coming to look for her, called out, the tufts of hair answered; and the fugitives gained time while the seekers were thus confused. Another Kaffir tale represents a single feather of a certain magical bird as endowed with the entire power of the bird after the latter has been swallowed by the heroine.^62.2 The Cegihas of North America, a branch of the Sioux, have a legend of a rabbit who overcame the black bears. He visited their lodge; and at night on departing he left his fœces all round the door, with instructions to give the scalp-yell as soon as it was day. The fœces accordingly yelled as if a large number of persons were attacking the lodge. The black bear rushed out and was killed by the rabbit.^62.3

In this case, too, we are fortunate in being able to produce evidence that the belief on which the tale is grounded is still living. When a Hungarian Gipsy is pursued as a thief, he scratches his left hand as he runs, and smearing the spurting blood on any convenient object, {63} exclaims: “Speak for me!” In this way he hopes to escape; and the more scars a Gipsy has upon his left hand from this cause the more he is honoured for his dexterity in stealing and evading pursuit.^63.1

In Grimm’s tale of The Goose-girl, which belongs to the cycle of The Substituted Bride, the maiden’s mother, on parting with her, cuts her own finger, and, letting three drops of blood fall upon a handkerchief, hands it to her daughter as a protection. The drops of blood speak to her from time to time on the way, though it must be owned their observations are not very helpful. When she loses them she becomes powerless, and her waiting-maid ousts her from her place as the bride.^63.2 It is impossible to misapprehend the meaning of the three drops of blood. So long as the maiden keeps them she retains her mother’s presence and protection, of which they are more than a symbol.

The folktales I have just cited present in an ascending series, first, the divisibility of a person, secondly, the continued sympathy of the severed portions with the bulk, and thirdly, the endowment of each of the severed portions with speech and power—in other words, with consciousness and reason. The identification of the severed portions with the whole is thus complete in the stories. Nor are we without illustrations in practical superstition of this belief. The two examples already given afford a striking exhibition of the truth which I may perhaps be pardoned for insisting on with wearisome iteration, that, namely, of the dependence of folktales on custom and belief. It is, however, in the practices of witchcraft that we find the severed portions of a person most frequently and completely {64} identified with the whole. To some of these practices we will accordingly now turn our attention.

Witchcraft is usually wrought in one or more of three ways—by incantations or curses, by symbolic actions, or (and it is this only with which we are now concerned) by acts done upon objects identified with the person intended to be affected. Among these objects severed portions of his body take the first rank.

In the old trials for witchcraft in this country we have full accounts of the proceedings then regarded as effectual in causing injury by witches. It is quite likely that some at least of the means mentioned in the confessions of the accused were at times actually adopted. But whether actually adopted or not, they are equally valuable for our present purpose, since their efficacy was undoubted. On the 11th March, 1618-9, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower were burnt alive at Lincoln for sorcery. They had been, with Joan Flower, their mother, confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. If we might credit their own confession under torture, they had become dissatisfied with their employers, and had employed the Black Art in order to gratify their spite. The mother had a familiar spirit in the form of a cat, named Rutterkin. Their procedure was to procure a lock of the hair of a member of the Earl’s family, or to steal one of his gloves. The hair they burnt; the glove was thrown by Joan Flower into boiling water, then repeatedly pricked with a knife, and afterwards rubbed on the cat. These performances were accompanied with words, bidding Rutterkin go and do some hurt to the owner of the glove. Finally, the glove was burnt, and its owner fell sick and died. Joan Flower vehemently protested her innocence, {65} and asked for bread. Taking a piece, the unfortunate woman wished that if she were guilty it might choke her. Immediately, so says the tale, she fell stark dead. Other women were associated in the accusation, and their confessions confirmed those of the sisters Margaret and Philippa.^65.1

The results of the practices of which these poor girls were convicted were terrible enough to them, if not to their supposed victim. Yet if their depositions exhausted their knowledge of the modes of witchcraft they cannot have penetrated far into its mysteries. A jealous Italian woman or a mischievous Gipsy, a North American Indian or an Australian savage, could have given them points.

A Sienese or Tuscan maiden, for example, deserted by her lover, will take some of his hair and put it into a toad’s mouth, or round a toad’s legs. The animal is then imprisoned in a covered pot, or else it is placed under a potsherd and bound to a tree. While the creature lives in this torment, the faithless lover will pine away; and when it dies, he will die also.^65.2 Wherefore a lock of hair is the most precious gift, the mark of the highest confidence, a lover or friend can bestow. In the province of Lucca, {66} indeed, it is almost always refused; for even an imprecation uttered over it would render bald the head whereon it had grown; and the women, when they comb their hair, never throw the combings out of window, lest they be bewitched by some one passing by.^66.1 Nor is less care taken elsewhere in Italy—not to say throughout Europe—to burn the combings of the hair oneself or to put them in a place of safety. Dr. Pitrè remembers a woman at Palermo, who, when she was lying sick, having seen a man pick up one of her hairs—as she thought, with malicious intent—jumped out of bed and followed him in her shift, weeping and begging him to give it back to her and not to do her any harm.^66.2 In Tuscany the hair is occasionally boiled with a peppercorn and some other substance, the operator repeating an incantation consigning the foe to death and the society of witches. In Friuli the hair and blood of the victim are boiled with nails, needles, knives and other pieces of iron.^66.3 Even in some parts of England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised to get a lock of his hair and boil it. Whilst it is simmering in the pot he will have no rest.^66.4 In Belgium, as also about Mentone, it is {67} possible to bewitch an enemy by putting one of his hairs into an egg, and leaving it there to rot; so that one must burn any hairs that fall out or are cut off, or at least spit or blow upon them as a protection against witchcraft before throwing them away.^67.1 In certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the hair or nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried beneath the elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or carefully hidden, for fear of witches.^67.2 In Poland it is thought possible to blind an enemy by threading one of his hairs in a needle which has sewed three shrouds, and then passing it through a toad’s eyes, and letting the poor brute go.^67.3 In Livonia, if you desire to bewitch a girl to the extent of preventing her marriage, all that need be done is to get hold of one of the pins with which her shift is fastened over her breast, wind round it three hairs torn by the roots from her head, and stick the pin in a corner in a northerly direction, or on the first paling of the house, saying: “As long as this sticks here the girl shall have no suitor.”^67.4 In Hungary and Transylvania continual strife between a married pair can be secured by laying a hair from each of their heads on the head of a corpse. They will have no peace until {68} the hairs have decayed away.^68.1 On the other hand, if a Magyar suspect another of an intention to injure him secretly, he will possess himself of some hairs belonging to the suspected person, and hang them in the chimney until they disappear in the smoke: the enemy will then have abandoned his evil purpose.^68.2 So likewise among the Pennsylvanian Germans a witch can be disabled by securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and firing a silver bullet into it.^68.3

We pay European peoples the compliment of calling them civilised: among savages the same methods are adopted. It was the belief of the Clal-lum, a tribe of British Columbia, that if they could procure the hair of an enemy and confine it with a frog in a hole, the head whence it came would suffer the torments of the frog.^68.4 And a lock of hair in the hands of certain women of the Chilcotin tribe would give them power over the person from whose head the lock was severed.^68.5 Any part of the body answers the same purpose among the Greenlanders.^68.6 At the opposite extremity of the American continent the Patagonians burn the hairs brushed out from their heads, and all the parings of their nails, for they believe that spells may be wrought upon them by any one who can obtain a {69} piece of either.^69.1 In Central Brazil the Bakaïrí of one village fear the medicine-men of another, holding that if they can get any portion of their hair or blood, they will put it into a poison-calabash and so cause illness to the original owner.^69.2 What the inhabitants of the isle of Chiloe fear is that a foe will fasten a lock in the seaweed where the tide flows: hence they often keep their hair very short.^69.3 In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success of any sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the victim, such as the parings of his nails, a lock of his hair, saliva or other secretions, or else a portion of his food. Accordingly, a spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant of a chief of the Sandwich Islands to receive his expectorations, which were carefully buried every morning. And the Tahitians used to burn or bury the hair they cut off; and every individual among them had his distinct basket for food.^69.4 Among the Maoris “the usual way of obtaining power over another was to obtain (European fashion) some of the nail-parings, hair, etc., anything of a personal nature to act as a medium between the bewitched person and the demon. Spells would be muttered over these relics, then they were buried, and as they decayed the victim perished.”^69.5 In the Banks’ Islands “there are three principal kinds of charms by which evil was believed to be inflicted through the power of ghosts.” One of these called garata operated through fragments of food, bits of hair or nail, “or anything closely connected {70} with the person to be injured. For this reason great care was used to hide or safely dispose of all such things.”^70.1 Similar beliefs and practices obtain in the New Hebrides and the New Marquesas.^70.2 At Matuku in Fiji, the priest of the god Tokalau, the wind, “promises the destruction of any hated person in four days, if those who wish his death bring a portion of his hair, dress or food which he has left.” Happily the doom can be averted by bathing before the fourth day. Most natives take the precaution of hiding the hair they cut off in the thatch of their own huts.^70.3 Some of the Papuan inhabitants of Timor-laut were delighted to make use of Mr. Forbes’ scissors to cut their hair; but they declined to allow the traveller to retain any specimens, for they said they would die; and they gathered up every scrap they could find.^70.4 Among the Australian aborigines of Western Victoria an unsuccessful lover who can get a lock of the lady’s hair covers it with fat and red clay and carries it about with him for a year. The knowledge of this so depresses her that she pines away and often actually dies. When a husband has, or imagines, a grievance against his wife he cuts a lock of her hair while she sleeps, and tying it to the bone hook of his spear-thrower he covers it with a coating of gum. Then he goes away to a neighbouring tribe and stays with them. At the first great meeting of the tribes he gives the spear-thrower to a friend, who sticks it upright before the camp-fire every night, and when it falls over, the husband considers it a sign that his wife is dead. This process, and the taunts to which the {71} deserted wife is subjected, seldom fail to bring her to a sense of her duty of going to seek her husband, apologising for her conduct and bringing him home. The natives are very careful to burn their superfluous hair; and locks are only exchanged by friends as a mark of affection. If a lock thus obtained be lost it is a very serious matter. The loser of the lock will die; and so strong is the belief, that he sometimes does die, unless the person who holds the lock of his hair given in exchange be willing to return it, and so undo the exchange.^71.1 Other tribes have the like superstitions. Mr. Howitt records it as a general practice among the natives of the south-east of Australia, and particularly of the Wotjobaluk tribe, to procure a piece of the victim’s hair, “some of his fæces, a bone picked by him and dropped, a shred of his opossum rug, or at the present time of his clothes,” for the purpose of injuring him. “If nothing else can be got, he may be watched until he is seen to spit, when his saliva is carefully picked up with a piece of wood and made use of for his destruction.” And the writer, a keen observer, adds: “There is evidently a belief that doing an act to something which is part of a person, or which even only belongs to him, is in fact doing it to him. This is very clearly brought out by the remark of one of the Wirajuri, who said to me: ‘You see, when a black-fellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.’ ” Indeed, all over Australia sorcery by means of hair is practised, or at least feared; and the same is asserted of the now exterminated Tasmanians.^71.2 In Sumatra {72} Mr. Forbes once noted a man carefully burying the scraps after paring his finger-nails.^72.1 The approved method of killing a foe at Amboyna is to take some of his hair or clothing, his quid of betel chewed and ejected, or the measure of his footprint, and put it into three bamboo cylinders, one of which is laid beneath a coffin, another buried under the steps of the house, and the third flung into the sea. To injure him it is apparently sufficient to put some of his hair into a coffin, or a grave, or to bind it to the tail of a living fish and return the creature to the water, or to stuff it into a cranny in a house or boat.^72.2 In the Panjáb some wizards are reputed to have the power of killing a woman by cutting off a lock of her hair, and afterwards bringing her to life again even though she had been buried.^72.3 And in Sindh no woman will give a lock of her hair, even to her husband, for fear of the power he would thus obtain.^72.4 Arab women are very careful to bury the parings of their nails for fear of witchcraft.^72.5 The Rautiás, a caste of Chota Nagpur in Bengal, partly Aryan and partly Dravidian, on the other hand, while convinced that witches can act upon their victims through bits of cut hair or nails, are guilty of the suicidal conduct of neglecting to preserve or destroy such articles.^72.6 They seem, however, exceptional in this respect among races in the lower culture. On the Slave Coast of Africa, “anything that has belonged {73} to a man, especially anything that has formed part of, or has come out of, his body, such as hair-clippings, nail-parings, saliva, or the fæces, can be used” to his detriment. “Hence it is usual for pieces of hair and nails to be carefully buried or burned, in order that they may not fall into the hands of sorcerers”; and the saliva of a chief is gathered up and hidden or buried.^73.1 The Makololo used to burn or bury their hair, lest, in the hands of a witch, it should be used as a charm to afflict the owner with headache.^73.2 Among the Basuto hairs or nail-parings of the person aimed at, or drops of his blood which he had not taken the precaution of effacing with his foot where they fell, were used by sorcerers in the manufacture of their charms. And without prolonging the list it may safely be said that this superstition is rife all over the continent.^73.3 Naturally the Negro has carried it to America. A lady writing half a century ago relates an incident which happened on the island of Antigua. A Negro boy had been drowned; and one of his kinswomen contrived to cut off some hair from the head of an acquaintance with whom she had a quarrel. This hair she placed in the dead boy’s hand just before his coffin was screwed down, at the same time pronouncing the word “Remember.” The ghastly result was thus described by the Negro who told the tale: “De pic’nee jumby trouble he [namely, the lady who had lost her hair] so dat he no know war for do, till at last he go out of he head, an’ he neber been no good since.”^73.4 Among the Negroes of the {74} United States the recipe for driving an enemy mad is to get one of his hairs and slip it inside the bark of a tree. When the bark grows over it his intellect is gone for ever. But in fact everything “that pertains to the body, such as nails, teeth, hair, saliva, tears, perspiration, dandruff, scabs of sores even, and garments worn next the person,” is employed in charms. A powerful conjurer told Miss Owen: “I could save or ruin you if I could get hold of so much as one eye-winker or the peeling of one freckle.”^74.1

Prominent in the magical superstitions of some nations is blood. All Europe holds that the pact with the devil must be signed with one’s own blood. It is by handing over a portion of his blood that the unhappy mortal puts himself in the power of the Father of Evil. Without this gage his covenant would be voidable. A popular allegation against the Freemasons in some places is that the candidate for initiation is required to paint his own figure on the wall of the lodge with blood taken from his finger. If thereafter he betray the secrets he has sworn to keep, he can be slain by stabbing the portrait thus made.^74.2 A German saying advises that blood let out of a vein should always be thrown into running water.^74.3 There, of course, it will always be free, it will speedily be lost, and no witchcraft can be wrought upon it. The Transylvanian Saxons declare that if any blood, saliva, or suchlike of a living person be put into a coffin with the dead, the former will slowly languish and die.^74.4 The blood or saliva, corrupting and decaying with the corpse, reacts upon the living body {75} whence it has been derived. Similar is a Magyar prescription for causing barrenness in a woman, namely, by rubbing a dead man’s organ with her menses. In Hungary, too, if you wish to render a bridegroom indifferent to his bride, take some of his blood, or saliva, and with it smear the soles of the bride’s shoes before the wedding, or write his name in his blood on a pigeon’s egg and contrive that she shall tread unawares upon it. In either of these ways she will tread out her husband’s love.^75.1 In Ireland, when a child is vaccinated, the medical man is not allowed to take lymph from its arm without giving some present, however trifling, in return; and Dr. C. R. Browne records that when he was vaccinated in county Tipperary, his arm, as the nurse reported, was kept inflamed because the doctor did not put silver in his hand when taking the lymph.^75.2 The ground of the superstition appears to be the belief in witchcraft. Payment is always held to neutralise a witch’s power over a person through something received from him, probably because what she gives in exchange would confer a like power over her, and hence becomes a hostage for her good faith.^75.3

When a shaman among the Cherokees wishes to destroy a man, he hides, and follows his victim about until the latter spits upon the ground. Then he collects on the end of a stick a little of the dust moistened with the saliva. “The possession of the man’s spittle gives him power over the life of the man himself.” He puts it into a tube consisting of a joint of the wild parsnip, “a poisonous plant {76} of considerable importance in life-conjuring ceremonies,” together with seven earthworms beaten into a paste, and some splinters from a tree struck by lightning. With the tube thus prepared he goes to a tree which has been lightning-struck. At its base he digs a hole, in the bottom of which he lays a large yellow stone slab. Upon this he places the tube and seven yellow pebbles. Then, filling up the hole with earth, he builds a fire over it. The fire, we are told, is for the purpose of destroying all trace of his work; but it may well be done with another object. The yellow stones are said to represent trouble, and to be substitutes for black stones, not so easily found, which represent death. The shaman and his employer fast until after the ceremony. The victim is expected to feel the effects at once: “his soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is dead.”^76.1 A traveller in Oregon relates how some Kwakiutl who were exasperated against him took up his saliva when he spat, intending, as they subsequently told him, to give it to the medicine-man, who would charm his life away.^76.2 The custom, everywhere practised, of obliterating all trace of the saliva after spitting, doubtless originated in the desire to prevent such use of it.^76.3

Sweat has been mentioned as one of the means of witchcraft among the American Negroes. The Melanesians hold a leaf wherewith a man has wiped the perspiration from his face an effective instrument for doing him mischief.^76.4 The {77} fouler excreta are quite as potent; and this belief has been one of the most beneficial of superstitions. To it is due the extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fæcal matter which is almost universally a characteristic of savages. I shall content myself with throwing into a footnote references to a few passages of various authorities bearing on this means of witchcraft.^77.1

Sorcery may be wrought upon a foe through any of his teeth which have been extracted. Wherefore the aborigines of Australia, among whom the loss of a front tooth is the sign of admission to the privileges of manhood, are very careful of the teeth which are knocked out. About the river Darling in New South Wales, “the youth’s companions take the tooth when it is extracted, and return it to him later with a present of weapons, rugs, nets, and suchlike. The youth places the tooth under the bark of a tree, near a creek, water-hole, or river: if the bark grows over it, or it falls into the water, all is well; but should it be exposed, and the ants run over it, it is believed that the youth will suffer from a disease in the mouth.”^77.2 Of other tribes in south-eastern Australia it is recorded that the extracted tooth is taken care of by one of the old men. It {78} is passed from one head-man to another, until it has made the complete circuit of the community. It then returns to the youth’s father, and finally to himself. He carries it always about with him; but it must on no account be placed in his bag of magical substances, else great danger will accrue to him.^78.1 In England and elsewhere children are commonly told to burn their milk-teeth when taken out. In Belgium about Liége the reason assigned is to obtain a tooth of gold. In fact, the fear is that a witch may find it if thrown away, and injure the child by its means, or that a dog, a cat or a wolf may swallow it, in which event the new tooth growing in its place will be that of the animal.^78.2 This particular form of the superstition is also found in Sussex and Suffolk, and probably in other parts of England.^78.3

Earth from a man’s footprints, on account of its close contact with the person—and closer still it must have been before mankind was shod—has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Out of a number of illustrations of its use in witchcraft I select the following from all quarters of the globe. Widely spread in Germany is the belief that if a sod whereon a man has trodden—all the better, if with naked foot—be taken up and dried behind the hearth or oven he will parch up with it and languish, or his foot will be withered. He will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking his footprint with nails—coffin-nails are the best—or broken glass. Burchard of Worms in the Middle Ages forbade the former practice; in still earlier times and another country Pythagoras had forbidden the latter.^78.4 They are still, {79} however, particularly recommended in various parts of Germany and adjacent lands for punishing a thief, though it is equally effectual to put tinder in his footprint, for he will thus be burnt, or to fill a pouch with some of the earth he has trodden and beat it twice a day with a stick until fire (!) come out of it: he will feel the blows and die without fail if he bring not back the stolen goods. According to Bezzenberger a Lithuanian, who finds a thief’s footmark, takes it to the graveyard and selects a grave, wherefrom he draws out the cross, thrusts the earth of the footprint into the hole and rams down the cross upon it again. The thief then falls ill, and thus is revealed.^79.1 In Italy and Russia one may be bewitched by similar means to those used in Germany.^79.2 In Hungary, when a woman has a child of unwedded love and desires to bind its father’s affections to it, she digs up one of his footprints, drops {80} some of her own milk into it and carefully puts it back, reversing its position toe to heel.^80.1

The use of the footprint survives in the British Islands, I think, solely as a means of defence against witches. A correspondent of Mr. Train, the historian of the Isle of Man, writing about half a century ago, relates a story in which a colt was taken ill and there was reason to fear the Evil Eye. A friend of the owner gathered the dust of the road out of the footsteps of the suspected person, and rubbed the animal with it. Thereupon it once more partook of food and rapidly recovered.^80.2 Quite recently a parallel case has been reported, the beast bewitched having been a calf.^80.3 Mr. Hollingsworth, in his History of Stowmarket, published in 1844, says of a reputed witch that, if any one followed her as she walked, and drove a nail or a knife well into the ground through one of her footprints, she was deprived of power to move another step until it was extracted.^80.4 In Grafton County, New Hampshire, in the year 1852, a woman was seen to stick a knitting-needle in the footmarks of another who was regarded as a witch, under the belief that the steel had power to fasten a witch in her tracks, so that she could not move. On this occasion the device was ineffectual. There is always a reason for want of success in such performances. The performer was satisfied that she had broken the needle’s power by speaking. Elsewhere in New England and in Canada an awl is prescribed for the purpose.^80.5 Further south, the mixed white population of the Alleghanies recommend a nail from the coffin wherein a corpse has {81} decayed to be driven with three blows into a thief’s track; it will produce the same effect as if it entered the robber’s foot. But you are cautioned to tie a string round the nail’s head, so that it can be drawn out when requisite; else the man will die.^81.1

Savages, on the other hand, are more frequently reported as using the footmark as a means of offence. The Karens of Burmah use the earth of a man’s footprints for the purpose of making a magical image of him.^81.2 The Pakoos strike an enemy’s footsteps with certain stones, with the intention of causing his death.^81.3 On the Slave Coast of Africa a magical powder thrown on a foe’s track renders him mad.^81.4 The Kurnai and other Australian aborigines bury sharp fragments of quartz, glass, bone or charcoal in the footmarks or in the place where the victim has lain, under the belief that the substances will thus be caused to enter his body.^81.5 In the west of Victoria—probably elsewhere—the black-fellow possessed of supernatural powers, who in hot weather comes upon the spoor of a kangaroo, follows it up, putting live embers on it. He will follow it thus for two days, unless he track it to a water-hole and spear it sooner.^81.6 This superstition, to which a special name is given, and of which Mr. Dawson, a most competent inquirer, failed to get any explanation, is analogous to the practice of the North American Indians. A compound, called “hunter’s medicine,” the preparation {82} whereof is taught to the neophyte in the initiation ceremony of the Ojibways, is dropped on the track of the animal pursued, to compel it to halt wherever it may be at that moment.^82.1 The Zuñi hunter follows the trail until he finds a place where the creature has lain down. He then deposits with certain offerings a spider-knot, tied of set purpose awkwardly, of four strands of yucca-leaves on the spot over which he supposes the victim’s heart to have rested or passed. Immediately in front of it he sticks a forked twig of cedar obliquely into the ground, leaning in the direction opposite to that taken by the animal. Other ceremonies follow, meant to have the effect of impeding and overcoming the prey.^82.2

With the foregoing may be compared some ceremonies practised in Europe, the design of which, though not hostile, is to attach the animal to one place and prevent it from straying. A German huntsman, for example, sticks a coffin-nail into the trail of the game he desires to retain in his preserve.^82.3 When a calf is born, a Transylvanian Saxon farmer will take a peg of birch and drive it over the head into the spot on which the calf has fallen.^82.4 So an ancient English charm for the recovery of stolen cattle directed three candles to be lighted and the wax dripped thrice into the hoof-track, and the following invocation to be sung: “Peter, Paul, Patrick, Philip, Mary, Bridget, Felicitas; in the name of God and the Church: he who seeketh findeth.”^82.5 It seems to have required a perfect {83} army of saints to stop one thief; but peradventure some of them were talking, or in a journey, or sleeping, and could not attend to the business.

Among the various instruments of witchcraft I have mentioned the refuse of food. In the South Sea Islands this has been noted over and over again by missionaries and travellers. In New Britain a native, seized with fever, complained to Mr. Powell that one of his enemies had bewitched him by obtaining the skins of some bananas he had eaten, “making magic” over them and then burning them. For fear of this, Mr. Powell explains, the natives are very careful to burn or hide the refuse of anything they have been eating.^83.1 In the New Hebrides a bit of a certain stone, taken with a prayer, is pounded up with a fragment of food of the person to whom mischief is to be wrought; or the refuse of his food, such as a banana-skin or a piece of sugar-cane he has chewed, is simply burnt. An amphibious sea-snake called mae is credited with supernatural power. It will do harm to men by taking away morsels of their food into a sacred place, whereupon their lips will swell and their bodies break out with ulcers.^83.2 In one of the Solomon Islands there is a sacred pool haunted by a Tindalo, or disembodied spirit, much resorted to for a similar purpose by persons who know the place and the spirit. If the scraps of food thrown into the pool are quickly devoured by a fish or a snake the thrower’s object is accomplished: the man whose food has been pilfered for the purpose will die. If otherwise, the Tindalo is unwilling {84} to do the mischief desired of him.^84.1 Without pausing to enumerate any other cases it may be said in general terms that the superstition which is the subject of this paragraph is found everywhere in Australasia, Polynesia and Melanesia.^84.2

Nor is it confined to the Southern Ocean. Among the Ainu double fruits are liable to be the means of bewitching any one who is bold enough to eat of them, unless he eat both.^84.3 In Europe, the Magyars carefully throw into the fire the remains of food partaken of at the Christmas feast; else the witches will make all sorts of evil charms of them. In many places they are kneaded together into a sort of paste in human form, and, with the words: “Eat fair ladies!” put into the oven, where they are burnt up in the next baking. The bones are frequently thrown into the open fire; and from their colour, and the way they crack and split in the heat, prognostications of future fortunes are drawn. Sometimes the bride buries close to the house the bread-crumbs, bones and other relics of her wedding-feast, in order “to strengthen the building.”^84.4 In both cases the anxiety to secure the food from harm, once extended to food in general, seems to have become restricted to special occasions. The reason alleged in the case of a wedding is probably no more the real reason than that stated in the {85} Mark of Brandenburg for not giving away a slice of bread which has been bitten, lest, we are told, one quarrel with the recipient.^85.1 People in Posen are counselled not to eat in the presence of a stranger for fear of being bewitched through the remains of their food, nor to take drink from a strange hand without saying as a counterspell: “God bless it!”^85.2 About Chemnitz one is advised on rising from a meal to leave no bread behind, lest somebody throw it over the gallows, in which event hanging would be the doom awaiting the person who had left it. In the neighbourhood of Ansbach he would get off more lightly, since only toothache is threatened.^85.3 In Belgium, things like milk or bread are never given to any one capable of bewitching the giver, save in exchange for a centime or some other trifle: the sale appears to destroy the evil power, a belief we have already found elsewhere. Children are also forbidden to receive from a woman whom they do not know cakes or sweetmeats, or if they do they must throw them over their shoulders, as in fairy tales the drink presented by supernatural beings is poured away by mortals; and a similar caution is enjoined in Italy.^85.4

Before dismissing the dangers which may arise from the remains of food being tampered with, it may be well to mention a curious ordeal in use among the Tunguses of Siberia. A fire is made and a scaffold erected near the hut of the accused. A dog’s throat is then cut and the {86} blood received in a vessel. The body is put on the wood of the fire, but in such a position that it does not burn. The accused passes over the fire, and drinks two mouthfuls of the blood, the rest whereof is thrown into the fire; and the body of the dog is placed on the scaffold. Then the accused says: “As the dog’s blood burns in the fire, so may what I have drunk burn in my body; and as the dog put on the scaffold will be consumed, so may I be consumed at the same time if I be guilty.”^86.1 The effect intended to be produced on a guilty man is obviously the operation of the sympathy between the blood united with his body by drinking and the remainder of the blood and the carcase of the dog as they are consumed, the one in the fire, and the other by putrefaction or birds of carrion.

Clothes, from their intimate association with the person, have naturally attained a prominent place among the instruments of witchcraft. Among the Transylvanian Saxons, to put on an article of clothing belonging to another is to put on his luck, provided it be done undesignedly.^86.2 The German population of Pennsylvania cherishes the belief that witches “acquire influence over any one by becoming possessed of anything belonging to the intended victim, such as a hair, a piece of apparel, or a pin. The influence acquired by the witch is greater if such an article be voluntarily or unconsciously handed to her by the person asked for it.”^86.3 For a similar reason, the Votjaks hesitate even to sell any article of clothing they have worn.^86.4 A pin from the maiden’s dress, it will be remembered, was a necessary {87} part of the Livonian charm cited a few pages back; one of the victim’s gloves appears in the confessions of the unfortunate Margaret and Philippa Flower; and a parallel practice has been recently recorded in Sicily.^87.1 At Mentone the witch with a piece of her victim’s garment can render him sick.^87.2 An elaborate Tuscan charm given by Mr. Leland prescribes the use of the hairs of the victim, “or else the stockings, and those not clean, for there must be in them his or her perspiration.”^87.3 As elsewhere, among the Greco-Walachian population of Macedonia a newly born babe and its mother are held to be specially subject to injury by supernatural beings. To prevent this their clothes must not remain out of doors all night; and the water in which they or the clothes have been washed must be poured through pipes into the depths of the ground.^87.4 In Germany, in Spain, in Asia Minor and in many other places a portion of the witch’s dress is burnt to destroy her spells and restore the object of her conjurations to health.^87.5 A Gipsy prescription to recover a stolen horse is to bury the harness which may be left, to kindle a fire over the spot and sing {88} an imprecation on the thief and an invocation to the steed to return safe and sound.^88.1 Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers thought it enough to sing over the foot-shackles or the bridle the powerful invocation I mentioned just now.

The Segoo conjurer on the Upper Niger uses a piece of cloth belonging to the victim, or a little dirt that has been touched by his foot. These he sticks by means of hen’s blood to a fetish charm prepared, according to price, to kill or only to produce various degrees of damage to his client’s foe.^88.2 In a Hottentot story a fugitive throws off his mantle, and it immediately runs in another direction so as to deceive and baffle his pursuers.^88.3 Here the garment is represented as endowed with life and sympathy for its owner; but it does not appear that when it was caught the pursuers thought it worth while to destroy it with intent to slay the owner. As already mentioned, a piece of an Australian native’s opossum rug, or any other portion of his scanty dress, is sufficient to enable an enemy to bewitch him.^88.4 The Maories and the Fiji islanders are equally superstitious. It is related of the latter that if they have reason to suspect others of plotting against them, they not only avoid eating in their presence, or leaving any fragments of their food behind, but they also dispose their clothing so that no part of it can be removed.^88.5 On the island of Tanna, in the New Hebrides, a yolnuruk, or wizard, can bewitch any one by means of a portion of his food, the {89} unused part of a stick of tobacco, his belt or garment, a stick he has had in his hand, the scrapings of a stone on which he has sat, or in fact anything that has once touched his body.^89.1 To a Tonga islander it was fatal to hide a portion of his clothing in the family tomb of one of his relations of higher rank than himself.^89.2

Everywhere, indeed, it is dangerous to leave an article of a living person’s dress in the possession of the dead. An old woman who went to pray in the old church, now ruined, of Saint Martin at Bonn was surprised by finding herself in a congregation of the departed. A spectral Mass was, in fact, being celebrated by spectral priests, and she was the only living being in the assembly. Her dead husband was there; and, warned by him, she fled. But the door, in swinging-to as she passed out, caught her cloak; and she had to leave it behind. She sickened and died; and “the neighbours said it must be because a piece of her clothes had remained in the possession of the dead.”^89.3 In Germany and Denmark no portion of a survivor’s clothing must on any account be put upon a corpse, else the owner will languish away as it moulders in the grave; and the superstition has been carried by Saxon settlers into the Land beyond the Forest.^89.4 Among the Poles, to lay a maiden’s garland on the head of a dead body covers the maiden herself with scabs; and the Masurs declare that if a bystander at an open grave drop anything in, or if any article {90} belonging to a living person be laid in it, he will die soon.^90.1 Conversely the greatest caution is necessary in taking anything belonging to the dead. Legends are common in Northern and Central Europe of persons who have wittingly or unwittingly stolen shrouds. The thief always comes to a bad end, or at least escapes only by the skin of his teeth. These catastrophes are attributed to ghostly action; but a similar power is ascribed to mere sympathy. To appropriate pieces of a coffin, or flowers from a grave, to say nothing of bones or other parts of a corpse, is, among the Saxons of the Seven Cities, to appropriate ill-luck for the rest of one’s life. To hang rags from the clothing of a dead man upon a vine is to render it barren. Even in taking his gear in the most legitimate manner, pious formulæ and ceremonies must be used; and then it will not last you long. In former times it was charitably given to the poor.^90.2 To stick a nail from a coffin in a living man’s shoe is, in Thuringia, to cause his death.^90.3 In the New World the Caribs held that they could injure an enemy by wrapping up some trifling object belonging to, or habitually used by, him with the bones of one of their deceased friends, which were preserved for that and other magical purposes.^90.4 The Aleutian Eskimo think that the tools and garments of the dead remain in sympathy with him; “hence their touch chills, and the sight of them inspires sadness.”^90.5

Probably it is only a different interpretation of the same belief which alike in Christian, in Mohammedan, and in {91} Buddhist lands has led to the ascription of marvellous powers to the clothes and other relics of departed saints. The divine power which was immanent in these personages during life attaches not merely to every portion of their bodies but to every shred of their apparel. The Ursuline nuns of Quintin keep one of the principal schools in Brittany. When a girl who has been their pupil marries and finds herself “in blessed circumstances,” the pious nuns send her a white ribbon painted in blue (the Virgin’s colour) with the words: “Notre Dame de Délivrance, protégez nous.” Before despatching it, they touch with it the reliquary of the parish church, which contains a fragment of the Virgin Mary’s zone. The recipient hastens to put the ribbon around her waist, and does not cease to wear it until her baby is born.^91.1 For the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, though that contact has ceased to outward appearance, is still in some subtle connection with the goddess, and can, with the power it has thus acquired, leaven its reliquary and everything that touches the reliquary. Father De Acosta bears unconscious testimony to the real character of this belief. Speaking of the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca, he relates that upon the even of his feast the god was furnished by the nobles with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken off “and kept with as much or more reverence {92} than we doe our ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments, of course, are meant; and the writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and pretious feathers, which served to no other vse but to be there, and was [sic] worshipped as their god it selfe.”^92.1 Not to multiply instances which might be adduced from the Arctic Ocean to the Southern Sea, I will refer only to the sacred girdle worn by Tahitian kings. The red feathers which adorned this girdle were taken from the images of the gods. It “thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that Mr. Ellis says it “not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods.”^92.2

Nor is it merely to clothes and personal ornaments that this intimate and sympathetic connection with their owner’s life is ascribed. It might be supposed that the constant visible and tangible association of these things with the man himself might render it difficult to disintegrate the image thus formed in the slowly working mind of a savage, and that this might be the reason for their identification (for it amounts to nothing less) with his personality. Or it might be argued that, as is distinctly suggested in certain cases, they have become saturated with his sweat by repeated use, and thereby become an {93} outlying portion of his body. The identification, however, is extended to things we should suppose more easily dissociated from him, to things but rarely coming beneath his touch. The Wanyoro of Central Africa imagine that straws from the thatch of a dwelling may be so charmed as to bring calamity upon its owner.^93.1 When Captain Speke was in Unyoro, the king, Kamrasi, sent some one to steal some grass from the thatch of a Chopi chief, “in order that he might spread a charm on the Chopi people, and gain such an influence over them that their spears could not prevail against the Wanyoro.”^93.2 In the Isle of Man, one fisherman can rob another of his luck by plucking a straw from the latter’s cottage as he passes it on his way to fishing.^93.3 A woman of Kirk Lonan in the same island confessed, on the 31st of July 1712, to a charge of having taken up some earth from under a neighbour’s door and burnt it to ashes, which she had given to her cattle, “with an intention, as she owns, to make them give more milk”—in other words, to a charge of stealing by magical means the milk from her neighbour’s cows.^93.4 In Denmark, to steal fishing-tackle is to rob the fisher of his luck. For a similar reason, no Esthonian farmer is willing to give earth from his cornfields.^93.5 In southern Bohemia the sweepings must not be allowed to lie before the house-door, else the witches will be enabled by its means to lame the inhabitants, as well as to ascertain what is going on in the house.^93.6 In the Tirol an enemy can be ruined by cutting a turf from one’s own ground and {94} throwing it on his roof; while a Fijian can bewitch his foe by burying certain leaves in the foe’s garden or hiding them in his thatch.^94.1 The Annamites are said by Dr. Bartels, I know not on what authority, to effect a spell of injury by driving a nail into a plank of the victim’s ship or one of the posts of his house.^94.2 As long as the men are away from a Dyak village on a warlike expedition their fires are lighted on their hearths as if they were at home. “The mats are spread and the fires kept up till late in the evening, and lighted again before dawn, so that the men may not be cold. The roofing of the house is opened before dawn, so that the men may not lie too long and so fall into the hands of the enemy.”^94.3 The belief in the inseparable connection of a person and his property seems to have limited to some slight extent the indiscriminate almsgiving practised in many European, especially Roman Catholic, countries. It is deemed prudent always to refuse persons suspected of witchcraft; and at certain times, as on the occasion of a birth or death, or even when a cow has calved, every one must be refused. To give fire on these occasions, or on various days of the year, is highly dangerous, and it is by no means safe at any time. Mr. Frederick Starr, the Curator of the Natural History Museum at New York, records a case of witchcraft that came under his own notice among the German population of Pennsylvania, where the trouble was traced to the giving of a match to the sorceress to {95} light her pipe.^95.1 Nor is the superstition unknown to the American aborigines, as witness the attempt mentioned in the last chapter of the Shawnee prophet to persuade John Tanner that his life was dependent on his lodge fire. And the Moravian missionaries found it in Greenland, where one of the things a pregnant woman may not permit is the lighting of a match at her lamp.^95.2

In the Mahábhárata an ascetic who is enraged with king Dhritaráshtra accepts from the king the carcases of some cattle which had died. Then he lighted a sacrificial fire and cut up the animals; and “observant of rigid vows the great Dálvya-vaka poured Dhritaráshtra’s kingdom as a libation on the fire with the aid of those pieces of meat. Upon the commencement of that fierce sacrifice, according to due rites, the kingdom of Dhritaráshtra began to waste away, even as a large forest begins to disappear when men proceed to cut it down.” The monarch, it need hardly be added, was soon reduced to submission.^95.3 Here the foe is affected by rites performed upon his cattle; and perhaps the same belief is the origin of the resentment felt by a Samoan when he finds marks of a knife or hatchet inflicted by another upon anything belonging to him, such as his canoe, his breadfruit-tree, or even on a few taro-plants. We are told that “he considers it is like cutting himself, and rages like a bear to find out who has done it.”^95.4 The close connection held in cases like these to subsist between {96} property and its owner is further exemplified by the practice of the Pipiles of Central America, who had special regulations for indulgence in marital embraces at the moment of sowing.^96.1 So also when the Ynca Mayta Capac ordered certain prisoners in one of the provinces he had conquered to be burnt alive, the zealous people not only carried out the command but included in the punishment all that the criminals had in their houses, destroying the houses and strewing their sites with stones as accursed places. “They also destroyed their flocks, and even pulled up the trees they had planted. It was ordered that their land should never be given to any one, but that it should remain desolate, that no man might inherit with it the evil deeds of its former owners.”^96.2 Among the Alfours of Posso in Celebes, when a man dies he is solemnly tried, and every one is entitled to express an opinion upon his life. If the decision be unfavourable he is buried without ceremony, provided his debts be paid, and his goods are destroyed, for nobody can, and nobody wishes to, inherit from him.^96.3 The spirit and intention evinced in this destruction of a great offender’s property dictated the extermination (or at least the story of the extermination) of Achan, the son of Zerah, with the goods he had appropriated at the sack of Jericho, his sons, and his daughters, “his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.” It was only when they had been burnt and covered with a great heap of stones, as in the case of the Peruvian prisoners, that “the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger.”^96.4 {97} Hardly an extension is it of the belief here indicated which leads the Chinese to identify the produce of labour with the labourer himself. In the Middle Kingdom grave-clothes are procured long beforehand and kept in store for years. Professor De Groot says: “Old age being a benefit the Chinese prefer above all things, most people have the clothes in question cut out and sewed by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that, whereas such a person is likely to live still a great number of years, a part of her capacity to live still long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus put off for many years the moment when they shall be required for use.”^97.1 Traces of the same thought are found in the German requirement that in making vinegar, to make it good, one must look sour and be savage, and in the high value placed upon yarn spun by a girl under seven years of age.^97.2

But superstition stops not with a man’s property and the produce of his labour any more than with portions of his body or his garments and ornaments. Things arbitrarily associated with him, if the proper ceremonies be observed, and the proper incantations muttered or sung, may be made effectual instruments of injury as if they were parts of himself. His name, it may be argued, is something peculiarly his own; and a portrait, if any resemblance be traceable to the person represented, may bear identification with him. But, as I have already pointed out, likeness is by no means necessary. If it be enough, in order to constitute a life-token, merely to attribute connection at the will of the person inquiring concerning the absent, it must {98} be enough also for the purpose of bewitching him. What is valid in the one case must be valid in the other. So much has been written on the aspects of savage thought concerning personal names and personal portraits, and on the images made for the purposes of witchcraft, that I need not do more than point out that the profane use of images for witchcraft is exactly parallel to the sacred use of images of gods and saints. If by sticking a pin into a waxen figure, or melting it in the fire, I can torture and do to death the person whom the figure represents, the converse process of honouring and feeding and pacifying with incense and adoration will have its effect upon the deity whose image is thus treated. Wherever he may be, he is present by means of the sympathy between the picture or the statue and himself, a sympathy thus indistinguishable from identity. Practically of course this involves omnipresence. The difficulty is not felt by the savage. If the theologian feel it, he can explain it away in a crowd of unctuous phrases, or smother his common sense with the authority of the Church. The scientific investigator can do neither. The only theory of the superstition he can present is that which is educed from a comparison of analogous cases, namely, that just as hair and other portions of the body, when severed in outward appearance, yet maintain an essential connection with it, so images bearing the name of, or intended to represent, an absent man or a deity are an extension of his person, bound to it by an invisible and indivisible link. That a ceremony should be required to perfect the bond, to complete the connection, is only to be expected; and naturally this ceremony is fully developed in solemn and formal worship and the higher sorcery. But the ritual of consecration depends upon another principle—that {99} of the power of certain forms of words when uttered in a prescribed manner to bring about the fulfilment of a wish—the discussion whereof is foreign to this inquiry.

A few illustrations of the identity imputed for magical purposes to arbitrary objects other than effigies may perhaps be interesting as showing how far the imputation may be carried, and on how slender a connection of thought in many cases it rests. On the Slave Coast, Major Ellis reports that an enemy’s death may be compassed by wrapping a tree-stump with palm-leaves and strips of calico, and hanging a string of cowries on it, and then hammering the top with a stone while pronouncing the victim’s name.^99.1 In the Congo region, an approved method of bewitching mortally is to put a certain herb or plant into a hole in the ground. As it decays, so the vigour and spirits of the person aimed at will fail and decay.^99.2 In Fiji, a cocoa-nut is buried beneath the temple hearth, with the eye upwards. A fire is kept constantly burning on the hearth; and as it destroys the life of the nut, so the health of the person represented by the nut fails, and he ultimately dies.^99.3 In the Hervey Islands, the expanded flower of a gardenia was stuck upright—no easy feat—in a cocoa-nut-shell cup of water. The sorcerer would then offer a prayer for the death of the person intended; and if the flower fell his prayer would be successful.^99.4 In some districts of Sicily on Christmas Eve, at the moment of the elevation of the host at midnight mass, an orange or a lemon, previously charmed for the {100} purpose by a witch, must be taken from the pocket, a piece of the rind torn off, and the fruit stuck with pins. It is necessary to accompany the act with an imprecation of as many pains and misfortunes on the unhappy victim as the pins in the fruit. At Palermo an egg is used, a ribbon is attached to one of the pins, and the egg is then hidden somewhere in the house of the person to be injured.^100.1 In Bosnia, a maiden may be detached from her lover by burying an egg before and another behind her dwelling, saying the while: “It is not eggs I bury; I bury rather her luck; her luck shall be turned to stone.” But the effect of the charm may be dissipated by the maiden’s finding the eggs, throwing them out of the farmyard, and retiring without looking round.^100.2

In each of the foregoing cases the association with the victim appears to be formed by the utterance of his name, though in the two last there is further the introduction of the bespelled object into his dwelling or its immediate vicinity. This effects a kind of contact with him. It was the same in a spell cast over a maiden to whose aid Saint Hilarion was once called. She had rejected the advances of a young magician, who in return laid a copper plate engraved with certain characters under the door of her dwelling. The effect was, as we know from Saint Jerome, that she became possessed by a devil, who boasted that he would not leave her until the copper plate was taken away. But in Hilarion, who was so full of the Holy Spirit that he could tell one devil from another by the smell, the tormentor had met his match. The saint forbade the removal {101} of the plate; nor would he bandy words with the demon, but delivered the girl by the sheer strength of his prayers.^101.1 At Vate, one of the New Hebrides, if a man were angry with another, he buried certain leaves by night close to his foe’s house, so that the latter in coming forth in the morning might step over them and be taken ill.^101.2 More direct contact is set up with the person condemned to undergo the poison ordeal at Blantyre, in Central Africa, when the ordeal is to be inflicted, as frequently is the case, by proxy on a dog or a fowl, or some other animal. The proxy is then tied by a string to the accused.^101.3 The same result is obtained in the neighbourhood of Hermannstadt in Transylvania on the occasion of a robbery, if restitution be desired, by procuring a consecrated wafer and putting it upon any portion remaining of the stolen property. The operator then sticks a needle into the wafer, saying: “Thief, I stick thy brains; thou shalt lose thy reason!” Again he sticks the needle in, saying: “Thief, I stick thy hands to change thee to goodness!” A third time he sticks it in, saying: “Thief, I stick thy feet to lame thee!” After this, if the thief would avoid death, he must bring the stolen goods back.^101.4 If, at the time of a death among the Poles, anything have been stolen, a similar article or a piece of the same material is laid in the coffin with the dead, and as it corrupts the thief withers away and ultimately dies.^101.5 The concurrence of a theft with a death, however, does not always happen so {102} conveniently. The Masurs, therefore, reckon it sufficient to bury the article in the churchyard.^102.1 In the Fiji Islands, Macdonald records that, certain roots having been stolen, the sorcerers who were called in placed the remains of the roots in contact with a poisonous plant. As soon as this was known, two persons fell sick with a disease that proved mortal; and before dying they confessed to the robbery.^102.2

The principle applied in these instances appears to be a logical extension of that which identifies a man with his property. The thief is identified with the articles he has possessed himself of, and is affected by means of a portion of the bulk to which they belong, and whence he has severed them. In this country the identification is usually arbitrary, no contact being attempted. The heart of some animal, as a sheep, a hare, or a pigeon, is procured and stuck full of pins; and a form of words is pronounced similar to those in the Transylvanian example. In a case mentioned by Mr. Henderson as occurring no longer ago than the year 1861, a live pigeon was thus tortured and pierced to the heart, and then roasted, the object being to punish and discover a witch who was believed to have killed some horses by means of the Evil Eye. This kind of incantation is perhaps more usual in philtres, or where the girl betrayed seeks to avenge herself upon her lover. Mr. Henderson quotes the following directions from The Universal Fortune Teller: “Let any unmarried woman take the blade-bone of a shoulder of lamb, and borrowing a penknife (without saying for what purpose) she must, on going to bed, stick the knife once through the bone every night for nine nights {103} in succession in different places, repeating every night while so doing these words:

Accordingly at the end of the nine days, or shortly after, he will come and ask for something to put to a wound inflicted during the time you were charming him.”^103.1 Reginald Scot gives a charm “to spoile a theefe, a witch, or anie other enemie, and to be delivered from the evill,” by cutting a hazel-wand on Sunday morning before sunrise, saying: “I cut thee, O bough of this summer’s growth, in the name of him whom I mean to beat or maim.” The table is then to be covered, using thrice the formula, “In nomine Patris, etc.,” and struck with the wand, the performer repeating some apparently meaningless jargon and a prayer to the Trinity to punish the object of vengeance.^103.2 It would be easy, but tedious, to multiply examples. Let it suffice to say that the spell here described is known in one form or other all over Europe. Generally the substance practised upon is a part of some animal, a puppet-figure, or else a candle or brand. In the last chapter we have seen the candle or brand as Life-token. It is immaterial whether the identification of the brand with a human being be for the purpose of divination or of witchcraft. If the brand indicate by its condition the condition of the person about whom I am inquiring, then I can, by affecting the condition of the brand, affect also that of the person in question. {104} The Bishop of Evreux in his statutes of the year 1664 condemns, among other practices, the purchase of a fagot to burn with incense and white alum at an uneven hour of the day or night with a long and horrible imprecation against an enemy by name. Mingled wine and salt were, we learn, poured over the burning fagot in the course of the proceedings. As an alternative the statutes mention the burning of nine, eleven, thirteen or fifteen candles. And apparently the same ill effects were to be produced by simply cursing the foe while putting out the lights in the dwelling, and then rolling on the ground reciting the one hundred-and-eighth psalm.^104.1

This is a superstition familiar to us in the classic tale of Meleager. When Althæa gave birth to him she was visited by the three Fates, who placed a billet of wood on the fire and bespelled her child to live until it was consumed. She snatched the brand from the flames, extinguished them with water and kept it safely until the day she beheld her two brothers brought home from the hunting of the Calydonian boar, both dead by Meleager’s hand. In the madness of her anger she fetched it forth, and after a struggle between her love as a mother and her love as a sister she cast it on the fire. Meleager absent and unwitting felt his entrails burning, and died in torture when the brand was consumed. The writer of a work, ascribed to Plutarch, on Parallels between the Romans and the Greeks, quotes in a fragmentary way from Menyllus a story of one Mamercus, a son of Mars by Sylvia the wife of {105} Septimius Marcellus. Mamercus’ life was by his divine father bound up with a spear, which was burnt by his mother under somewhat similar provocation to that of Althæa. The tale is yet current in Epirus, in the Vosges, and among the Germans both in Germany and Transylvania; and a few years ago I heard from the lips of a collier on the wild upland between the vale of Neath and the vale of Swansea a legend of a man named John Gethin, who had been overcome with fright on raising the Devil and so put himself into the enemy’s power. A fight ensued between the conjurer who accompanied him and the Devil for Gethin’s body. The conjurer pulled and the Devil pulled, until the unfortunate man was nearly torn in two. The conjurer at length obtained from his adversary permission to keep him so long as a candle which was part of his conjuring apparatus lasted. The candle was instantly blown out, but though it was kept in a cool place it wasted away, and with it John Gethin’s life, so that when he died the candle was found to be entirely consumed. His body vanished; and the coffin buried in the parish churchyard at Ystradgynlais, on the borders of Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, contained nothing but clay.^105.1 In the province of Posen it is said that every man has a burning taper which is set up in a certain grove; and when it goes out, the life of the man to whom it belongs goes out too.^105.2 This is the foundation of an incident in a folktale known in many parts of Europe, wherein Death takes a man down into his own abode and shows him an array of candles {106} which are the lives of men, some long, some short, and some on the point of extinction.

The superstitions we have discussed in the present chapter disclose a parallel range to those of the Life-token. First we find witchcraft exercised upon detached portions of the victim’s body, identified with himself by the same process of thought as that analysed in the last chapter. The remains of his food are equally liable to hostile practices, because they are a portion of something which he has incorporated into his own substance. Clothing and the dust or mud of naked footprints would also be likely to retain sweat, hairs and specks of skin available for the sorcerer’s purpose; and it may well be believed that this was the original reason for treating other articles of property in the like manner. But with the accumulation of property of all kinds the real reason for the use of such things would fade, and the procedure would degenerate into mere simulation. The process would be facilitated by the superstition of regarding a man’s name as a part of himself. Any one who knew another’s real name, by imputing it to some convenient object, could identify that object with his enemy, and work his will upon it, and upon his enemy through it. There is, however, a wide tract of borderland where the underlying reason for the practices is vague, and it is consequently difficult, or impossible, to determine whether the injuries are believed to be inflicted on something essentially part of the victim, or are no more than symbolic. But here as elsewhere symbolism is the offspring of an earlier practice; it is the form which remains when the real practice can no longer be repeated. It points unmistakably to injuries originally inflicted on something regarded as actually part of, and so united with, the {107} victim, though in appearance detached, that he will suffer all that it receives.

One of the most curious applications of the doctrine we have been considering deserves a few illustrations before passing on. The imputation of identity of a man’s property with himself would lead us to expect that wherever the instrument of witchcraft could be found, its destruction would be attended with injury and even destruction to the sorcerer, as when in Silesia cattle are bewitched. In such a case, any object found under the crib, or under the threshold, is put into a bag and hung up in the chimney. The witch will then come and ask for something. If she be refused, the cattle are saved and she herself suffers.^107.1 A Danish tradition of a bewitched household relates that under a large stone outside the dwelling was found a silken purse, filled with claws of cocks and eagles, human hair and nails. When it was burnt, the suspected witch died, and all sorcery was at an end.^107.2 So too in the Isle of Man, Professor Rhys was told, by the man who did it, of the burning of a reputed witch’s broomstick. She died; and the man firmly believed that the burning of the broomstick had caused her death.^107.3 On the Slave Coast, any one who wishes to be revenged upon another prays to certain gods to send the owl, their messenger, to eat out the heart of the offending person by night. “The only mode of escape,” we are assured, “is to catch the bird and break its legs and wings, which has the effect of breaking the legs and arms of the person who sent it.”^107.4 A gruesome tale, {108} current among the descendants of Scottish Highlanders settled in Ontario, speaks of a large blue butterfly that frequented a certain farm, where the churns were bewitched and the butter was of an inferior quality. When the creature was persistently followed and killed the charm was destroyed, and so was a neighbour, a lonely old woman who was wicked enough not to go to church, and was on ill terms with the community.^108.1 Tales of this kind are current in Germany and the Netherlands, especially in connection with nightmare stories.^108.2 The Gipsies of the Austrian empire believe that women become witches by holding sexual intercourse with demons. From this a demon-spirit passes over into the woman. She can send it at her will out of her own body in the form of an animal to injure and slay her neighbours. This it does by creeping while they sleep into their bodies, generally through their mouths: whence Gipsies are very careful not to sleep with the mouth open. Meantime the witch’s body lies as dead, and only revives when the sleeper awakes and the spirit returns to its owner, leaving its spittle behind in the victim’s intestines, to cause sickness and even death. The antidote consists of certain incantations, accompanied by the symbolic crushing of an egg and the burning of portions of the witch’s hair, nails, clothing or the like. The victim leaps nine times over the fire, calling out the witch’s name, and then spits and makes water into the flames.^108.3 Here nothing is said about catching the mischievous animal, as in the {109} West African and some of the European examples; while in all alike the close connection, amounting to an imputation of identity, between the witch and the animal is related very nearly to the belief in the witch’s power of self-transformation so commonly believed in western Europe.

The Gipsy prescription, however, goes further. When the victim leaps over the flames he symbolises an immolation that actually takes, or used within recent times to take, place when cattle are bewitched. In the earlier half of the last century a witch was believed to have been burned to death at Ipswich by the process of burning alive a sheep she had bewitched. “It was curious,” says Mr. Zincke, “but it was as convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of the witch were the only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This was satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep, by which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed in the flames that consumed its body.” The same writer knew a woman at Wherstead, in Suffolk, who had once baked alive a duck, one of a brood believed by her to be under a spell.^109.1 In 1833 a man at Woodhurst, in Huntingdonshire, was persuaded by his neighbours to roast alive a pig belonging to a litter recently farrowed, all of which with the sow were bewitched. The sorceress was expected to appear during the ceremony, and doubtless to suffer with the tortured beast.^109.2 More lately still, if a correspondent of the Diss Express can be trusted, an old woman at South Lopham burnt one of her hens on a Sunday {110} at noon, about the year 1892, to put an end to a spell laid upon her fowls by a neighbour.^110.1 Unhappily England does not enjoy a monopoly of this cruel prescription. It was certainly known in Germany. One of the directions in some folklore collected at Gernsbach, near Spire, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, is: “If your hens, ducks, pigs, etc., die fast, light a fire in the oven, and throw one of each kind in; the witch will perish with them.” While it is included by implication in the more general precept obtained at Pforzheim: “If a thing is bewitched, and you burn it, the witch is sure to come, wanting to borrow something; give it, and she is free; deny it, and she too must burn.”^110.2 The same prescription is reported from Franconia.^110.3 At the present day it is usual to wait until the bewitched animal be dead, and then its heart is taken and stuck with pins, and frequently burnt, cooked, or suspended in the chimney. Variants of the prescription deal in a similar manner with other portions of the body. All over the west of Europe this is the course taken; and immigrants from the Old World practise it in Pennsylvania and the Alleghanies. In some countries the ceremony is very elaborate, and great precautions are taken to prevent the witch from entering the house while it is proceeding, or from borrowing anything, lest the efficacy of the counter-spell be destroyed.^110.4 Reginald Scot quotes a {111} direction for grilling the intestines of a beast slain by witchcraft. They are to be trailed unto the house, and not taken in at the door but drawn under the threshold. “As they wax hot” on the gridiron, “so shall the witches entrailes be molested with extreame heat and paine.” The doors must be made fast; for if she can succeed in taking away a coal of the fire, her torments will cease. To this end she will make extraordinary efforts, darkening the house and troubling the air “with such horrible noise and earthquakes, that,” writes an eye-witness, “except the doore had been opened, we had thought the house would have fallen on our heads.”^111.1 Sometimes the animal bewitched is shot, or it is deemed enough to beat it, or to fumigate it with herbs, or, among the Poles, with the ashes of a young snake caught on the festival of the Annunciation.^111.2 In Germany, when a cow’s milk has been taken away by a witch, the animal’s nostrils are burnt with a hot iron and its name is changed.^111.3 The milk or urine of a bewitched animal is beaten, pricked with a fork, cooked in a pot with pins and needles, or nails, or poured on the dunghill.^111.4 When the milk only is affected, so that butter cannot be made, it is common to beat it, or thrust a red-hot poker into the churn, or to beat the churn. A farmer in the State of Vermont, who had churned nearly all day without making butter, “loaded his musket and fired the whole charge into the churn,” saying that “the {112} witches had got into it.” The result was satisfactory, for shortly afterwards the butter came; but what was the effect of the shot upon the witches we are not told.^112.1

A bewitched person is treated in precisely similar ways. The Abipones pulled out the heart and tongue of a dead man, boiled them, and gave them to a dog to devour, so that the author of his death might die too.^112.2 Among the Masurs it is believed that if a person killed by witchcraft be buried with the feet up, the guilty witch will be discovered; for she cannot endure it, and must come to put the bier in the proper position.^112.3 As an example of simulated destruction, like that in the Gipsy counter-spell above quoted, we may cite the treatment of a “heart-grown” child at Stamfordham, in Northumberland, given by Mr. Henderson. The puny patient is brought before sunrise “to a blacksmith of the seventh generation, and laid naked on the anvil. The smith raises his hammer as if he were about to strike hot iron, but brings it down gently on the child’s body.” This is done thrice, and the child, though overlooked or otherwise bewitched, is sure to thrive from that day.^112.4 In Suffolk, blood, hair and nails from the victim were simmered, or fried. The witch was expected to come and knock at the door, which in all such cases is fast shut, and ask to borrow something. If denied, she would die.^112.5 Anne Baker, one of the confederates of the sisters Flower, being examined concerning a child of Anne Stammidge whom she was suspected of having bewitched to death, gave most damnatory evidence against herself. She was {113} charged “that upon the burning of the haire and the paring of the nailes of the said childe, the said Anne Baker came in and set her downe, and for one houre’s space coulde speake nothing”; and she confessed “shee came into the house of the said Anne Stammidge in great paine, but did not know of the burning of the haire and nailes of the said childe, but saith she was so sick that she did not know whither she went.”^113.1 A French writer a few years before this case recorded the means taken by a Fleming who suffered from sorcery. He cut his nails of hands and feet, threw them into a pot of fresh water, and at night before he went to bed he put the pot on the fire and cast in four large needles. When the water began to boil, the witch could not resist coming to his house, for the needles pricked her like spurs. She threw herself on his bed, but he threatened her with sword and dagger; and other persons rushing in to his help she fled in the form of a cat.^113.2 A mother and child at Spickendorf, in Prussia, who were bewitched, were fumigated with nine kinds of wood, and the straw was taken out of the cradle and thrust into the kitchen-furnace, where no fire had been lighted for four weeks. A clear flame immediately burst forth and burnt the straw. The witch came to the house and tried to get in; but as the door was fastened she tried in vain. The end of this tale ought to be the witch’s death and the recovery of her victims. Unfortunately, however, it was the child who died; and everybody said that the wise man who directed the ceremony was called in too late for the fumigation to be effectual.^113.3

{114}

Not merely the blood, hair and nails are dealt with: the remedy often lies in the exuviæ of the person bewitched. Preservation of the urine in a closed vessel was prescribed when the patient was afflicted by a witch in the shape of a nightmare. This was sure to bring the sorceress to the house, for she would be unable to make water until the vessel was opened. The prescription was, and still is, a favourite in the Low Countries, and that not merely for nightmares. Sometimes, there and elsewhere, it is considered necessary to boil the contents of the vessel, or at least to hang it in the chimney, a course which adds greatly to the witch’s torments. An old English recipe directs the urine to be baked with meal into a cake.^114.1 On the island of Lesbos a portion of the sufferer’s dress, or of the threshold of the house where he dwells, is burnt to free him from the spell.^114.2 In Italy it is usual to boil the clothes of a bewitched child, sometimes taking the precaution of sticking a long fork into them now and again during the process. The child will recover and the witch will die. At Venice it is believed that the witch will present herself and ask for salt; if it be given, the counter-charm is destroyed.^114.3 It is generally believed, indeed, that sooner or later she will be compelled to come to the house on some pretext. At Milan, in the spring of 1891, a child was ill with some unknown and obstinate disorder—therefore bewitched. By the advice of a woman who pretended to know something of {115} medicine the parents boiled its clothes. A neighbour’s wife happening to call at that moment out of kindness to inquire after the little one, she was at once attacked by the parents. A raging crowd assembled and pursued her to the church of Santa Maria del Naviglio. There, before the altar itself, she was savagely beaten; her hair was torn out; and, despite the interference of the parish priest, she was finally dragged back to the house of the sick child, and with blows and curses was ordered to disenchant her victim. Her protests of innocence only called forth repeated howls, curses and blows. The whole suburb of the Porta Ticinese was in an uproar; nor was it without much trouble that the military police at length succeeded in rescuing her more dead than alive, and in dispersing the mob. The women who had torn her hair from her head went home and burnt it, running afterwards to see if the child were not cured. They declared they found it somewhat better, and exclaimed: “See now if it is not true that she is a witch!”^115.1

These cases all seem explicable by the supposition that the witch has united herself in some way with the object of her spells, and thus injury inflicted upon it, by any other hand than hers, will reach and injure her. This is clearly so, for instance, where she bewitches cattle to draw away their milk. There she may be punished by vindictive action upon the milk, or upon the kine producing it. It is hardly less clear where she has, in the shape of a nightmare, appropriated an unfortunate man or animal as her steed; and the same reasoning applies to all the rest. {116} Perhaps it may not be considered an unwarrantable stretch of barbarous logic to regard the casting of a spell as an act of appropriation parallel to theft. Theft, however, like any other act of appropriation, sets up union between the person appropriating, and the article appropriated. Ownership, by the process of thought I have endeavoured already to trace, is in fact union; and injury inflicted upon a man’s property is in a literal sense inflicted on himself.

{117}

In the last chapter we dealt with that branch of witchcraft which has been called Sympathetic Magic. There is another branch that will repay a little attention, namely, the composition and administration of philtres. Many philtres are of course potions compounded of herbs and other substances known to ancient pharmacopœia. They are believed to have an effect partly inherent, partly conferred by spells. It is probable, indeed, that all medicine has arisen out of witchcraft, in the same way as chemistry, the true science, has emerged from alchemy, the false, and astronomy from astrology. Witchcraft, alchemy and astrology are all related by very close ties. They are the practical application of early beliefs and speculations growing out of one and the same theory of the universe. So far as I know, the history of the evolution of medicine from witchcraft has not received the attention which the corresponding evolution of chemistry and astronomy has had; but it is not less interesting, and in some respects it is even more surprising. Among love-potions made of herbs or of portions of the lower animals it is often difficult, or impossible, to estimate how far the virtue of the dose is conceived to be inherent in the {118} ingredients, and how far it is conferred by spells or other observances with which it is concocted. Sometimes the inherent virtue seems to preponderate; at other times the spell. In extreme cases on the one hand the spells are absent, or are reduced to the simple direction to cull the materials at a certain time, as in the case of the Gipsy philtre consisting of the bones of a green frog powdered and mixed with cantharides and a well-sweetened dough, and baked into a cake. Here the frog must be caught on Saint John’s day, put into a pot having holes in the sides, and sunk into an ant-hill until the ants have picked the bones clean.^118.1 On the other hand, the ingredients are almost disregarded, and the spell it is that is relied on. So a philtre reported by M. Laisnel de la Salle consists, like the other, of a little cake, of whose substance we are told nothing. Its power is obtained by being placed under the altar-cloth, so that the priest unwittingly says mass and sheds his benediction over it.^118.2

Our present business, however, is not with philtres like these, but rather with such as operate in a manner similar to the charms described in the previous chapter, founded, as I am endeavouring to show, upon the belief that portions of the body, though outwardly severed, are still in some secret physical connection with one another. In the Mark of Brandenburg a maiden causes the object of her affections to fall in love with her if she give him one of her hairs in his food, or a third person can compel a youth and maiden to love by laying a hair of each together between two stones in such a manner that the wind can play with them.^118.3 According {119} to Gipsy belief, love can be awakened by mixing one’s sweat, blood or hairs with the food of the person desired; and on the other hand it can be destroyed by burning these substances.^119.1 Another Gipsy charm, and one not unknown among the Russians, is made by a maiden who burns some of her hair to ashes and mingles them with the drink of the man she loves.^119.2 A Bohemian, or a Wendish maiden, is said to take some hairs from her arm and bake them in a cake for him.^119.3 Hairs are not such enticing food as to be readily eaten: hence charms made of them are likely to fail if this be necessary. It is, therefore, enough to convey them into the clothes of the beloved. A Transylvanian Saxon maid can kindle love if she can contrive this; and if the hairs remain there until New Year’s morning the youth cannot forsake her that year.^119.4 Formerly at all events a similar belief seems to have prevailed in Germany.^119.5 A Gipsy wife endeavours to bind her husband to her by binding some of her own hair among his; but, to be effectual, it must be done thrice at the full moon. For this cause, apparently, a widower on marrying again cuts off on the wedding day his beard and hair and burns it. Spells cast by the dead wife are thus destroyed. If {120} a man wish to bind a maiden to him, he obtains some of her hairs, spits thereon, and hides them secretly in the coffin of a dead man.^120.1 The writer who reports this charm also tells us that a Hungarian lover will secure the maiden by burying some of her hair at a cross-road. The cross-road is everywhere a place only one degree less dreadful than the churchyard; and burial there is doubtless a substitute for burial in the churchyard and committing the hair as a pledge to the keeping of the dead. A traveller in Ireland in the early part of the last century declares that a love-sick Irish youth will thread a needle with the hair of the damsel he covets and run it through the fleshy part of the arm or leg of a corpse, “and the charm has that virtue in it to make her run mad for him whom she so lately slighted.” Some light is perhaps thrown on these practices by the corresponding charm said to be practised by Magyar girls. She who desires to be loved steals some of the youth’s hair and, throwing it towards the moon, utters a prayer for his love and for marriage, “if that can be.”^120.2 The hair is thus given to the moon, both as an act of worship, and that it may be the means whereby the object of worship may, in accordance with the belief discussed in the last chapter, constrain the original owner to compliance with the votary’s wishes. Another Magyar practice confirms this interpretation. The first egg laid by a black hen is carefully blown and laid on the hearth to dry. Hairs, nail-parings, and some drops of blood of the person whose love is desired are then introduced into it, and it is buried {121} in the grave-mound of an unbaptized child. After three days it is dug up; and if any moisture be found inside the egg-shell success is assured.^121.1 Here the moisture seems to be the work of the dead child, and, brought thus into contact with portions of the body of the beloved, it will have its effect upon him. More direct and more in accordance with the cases cited in the earlier part of this paragraph is the superstition (also Hungarian) that a woman who can, after reciting a certain spell, strip quite naked and in this condition steal a lock of hair from a sleeping man, and binding it afterwards wear it in a bag or ring, will obtain absolute mastery over his affections.^121.2 The same result is attained by a Wendish youth who can cut hair thrice from the back of the neck of a sleeping maiden and keep it in his waistcoat pocket.^121.3 Among the charms carried by German settlers to Pennsylvania was one which prescribed as a means of rendering a girl crazy for a certain man, that he should without her knowledge get a piece of her hair and sew it in his coat.^121.4 And the witch in Apuleius’ immortal tale bade her servant bring away for some such purpose the clippings of the hair of the Bœotian youth of whom she was enamoured.^121.5 In Bohemia it is enough to {122} hide the hair under one’s threshold or in the doorposts.^122.1 Farther south the Slavonic youth (the practice may also be followed by a maiden) obtains a few hairs or a shred from the smock of the beloved, and wrapping his prize up in a rag wears it upon his heart. If he wish for her society, all he has to do is to throw it into the fire at new moon, and let it burn: the beloved will certainly come.^122.2 This is the very charm given by the Helpful Beasts in the märchen. An amusing tale is told in Corsica of a youth who loved a girl, from whom he could get no encouragement. So he begged her to give him at least one of her hairs. She sent him a long camel’s hair drawn out of a sieve which hung on a nail in the kitchen. Towards midnight the sieve tumbled down with a great noise and began to roll about the floor. At last it found its way out of doors and rolled straight to the lover’s house, where he was impatiently expecting quite a different visitor.^122.3 A Prussian prescription for securing a maiden’s love is to stick three of her hairs in a split tree, so that they must be grown over as the tree heals.^122.4 In some of the central Brazilian tribes, when a husband sets out on an expedition, the wife takes and keeps portions of his nails or hair, that he may not forget to return; and a woman who desires to win or preserve a man’s love puts some of her nail-parings or hair in his cigar.^122.5 To prevent a dog in Germany from straying, three of his hairs are taken out and {123} laid in the kitchen under the leg of the table; or he is made to eat in a cake hairs from his master’s armpit. To keep a newly purchased cow a handful of hair is cut from between her ears and buried before the stable door.^123.1

A cake, an apple or a sweetmeat impregnated with the sweat of the giver is a powerful philtre throughout the greater part of northern and central Europe from Cairn Gorm to the Carpathians. Sugar in the same condition is sometimes given in drink.^123.2 Nor can I suggest any better reason for the Hungarian recommendation to a lass to steal meal and honey at Christmas, bake a cake thereout and take it to bed with her for one night, afterwards giving it to the lad of her choice to eat.^123.3 When a spell has been cast upon a Finnish woman to wean her affections from her husband, they may be recalled by drinking of a running stream out of his shoe and throwing the shoe upside down over her shoulder.^123.4 Here too the chief motive seems the same. Among the Pennsylvanian Germans an instance was known by Dr. Hoffmann of a widow who sent a cake, one of the ingredients whereof was a small quantity of cuticle scraped from her knee, to a man whose love she desired.^123.5 The bread mentioned by Burchard of Worms, as made by women and given to their husbands to inflame their conjugal passion, appears to have owed its efficacy to the absorption of their perspiration or particles of skin; and the interpretation is confirmed by the confessors’ manuals formerly, if not still, in use in the Greek Church, where {124} women are accused of the practice of rubbing dough on their bodies, and giving to eat to men in whom they wished to arouse satanic love.^124.1 It is a Negro-Indian, as well as a Belgian, superstition that if you give a dog some bread soaked in your sweat, he will have to follow you to the ends of the earth: he is yours.^124.2 He has eaten and absorbed into his own substance a part of you, and has thus become united with you.

One’s blood is of course a powerful potion. In Denmark the prescription is three drops introduced into an apple or dropped into a cup of coffee, and so consumed by the person intended.^124.3 In Transylvania a girl puts a drop from her left hand in a cake to be eaten by the lad on New Year’s Eve.^124.4 An old recipe in the Netherlands—and one current, with variations, in other parts of Europe—is to take a wafer not yet consecrated, write some words on it with blood from the ring-finger, and let the priest say five masses over it. Then divide it into two equal parts and give one to the person whose love is to be won, retaining the other half oneself. Many a chaste maiden has been fordone by this means.^124.5 Blood, as well as hair and sweat, is an approved philtre among the Danubian Gipsies both for inward and outward application. A bride and bridegroom of the northern stock, before setting out for their wedding, smear the soles of their left feet with one another’s blood. And a bride of the southern stock, or a bride of the Serbian {125} Gipsies, will seek on her wedding night to smear unobserved a drop of blood from her left hand in her husband’s hair, in order that he may be true to her. Gipsies also give their blood to their cattle and dogs to prevent them from being stolen, or perhaps from straying.^125.1 Among the Magyars, if a girl can smear the warm blood of the little finger of her left hand in a lad’s hair, he must always be thinking of her; and a man who can induce his wife unwittingly to eat his name written in his blood can thus assure her fidelity.^125.2 A maiden who can get some of a youth’s blood unknown to him and rub it on the soles of a corpse binds him to her for ever.^125.3 But, alike in Esthonia, in Denmark, in Germany and in Italy, in Scotland, in the valley of the Danube, and, if we may trust the confessors’ manuals just cited, in the Balkan peninsula, a woman regards her menstruous blood as the most effective: an opinion rife, too, among the mixed population of central Brazil.^125.4 Conversely, the other sex has its peculiar product, which is equally esteemed;^125.5 while the impurer issues of the body {126} common to both sexes are also made use of.^126.1 Students are referred to the authorities below-cited for details.

Saliva is also a favourite fluid. I have already mentioned some applications of it. In Hungary it often supplies the place of blood.^126.2 Gipsy girls in the valley of the Danube steal some of the hair of their beloved, boil it down to a pap with quince-kernels and a few drops of their own blood taken from the little finger of the left hand. They chew this pap, repeating a charm, and then smear it on the raiment of the youth, in order that he may find no rest, unless with the maid who has thus bespelled him.^126.3 Or a blade of grass gathered on Saint George’s Day before sunrise is held in the mouth while a spell is muttered; and it is then placed in the food of the person whose affection is sought.^126.4 In the early part of this century rustic lovers in France were said to seal their troth by spitting into one another’s mouths.^126.5 Signor Gigli reports a curious custom {127} at Taranto, the origin and significance whereof are not clear to him, but perhaps may be explained by the practices we are now considering. A young man announces his love by prowling about under the windows of the fair one. She easily understands what he means, and, if averse to the match, withdraws inside the house. On the other hand, if desirous of encouraging her suitor, she leans out and spits on his happy head.^127.1 Among the Cherokees a young and jealous bridegroom watches his bride until she sleeps, when he begins to chant:

Repeating this four times (four is a sacred number among the American aborigines), he moistens his fingers with saliva and rubs it on her breast. The ceremony is reiterated, with variations in the song, the three following nights, and is wound up on each occasion with a prayer addressed to the “Ancient One;” after which no husband need have any fears about his wife.^127.2 In Silesia and in certain parts of Italy bread whereon one has spit is given to a dog to attach him to the giver.^127.3 In other parts of Italy, in Corsica and in the Gironde the direction is to spit into his mouth.^127.4 About Chemnitz a goose is passed between the legs thrice and given three mouthfuls of chewed bread; and she will always come home.^127.5

Many of the philtres I have mentioned are put into food. {128} Food-philtres are not always equally objectionable in character. It is a Scandinavian saying that if a girl and boy eat of one morsel, they grow fond of each other.^128.1 In many parts of the East Indies the custom of chewing betel-nut is universal, and the quid has become a symbol of love. It is employed as a love charm; it is given as a pledge of love; and the chewing by both parties of one quid is an essential—indeed, the essential—part of the wedding ceremony.^128.2 The idea embodied in food-philtres underlies also other usages. A familiar example is that of drinking at the Fountain of Trevi by visitors to Rome before they leave, as a charm to draw them back.

Many of the philtres, too, as we have seen, are deemed sufficient if brought into contact with the beloved object by being placed upon, or fastened into, his or her clothes. A few examples may be added. Magyar peasants make a sort of fetish which bears the name of czolonk. It is fashioned at Christmas of aspen-wood, is an efficient protection not only against witches and devils, but also against bullets and swords, and accordingly is worn next to the skin in all perilous enterprises. Every year the old one is burnt, and the ashes mixed with milk are scattered in the cattle-stalls. But a love-spell may be framed by sprinkling the czolonk with one’s own blood before burning it, and strewing the ashes on the garments of the person to be love-witched.^128.3 A Gipsy girl will drop warm blood from her left foot secretly in the shoes or stockings of her beloved, so to bind his footsteps night and day to herself.^128.4 In Hesse it seems to be even {129} enough to steal a shoe or boot from the object of desire, carry it about for eight days, and then restore it.^129.1 Lucian, writing in the second century, makes mention of a different mode of dealing with a man’s belongings. The witch takes some portion of his clothing, or a few hairs, or something else of his, and hanging them on a nail she fumigates them with incense, and sprinkling salt in the fire she pronounces the name of the woman, with it coupling the man’s name. Further spells are muttered to the twirling of a spindle; and the charm is complete. If we may believe one of the interlocutors in the Dialogue, the spell is most effective, for she had herself tested its power.^129.2 It can hardly be more effective than the boiling of a sock on Saint Thomas’ night, said to be practised in the Land beyond the Forest, which has given rise to the proverbial expression, for one who is restless, that some one has boiled his stockings.^129.3 Theocritus, in his second idyll, presents Simaetha casting into the magical flame some fringe from the cloak of Delphis, whom she loves, as part of a similar charm to that mentioned by Lucian. Any youth on whose raiment a maiden of the Seven Cities has bound a thread spun by herself on Saint Andrew’s Day (30th November) will be inflamed with love for her.^129.4 Albanian wives (as provident as the wives in Brazil) are in the habit of sewing in their husbands’ gear {130} when the latter are going from home little objects which they themselves have worn as talismans, to bring them safely back.^130.1 In Eastern Africa no Taveta woman will part with her loin-cloth to a man for any consideration after she has once worn it, for “she would be under some sexual subjection to him”; he could bewitch her by means of it, and take her away from her husband and friends.^130.2

The speaker in the Dialogue I have cited from Lucian goes on to tell her friend of an easy and efficient method of destroying a rival’s influence over the beloved. It is to watch the unhappy rival as she walks and to efface her footprint, immediately it is made, with her own, taking care to put her right foot in her rival’s left footmark, and vice versâ, and repeating the while: “Now I am over thee, and thou art under me.” This is not exactly a philtre: it rather belongs to the practices dealt with in the last chapter. Among the Danubian peoples, however, love-charms are made from footprints. A Gipsy girl, for instance, digs up the youth’s footprint made upon Saint George’s Day, and buries it under a willow (willows are favourite trees in Gipsy sorcery), saying:

{131}

In Transylvania a Saxon maid will dig up her lover’s footmark, made on St. John’s Day, and burn it, to secure his fidelity; or she may obtain equally good results any other day by burying his footmark in the churchyard.^131.1 A Magyar lass on Christmas night will dig up her own footprint and fling it unseen into the courtyard of the lad’s dwelling: he can never leave her after.^131.2 Among the Southern Slavs the lady fills a flowerpot with the earth of her swain’s footstep, and plants in it a common marigold. This flower is said not to wither; and in German lands it is planted upon graves and called the flower of the dead. As it grows and blooms and does not fade away, so will the youth’s love grow and blossom and never fade.^131.3

The sacramental character of all these philtres is obvious. We saw in the last chapter that injuries inflicted on detached portions of a man’s body are felt by the bulk. In the same way, when the detached portions become incorporated into another body, or are simply brought into contact with it, by means of the philtres we have been discussing, the two bodies are united; and their union manifests itself in sympathy and sexual desire. The greater number of the foregoing examples have been drawn from the backward classes of the more civilised peoples, concerning which our information is in many cases remarkably full. When, however, we come to consider nuptial rites we shall find the sacramental conception entering into the idea of sexual union over a much wider area. Meanwhile we proceed to examine some of its manifestations in other beliefs and practices.

{132}

We will begin by dealing with some of the dangers, apart from witchcraft, that beset the body by carelessness over its severed parts.

A belief not uncommon is that great care must be taken in the disposal of an amputated limb, lest evil consequences to the trunk ensue. Quite recently in New England a serious consultation was held by the friends of a man who had had his foot amputated as the result of crushing it in a railway accident; and it was decided to burn it, “in order that the stump should not always continue to be painful, and the man troubled by disagreeable sensations, as would surely follow if the foot were put into the ground.”^132.1 Similar dangers threaten the man who clips his hair or cuts his nails. In Sussex the peasantry allow no portion of their hair to be carelessly thrown away, lest a bird find it and carry it off to work into its nest; for, until it had finished, the true owner of the hair would suffer from headache. Or if a toad get hold of a maiden’s long back hairs, she will have a cold in her head for so long as the animal keeps the hair in its mouth.^132.2 In Germany also the action of birds is dreaded—especially theft by a starling, for then cataract will ensue. Hair is therefore burnt, or thrown into running water.^132.3 Headache is the result of throwing away hairs in the Tirol. Wherefore they are burnt, or in the Unterinnthal, if thrown away, are first spit upon.^132.4 In Norway the consequences are even worse: there the owner of a hair {133} obtained by a toad will lose his reason.^133.1 In the Atlantic States of North America the combings of the hair must not be thrown away, but burned, for the same reason as in Sussex, or because the birds might carry them to Hell, and so render it necessary for the owner to go thither to recover them.^133.2 Among the Danubian Gipsies, hair which has fallen, or been cut off, is a source of anxiety. Headache will be caused by the birds working it into their nests, and can only be relieved by a complicated counter-charm. If a snake be guilty of carrying hair into its hole, the man from whose head it has come will continue to lose more, until that in the snake’s hole has decayed away.^133.3 The Undups of Borneo will not burn their refuse hair, nor throw it into the water, for fear of headache. But it may be flung to the winds, or cast on the ground: it is better still to bury it. On the other hand, the tribes about Lake Nyassa burn their hair; but they bury the parings of their nails.^133.4 At the other side of the African continent, among the Bodo, the nails are buried;^133.5 while the Wayova of the Upper Congo, when they become old or sick, tie the clippings of their hair and nails with amulets in a string which they wear wrapped around them.^133.6 In Mashonaland the hair is not cut until it is long and tangled, and too full of life to be endured any longer. It is then shaved entirely off and hung to a tree.^133.7 The practices of the Western world {134} are similar. The natives of the Youkon river in Alaska hang what they cut from their hair and nails in packages on the trees.^134.1 The Gauchos of the Pampas of South America deem it of the utmost imprudence to throw away their hairs, wherefore they roll them up in a ball and hide them in the walls of the house.^134.2 In the Cuyabá valley of central Brazil it is believed that to tread on hair-clippings is to render insane the man from whose head they came.^134.3 The Maoris attached great importance to the cutting of the hair. It was always performed with much ceremony and many spells. In one place the most sacred day of the year was appointed for it: the people assembled from all the neighbourhood, often more than a thousand in number. Some of the hair was cast into the fire. Elsewhere the hair was laid upon the altar in the sacred grove, and there left.^134.4 Algerian Jews and Arabs and Orthodox Polish Jews carefully bury or burn their nail-parings.^134.5 A Galician Jew will not throw away the cuttings of his hair, lest he suffer from headache.^134.6 It seems, indeed, a general opinion among Jews, if we may trust an American Jew, that “he who trims his nails and buries the parings is a pious man; he who burns them is a righteous man; but he who throws them away is a wicked man, for mischance might follow should a female step over them.”^134.7 Contact with menstrual {135} blood, and consequent ceremonial defilement, is evidently what is dreaded, just as if the blood had touched the man himself. For some such reason, perhaps, the Flamen Dialis was required, among the Romans, when he cut his hair or his nails, to bury the severed portions beneath a lucky tree.^135.1 Ahura Mazda is gravely represented in the Vendîdâd as telling Zoroaster that when a man drops his refuse hair or nails in a hole or crack, and observes not the lawful rites, lice are produced, which destroy the corn in the field and the clothes in the wardrobe. The prophet is commanded, therefore, to take these portions of the body, whenever they are detached, ten paces from the faithful, twenty from the fire, thirty from the water and fifty from the consecrated bundles of baresma, and there to dig a hole, drawing three, six or nine furrows around it with a metal knife, and chanting the Ahuna-Vairya a corresponding number of times. In the hole he is to bury the hair or nails, saying aloud the fiend-smiting (though slightly irrelevant) words, in the case of hair: “Out of him by his piety Mazda made the plants grow up”; or in the case of nails: “The words that are heard from the pious in holiness and good thought”; and the nails are to be dedicated to the Ashô-zusta bird, which is believed to be the owl, as weapons for him against the Daêvas.^135.2 This elaborate ritual and the belief it embodies are, of course, comparatively late in civilisation; but they are an adaptation to Zoroaster’s lofty religion of pre-existing superstitions. In the Grihya-Sûtra, one of the ancient books of the Hindus, it is enjoined as a religious rite to gather the hair and nails which have been cut off, mix them with bull’s dung {136} (the bull was a sacred animal) and bury the whole in a cow-stable, or near an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. And when a boy received the tonsure, in the third year of his age, the barber threw the locks upon the same savoury substance, which was then buried in the forest. The hair left on the head was arranged according to the custom of his gotra and of his family.^136.1 The ritual first shaving now takes place in India at the shrine of some goddess; and the locks are safely deposited in a place where they are not liable to be trodden on.^136.2 In Japan, when a boy, at or after the age of fifteen, receives his permanent name, and is admitted to the privileges of manhood, his forelock is ceremonially cut. It is taken by the sponsor to the youth’s guardians, who wrap it in paper and offer it at the shrine of the family gods; or else it is kept with care in the house until its owner dies, and then put into the coffin with him.^136.3 Throughout the East Indian islands much importance is attached to the first hair-cutting. On Timor it takes place three months after birth, at new moon. The child’s eldest uncle cuts a lock from four places on the head with a bamboo knife, and wrapping each of the locks in a flake of cotton he blows it away from the palm of his hand into the air. More usually it is carefully preserved. In North Celebes the rite is performed by a priest. The clippings are put into a young cocoa-nut and hung up under the thatch of the house. Another tribe {137} of the same island puts the hair, moistened with sweet-scented oil, into a young kalapa-fruit, and hangs it before the house above the ladder until it fall in course of time. The Ambonese bury the clippings under a sago-palm, or lay them in a silver box with an amulet against sickness and hang it about the child’s neck. The Aru Islanders hide them in a pisang- or banana-tree. The inhabitants of Roti lay them first with water in a cocoa-nut-shell; afterwards the father stuffs them into a little bag of plaited leaves, which he fastens in the top of a loutar-palm.^137.1 The Bambaras, a tribe of the Upper Niger, celebrate the birth of a child by the sacrifice of a bull or sheep at the door of the mother’s hut. The infant’s head is then shaved, and the hair is placed in a calabash containing dega, a composition of millet and milk prepared for the occasion. The friends invited to the feast then place each one his right hand on the calabash, while the griot, or medicine-man, pronounces blessings on the babe. The hairs are afterwards given to the mother, who carefully preserves them.^137.2 Among the Ictasanda gens of the Omahas of North America, when a child had reached four years his hair had to be cut in the customary shape. The proper person to cut the first lock was the keeper of the sacred pipes. It was done with certain ceremonies; and the lock was put with those of other children cut at the same time into a sacred buffalo hide.^137.3 There may have been more reasons than one for {138} placing hair ceremonially cut on occasions like these in a sacred receptacle. This is a subject to which I shall return. But it is clear that one object at all events was safe custody. The locks thus shorn from the head must be guarded with care, lest any evil come to them, and through them to the person of whose body they once formed part.

For many of the practices we are considering no reason is assigned by the travellers and others who report them. Sometimes fantastic reasons are given, even by the people who practise them. It is for fear of ancestral spirits, we are told, that the natives of the lake regions of Nyassa and Tanganyika bury their hair and nails. The Esthonians are said to take care of their nails, else the devil will make of them a visor to his head-gear; and their national poem, the Kalevipoeg, mentions a wishing-hat of the same materials. The dread of the Samogitians is that the devil will make a hat of their nail-parings.^138.1 A Basque tale attributes to the same personage the equally remarkable feat of making a chalice for himself out of the nails cut by Christians on Sundays.^138.2 Among the ancient Scandinavians it was a point of religion to die with pared nails, for of the unpared nails would be constructed the ship Naglfari, to float, steered by the giant Hrym, over the waters to the combat with the Anses on the Day of Doom. A modern Icelandic superstition accounts for the custom of cutting each nail-paring into three pieces, by explaining that it is to render it useless to the devil, who would else use it in building the ship of the dead.^138.3 Reasons like these, though genuine, are only secondary. They are mythological reasons, more or less remote from the direct interest of the individual, {139} invented when the original reasons have passed out of memory, or been dropped from some other cause, as in the case of the practices adopted into the Zoroastrian religion.

Similar superstitions apply to milk. In Transylvania it is reckoned dangerous to a woman who has recently been delivered for another suckling woman even to visit her, lest she take her milk away. To prevent this the visitor must let a drop or two of her own milk fall upon the bed where her friend lies.^139.1 At Friuli a woman was accused before the Holy Inquisition of drying up another by merely entering her house and kissing her child in the cradle.^139.2 Among the causes enumerated in Italy for a woman’s milk diminishing or drying up are—that the placenta has been eaten by some female animal; that another suckling woman has drunk out of her cup; that the remains of her food have been thrown to a suckling cat, sow, or bitch. If either of these contingencies happen, the milk will be transferred to the other woman or animal. No less disastrous is it to the supply if any drops fall by chance on the ground and be sucked up by ants.^139.3 A woman who is suckling must beware of letting a drop of her milk fall into the fire, for then her breasts would dry up.^139.4 Contrariwise, if a Magyar mother desire a rich, nourishing milk, she is advised to drop a little of it at waxing moon upon the blazing hearth. If she drop some into cow’s milk, the cow will dry up: apparently the cow’s milk will be thus transferred {140} to the woman.^140.1 In Warwickshire the burning of cow’s milk will cause the cow to run dry; and a like belief attaches among various tribes of Africa, even to the boiling of milk, as well as to its consumption by “any one who ate the flesh of pigs, fish, fowls, or the bean called maharagué.”^140.2 In Switzerland it is held that a knife or needle dipped in the milk reaches the beast which has yielded it, and causes pain as if wounded in the udder.^140.3 It seems to have been currently believed in the seventeenth century in France, that if milk curdled too rapidly, a little of it thrown upon a hawthorn would retard the process.^140.4 About Chemnitz to mix the milk of two men’s cows, is to cause the cows of one to dry up.^140.5 In Altmark some milk of a badly milking cow is poured into the well of a neighbour who has a good milker, and thereupon the condition of both is changed.^140.6

So of saliva. We have seen that, equally with other issues of the body, saliva is a means of witchcraft, whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps done to death. Wherefore all over the world, from Africa to the Sandwich Islands, from Europe to New Zealand, the spittle is hidden or erased as soon as it is ejected, so that it can no longer be discovered or rendered available by sorcerers. By parity of reasoning, in Sweden and Germany, as well as among the Galician Jews, one is forbidden to spit in the fire, lest bladders be produced on the tongue, or other {141} sores in the mouth;^141.1 and in various parts of France, lest pulmonary consumption result. To spit on glowing iron, in the department of Aube, is almost as bad; and in the Gironde it is believed that a cold will be increased by spitting in the fire.^141.2

So too of other portions of the body. The Poles say that a girl who drops tears on a corpse will become consumptive. At Zwickau in the Erzgebirge any who does so is in danger of an early death.^141.3 A fine appreciation of the antiseptic properties of tobacco is reputed to be shown by some French smokers, who preserve in their tobacco-pouches the teeth lost from their heads, believing by this means to prevent toothache.^141.4 It used to be the custom in Derbyshire to preserve all one’s shed teeth in a jar until death, and then to have them buried in the coffin with their owner; for, it was said, on reaching heaven the man would be obliged to account for all the teeth he had upon earth: an obvious afterthought, and not the real reason.^141.5 I have already mentioned the English superstition that a child’s cast tooth must not be thrown away, but burnt. The practice on the Riviera is the same.^141.6 In Piceno the infant is made to hide the tooth in a crack of the {142} hearth, in the hope of finding a gift the next morning. In the Abruzzi it is enough to put it into any hole.^142.1 While among the southern Slavs the child is instructed to throw it into a dark corner, crying: “Mouse, mouse! There is a bony tooth; give me an iron tooth instead.” He is then to spit; and this is done that no more teeth may fall out. Sometimes his cast tooth is plugged into an old willow, that he may never suffer from toothache.^142.2 In the Erzgebirge, to attain the same end the father is told to swallow a daughter’s tooth, and the mother a son’s.^142.3 The origin of the superstition, widely spread in Europe, that the mother should bite and not cut a baby’s nails, may possibly be found in some analogous reason.

The liability to injury in consequence of an accident happening to, or wilful act inflicted on, a detached portion of the body or its issues, implies the opposite possibility. Good may be received, health may be restored by the same means. Hence has arisen a great body of folk-medicine and surgery. Incidentally we have already noticed some examples of this; but the most familiar is undoubtedly to be found in the cure of warts. To rub the warts with a piece of flesh-meat (various kinds are prescribed—in this country beef or bacon seems the favourite) usually raw, and {143} then to bury it in the ground, or throw it where it will speedily rot and disappear; to rub them with an apple, an onion, a potato, a turnip, a willow-twig whereon a corresponding number of notches has been cut, peas, beans, knots of barley-straw, a branch of tamarisk, or some other vegetable substance easily obtained, and afterwards bury, burn it or throw it away; to tie knots in string, touch every wart with a knot, and then treat the string like the meat; to stroke the warts with a corpse’s hand; to wash them in flowing water, especially at a time when bells are tolling for the dead, or over which the corpse is carried, or in water found in a hollow stump or other unexpected place; to rub them with a snail, and then impale the creature on a thorn or (in Germany) nail it to the doorpost with a wooden hammer; are remedies known all over Europe and the United States; and they date back to classical antiquity. The beef, the apple, the string, the dead hand decay; the water flows far out of sight, or dries up; and in like manner the warts they have touched also disappear.

The principle has many other applications. A remedy for fever in use in the sixteenth century in the Mark of Brandenburg was to cut the patient’s nails, bind them on the back of a crawfish, and throw the crustacean back into flowing water.^143.1 In France, and, it seems, in England also, the remedy recorded a century later for the quartan ague was to wrap the nail-parings in a portion of a shroud, and fasten the package around the neck of an eel, which was then {144} returned to the water.^144.1 In these cases it can hardly be doubted that the sufferer was to benefit by the cooling influence of the water. In the north-east of Scotland it was usual to put the nail-parings of a consumptive patient into a rag from his clothes, the rag was waved thrice round his head, the operator crying “Deas Soil,” and then buried in a secret place.^144.2 For ligature, or impotence, believed to be caused by witchcraft, the cuttings of the hair and nails are, in Germany, wrapped in a cloth, stuffed into a hole made in an elder-tree, and the hole closed with a plug of hawthorn.^144.3 For infantine rupture, in Switzerland, some of the child’s nails and hair, with a piece of paper inscribed with his name, are put into a hole bored in a young oak, and the hole is then stopped with wax.^144.4 Among the Transylvanian Saxons at Kronstadt the hair and nails of an anæmic patient are buried under a waxing moon beneath a rose-bush.^144.5 Here the rose is evidently expected to diffuse its colour in the sick man’s veins. The collection just cited of old remedies in use in the Mark of Brandenburg directs that when hairs grow in an ulcer they should be plucked out and nailed up in an elder or oak-tree towards the east.^144.6 The ancient English leech-book attributed to one Sextus Placitus prescribes, for a woman suffering from flux, to comb her hair under a mulberry tree, and hang the combings on an upstanding twig of the tree. When she is healed she must gather them again and preserve them. If on the contrary she {145} desire ut menstrua fluant, the combings must be placed upon a twig hanging downwards.^145.1 The mulberry appears to be chosen because of the form and colour of its fruit, in accordance with the old doctrine of Signatures whereby the remedy for a disease was pointed out by some fancied resemblance of form or colour to the diseased member. To restore falling hair, Etmuller, writing in the seventeenth century, advises burying some of the hair in an oak, or, to cure the gout, some of the toe-nails. Bronchitis in growing children is cured, among the Pennsylvanian Germans, by making a gimlet-hole in the door-frame at the exact height of the child’s head. A tuft of his hair is inserted, and the hole pegged up. As the child grows above the peg he will outgrow the disease. The door-frame appears to be a mere substitute for a tree.^145.2

Specimens of this kind of remedy might be multiplied indefinitely. They are usually regarded as cases of transplantation. By the process described the disease is supposed to be transferred, or transplanted, into the tree, or very often into another human being or one of the lower animals. This idea is present in a recipe for fever given by Beckherius, whose medical work was published in London in 1660. He advises the tying of the patient’s nail-clippings in a rag to the door of a neighbour’s {146} house:^146.1 a remedy equally known to the Romans.^146.2 Rupture in a young person is to be cured in Thuringia by cutting three tufts of hair from the top of the head, binding them in a clean cloth, carrying the parcel into another parish, and so burying it in a young willow that the hole may close up and grow together.^146.3 We can hardly understand apart from transplantation the direction to carry the parcel into another parish and there plant it in a tree, or to fasten the rag of nail-clippings to a neighbour’s door. At other times the hair and nails are given in food to various animals, or are thrown in the highway to be picked up by any passer-by, who is supposed to contract the disease and thereby free the original patient. Many of the cases, however, which have been classed as transplantation are not really so; for it will be noted that it is a very common direction (as in the prescription just cited) to carefully close up the hole made in the tree, and as it heals the patient’s health will improve. But if the disease were to be transferred to the tree, the latter could scarcely be expected to heal; and if it did, there would be ground for suspecting that the rite had not been properly performed. Formerly it was a very common remedy for rupture and other infantile complaints to split a tree and pass the child through it three or seven times. The tree was then bound up and often plastered with clay, so as to ensure its recovery; and it was believed that the more rapidly it healed, the more rapidly the child would be restored to health. In fact, as we have seen, it thenceforth stood in relation to the child as his External Soul or Life-token. The earliest mention of this prescription {147} is by Marcellus of Bordeaux, physician of the Emperor Theodosius I., not later than the beginning of the fifth century of our era; and it has continued in use, even in England, down to the present day. From first to last the importance of the tree’s recovery and preservation has been a cardinal point.^147.1 It is perfectly clear, therefore, that whatever the intention of the rite may have been, it was not transplantation. Transplantation, in fact, seems to be a foreign graft on many of the old prescriptions. It may be questioned, for example, whether it is the primitive idea of either Beckherius’ prescription or the Thuringian; and I cannot help thinking that the doctrine of Transplantation is a modern interpretation of an older rite, an interpretation which has in many cases wrought such changes in its substance that the true and profounder significance of the rite is now hardly to be recognised. This may not hold good in every instance. The question, however, is immaterial to my present contention, and cannot be argued at length here. It is enough for my purpose to prove that a large class of remedies cannot be explained as Transplantation, although the theory of Transplantation may have a tendency to appropriate and modify them. The remarks which follow will, I hope, make the position clear.

Magyar folk-medicine prescribes a curious remedy for {148} lunacy. The head of a corpse is wetted with the patient’s blood and saliva, so that “he may obtain as much intellect as the dead man had”: in other words, the crazy man is brought into such union with the dead as will result, not in the transfer to the latter of his lunacy, but the transfer to the lunatic of the intellect of the dead. Similarly, the toothache is cured by spitting on a grave-mound, or rubbing the aching tooth with the tooth of a corpse, which perhaps is sound, or at all events can no longer suffer.^148.1 If it be desired to render a woman unfruitful, the organs of a dead man, whose potency is at an end, must be rubbed with her menses. It is even deemed sufficient for her to make water on a corpse. For the green-sickness, a few drops of the sick man’s blood mingled with the excrement of one who is recently dead, and flung into the open grave just before the body is put in, will prove a cure.^148.2 To stay bleeding, the Saxons of the Seven Cities write with the blood the letters INRI on a piece of wood and throw it into a spring, saying: “Three women of the spring (Brunnenfrauen, spirits of the spring) wish to behold blood. They say: Blood, stand still, that is God’s will! Out of this wood the cross whereon Jesus hung, was made. Amen!” A syphilitic patient is directed, on three several Sundays while the bells are ringing for divine service, to write his name in his own blood on his drawers, and, hanging them on a tree, there to leave them permanently.^148.3 {149} The Gipsies of the same neighbourhood cure pimples by dropping before sunrise some blood from the ring-finger into flowing water, that it may be swallowed by a Nivashi, or water-spirit; and they cure dropsy by letting nine drops of blood from the index-finger fall, by a waning moon, into flowing water, that the Nivashi may draw the water from the patient’s body.^149.1 A prescription recorded by Reginald Scot for a bloody flux runs as follows: “Take a cup of cold water, and let fall thereinto three drops of the same blood, and betweene each drop saie a Paternoster and an Ave, then drinke to the patient, and saie; who shall helpe you? The patient must answer S. Marie. Then saie you; S. Marie stop the issue of blood.”^149.2 It will be observed here that the blood is drunk by the operator; and it could not have been intended to transfer the disease to him. The invocations as given are certainly not part of the original rite. What that rite was, of course we do not know. We may conjecture that the primitive operator was a sort of shaman in special communion with his god. The patient’s blood, entering him, would be brought into contact with the god; and the god through it would be united with the patient for his healing.

In the light of examples like these we must interpret many prescriptions which have been hastily put down as cases of transplantation, or have been turned by the folk themselves into transplantation formulæ. For instance, a Gipsy remedy for fever bids the sufferer go before sunrise to a little tree, scratch his left little finger, and smear the blood on the tree, saying: “Go away, fever; go away, pain; {150} go away into the tree, whence thou hast come; thither go thou, fever!”^150.1 No specific tree is indicated; and there can be little doubt that the original words of this ban have been forgotten, and meaningless rhymes substituted—so far at least as the words “Go away into the tree whence thou hast come,” which rhyme in the original with the two previous lines. So also, in Dr. Colerus’ collection of remedies from the Mark of Brandenburg, we find that, to cure the toothache, a splinter must be taken from a willow, and the teeth pricked with it until they bleed; the blood must be allowed to drip upon the splinter, which must be then cunningly put back into the tree, covered with the bark and plastered with mud, that it may grow together again. This prescription is still current in various parts of Germany and among some of the non-German populations of Eastern Prussia. In Pomerania it appears with the addition that the performance must be in silence, and the variation that the tree must be one struck by lightning.^150.2 If it were simply intended to transplant the toothache into the tree, there would be no need to be careful about the healing of the wound. But here, as in the cases of children passed through split trees, it is of importance to the recovery and after-life of the patient that the tree recover and be allowed to flourish. Moreover, a lightning-struck tree would, in heathen times, have been sacred; and the requirement of silence confirms its sacred character. The object of the ceremony, therefore, is not a transplantation of the disease, but a healing union of the diseased tooth {151} with the tree. In the province of Liège it is sufficient to touch the tooth with the splinter.^151.1 The rite there appears to be in decay, for the real intention to incorporate in the tree blood from the tooth and surrounding gums is manifest from a variation current at least as early as the seventeenth century, when it is mentioned in England by John Aubrey. It consists in scarifying the gum with an iron nail, and burying the nail in the tree.^151.2 And Sir Kenelm Digby gravely prescribes it, directing the nail to be driven up to the head into a wooden beam, which of course is a makeshift for a tree.^151.3 Kuhn, reporting the same practice from the Mark, says expressly that the tooth must be bored with the nail until the blood comes, the nail must then be driven into the north side of an oak where the sun does not shine, and then so long as the tree stands the patient will have no more toothache.^151.4 About Liège the nail is, according to one prescription, to be drawn from a coffin. According to another it must be a new nail and must be driven into the first tree you come to.^151.5 At Pforzheim, when a tooth is drawn, it is to be nailed into a young tree, and the bark drawn over it; if the tree be cut down the toothache will return.^151.6 At Agnethlen, in Transylvania, {152} the sufferer bores a hole in a tree, chews with the aching tooth a piece of bread, swallows half and spits the rest into the tree, saying: “Tree, I give thee half of what I have; take away all my pain, and convey it down into the earth!”^152.1 The consumption of half the bread by the patient is conclusive against transplantation. And with this we may compare a recipe against the rickets in use in Schleswig-Holstein. The sick child is rubbed over with a handful of oats, and the oats are then sown in a secret place; as they grow the rickets disappear.^152.2

In view of the cases I have cited it may be doubted whether the intention (at all events, the original intention) of many of the prescriptions of hair, saliva, food and other things belonging to the patient, to be given to the lower animals was transplantation, and not rather union with another and a healthy body. Thus, in Kerry and Leitrim a cure for the whooping-cough is to pour some milk into a saucer, let a ferret drink some of it, and give the rest to the sufferer. In Antrim the child is passed thrice under a jackass, to which is afterwards given a bit of oaten bread, and the child is made to eat what the animal leaves.^152.3 Transplantation in both these examples is out of the question, because the child does not feed until the other creature has finished. So in the Panjab stammering is cured by hanging in a tree a cup, which is kept filled for forty days with water for the birds. The last few drops they leave every day are drunk by the patient. And a remedy in the north of India for boils is to move over the {153} part affected some treacle and parched wheat, and afterwards distribute these things among some Brahman boys.^153.1 The food, it will be noted, does not actually touch the diseased part: the symbol is reckoned sufficient. But the destination of the food for persons of the sacred caste renders it impossible that transfer of the disease is intended. A ceremony in use among the Southern Slavs as a cure for a fretful child directs the drawing of water in a vessel of greenwood. The mother then, with the child on her arm, dips firebrands thrice into the water, saying: “The Vila weds her son and invites my Marko to the wedding. I am sending not my Marko, but his weeping.” The child is made to drink as much as it can of the water thus brought into contact with the drying, or perhaps the hallowing, power of the fire, the rest is poured over the dog or cat of the household, the vessel is thrown to the ground and left there all night.^153.2 The entire meaning of this curious ceremony is not very clear; but it can hardly be intended to transfer the constant weeping of the infant to the dog, or the cat. In Buffalo Valley, Pennsylvania, certain diseases are cured by allowing a black cat to eat some of the soup given to the patient—a remedy probably brought from Germany.^153.3 Here again transference is improbable, seeing that a black cat is a magical animal: we should rather apply the reasoning in reference to Reginald Scot’s remedy for the flux. It is more doubtful whether the same can be said of a Jewish leechcraft, quoted by Dr. Strack from Tholedoth Adam, which bids a woman suffering from undue menstruation {154} bake some of her blood in bread and give it to a pig to devour.^154.1 But in Tuscany, when one spits blood, ants are to be caught, put into the blood and left there all night. Mr. Leland, in recording this, observes that Marcellus quotes a conjuring verse where ants are said to have no blood.^154.2 If we may look upon the saying as embodying a general belief, we may suppose that their bloodlessness would be held to react upon the sufferer.

Marcellus mentions a number of prescriptions which cannot be cases of transplantation, but rather intended to unite a diseased body with a sound one for the benefit of the former. Take his remedy for a gathering in the ear by injecting the warm urine of a boy under the age of puberty. Or where incontinence of urine is to be cured by making water in a dog’s sleeping-place, saying the while: “Let me not make water in my own bed, like a dog.” Or the recommendation to apply the cut hairs of a boy under puberty to the suffering foot of a gouty patient. A prescription extolled as et praesens et maximum for consumptives, even when apparently beyond hope, consists in administering the saliva or foam of a horse in warm water for three days: the horse will die, and the sick man recover.^154.3 Even here, in spite of the horse’s death, we have no warrant for supposing that the disease is transferred to him. The operation upon him is clearly to be attributed to the magical principle so fully discussed in this and {155} the previous chapter. The process is the converse of transplantation. Nothing that has touched the patient is brought back to the unfortunate horse. His death is caused by union through his own saliva with a sick body which absorbs his qualities of health and strength.

An old French remedy for a cough, and probably also for toothache, is traceable back to Marcellus. It was to spit in a frog’s mouth—a method of cure still in vogue in Shropshire and perhaps elsewhere in England.^155.1 No doubt it was a traditional remedy long before the Emperor’s physician gravely recorded it, and added that the patient must stand shod upon the bare earth under the bare heaven, on a Tuesday or Thursday at waning moon, and repeat seven times: Argidam, margidam, sturgidam. Moreover the patient is solemnly to ask the frog to take the toothache with her; “and then shalt thou let her go alive; and this shalt thou do on a fortunate day and at a fortunate hour.” O learned physician! This does appear, at least as Marcellus understood it, a case of transplantation; and it is no part of my business to combat every instance. I only desire to point out that Transplantation is a theory inadequate to account for many remedies which it has been dragged in to explain; and to express the doubt whether it be not after all a comparatively recent development in folk-medicine.

Saliva prescriptions, numerous as they are, need not detain us longer. Nor will I pause upon those of the fouler excrements. They are made, as we might expect, to subserve the purposes of healing, as well as those of witchcraft, {156} and in the same general manner. I shall, therefore, only add a few references at the foot of the page for the use of students.^156.1

For various diseases the patient’s bath-water and fomentations, wherein are often mingled simples of different sorts, are in Germany, Hungary and Transylvania poured out upon a tree, into flowing water, into the churchyard, or upon dead human bones.^156.2 The Magyars, as a depilatory for children born with much hair on their bodies, put ashes on the four corners of the bath-tub, and throw into the water three potatoes, which they fling, after the bath, behind the oven. As the potatoes dry up, the hair is expected to disappear.^156.3

Not only the bath-water and fomentations but also cloths and articles of clothing which have been in contact with {157} the patient, and especially with the diseased member, are subject to treatment for the purpose of healing, of causing, or of preventing disease. At Rauen, near Fürstenwald, in Northern Germany, the remedy for a violent headache is to bind a cloth round the head at night, and take it on the following morning to a wise man, who will charm not the head, but the cloth.^157.1 Among the Transylvanian Gipsies a certain kind of sore is cured by covering it with a red rag and pegging the rag by night in a hole in a tree. The words used on the occasion are: “Stay thou here, until the rag become a beast, the beast a tree, the tree a man, to strike thee dead!” So far as they have a meaning they point to transplantation, though not conclusively. Dr. von Wlislocki, who reports them, suggests they contain a reminiscence of a Gipsy Creation-myth. If so, they are probably archaic; but this is doubtful.^157.2 An old physician relates of a patient who had a violent pain in the arm that it was healed by a plaster of red coral beaten up with oak-leaves, which was kept on the part until suppuration and then in the morning put into an auger-hole in the root of an oak, looking towards the east, and the hole stopped with a peg of the same tree. The pain ceased, but returned more sharply than before when the peg was taken out.^157.3 In Middle Silesia plasters and bandages from wounds must only be thrown into flowing water—certainly never into the fire, lest the hurt be made incurable.^157.4 The Masurs in East Prussia, after suffering from an attack of fever, and not until it is over, take off the patient’s shirt and carry it, after sunset or before sunrise, if possible on a {158} Thursday, to a cross-road and suspend it on the sign-post.^158.1 It is a French prescription for hastening a slow delivery to bind the woman’s girdle about the church-bell and sound the bell thrice.^158.2 In 1630 the wife of Francesco Noverta of Pordenone was brought before the Inquisition in Italy for taking her husband’s shirt to a wise man to be “signed,” in order to cure him of some disease. The man signed it with a crown, repeating sacred words and invoking the saints. He did more. He gave her an oil to anoint the patient’s back and stomach, a piece of bread for him to eat, and certain herbs to be put under his bolster, together with a powder. But when she got home, so she told the holy inquisitors, she threw all these things on the fire, and kept only the shirt: she had more confidence in the charm than the simples.^158.3 These cases, in which there is no transplantation, may perhaps be allowed to interpret the ambiguity of some of the following. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure the swelling of the glands of the neck by stealing a piece of bacon over night and binding it round the throat with a rag, and the next morning hanging the bandage on a tree, or throwing it in the fire. In the former case, the spell to be uttered, while removing the bandage, is: “Tree, thou hast many knots; take away my knots also.” In the latter, it is: “The knotman has seven sons; the knotwife has seven daughters; they married, lived together and did not agree; they parted and disappeared like the bacon in the fire. So, in God’s name, let the knots disappear in N. N.’s neck, that he may enjoy pure the Holy Supper of the Body {159} and Blood of Our Lord. Amen.”^159.1 Galician Jews cure infantine convulsions by throwing articles of the child’s clothing into a stream where it divides into two branches, and crying thrice: “Here hast thou thine; give me mine.” This is, of course, a prayer for the child’s health. They are also careful not to hang swaddling clothes out of doors to dry, nor to drop them on the ground, else the child whose they are will lose its rest.^159.2 The garb of Italian babies must likewise be tenderly treated in washing, else the infants will be afflicted with various pains. Abruzzian babe-clothes must not be washed in the water whence horses have drunk, lest the babe’s tender skin be heated. A Tuscan baby is cured of a certain disorder by putting its clothes in boiling water with a nail, some laurel and garden-flowers, like rose or jasmine, and afterwards rinsing them in flowing water.^159.3 Against a menstruation too copious a Galician Jewess washes her own shift together with her husband’s night-dress.^159.4 The intention here seems to be not to attempt the absurdity of transferring the menstruation to the husband, but by uniting the patient to a healthy man through the contact of their clothing, to obtain for her that quality of his whereof she stands especially in need. Conversely, one of the remedies of Italian women for suppressed menstruation is to send the sufferer’s shift to the wash with the linen of a woman who has just been delivered; and they firmly believe that a washerwoman may cause them painful menstruation by beating their linen too hard, or by using burning coals with the ashes in {160} making the lye.^160.1 Nor must we forget here the Bosnian rite for procuring conception, referred to in a previous chapter. The barren woman’s wedding-garment is not worn by the quick woman wound about her body for the purpose of transferring the barrenness to herself. On the contrary, she wears it that her prolific influence may thus be communicated to her friend; and she continues to wear it until that effect is produced.

Other things that have been brought into contact with the body may also be efficaciously treated. In Donegal the piece of turf whereon a sick cow first treads on getting up is cut out and hung against the wall; and the cow is expected to recover.^160.2 Formerly in France a limping cow was healed by cutting out the turf whereon the lame foot had trodden and putting it to dry on a hedge. To cure quartan fever a certain herb was plucked secretly and in silence, and thrown to the winds.^160.3 In the seventeenth century a prescription for epilepsy was three nails made on Midsummer Eve driven over their heads into the place where the patient had fallen, his name being uttered the while.^160.4 For spasms at the heart it is recommended in Transylvania to lie on the back on the turf. The length and breadth of the patient’s body is then marked, and the turf to the thickness of a finger cut out, if possible in one piece, and thrown into a brook with the words: “Spring-wife, spring-wife, take the water from my heart; I give thee what lay under my heart.”^160.5 In Thuringia, to heal sores {161} on the body three crosses are made with a bit of comfrey on the sores before sunrise, and the comfrey is then buried in a place where it will quickly rot, and whither the patient is not likely soon to come.^161.1 A like remedy is given in the Grihya-sutra of Âpastamba. If a wife be affected with consumption, or be otherwise sick, one who has to observe chastity is to rub her limbs with young lotus-leaves, still unrolled, and with lotus-roots and certain formulæ; the leaves and roots are afterwards thrown away towards the west.^161.2 For whooping-cough, a mother in Norfolk looks for a dark spider in the house, and having found it holds it over the child’s head, repeating thrice:

She then hangs the spider in a bag over the mantelpiece—formerly no doubt it was hung in the chimney—and when it dries up the cough will be gone.^161.3 A feverish patient, among the Jews of Galicia, wraps a hair taken from his body about a louse, and throws the creature away. While, against epilepsy, a black hen is rent in pieces over the sick man; or a cock is slaughtered and buried, its head being first cut off on the threshold of a barn: with the decay of its flesh the epileptic recovers health.^161.4 The old French superstitions recorded by Thiers prescribe for various diseases a branch of a plum-tree hung to dry in the chimney, a cabbage stolen from a neighbour’s garden and hung up to dry, nine grains of barley put into a bottle of {162} clear water, a hard-cooked egg put into an anthill, certain drugs wrapped in a piece of new cloth and thrown into the fire. They do not in every case mention that these articles must be first applied to the patient; but it is tolerably clear that this is meant.^162.1 And it must also be inferred that the cock in the Galician prescription was formerly brought into similar contact, though perhaps in this case, as in many others throughout Europe, the touching has fallen into disuse. The black hen, it is obvious, could not be torn in pieces without its blood falling on the patient and so bringing it into union with the disease. Remedies of the kind under consideration are naturally most in vogue for external diseases, such as warts, boils and sties. But enough: examples of their application to all kinds of disease are endless.

I have mentioned some cases where corpses have played remedial parts. A few more illustrations may be added, more clearly to bring out the real meaning of the prescriptions, which are divisible into two classes—the one wherein the patient himself is brought into contact with the body, or with some article that has belonged to it, or been in contact with it; the other wherein articles belonging to the patient, or which have been part of, or in contact with, his body are deposited in the coffin, or the grave, and thus brought into permanent connection with the dead. The intention of both appears to be the same, namely, to bring the disease into union with the corpse, in order that, as the latter suffers decay and dissolution, it also may decay and perish.

In enumerating a few instances of the former class, let me first refer to the fact that touching or stroking with {163} the hand of a corpse is a remedy known in every part of Europe for superficial growths like wens, tetters, and swollen glands. In September 1892, a fashionably dressed young woman was one day seen hovering about a physician’s residence in the north of Berlin. When he went out she met him and timidly prayed him to take her, when he had an opportunity, to a dead body. He thought she must be suffering from overstrain or mental disorder, and brusquely refused her. In nowise daunted, however, she begged him earnestly to grant her request, explaining that her object was to remove a deformity. As she said this, she laid bare a delicate white hand blemished by a bony outgrowth, known among surgeons as exostosis. The medical man became interested; and it was not long before he stood with her in the presence of a corpse. The lady grasped the cold right hand and with it repeatedly and silently stroked the ugly excrescence. Then, without speaking, she left the room in all haste; nor was the physician able to learn who she was, or what had led her to seek this means of relief.^163.1 In the good old days, when what was called Justice was chiefly exhibited in hanging men with short shrift on every convenient pretext and at every convenient place, this remedy was much easier to obtain than it is to-day. In Europe it was universal; and perhaps it was partly the facility for touching an executed criminal that led to a preference in popular pharmacopœia for such corpses. Partly also it may have arisen from another cause. The victims of violence are often regarded as endowed after {164} death with extraordinary virtue. When that violence took the form of persecution for adherence to the Church, the Church herself encouraged and systematised the superstition to her own profit. Popular sympathy with unmerited suffering extended the Church’s doctrine to other murders, judicial murders among them. And often the Church did not hesitate to sanction the popular canonisation, and appropriate the material gains that followed. But beyond all that the Church could sanction, there remained a margin constantly supplied by the bloodthirsty tribunals, as well as by private enterprise. The former may have been more regular in their action; but one thing is certain. Their victims were more uniformly derived from the classes which were chiefly concerned in forming and preserving tradition. The feeling of oppression would be likely to generalise all executions into martyrdoms, entailing miraculous powers analogous to those recognised by the Church. This would be enough to intensify the operation of any potency believed to be the ordinary property of a corpse, and so to favour the resort to the bodies of criminals.^164.1

Be this as it may, remedies derived from the dead were, and still are, popular. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure wens and scrofula by drawing a silken thread through a corpse’s hand and then binding it round the patient’s neck. They hold that a silken band out of a grave is a protection against epilepsy. Earth from a sucking infant’s grave is {165} put upon the mother’s breast to dry up her milk. Gout is healed by rubbing a rag from a dead man’s clothes on the suffering parts and hanging it all night upon a tree. Against cramp, a string wherewith a corpse has been measured is worn on the body next to the skin. A drunkard’s craving for drink is stayed by giving him some of what he best loves, poured over a silver coin which has been placed in a corpse’s mouth. Diseases of the eyes are cured by going early on a fine Sunday morning in spring to a pious man’s grave, and washing the eyes in the dew that lies upon it. Herbs grown in the churchyard, and gathered on Good Friday when the bells are sounding for service, are good against every kind of sickness.^165.1 Among the Poles and Masurs it is believed that to smell a flower growing in the churchyard causes permanent loss of the sense of smell.^165.2 The Negro population of Barbados resorts to the touch of a dead hand for all swellings and chronic pains, and believes that to wash the eyes in rum which has been used to wash a corpse is to be safe from disease of the eyes for the future.^165.3 In the Abruzzi the hand of a dead priest has potency against scrofulous tumours, and a certain remedy for headache is to rub the forehead and temples with the tears of a dying man.^165.4 A prescription in Middle Silesia, against epilepsy and against toothache is a ring smithied from a coffin-nail found in a grave.^165.5 In the Netherlands {166} an aching tooth is rubbed with a bone from the churchyard; or, in the province of Namur, the sufferer goes to bite a cross erected on the wayside where a violent death has occurred.^166.1 The bone, among the Masurs and generally in Prussia, is replaced by the index-finger of a corpse.^166.2 In old French belief it should be a tooth, if possible the tooth of a man who has come to a violent end, as by hanging; and the best time for its application is on Holy Saturday when the bells are ringing. Other French prescriptions are: for fever, to hang round the neck a human bone taken from the graveyard, or the hem torn (not cut) from a winding-sheet; for colic or lapsus ani, to cut the hem from a winding-sheet, pass it under the loins and wear it as a girdle; for hydrophobia, pills made of the head of a man who has been hanged.^166.3 In Silesia water left on tombstones will send freckles away. At Gernsbach, in the neighbourhood of Spire, to smear a goitre with the wick of a lamp that has burnt in a dying man’s room will heal it.^166.4 To cure a Bosnian drunkard, extinguish in brandy one of the candles burning at the head of a corpse before the funeral, and give him the brandy to drink. Even a bit of the wick when the candle is put out in the ordinary course, {167} given in brandy, will be sufficient; or indeed brandy bought with a coin which has been used to close the eyes of the dead.^167.1 The last is doubtless a degenerate form of a superstition akin to that of the Transylvanian Saxons adduced just now. In the Lettish prescription the corpse’s mouth is to be washed out, and the water given to the tippler. After drinking it, we are told, he can never drink again, which is quite likely.^167.2 The reasoning which has given rise to all these beliefs perhaps applies also to the tradition in Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man that it is unlucky to disturb old burial-places and old churches, and utilise their materials. Professor Rhys relates an example in which a farmer in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, in the Isle of Man, carted earth from an old burial-ground and used it to manure his fields. His cattle died, and every one attributed it to this cause. The farmer himself was convinced at last, and desisted from the desecration.^167.3 A similar story is told of a cattle-dealer in the parish of Templepatrick, near Belfast, who attempted to use the soil of an ancient fort as a top-dressing for his land.^167.4 We may compare with these instances a curious Manx curse: “May a stone of the church be found in the head of thy dwelling!”^167.5 It would seem as if that which had been part of, or had become by contact united with, the dead, or had been part of the subject of a taboo, were still, notwithstanding severance, in indissoluble connection with the remainder, and thus capable of communicating its evil effects or of bringing into similar connection any other {168} object. Too much stress, however, cannot be laid on this conjecture at present. The question needs further investigation.

The other class of prescriptions consists of such as the following. An English cure for boils mentioned by Mr. Thiselton Dyer was to poultice for three days and nights, and then to place the poultices, cloths and all, in the coffin of a body about to be buried.^168.1 In Germany, when a sucking babe dies, the mother puts a bottle of her milk in the coffin, and then the breast dries up without making her ill.^168.2 To the same end a South Slavonic mother sticks in the infant’s shift over the breast two pins, probably to be taken from her own. The coffin-lid must not be nailed at the head and foot, else the mother will bear no more, or if she bear, it will be a difficult labour.^168.3 In Silesia, to destroy lice, bugs and moths, it is recommended to catch a few specimens, bottle them up in a quill and secretly by a waning moon lay the quill in the coffin of a spotless maiden.^168.4 The population of North Carolina is mainly of German descent. There, by the same process of logic, it is forbidden in making garments for the dead to bite the thread, lest the teeth rot.^168.5 The Transylvanian Saxons spit into an open grave to heal sore throat.^168.6 In East Prussia, as in West Sussex, a child is cured of a certain nightly offence by being taken to an open grave to repeat it.^168.7 In Donegal, warts are got rid of by throwing some clay from under {169} your right foot in the path by which a funeral is going, and by saying: “Corpse of clay, carry my warts away.” This must be done three times, and as the corpse decays in the grave the warts will vanish.^169.1 As might be expected, to bring warts into contact with a corpse is a specially efficacious means of getting rid of them. In the Obererzgebirge warts or any other superficial ailments are rubbed with a piece of linen, which is then laid in the coffin with a corpse.^169.2 To recover from the ague in the Netherlands the sufferer’s garter used to be tied round a gallows.^169.3 When a death occurs in Poland, if anything has been stolen from the family, a similar object, or a piece of the same stuff, is laid in the coffin; and as it decays the thief withers away and dies. It is even enough, in case of robbery, to lay a portion of the stolen goods in the churchyard.^169.4 We considered in the last chapter the identification of the thief with the property stolen, and no more need be added on the subject.

The principle which underlies all these practices dictated the sympathetic treatment of wounds by washing and keeping clean and bright the instrument inflicting them—a treatment taught by Paracelsus, believed in by Bacon and proclaimed as a valuable discovery by Sir Kenelm Digby, who learned it in France. Though long since discredited by science, it is still in use among the peasantry of England, and can be traced backwards into savagery. A few instances will suffice to exhibit the vast area over which it {170} is found, and the different modes of its application. In Sussex a few years ago Mrs. Latham saw it actually in use. A man had been accidentally wounded by a sword-stick, and the whole time he was confined to his bed the sword-stick was kept hung at his bed’s head, and was polished at stated intervals day and night, and anxiously examined lest a spot of rust be found thereon; for that would have been a token that the wounded man would die.^170.1 In Suffolk, if a horse be lamed by treading on a nail, the nail must be found, cleaned and kept bright and well greased; and in dressing a human wound the old plaster must be buried, not burnt, else the wound will not heal.^170.2 Similar treatment of a wound by a tool or weapon was practised within the memory of living men by the descendants of the Dutch settlers in the Hudson River.^170.3 About Schaffhausen and Solothurn it is held that if one be pricked with a needle, the wound will heal the sooner if the needle be at once plunged into wax.^170.4 In the Tirol, in order to prevent a wound from giving trouble, the weapon that has caused it is immediately stuck into ash-wood.^170.5 About Siena a nail which has inflicted any hurt is gently warmed over the fire with a clove of garlic in oil prepared from herbs gathered on Saint John’s day, and it is then used to sprinkle the oil about.^170.6 In Esthonia, if you cut your finger, you are advised to bite the blade of the knife, and the wound will then cease to bleed.^170.7 Among the Galician Jews, if a child fall on the floor, the pain will pass away, provided {171} water be poured on the floor, at the spot where the child came in contact with it.^171.1 These superstitions are not a whit more civilised than those of the races we call savage. Dr. Boas mentions a tribe of North American Indians who are very careful to keep the arrow that has wounded a friend concealed, and as far from the fire as possible; for he would be very ill if, while still covered with blood, it were put into the fire.^171.2 Melanesians keep the arrow, when extracted, in a damp place, or in cool leaves; then the inflammation will be little and soon subside. A story is told by Dr. Codrington of a man who aimed at another with a ghost-shooter, that is to say, a magically prepared arrow which does not actually reach the foe, but is only believed to do so by being directed towards him. In this case the man’s next of kin, his sister’s child, happened to come between him and the object of his aim, and he felt sure he had hit it full. To prevent inflammation of the imaginary wound he put the contents of his ghost-shooter into water, and the child took no hurt. If a Melanesian have really shot another, and can get back the arrow, he puts it into the fire. To heat the wound he will keep the bow near the fire; and the bowstring will be kept taut and occasionally pulled, to bring on tension of the nerves and tetanus in the wounded man. Or a bundle of certain leaves, tied on the bow will produce a fatal result. Nor is this all. The assailant and his friends will drink hot and burning juices, and chew irritating leaves; they will burn pungent and bitter herbs to produce an irritating smoke. The wound by his arrow has set up such union between the shooter and his victim that these proceedings {172} are expected to react upon the latter.^172.1 The Zulus are said to have the like belief. They think that if the corpse of a slain enemy swell up, they themselves will suffer pain in the intestines. If they have time, therefore, they tear out the entrails of their fallen foes; if not, they pierce the navel with an assegai, as was done to the body of young Bonaparte, the Imperialist Pretender.^172.2

“A hair of the dog that bit you” is a remedy which has passed into a proverb. In dealing with witchcraft we had occasion to note some instances of its application, as when the dust of a witch’s footprint is rubbed on the bespelled animal. The Abruzzians hold the bite of a cat to be venomous; and their prescription for it is a bit of the same cat’s fur applied with pounded garlic. So, for a serpent-bite a portion of the skin of the creature is put on the wound; but, as Signor Finamore remarks, the question is to get it.^172.3 In Sicily the sting of one of the small scorpions found in damp places in the island is healed by scorpion-oil prepared from the same scorpion. The mode of preparing the oil is to decapitate the animal and plunge it into a vessel of oil, which is then closed tightly.^172.4 In Devonshire a person who is bitten by a viper is advised at once to kill the creature and rub the wound with its fat; and the flesh of a rattlesnake is accounted the best cure for its own bite in the Northern States of America.^172.5 In Belgium a dog’s bite is to be healed by inducing a bitch to {173} lick the sore.^173.1 The reason for the treatment is obscure in some of these cases; but we shall probably be right in referring its origin to the desire to set up union between the victim and the animal inflicting the wound, by means of a detached portion of the latter’s substance. This view is strengthened by the treatment directed, in the neighbourhood of Masulipatam, for a scorpion which has stung a man. The brute is to be caught by slipping a noose over its tail, and tied to something to prevent its wandering. For the more it wanders, the more the poison will wander in the man’s body; while to kill it may have the effect of killing its victim. Here the union by means of the injected poison is already complete, and the scorpion is dealt with accordingly.^173.2

Folk-leechcraft thus provides us with further illustration of the theory lying at the foundation of the story-incident of the Life-token. A severed portion of the body, or any of its issues, or anything once in contact with it, though now detached, is none the less believed to continue in real, if unapparent, connection with it. Whatever, therefore, is undergone by the one, is undergone also by the other. For the purposes of healing, as of injury, to affect the one is to affect the other. It is curious that a large number of the remedies prescribed are of a character that, judging from the examples of witchcraft in the last chapter, one would suppose calculated to inflict injury rather than to heal. To hang in the chimney things which have become united with the patient’s body, or to put them into a coffin, if done with malicious intent, would certainly result in evil to the victim. We must, however, be at all times prepared to {174} find tradition inconsistent. In the cases referred to, the disease is thought of, rather than the patient, as identified with the object operated on; and the intention is to destroy the disease by causing it to waste away. Probably the prescription was at first applied only to excrescences and other diseased growths, like warts, tumours and wens. These alone were touched by the dead hand, or by the cloth, or the spider, which was to be enclosed in the grave, or hung in the chimney. The remedy having been tried for them, would be extended to other ailments, without adverting to the reason of its primitive limitation. So far as regards objects committed to the keeping of the dead, a comparison of love-charms comprising the same process will have suggested an alternative explanation, namely, that they are brought thus into permanent contact with the corpse for the purpose of putting them under the influence of the departed spirit. This is a less materialistic explanation, and one that will have weight with students who can estimate the importance, in savage life, of the worship of the dead. It is possible that there may be an element of truth in it, as well as in the explanation which regards the objects as merely intended to be affected by the physical decay and corruption of the corpse. But, either way, is clearly necessary the postulate that the disease in the patient’s body is capable of being affected by the influence, whatever it may be, on the objects in contact with the dead,—that in them, and by means of them, the patient himself is actually in contact also.

{175}

In the light of the results thus obtained by an examination of certain of the methods of witchcraft and folk-medicine, we next approach a group of rites known in one form or other from shore to shore of the Old World, and the principle of which has regulated religious observances alike in North and South America. These rites are very numerous in the British islands; and it will be convenient to start from some of the most modern forms found in Great Britain. Professor Rhys, in a paper read a year or two ago before a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folklore Societies, quotes a correspondent as saying of Ffynnon Cae Moch, about half-way between Coychurch and Bridgend, in Glamorganshire: “People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted but very old tree, and is simply covered with rags.” In another case, that of Ffynnon Eilian (Elian’s Well), near Abergele in Denbighshire, of which Professor Rhys was informed by Mrs. Evans, the late wife of Canon Silvan Evans, some bushes near the well had once been covered with bits of {176} rags left by those who frequented it. The rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool—not woollen yarn, but wool in its natural state. Corks with pins stuck in them were floating in the well when Mrs. Evans visited it, though the rags had apparently disappeared from the bushes. The well in question, it is noted, had once been in great repute as “a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated.” The Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Carnarvonshire, is a resort for the cure of warts. The sacred character of the well may be inferred from the silence in which it is necessary to go and come, and from the prohibition to turn or look back. The wart is to be bathed at the well with a rag or clout, which has grease on it. The clout must then be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. The Professor, repeating this account of the well, given him by a Welsh collector of folk-lore, says: “This brings to my mind the fact that I have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.” The Rev. Elias Owen, writing on the Holy Wells of North Wales, relates that the patients who came to the Ffynnon Awen, or Muses’ Well, in the upper part of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, buried under a stone close to or in the well the pieces of wool they had used in washing their wounds.^176.1

Professor Rhys, in the paper just cited, mentions several {177} wells wherein it was usual to drop pins; but the most detailed account was afterwards furnished by Mr. T. E. Morris, from a correspondent who supplied him with the following information relating to Ffynnon Faglan (St Baglan’s Well) in the parish of Llanfaglan, Carnarvonshire: “The old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish (Llanfaglan), remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism, and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well at Tan-y-graig, said that he remembered it being cleared out about fifty years ago, when two basins-full of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say, dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well.”^177.1

In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or hanging rags torn from the devotee’s {178} clothing upon the neighbouring bushes and trees.^178.1 But without pausing on English examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase, quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in the roof, were of gold and silver.^178.2 This is a rare case. Quite recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands, Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely Ones.^178.3 Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various diseases. Among the offerings left on a {179} bush beside the stream are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones picked up from the pool.^179.1 A number of other instances are cited by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.^179.2 What seems an analogous custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the ocean.”^179.3

In the Isle of Man there is a well called Chibber Unjin, or Ash-tree Well, which I mention for the sake of calling attention to an interesting detail of the rite. A patient visiting the well had to take a mouthful of water, retaining it in his mouth until he had made the circuit of the well, and then empty it upon a rag of his own clothing, which he afterwards tied on the hawthorn growing there.^179.4

I select a few examples out of a large number from Scotland. Saint Wallach’s Well and Bath in the parish of Glass, Aberdeenshire, are famous for their healing qualities. {180} The former is now dry, save in rainy weather; but it was frequented by persons with sore eyes, “and every one who went to it left a pin in a hole which had been cut either by nature or by art in a stone beside the well.” The bath is a cavity in the rock, supplied by a spring which flows into it and overflows into the river Deveron. Children who did not thrive were brought and dipped in it, “a rag, an old shirt, or a bib from the child’s body being hung on a tree beside the bath, or thrown into it.”^180.1 “There is a big rugged rock,” says the Rev. Walter Gregor, “on the top of Ben Newe in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. On the north side of this rock, under a projection, there is a small circular-shaped hollow which always contains water. Every one that goes to the top of the hill must put some small object into it, and then take a draught of water off it. Unless this is done the traveller will not reach in life the foot of the hill. I climbed the hill in June of 1890, and saw in the well several pins, a small bone, a pill-box, a piece of a flower, and a few other objects.”^180.2 Saint John’s Well, at Balmano, in the parish of Marykirk, Kincardineshire, was reputed to heal sore eyes and rickety children. The “oblations” left here were generally pins, needles and rags taken from the pilgrim’s clothes. In the island of St. Kilda is a consecrated well called Tobir-minbuadh, or Well of diverse Virtues. The votaries laid their offerings on an “altar” (probably a rock, or perhaps a rude stone monument) that stood near; and Macaulay in his History of St. Kilda sarcastically remarks: “The devotees were abundantly frugal.… Shells and pebbles, rags of linen or stuffs worn out, pins, needles or rusty nails were generally all the tribute that was paid; and sometimes, though {181} rarely enough, copper coins of the smallest value.” Of Loch-siant Well in the island of Skye we read that the sick people who made a pilgrimage to it, after drinking “move thrice round the well, proceeding sun-ways,” and it was “a never-failing custom to leave some small offering on the stone which covers the well. There is a small coppice near it, of which none of the natives dare venture to cut the least branch, for fear of some signal judgment to follow upon it.”^181.1 And Mr. David MacRitchie, recording similar offerings at Grew’s Well, Stormont, Perthshire, made on the first Sunday of May (Old Style), and speaking from the information of an old woman on the spot, says: “No good whatever was expected to result from the bathing if no offering was left.”^181.2 It is rarely that an offering of value is recorded at these wells. A spring is, however, mentioned by Mr. Gregor, called Tobar-fuarmor, in Aberdeenshire, where no cure was effected unless gold was presented.^181.3 The well and tree on the island of Maelrubha in Loch Maree are dedicated to Saint Maree, or Mourie. We need not concern ourselves whether this holy man ever existed in the flesh. It is clear that he succeeded to the divinity of an ancient heathen god, and wielded all, and perhaps more than all, his predecessor’s powers. Whether the mediæval church ever struggled against the deeply-rooted cult we do not know. Since the Reformation the Dingwall presbytery has in vain striven to destroy it, though at last it seems to be dying before the blasts of modern disbelief. {182} Miss Godden, who visited the shrine in the summer of 1893, describes the tree—an oak—“as a slight white trunk—bare, branchless, leafless, with spreading foot, and jagged and broken top. The cracks and clefts in the stem are studded with coins, nails, screws, and rusty iron fragments. No sign of leaf or shoot remains to give the gaunt shaft any touch of common vegetation. It stands alone and inviolate—a Sacred Tree. In the damp ground at the tree’s foot is a small dark hole, the sides of which are roughly formed by stones overhung with moss and grass. A cover of unwrought stone lies beside it, and it is filled up with dead leaves. This is the healing well of power unspeakable in cases of lunacy.… The tree,” she adds, “is now a Wishing Tree, and the driving in of a bit of metal is the only necessary act.” The well, in fact, long so famous, is now disused, and the ritual of the shrine is in the last stage of decay. Formerly, when an afflicted person was brought thither for the cure of insanity, a portion of his clothing was attached to a nail, which was driven on his behalf into the tree. Sir Arthur Mitchell in the year 1860 found two bone buttons and two buckles nailed to the tree, and a faded ribbon fluttering from another nail. The tree, now dead as the superstition which hallowed it, was then living. Countless pennies and halfpennies had been driven edgewise into it, and the bark was closing over many of them, while it was believed to have covered many others.^182.1

We turn to the continent of Europe. Close parallels to the practices at the shrine at Maelrubha are found in Germany and Belgium. Such is the ceremony prescribed for hernia in Mecklenburgh. A cross is made over the affected part {183} with a nail on a Friday; and the nail is then driven, in unbroken silence, into a young beech or oak. The operation is repeated on the two Fridays following. A variant prescription directs the part to be touched with a coffin-nail, which is then to be driven over its head into the tree by the sufferer, barefoot and silent. As the nail is overgrown by the bark, the hernia will be healed.^183.1 In this case the rite does not seem to be attached to any specially hallowed tree. I cited some similar instances in the last chapter, and others will be mentioned presently. We must first consider, however, some cases where the sacred character of the object, whether well or tree, is unquestionable.

In Belgium, halfway between Braine l’Alleud and the wood of Le Foriet, two hollow, and therefore doubtless very ancient, roads cross one another. Two aged pine-trees are planted at the top of the bank at one of the corners; and formerly there stood between them a cross, which has disappeared for some thirty years. It was a very ancient custom to bury in the pines, and even in the cross, pins or nails, in order to obtain the cure of persons attacked by fevers of various kinds. The pins and nails thus employed must have been previously in contact with the patient or his clothes. If any one took out one of these pins or nails from the pines or the cross, and carried it home, it was believed that the disease would certainly have been communicated to some member of his family. The custom is said to have fallen out of use. Yet M. Schepers, who visited the place in September 1891, and to whose article on the subject in Wallonia, a periodical published at Liège, I am indebted for these particulars, found not {184} only rusty nails in the pines, but also pins quite recently planted. He was told that it was equally customary to roll round the pines, or the arms of the cross, some band of cloth or other stuff which had touched the sufferer. As soon as the nail or pin had been driven in, or the ribbon fastened, the operator used to run away as hard as he could. The spot was called À l’crwe Saint Zè, St. Etto’s Cross, or Aux deux Sapins, The two Pine-trees. Saint Etto, it seems, was an Irish missionary to these parts in the seventh century.^184.1 Nor is this by any means the only instance in Belgium. Two old lime-trees on either side of a Calvary, near the convent of Soleilmont at Gilly, in Hainaut, are covered with nails; and a similar tree is found behind a chapel between Trazegnies and Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont in the same province. At Chastrés, near Walcourt, a chapel of Our Lady is shown with pins thrown in through the interstices of the gate by devotees on reciting their prayers. Numbers of pins have also been taken from the beds of the Meuse and the Sambre at ancient fords, though whether they were put into the water for any superstitious purpose is uncertain.^184.2

At Croisic, in Upper Brittany, there is a well, called the Well of Saint Goustan, into which pins are thrown by those who wish to be married during the year. If the wish be granted, the pin will fall straight to the bottom. Similar practices are said to be performed in Lower Brittany, and in Poitou and Elsass.^184.3 Girls used to resort to the little {185} shrine of Saint Guirec, which stands on an isolated rock below high-water mark on the beach at Perros Guirec in Lower Brittany, to pray for husbands. The worshipper, her prayer concluded, stuck a pin into the wooden statue of the saint; and when I saw the shrine, in the year 1889, the figure was riddled from top to toe with pinholes. It was said that the prayer for a husband would infallibly be granted within a year. On the other side of Brittany, in the Morbihan, there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Uférier, credited with a similar reputation. The saint’s foot, if I may be guilty of a bull, is almost entirely composed of holes. It is, however, necessary here that the pin should be a new one and quite straight; not that the prayer will not be granted otherwise, but the husband will be crooked, humpbacked, and lame. In Upper Brittany, at St. Lawrence’s Chapel near Quintin and elsewhere, the condition is that the pin be planted at the first blow; the marriage will then take place within the year.^185.1 To avoid either the disfigurement or the desecration of this practice the authorities of the churches of Saint Peter at Louvain and of Bon-Secours at Brussels thoughtfully provide pincushions to receive the proofs of the worshippers’ pious enthusiasm;^185.2 but in Brittany the good priests are less fastidious.

Where the statue is of stone, it is of course impossible to plant the pins. They are then simply laid upon it, or thrust into cracks or hollows in the surface. At Loscouët young children are taken to the Virgin of Menès near the mill of Meu, in order that they may soon walk. The Virgin in question is nothing but the battered remains of a mullion {186} from a window in the ruined château of Menès, formerly the residence of the lords of Loscouët before the signory passed to the abbé of Saint Méen. This mullion the simple peasants take for a statue. The children are held by the armpits, and made to walk thrice round the Virgin, and pins are then placed upon her arms. At Penvenan the chapel of Notre Dame du Port-Blanc is resorted to for the same object. The parents exercise themselves in throwing small coins from the nave into the choir at the statues of the Virgin, and of Saint Yves of the Poor, and afterwards at those of Dives and Lazarus. The children are then put to pick the coins up and drop them into the Virgin’s coffer. Lastly, they are marched round the pavement outside the chapel; and within a fortnight they will certainly walk.^186.1

All over France the like practices exist, or have died out only within comparatively recent years. In the Protestant villages of Montbéliard, between the Vosges and the Jura, at the moment of celebration of a wedding a nail was planted in the gallery (or, in some places, in the floor) of the church, to “nail” or fasten the marriage. In various parts of the country there are stone or iron crosses which have doubtless replaced wooden ones. In the case of these new crosses, votaries must content themselves with depositing pins upon the arms or the pedestal, or in the joints.^186.2 In the valley of Lunain there is a menhir called the Pierre Frite, in almost every hole or fissure of which may be found a pin or a nail, placed there by the youth of the neighbourhood in the belief that this action will bring a {187} speedy marriage.^187.1 The well of Moniés in the department of Tarn had, at the beginning of the present century, a great renown for the cure of various diseases. The rags which had been used in bathing with the sacred water the diseased members, were left stretched out on the neighbouring bushes.^187.2 An instance where the honour and glory, not to say the substantial gains attendant on the superstition, were early annexed by the Church is that of St. Michel-la-Rivière in the diocese of Bordeaux. Both the honour and the gains were considerable in the seventeenth century, as appears from quarrels between the curé and the fabriqueur of the church decided by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and other orders made by him. The sick man was required to pass through a hole called a veyrine at the end of the apse; and the patients left offerings not merely of linen, but also of money, wax, and other things.^187.3 Nor was this case at all singular; for similar practices obtained wherever in the diocese was a church dedicated to St. Michael. In a North German example the object of veneration was an oak-tree; and the pilgrim, after creeping through the hole in the prescribed manner, completed the performance by burying a piece of money under the roots. As many as a hundred patients a day are said to have visited it.^187.4 Here the Church had neglected her opportunities.

We have already dealt with the custom of creeping {188} through trees. Our concern at present is with the offerings. Passing the Pyrenees, let us note that in the seventeenth century it was usual to stick needles or pins in a certain tree belonging to the church of Saint Christopher, situated on a high mountain near the city of Pampeluna.^188.1 At Naples it used to be the custom to lead a sick horse round the church of Saint Elias, and afterwards to fasten one of his shoes on the church-door.^188.2 One who suffers from intermittent fever will go and hang a small pebble on the inside of the door of Saint Giles’ church in the Abruzzian commune of Lanciano.^188.3

A rite hitherto unexplained was practised from very early times at Rome. From the date of the erection of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus it was the custom on the festival of the dedication, the Ides of September, for the highest person of the state to drive a nail into the right wall of the Cella Jovis. This was usually done by the consuls or prætor; but in case of the appointment of a dictator the latter performed the ceremony. After it was dropped as an annual performance, recourse was occasionally had to it for the staying of a pestilence, or as an atonement for crime. More ancient still was the corresponding Etruscan practice of sticking a nail every year into the temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess.^188.4 Curious parallels to this custom are found in modern Europe. Near Angers was an oak which bore the singular name of Lapalud. It was regarded as of the same antiquity as the town, and was covered with nails to the height of ten feet or thereabouts. From {189} time immemorial every journeyman carpenter, joiner, or mason who passed it, used to stick a nail in it. Near the cathedral at Vienna was the stock of an old tree, called the Stock im Eisen, said to be the last remnant of an ancient forest which once covered the neighbourhood. Every workman who passed through Vienna was expected to fasten a nail in it; and it was in fact invested with a complete coat of mail, consisting entirely of the heads of the nails it had thus received.^189.1 These two examples existed almost down to the present day; elsewhere the rite appears to be still in full force. At Evessen stands a lime-tree on a barrow wherein a golden coffin is believed to have been buried. In the trunk (which is seven mètres in girth at the height of one mètre from the soil) are driven numbers of nails, some of them recently fixed. This is often done by travelling apprentices.^189.2

At Athens, mothers bring their sick children to the little church of Santa Marina, under the Observatory Hill, and there undress them, leaving the old clothes behind. There is a dripping well near Kotzanes, in Macedonia, “said to issue from the Nereids’ breasts, and to cure all human ills. Those who would drink of it must enter the cave with a torch or lamp in one hand and pitcher in the other, which they must fill with the water, and, leaving some scrap of their clothing behind them, must turn round without being scared by the noises they may hear within, and quit the cave without ever looking back.”^189.3 Among the inscriptions discovered at Epidauros, recording the miraculous cures attributed to Asklepios, is the record of what happened to {190} Pandaros, a Thessalian who was afflicted with certain unsightly marks upon his forehead. The god appeared to him in a dream, pressing a bandage on the spots and directing him when he left the chamber to take off the bandage and deposit it as an offering in the temple. When the patient untied the bandage in the morning, the marks were transferred to it, leaving his forehead free; and he left the bandage in the temple, with this proof of his recovery,^190.1 just as crutches are left in modern times at Roman Catholic shrines by persons who believe themselves healed by the presiding saint. It is clear from a reference by Aristophanes that the Greeks were in the habit on certain occasions of hanging articles of their clothing on, or even nailing them to, sacred trees as an offering to the god.^190.2 Indeed, allusions to the practice are not uncommon in Greek poetry. Among the Romans, Pompey is compared by Lucan to a lofty oak, hung with old clothes and other votive offerings; and Vergil describes an olive-tree whereon the vests and votive tablets of mariners who had escaped shipwreck were suspended.^190.3 To-day in Lesbos sick women vow to walk before Our Lady, or one of the saints, with bare feet, flowing hair, and their hands tied behind their backs with a handkerchief which they subsequently leave suspended on the image. In one of their tied hands they must contrive to carry a large lighted taper. Lofty sacred trees are still numerous, frequently growing in {191} the vicinity of some chapel. The sick suspend on the branches their shirts or their girdles, in the hope, we are told, of leaving their ailments there. Feverish patients hang their clothes on a tree near the chapel of Saint John.^191.1

In the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire stands a great sacred aspen near the village of Röiks, which, up to the year 1845 at all events, was hung with wreaths and many-coloured ribbons to win the favour of the tree-spirit for sick cattle. Near Pallifer stood in the seventeenth century two holy elms, which are reported to have been hung and bound with ribbons, this time for the healing of human ailments and to obtain good luck. An old lime-tree near the chapel of Keppo is also held sacred. Passers-by tear off ribbons and rags from their clothing and nail them upon it. The trees of the sacred woods on the island of Oesel are hung with rags by the Esthonian inhabitants of the island.^191.2 In the district of Vynnytzia, government of Podolia in Ukrainia, there is a mineral spring much resorted to. The sick, after bathing, hang to the branches of the trees their shirts, handkerchiefs, and other articles, “as a mark,” says M. Volkov, who reports the case, “that their diseases are left there.”^191.3

In the last chapter I mentioned a practice of the Masurs in Eastern Prussia of taking off the patient’s shirt after an attack of fever, carrying it to a cross-road and suspending it on a signpost. It is probable that the signpost represents a sacred tree, or perhaps a cross. In Hungary there are two fountains resorted to for the cure of ailing limbs; but it is essential to wait until the water-spirit is in a good humour and to leave behind as an offering articles of {192} clothing and hair from the head. These are put upon the trees that stand around. Both in Hungary and in Transylvania ill-luck is like to befall one when his name-day happens on a Friday. To avoid the threatening evil, a rag is torn off the clothing, and hung, in Transylvania, on a tree before sunrise. The Magyar puts some of his blood and saliva on the rag and then burns it.^192.1

Leaving the real meaning of these ceremonies to be considered hereafter, we go on for the present with the search for parallel superstitions in other parts of the world. In Hindustan, a festival called Melá is held at the beginning of the month of Mágha (about the middle of January) at the island of Ságar, at the mouth of the Hugli. A temple of Kapila, who is held to be an incarnation of Vishnu, stands on the island, and in front of it is (or was) a Bur-tree, beneath which were images of Ráma and Hanumán, while an image of Kapila, nearly of life-size, was within the temple. The pilgrims who crowd thither at the festival commonly write their names on the walls, with a short prayer to Kapila, or suspend a piece of earth or brick from a bough of the tree, offering at the same time a prayer and a promise, if the prayer be granted, to make a gift to some divinity.^192.2 Shreds of clothing and feathers may be seen flying from the posts erected on the roofs of the Toda temple-huts in the Neilgherry Hills. The Korwas hang rags on the tree which constitutes the shrine of their village gods. The Patáris, when attacked by fever, tie round a pípal-tree a cotton string that has never touched water, and suspend rags from the branches. Elsewhere in India, as well as in Arabia and Persia, strips of cloth are {193} suspended from shrubs and trees, which, for some reason or other, are venerated; and, in Persia at all events, not only are rags, amulets, and other votive offerings found upon the trees, but the trees are also covered with nails.^193.1 At the source of the Jordan, as I am informed by Dr. Robert Munro, there is a tree hung with rags; and indeed such trees are not uncommon throughout Asiatic Turkey. Mohammed is said to have made a pilgrimage to a similar one. At Tyana, in Cappadocia, was a pillar to which persons used to go to nail their fevers.^193.2 With this last may be compared an Athenian legend of Saint John, who is declared to have been a physician especially skilled in the treatment of fevers. Before his death he set up a column and bound under its foundations with silken threads all manner of diseases; fevers with a yellow thread, measles with a red one, and so forth. And he said: “When I die, let whosoever is sick come and tie to this column a silken thread with three knots of the colour that his sickness takes, and say, ‘Dear Saint John, I bind my sickness to the column, and do by thy favour loose it from me,’ and then he will be healed.”^193.3 Neither of these is an ordinary case of transference, however it may look like it at first sight. It falls rather into the category of rags used to bathe a wounded limb and left in the holy well or on the bushes adjacent.

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In Tibet there are numerous heaps of stones erected by wayfarers, to which every one who passes adds, and where he prays. Lamas who come by set up stakes, fastening thereon a bit of silk or other stuff, so that they resemble flags. At the tops of the passes in the mountains between Siam and Burmah are found heaps of stones. Passengers, besides stones, lay down on them flowers and leaves. Among the Mongols heaps of this kind are called obo; and they are said to be all consecrated by Buddhist lamas. Pousselgue describes one on a difficult pass between Urga and Kiachta. A rude image of Buddha was formed of two roughly chiselled blocks. By it stood a large granite urn for the burning of incense; and all around were numbers of stakes covered with offerings of clouts, pieces of paper, prayer-wheels, and even purses and objects of precious metal. Pousselgue’s guide bowed down before the obo and offered up a bit of his fur-robe.^194.1 Nobody who has read Mr. Cooper’s amusing account of his marriage unawares to a girl in Eastern Tibet will forget how, when he got up to the top of a high hill, a little later in the day, with his bride, the lady contributed her quota of stones and prayers at the inevitable cairn, and then insisted, first, that in order to secure their connubial happiness the baggage must be unpacked and a couple of Khatah cloths taken out and fastened by her unwilling bridegroom to the flag-staves, and then that he must prostrate himself in prayer with her. “And there, on the summit of a Tibetan mountain, kneeling before a heap of stones, my hand wet with the tears of a daughter of the country, I muttered curses on the fate that had placed me in such a position.”^194.2 Similarly an English traveller in Ladákh was compelled to gratify the spirits of {195} a certain pass with an offering of the leg of a worn-out pair of nankin trousers.^195.1 Nor is the custom confined to Buddhists. Among the Mrús of the Chittagong Hills every one on reaching the crest of a hill which he is crossing “plucks a fresh young shoot of grass, and places it on a pile of the withered offerings of former journeyers who have gone before.”^195.2

The Karakasses, too, of Eastern Siberia make to the mountains and rivers which they pass offerings of tobacco, a branch of a tree, a strip of a pelisse or some other trifle. The Kamtchadales and Teleouts offer pine-branches, pieces of meat, fish or cheese, packets of hair or horsehair, little furs or ribbons of cloth. The offerings dedicated to a mountain are suspended from a tree on some hill or other conspicuous place. The Tunguz call these trees Nalaktits.^195.3 Erman, the German traveller in Siberia, records having seen in the woods between Churopchinsk and Aruilákhinsk trees, at different points along the road, hung thick with horse-hair. It was an ancient custom of the nomadic Yakuts, he was told, to put tufts of their horses’ hair on these trees, and many of the tufts “had so weather-beaten an appearance, that there could be no doubt of their antiquity.” Every horseman who passed added to them, and the custom was called by a name signifying propitiation for the Spirit of the Woods.^195.4 In the Alazeï Mountains, on the road from Kolymsk to Verkhoiansk, is the tomb of a famous Tchuktchi sorceress. All who pass deposit offerings: on the cross they hang strips of cloth and horsehair; at its foot they lay pieces of meat and fish. {196} He who forgets this act of homage is always punished. The devils cause him to lose his way, his horse breaks a limb, or his sledge is shattered.^196.1 The Kirghiz honour a solitary poplar, said to be the only tree standing between Fort Orsk on the Ural river and the Sea of Aral. It is covered with shreds torn from the clothing of the tribesmen who have worshipped at it. A certain wild plum-tree is also reverenced in the same way. The number of rags and pieces of sheep-skin attached to it is constantly increasing.^196.2 Every traveller from Marco Polo downward speaks of the practice as rife in Central Asia. Many of the Tartars are Mohammedans; and the shrine of every Mohammedan saint is adorned with rams’ horns and with long bits of dirty rag, a pious gift no pilgrim would omit to tie on some adjacent stick or tree.^196.3

Sacred trees covered with clouts hung by votaries, as well as piles of stones cast from the hands of wayfarers, are to be seen everywhere in Corea.^196.4 We are told that “devils”—probably, as in the Tchuktchi superstition, a generic term for spirits—“are supposed to inhabit certain withered trees; and the natives are careful never to pass a devil-tree without throwing a stone at it, or tying a piece of cloth to one of its branches. If they omit to do this, evil, they believe, is sure to come to them and their families.”^196.5 Mr. J. F. Campbell records having found in Japan “strips of cloth, bits of rope, slips of paper, writings, bamboo strings, flags, tags, and prayers hanging from every temple,” and small piles of stones at the foot of every image {197} and memorial-stone, and on every altar by the wayside; and he draws attention to the similarity of the practices implied to those of his native country.^197.1 Another traveller in Japan states that women who desire children go to a certain sacred stone on the holy hill of Nikko, and throw pebbles at it. If they succeed in hitting it their wish is granted. They seem very clever at the game, he says maliciously. Further, the same writer speaks of a seated statue of Buddha in the park of Uyeno at Tokio, on whose knees women flung stones with the same object. Describing a temple elsewhere, he records that the grotesque figures placed at the door were covered—or, as he more accurately puts it, constellated—with pellets of chewed paper shot through the railing that surrounded them by persons who had some wish to be fulfilled. A successful shot implied the probability of the attainment of the shooter’s desire.^197.2 Japanese pilgrims also paste up their cards containing name and address on the doors or pillars of the shrines they visit.^197.3

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In another Asiatic island, Borneo, a tree hung with countless rags is often seen at the cross-ways, and every passenger tears off a piece of his clothing and fastens it on the tree. The natives who practise it can give no other account of the custom than that they fear for their health if they omit it. Dr. Ten Kate lately found twice in the island of Great Bastard under the branches of a large tree a heap of stones whereon fishermen were wont to place rags of red, green or many-coloured calico. In the same way an old tree-trunk, or a stake propped upright with stones, is found here and there in the Egyptian desert adorned with shreds and tatters of clothing; for every pilgrim as he passes adds a rag. Such a tree is a certain ancient tamarisk-tree, called “the Mother of Clouts,” between Dar-el-beida and Suez. In the Mohammedan districts of North Africa trees of this kind are known as Marabout-trees; and it is thought that by tying on one of them a screed from one’s clothing all evil and sickness passes over to the tree, which is generally a crippled, miserable specimen.^198.1

But the custom is not confined in Africa any more than in Asia to Mohammedan districts. The Shilluk on the White Nile derive their origin from an ancestor whom they call Niekam; and from his sacred tree they suspend glass beads and pieces of stuff.^198.2 On the western side of the continent, Mungo Park found a tree in the kingdom of Woolli decorated with innumerable rags or scraps of cloth {199} tied upon its branches at different times by travellers. He conjectures that it was at first intended as an indication that water was to be found not far off; but of this there is no evidence. The custom was, as he says, so greatly sanctioned by time that nobody presumed to pass without hanging up something; and the intrepid explorer himself followed the example. A pool was, in fact, found not far off, as his Negroes predicted.^199.1 A French traveller in the region of the Congo relates with astonishment concerning the n’doké—which he portrays as “fetishes important enough to occupy a special hut, and confided to the care of a sort of priests, who alone are reputed to have the means of making them speak”—that when it is desired to invoke the fetish, one or more pieces of native cloth, and the like, are offered to it or to the fetish-priest; and the worshipper is then admitted to plant a nail in the statue, the priest meanwhile, or the worshipper himself, formulating his prayer or his desires.^199.2 Another French traveller in the watershed of the upper Niger reports the custom of sacrificing animals under sacred trees. The animal when slain is eaten; its head is placed under the tree, or suspended from one of the branches, or laid in a fork. Pottery of various kinds, handles of old agricultural implements, old clothes and calabashes, cow-tails, and so forth, lie around the fetish-tree; and under one such tree he saw a piece of {200} hollow wood propped on forks and filled with grass and other plants.^200.1

In the New World the practice does not seem so common. Darwin, however, notes one instance. On the sandstone plain from which the valley of the Rio Negro has been carved, not far from the town of Patagones, is a solitary tree reverenced by the aborigines as a god by the name of Walleechu. The traveller found it leafless, being winter-time; but from numberless threads were suspended on the branches cigars, bread, meat, pieces of cloth and other things. “Poor Indians,” he says, “not having anything better, only pull a thread out of their ponchos, and fasten it to the tree. Richer Indians are accustomed to pour spirits and maté into a certain hole, and likewise to smoke upwards, thinking thus to afford all possible gratification to Walleechu. To complete the scene, the tree was surrounded by the bleached bones of horses which had been slaughtered as sacrifices. All Indians of every age and sex make their offerings; they then think that their horses will not tire, and that they themselves shall be prosperous.”^200.2

To sum up:—We find widely spread in Europe the practice of throwing pins into sacred wells, or sticking pins or nails into sacred images or trees, or into the wall of a temple, or floor of a church, and—sometimes accompanying this, more usually alone—a practice of tying rags or leaving portions of clothing upon a sacred tree or bush, or a tree or bush overhanging, or adjacent to, a sacred well, or of depositing them in or about the well. The object of this rite is generally the attainment of some wish, or the granting {201} of some prayer, as for a husband, or for recovery from sickness. In the Roman instance it was a solemn religious act, to which (in historical times at least) no definite meaning seems to have been attached; and the last semblance of a religious character has vanished from the analogous performances at Angers and Vienna. In Asia we have the corresponding customs of writing the name on the walls of a temple, suspending some apparently trivial article upon the boughs of a sacred tree, flinging pellets of chewed paper or stones at sacred images, and attaching rags, writings, and other things to the temples, and to trees. Trees are adorned in the same way with rags and other useless things in Africa—a practice not unknown, though rare, in America. On the Congo a nail is driven into an idol in the Breton manner. It cannot be doubted that the purpose and origin of all these customs are identical, and that an explanation of one will explain all.

The most usual explanations are, first, that the articles left are offerings to the god or presiding spirit, and, secondly, that they contain the disease of which one desires to be rid, and transfer it to any one who touches or removes them. These two explanations appear to be mutually exclusive, though Professor Rhys suggests that a distinction is to be drawn between the pins and the rags. The pins, he thinks, may be offerings; and it is noteworthy that in some cases they are replaced by buttons or small coins. The rags, on the other hand, may be, in his view, the vehicles of the disease. If this opinion were correct, one would expect to find both ceremonies performed by the same patient at the same well: he would throw in the pin and also place the rag on the bush, or wherever its proper place might be. The performance of both ceremonies {202} is, however, I think, exceptional. Where the pin or button is dropped into the well, the patient does not trouble about the rag, and vice versâ. Professor Rhys only cites one case to the contrary. There the visit to the well was prescribed as a remedy for warts. Each wart was to be pricked with a pin, and the pin bent and thrown into the well. The warts were then to be rubbed with tufts of wool collected on the way to the well, and the wool was to be put on the first whitethorn the patient could find. As the wind scattered the wool the warts would disappear. Upon this one or two observations may be made. Either the act of affixing the wool bears the meaning assigned in the last chapter to similar practices, or the rite only survives in a degraded form, and originally some definite sacred tree was its object. If the latter, then the rite is here duplicated. For if the pins were really offerings, to be distinguished in character from the deposits of wool, the prescription to touch the warts with them would be meaningless. But we must surely deem that whatever value attached to the rubbing of the warts with wool would equally attach to their pricking with the pins.

Moreover, the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to the rags tied on the bushes at Elian’s Well—namely, that they must be tied on with wool—points further to a degradation of the rite in the case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used, and simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked upon as the essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so continue after the disuse of the rags.

{203}

Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of ceremonial decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags represent entire articles of clothing, which were at an earlier period deposited. There is no need to discuss here the principle of substitution and representation, so familiar to all students of folklore. It is sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost everywhere in a state of decay, the presumption is in favour of entire garments having been originally deposited; and that, in fact, we do find this original form of the rite in the ancient and several of the modern examples I have cited on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. Entire articles of clothing seem also to have been usually left at several Scottish wells in quite recent times. Such was a chalybeate spring in the parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was invoked not only for human beings but for cattle, the tribute consisted of “part of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness of the cattle.”^203.1 If we may trust the slovenly compilation of Mr. R. C. Hope on the holy wells of Scotland, a traveller in 1798, from whom he professes to quote, but whom he neither names nor identifies, relates of the Holy Pool of Strathfillan in Perthshire, that “each person gathers up nine stones in the pool, and after bathing, walks to a hill near the water, where there are three cairns, round each of which he performs three turns, at each turn depositing a stone; and if it is for any bodily pain, fractured limb, or sore, that they are bathing, they throw upon one of those cairns that part of their clothing which covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds upon, and make it into paste with {204} these waters, and afterwards give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, night-caps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their halfpence.”^204.1 From this account it appears that stones from the pool, rags, garments which had covered the diseased parts of the devotees, and halfpence, had all the same value. The stones could not have been offerings, and it was evidently not usual to throw away halfpence. The gifts of rags and articles of clothing are ambiguous. If we must choose between regarding them as offerings and as vehicles of disease, the analogy of the gifts at the shrine of Saint Michel-la-Rivière favours the former. Under ecclesiastical patronage, however, the rite had doubtless been manipulated to the benefit of the officials; and we can use the instance no further than as proof that the deposit of garments was ambiguous enough to develop sometimes into pious gifts, if it developed at other times into devices for the shuffling of disease off the patient on another person.^204.2

Cairns have already been mentioned as occurring in {205} Buddhist lands, where we found an apparent equality in the offerings of stones and of other things at these sacred places, just as at Strathfillan. But the custom of erecting piles of stones is so ancient and widespread, that it may be worth while looking at it a little more closely before proceeding with our inquiry. Dr. Andree, whose ethnographical collections have furnished me with many examples for the present chapter, has brought together a large number of instances of cairns from all quarters of the globe. They resolve themselves, on examination, into three classes.

First are those to which no additions are made and where no rites are performed. Of such it may be said broadly that they only exist where the original purpose of the cairn has been forgotten, and probably the race that erected it has passed away. Of this kind was the cairn at Gilead, said to have been erected by Jacob and Laban on the scene of their final reconciliation and parting.^205.1 It is hardly necessary to say that there is nothing worthy of being called evidence in favour of the tradition preserved in Genesis. We may conjecture that it was a place held sacred by the predecessors of the conquering Hebrews. If the Batoka were not in the habit of adding to the pile {206} mentioned by Livingstone, that pile must be set down as belonging to the same class. They declared it was made by their forefathers by way of protest against the wrong done them by another tribe not named, as an alternative to fighting.^206.1 The omission of the name of the offending tribe is an index to their forgetfulness of the real object of the cairn. Such, too, were the small heaps of stones found by Darwin on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas in Uruguay. The Indians are extirpated from the district, and nobody knows the purpose for which the heaps were erected.^206.2

Another kind of cairn is that which is piled over the place where death, especially a violent death, has been suffered. To this every wayfarer makes his contribution; and doubtless originally the dead body lay beneath the mass. The most familiar instances are the cairns raised over Achan and Absalom.^206.3 The custom, however, is by no means confined to the Hebrews, or to the Semitic race; and in districts where stones are few, branches and pieces of wood are piled. Thus, near Leipzig is a heap of boughs to which every passenger adds three. Elsewhere in Germany, in Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, Lesbos, Armenia, the upper valley of the Nile, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Venezuela, the valley of the Plate, and Patagonia, similar piles are recorded, as well as among the Bushmen and Amakosa of South Africa. The Bushmen are reported to declare that the Devil is buried under these heaps; and every Bushman throws a stone as he passes, that Satan may not rise again. In case of sickness, pilgrimages are made to them and prayers for help {207} offered.^207.1 The various graves of Heitsi-eibib, or Tsuni-ǁgoam, the ancestor-god of the Khoi-khoi, are marked by cairns on which every one who passes by flings a stone or twig. Sometimes the offering is a piece of the wayfarer’s clothes, flowers or zebra-dung. A prayer for success is muttered if the wayfarer be hunting; and occasionally even honey and honey-beer are offered.^207.2 These graves are, in fact, shrines of worship. And it is noteworthy that the gifts to the divinity are in general of no value in themselves, and that prominent among them are the stones and branches which are thrown, in other parts of the world, upon grave-cairns to which no other act of worship is now offered.

The third class of cairns consists of such as are erected on spots which for any reason are recognised as sacred. To this class belong the obo of Tibet. In Buddhist lands cairns are to be seen on the top of every pass and almost of every mountain. Frequently they are adorned with prayer-streamers and bones of sheep; and flat stones inscribed with the formula Om mani padme hum are laid upon them by worshippers. Passengers constantly add to the pile rough stones which they have picked up in climbing the ascent. In India cairns, especially cairns of Kankar, or calcareous limestone, to which every one adds, are not uncommon. Such is the shrine of Anktaha Bir, the hero of the Kankar-heap, in the village of Niámatpur.^207.3 {208} Among the Dyaks of Batang Lupar the heaps are said to be erected in memory of great liars. Stones and branches are thrown upon them; and after the liar’s name has been long forgotten the heap remains. In the Caucasus the mountain-tops are sacred to the prophet Elijah (who, there is little reason to doubt, has succeeded to an ancient thunder-god) or to some other saint. Perilous places and places struck by lightning are marked by cairns. At the latter a pole is stuck up from which a black goat-skin flies. Around a certain rock in the Sinaitic peninsula Professor Palmer found small heaps of stones, said to have been first erected by the Israelites in memory of the water obtained from that very rock by Moses. The Arabs retain the practice in hopes of propitiating the great lawgiver. If any of them have a sick friend, he throws a stone in his name, and in the expectation of his speedy recovery. In Arabia, indeed, heaps of this kind are often to be seen, some of them of enormous size. In South America the passes of the Cordilleras are marked by cairns originally built before the Conquest. To this day the Indians fling stones upon them, or lay there a little offering of fresh coca-leaves, or spit upon them the coca-quids they have been chewing. Sometimes they stand and pull out a few of their eyebrow-hairs, blowing them in the direction of the sun—an ancient rite recorded by the Spanish conquerors among their observations of the Peruvian cult. In North America piles of stones are often mentioned, to which every traveller is accustomed to add. The old inhabitants of Nicaragua threw stones and grass upon them, believing themselves thereby to be freed from hunger and fatigue. In Europe, Saint Wolfgang’s chapel and well are renowned among the shrines of the Salzkammergut. Up the steep {209} stony path on either side pilgrims carry to the sacred spot heavy stones, which now lie there in heaps. The story goes that when enough have been gathered, the saint will build himself a new and larger church; but this is, of course, a modern theory to account for the practice.^209.1 In the Aran Islands, though we are not told of any such piles, “numerous rounded pebbles are placed on the well and on the altar of St. Columb Kill.”^209.2 On the island of Iniskill, off the coast of Donegal, on the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage where the last of the “stations” performed by the pilgrims is a rough pile of stones, formerly the altar of a now ruined church. On the top of the pile is laid a flat stone, through which a circular hole about three inches in diameter has been bored. In this hole Mr. Borlase found shreds of coloured stuff (doubtless from their own clothes), rosaries and bronze medals, put there by devotees.^209.3 Lastly, it may be mentioned that, among the Basuto, heaps of stones are to be found by the wayside near a village, to which every traveller adds a pebble, on which he has first spit.^209.4

Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places {210} are sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who must always be propitiated—all the more if they have died in a manner unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an earlier part of the present chapter. Alike—and this is a point of cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices—the gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be, it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed, by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from his mouth. The Landnámabók mentions an early settler of Iceland named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into it all remnants had to be thrown.^210.1 This was not a mere paltry economy of worship; for we are told {211} he was “a great blót-man,” in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity; and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.

With the practices at cairns in our mind, then, let us return to the customs at wells and trees.

M. Monseur, fixing his attention on instances like those of the Croix Saint Zè and Saint Guirec, in which pins or nails were stuck into the cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, suggests that the aim was, by causing pain or inconvenience to the object of worship, to keep in his memory the worshipper’s prayer. And he refers, by way of illustration, to the tortures inflicted on children at the beating of boundaries, and to the flogging said to have been given to children in Lorraine on the occasion of a capital punishment, the intention of which incontestably was to preserve a recollection of the place or the incident.^211.1 M. Gaidoz, dealing with similar cases, and similar cases only, propounded years ago a theory somewhat different. In replying recently to M. Monseur, he recalls his previous exposition, and reiterates it in these words: “The idol is a god who always appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and, peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time a memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the member corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is directed to the prayer. And more than that is done in leaving a nail or a pin in its body, {212} for this is a material memento for the idol.” In putting it in this way, the learned professor does not desire to exclude the ideas of an offering and a transfer of disease, for he expressly adds that both these ideas are mingled with that of a memento.^212.1

Let us take stock of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to a satisfactory solution of the problem. It must be equally applicable to sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns and temples. It must account not merely for the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but also for the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and coca-quids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese temples, the pilgrims’ names written on the walls of the temple of Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors of Protestant churches in Eastern France. These are the outcome of equivalent practices, and the solution of their meaning, if a true one, must fit them all. M. Gaidoz’ suggestion of a memento comes nearer to this ideal than any other hitherto put forward. But does it touch cases like those of the Lapalud, the Stock im Eisen, and the Cella Jovis, where the rite was unaccompanied by any prayer? The two former cases, indeed, if they stood alone, might be deemed worn and degraded relics of a rite once gracious with adoration, prayer and thanksgiving. But nothing of the sort accompanied the driving of a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter, nor, so far as we can learn, the yet older custom observed by the Etruscans at Vulsinii, of {213} sticking a nail every year in the temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess. On the contrary, in both these classical instances the rite was so bare and so ill-understood, that it was looked upon merely as an annual register or record. Almost as little does M. Gaidoz’ explanation seem to fit the throwing of pins into a well, the burial of a coin, as in Mecklenburgh, under a tree, or the marriage-nails of Montbéliard. Like M. Monseur’s theory, it is applicable in its full significance only to examples of the rite as practised on statues; and it assumes that trees and crosses and other rude forms are mere makeshifts for the carven image, deteriorated survivals of idols strictly so called.^213.1 But this is to put the cart before the horse. There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to {214} suppose exactly the reverse. And in this connection it is significant that neither at Rome nor at Vulsinii (the earliest examples we have in point of time) were the nails fastened into the image, but into the temple wall.

I believe that a profounder thought forms the common ground in which all the customs under consideration—or, as I should prefer to say, all the variations of a single custom—are rooted. They are simply another application of the reasoning that underlies the practices of witchcraft and folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters. If an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart, even if not covered with my blood, has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215} represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I may become permanently united with the god.

This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. Of course, it cannot be denied that there are instances, like some of the Japanese and Breton cases, where, the real object of the rite having been forgotten, the practice has become to a slight extent deflected from its earlier form. But it is not difficult to trace the steps whereby the idea and practice of divination became substituted for that of union with the object of devotion. Still less can it be denied that, where the practice has not been deflected, the real intention has in most places been obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us everywhere, and will mislead no one who understands that the real meaning is not what the people who practise a rite say about it, but that which emerges from a comparison of analogous observances.

A few other customs remain to be considered. Prominent among these is a rite well known to all students of classical antiquity—that of the consecration of locks of hair at various shrines. It was usually performed in consequence of a vow made by the parents at birth. The actual ceremony took place on arriving at manhood or womanhood. A lock of the hair and of the sprouting beard of the youth, a tress from the maiden’s head, was cut off and presented {216} to the god; and in Greece the youth then received the clothing of an ephebos and was admitted to such of the privileges of a free citizen as his age entitled him. The dedication of the hair was regarded as a symbol of that of the entire person. And this dedication was extended to other occasions, such as before marriage, before and after childbed, or at the time of making or fulfilling a vow. Pausanias mentions a statue of Hygeia hardly to be seen, by reason partly of the hair cut off by women and bound or placed upon it.^216.1 On the death of one very dear, a lock of the survivor’s hair was frequently cut off and placed in the corpse’s hand or upon the grave, as Herakles did to Sostratos, and Achilles to Patroklos. So Death was said to cut off the hair of those who were about to die. Euripides represents him as declaring:

Graves and sacred trees were favourite places for the deposit of the hair. Beneath the olive which grew upon the tomb of Hyperoche and Laodike, in the entrance of the sanctuary of Artemis at Delos, epheboi laid the first fruits of their beards, and bridal pairs their hair. At Megara was the grave of the virgin Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous. Brides there performed funeral rites, before the wedding ceremony, and cut off their hair. The Roman Vestals, on attaining womanhood, consecrated to Juno Lucina and {217} hung upon her tree, which was older than the temple, the locks of their hair; whence it was called the arbor capillata. At the completion of the mysteries of Cybele the votaries dedicated locks of their hair at the door of her temple; and in the same way the Bacchic votaries, when their mysteries were finished, dedicated their locks at sacred pine-trees. In this connection, too, we may remember that the Flamen Dialis buried the clippings of his hair and nails beneath a lucky tree.^217.1

The usage also extended to the Hebrews. It is referred to in the legislation on vows and on mourning; and many examples are familiar to us in the Bible, from Samson and Job to the Apostle Paul. The ancient Arabs and Egyptians also on similar occasions cut or shaved their hair.^217.2 Nor was it confined to ancient times. In the seventeenth century the Serbs used to cut their hair and bind it on the grave of a dead relative; and among the Albanians the sisters, daughters-in-law, grown-up daughters and wife of a dead man are said still to cut their hair in token of grief. The mourning women at Lecce in Apulia pluck out their hair and strew it on the corpse.^217.3 Zingerle quotes from an old manuscript in the Franciscan monastery at Botzen in the Tirol a superstition which directs the hair of a sick man to be cut off, rolled in wax and afterwards offered at some sacred shrine.^217.4 A story is told in the province of Posen of the daughter of a day-labourer who was sick and given up by the physician. She begged her parents, as they stood by her bed plunged in helpless grief, {218} to cut off her hair and lay it upon the crucifix in the convent at Exin. This was done, and she recovered; and, marvellous to state, the hair grew upon the head of the crucifix until it reached the ground, to the gratification of the pious from all parts of the province.^218.1 At Flastroff, in Lorraine, sick or vicious horses are taken in pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Elias on the 25th June. After mass, at which the owners of the animals are present, the horses are paraded round the outside of the chapel. A handful of hairs from the tail of each of them is deposited on the steps of the altar, sometimes accompanied by a gift of money; and the owner takes away a cupful of holy water, made for the purpose, in order to mix it with the animal’s drink. The custom of taking the horses themselves is now disappearing. The owners, instead, take their handfuls of horsehair, make the tour of the altar after mass to kiss the relic of the saint, and deposit the offerings of hair in a niche in the wall of the apse on the left side of the altar. And this has probably been found equally efficacious.^218.2

In some districts of the Abruzzi there is yet practised a rite that seems to be a survival of an ancient act of worship such as I have just referred to. Two or more girls who are desirous of swearing eternal friendship of the most sacred kind join hands in a church and compass the altar three times. They afterwards exchange kisses; and each of them, pulling out a hair, hides it in some hole or dark recess of the building. One of them then, standing in {219} front of the altar, lifts her hand as if to count her companions, and solemnly chants verses, the import of which is to pronounce them henceforth gossips, spiritual kindred, entitled to share one another’s food, and further to invoke blessing or ban, according as either of them shall fulfil or neglect the duties of the relationship.^219.1 Reginald Scot, apparently quoting Martin of Arles and speaking of the Spaniards, mentions that “maids forsooth hang some of their haire before the image of S. Urbane, bicause they would have the rest of their haire grow long and be yellow.”^219.2 Pettigrew cites Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall as authorities for the statement that pilgrims to Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, a sacred well dedicated to Saints Quan and Brogawn, after performing certain circuits and reciting prayers, go thrice round a tree on their bare knees and then cut off locks of their hair and tie them on the branches as a specific against headache. The tree, we are told, was an object of veneration and was covered with human hair.^219.3 So at the two Hungarian fountains already mentioned clothes and hair from the patients’ heads are left on adjacent trees “as gifts for the water-spirit.”^219.4 In Turkey among the Greek Christians three tiny locks are cut, if they can be found on a baby’s head at his baptism, and thrown into the font in the name of the Trinity; and the font is afterwards emptied into a pit or well under the floor of the church.^219.5

Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few examples, and must content myself {220} with referring the reader for others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to sticks over the graves of females.^220.1 And Olearius, who was in Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr. Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.^220.2 When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of his successor and offering them to his manes.^220.3 At the junction of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage, Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the stream.^220.4 The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.^220.5 Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the crater.^220.6 About Lake Nyassa, {221} in East Central Africa, one of the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the bush.^221.1 On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath is administered by the fetish-priest. His bossum, or fetish, consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath, he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel, rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker, and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the vessel.^221.2 The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging them upon the dead body;^221.3 and in various parts of America widows are required to shave or cut their hair.^221.4 Indeed, haircutting or shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, {222} it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when

It was not, however, always possible or convenient to do this; and it has consequently been dispensed with until the purpose has been forgotten.

These practices all explain themselves in the same way. The dedication of the hair at a temple, or the placing of it in the hand of a corpse, or on the grave, effects union with the divinity, or with the departed friend. The tress is more than a symbol of devotion; it is more than a gage of fidelity. The owner of the head whence it has been taken, and the holder of the severed lock are in actual, though invisible, union. This accounts for the efficacy of the practice in healing disease: this accounts for its value as a guard of fidelity to an oath. In the last chapter we saw that not only hair but nail-parings, teeth and other things previously part of the patient, or in contact with him, were plugged into trees, or hung from their branches, for the purpose of uniting him with a living healthy body, which was believed to react upon him. Much more powerful would be the action of an object regarded as the abode of a supernatural being, even if only a departed friend,—or rather, {223} the action of the supernatural being himself, thus linked through that object with his worshipper, patient or friend. Abruzzian girls put themselves in the hands of the saint when they hide their hairs in his sanctuary, and doubtless feel abundantly satisfied that he will perform the blessing or the ban they invoke upon themselves in their rustic ritual. We had occasion in the last chapter to consider the disposal of the hair when ceremonially cut off. It will be recollected that the Grihya-Sûtra of Hiranyakesin directs the clippings of hair, beard and nails, made up into a lump with bull’s dung, to be buried in a cow-stable, or near an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. It is true that the words accompanying the act of burial were: “Thus I hide the sin of N. N.” These words were probably not primitive, for the real intention of the rite is revealed by the places prescribed for the burial. Had it been meant simply to hide the lump of dung and hair, any secret place would have sufficed. But the cow-stable, the Udumbara-tree and the Darbha-grass were all sacred; and the object of placing these clippings of the person in, or adjacent to, them must have been that the man from whom the clippings had been taken might be blessed by the hallowed influences which would surround those portions of himself, severed indeed to outward appearance, but still subtly connected with his frame. So also something more than a desire for safety leads the sponsors of the Japanese boy to deposit his forelock on the family shrine. And when the Omaha children received the tonsure, the first-fruits (if I may so call them) of their heads, wrapped in the sacred buffalo-hide, not merely secured the heads themselves from harm, but kept them in a perpetual environment of positive good. For the same reason in Tahiti the {224} child’s navel-string was buried in the marae, or temple.^224.1 In Mecklenburgh and Thuringia the navel-string, or a piece of it, is taken by the mother to her churching and laid down behind the altar or elsewhere in the church. This will keep the child continually surrounded with such holy influences that he will grow up god-fearing and pious. If, on the other hand, it be left in a shop, he will—at least in Thuringia—become courteous and clever in business.^224.2

Again. Athenian women who for the first time became pregnant used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. So the Spanish women tied their girdles or shoe-latchets about one of the church-bells, and struck the bell thrice.^224.3 In the French department of Côtes-du-Nord, to cure a certain childish disease the infant’s cap is placed at the foot of the statue of St. Méen in the church of Plaine-Haute.^224.4 Among the French superstitions enumerated by Thiers is that of passing a child afflicted with Saint Giles’ sickness through his father’s shirt, and carrying the shirt afterwards—not the child—to Saint Giles’ altar, as a means of cure.^224.5 European settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measure a child for a disease called “the Go-backs” with a yarn string; and having by this means diagnosed the disease they hang the string on the hinge of a gate in the premises of the infant’s parents, believing that the disease will die away with the decay of the string.^224.6 They have no local shrines.

{225}

The converse case of measurement as a method of conveying the divine effluence was a favourite during the Middle Ages, and is still practised in Roman Catholic countries. It consisted in measuring with a string or fillet the body of a saint, and passing the string afterwards round the patient. Many miracles performed in this way were attributed to Simon de Montfort. Pope Clement VIII. is said to have given his sanction to a similar measurement purporting to be the “true and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” found in the Holy Sepulchre. Copies of this measurement were current in Germany up to a comparatively late date.^225.1 By an application of the same reasoning it seems to have been believed up to the seventeenth century in this country that, to measure a living person with a rope which had been used in a prescribed manner to measure a corpse, was to inflict misfortune and misery.^225.2 The object specially in view of the Athenian women was attained in Germany towards the end of the Middle Ages by measuring a wick by Saint Sixtus’ image, and wearing it as a girdle.^225.3 In Japan it is enough to wear, inside the sash, a coloured strip made in imitation of a temple-flag.^225.4 The underlying thought in these cases is the same as that of the Breton girdles of Notre Dame de Délivrance, mentioned in a previous chapter. And so far is the practice carried in China that a woman who wishes to bear children will borrow {226} on certain days in the year from the temple of the goddess of children one of the votive shoes offered there, and, taking it home, will pay it the same honours as to the goddess herself; while another woman will take a flower from the hands of the sacred image, or from a vase beside it, and wear it in her hair.^226.1 Saint Francis’ girdle and other “blessed girdles” were formerly worn in Europe for the purpose of facilitating delivery, and for healing various diseases.^226.2 And still in Mexico the measure of the head of an image of Saint Francis at Magdalena is sovran for headache, the measurement of his waist for diseases of the abdomen, and so on of other parts.^226.3

In Poitou sick children are taken to the shrine of Saint Roch at Saint-Rémy, to embrace the Saint’s image. But because it is so horribly ugly, many children turn away with cries of fright. The parents then content themselves with passing a handkerchief over the statue, and afterwards wiping with it the child’s face and hands.^226.4 Among the Basuto, travellers on entering a strange country seek to render the indigenous gods propitious to them by rubbing their foreheads with a little of the dust which they collect on the road, or by making a girdle of the grass.^226.5 Newcomers to places lying on the river Körös, in Hungary, used to {227} be dipped in the water as a sort of baptism.^227.1 Many wells in Ireland are called by the name of Saint Patrick. In the seventeenth century it seems to have been a common belief among the Irish that a stranger who drank at any of these wells would never after forsake the country, or if he left it he would be sure to return thither.^227.2 At Rome an old superstition, incidentally noticed in the last chapter, prescribes for those who desire to return to the city to drink a little of the Fountain of Trevi and to throw a small offering in the shape of a coin into the basin. And with a little earth from the churchyard of Applecross, in Ross-shire, where Saint Maelrubha is buried, a man may fare the world round and safely come back to the neighbouring bay.^227.3 Among the North American tribes, figures of sacred animals and gods are drawn in coloured sand on the floor of the medicine-lodge. The patient is rubbed with the dust composing the figures. Applied to dying men, as a Roman Catholic Indian piously told Captain Bourke, it corresponds to Extreme Unction.^227.4 Those who doubt whether it be equally efficient may be recommended {228} to try both. At any rate the parallel is instructive; for in all these cases a substance which has been hallowed by contact with the divinity, or with his shrine, brought afterwards into contact with the devotee and patient, sets up union between the worshipper and his god; a portion of the sacred earth or water in contact with the traveller or votary, or united with his person, unites him with the remainder in such a bond that he is infallibly brought back to it, or else he is endowed with all the blessings that could be conferred by the touch of the entirety.

Our examination of the practices of throwing pins into wells, of tying rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, of throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the analogous practices throughout the world, leads to the conclusion that they are to be interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified with well, with tree, or stock, or cairn. In course of time, as the real intention of the rite has been forgotten, it has been resorted to (in Christian countries at least) chiefly for the cure of diseases, and the meaning has been overlaid by the idea of the transfer of the disease. This idea belongs to the same category as that of the union by means of the nail or the rag with divinity, but apparently to a somewhat later stratum of thought. Since the spread of Christianity the reason for the sacredness of many trees or wells has passed from memory; and it has consequently been natural to substitute any tree or any well for a particular one. The substitution has favoured the idea of transfer of disease, which has thus become the ordinary intention of the rite in later times.^228.1

{229}

But I cannot close this inquiry without referring to one or two other ceremonies not quite so easily deciphered. The first is reported by a German writer whose authority for the statement I have been unable to trace. He says it is the custom in Wales for a bride and bridegroom to go and lie down beside a well or fountain and throw in pins as a pledge of the new relation into which they have entered. And he adds that in clearing out an old Roman well in the Isle of Wight, about the year 1840, some bushels of ancient British pins for the clothes were found.^229.1 Whether or not the British pins are to be connected with the alleged custom in Wales, it is difficult to account for a collection of pins in such a situation except upon the supposition that they were purposely thrown into the well. As in the case of the pins found in the Meuse and the Sambre, however, we can only guess at the reason that brought them there. If the alleged Welsh rite be correctly described, no prayer is offered. Could we find an early shape of it, we should probably recognise a solemn consecration of the one spouse to the domestic divinity of the other—a ritual reception into the kin. The analogy with the marriage custom of the Montbéliard Protestants is obvious. An instance in which the same analogy lies even more on the surface is a ceremony in use among the Mohammedan tribes of Daghestan. Imperfectly civilised, they are still organised in gentes, each of which derives its origin from a mythical ancestor. But it is possible for a man to break with his gens, if he desire to do so. The desire must be expressed solemnly and publicly at a meeting in the mosque; and {230} he must announce that every tie is broken between himself and his touchoum, or clan. By way of memorial a nail is then driven into one of the walls of the mosque.^230.1 It seems to be unnecessary now to enter another clan in place of the one renounced; and the words employed express no more than the detestatio sacrorum, or renunciation. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, this could only have been half the original ceremony. It must once have been followed by admission into another kin, for no one would be content to be a kinless man. The ceremony now takes place in a mosque. Before the conversion to Islam it must have taken place in the hut or temple where the totem or ancestor-god of the new kin was worshipped. And the driving of the nail into the wall of the mosque may be imagined to be the only remaining relic of the rite of admission into the new gens and of initiation into its cult. If this be so, it probably expressed and effected the neophyte’s union with the divinity into whose kin and worship he was entering.

Assuming this conjecture to be correct, we may go a step further. To anticipate again what I shall have to explain more fully hereafter, the union with the totem-god would have to be renewed at intervals. Some such intention perhaps governed the rite at Reggio Emilia, in Italy, which is now called “burying the old year.” At midnight of the last day of the year the head of the household goes into the courtyard of his house and thrusts into the ground a stake.^230.2 Turning back to Wales, at Gumfreston, in Pembrokeshire, there is a holy well to which the villagers {231} used to repair on Easter Day, when each of them would throw a crooked pin into the water. This was called “throwing Lent away.”^231.1 On the same day at Bradwell, in Derbyshire, it was the practice for children to drop pins into the various wells in the town. A fairy was said to preside over each well, and to know whether a child had deposited a pin in her well, or not. On Easter Monday every child carried a bottle of sweetmeats all day long; and if a bottle were broken, it was because the child had forgotten to drop a pin into one of the wells, “the fairy of the well being the protector of the bottle.”^231.2 I need hardly pause on the proof, which the comparison of these rites affords, of the absolute ritual equivalence of throwing pins into a holy well and driving a stake, or a nail, into the ground, or into a wall. Nor—even apart from the evidence of the custom at Bradwell, which is obviously much degraded—can it be necessary to insist on the improbability that anything would be thrown into a holy well with the idea of simply getting rid of it. The pins must have been intended, as elsewhere, to unite the thrower with the god. And the custom may accordingly be supposed to be a periodical renewal of union with the divinity, removed under Christian influences from the day of the pagan festival (perhaps May-day) to the nearest great feast-day of the Church. In the same way the Italian peasant in planting a stake in his courtyard—doubtless in the centre of his dwelling—would be renewing his union with his household god, and emphatically asserting once more his ownership of the house and his headship of the household.

{232}

Thus far, in pursuing our investigations into the significance of the Life-token, we have arrived at the conclusion that the reason of the mysterious sympathy between the hero and an object external to himself is not merely that, actually or by imputation, the Life-token has been part of his substance, but further that, notwithstanding severance, it is still in unapparent but real connection with him, and consequently any mischance he may suffer will be felt by the Life-token and reflected in its condition. The converse is also true. Any portion, actual or imputed, of the hero’s substance, detached from him in appearance, continues in effect so united to him that injury to it will redound to his injury and perhaps to his death. The Life-token and the External Soul are thus equivalent; and they are equivalent not merely in story, but also, and first of all, in human customs and belief.

Moreover, the possibility of evil implies the contrary possibility of good being received by a man through severed pieces of himself. This belief has led to the practices we have considered in our last two chapters. Whether for the healing of a specific disease, or for the more general {233} purpose of promoting his wellbeing, anything which has once been his, as a scrap of his body, his excrements or his clothing, or which has simply been in contact, though only for a moment, with him, is subjected to influences held to be beneficial, with the expectation that they will in this way act upon him. The belief and the practices it has engendered have thus to our eyes a double aspect, physical and spiritual. But we must not forget that everywhere in the earliest times, and among the lowest races even yet—nay, the limitation need not be by any means so strict—among peoples in all but the highest state of civilisation, no substantive distinction is drawn between the physical and the spiritual. The abstract entity we call a soul has no existence for them: it is a philosophical speculation, whereof they have no conception. The soul, to them, is but another body which quits at times in life this visible frame, as a man quits his dwelling, on errands of business or pleasure, and forsakes it finally at death, as a corpse is carried out of doors. It is but a fragment of the man. It may take a fresh form, become a new whole, new but the same; for it will differ only in form, if indeed it will differ so much as in form. And the conception of divinity current in the lower culture corresponds with that of the soul. The god is precisely “a magnified, non-natural man,” though not always in human shape, corporeal and subject to all corporeal wants and infirmities, but endowed with potencies and privileges far beyond those of ordinary men: potencies and privileges, however, the like of which are attained sometimes with much fasting and striving and patience by the greatest shamans. This corporeal nature of the god enables man to enter into communion with him, to put and keep himself in touch with him, to become {234} united with him. In the last chapter we considered some methods whereby this may be done. Some other methods remain to be mentioned; but it will be needless to discuss them at length, because they have not long ago been made the subject of a brilliant exposition by the late Professor Robertson Smith, to which little or nothing can be added.

What seems, however, desirable for the purpose of completing our view of the Life-token and the ideas connected with it, is to turn our attention to some points in the social organisation of savage races, and their survivals in societies, like our own, which have long been organised on principles of a wholly different character. To these points the next four chapters will be devoted. But the organisation of archaic communities is bound up with their tribal worship. It is accordingly necessary to have distinctly before our minds the relation of the tribe to its god, and some at least of the usages expressive of that relation. I shall therefore begin by summarising the results of Professor Robertson Smith’s examination of Semitic institutions, as far as they are relevant to our present inquiry, contributing only a few further illustrations drawn from the usages of nations outside the Semitic sphere.

At a certain period in the evolution of human institutions men are organised in kindreds, called clans or gentes, deriving descent and reckoning kinship exclusively through the mother. As a matter of fact, hardly anywhere throughout the world is this organisation found in an absolutely unadulterated condition; for it seems to have constantly tended to pass over into an organisation where the kinship was reckoned exclusively through the father. But in almost all parts of the world many existing institutions, and institutions described, or incidentally mentioned, by {235} writers ancient and modern, can only be accounted for by postulating the former existence of a system of kinship reckoned exclusively through females. The kindred or clan thus formed believes itself to be descended from a totem, or ancestor to whom honours are paid of a kind for which we have no other word than divine—a word, however, implying a more exalted conception than any to which the clan has yet attained. The totem is not in human shape. Very generally it is an animal, sometimes a tree or other vegetable, occasionally an inanimate object, such as the sun, the earth, wind, salt, or even the rain or thunder. For the savage believes in metamorphosis. We have already investigated at some length this belief, in so far as it relates to changes effected by death and birth. But it is by no means confined to these. Broadly speaking, every object in the universe is regarded as alive; and every object is capable of changing its shape without losing its identity. Death is merely one way of doing so. To the savage, therefore, there is no difficulty in believing that his ancestor is a turtle or a pine-tree, for he knows no distinction between animal and vegetable, between genus and genus. Nay, he will even hold with as little difficulty that the same ancestor is both a turtle and a pine-tree, and will worship him now under the one, and now under the other, form.

The clan bears a representation of the totem as its symbol or crest; is usually called after its name; and the individual members dress and adorn themselves to resemble it in their persons. It is forbidden to kill, injure or treat with disrespect any animal or vegetable of the species to which the totem belongs, for they are all akin. But, at least when an animal, it is customary at stated times to {236} slay and eat it in solemn festival wherein all the kin join.

The home of the clan is the home of its god; and wherever a society has passed beyond the nomadic stage it will be found to have a definite place consecrated to social reunion and worship. There the totem-god is represented by an idol of some kind—ordinarily, in an archaic stage of civilisation, by a post or a rough stone. This is his dwelling-place, or the embodiment he chooses for the convenience of his worshippers,—the god himself. Later, it becomes by degrees a simulacrum, a piece of sculpture, until, in the most elevated form to which paganism has attained, we arrive at masterpieces like those of Phidias.

The stone god is also at first the altar. There the totem-beast is slain, some of its blood is dashed upon the stone, and around it the rest of the blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten by the clansmen. This is probably the primitive form of sacrifice. It is not a gift to the god, but a sacrament in which the whole kin—the god with his clansmen—unites. In partaking of it each member of the kin testifies and renews his union with the rest. The god himself is eaten, and yet he is at the same time embodied in the sacred stone. Archaic thought sees no contradiction in this. Our inquiries into the Life-token have already shown that a man is separable into portions. The savage conception of life permits of its division without destroying its existence or its essential unity. Not only, therefore, is the totem himself divisible: the kin, including the totem-god in every one of his forms, is regarded as one entire life, one body, whereof each unit is literally a member, a limb. The same blood runs through them all; and elsewhere, as among the Hebrews, “the blood is the life.” Literally {237} they may not be all descended from a common ancestry. Descent is the normal, the typical, cause of kinship and a common blood. It is the legal presupposition, a presumption not to be rebutted. But kinship may also be acquired; and when it is once acquired by a stranger he ranks thenceforth for all purposes as one descended from the common ancestor. In a state of society organised on the lines of kinship this is an important matter. A man who is not of the kin is a stranger; and a stranger is a foe. The kinless man has no rights, no protection: he is an outlaw. His hand is against every man’s, and every man’s hand against him. To acquire kinship, the blood of the candidate for admission into the kin must be mingled with that of the kin. In this way he enters into the brotherhood, is reckoned as of the same stock, obtains the full privileges of a kinsman.

The mingling of blood—the Blood-covenant as it is called—is a simple though repulsive ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be made in the neophyte’s arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of the clansmen, upon whom the operation is repeated in turn by the neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless variations. Sometimes the blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with water or wine. Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the blood. Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, so that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared upon them both. Among the Kayans of Borneo the drops are allowed to fall upon a cigarette, which is then lighted and smoked alternately by both parties. But, {238} whatever may be the exact form adopted, the essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the Scythians, the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the Medes. Many passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians are full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered into the bond, which means for us that it was customary among the Norsemen—as we know, in fact, from other sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of his day. It is described in the Gesta Romanorum. It is related of the Huns or Magyars, and of the mediæval Roumanians. Joinville ascribes it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth century, found it there. In modern times every African traveller mentions it; and most of them have had to undergo the ceremony. In the neighbouring island of Madagascar, it is well known. All over the Eastern Archipelago, in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the wild tribes of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the Bedouins, and among the autochthonous peoples of North and South America, the rite is, or has been quite recently, in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in Europe by the Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the Abruzzi. The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken up a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in this way. Most savage peoples require their youths at the age of puberty to submit to a ceremony which admits them into the brotherhood of the grown men, and into all the rights {239} and privileges of the tribe. Of this ceremony the blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is also, either actually, or by symbol which represents an act once literally performed, in the initiation-rite not only of the Mala Vita, but of almost all secret societies, both civilised and uncivilised. In the French department of Aube, when a child bleeds, he puts a little of his blood on the face or hands of one of his playfellows, and says to him: “Thou shalt be my cousin.” In like manner in New England, when a school-girl, not many years since, pricked her finger so that the blood came, one of her companions would say: “Oh, let me suck the blood; then we shall be friends.”^239.1

That the blood-covenant, whereby blood-brotherhood is assumed, is not a primæval rite, is obvious from its artificial character. It has its basis in ideas which must have been pre-existent, and which I have endeavoured to make clear in this and the foregoing chapters. At the same time its barbarism, and the wide area over which it is spread, point with equal certainty to its early evolution, and to the fact that it is in unison with conceptions essentially and universally human. Even among races like the Polynesians and the Turanian inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, where the rite itself may not be recorded, there {240} are, as we shall hereafter see, unmistakable traces of its influence on their customs.

As Society evolved, the clan-system gradually broke up over large tracts of the earth’s surface. In the same measure as the clan relaxed its hold upon the individual members, blood-brotherhood assumed a personal aspect, until, having no longer any social force, it came to be regarded as merely the most solemn and binding form of covenant between man and man. For that purpose the gods of one or both were frequently made party to the contract, and the blood of the covenanters was smeared upon the idols as well as upon one another. The deities thus continued to watch over a rite in which they had originally taken part as members of a clan. For as the bonds of kinship were loosened the totem developed into a god; and even so the totem’s interest in the rite as a member of a clan developed into that of a god as witness and avenger of the covenant. But though the significance of the rite changed, its evolution was continuous. Religion, like other forms of human thought and other human institutions, has been a slow and constant growth. If the whole field be surveyed, it will be found that there are no yawning chasms dividing period from period, and cult from cult. Everything evolves by processes analogous to those with which we are familiar in the physical world. The totem, released from the bonds of kinship, and soaring upward to the heaven of Godhead, ceases not to be worshipped with rites appropriate only to the social reunions of the clan. True, these rites are gradually modified; but alike by their symbolism and by their barbarity they bear unfailing testimony to their real birth. Such was the Hebrew practice of sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice before the Lord, or {241} upon the mercy-seat, daubing it upon the horns of the altar, or pouring it out at the base, and the converse practice of sprinkling it upon the congregation, or putting it upon the priest at his consecration. Among other nations the practice was grosser still.

by no means stood alone. The priest in Guatemala drew blood from his tongue and other members, and anointed with it the feet and hands of the image. And a similar custom is described by Spanish writers as followed in both North and South America.^241.1 When Rome was at the height of her civilisation Tibullus described the high priestess of Bellona as lacerating her own arm with the sacrificial axe and bespattering the goddess with her blood, and then as she stood there inspired by the goddess with her oracle.^241.2 This doubtless is the meaning of the passage relating the antics of the priests of Baal in the contest with Elijah, when they leaped about the altar, crying aloud, and cut themselves with knives and lances until the blood gushed out upon them. Their object was not to maim or torture themselves, but to renew their union with the god, {242} by shedding their blood upon him. In course of time the rite would cease to be understood, its practice would change, and then the mere torture, or the outpouring of the blood without any care to bring it into contact with the god, would be regarded as its object. This was perhaps the stage at which Baal-worship had arrived in the time of Ahab. In the Hebrew ritual it was the blood of the sacrifice and not of the worshipper which was sprinkled, and so also in many other instances. But then the victim was identified with the worshipper, or the latter also partook of it by being himself sprinkled with the blood or eating its flesh. The Scandinavian custom, for example, as delineated in the Heimskringla required that the blood should be drained into bowls, and then with a rod or sprinkler “should the stall of the gods be reddened, and the walls of the temple within and without, and the men-folk also besprinkled; but the flesh was to be sodden for the feasting of men.”^242.1 In either case the worshipper was brought into union with the god. Elsewhere the same object is effected by the substitution of some other substance for blood. Among the ceremonies of purification imposed by certain of the non-Aryan tribes of Bengal upon women after childbirth, is that of smearing with vermilion the edge of the village well.^242.2 Vermilion is a very obvious symbol of blood; and we shall hereafter see that, by these tribes and others, it is its recognised substitute. Originally the well must have been smeared with blood, and that {243} blood drawn from the offerer’s veins. By the ceremonial union thus effected with the deity who dwells in, or is identified with, the well, the woman would be purified.

The modes of thought portrayed in the ritual of sacrifice are entirely analogous to those disclosed by the practices we discussed in the last chapter. Their great aim is union with the deity. It is attained by placing in contact with him something already part of ourselves, as our blood, hair, clothing, or other property; or else the blood of a victim of which we are about to consume the remainder, just as among medical practices we found that of giving part of the patient’s food to an animal before partaking of the rest, with the object of being united with a healthy body. It may, indeed, be, if we were to trace back the superstition in these medical cases, that the animal made use of was at first a totem-beast. To investigate this, however, would require much greater space than I have at command.

I have on an earlier page alluded to the compacts alleged to be made with the Devil by a writing signed with the blood of the person who enters into the contract. With this may be compared a practice said to be sometimes followed on the Riviera, where two lovers write to one another in their own blood in sign of fidelity.^243.1 A Breton folktale represents the Devil as aiding the hero on condition of his giving him a drop of his blood or a lock of his hair.^243.2 According to an Icelandic saga, witches enter into a still closer relation with the Father of Evil by {244} giving him of their blood to drink,^244.1 thus constituting him their blood-brother; and the same belief seems to be current among the Gipsies of the Danube valley, the Poles and Esthonians.^244.2 To drink a witch’s blood was also a means of destroying her witchcraft, and doubtless for the same reason: it united her with her victim. Mannhardt quotes a case in Germany where, no longer since than the year 1868, two ignorant men were sent to prison for three months for assaulting a young woman whom they believed to have bewitched a friend, drawing blood and compelling her to drop it into his mouth.^244.3 But in general it is considered quite sufficient simply to draw blood from her. According to the Scottish prescription she should be “scored aboon her breath”—that is, in the upper part of her face.^244.4 The superstition, of course, has long been in decay. Merely to draw blood does not of itself constitute blood-relationship; but the barbarous rite of the blood-covenant having practically died out of north-western Europe, the real reason of drawing blood has been forgotten. A similar protection is invoked by Gipsy thieves in Servia. They make a certain powder with which they mix drops of their own blood and put it into the food of any one they suspect knows of their crime. In this way the thief believes that he not merely prevents the person {245} who consumes the mixture from betraying him, but on the other hand causes him henceforth to cherish a friendly feeling towards him.^245.1

More difficult of interpretation is a horrible usage of the Hurons of North America. Unless they are belied, while torturing a prisoner to death, they would sometimes open the aorta and mingle the blood that gushed from it with some of their own, in the hope of being at all times apprised of an enemy’s approach, and so assuring safety against a sudden attack.^245.2 Let us compare it, however, with a few cases of cannibalism. The Botocudos devoured their fallen enemies, in the belief that they would thus be protected from the revenge of the dead and would be rendered invulnerable by the arrows of the hostile tribe.^245.3 The inhabitants of New Britain, notorious cannibals, eat their enemies, and fix the arm- and leg-bones of the men at the butt-end of their spears, thinking thus not only to acquire the strength of the deceased owner of the bone, but also to become invulnerable by his relatives.^245.4 When the Tchuktchis murder a man they eat a piece of his heart or liver, in order to make his kindred sick.^245.5 The Eskimo of Greenland do the like, because then the relations of the murdered man will lack the courage to revenge his death.^245.6 Even in the south of Italy it is still believed that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste, or beslubber himself with, his victim’s blood:^245.7 a superstition {246} which, in these days, has sometimes the contrary effect of leading to his discovery. By means of these examples we may perhaps conjecture the origin of the widely prevalent custom of eating the dead body of an enemy. Little doubt can at all events remain that the savage Hurons intended so to unite themselves with their captive that they would be secured from the blood-revenge of his kindred, and that it was against the kindred and them only that the precaution was adopted. And if this result could be attained by commingling the blood in a manner similar to that of the blood-covenant, it could also be achieved by eating a portion of the foe. Closely connected with cannibalism of the kind I am referring to is the custom of alumbi practised by several tribes in Equatorial West Africa. It consists in serving in food to a guest powder scraped from the skull of a deceased ancestor. “The idea is, that by consuming the scrapings of the skull, the blood of their ancestors enters into your body, and thus, becoming of one blood, you are naturally led to love them and grant them what they wish.”^246.1 In other words, a blood-covenant is entered into unwittingly by the guest with his host; and it need hardly be said that the trick is only played on those guests whose hearts a greedy host considers it is worth his while to soften.

Naturally superstition extended the blood-covenant by analogy to the lower animals, both in their relations with one another and with man, and utilised it for human profit. Servian Gipsy thieves draw blood from the left shoulder of a stolen beast, dry it to powder and mix the powder with the fodder of other beasts which they intend to steal, so as to be able to capture them without hindrance.^246.2 An {247} Icelandic story is told of a fairy who used to send her kine to graze with those of a peasant-farmer. One day the farmer found a fairy cow in his stable. He cut its ear until it bled, and so appropriated the animal, to the fairy’s great annoyance.^247.1 The story is incomplete in not telling us what was done with the blood. It is clear, however, that a bond of blood was created which, in the stage of civilisation wherein the story arose, meant, as between man and one of the lower animals, ownership. From the Arctic circle to the southern Sporades may seem a far cry; yet it is from the island of Calymnos that we are able to supply the missing detail. One day in the spring of last year (1894) Mr. W. R. Paton saw a little girl, the daughter of a shepherd, with her face besmeared with blood. Her mother told him, by way of explanation, that the father had been marking the kids in his daughter’s name. Further inquiry showed that it was the custom to mark these animals by cutting their ears, every shepherd having his own distinctive mark, that they were marked in the name of one or other child of the family, and that some of the blood was smeared on the face of the child in whose name they were marked.^247.2 A better illustration could hardly be found of the manner in which the customs of one country will throw light upon the customs and traditions of another. Distance in space counts for naught where we are dealing with similar conditions of culture.

This sketch of totemism, including the means of union and communion between the clan and its totem on the one hand, and between the individual members of the clan on the other hand, is hasty and imperfect. Yet I hope it may {248} prove sufficient for our purpose, the more so as the writings of Professor Robertson Smith and Mr. Frazer, who have studied the subject with great detail, are happily easy of access. Without, therefore, dwelling longer upon it we may turn to glance at some of the modifications undergone by the ceremony of the blood-covenant. A rite so barbarous would not maintain itself unimpaired as culture advanced. Other rites are softened in course of time; a part is taken for the whole, or a sham for the real thing; and this is no exception. I have referred to some of the forms it has assumed, but only to such as bear to the most casual observer the mark and witness of the original whence they are derived. There remain to be briefly considered some of the remoter variations.

The sacramental essence of the rite has escaped many modern travellers. Yet it might have been thought obvious enough. It is, perhaps, most clearly brought out where the blood is mingled with the food of the participants. It has been well insisted on, and its connection with the totem-sacrifice exhibited at length, by Professor Robertson Smith. Nor, after what has been said about it in the foregoing pages, and after the analogous superstitions discussed in preceding chapters, is it necessary to dwell on the point here. But it can excite no surprise that the rite should have degenerated into a solemn meal eaten together by the persons entering into the new bond. In early times no one would have a right to eat together save the brethren of a clan; and on the other hand, all who ate together would, presumably at least, be members of the same clan. Hospitality—the relation of host and guest—would form the only exception; and hospitality, as practised in savage and barbarous communities, may be described as a temporary reception into the kin or family. {249} But none save brethren habitually shared the common meal. To eat together, therefore, would of itself be a sign, though not an infallible sign, of kinship. Eating together is—not merely on solemn occasions, as the sacrifice of the totem-beast, but in a lesser degree at other times—an act of communion. The sharing of a common substance as food unites those who partake of it in a common life: it makes them parts of one another: they incorporate one another’s substance. This is the significance of eating “things sacrificed to idols,” and of “sitting at meat in an idol’s temple.” The idol is supposed to have partaken of the meat; and those who afterwards eat of it share by that act the idol’s life; they partake of his substance. This is the significance of the offering of first-fruits; the bulk is holy and fit for the worshippers’ food, because a portion, and through that portion the whole, is first united with the god. What is true of special feasts, and of communion with the god, holds good of everyday meals, and of communion by the clansmen with one another. To admit a stranger into the clan, then, it will be enough that he be allowed to partake of the common meal. If the admission be simply for a temporary purpose as a guest, it will take place without any extraordinary formalities. If a permanent union be contemplated, then ceremonies must be performed indicative of the intention, and uniting the parties in the unmistakable bond of a common life.

One or two examples will suffice. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal have now in many instances undergone a transformation, under the influence of the dominant Aryan religion and organisation, from tribal organisation and status into that of castes. The Mahilis, “a Dravidian caste of labourers, palanquin-bearers and workers in bamboo, {250} found in Chota Nagpur and Western Bengal,” readily admit “men of any caste ranking higher than their own.” The person seeking admission “has merely to pay a small sum to the headman of the caste and to give a feast to the Mahilis of the neighbourhood. This feast he must attend himself and signify his entrance into the brotherhood by tasting a portion of the food left by each of the guests on the leaf which on these occasions serves as a plate.”^250.1 The Máls of Western and Central Bengal, another tribe which has become converted into a caste, while still retaining many distinctly tribal practices, also admit outsiders. The fashion among them is for the neophyte to give a feast to the Máls of the neighbourhood, and to drink water wherein the headman of the village has dipped his toes.^250.2 The Mysteries of Greece and Western Asia were celebrated with the sacrifice and consumption of the divine animal; and the persons who joined in the ceremony entered into a brotherhood which, though in the latter times of classic heathendom regarded as spiritual rather than literal, must have derived its significance from a more archaic state of society, when to partake of the totem-animal was to consummate the most sacred rite of kinship. Among the Battas of Sumatra alliances are concluded by the slaughter of a hog or cow. As soon as its throat is cut the heart is torn out and divided into as many pieces as there are chiefs present. The share of each is put on a pointed stick and roasted by holding it over the fire. In turn the chiefs then hold up their respective morsels, saying: “If I should ever violate my oath, I am willing to be slaughtered like the bleeding animal which lies before me, and to be {251} devoured like the piece of heart I am about to eat.”^251.1 This oath, which is reported to be more than a mere form, points back to an earlier period before the cow or the hog was substituted for a man. In classical antiquity a blood-rite of this kind is many times mentioned which not improbably may represent an early form of the blood-covenant. In the oath said to have been administered by Catiline to his fellow-conspirators, a slave was put to death, and every one drank out of the same cup his blood mingled with wine. The oath they swore was deemed irrevocable: it united them like the brethren of one blood to support one another in life and avenge one another’s death. The same is doubtless the meaning of the act recorded by Herodotus of the Greek and Carian allies of Psammenitus, when one of their number, Phanes of Halicarnassus, deserted to Cambyses, the Persian invader of Egypt. They put to death his sons in Phanes’ sight, drained their blood into a vase, which they filled up with wine and water, and, having drunk it together, they rushed madly but vainly on the foe.^251.2 And Diodorus Siculus relates of Apollodorus, who aspired in the third century before Christ to the government of the city of Cassandrea in Macedonia, that he slew a youth to the gods, gave his fellow-conspirators the entrails to eat and the blood mingled with wine to drink.^251.3 A relic of some such ceremony is found in India. Among the Saráogi Baniyás, who are reckoned of the Súdra caste, on the occasion of a marriage the relatives only of the parties meet in a private apartment around the figure of a Brahman, made in dough and filled with honey. The bridegroom’s father, “armed with a miniature bow and arrows, topples over the effigy, {252} which is then disembowelled, so to speak, of its honey, into which all present dip a finger and suck it.”^252.1 In the New World the bloodthirsty Aztecs ate their human sacrifices. The Yncas, a little more human, offered and ate animals, called by De Molina sheep. Their sacrament consisted of a pudding of coarsely-ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim, before distributing it to the people.^252.2 A curious rite is reported as taking place among the Isubus, in the west of Africa, when entering into a covenant to do some murderous or warlike deed. A pot is placed upon the fire, and in the pot a stone, supposed to become by cooking as soft as a plantain. It is then cut with a knife, and each of the covenanting parties must swallow a piece, binding himself thereby to do or abet the deed proposed.^252.3 A Danubian Gipsy saga relates the mode of admission into a tribe. The chief eats with the candidate a piece of salted bread, and gives him brandy in a glass. When the brandy is drunk the glass is smashed.^252.4 Drinking, indeed, often becomes the substitute for eating. Among the aborigines of Formosa the manner of taking an oath of friendship is by putting their arms round one another’s necks and drinking simultaneously from the same cup of wine.^252.5 Among the Slavs the blood-covenant is still practised; and the Church has taken it under her own protection. In her hands it has become transformed into the ritual drinking of wine together. Thus in Crnagora the comrades who are {253} about to enter into the bond of brotherhood attend the church, where the priest awaits them. He hands them the chalice, out of which they thrice drink wine together. They kiss the cross, the gospels and the sacred images, and finally kiss one another thrice upon the cheek. Afterwards the one on whose suggestion the league is formed, gives a dinner to the brother of his choice and adds to it some more valuable gift.^253.1

But we have seen that an entirely different modification of the rite early took place. The actual drinking of the blood was dropped in favour of mixing it by inoculation,^253.2 or outwardly upon the bleeding flesh. Among the Norsemen in later times the blood was drawn from each party and simply allowed to flow together in their footprints.^253.3 Herodotus describes the covenant among the Arabs on the borders of Egypt. Blood was drawn with a sharp stone from the thumb of either party. With a shred of each person’s robe it was then smeared upon seven sacred stones, with an invocation to the divinities Orotal and Alilat, whom the historian identifies with Dionysos and Urania.^253.4 Professor Robertson Smith commenting on the passage observes that the smearing on the stones “makes the gods parties to the covenant, but evidently the {254} symbolical act is not complete unless at the same time the human parties taste each other’s blood.” And he surmises that “this was actually done, though Herodotus does not say so. But,” he admits, “it is also possible that in the course of time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred stone.”^254.1 I cannot help thinking that what we have learnt in the course of our previous inquiries may help us to the solution of the difficulty. When Abruzzian girls hide their hairs in some secret place of the sanctuary on vowing eternal friendship, they seem at first sight to be performing an act parallel to that recorded of the Arabs; and if so we need not suspect that Herodotus has omitted any feature of the rite. Probably, however, the true explanation does not lie here. We may suppose that the shreds torn by the master of the ceremonies from either garment were roughly tied or twisted together into a wisp, which was then dipped into the flowing blood of both persons, and the blood thus mingled after the fashion of many tribes before it was painted on the stones; or, in the alternative, that the shred from the garment of the one person was dipped in the blood of the other. We have had abundant evidence that a man’s clothes are deemed a part of himself, and that what is done to them is done to him. To dip a portion of my clothes in my friend’s blood, therefore, is to unite me to him, to make him my blood-brother, without the necessity of tasting his blood, or even of literally mixing our blood together. In either way the act would be complete, and the historian’s accuracy justified. Even less than this is necessary among other {255} nations. A man is deemed a blood-brother if the blood of another touch him only by accident and without any outpouring of his own blood. So Dr. Livingstone involuntarily contracted blood-relationship with a Balonda woman in opening a tumour in her arm, by the spurting of some of her blood in his eye.^255.1 Similarly in the Irish saga of The Wooing of Emer we find Cuchulainn becoming the blood-brother of Devorgoil by sucking from her wound the stone that had struck her from his sling.^255.2 An Abruzzian prescription for epilepsy is for some one on the first attack of the disease to strike the patient on the ear with something of iron, so that the blood flows. The operator becomes the “gossip” (compare o comare) of the person thus cured. Here it seems to suffice if the blood simply touch the instrument used: a much degraded form of the rite, comparable with that in the Icelandic story of the fairy cow, and with the practice of scoring a witch. In a variant remedy, however, a person unacquainted with the patient bites the ear until the blood flows.^255.3

A further modification of the rite appears in ancient Arabic literature, whereby the blood shed is not that of one of the contracting parties but of another human victim slain at the sanctuary, and the hands of all who shared in the compact were simply dipped into the gore. At first it would seem likely that the victim was already a member of one of the clans entering into the alliance. This was the case in the province of Zacatecas in Central America. The victim chosen was first mercifully intoxicated to deaden his pain. It does not appear that he was put to death; {256} but his ears were pierced in turn by each member of the contracting clans, who rubbed the spurting blood over his own body.^256.1 After a while, however, the human victim would be dispensed with, or perhaps among many nations the victim may always have been a sacred animal, originally of course a totem-animal. So, among the Dyaks for the purpose of reconciling two foes, or of welcoming a stranger, a fowl is killed and its blood sprinkled over the parties and the dwelling.^256.2 In the Chittagong Hills the Kumi and the Shendoos kill a goat or a heifer and smear with its blood the feet and foreheads of the contracting parties. Before doing so, however, the presiding chief takes a mouthful of liquor from a cup and blows it over one party, blows another mouthful over the other party and a third over the victim. Some other ceremonies follow, including the imprecation frequently occurring on any one who violates the compact.^256.3

The ritual of other peoples deviates yet more from the type. The cannibal Bondjos of Africa merely put red ochre on the arms and rub them together.^256.4 Two men of the Limbu, a Bengali tribe of Mongolian descent, contract brotherhood by a ceremony at which a Brahman, or, when the parties are Buddhists, a Lama, presides and reads mantras or mystic formulæ, while the two friends thrice exchange rupees, handkerchiefs or scarves, and daub each other between the eyebrows with a paste made of rice and curds. And the description of the performance holds good of the Muriari and other tribes of the same province.^256.5 {257} In other parts of the world the rite further degenerates into the mere rubbing of noses, or the striking of one another’s breasts with an exchange of names.^257.1 Our hand-shaking is a pledge of goodwill and fidelity which, we can hardly doubt, points to the same course of ceremonial decay. The exchange of names, practised so frequently among savage peoples by intimate friends, has no different effect. For the name being part of the person, to confer it upon another and to take that other’s name in exchange is to effect union as close as the mixture of one another’s blood. Among the Abruzzians in Italy, as I mentioned just now, the blood-rite is not yet extinct. It is practised in a milder form by two girls who wish to swear eternal friendship after the manner of maidens. Taking each other by the hand and repeating certain prescribed rhymes, in which they pray with emphasis that the one who breaks the bond may go straight to hell, each of them pulls a hair from her own head and puts it on the other’s. Thenceforth they salute one another as “Gossip,” and may safely make one another the recipient of the most sacred confidences.^257.2

It will readily be understood that the ceremony of the blood-covenant cannot be thus truncated and altered in a variety of ways without a corresponding change in the rights and liabilities, the privileges and disabilities, entailed where the clan system is in the plenitude of its sway. When a Dyak welcomes a stranger by sprinkling the blood of a domesticated bird, or when two Italian girls exchange hairs, one party to the performance is not admitted to the {258} kin of the other. No legal tie of blood results from the ceremony. For all that, a tie is formed. The tie of hospitality, or the tie of gossipry, is, in the contemplation of the Italian peasant, or the Dyak, a tie involving rights and duties similar within its limits to those of blood. So when two Slavs enter into adoptive brotherhood, the evolution of society, which has mollified the rude rite, has also shorn it of many of the resulting consequences; and kinsmen of this kind often betroth their children together while yet in the cradle, in order, we are expressly told, to strengthen the bond between them^258.1—a betrothal usually impossible in archaic society, because as a rule marriage within the kin is forbidden. But it does not come within my design to do more than point out that these differences arise in the consequences, as well as in the forms, of the rite, and in both cases from the same cause—the growth of civilisation.

There is an analogous group of practices the material of which is not the blood but the saliva. In an able and interesting paper, published in the Transactions of the International Folklore Congress of 1891, Mr. J. E. Crombie has investigated the superstitions connected with the use of saliva. His contention is that it is sometimes believed to contain the element of life, that to spit upon another person is to add to the latter’s store of life some of one’s own, and that for two persons to spit upon one another is to effect an interchange of life. And he refers in support of his argument to various customs, among which may be mentioned the following. At the reception held by an Osmanli mother after childbirth, every visitor who looks at the babe is expected to spit on it and to {259} conceal her admiration under such disparaging remarks as “Nasty, ugly little thing!” to show that she does not envy or ill-wish it. Among the Masai spitting on another expresses the greatest goodwill and best wishes. Pliny records the classical habit of spitting on a lame man or an epileptic, the reason given being to avoid fascination or repel contagion. For diseases of different kinds fasting spittle is a remedy. To cite Pliny again, he speaks of ophthalmia and crick in the neck being thus cured. Growing pains in children are treated in the same manner. Among the Samoans, when a man was ill his relatives used to assemble, and, after confessing whether he had wished the sick man any evil, each of them was required to take some water in his mouth and spurt it out towards him. In making a bargain or contract of any kind the saliva is employed. In Masailand the sale of a bullock is concluded by the seller spitting on the animal’s head and the purchaser on the article he is going to give in exchange. At Newcastle in old days when the colliers combined for the purpose of raising their wages they were said to spit together on a stone by way of cementing their confederacy. So the Anses and the Wanes in making a covenant of peace let fall into a vase each of them some of his saliva, out of which a being was made endowed with the wisdom of them all. And Mr. Henderson relates that in his school-days the highest pledge of faith two boys could give to one another was to spit.^259.1

{260}

The exigencies of a Congress-paper no doubt compelled Mr. Crombie to shorten his list of examples. His conclusion is in harmony with the opinions advocated in the present volume. But if those opinions be correct we may go further than Mr. Crombie has ventured. The transfer of saliva is more than a gift of a portion of the spitter’s life. It is a gift of a portion of himself, which is thus put into the power of the recipient as a pledge of goodwill. Nay, it is a bodily union with the recipient, such as can be effected by a blood-covenant. Possibly as Mr. Crombie suggests, it is, where an interchange of saliva occurs, a form of blood-covenant consequent upon milder manners, like some of the modifications we have already glanced at. Rather it seems to be a more evanescent and less solemn, though still emphatic, form, intended only for temporary purposes. I hope the examples I propose to adduce will bear out this contention.

Let us first recall the uses to which we have, in previous chapters, found saliva put. Equally with the other issues of the body, it is a means of witchcraft whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps done to death. In the same way it is available as a means of compelling the love of one of the opposite sex. It is dangerous to spit into the fire. To spit the half of a piece of bread which the patient has been chewing, and has therefore {261} mixed with his saliva, into a tree is in Transylvania a specific against toothache. And to spit in certain prescribed places is a remedy for various diseases. The natives of South America spit their coca-quids upon the cairns in the Cordilleras; and every Basuto traveller spits upon the pebble he is about to add to the heap outside the village he is approaching. It is hard to put any meaning into these superstitions, unless it be one that ignores the separation of the saliva from the body of which it once formed a part. The märchen cited in Chapter IX., by causing the heroine’s spittle to answer for her, as if she were present, after she has in fact fled from the ogre’s thraldom, exaggerate the identification of the saliva with its owner to the height of endowing it with a large measure of her consciousness and personality. The same exaggeration is to be observed in a practice among children in New England, doubtless derived from the old country, of divining by means of saliva where a bird’s nest, or something else for which they are searching, is. A boy will spit into the palm of his hand and striking the spittle with the forefinger of the other hand will say:

(or as the case may be); and the direction in which the spittle flies will be that in which the search must be pursued.^261.1

Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the first century of the {262} Christian era, describes with great scorn a grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle finger.^262.1 Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative from spells.^262.2 And over the whole of Europe it is the most ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise, to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it. Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.^262.3 A visitor to Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.^262.4 The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the same thing) of fairies appears, however, {263} to be only a specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his child.^263.1 Some such custom would seem to have been known in Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.^263.2 When Mohammed’s elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him Hasan.^263.3 Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits thrice in its face.^263.4 In Ashanti the father varies the performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and calling it by a name.^263.5 And in the Roman Catholic rite of baptism—a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common with these heathenish practices—the person operated on, whether babe or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.

Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his tongue.”^263.6 This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the kissing of the pope’s toe, to express {264} mere subservience; but other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of his saliva.^264.1 At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in one another’s hands.^264.2 On the other side of the continent, a stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of naturalisation.^264.3 Contact with the saliva thus effects union for the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a similar meaning {265} to the Somali rule which requires chance passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.^265.1 If they thus unite themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful over his fetishes or his amulets.^265.2 And the Basuto diviners believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose their power and become like other mortals.^265.3 In these cases the spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling a drop or two of drink as a libation.

These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish, and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of water.^265.4 In Central America, whenever the native traveller came to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and, spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the altar.^265.5 And in the last chapter I had occasion to {266} refer to the customs of Basuto travellers, which also present the attempt at union with the god in a form analogous to those just mentioned of the Kafirs and Bissagos islanders.

So the custom of spitting on one’s money for luck appears to be an emphatic way of identifying oneself with it. It is usual in England for country people attending a market to sell, to spit on the first money received and put it into a pocket apart; and the object is rightly suggested in an old dictionary “to render it tenacious that it may remain with them, and not vanish away like a fairy gift.”^266.1 A Walloon receiving money from one suspected of sorcery bites it, otherwise it would return to the sorcerer, together with all the pieces in contact with it in the pocket.^266.2 The biting is evidently a method of touching the coin with the saliva. So an Eskimo licks anything which is given him; while in some parts of England it is believed that to spit on a gift, such as a piece of money, is to ensure more.^266.3 For the same reason, as noted in a previous chapter, the Danubian Gipsy who desires to assure a maiden’s love will obtain some of her hairs, spit on them, and then hide them in the coffin of a dead man. A Transylvanian Saxon in a business matter, before he pays the first money, spits on it, that it may bring him more.^266.4 An Esthonian, if he be required to empty his purse, will spit into it.^266.5 A Spaniard, in buying a lottery ticket, spits on the money before handing it over, in the hope of thus securing the winning {267} number. Others spit on the ground, put the foot on the spittle, and only take it off on receiving the ticket.^267.1 The Persian gamester, who always attributes losses to the Evil Eye, blows on the cards or the dice, and feigns to spit on his money before staking it on the game.^267.2 In France a player spits on his chair.^267.3 The Cherokee fisherman, before baiting his hook, chews a small piece of Venus’ Flytrap, and spits it upon the bait and the hook, at the same time repeating an incantation addressed to the fish. “Our spittle,” he says, “shall be in agreement,” implying, as Mr. Mooney tells us, “that there shall be such close sympathy between the fisher and the fish that their spittle shall be as the spittle of one individual.”^267.4 A Girondin fisherman, having baited his hook, spits on the worm to make the fish bite better.^267.5 In Norway the fisherman also spits upon the bait for luck; the tradesman and the working-man spit on the first money they take. In the Lofoden Islands the fisherman’s wife accompanies him to the boat, and always spits in it to bestow luck upon him.^267.6 In Upper Ogowe, in Africa, a fetish-horn is shaken around a man to bring him luck, a certain herb is chewed and the quid is spit out upon him; and in the same way chewed herbs are spit upon a new-born child to preserve it from spells. Among the Okandas of the same region, in order to assure to a pirogue a prosperous voyage, the women come with a bouquet of leaves. Striking the forepart of the vessel with the leaves, they make a noise as of driving away something, and finally spit upon it.^267.7 Olenda, the king of the Ashira in {268} Equatorial Africa, when he gave his parting blessing to his sons and Du Chaillu, whom they were to accompany on a journey, took a sugar-cane, and biting off a piece of the pith spat a little of the juice in the hand of each of the party, at the same time blowing on the hand.^268.1 In his book on the Highlands of Æthiopia Major Cornwallis Harris describes a search for a lost camel. The man who was sent on the search was given the rope wherewith the animal had been fettered; but before it was put into his hands, spells were muttered over it; and we are told that “the devil was dislodged by the process of spitting upon the cord at the termination of each spell.”^268.2 So in the old Roman Catholic liturgy, when the priest puts his spittle on the ears and nose of the person he is baptizing he says: “Effeta, quod est adaperire, in odorem suavitatis; tu autem effugare, diabole, adpropinquavit enim judicium Dei!”^268.3 This conjuring formula perhaps derives its value from the blessed word Effeta, transliterated in our Bibles as Ephphatha, used by Christ, and having nothing to do with the dislodgment of the devil to which the latter part of the spell, like those muttered over the camel-fetter, refers. Moreover, the dislodgement of the devil is an incomplete explanation in both cases, as we shall see directly.

There is a remarkable method practised among some savages for quelling a refractory wild animal when caught alive; and here, as in some other instances, we find Western Africa in curious agreement with North America. {269} Mr. Kane went out with a Cree Indian to hunt the buffalo, and killed a cow which was followed by her calf. “Wishing,” he says, “to take the calf alive, so that it might carry itself to the camp, I pursued and caught it, and, tying my sash round its neck, endeavoured to drag it along; but it plunged and tried so violently to escape that I was about to kill it, when the Indian took hold of its head, and turning up its muzzle, spat two or three times into it, when, much to my astonishment, the animal became perfectly docile, and followed us quietly to the camp, where it was immediately cooked for supper.”^269.1 There is no ground for doubting the facts related by the traveller, however we may account for them. The same procedure was adopted by a turtle-fisher with whom Mr. Winwood Reade went sporting on one occasion in Western Africa. A turtle was caught, and on being hauled into the canoe the man “welcomed him by patting him on the head and spitting down his mouth.” The turtles, however, are not always so submissive as Mr. Kane’s buffalo-calf; for the fisherman showed Mr. Reade a scar on his arm, which a turtle had once inflicted in retribution.^269.2 Exactly the same prescription is adopted by the Icelandic parson to lay a ghost. He spits down his throat, or in his face; and the performance is said to be effective.^269.3

In some of the foregoing illustrations protection against the Evil Eye, or the driving away of evil spirits, has appeared as the reason for spitting. The habit is one almost universal as a counter-charm to witchcraft. If we look at it a little more closely we shall see that it is ultimately {270} referable to the same idea as other spitting customs, namely, that of effecting union between the person spitting and the object on which his saliva falls. This may be done by spitting upon one’s clothes, money, or other property, so as to guard them against attack, as in the case of the gamester’s money or his chair. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, Dr. Brinton records that boys always used to spit on a pair of new boots; and it was important to prevent others from doing the same: hence frequent struggles and teasing at school.^270.1 The superstition is derived from Europe, where Reginald Scot prescribed, centuries ago, and Pliny centuries before him, spitting into the right shoe before putting it on: a similar practice to that said to be still in use in some parts of Scandinavia of spitting into one’s bed before lying down, spitting upon the floor before rising, upon the grass before sitting down, or into a spring before drinking from it.^270.2 Captain Binger’s host in one of the villages on the tributaries of the upper Niger never put on his trousers without spitting into them, and never sat down without spitting on the seat.^270.3 A Clal-lum of North America on meeting an enemy will spit into his own blanket if he happen to be wearing one at the time.^270.4 In the same way a maiden in Theocritus, on repelling a lover who attempted to kiss her, spat thrice in the breast of her gown.^270.5 Pliny describes the Roman practice of spitting into the lap as a method of asking pardon of the gods, when indulging in some extravagant hope. It is {271} more probably to be assigned to the kind of superstitions we are now dealing with. In the same chapter he mentions the practice of spitting into one’s urine as a counter-charm.^271.1 Parallel with the latter practice is that alluded to by Delrio of spitting thrice on one’s hair-combings before throwing them away.^271.2 In various parts of Italy, if a stone become lodged in a horse’s hoof, it is usual to take the precaution of spitting on it before throwing it away.^271.3 In addition to the Scandinavian customs just mentioned we also find those of spitting on throwing water out of doors, of spitting on the straw worn in the shoe before throwing it away, into the bath-water of a new-born child, into the water in which another has washed before washing in it oneself (a practice not unknown in England) and others all referable to the same purpose.^271.4 The Transylvanian Saxons used to spit on the four corners of a new house, saying a prayer at each corner and kissing it; and to protect their belongings from envy they spit and repeat a certain spell every morning on stepping out over the threshold of the house.^271.5 In Silesia it is proper to spit into the fodder given to a horse, so as to protect it from witchcraft.^271.6 In Lesbos it is customary to spit on beholding a handsome person (man or woman), a sleek, well-fed horse, cow or sheep, a good milch-goat, or a fruitful tree, {272} in order to preserve the object in question from the Evil Eye.^272.1 In America a Negro, on turning back in a path, makes a cross with his foot and spits in it, lest misfortune overtake him the next time he passes that way.^272.2

Another course is to spit on the witch. For this cause the Romans used to spit on meeting not only a lame man, but apparently also an epileptic; for although Pliny speaks of the latter habit as intended to repel contagion, it is more likely a modification of an earlier habit of spitting on the unfortunate person. In Sicily still it is the custom to spit behind a hunchback or a sorcerer. A mother will spit at any one who admires her child, the moment he has turned his back. And when a woman is in the pains of childbirth, one of her attendant friends will go to the window and spit thrice, looking sternly all about, as if she hoped to find and reach with her saliva the witch who is retarding delivery. The Roman nurses used to spit on the ground when a stranger entered, or when any one looked at their sleeping charges.^272.3 A Russian nurse, with less civilised manners, is said to spit straight in the face of anybody who praises the babe without adding: “God save the bargain!”^272.4 In Corsica a bewitched child is made to spit in the witch’s mouth.^272.5 It is a Norse custom to spit on meeting a witch. In the Gironde people sometimes spit thrice in passing a witch’s dwelling. In Germany there seems to be a similar practice when passing any haunted water by night. The Romans spat when passing a place where they had incurred any danger. The intention here is by spitting on the evil thing so to bring it on your side as to prevent its doing you {273} any ill; and the same may be conjectured of the incident said to occur in a Russian tale where the Devil is made to flee by spitting upwards, and of the rite of exorcism on the Gaboon, where the practitioner spits to right and left of the possessed person. The Conibos of South America spit on the ground when they meet evil spirits or persons whom they suppose capable of injuring them.^273.1

A third course is to get the witch to spit on her victim. This is considered effective in the Aran Islands, where the possessor of an evil eye is required to spit on any one whom he may have affected, and to say: “God bless you!”^273.2 Captain Bourke mentions a Mexican case where a horse was suffering from the Evil Eye. “The man accused of casting the spell admitted his guilt, but said that he would cure the animal at once. He filled his mouth with water, spat upon the horse’s neck, and rubbed and patted the place until it was dry.” The horse recovered in due course.^273.3 For the same reason in Italy the dust of the witch’s footprint is flung over the person or cattle bewitched, and the Persians scrape the mud from the sorcerer’s shoes and rub the part affected.^273.4 The principle is that of taking “a hair of the dog that bit you,” to which I have already sufficiently referred.

The saliva of sacred personages, as we might expect, is of much importance. In this connection the performances of Christian as well as heathen priests in exorcism and {274} other rites will be remembered. The Tunguz shaman, called in to cure a sick man, “takes the patient’s head between his hands, sucks his brow, spits in his face, and fixedly looks at the affected part.”^274.1 A Tcheremiss conjuror pronounces his spells over a vessel of water, beer, milk or salt and bread, blows or spits upon the contents, and then gives them to the invalid to drink or eat, as the case may be.^274.2 In Central Australia the old men are the performers of all important tribal ceremonies. They are credited with shamanistic powers; and their treatment of disease is by spurting a mouthful of water over the stricken member and then sucking it.^274.3 On the Paraguay River, the Guaná medicine-man, when called to attend a patient, spits in the course of his ceremonies strenuously on the suffering spot.^274.4 Spitting, in fact, when performed by properly qualified practitioners, is a powerful remedy. Vespasian is said to have restored his sight to an inhabitant of Alexandria by spitting on his eyes.^274.5 The old thaumaturgists of the Church were not wont to be outdone by any one—not even by their Lord, still less by a heathen Pontifex Maximus. Accordingly, we find Hilarion (the saint, it will be recollected, who had so excellent a nose) repeating Vespasian’s miracle on a woman, also in Egypt.^274.6 More purely spiritual are some other uses of spitting. At Foochow, in China, when a family removes to a house previously occupied {275} by another family, a priest first of all cleanses the dwelling by spirting water from his mouth, or scattering it direct from the bowl he carries; and on returning from a funeral the priest stands at the house-door and spirts from his mouth water over the members of the bereaved family to purify them, repeating as he does so a short formula.^275.1 Among the Khonds the Meriah, previous to his sacrifice, was paraded through the village, when hairs were plucked from his head by the people, while some begged for a drop of his saliva, with which they anointed their own heads.^275.2 Dr. Wolf, when in Abyssinia, being mistaken for the new Abuna, or bishop, was compelled to spit upon the people, and to have his feet washed that the devotees might drink the water of ablution.^275.3 Cases like these are ambiguous: a different and simpler interpretation may be put upon them. In view, however, of other customs relating to saliva, we shall probably not be straining the analogy by describing the fundamental idea rather as the desire for union with the divinity, than the ascription of an inherent power to his emanations.

Having now sketched the results arrived at by Professor Robertson Smith and other distinguished anthropologists in reference to the blood-covenant, and briefly discussed several forms of the rite, I have endeavoured to put before {276} the reader a series of parallel usages with saliva. This has led us to other superstitions more closely related to those of sorcery, medicine and worship earlier passed in review. In all these alike we have found the same ideas—the ideas, namely, which form the core of the incident of the Life-token and the practices it embodies. Armed with the conclusions drawn from the consideration of the blood-covenant, we will go on to examine some other social institutions and ceremonies on various planes of civilisation.

{277}

If I have made clear the corporate character of the clan, or gens, as conceived by savage thought, the reader will have understood how completely the clan is regarded as an unity, literally and not metaphorically one body, the individual members of which are as truly portions as the fingers or the legs are portions of the external, visible body of each of them. We saw in previous chapters that a severed limb, a lock of hair or a nail-clipping, was still regarded as in some invisible but real union with the body whereof it once, in outward appearance also, formed part; and any injury inflicted on the severed portion was inflicted on the bulk. The individual member of a clan was in exactly the same position as a lock of hair cut from the head, or an amputated limb. He had no separate significance, no value apart from his kin. More than that: as we shall see hereafter, injury inflicted on him was inflicted on, and was felt by, the whole kin, just as an injury inflicted on the severed lock or limb was felt by the bulk. This unity of the clan is constantly renewed by the common meal, where the same food is partaken of, and becomes incorporated into the essence of all who share it. In strictness commensal rights belong {278} only to the kin. To eat together means to be of the same flesh and blood, for none others could do so. Such a rule of course came to be modified as soon as hospitality was recognised as a duty or a privilege. But the stranger admitted as a guest to the meal became by that act a temporary member of the kin. The rights conceded to him so long as he remained a guest were the rights of kinship, and entailed corresponding liabilities. He could not, however, share the common meal in its most solemn form, namely, the totem sacrifice, without becoming a blood-brother, and thus entering the kin as a permanent member. In mingling his blood with the blood of the clan, and feeding with them on the totem-animal, he became one with them as much as if he had been already united with them in a common descent. Abandoning his former country and kin and worship, he identified himself with a new organism having a different domicile with different rights and interests and a different cult.

The common meal was thus the pledge and witness of the unity of the kin, because it was the chief means, if not of making, at least of repairing and renewing it. And its importance is emphasised everywhere by its repetition upon every solemn occasion, and by its forming the centre of the entire ritual. This may be taken for granted of many such occasions; but it may seem strange to assign it a position so prominent in some. It is not obvious, for instance, how it can be the most important act of a funeral. The funeral feast, however, is probably universal; and in savage communities it is difficult to overrate its significance. The most archaic form, if barbarity be a test of archaism, in which it is known to us, is where the meat is nothing less than the corpse of the departed kinsman. Cannibalism in {279} any form excites so much horror in civilised mankind that we hesitate to believe it is a stage through which we have all passed. But it is certainly a custom very widely spread and characteristic of a low plane of culture. We cannot, and we need not, now discuss cannibalism in general. Of all the forms it has ever assumed, the most horrible is that of the eating of the bodies of our nearest and dearest; and that is the form we have to consider.

In considering it, and recalling, as we must, some of the repulsive details of the rite, we cannot do better than begin by reminding ourselves of the anecdote related by Herodotus of the Persian king, Darius, to illustrate the power of custom. He tells us that the monarch once called into his presence some Greeks, who were in the habit of burning their dead, and asked them for what reward they would be willing to devour the bodies of their parents. They replied, of course, that nothing would induce them to do such a thing. Then summoning certain Kalatiai, an Indian people who used to eat their dead, in the presence of the Greeks (who were informed by an interpreter of what was being said) he put the converse question to them, for how much they would burn their deceased parents. They, on the other hand, broke out into exclamations, begging him to desist from such ill-omened language. Leaving the moral of this story to be digested as we proceed, we may review some of the other accounts by ancient and modern travellers of the practice under consideration. The Father of History ascribes it not only to the Kalatiai. Among Indian peoples he mentions the Padaioi, concerning whom he furnishes us with a little more detail. The Padaioi were a race of nomads alleged to feed on raw flesh. When any of the tribesmen fell sick they were {280} mercilessly put to death by their most intimate associates, by which expression is perhaps meant their fellow-clansmen. The men were killed by the men, and the women by the women. They sacrificed all who arrived at old age, and feasted upon them. But these were not numerous, because they slaughtered every one attacked by disease. That even the latter were intended to be eaten is clear from the reason for putting them to death, namely, that otherwise as they were wasted by sickness their flesh would be utterly spoilt.^280.1 In this respect they differed for the worse from the Massagetai, the Scythian nation whose fierce and masculine queen overcame the mighty Cyrus. They only ate the aged. Those who died of disease they stowed away in the earth, accounting it a misfortune that they had not come to be sacrificed. The kindred of an old man would assemble and immolate him, as well as other animals at the same time; and then boiling the flesh all together they would feast upon it. The Issedones, also Scythians, seem to have been somewhat less savage, for we gather that they waited until a natural death removed the aged. When once a man’s father was dead, the rite, however, was not different from that of the Massagetai, save that we are told they preserved the skull, set it in gold, and used it at their solemn yearly festivals.^280.2 Herodotus is not the only writer of antiquity who attributes this kind of {281} cannibalism to savage tribes. The geographer Strabo likewise records of the Derbikes in the Caucasus that the men of seventy and upwards were put to death and eaten by their nearest kinsmen, but the women were buried; for they never used for food the flesh of any female animal. And the ancient Irish, more savage, he tells us, than the Britons, considered it praiseworthy to devour their dead fathers, though he admits very fairly that his authority for the statement is not decisive.^281.1 In the Middle Ages Marco Polo found a tribe in Tartary, whose capital he calls Chandul, who used to cook and eat men condemned to death. Those who died by natural means, on the other hand, they did not eat.^281.2 It is doubtful whether he refers to criminals as thus eaten; and he is silent as to who joined in the feast. No such ambiguity attaches to the usage reported by the Venetian adventurer as existing in the kingdom of Deragola on the island of Sumatra. The savages of this kingdom, when any kinsman fell sick, used to send for their shamans, who made incantations to ascertain whether he would recover. If the answer were favourable, nature was left to do her best; if unfavourable, they sent for the professional slaughterman, by whom he was suffocated and cooked. The next of kin then assembled and devoured him, afterwards enclosing his bones in a coffin, which was put away in a mountain cavern.^281.3 Less authentic are the accounts preserved by the author of Sir John Maundeville’s travels concerning the East Indian islands. He attributes a similar practice to the inhabitants of islands he calls Caffolos and Dondun. Of that of Rybothe he relates that a dead body is given {282} to the birds of prey, but that the son of the deceased makes a feast, and serves the flesh of the head to his particular friends, making a drinking cup of the skull, which he uses for the rest of his life.^282.1 Other mediæval writers ascribe the same species of cannibalism to Tibetan tribes.^282.2

These statements have received confirmation in modern times from the reports of travellers among tribes in the lower savagery almost everywhere. As in the older writers, there is some ambiguity on the question who was expected or entitled to partake of the horrible food. A comparison, however, of the accounts clearly shows that it was originally confined to the clan, though possibly the melancholy satisfaction of uniting oneself with the departed in this manner may, in different places, have been extended by special favour to intimate friends not belonging to the kin, or, by a modification of tribal customs, to the entire local organisation. Not to weary the reader I have selected in a note at the foot of the page a number of references to cases where the rite is reported to exist in full force;^282.3 and I now propose {283} to examine some changes and adaptations of its form down to its latest survivals in the folklore of civilised Europe.

But first of all we may take note of some observances among the American aborigines, which, though not connected with funerals, afford us a glimpse of the sacramental {284} character of a feast upon a kinsman’s body. The Totonacas, a tribe of the Mexican Chichimecs, used to slay periodically three of their children and mix the blood with certain herbs from the temple-garden, and the sap of the Cassidea elastica, into the consistency of dough, which was called toyoliayt la quatl (Food of our Life). Every six months all adults of the tribe were required to partake of it as a kind of Eucharist. And the compiler, from whom I take the account, sarcastically adds: “They thus partook of human blood without previous miraculous transformation.” The Cacivos of Peru are also said to sacrifice and eat a voluntary victim every year.^284.1 The Aztecs and the peoples allied to them are infamous for the hideous barbarity of their human sacrifices; and indeed it is incalculable what benefits were conferred on these unhappy nations in the softening of manners and the refinement of character, not to mention the salvation of immortal souls, when the sanguinary rites of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli were swept away, to make room for the Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass and the hecatombs of the Holy Inquisition. Among the Aztecs a prisoner of war was esteemed his captor’s son. He was generally sacrificed at the feast of Xipetotec, deity of the goldsmiths, and Huitzilopochtli. The body was returned to the captor, who cut it up and divided it between {285} his superiors, relations and friends, not tasting it himself, because “he counted it as the flesh of his own body.” He gave the skin to be worn for twenty days by another, who went about during that time collecting gifts for the captor. At another festival of Huitzilopochtli a dough statue of the god was made with certain seeds and the blood of children. It was formally “killed” at the conclusion of the ceremonies, by means of a flint-tipped dart, and then cut up and eaten by the male part of the population. This was called the killing and eating of the god.^285.1 Nor can we doubt that we have in these rites vestiges of totemistic feasts at which the totem-victim was not improbably represented by a kinsman.

We return to funeral feasts. The Fans of Equatorial West Africa have repeatedly been charged with this kind of cannibalism, but, while asserting it of their neighbours, have always denied it of themselves. The solution seems to lie in the fact that they sell their dead to the Osebas, who are recognised as a kindred race, and buy in return Oseba bodies for the purpose of consumption.^285.2 In short, repugnance to eat their own relatives has sprung up, without entire abandonment of anthropophagy. A curious compromise between burial in the earth and in the bodies of living members of the tribe appears in an account of the ceremonies on the death of a recent king of the Bangala. He was cut in two lengthwise, and another man slain for the purpose was treated in like manner. One half of the one, and a half of the other, were then put together, so as to {286} form an entire man, and buried. The remaining halves were stewed with manioc and bananas and eaten with other sacrifices.^286.1 In some cases the flesh of the dead is only eaten in the delirium of grief, or as a mark of particular affection. The latter is related to have frequently happened on the demise of a Hawaiian chief.^286.2 For the same reason mothers, among the Botocudos of South America, ate their dead children.^286.3 While in California the Gallinomero burnt the body immediately life became extinct; and the frenzy of survivors reached such a pitch that one of them has been seen to rush up to the pyre, snatch a handful of blazing flesh, and devour it on the spot.^286.4 A method of consuming the corpse adopted by the savage tribes inhabiting the valley of the Uaupes, a tributary of the Amazons, is described by Dr. Wallace. Their houses are generally built to accommodate the entire community; and the dead are buried beneath the floor. About a month after the funeral, Dr. Wallace tells us, the survivors “disinter the corpse, which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan, or oven, over the fire, till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most horrible odour, leaving only a black carbonaceous mass, which is pounded into a fine powder, and mixed in several large couchés (vats made of hollowed trees) of a fermented drink called caxirí; this is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished; they believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers.” Similar customs are reported of {287} other South American peoples.^287.1 Among the Koniagas, an Eskimo tribe of Alaska and the adjacent islands, when a whaler dies, one method of disposing of his body is to place it in a cave. There his fellow-craftsmen congregate, before setting out upon a chase. They take the body out, immerse it in a stream and then drink of the water.^287.2

Speaking generally, the practice of eating a dead kinsman, which is probably the earliest form of cannibalism, is also the earliest form to be abandoned. In the South Sea Islands, for example, where the custom of eating strangers has continued until recent years, the flesh of one’s own tribesmen is rejected, save in rare instances, such as that of Hawaii. In the Banks’ Islands it is occasionally eaten, in order to establish communion with a dead man for magical purposes: a practice likewise known in Australia.^287.3 But though the custom changes, the sacramental idea underlying it is retained; and the problem would be how to effect the necessary union between the dead and the living without partaking of the body. On the island of Vate, in the New Hebrides, the aged were put to death by burying them alive. A hole was dug, and the victim placed within it in a sitting posture, a live pig tied to each arm. Before closing the grave, the cords were cut; and the pigs were afterwards killed and served up at the funeral feast.^287.4 In this way they seem to be identified with the corpse.

In Europe, where flesh is not consumed ceremonially at {288} the funeral feast, other means even more expressive are taken to ensure the same object. In the Balkan peninsula the rites are very significant. In Albania, cakes of boiled wheat and other ingredients are carried in the funeral procession, and eaten by the mourners upon the grave as soon as it is filled up. All expressions of sorrow are repressed as sinful while it is being eaten; and as each person takes his share he says: “May he (or she) be forgiven!”^288.1 In some parts of the peninsula the cakes bear the image of the dead. They are broken up and eaten upon the tomb immediately after interment, every mourner pronouncing the words: “God rest him!”^288.2 At Calymnos, among the Greeks, the funeral, as elsewhere, takes place on the day of death. Kólyva cakes like those in Albania are then made, and are guarded in the house of the departed all night, with two lighted candles, by a watcher who must not go to sleep. The next day they are carried first to the church and then to the tomb, on which they are set to be distributed. The eating of Kólyva cakes is repeated with similar ceremonies on the third, ninth and fortieth days, and again at the end of three, six and nine months and of one, two and three years, after death.^288.3 It is impossible to {289} mistake the meaning of these practices: the image of the dead upon the cakes, the acts of carrying them in the funeral procession and eating them upon the grave, elsewhere the night-watching, and everywhere the cessation of mourning and the pious exclamations during eating, all admit of but one interpretation.

The ritual eating of special food is used at funerals in many countries. Pulse is not mentioned as an ingredient of the Kólyva cakes. It was, however, an important part of the funeral feasts of the Romans; and Mr. F. B. Jevons, commenting on Plutarch, has quoted Porphyry’s statement, that Pythagoras bade his followers “abstain from beans as from human flesh,” and the reason mentioned by Pliny as entertained by some for the prohibition, namely, that the souls of the dead are in them.^289.1 The various taboos and other superstitions connected with beans point to the correctness of this reason, and tend to show that pulse was in some way identified with human flesh. In the French provinces of Berry and the Marche, a plate of beans, or of dried peas, always figures among the provisions of the funeral banquet.^289.2 In the Marches of Italy the family on returning from the burial-ground sit down together to a large plate of beans.^289.3 In some parts of Friuli a soup of beans is distributed; in other places cakes of barley, or grated cheese. Elsewhere a loaf or cake of pan di tremeste, composed of rye and vetch, is given, with wine or brandy, to all who come to chant the rosary and other prayers over the corpse on the evening of death.^289.4 In the neighbourhood {290} of Rimini the feast consists of a broth of chick-pease.^290.1 But the form assumed by the ritual food is usually either cakes or fermented liquor, frequently both. Cakes called wastê are eaten in the Ardennes.^290.2 In Wales it seems that a hot plum-cake fresh from the oven used to be handed round to the guests, broken in pieces, not cut with a knife. In Sardinia, on the seventh or ninth day after death, savoury cakes are prepared and sent hot from the oven to all the relatives and neighbours, and to all who have joined in the weeping for the dead, or accompanied the corpse to the tomb. The family then gathers at supper, celebrating the virtues of the deceased between the mouthfuls of food and their tears.^290.3 Dough-nuts, among the Turks, are sent to friends and to the poor on the third, seventh, and fortieth days after the funeral; and prayers for the soul are requested in return.^290.4 Bread carried in the funeral procession is distributed to the poor by the Tamil population of Ceylon.^290.5 On one of the Banks’ Islands, “when a great man dies, the people from all the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to the place where the dead man lies and eat them there.”^290.6 Among the Abyssinians the poor receive from the banquet pieces of bread and of the entrails and liver of the animals which are served up.^290.7 {291} The Tcheremiss of the Kama and the Volga provide small pancakes, which they eat as soon as the grave is filled up, every one depositing three morsels upon the grave, saying: “This is for thee.”^291.1

In several of the cases cited the eating of the dead has evidently undergone a natural transformation into eating with the dead. But wherever a special food is used it may be suspected to represent the flesh of the deceased. In the funeral cakes of the Balkan peninsula the identity is manifest. I shall try to show that it is the same nearer home. In various parts of England and Wales a custom of giving small sponge-cakes to the guests is yet in force. In Yorkshire and elsewhere the last part of the funeral entertainment before the procession started for the churchyard was to hand round glasses of wine and small circular crisp sponge-cakes, whereof most of the guests partook. These cakes were called “Avril-bread.” The word Avril is said to be derived from arval, succession-ale, heir-ale, the name of the feasts given by Icelandic heirs on succeeding to property.^291.2 Now, although it might be suspected that the avril-bread represented the corpse, we should not be justified in holding that it did without more direct evidence. That evidence can fortunately be supplied, from a funeral which took place near Market Drayton in Shropshire on the 1st {292} July 1893, as described by an eye-witness. “The lady,” writes Miss Gertrude Hope, “who gave me the particulars, arrived rather early, and found the bearers enjoying a good lunch in the only downstairs room. Shortly afterwards the coffin was brought down and placed on two chairs in the centre of the room, and the mourners having gathered round it,” a short service was then and there conducted by the Nonconformist minister, as is frequently done, before setting out for the grave. “Directly the minister ended, the woman in charge of the arrangements poured out four glasses of wine and handed one to each bearer present across the coffin, with a biscuit called a ‘funeral biscuit.’ One of the bearers being absent at the moment, the fourth glass of wine and biscuit were offered to the eldest son of the deceased woman, who, however, refused to take it, and was not obliged to do so. The biscuits were ordinary sponge biscuits, usually called ‘sponge fingers’ or ‘lady’s fingers.’ They are, however, also known in the shops of Market Drayton as ‘funeral biscuits.’ ” These cakes are not exactly of the shape mentioned by Canon Atkinson as used in Yorkshire, but that is of no importance, because their shape varies with the place. What follows is enough to show that the scene described is not a solitary one. “The minister, who had lately come from Pembrokeshire, remarked to my informant that he was sorry to see that pagan custom still observed. He had been able to put an end to it in the Pembrokeshire village where he had formerly been.”^292.1

Here, it will be observed, the ritual food is handed across the coffin. Pennant, writing early in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, says that in Wales “previous to a {293} funeral, it was customary, when the corpse was brought out of the house and laid upon the bier, for the next of kin, be it widow, mother, sister or daughter (for it must be a female), to give, over the coffin, a quantity of white loaves, in a great dish, and sometimes a cheese, with a piece of money stuck in it, to certain poor persons. After that, they present, in the same manner, a cup of drink, and require the persons to drink a little of it immediately.” The Lord’s Prayer was then repeated by the minister, if present; and the procession started.^293.1 We can have little doubt that this was the same custom. A hundred years earlier still it was witnessed by John Aubrey at Beaumaris. He mentions it as occurring when the corpse is brought out of doors. The food consisted of cake and cheese, with “a new Bowle of Beere, and another of Milke with ye Anno Dni ingraved on it, & ye parties name deceased.” And Dr. Kennett, who annotated his manuscript, refers to a practice at Amersden, in Oxfordshire, of bringing to the minister in the church-porch after the interment a cake and a flagon of ale.^293.2 In Wales and the Welsh border the custom underwent a curious development. It became, for some cause, a profession to eat this funeral meal, and thereby, as was believed, to become responsible for the sins of the deceased. Aubrey describes one of these Sin-eaters, as they were called. “One of them I remember lived in a Cottage on Rosse-high way. (He was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal.) The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house and layd on the Biere, a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips bowle) full of beer, wch he was to drinke up, and {294} sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.”^294.1 The profession of Sin-eater and the full ceremony, pagan enough in all conscience, have vanished from the earth only within the lifetime of persons yet living. The most modern account of it was given by Mr. Matthew Moggridge of Swansea to the Cambrian Archaeological Association at Ludlow in the year 1852. He said that “when a person died, the friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d.” (a modest fee for the service, all things considered, though it had risen since Aubrey’s day), “and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly detested in the neighbourhood—regarded as a mere Pariah—as one irredeemably lost.” Mr. Moggridge specified the neighbourhood of Llandebie, about twelve or thirteen miles from Swansea, as a place where the custom had survived to within a recent period.^294.2

{295}

Thus in our own country we find the relics of a ritual feast, where food is placed upon the coffin, or rather upon the body itself, or handed across it, and so in a manner identified with it, and where it is expressly believed that by the act of eating some properties of the dead are taken over by the eater. Let us now turn back for a moment to the East. At a Hindu funeral in Sindh the relations, in the course of the march to the place of burning, throw dry dates into the air over the corpse. These, we are told, are considered as a kind of alms, and are left to the poor. On returning to the house, after the cremation, the first thing done is to offer the couch, bedding, and some clothes of the deceased to a Karnigor who is in attendance. A Karnigor is a low caste-man,—according to some, the offspring of a Brahman father and a Sudra mother. North of Hydrabad his appearance and conduct resemble those of the servile, south of that city those of the priestly, order. The condition of the gift is, that the Karnigor must eat a certain sweetmeat prepared for the occasion. If he refuse, the ghost of the dead man would haunt the place. This means that the funeral rites would have been incomplete. The Karnigor has, therefore, the game in his own hands; and, rejecting the first advance, he demands not only all the articles of dress left by the departed, but fees into the bargain. “When his avarice is satiated, he eats four or five mouthfuls of the sweetmeat, seldom more, for fear of the spirit. After this, he carries off his plunder, taking care not to look behind him, as the Pinniyaworo [head mourner] and the person who prepared the confectionery {296} wait until he is fifteen or twenty paces off, break up all the earthen cooking pots that have been used, and throw three of the broken pieces at him, in token of abhorrence.”^296.1 Can we fail to be reminded of the Sin-eater? Nor is this the most remarkable parallel to be found in India. The burning of the corpse of a king of Tanjore who died in 1801, and of two of his widows chosen for the purpose by the Brahmans, is described by the abbé Dubois. He states that a part of the bones which escaped the fury of the flames was reduced to powder, and this powder, having been mixed with boiled rice, was eaten by twelve Brahmans. The reason for the proceeding is put by the abbé almost in the very words I quoted in the last paragraph. The act “had for its object the expiation of the sins of the defunct persons: sins which, according to common opinion, are transmitted into the bodies of those whom the allurement of gain has induced to surmount the repugnance that a food so detestable should inspire. Moreover, people are persuaded that the money which is the price of this base condescension is never of any profit to them.”^296.2 If any doubt could remain as to the meaning of the Welsh custom, this would be enough to dissipate it. But in truth it is not needed; for we have in Europe other usages that set the meaning in the clearest light. In the Highlands of Bavaria, when the corpse is placed upon the bier, the room is carefully {297} washed out and cleaned. Formerly it was the custom for the housewife then to prepare the Leichen-nudeln, or Corpse-cakes. Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, as it lay there enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared, the belief attached that they contained the virtues and advantages of the departed, and that thus the living strength of the deceased passed over, by means of the corpse-cakes, into the kinsmen who consumed them, and so was retained within the kindred.^297.1 Here we find ourselves at an earlier stage in the disintegration of tradition than in the Welsh practice. The identification of the food with the dead man is not merely symbolic. The dough in rising is believed actually to absorb his qualities, which are transmitted to those of his kin who partake of the cakes; and—consistently with the requirement that the relatives eat the cakes—the qualities transferred are held to be not evil but good ones: the living strength, the virtues and so on of the dead are retained within the kin. Not less striking than the resemblance just pointed out between the objects of the Hindu and the Welsh rites, is that between the objects of {298} the Bavarian custom and that of the Tariánas and other tribes of the Uaupes for consuming the pounded remains of their kinsmen in their caxirí. In both cases, indeed, there is more than resemblance. The objects are absolutely the same; and it is inconceivable that the European usages wherewith we are dealing had any other origin than a cannibal feast, the material of which was the very body of the deceased kinsman.

It is natural to inquire whether any trace of this cannibalism lingers among the Irish, who alone among European races have been charged with it. There is a trace, though it must be admitted a fainter trace than we have found on this side of Saint George’s Channel. Yet I think when we compare it with the latter we shall conclude that it is enough, and therefore that in all probability Strabo’s accusation was not unfounded. The drinking which goes on at a wake is of course a relic of the funeral feast. It takes place in the presence of the corpse. A foreigner, describing a nobleman’s obsequies which he witnessed at Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles the Second, states that the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay, and “during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the deceased. This being finished six men took up the corps, and carried it on their shoulders to the church.”^298.1 I am not aware whether in Ireland the whisky is thus brought into immediate contiguity with the bier. In Connaught it was the custom about a generation ago, and probably still is, to place a plate of tobacco cut in short lengths, and a plate of snuff on the breast of the corpse; a boy stood at the door with a {299} basket of pipes, and each person helped himself according to his inclination.^299.1 Whatever may be the case as regards tobacco, I am informed by eye-witnesses that it is still an Irish custom to lay a plate of snuff on the breast of the dead; and everybody who attends the funeral is expected to take a pinch. This ceremony must have assumed its present shape in recent times; but it cannot be doubted that it represents the more archaic consumption of food or drink similarly placed.

I mentioned just now that dates were thrown, at a funeral in Sindh, over the corpse, and left to the poor. Before the funeral at Calymnos, figs and other fruit contributed by the relatives of the deceased, are carried from his house to the churchyard and there distributed among the poor.^299.2 In classic times the Greeks and Romans used to offer to the manes of the departed on the ninth day after the burial; and on the steps of the grave-monument a simple meal of milk, honey, oil and the blood of the sacrificed animals was prepared. If the tomb were large enough, there was a separate apartment provided, where the meal was consumed. As numerous guests were impossible in the limited space ordinarily available, the wealthy used often to distribute flesh-meat among the people, and in later times money.^299.3 To-day, in the Abruzzi, when a {300} maiden dies, comfits and money are distributed during the procession from the house to the church, and in some places also from the church to the graveyard, just as they are distributed during a wedding procession. This perhaps has no significance for our present inquiry; but the funeral feast which follows the burial must not be left unnoticed. Its material is provided by the most intimate friend of the dead,^300.1 who sometimes joins in it. No one else is admitted beside relatives. The table whereon the coffin has rested is the one used for the meal, and if not large enough, others are added to it to extend it. On returning to the house the party, after an interval of solemn silence, begin by telling their beads. The nearest of kin, one after the other, hand round the food, and the life and merits of the defunct are the invariable subject of conversation. They repeatedly press one another to eat and drink. This and the talk about the departed, from the way they are mentioned, appear to be important parts of the ceremony. The utensils must be returned empty and unwashed to the friend who has furnished the meal. Nothing eatable may be sent back: it must be finished by the servants and those who have taken part in the preparations for the funeral. Nor may the meal be taken in the usual room.^300.2

Several things are noteworthy in the Abruzzian feast; and there are few readers with the ceremonies we have {301} been discussing in their minds, who will not come to the conclusion that where the solemn banquet is spread on the table where the corpse has previously lain, where there is mutual urging to eat and nothing is permitted to be left, and where the virtues of the deceased are discussed as part of the rite, there is a presumption that the feast was originally upon the flesh of the dead. Among the Masurs, though we hear nothing about the requirement to finish the food, special food is provided, which we already know as a suspicious circumstance. Combined with the other details I am about to give, I venture to think it affords fairly strong evidence as to the original character of the mortuary feast. The body is placed on a table in the middle of the room, and the neighbours and relatives assemble round it. Buns and schnaps are placed on the table for the men; and the schnaps is drunk in turn out of the same glass. The women drink it with a spoon from a bowl. Suitable religious songs are sung. After the funeral, schnaps thickened with honey is served to the women on the same table; and at the feast which follows, presumably on the same table, groats mingled with honey are a special dish. In some districts the body is covered with a table-cloth, which is afterwards put over the funeral bakemeats on the table; and no one can take them until it is removed. At the meal all drink in brandy to the everlasting rest of the departed.^301.1

In classical times and classical lands, as we saw, the tables were spread at the tomb. At Argentière, in the department of the Hautes Alpes, France, this continues to be done immediately after the burial; and the table of the curé and the family is placed upon the grave itself. The dinner {302} ended, every one, led by the next of kin, drinks the health of the departed. Here the situation of the chief table is unambiguous. We should hesitate to say so much of the classical feast, or of the custom prescribed by the ritual of the monastery of Saint Ouen at Rouen, where after the abbot’s death a repast of spices and wine was given in his chamber.^302.1 Neither the celebration of the formal meal in the death-chamber nor at the grave is conclusive of itself. When once the practice of eating the dead was abandoned, and only a symbol of the loathsome food remained, the meaning of the symbol would tend to pass out of memory, and, according to varying circumstances, sooner or later the symbol itself would undergo change and disappear. The totem-feast, on the other hand, of which it may be plausibly maintained the cannibal feast on the dead kinsman was originally part, shorn of its most savage detail, would remain in full vigour. So far as it was a funeral observance it would receive a specific development with appropriate surroundings, and its totemistic character would gradually be forgotten. Moreover, it is possible that the cannibal feast was by no means universal at any time. However this may be, the totem-feast being a sacramental rite, a communion between the living members of a clan and their totem, one of the most obvious extensions of the sacramental idea would be that of communion with the dead. The latter would be supposed to join in the feast and partake of the food: a portion of which would accordingly be reserved for them. And as the deceased member of the clan would be supposed to be sojourning at his grave, it would of course be greatly for the convenience of all parties that the feast should be held {303} there, and the portion meant for him deposited in or upon the tomb. Death had not relieved him of the wants of life; but it had released him from certain of its limitations. The conditions of his existence were changed. While in some directions he had been deprived of power, in others he had become possessed of greater power than during life; and all beings possessed of extraordinary power were regarded with distrust. Savage man felt himself capricious, revengeful, envious, cruel. The feelings he experienced, the feelings he saw manifested in his fellow-men, he attributed to the mightier creatures of his imagination. Now life was, in his contemplation, so much more desirable than death, that the dead would naturally have been supposed to envy the living. Here was a distinct cause of ill-will. The dead man must, therefore, be kept from haunting the survivors. To that end his funeral rites must be fully and properly performed, and every precaution taken both to persuade him to stay at a distance and to prevent him from finding his way back. One means to do this was to provide him with food in or upon his sepulchre. He would thus be induced to abide there, or, as the case might be, to take his departure straight thence to the dwelling-place of spirits, and not to linger among the kindred who were anxious to be rid of him. This belief gave rise to the repetition of feasts of the dead, for the needs of the dead must be constantly supplied. Besides, to keep them in good humour would be to enlist their sympathy and their help; and who could know how much that help might mean against enemies, or in the chase, or in the operations of agriculture? Thus, not only love for the departed, and the desire for communion with them, but every other motive concurred on the one hand to provide {304} them with food, and on the other hand to consult their convenience in facilitating their enjoyment of it. The reasoning was not free from inconsistencies, because there were cross-currents of tradition. All of them did not flow from the habit of looking upon the dead as abiding permanently in their graves. Probably this was the original faith. But the belief in a separate realm of souls grew up as culture advanced, and disturbed the earlier tradition. The possibility of return to life by a new birth into the kin was another opinion that affected it. And the doctrine of Transformation must, from the most archaic times, have intervened as a modifying influence, for transformation implies locomotion. The savage did not always trouble himself to reconcile inconsistencies. His simple credulity accepted them all. We need not wonder; for even the mind of civilised and educated man is built in watertight compartments: whereof no reader will want examples.

The meal at the grave, then, or in the death-chamber, may be a meal at which the dead man is one of the convives. Instances are numerous in the lower culture. Some of them, like that of the Tcheremiss Tartars, have been mentioned; and I select a few more, out of many, further to illustrate the practice. It will be convenient to begin with the Tchuvash, whose seats are on the middle reaches of the Volga, because their customs, if correctly reported, seem, like those of the Tcheremiss, to show the eating of the dead passing over into the eating with the dead. After burial in the public cemetery the relatives deposit on the grave some cakes and a piece of cooked fowl, saying, like the Tcheremiss: “This is for thee.” The old clothes of the deceased are thrown over the tomb; and the rest of the cakes are eaten by the funeral escort, {305} by whom the repast is regarded as taken in company with the dead. On the fortieth day after burial an animal, designated by the deceased in his lifetime for that purpose, is killed. Libations are made, and half the flesh with other food is deposited on the grave. This is devoured, amid lamentations of the relatives, by dogs; “for it is believed that the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead. The feasting then begins, and eating and drinking continue until all the supplies are exhausted.”^305.1 The Tchuvash appear to be the same people of whom Hanway, in the middle of the last century, relates that they throw their dead into the open field to be devoured by dogs, of which many run wild, and some are kept for the purpose.^305.2 If the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead by eating of the memorial banquet, we are presented with a result comparable with that obtained by the Bavarian Highlanders and the Tariánas; and we may conjecture that in earlier times the deceased was eaten by the kin.

Immediately before the burial of an Ainu, millet-cakes and wine are handed round to the assembled relatives and friends. Each person “offers two or three drops of the wine to the spirit of the dead, then drinks a little, and pours what is left before the fire as an offering to the fire-goddess, all the time muttering some short prayer. Then part of the millet-cake is eaten, and the remainder hidden in the ashes upon the hearth, each person burying a little piece.” After the body has been interred these fragments are carried out of the hut and placed together before the eastern window, which is always a sacred spot.^305.3 When a {306} dead Chinaman is put into his coffin, a quantity of food is put before him, and afterwards removed and eaten by his family; and again at the burial eatables are taken from the house and set on the tomb, and subsequently brought back to be consumed at the funeral meal.^306.1 Moreover, at each of the oft-repeated memorial feasts for the departed, some of the food is first placed before the ancestral tablets, or the tombs, and then eaten by the family; and it is believed that the spirits partake of its “essential and immaterial elements.”^306.2 In the funeral rites of the Dyaks food is set before the dead ere the coffin is closed. It is allowed to stand for about an hour by the corpse, and is then devoured by the next-of-kin.^306.3 On the death of a Hungarian Gipsy he is carried out of the tent or hut. It is now the duty of the members of his clan to offer to the deceased gifts, especially food and drink, which they lay beside the body and later on themselves consume.^306.4 The Sàkalàva of Madagascar bury in a family cemetery. “A cup and a plate are placed by the side of the coffin, and every now and then the friends go in large numbers, and taking rice and rum with them, hold a feast in these cemeteries, and believe that the spirits of their dead ancestors and relatives come and join them.”^306.5 The Hillmen of Rájmahál on the death of a chief, hold a feast where a part of the provisions is dedicated to their god and to the spirit of the deceased, and thus becoming forbidden {307} to the survivors, is thrown away.^307.1 On Florida and San Cristoval, and possibly other of the Solomon Islands, at the funeral feast a bit of the food is thrown into the fire for the departed, with the words: “This is for you.” On Lepers’ Island and the Banks’ Islands, the feasts are repeated for a long period; and a portion is always set aside with the words: “This is for thee.” On the Banks’ Islands, indeed, at ordinary meals when the oven is opened a morsel of food is put aside for the dead with the words: “This is for you; let our oven be well cooked.”^307.2 The tribes about Lake Nyassa, in Central East Africa, hold a memorial feast two or three months after the death, of which the spirit of the deceased is considered to partake.^307.3 Among some of the Senegambian tribes, when the grave is filled up, a fowl, with its legs tied, is laid upon the mound, within reach of some water and boiled rice, which are placed at the head of the grave. If it eat any of the rice it is killed, the tomb is sprinkled with its blood, the flesh cooked and partly eaten, partly left for the dead. This ceremony is repeated at every renewal of the customary lamentations.^307.4 The Koiari tribe of New Guinea cook food at stated times, formally present it to the dead man, and then eat it.^307.5 The Dorah tribesmen on the same island hold a feast two or three months after the death of a first-born son, when the skull is produced, adorned with a wooden pair of ears and nose and with eyes of coloured {308} seeds. The head thus prepared is honoured with a portion of all the dishes.^308.1 So on the island of Nagir, in Torres Straits, at the death-dance held three months after the death of a man whose skull was afterwards sold to Professor Haddon, the skull being prepared and adorned was placed on a mat in the midst of the assembly. Food was provided for the immediate relatives, and laid before the skull. The feast then began; and it must have been accompanied by much enjoyment, for we are told that all got very drunk.^308.2 Perhaps this was the way in which the Issedones used the skulls of their dead. The same intention is doubtless to be understood of the memorial feast, or Karmantram ceremony, of the Eastern Kullens of Madura, in Southern India. After a meal, to which the relatives are invited, in the evening a bier, followed by the kin, is carried with music to the grave. The dead man’s wife’s brother digs up the corpse, and removes the skull, which he washes and smears with sandal-wood powder and spices. He then seats himself on the bier, holding the skull in his hand, and is carried without music to a shed in front of the house of the deceased, where the skull is set down, and the relatives weep and mourn over it until the following noon. The succeeding twenty-four hours are given over to drunken revelry. This, it will be observed, is in the presence or immediate neighbourhood of the skull. It is afterwards carried back by the person who brought it from the grave, seated again on the bier and accompanied by music. Arrived once more at the grave, the son or heir of the deceased, at whose expense the rite is performed, burns the skull and breaks an earthen pot. The relatives on {309} returning bathe and then feast together,^309.1—an ordinary conclusion to a funeral ceremony. Here, if I am right in my interpretation, only drink is offered—by no means a solitary instance. The Livonians used to stand round a corpse drinking, inviting it to partake, and pouring for that purpose a part of the liquor over it. The pagan Lapps sprinkle the grave with brandy, part of which is reserved for the mourners at the funeral feast. However, they also kill the reindeer that draws the body to the burial-ground, eat the flesh and bury the bones, but in a separate coffin.^309.2 Among the Peguenches in the south of Chili, when the body is deposited in the graveyard, but before it is put into the ground, a feast is prepared. Every one who partakes, before eating throws a morsel of food towards the corpse, crying out “Yuca-pai.”^309.3 At the other extremity of the Western Continent the Eskimo sometimes pay a formal visit to the sepulchre taking pieces of deerskin and fat. Of the fat they eat a portion, standing round the grave, and talking the while to the dead. Then each of them lays a piece of deerskin (still covered with the fur) and a piece of fat under a stone, exclaiming: “Here is something to eat, and something to keep you warm.”^309.4 The feast with the dead is common among the North American tribes. It is eaten at the grave. A fire is kindled; and each person before eating cuts off a small piece of meat which he casts into the fire. The smoke and smell of this, they say, attracts the {310} ghost to come and eat with them. Nor only so. The practice of setting aside a portion of their food for the ghost whenever they eat or drink is continued, sometimes for years, until they have an opportunity of sending out this memorial with a war-party, to be thrown down on the field of battle, when their obligation to the departed ceases.^310.1

Among the examples I have given, the skull of the dead man often appears at the festivity. Other representatives of the deceased are also found. The Tcheremiss kart, or shaman, wears the garments of the deceased; and when the feast is over it is he who gives what is left to the dogs.^310.2 The Teng-ger tribes of Java accord the most conspicuous position to a mannikin about a foot and a half high, made of leaves, dressed in the clothes of the dead and ornamented with flowers.^310.3 The practice of making images of the dead and conjuring the spirits into them is not an uncommon one; and wherever it exists we are justified in assuming that the images would not be allowed to go without their due share of nourishment at proper times.

The meaning of some ceremonies may not be quite so clear; as when one tribe of Tartars, having eaten the favourite horse of the departed, sticks up its head on the grave; or another tribe, killing and eating a fat mare, hangs her skin from the branches of the tree that shades the tomb.^310.4 The southern tribes of British Columbia often killed the horse of the deceased and decked the grave with its skin.^310.5 The Yoruba of West Africa collect the bones of the fowls and sheep eaten by the guests, and of the other {311} victims sacrificed, and place them over the grave.^311.1 The Kamtchadales eat a fish in memory of the departed and throw the fins into the fire.^311.2 The Kirghiz Tartars burn on the tomb the bones of the horse they have eaten—usually the favourite of the dead man.^311.3 Animal bones, burnt and unburnt, and especially the head of an ox, are frequently found in opening barrows in this country, pointing to practices on the part of the prehistoric inhabitants analogous to these.^311.4 Probably, in many cases at least, they are the remains of a banquet common to the living and the dead.

The drink bestowed on the dead in some of the foregoing instances perhaps represents blood; and blood, it will be remembered, was the share of the totem-god in the sacrificial feasts. Nothing could, therefore, more plainly bespeak the meaning of these funeral rites. In some cases, indeed, as we have seen, the blood is sprinkled upon the grave. So among the Wanyika the corpse when buried holds in its hand a piece of skin taken from the head of a goat or cow which has been killed for the feast, and the grave is sprinkled with the blood before it is filled up.^311.5 The dead body of a Yoruba is spattered with the blood of a he-goat slain to propitiate the phallic deity, Elegba; but whether the mourners partake of the flesh we are not told: most likely they do.^311.6 In the same way wine was sprinkled on a Roman’s grave—a ceremony of which we find the relic, after cremation began to be practised, in the formal extinction {312} of the ashes by the outpouring of wine. The rites of the Todas and Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills are complicated; and only a portion of them need be noticed in this connection. The corpse is burnt; but a piece of the scalp and some of the finger-nails are first cut off and preserved between two strips of bark as relics. On the anniversary, or some other suitable day, buffaloes are sacrificed; the relics are rubbed with their blood and ceremonially burnt; and their flesh is eaten by the Kotas.^312.1

We may dismiss funeral banquets with one further observation. The intention of sharing a common meal with the dead is by no means abandoned at the completion of the funeral ceremonies. The feasts, as in several cases we have already noted, are repeated at intervals. Indeed, at all festivals when the entire kin is assembled the deceased members are conceived as assembled with them; a portion of the food is set aside, a portion of the drink is poured out for the departed. The cult of the dead in this form survives into the higher phases of civilisation. At various times in the year, particularly at Halloween, all over Europe, the tables are set, the doors are opened, and the ghosts are invited to partake of the fare provided by their descendants and relatives; and it is believed that they actually come and enjoy the food prepared for them, and warm themselves on the hearth, which, in the days of their flesh, they used to tend, and around which they used to gather, when work was over, to eat their frugal fare, and to rejoice one another with social converse and the performance of domestic rites. A tender custom! and one that pleads pathetically for its continuance as a witness to {313} a faith in comparison wherewith Christianity is a thing of yesterday, a faith not less true than Christianity itself in its recognition and its consecration of some of the deepest and most vital emotions of our nature.

There are other ways of forming a sacramental union with the dead. Among the Tolkotins of Oregon, who burnt their dead, the widow was compelled to pass her hands through the flame and collect some of the liquid fat exuding from the body, wherewith to daub herself. The Modocs appear to have smeared their persons with the blood of any of their kindred who died violent deaths.^313.1 On the Gilbert Islands “the nearest relations,” whatever that expression may include, are said to rub themselves with the saliva which escapes from the mouth in the agonies of death.^313.2 Other savages rub themselves with the liquid flowing from the putrefying corpse. There is no need to dwell on this loathsome custom. It is reported of tribes extending over a considerable area of the earth’s surface, namely, of the Krumen near Sierra Leone, the Antankàrana in Madagascar, the aborigines of Victoria, the Andrawillas in East Central Australia, the Koiari of New Guinea, the Laughlan Islanders between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the inhabitants of New Britain and the Similkameens of British Columbia. Of the last we are told in so many words that they believe that in this way some portion of the deceased becomes incorporated in them.^313.3 Nay, some {314} peoples, like the Banks’ Islanders and the Aron Islanders imbibe these fluids; but the Nias Islanders perform the duty by deputy in the persons of their wretched slaves, who according to one account are suffocated in the process.^314.1 Of a party of Tasmanians who were deported to Barren Island we are told that they were seen to collect the ashes of the dead after burning, and smear a portion of them every morning on their faces, singing the while a death-song and weeping.^314.2 Among the Digger Indians of California the relatives are said to cover their hands and faces with a mixture of tar and the ashes of the deceased.^314.3 And the Correguajes Indians of New Granada burn the bones when the wild beasts have removed the flesh, and use the ashes as a pigment for painting themselves, “the relatives having the first right to its use.”^314.4 Earlier in the chapter I mentioned a method of dealing with the dead body of a Koniaga whaler. An alternative method is to cut it into small pieces and distribute it among the other whalers, each of whom rubs the point of his lance upon it, so to unite the weapon with the skill and power inherent in the deceased, and preserves the morsel as a permanent talisman.^314.5 Sometimes a Tchuktchi, tired of life, is put to death by his kinsmen at his own desire. All who take part in the ceremony bathe their faces and hands in his blood. They then burn his body on a funeral pyre, {315} standing around it and praying the departed not to forget them.^315.1 A Dyak rite identifies the victim at the commemorative festival with the deceased. The corpse is put into a temporary coffin for preliminary burial until the Tiwah, or Feast of the Dead, can be held. On that occasion a slave, or prisoner of war, is provided and dressed in the usual clothing of the deceased. Thus clad, the victim is wounded by all the assembled guests and finally killed. The priestesses in attendance then daub the relations of the deceased with the victim’s blood, “so to reconcile them with the departed and to give them to understand that they have now fulfilled their obligation towards his wandering soul.” After a night of debauchery the remains of the dead man and the victim are placed in one permanent coffin, in the family dead-house; but the victim’s skull is ranged with others outside.^315.2 The details of this ceremony are unmistakable, though it is right to say that the victim is now regarded simply as an attendant on the departed in the other world.

Other means are also adopted. Among the Andaman Islanders, over a large part of the Southern Ocean, in various districts of America, and perhaps among the Wahuma of East Africa, certain of the bones, either whole or calcined, are worn. Naturally the widow is, above everybody, expected to do this. Among the Mosquitos of Central America and the tribes of Honduras the widow took up the bones after burial for a year and carried them for another year, sleeping with them at night. Not until she had ceased to do this was she permitted to marry again.^315.3 In {316} Australia the Kulin widow seems to have carried the head and arms of her husband for an indefinite time, if not for the rest of her life.^316.1 Among the Kurnai the mummified corpse was carried about by the family in its migrations for years under special charge of the parents, the wife or other near relatives, and finally, after it was buried or stowed away in a hollow tree, the father or mother, if living, would carry the lower jaw “as a memento.”^316.2 The Kiriwina widow in New Guinea hangs from her neck her husband’s lower jaw richly ornamented with glass and shell beads.^316.3 The Mincopie widow is said to wear the entire skull.^316.4 Among the natives of the western districts of Victoria the widow of a chief by his first marriage wears a bag containing some of his calcined bones for two years, or until she marries again; and she also gets the lower bones of the right arm entire, which are carried in an opossum skin for the same period. Conversely, a widower wears his wife’s calcined bones in a bag of opossum-skin for twelve moons, and then buries them.^316.5 The Taw-wa-tins and Tacullies of British Columbia, and the Tolkotins of Oregon, compel a widow to wear her husband’s calcined bones for three years, during which time her life is made a burden to her by his kindred, so that widows marrying again have been known to commit suicide rather than undergo the suffering a second time.^316.6 {317} In many cases the bones are permanently worn by the relatives of the deceased: in other cases, only for a time. Sometimes they are expressly recognised as charms; but always they seem to be something more than mere memorials of the dead.^317.1

The skull and various other bones are yet more frequently kept in the dwelling.^317.2 The instances to which {318} reference is given in the note are, with the exceptions of the Issedones in antiquity and the Krumen of the Grain Coast and the Andaman Islanders among modern savages, confined to the islanders of the Pacific Ocean, and certain tribes of North America, Honduras, and the northern parts of South America. Where the circumstances permit, as in the case of the Ichthyophagi and other ancient Ethiopian tribes, the old Egyptians, the Chinese, the Solomon Islanders, the Banks’ Islanders, the islanders of Ambrym in the New Hebrides, and the Yorubas of the Slave Coast, the corpse is kept either permanently, or for a lengthened period in the house unburied.^318.1 And after burning, the ashes are similarly kept by several of the aboriginal peoples of Bengal and Assam, until the time arrives when they can be solemnly committed to the river or put into the family grave.^318.2 The Wakonda burn the corpse; and the ashes, collected into a jar are preserved by the family.^318.3 Along the Skeena River in British Columbia the natives cremated their dead, and sometimes hung the ashes in boxes to the family totem-pole.^318.4 Like certain Tibetan tribes, and perhaps {319} the Issedones, some of the native Australians used the skull for a drinking-cup.^319.1

A custom more widely spread than that of keeping the bones, because attended with much less inconvenience, is that of taking and keeping some of the hair, nails or pieces of garments of the dead. It may, indeed, be said to prevail through the greater part of the world; nor has the custom of preserving a lock of hair cut after death as a memorial of the departed yet vanished from among ourselves. An acute writer in the Contemporary Review some years ago related that in the West Indian island of St. Croix those who washed the dead prior to burial always took a lock of hair, a garment, or at least a fragment of a garment, in order to prevent the spirit from molesting them for venturing to tamper with the place of its late habitation. And he adds: “At first thought, it seems most natural to believe that the surest way to prevent any visit from a dead man is to take nothing of his with you. But not so. A liberty has been taken with his body by one who is probably a total stranger, hired perhaps for the express purpose of preparing him for his coffin. Now, if you take something of his, something that is either a part of him, or has been on his person, you in a sense identify yourself with him; you establish as it were, a kind of relationship, and thus the liberty you take with him must seem much less to him.”^319.2 The reader who has followed the argument of {320} the preceding paragraphs and the preceding chapters will have no difficulty in admitting that here the true theory has been touched. The motive that prompts an English mother to wear in a brooch a lock of hair and the likeness of the darling she will see no more on earth is the same as induces a Friendly Islander to pass a braid of the hair of his dead kinsman through his own ear, and to wear it there for the rest of his life. It is the same as leads a Mosquito widow to carry about her husband’s bones and to sleep with them. Consciously or unconsciously, the idea at the root of these and similar practices is that of sacramental communion with the dead. In the West Indian Negro practice just cited we see the application of this idea to the protection of the person who may perchance have incurred the wrath of the dead. Thus applied, it is analogous to that of counteracting witchcraft by uniting the witch in blood-brotherhood with her victim.

Hitherto we have only considered methods of effecting communion with the dead based on the appropriation by the living of some part of the corpse. This, however, implies the reciprocal possibility of communion formed by means of a gift of some portion of the living body to the {321} dead. Nothing more nor less I take to be the real meaning of the practice, forbidden to the Hebrews, of cutting oneself for the dead.^321.1 We find this practice in its most complete form among the Orang Sakei, a people whose chief seats are about the river Siak on the eastern side of Sumatra. There, at a funeral the kindred, making a cross-cut with a knife on their heads, drop the blood on the face of the corpse. Individuals are found who by repetition of this mutilation have lost all the hair from their heads.^321.2 They have indeed, in the words of the Deuteronomist, made a baldness between their eyes for the dead. At Tahiti, in Captain Cook’s time, mourners were in the habit of wounding themselves with knives and clubs consisting of canes or pieces of wood set with sharks’ teeth, and allowing the blood and tears to drip on small cloths which they threw under the bier. As described by Mr. Ellis, some half century later, the performance was a little different. Both sexes cut themselves. The females wore short aprons of a special kind of cloth, which they held up to catch the blood until it almost saturated them. The aprons were then dried in the sun and given to the nearest surviving relatives as proofs of the affection of the donors, and were preserved by the bereaved family as tokens of the esteem in which the departed had been held.^321.3 It is easy to see that this may have been a modification of the rite as it prevailed in Captain Cook’s day, and that both may have been derived from a rite similar to that of the Orang Sakei. In Australia the rite is found both in its original and its {322} degraded forms. When the body is placed in the ground the practice of several tribes is that the mourners leap into the grave in turn, and are there cut on the head with a boomerang, so as to allow the blood to fall over the corpse. Among the tribes of the Murray river, the kindred of the deceased, assembled round the corpse, or at all events in its presence, used to lacerate their thighs, backs and breasts with shells or flints until the blood flowed in streams. After burial the women visited the grave at stated intervals, by night or in the early morning, there to renew their wailings and lacerations. With other tribes it is enough for the mourners to gash themselves, or be gashed by others, in sign of grief: the process of ceremonial decay has caused the need of bringing the blood into contact with the body of the deceased to be no longer recognised.^322.1 The Mosquito Indians lacerate and bruise themselves until they bleed in the dead man’s hut.^322.2 The Bororó women in Central Brazil, at the festival for a dead man, cause their limbs to be scratched until the blood flows, and allow it to drip into the basket containing the bones.^322.3 Four aborigines executed for murder at Helena, on the head waters of the Missouri, in December 1890, were mourned by two squaws. One of the squaws cut off two of her fingers and threw them into the grave. The other gashed her face. Both caused the blood to flow into the grave, and had previously scalped their children.^322.4 In another case {323} of which a traveller in the early part of the present century was a witness, the mourners’ blood was made to flow over the dead man and over the food that was buried with him. But, though we have sufficient testimony to the archaic form of the custom among the North American peoples, that form is far from universal. More usually they are content with simply wounding themselves, careless where the blood may fall.^323.1 On the occasion of a burial among the Battas the wives of the dead not only weep and howl, but scratch their faces and bodies until the torn skin hangs down in places, and the blood streams on the earth.^323.2 When an Abyssinian corpse is about to be removed to its final resting-place some of the mourners “frantically grasp the bier, as if wishing to retain it by force; others, convulsed by the throes of agony and despair, rend their clothes, tear their hair, lacerate their faces and necks with their nails, so that the blood trickles down in streams.”^323.3 The Abyssinians call themselves Christians; but in this respect they have hardly advanced beyond many benighted pagans, like those already mentioned, or like the Gallinomero of California who burnt the bodies of their dead, and howled and wounded themselves the while in a manner, we are told, too terrible for description.^323.4

Nor is mere cutting and wounding all. Many savages deem it necessary to inflict permanent mutilations on themselves, like the squaws of Montana just mentioned. Among {324} the Fiji Islanders, when a king died, each of the women cut off a finger-joint. These were hung upon the eaves of the royal house. The amputation of a finger-joint was a common sign of mourning; and poor people made a business of it, receiving payment from the relatives of the dead in exchange for their severed members.^324.1 In numerous cases of mutilation, as of laceration, however, the evidence is wanting that the amputated member, like the blood, was brought into contact or proximity with the corpse. In such the rite is probably in a decayed form. The mere wounding or amputation had come to be looked upon as enough. With regard especially to amputation the process is clear. As the totem developed into a god the idea of sacrifice evolved in like measure from sacramental communion into a gift, a present to propitiate an offended being, a substitute for the votary himself who had deserved death, or (as in the instance of Admetos) whom the divinity was calling out of life. To save themselves from death, or from calamity, men offered up something of less value than their own lives, or than that whose loss or injury they dreaded, but still something of value and importance. Thus, as Dr. Tylor recalls, mothers in the southern provinces of India will cut off their own fingers as sacrifices lest they lose their children; and golden fingers are sometimes offered—“the substitute of a substitute.”^324.2 At length a virtue is attached to the mere abnegation. To deprive oneself of what is held dear, or what is essential to enjoyment, or even to life, is in itself of merit, {325} quite apart from any thought of benefiting the deity. The shedding of blood, or the amputation of a finger, for the purpose of communion with the dead would follow a parallel course, and would gradually acquire virtue alone as a means of testifying to the affection and the grief of the survivor, without bringing the survivor into ritual union with the departed.

In the closest connection with wounding and mutilation for the dead, is the cutting, tearing or shaving of the hair. We have already studied gifts of hair to the dead; and if our conclusions as to them be correct, we must also conclude that the cutting or tearing of the hair as an expression of mourning is a relic of that custom which led Hecuba to lay her grey locks upon Hector’s grave and Achilles to bestrew the body of Patroklos with his shorn tresses. Dr. Wilken contends that the intention alike of wounding, of mutilation and of the gift of hair is the dedication of oneself to the dead, a consecration of the entire person, a pledge of ultimate reunion. That it is so in some cases seems clear. But this dedication must in a far greater number of instances be made repeatedly to quite different personages who have stood during life in a variety of relations to the mourner. Where only wives devote their hair to their dead husbands and are not allowed to marry a second time, things would arrange themselves easily in the next world. But if they shed their blood, or shear their locks also for fathers and brothers, for kindred and friends all round—nay, perhaps for another husband or two,—then one would imagine that even savages might anticipate awkward contingencies yonder. The truth is that the practice has sprung from a lower plane of culture than is supposed in a theory of self-dedication and {326} future reunion. We know little of the belief in a future life entertained by the Tasmanian aborigines. From what little we do know it is safe to say that the Tasmanian woman who threw her hair upon the grave of her mother or her child, had no thought of self-consecration to the dead or of meeting again in another world. But she cherished the belief that by means of her hair she could still be in some sort of union with one she had loved. In short, the radical idea of all the practices we have discussed in the present chapter is the same, however much it may be modified with rising civilisation and the gradual evolution of the conception of deity and spirit and the life after death. It is grounded in the conviction of the continued, though mysterious, oneness of a body with its severed parts, and the absence of any conception of spirit apart from a visible and tangible material existence.

Other funeral rites point in the same direction. We will confine our attention to one. The custom of burial in a common grave or at least in one general cemetery, is very widespread. It is found in all quarters of the globe. The reason is given by Sir Richard Burton in describing the practices in Sindh. “They believe that by interring corpses close to the dust of their forefathers, the ruha, or souls of the departed, will meet and commune together after death.”^326.1 This is a belief that could not have arisen, save at a time when no sharp division had been drawn between body and spirit. Mr. Crawfurd says: “When a Javanese peasant claims to be allowed to cultivate the fields occupied by his forefathers, his chief argument always is that near them are the tombs of his progenitors. A Javanese, as I have remarked in another place, cannot endure to be removed {327} from these objects of his reverence and affection: and when he is taken ill at a distance, begs to be carried home, at all the hazards of the journey, that he may ‘sleep with his fathers.’ The bodies of some of the princes who died in banishment at Ceylon, I perceive, were, at their dying request, conveyed to their native island.”^327.1 I need not dwell on the practice itself of burying the kindred in one place. It is well known, and even among ourselves is not destitute of force, appealing as it does to our most sacred feelings. As little need I dwell upon the belief underlying it. But some of the modes of giving effect to it may detain us for a few moments.

Even if already buried in another place the Sindhi and their neighbours, the Yusufzais of Afghanistan, will exhume the bones and bring them home for a fresh burial.^327.2 So do the natives of the Gold Coast, even though years have elapsed since the death.^327.3 Dr. Brinton tells us that “the custom of common ossuaries for each gens appears to have prevailed among the Lenâpe”; and he quotes Gabriel Thomas as relating that “if a person of note dies very far away from his place of residence, they will convey his bones home some considerable time after, to be buried there.” The Nanticokes buried their corpses for some months, and then, taking up the bones, they cleaned them and deposited them in a common ossuary. When they removed to another place these bones were carried with them.^327.4 Common ossuaries were very usual among the North American tribes; and in the Ohio mounds is evidence that the {328} custom dates back to a considerable antiquity.^328.1 These are only a few of the examples that might be given. It is thus by no means necessary that the entire body should be buried in the common ground: the bones only were sufficient. But sometimes it is not practicable to bury the whole skeleton; nor is it necessary. If what is done to a detached portion of the body be done to the whole, all that is necessary is to make a selection. The bones usually chosen are those of the skull; the reasons for the choice being probably those which determine the choice of the skull as a keepsake, according to a custom considered a few pages back. When the Samoans made war at a distance from their homes, they brought back, in returning, the skulls of their dead to the ancestral graves.^328.2 Among the villagers of the Wanyika, in the highlands of Eastern Africa, the head is dug up some time after interment and sent to the capital to be buried, for there was formerly the general cemetery of the whole tribe, and there still its councils are held.^328.3 It is the custom of the Greeks and the Orthodox Albanians, as of the Bretons and other European peoples, to dig up the bones after a certain period of burial, wash them in wine, and deposit them in an ossuary. But, because the Albanians lead a migratory life, a large proportion of the male population dies abroad. “The bones of these wanderers are afterwards collected and sent home; or, at any rate, a portion of them—a skull or a single bone—is brought back to their native place.”^328.4 Among the {329} ancient Romans a bone of such as died abroad or in war was sent home to the relatives for burial. This usage was expressly recognised by a law of the Twelve Tables which abolished in all other cases the pre-existing custom of cutting out a bone in order to bury it when the rest of the body was burnt.^329.1 At the cremation the hot ashes were extinguished in wine, collected by the relatives and deposited in an urn in the grave-chamber. At Kalna, near Calcutta, is a place called Samáj Bati, where a bone of every deceased member of the family of the Rajah of Bardwan is deposited.^329.2 Various tribes of Bengal, among which are the Santals, Oraons and Garos, ultimately commit some of the burnt fragments of bone to the river, where they are carried down by the current to the far-off eastern land whence, if we may trust the national traditions, their ancestors originally came, thus “uniting the dead with the fathers.” Instances, we are told, have been known of a Santal “son following up the traces of a wild beast which had carried off his parent, and watching, without food or sleep, during several days for an opportunity to kill the animal, and secure one of his father’s bones to carry to the {330} river.”^330.1 The Khási of Assam, on the other hand, place the ashes in the family bone-receptacle; and it is worthy of note that those of husband and wife are never placed in the same, because they belong to different clans, and the ashes of the children are put in that of their mother. Major Godwin-Austen says “that the collection of the bones into one vault, as it may be termed, is done under the impression that the souls of the departed may all mingle together again in one large family without trouble or suffering. The idea of a member of a family being a wanderer in the other world, cut off from, and unable to join, the circle of the spirits of his own clan is most repugnant to the feelings of a Khási or Sinteng.” Consequently great efforts are made to recover, even after the lapse of many years, the calcined bones of any member of the gens who may have died at a distance.^330.2 Some of the Garos, neighbours of the Khási, seem to follow this custom, while others put the ashes into the river like the Santals.^330.3 The Bhumij of Bengal inter some of the unconsumed fragments of bone at the foot of a tulsi-plant in the courtyard of the dead man’s house, and the rest in the original cemetery of the family. “The theory is that the bones should be taken to the village in which the ancestors of the deceased had the status of bhuinhárs, or first clearers of the soil; but this is not invariably acted up to, and the rule is held to be sufficiently complied with if a man’s bones are buried in a village where he or his ancestors have been settled for a tolerably long time.”^330.4

Dr. Henrici brought from the Little Popo region of West {331} Africa to Berlin some Negroes, among whom was one who was a great favourite in the explorer’s family. Unfortunately he died; and his brother, who was with him, cut off, before burial, “a lock of hair and some finger-nail of the dead man to send to his parents in Africa in proof of his death.”^331.1 Not merely in proof of his death was this done, as the newspaper reports; for here we have what is called “the Yoruba custom of Ettá.” It is practised by the tribes of the Slave Coast. When a man dies away from home the greatest exertions are made by his family to obtain something belonging to him, to be buried with the usual rites in his native place. Clippings of the hair and nails are usually carried home by his companions, if he have any. But these do not constitute an irreducible minimum; for if they cannot be obtained, a portion of his clothing is, as we might expect from our study of other superstitions, enough.^331.2 So among the Dyaks (who, it will be remembered, have family mortuaries), if any one be murdered, eaten by a crocodile, or suffer some such misfortune, so that his body cannot be found, all his clothing obtainable is tied up in a bundle and buried.^331.3 Similarly, if a Khási corpse cannot be recovered, as would happen, for example, if he were drowned in one of the large rivers in the plains, his kinsmen assemble on some prominent rock or hill overlooking the low country. One of them, taking in his hand some money-cowries, “and looking towards the site of the accident, shouts out the name of the deceased and calls on him to return; his spirit having been supposed to do so, they proceed to burn the cowries, which are symbolical of his bones, and any clothes {332} of the deceased they may possess.” The ashes are placed in the bone-depository.^332.1 When a Chinaman dies in battle, or at a distance from home, and his body cannot be obtained, an effigy of paper or wood is made, his soul is summoned to enter it, and it is then buried by his family with all the usual obsequies, as if it were his body.^332.2 In Samoa, if it were impossible to recover the body, or at least (as we have seen) the skull, there was still a method left of performing the all-important rites for the dead. The relatives would go to the battle-field, or, if the man had died at sea, to the shore, and, spreading a cloth or fine mat, would watch until some reptile or insect crawled upon it. They would then quickly enclose the creature, take up the mat and bury it in the proper manner, as if they had the corpse.^332.3 The luckless insect is, in fact, identified with the departed, in accordance with the beliefs discussed in an earlier chapter.

Here, though the subject be far from exhausted, we may terminate our inquiry concerning funeral ceremonies based on the conception of sacramental union, on the one side with the survivors, on the other side with the forefathers of the clan. They afford ample evidence that death, as the most solemn and mysterious fact of our existence, has exercised the thoughts of men from the remotest ages. When they arose the idea of a soul or spirit, as distinct from its corporeal tenement, had hardly yet been evolved. Reason, as well as feeling, could do no otherwise than cling to the bodily relics of the dead. And still it clings, even in the highest plane of culture. And still—whatever hopes may linger in the recesses of the mind of reunion, in {333} some brighter and more lasting state of being, with those whom we have loved—we cannot but cherish the relics left to us of their bodily presence and think of the departed as yet about us while we hold these treasures; and there is consolation, albeit a dreary one, in the expectation that when we can hold these treasures no longer, the dust which has been dearest will be that which mingles with our own.

{334}

Marriage, or sexual union of a more or less permanent character, from the intimate connection which it creates, has obvious analogies to the admission of a new member into a clan. In early stages of culture it was not, however, deemed to constitute admission into the clan; and to the present day, in English law, husband and wife, though united by the closest of all ties, are not reckoned among the next of kin to one another. Still it inaugurates a new relationship, not only as between the immediate parties, but also as between their respective kindred. As doing so, it is an occasion on which the consent and concurrence of the kindred are required, and it is appropriately solemnised by rites bearing a close resemblance to the blood-covenant. An examination of some of these rites will be useful in strengthening our apprehension of the sacramental ideas of savages, and will help to complete our view of the savage conception of life.

Among several of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal a curious ceremony is practised. It is known as sindúr (or sindra) dán, and consists in the bridegroom’s marking his bride with red lead. This ceremony is the essential part {335} of the entire performance, which renders the union indissoluble, in the same way as the putting on of the ring in the marriage service of this country. The sindúr, or red lead, is generally smeared on the bride’s forehead and the parting of her hair, but sometimes on her neck. It is usually done either with the little finger or with a knife.^335.1 In either case this detail is significant, because it points to the origin of the custom. There can be no doubt that vermilion is a well-recognised symbol of blood. I have already mentioned the primitive usage of daubing the stone which was both god and altar with the blood of the sacrificed victim. Everywhere in India the idol, whether a finished simulacrum or a rude unchiselled stone, is dashed with vermilion. Sometimes the object of worship is a tree; and its stem in the same way is streaked with red lead. Sir William Hunter lays it down that the worship of the Great Mountain, the national god of the Santals, “is essentially a worship of blood.” Human sacrifices were common, until put down by the British. At the present day, “if the sacrificer cannot afford an animal, it is with a red flower or a red fruit that he approaches the divinity.”^335.2 Nor is red as a symbol of blood confined to India. We do not need to go further afield than the Roman Catholic Church, or even certain sections of the English Church, to find red worn in ecclesiastical ceremonies on the day of a martyr’s commemoration, expressly as an allusion to the outpouring of that martyr’s blood. The use of the colour in the wedding ceremony has reference also to blood. {336} Among the Dom, the Muchi, the Sánkhári and other Bengali tribes red is the bridal colour;^336.1 as it is likewise in China, at least where the bride is a maiden.^336.2 In Ukrainia at a certain stage of the proceedings a red flag is hoisted and red ribbons adorn the dresses of the bride and other members of the party. The meaning attached to them in this case does not admit of doubt;^336.3 and it may be legitimately inferred in the others.

But the proof of the significance of the sindra dán rests not on the antecedent probability afforded by the use of red in rites of worship and marriage. Among the Bírhors the wedding ceremony is very simple. It consists entirely in drawing blood from the little fingers of the bride and bridegroom, and smearing it on one another.^336.4 The ritual, on the other hand, of the Káyasth, or writer caste of Behar, is as complex as that of the Bírhors is simple; and it bears at every stage the marks of antiquity. After the bridegroom arrives with his procession at the bride’s house, but before he is allowed to see her, her nails are solemnly cut. The opportunity is taken to draw from her little finger a drop of blood, which is received upon a piece of cotton soaked in red dye. Later on, after the bridegroom has formally rubbed her forehead with the sindúr, his neck is touched with this piece of cotton; and the bride’s neck is also touched with a similar piece brought by the bridegroom, but not containing any of his blood.^336.5 Here we seem to {337} have the ceremony in a double, if not a triple form. The dye on the cotton would represent blood. Nor is it unimportant that the bridegroom having previously plastered the sindúr, which stands for his blood, on the bride, does not need to bring his blood into contact with her. Among the Kewat, another caste of Behar, the ceremony is also duplicated. After the sindúr dán a tiny scratch is made on the little finger of the bridegroom’s right hand and of the bride’s left. Blood is drawn from each and mingled with a dish of boiled rice and milk; and either party then eats the food containing the other’s blood.^337.1 Similarly in the Rájput ritual the family priest of the bride’s household fills the bridegroom’s hand with sindúr and marks the bride’s forehead with it. This is done on the first day. The next morning they are brought together, and each of them is made to chew betel with which a drop of blood from the other’s little finger has been mixed. The bride is then conducted to the bridegroom’s house, and the marriage is consummated.^337.2 Among the Kharwár blood mixed with sindúr is exchanged, although what is now the final and binding act of smearing the sindúr is performed by the bridegroom alone.^337.3 The Kurmi bridegroom also touches the bride between the breasts with a drop of his own blood, drawn from his little finger and mixed with lac-dye, prior to the performance of the sindra dán.^337.4 Among the Rautiá, as among the Birhors, the sindra dán is effected with one another’s blood taken from the little fingers.^337.5

The meaning of the ceremony therefore cannot be mistaken. It is precisely parallel to the blood-covenant: it {338} constitutes a permanent bodily union between the parties. Oriental scholars regard it as in origin Dravidian. It is, however, now practised also by the Aryan Hindus, and its survival among many aboriginal tribes in a double form is ingeniously attributed by Mr. Risley to its readoption by them from the Hindus in the later form of smearing with vermilion, after the connection between the red lead and the blood had been lost sight of.^338.1 It is certain that many customs have been taken in recent times by the Dravidian populations from the Hindus; and the theory of readoption is confirmed by the fact that the red lead is usually smeared only by the bridegroom on the bride, as if it were an act of ownership, whereas the blood-smearing is done by both parties.

Beyond the limits of Bengal, blood is not often a prominent feature in marriage rites. Yet some significant instances may be cited. We cannot reckon that of the ancient Aztecs among these. When, after the marriage feast, the Aztec bridal pair retired to their chamber, it was only to fast and pray during four days, and to draw blood from various parts of their bodies. The object of this bleeding, however, is said to have been the propitiation of their cruel gods. In fact, the idea of propitiation seems to have entered into the rite, and to have ousted what probably was the original intention—that, namely, of sacramental communion with the divinities. Such communion with the divinities may, of course, have been indirect communion with one another; though there is not sufficient evidence to warrant our asserting that this was meant, and still less that direct communion of the same kind was effected. But we are not left without {339} examples elsewhere. The ceremonies of the Wukas, a tribe inhabiting the mountains of New Guinea, are exactly in point. Their weddings begin with an elopement, followed by pursuit and capture of both fugitives. The next step is to bargain for the price of the bride. When this is settled the marriage is performed by mutual cuts made by husband and wife in one another’s foreheads, so that the blood flows. The other members of both families then do likewise—a proceeding, we are told, “which binds together all the relations on both sides in the closest fraternal alliance.”^339.1 The writer I am quoting does not, indeed, mention any daubing or exchange of blood; but it is clear that this must be understood. On the island of Banguey, off the northernmost point of Borneo, is a tribe of Dusuns. Mr. Creagh, the governor of British North Borneo, visiting them a year or two ago, found that their marriage-rite consisted in transferring a drop of blood from a small incision made with a wooden knife in the calf of the man’s leg to a similar cut in the woman’s leg.^339.2 An Annamite story points to a ceremony in which the blood was drunk. A husband and wife swore that when one of them died the other would preserve the body until it came to life again, and would not marry a second time. The wife died, and the husband kept her corpse for seven months. At length the village elders remonstrated, fearing that the dead woman would become a demon and haunt {340} the village. Rather than bury his wife, the husband arranged that they should help him to make a raft, and he would put the body upon it and float with it whithersoever the winds and the waves would take him. The raft was borne to the eastern paradise; and there Buddha, touched by the man’s story, raised his wife from the dead, and asked her if she loved her husband truly and constantly. She vowed she did. Whereupon Buddha directed him to draw a cupful of blood from his finger, and give it to her to drink: which was done. It is sad to relate that after all this she proved unfaithful, and, when she died, was changed by Buddha into a mosquito, which is always sucking blood, but never can get enough to restore to her husband, in accordance with Buddha’s command, the entire cupful of blood she had taken from him.^340.1 A tale from Mota, one of the Banks’ Islands, relates that certain women, who desire to become the hero’s wives, make him give them some of his liver to eat.^340.2

On these two stories it would be easy to lay a stress greater than they will bear. But if they have any meaning it is in the direction we are seeking. Coming to Europe, however, we find a tale where we are on firmer ground. A Norwegian youth was curious to see if it were really true that the Huldren, or wood-women (a kind of supernatural beings), occupied the mountain-dwelling in the autumn, after it was deserted by the family for the lowlands. The story runs that he crept under a large upturned tub, and there waited until it began to grow dark. Then he heard a noise of coming and going; and it was not long before the house was filled with Huldre-folk. They immediately {341} smelt Christian flesh, but could not find the lad, until at length a maiden discovered him beneath the tub, and pointed at him with her finger. He drew his knife and scratched her finger, so that the blood flowed. Scarcely had he done it, when the whole party surrounded him; and the girl’s mother, supported by the rest, demanded that he must now marry her daughter, because he had marked her with blood. There were several objections to marrying a Huldre-woman: among others, that she had a tail. But there was nothing else for it; and happily, when she had been instructed in the Word of God and baptized, she lost the undesirable appendage, and made the youth a faithful and loving spouse.^341.1 Now it may very well be that the reason for compelling this marriage is incomprehensible to the modern teller of the story, at least as a serious one. Yet the story can hardly have arisen and been propagated, with the incident in question as its catastrophe, unless a custom of marking with blood in connection with a wedding ceremony had been known to the original tellers. The barbarous nature of the custom is indicative of a much lower grade of civilisation than the Norwegian people have now, and long since, attained. And its ascription to the Huldre-folk suggests that it was practised by a non-Aryan race rather than by the Norsemen. It was certainly practised by the Finns; for a Finnish poem, entitled The Sun’s Son, describes its hero’s wedding ceremony in the following terms:—The bride’s father “leads and places them on the whale’s, the sea-king’s, hide. He scratches them both on their little fingers, mixes the blood together, lays hand in hand, unites breast to breast, knits the kisses together, bans the knots that jealousy has conjured, {342} separates the hands, and looses the knots of the espousal.”^342.1 The correspondence of this rite with that of the aborigines of Bengal extends to the fingers whence the blood is drawn; and it cannot be doubted that we have here in full the ceremony referred to in the Norwegian tale. It will be remembered that the Icelandic saga of the farmer who appropriated a fairy cow stops short in its description of the act with the drawing of blood. The story now before us has suffered a similar curtailment.^342.2

In other parts of the world we find red paint of some kind used apparently as a substitute for blood. An Australian bridegroom in the neighbourhood where Sydney now stands used to spit on his bride, and then with his right thumb and forefinger he took red powder and streaked her all over the face and body down to the navel.^342.3 The Caribs are reported to have had no specific rites of marriage. But a full-grown man would sometimes betroth himself to an unborn child, conditionally on its proving a girl. When this was done the custom was for him to mark the mother’s body with a {343} red cross.^343.1 This is an act hardly susceptible of more than one interpretation. The red mark over the mother’s womb was no doubt originally made with the man’s blood, and, since the child itself could not be reached, was the expedient for effecting the union between him and the unborn infant.

The blood of a fowl often takes the place of that of the parties, in the East Indies. Among the aborigines of Southern India a fowl is sacrificed at the threshold of the bride’s room, and the foreheads of bride and bridegroom are marked with its blood; while among the Káháyáns of Borneo a cock and a hen are slaughtered, their blood received in a cup, and the happy pair are marked from head to foot with it.^343.2

Out of many other ceremonies expressive of union I select for illustration that familiar to us in the Roman law under the name of Confarreatio. This solemn form of marriage took its name from the central rite, in which the man and woman seem to have eaten together of the round sacrificial cake, called the panis farreus. At all events, in the corresponding Greek ceremony they partook together of a sesamum-cake. In one shape or other this rite is found in many lands, perhaps over the greater portion of the globe. It has been too often described to need an extended notice here; but a few of its various forms may be mentioned, before we pass on to consider some of the analogies between the effects of marriage and of the blood-covenant.

We may as well begin with the Santals, one of the tribes of Bengal of which I have already spoken. Among them the {344} couple to be married fast on the wedding-day until after the sindra dán, when they sit down together and eat. Colonel Dalton, in describing the custom, reminds us that it is the more remarkable because the Hindu husband and wife never eat together, and tells us that this meal is the first time the maiden is supposed to have sat with a man at his food, and that it “is the most important part of the ceremony, as by the act the girl ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s family.”^344.1 Among the Santals, in fact, marriage is admission into the kin. None but members of a kin have, we know, commensal rights; and admission frequently takes the form of a ceremonial common meal, which probably is a modification of the blood-covenant. Among the Khyoungtha, one of the Chittagong Hill-tribes, the bride and bridegroom are tied together with a new-spun cotton thread, and the poongyee, or priest, muttering prayers, takes a handful of cooked rice in each hand, and crossing and re-crossing his arms he gives seven alternate mouthfuls to each. Then he hooks the little finger of the bridegroom’s left hand into the little finger of the bride’s right, and with some further mutterings the ceremony is concluded. The Chukma, a neighbouring tribe, bind the couple together with a muslin scarf; and in that position they have to feed one another. Their hands are guided by the bridesmaid and best man to one another’s mouths amid general hilarity.^344.2 Father Bourien was present at several marriages of Mantras or wild tribes of the Malay peninsula. According to his report, “a plate containing small packages of rice wrapped up in banana-leaves having been presented, the husband offered one to his future wife, who showed herself eager to {345} accept it, and ate it; she then in her turn gave some to her husband, and they afterwards both assisted in distributing them to the other members of the assemblage.” In the feast which followed the remaining ceremonies husband and wife ate from one dish.^345.1 Eating from one dish, or one leaf—a more archaic form of dish—is in fact the usual rite all over south-eastern Asia and the East Indian islands; and although the Hindu husband and wife now never eat together, the ancient ritual prescribed that they should do so at the marriage ceremony.^345.2 Boiled rice appears to have been the food, as it is in Dardistan at the present day, where a dish of rice boiled in milk is brought in, and the boy and girl take a spoonful each.^345.3 Married couples of Kafa, in the north-eastern corner of Africa, are only allowed to eat out of the same dish and drink out of the same horn or glass. And the etiquette is more rigorous than that of Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig; for they are expected to eat as well as to “drink fair.”^345.4 The custom of eating together as a marriage rite is recorded as in use by the aborigines of the greater part of America. The simple ceremony is thus related in a Pawnee legend: “He entered his tent. She made a very good bed for him. She was sitting with him. She married him. She had food with him. And the young men said as follows: ‘Why friends, the chief’s daughter has married the Orphan.’ ”^345.5 It is the same among the Polynesians. On the island of Mangaia, in the Hervey Group, the pair sit to eat together in the presence of their friends on a single piece of the finest native cloth, just as in the {346} Finnish lay they sat on the whale’s hide, and at Rome they sat, during one portion of the proceedings, on the fell of a sheep which had been slain in sacrifice.^346.1 Among the tribes of New Guinea, when the bride is brought to her husband’s dwelling a dish of food is presented to them, out of which they both eat. In some cases a roasted banana is eaten half by the bride, the other half by the bridegroom.^346.2 So, after getting into bed the South Slavonic bride from her bosom takes an apple which has been given to her by the bridegroom in the course of the day, eats one half of it and hands the other to him.^346.3 One of the Epirote ceremonies is the eating of a cake made of flour, butter and cheese. It is cut into slices; and the husband taking one dips it in honey and eats, afterwards giving to his wife. This is repeated thrice. Then, after eating some fruit, a round loaf with a hole in the middle is brought to them. Putting their fingers into the hole, they pull against one another until the loaf is torn in two; after which they and their nearest relatives eat it.^346.4 Bread and honey are eaten together in alternate bites by a Greek, or an Albanian, pair.^346.5 In the Obererzgebirge before setting out for church the bride and bridegroom eat from the same dish; and in some districts of Thuringia they partake of soup from one plate.^346.6 In Provence, as also in Esthonia, this is done after the return; and in Esthonia a piece of bread and butter, or a little bread with salt, is also eaten.^346.7 At the same point {347} in the province of Berry, France, and in the Jura, a piece of bread and wine are offered to the young couple. The husband takes the first bite out of the bread; and his example is followed by his wife.^347.1 The Wallon practice is for the bride to eat half a tart and give her husband the rest: this ensures his affection.^347.2 In the old Parisian marriage rite the betrothal took place at the church-door. The priest then led the newly wedded into the church, and said mass. After mass he blessed a loaf and wine. The loaf was bitten and a little of the wine drunk by each of the spouses, one after the other; and the officiating priest then taking them by the hands led them home.^347.3 In the celebration of a Yezidi wedding a loaf of consecrated bread is handed to the husband; and he and his wife eat it between them. The Nestorians, their near neighbours, require the pair to take the communion.^347.4 Nor is this requirement by any means confined to the Nestorians among Christian sects; and even until the last revision of the Book of Common Prayer the Church of England herself commanded, in the final rubric of the solemnisation of matrimony, that “the new married persons the same day of their marriage must receive the holy communion”:—a practice which continues to be recommended and is occasionally followed.

Many of the foregoing ceremonies include a drink out of the same vessel. Either alone or accompanied by eating, it is usual from Italy to Norway, from Brittany to {348} Russia; and traces of it have been found even in Scotland.^348.1 According to the old Lombardic laws no further ceremony was necessary to constitute a valid marriage than a kiss and a drink together. The Church long struggled against this rule, but was in the end obliged to sanction it, subject to the condition that a priest should be present to impart the benediction and a “spousal sermon.” It has been adopted into the rites of the Greek Church in Russia, where the priest in the course of the ceremony solemnly blesses a small silver ladle, called the Common Cup, filled with wine and water, and holds it to the lips of the pair, who sip it alternately each three times. In the West of England there is evidence which a careful examination of ecclesiastical records would probably extend to other parts of the country that at the time of the Reformation formal betrothals were usually performed by any respectable friend of both parties. He joined their hands; they gave their faith and troth in his presence; and after the betrothal gift, or token, had been handed over, or else promised, or acknowledged as already received, they kissed and drank together. This seems to have been considered as a binding union, though the banns and religious ceremony generally followed shortly after. To this day in Hesse the custom is preserved in the Weinkauf (literally, wine-purchase), or assembly of relatives on both sides. At this assembly the conditions are fixed on which the bride is to be discharged from her native kin to enter the kindred and protection of the bridegroom. When these are arranged {349} she drinks to her bridegroom in token of her consent, and both then drink out of the same glass. From that moment they are regarded as practically husband and wife; and it only remains to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for the union. This usually follows shortly after; and between the Weinkauf and the wedding it was formerly not thought proper for a virtuous maiden to go out of doors.^349.1

Going eastward we may note a few out of many other instances. The loving cup is part of the Jewish and Armenian ceremonies.^349.2 Among the Mohammedan Yusufzais of Afghanistan it is the bride’s father and the bridegroom that drink out of the same vessel;^349.3 obviously a change of the earlier practice to suit the faith of Islam. In Singbhúm, among the Hos and other tribes, the young couple are given beer, which they proceed to mix, the bridegroom pouring some of his into the bride’s cup, and she in turn pouring from her cup into his. They then drink, “and thus become of the same kili, or clan.”^349.4 Rice is sprinkled over the heads of a Lepcha pair; they eat {350} together and drink maruá beer out of the same cup.^350.1 Among the Tipperahs of the Chittagong Hill districts, “the girl’s mother pours out a glass of liquor and gives it to her daughter, who goes and sits on her lover’s knee, drinks half and gives him the other half; they afterwards crook together their little fingers.”^350.2 The Annamite youth and maiden being placed on either side of the ancestors’ altar, they help one another to drink, exchanging cups and then putting them back one on the other. This is said to be the relic of a very ancient rite which consisted in fitting together the two halves of a calabash, used no doubt for the drink.^350.3 It was the ancient custom in China for bride and bridegroom to eat together of the same sacrificed animal, and to drink out of cups made of the two halves of the same melon, the bride drinking from the bridegroom’s half and he from hers: thus showing, as we are expressly told in the Lî Kî, “that they now formed one body, were of equal rank and pledged to mutual affection.”^350.4 At present, about Foochow, and possibly in other parts of the empire, the ceremonial drink is sometimes taken by bride and bridegroom out of the same goblet; where two are used they are often tied together with red cord.^350.5 In Korea the lady hands a gourd-bottle of rice-wine, adorned with red and blue thread to her spouse, and they drink together out of one little cup several times filled by the bridesmaids who stand beside them.^350.6 And in general we {351} may say that, as the eating from one vessel, so the drinking together, is found all over the East Indies, on the islands as well as on the continent, and as far to the south as Fiji, save where in the East Indian islands it is replaced by the parallel custom of chewing a quid of betel together.^351.1 Whatever shapes the practice takes, they all resolve themselves into the thought presented on another side to us by the tale, said to be of Oriental origin, that on the first day Allah took an apple and cut it in two, giving one half to Adam and the other to Eve, and directing each at the same time to seek for the missing half. That is why one half of humanity has ever since been seeking its corresponding half.^351.2

But here we must go a step further. The remains of the cake, which, in the Roman ceremony of Confarreatio, seems to have been broken and eaten by the bride and bridegroom, were distributed among the guests; just as our own bride-cake, after being cut by the bride and bridegroom, is shared with the entire wedding party. The ritual distribution of cakes or drink is common in Europe from one end to the other. The Esthonian bride gives to each guest of the bread and salt whereof she and her husband have just partaken.^351.3 At a marriage in the Ukrainian provinces a cake called the korovaï is made with a number of formalities. Immediately before the bride is conducted to her husband’s house this cake is solemnly cut. The moon which crowns it is divided between the happy pair; and the rest is distributed among the relatives in order of age, great care being manifested that every one {352} shall have his due portion. The cutting and distribution are performed with ceremonies showing the importance attached to the act; and we learn from an ancient song that it was formerly the custom to light a candle and search diligently every corner to make sure that no one had been overlooked.^352.1 A bridal pair of La Creuse, in the south of France, on arriving at their home from the church, find at the door a soup-tureen filled with a certain broth or porridge, of which they are required to taste with the same spoon. The soup-tureen is then passed round to all the guests; after which a glass of wine is taken in the same manner, and the soup-tureen and wine-glass are broken to ward off witchcraft.^352.2 In Caltanisetta, Italy, the ritual food consists of toasted almonds and honey. An eye-witness at a wedding some five-and-thirty years ago describes a boy, with a towel hung round his neck like a sacerdotal stole, who mounted the table, took a silver spoon, and after blessing the basin in dumb show, tasted the sweet compound within it. The table was then removed; and the boy carried round the basin, while the bride’s mother put a spoonful of the almonds and honey in the mouth of every one present, beginning with the happy couple, and wiped their lips with the towel.^352.3 As with other rites already referred to, this is one regarded not only among comparatively civilised peoples. Backward races, as convivial in their instincts as the most enlightened, join indeed in feasting on these occasions; but they also join in ceremonially partaking with the newly-made spouses of a special article of food or drink. Such is the Mantra rite already mentioned; {353} such also is the striking ceremony of the Saráogi Baniyás, referred to in a previous chapter, at which a Brahman is slain in effigy and the contents of the figure shared among the kinsmen present. It will be enough to recall two others. Among the Garos of North-eastern India the married couple complete their wedding festivities by each drinking a bowl of rice-beer and presenting a cup to every guest.^353.1 On the Kingsmill Islands bride and bridegroom are led to their hut by an old woman who spreads for them a new mat of cocoa-palm leaves, and makes around them a circle of cooked pandanus-fruits. Of these she takes two and hands them to the pair, having first called on the goddess Eibong to take them under her protection, and bless their union richly with children. When these two fruits have been eaten the others are divided among the relatives and friends, who are waiting outside to receive them.^353.2

The meaning of this extension of the rite must be interpreted by its meaning when limited to husband and wife, and both by reference to the rites of kinship. It is not merely assent to the marriage on the part of the guests. It is indeed that; but assent, though, as we shall see, very necessary, may be obtained and given in other ways. To understand its full force we must turn back to some of the examples I have cited. By sitting and eating with her husband, the Santal maiden “ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s family.” The Ho and the Múnda bride and bridegroom, drinking the blended liquor from their two cups, become of one kili. But the woman who enters her husband’s kili, or clan, {354} becomes related to all its members. Becoming of one flesh with him, she becomes of one flesh with all of his kindred. This is implicitly recognised among the Amils of Sindh, where the bridegroom and all his female friends are marked with vermilion by the officiating Brahman.^354.1 Among the Bodos and the Kochh of Bengal it would seem to be the rule for two women to accompany the bridegroom and his friends in their procession to the bride’s house. These women it is who, penetrating to her apartment, anoint her head with oil mixed with red lead, prior to her being presented to her husband.^354.2 Conversely, the Santal bridegroom in some districts, after reaching the bride’s village, is stripped by her clanswomen, and by them bathed and dressed in new garments properly stained with vermilion.^354.3 When, among the Mál Paháriás, the bridegroom has daubed the bride with sindur, the compliment is returned not by her but by her maidens, who adorn his forehead with seven red spots.^354.4 The analogy to the blood-covenant is in these cases carried to the point of identity. The same may be conjectured with some probability to be the effect of marriage on the island of Bonabe in Micronesia, where the wife is tattooed with the marks representing her husband’s ancestors.^354.5 Ellis describes the female relatives of a bride and bridegroom in the Society Islands as cutting their faces, receiving the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, {355} and depositing the cloth, “sprinkled with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet of the bride.” And he tells us in so many words that the rite removed any inequality of rank that might have existed between them, and that “the two families to which they respectively belonged were ever afterwards regarded as one.”^355.1

But even when marriage does not amount to reception into the kin, it constitutes a quasi-relationship with the entire kindred; and the ceremony initiates, or at least expresses, this. A crude instance is afforded by the Wukas of New Guinea, already cited. A hideous rite susceptible of no other interpretation is performed by the Kingsmill Islanders immediately upon the consummation of a marriage; and a similar one is mentioned by a Chinese traveller at the end of the thirteenth century as taking place in Cambodia.^355.2 On Teressa, one of the Nicobar Islands, a pig is killed and the faces of the guests are smeared with its blood.^355.3 Here the pig’s blood is doubtless a substitute for that of the bridal pair. In the south of India the Wadders use for the wedding feast the rice which has been poured over the new husband and wife: a practice to which a similar intention must probably be ascribed.^355.4

For the effect of marriage is to give the kindred of the husband or the wife new rights over the person of the spouse. There are in Europe some very general usages pointing to the rights which must once have been exercised by the husband’s kin over the wife. Among the Esthonians, {356} when the bride has at length been brought into the bridegroom’s house a repast is served, and the day is concluded with a dance, wherein all the guests in turn dance with her, for which she is entitled to a piece of money from each of them.^356.1 The custom of the Polish inhabitants of the Prussian province of Posen is the same.^356.2 Du Chaillu witnessed a similar wedding dance in Dalecarlia, Sweden. It appears to have taken place in the bridegroom’s father’s house.^356.3 In the Tirol, and among the Masurs, the bride has to dance the Bride-dance with every one of the guests. In Transylvania she begins with the beistand, or best man; and after every dance she must drink a glass of wine with her partner, who throws a piece of money into a plate ready for the purpose.^356.4 Among the Wends, every male guest is expected to dance with the bride, formal permission being first obtained from the brautführer. The bridegroom, and this is an important point, is sent away the while; and the dances are continued until midnight, when he is brought back. They take place, unlike the Dalecarlian ceremony, in the bride’s house.^356.5 In the Lowlands of Scotland, after the wedding ceremony, which was usually performed at the bride’s residence, she was expected to go round the room with her bridesmaids and kiss every male in the company. “A dish was then handed round, in which every one placed a sum of money, to help the young couple to commence housekeeping.”^356.6 Dr. Gregor describes a similar dance as {357} performed in the north-east of Scotland. It was opened by the bride and her best maid dancing with the two sens, officials sent by the bridegroom on the wedding morning formally to demand the bride. The dance began and ended with a kiss, and when it was over the bride fixed a favour on her partner’s right arm, and the bridesmaid one on her partner’s left arm. “The two sens then paid the fiddler. Frequently the bride and her maid asked if there were other young men who wished to win favours. Two jumped to the floor, danced with the bride and her maid, and earned the honour on the left arm. Dancing was carried on far into the morning with the utmost vigour, each dance being begun and ended by the partners saluting each other.”^357.1 At Bourges it was the custom for brides on coming out of church to embrace indifferently all whom they met in the street; and still in country places of the province of the Marche the practice is said to be followed, with the variation that it is done before the marriage service. Generally in the province of Berri the guests after the feast approach in turn and deposit an offering (formerly gifts in kind proper for setting up housekeeping), receiving in return a kiss from the bride.^357.2 In the valley of Pragelato, near Pinerolo, the festivities are held in a large outhouse, the rooms in the house being usually too small. The bride is the first to enter. She stands on the threshold, holding a platter covered with a small cloth. Every one entering, without distinction of age, embraces {358} and kisses her, and drops a piece of money clinking under the cloth.^358.1 Similar customs obtain in other parts of Italy, sometimes repeated more than once during the festivities.^358.2 The bride-dance is also practised in Provence. And at the village of Fours, near Barcelonnette, on leaving the church the bride is conducted to a rock (possibly, an erratic boulder) called the Bride-stone, whereon she is made to sit with one foot in a certain hollow of the rock. While in this position each of the relatives and guests comes in turn, kisses her and gives her a ring.^358.3

We must look back to savage customs to discover the origin and meaning of the European rites I have here set forth; and I think we must connect them with those of the Nasamonians mentioned by Herodotus, the Auziles, an Ethiopian tribe mentioned by Pomponius Mela, and the Balearic Islanders, among all of whom in ancient times the bride was, on the wedding-night, considered as common property.^358.4 The information we have about these peoples is meagre and fragmentary. About the Kurnai of Australia, however, we have full and precise statements, extending, far beyond the act of marriage, to all their connubial relations. Their only recognised form of marriage was by a species of elopement or capture, performed with the aid of the other unmarried youths of the tribe. With all these youths the unfortunate bride had to observe the Nasamonian rite. She then went off with her new husband. This process {359} had to be repeated once, if not twice again, before her relatives could be got to sanction the match; and meantime both bride and bridegroom incurred their wrath, which was much more than a mere form. But when once the elopement had been condoned, if the bride had an unmarried sister, it is said that she also would be handed over to the husband; and in any case on his wife’s death he had a right to her. Moreover, on his death, his widow, if he left but one, went by right to his brother; if more than one, they went to his brothers in order of seniority. If the wife ran away from her husband with another man, “all the neighbouring men might turn out and seek for her, and in the event of her being discovered, she became common property to them until released by her husband or her male relatives.” Further, the husband was obliged to supply his wife’s parents with the best of the food he killed; but on the other hand he was free to hunt over their country as well as the country of his own ancestors.^359.1

In considering these particulars we must remember that the constitution of society among the Australian aborigines is in process of transformation. They had a system of group-marriage, whereby every tribe consisted of certain classes, all exogamous. Their table of prohibited affinities is highly complex, and need not be here discussed. It is enough to say that the members of each class were looked upon among themselves as brothers and sisters; but {360} towards the class into which they could marry they were husbands and wives; and they were entitled to act accordingly whenever they met any members of the latter class. No sexual relations were permitted with any other class. The system has been in a state of decadence—greater in some tribes, like the Kurnai, less in others—from a time probably anterior to the English settlement. A custom had arisen, it matters not from what causes, of appropriating one woman, or more, to one man. This custom, if not interfered with, would have issued in the evolution of a different idea of kinship, and ultimately of the true family. In group-marriage the wives were not regarded as akin to the husbands. Marriage was the status into which husbands and wives alike were born. The union required no ceremonies to its consummation, because no relationships were changed by it. But with the rise of monopoly by individuals of one another, the unappropriated women would be kept at a greater distance from the men, and the act of appropriation would gradually assume a ceremonial form. The kindred would be called upon to take part in it, both as assistants and as witnesses. From Mr. Howitt’s account it seems likely that the evolution would be in the direction of patriarchal clans. If so, the woman would be introduced by marriage into a special relation with her husband’s kin. The exogamous classes would ultimately be effaced; a new idea of the clan would supersede them; and the act of marriage would at length operate as admission into the clan.

Now it is clear from Mr. Howitt’s statement that, by the marriage, rights were acquired on the part of the husband’s kin in the wife and on the part of the wife’s kin in the husband. The decaying system would doubtless at that {361} stage operate to permit only members of the husband’s class to take part in the capture of a bride, or of a runaway wife; and they would as yet be all reckoned of his kin. The rights they then exercised would afterwards be held in abeyance; but, subject to the husband’s monopoly, those rights would survive, to reappear upon his death, if not upon any other occasion in his lifetime. The gradual circumscription of the kindred, by the recognition of closer ties than those of the exogamous class, is indicated by the duty laid upon the husband to supply his wife’s parents with food, as well as by the limitation to his brothers of the right to his widows. The peoples referred to by the classical writers I have cited were probably in the stage in which group-marriage had died, or was dying, out in favour of individual unions. The bride was hardly yet conceived of as taken into the kindred. The Nasamonian habits in particular, as recorded by Herodotus, appear little, if at all, advanced beyond those of the Kurnai. Both among the Nasamonians, however, and the Auziles it was the practice for each of the guests who had taken part in the rite to reward the bride with a gift, just as among European peoples the bride is rewarded for her dance or her kiss: an indication that her compliance was becoming something more than the guests could demand,—something they had, therefore, to purchase. This does not appear to have been the case with the Balearic Islanders: at least Diodorus Siculus, who mentions the custom, says nothing about any gift. A similar usage is reported by Garcilasso of some of the aborigines of Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest. Here we are expressly told what we may probably assume to have been the case among the Nasamonians, namely, that it was only the relatives and friends of the bridegroom {362} who shared in the rite; and from the historian’s expressions we may infer that no payment was made.^362.1 Nor is it found in an account of the marriages of the Wa-taveta given by a lady who has recently travelled in Eastern Africa. In other respects the Wa-taveta would appear to be somewhat higher in the scale of civilisation than the Kurnai or the Baleares. The bridegroom’s friends are limited to four in number. The capture of the bride, in which they aid him, is a mere ceremony followed by a five days’ feast, during which they participate in the Nasamonian rite.^362.2 More remarkable than any of these, however, as attesting the rights of the bridegroom’s kindred, is a custom of the Eesa and Gadabursi, two of the western Somali tribes. When the bride enters the hut which is to be her new home, she is followed by the bridegroom and some of his nearest male relatives. He takes a leathern horsewhip and with it inflicts three severe blows upon his wife; and his example is followed by his {363} companions, “who by this act obtain ever afterwards peculiar rights and power over the bride, which her husband dare not dispute.”^363.1

I might rest on these examples the case for the real meaning of the bride-dance and the kiss which the European bride bestows upon the guests (or rather, of course, on the masculine guests) at the wedding. But it is not necessary to do so; for we find even in Europe a practice of which the significance is unmistakable. The most important official at a marriage among the Southern Slavs is the djever (in German, brautführer) bride-leader, or bride-carrier. One only appears to be necessary, but commonly the bridegroom appoints two. They are chosen from his own brothers, or adoptive brothers, or his most intimate and trusty friends; or the chief brautführer may be his godfather. Adoptive brotherhood and godfatherhood are very sacred ties, at least as close as natural relationships; and the duties they impose are rarely violated. It is for this reason that such persons are selected for the office of djever. For the djever is allowed to relieve the tedious festivities of the wedding (and Slav weddings are tedious indeed) as often as he likes by kissing the bride and taking other liberties with her. And in the Bocca and Herzegovina, when the night at length arrives, he sleeps beside her “as a brother with a sister”; or if there be two, they both occupy the room with her. The latter custom is now falling into disuse; and the djever’s place is taken by the bridegroom’s mother and sister, the happy man himself not being permitted to obtain possession of his bride for two, or sometimes three, nights.^363.2 It needs {364} no words of mine to drive home the conclusion that here we have a survival of a rite identical with that of the Kurnai. The djeveri are the representatives of the entire band of the bridegroom’s brethren and assistants, whose rights are concentrated in their hands. The connection between this usage and those in other parts of Europe comes to the surface in the Wendish requirement that permission for the bride-dance be obtained from the brautführer.

If this conclusion be correct, the ancestors of the European nations must have passed through a stage of society wherein group-marriage was the rule, the groups on either side probably consisting of husbands reckoned, according to the standard of savage kinship, as brothers, and wives reckoned as sisters, among themselves. The limited promiscuity thus established would be entirely in harmony with—nay, it would be a consequence of—the conception of gentile solidarity which I have endeavoured to summarise in a previous chapter. This is what the late Mr. Lewis Morgan called the Punaluan Family. Starting from the kindred-names and customs of Hawaii, he traced it over a large part of the Old and New Worlds, and successfully vindicated its existence against the criticisms of Mr. MacLennan. The most striking piece of evidence in favour of Mr. Morgan’s theory that has come to light since he wrote is perhaps to be found among the inhabitants of the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides. Their rules of marriage and terms of relationship may be studied in detail in a paper by the Rev. William Gray, read at a meeting of the Australasian Association, held at Hobart in January 1892, and published in the report of the meeting. It will suffice here to say that in the laws and language of the {365} Tannese no distinctions are drawn between a wife and a wife’s sister, between a husband and a husband’s brother; all a man’s brother’s children are his own; all his wife’s children and his wife’s sisters’ children are alike his; the relation of uncle or aunt and nephew or niece does not exist, for the person whom we should call uncle or aunt is recognised by a Tannese as his father or mother, or else the term is indistinguishable from those for wife’s or husband’s father or mother; in like manner the terms for nephew and niece are the same as those for son-in-law and daughter-in-law; and the children of a man’s father’s brothers, or of his mother’s sisters, are regarded as his brothers and sisters equally with the children of his own parents.^365.1 For such a condition of society any explanation is impossible, unless it be that an entire band of brethren is—or was down to a recent period, yesterday if not to-day—actually or potentially married to an entire band of sisters. The Punaluan Family is thus Australian group-marriage surviving into a somewhat higher stage of culture, but surviving, of course, in a more restricted form. The sense of solidarity has become stronger, but more circumscribed.

When in the progress of culture group-marriage began to give way to individual appropriation, and inroads were made upon the totemistic clan, the clan-brethren would not immediately cease to be specially interested in the marriage of one of their number. Their rights would not be extinguished all at once; they would only become dormant. They might never be exercised during the continuance of the marriage. Probably they never would be, at all events without the individual husband’s assent. {366} But, whether exercised or not, there the rights would be, ready to arise upon a favourable opportunity. Rights thus in abeyance would be likely to be exercised at the entrance upon marriage, prior to the husband’s sole ownership, if the assistance of the clan-brethren were required to obtain the bride. They might be exercised also during the marriage, if the wife ran away and the clan-brethren helped to recover her. The opportunity for asserting the rights would come with the call for assistance.

In the most archaic period, such as may be represented for us by the Kurnai, the assistance would take the form of physical force. But after a while purchase began to supersede violence as the method of bride-winning, and capture dwindled to a form. The help of the clansmen would be equally required in purchase as in capture. I select a few examples from different parts of the world. Among the Nestorians, relatives and friends are called on to contribute to the dowry and wedding-dress given by the bridegroom to the bride, and the presents he has to make to her parents, as well as the expenses of the feast.^366.1 The tribes of the Caucasus are divided into exogamous clans; and when a member of a clan marries, all the brethren contribute to the ransom paid for the bride. Every member of a Kurdish commune pays a share of the purchase-money. A similar collection is made among the comrades of the Lithuanian bridegroom. In Ukrainia, before the bridegroom and his suite set out for the bride’s dwelling, each of the suite is called upon by the best man to make a contribution towards the sum which is afterwards paid to the brothers of the bride.^366.2 Among the Khonds of Orissa a {367} large price in cattle and money is paid for a wife; and this is chiefly subscribed, as among others of the aboriginal tribes, by the bridegroom’s “near relatives and his branch of the tribe.”^367.1 The inhabitants of Sumatra buy their wives; but the debt is often allowed to remain for many years undischarged. “Sometimes it remains unadjusted,” says Marsden, “to the second and third generation, and it is not uncommon to see a man suing for the jujur (or price) of the sister of his grandfather.” And he adds that “in Passummah, if the race of a man is extinct, the dusun or village to which the family belonged must make it good to the creditor.”^367.2 This implies that the dusun was originally collectively liable for the payment. The Melanesian custom seems to be for the youth’s kindred and friends to contribute to the sum he is called on to pay.^367.3 Among the Basutos a marriage is an affair of much concern to the relatives of the young people on both sides. The bridegroom’s relatives furnish the cattle he gives for her, and go in a body to make the bargain and present the beasts.^367.4 On the western continent the Araucanian aspirant for matrimony takes counsel with his friends and relatives, who inform him what contributions they are prepared to make towards the amount of the purchase-money. Among the Peguenches the relatives negotiate the marriage and collect the articles of value to be paid for the damsel.^367.5 In Guatemala the price was furnished by the bridegroom’s clansmen.^367.6 In what is now Los Angeles County, California, {368} the male relatives “proceeded in a body to the girl’s dwelling, and distributed small sums in shell-money among her female kinsfolk, who were collected there for the occasion,” and who afterwards returned the visit and gave baskets of meal to the bridegroom’s kindred.^368.1

From these examples, and many more might be cited, it is obvious that the purchase was made by the clan, just as the capture was probably made by the clan. And we might well expect to find that the clan, and not merely the individual, acquired by the act rights over the bride, such as would be expressed in the rude Nasamonian custom, and in the Bride-dance and other survivals of modern Europe. I have only space for a few examples indicating community of wives or of husbands. But the subject has been so exhaustively treated by anthropologists of distinction that little more than a passing notice is needful. An observation or two must, however, be made first of all, in reference alike to the examples that follow, and to those I have cited in previous pages. When we read, whether in classical writers or in the works of modern travellers, of community of women, we must always beware of giving the words the meaning of absolute promiscuity. Very strong evidence, and not merely that of writers imperfectly acquainted with the language and customs of a savage people, is called for to establish absolute promiscuity. But limited promiscuity among the members of a clan is a different matter. As a savage practice it is beyond doubt; and I have already pointed out that it owes its origin to the solidarity of the kindred in the lower culture. We must fully grasp the meaning of this solidarity if we would avoid the twofold chance of error in descriptions of savage life {369} and the inferences to be drawn from them. The chance of error too, it may be parenthetically observed, is not confined to marriage ceremonies, nor to the abiding customs of the conjugal relation; but we must guard against it on many other occasions, as for instance those described in the last chapter. Travellers having but a superficial knowledge of the peoples they describe—especially in the days before savage kinship had become the subject of scientific investigation—are not careful to define, because they do not understand, the relationship of members of a tribe to one another. Their vague expressions “relatives” and “friends” are therefore subject to interpretation by what has been ascertained of clan-organisation, if we would avoid one source of error. But there is a further consideration which ought not to be overlooked. The clan system has rarely been found complete and unimpaired. The evolution of civilisation is always modifying it, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. Consequently ceremonies limited in theory to the clan-brethren display a constant tendency on the one side to limitation to the smaller circle of the family, as the family is evolved from the clan; and on the other side to extension among the intimate friends and relatives of the person chiefly concerned, as blood-relationship begins to be recognised outside the clan, and as the ties of friendship are knit between man and man regardless of kinship. Herein lies our other difficulty. The criticism that the privileges we are discussing are not recorded as belonging to the members of one group only, though it applies with greater force to the instances mentioned by classical writers, who understood the gentile system, than to modern writers who do not understand it, is by no means enough to dispose of the evidence where {370} such record is wanting. Unfortunately we cannot cross-examine the writers. We can, however, and we must, read their accounts by the light of more accurate investigations. We shall then be inclined to admit that most of the cases alleged are not referable to phallic worship, nor to an outbreak of indiscriminate licence occurring in the midst of long-established monogamy, to which they are sometimes ascribed.^370.1

Turning now to the privileges themselves, it must be remembered that we have not to deal with cases in which polyandry is still open and avowed, but to customs which indicate its former existence. Group-marriage, like that of the Australians, the more limited polyandry of the Tibetan peoples, and the ruder polyandry like that of the Nairs, whether it be the remains of a more savage and unorganised society before the rise of the clan, or a sporadic degradation of clan-marriage, may be studied in the writings of MacLennan, Morgan, and Robertson Smith. Group-marriage and Tibetan polyandry, indeed, we must assume as the precursors of the state of barbarous culture where the marriage is primarily between individuals, but in which the kin still have certain rights over the spouse. And in dealing with the rights of the husband’s kin we are not required to take into account whether his marriage be polygynous or no.

Bearing these things in mind then, let us consider a few examples. Among the Santals, it is said, “a man’s younger brother may share his wife with impunity; only they must {371} not go about it very openly.”^371.1 In dealing with women taken in adultery the main point considered by the Dhobás of Orissa is whether the paramour be a member of the caste.^371.2 For, while a slight penance is deemed sufficient penalty for such a lapse of virtue, and the husband by no means invariably insists on divorce, the offence committed with an outsider is incapable of atonement, and the offending woman is turned out of the caste. Here, although the limits of the gotra are not coextensive with those of the more venial sin, it is to be observed that the Dhobás all claim descent from a common ancestor, and they eat and drink together indiscriminately. It is not considered any offence among the Bhuiyars of South Mirzapur for a married woman to grant her favours to her husband’s brothers. More distant relatives must give a tribal feast; or, if the kindred be very remote, the paramour must repay to the husband the cost of her marriage.^371.3 Similarly, in Southern India a Cunian woman who has been guilty of an intrigue with a lover of her own tribe is not disgraced thereby; and if her husband desire to get rid of her she will have no difficulty in finding another.^371.4 Among the Thlinkits of North America a wife has the privilege of selecting as her lover a brother or near kinsman of her husband; and such a man is required to contribute towards her maintenance. On the other hand, a seducer who is no relation may be slain by the outraged husband, or compelled {372} to submit to a heavy fine.^372.1 The right loosely described by Herodotus as exercised by the Massagetai over other men’s wives must probably be understood as limited to kinsmen.^372.2 In the island of Timor a brother made by the blood-covenant coming to the house of one of the brothers of the same covenant or clan “is in every respect regarded as free and as much at home as its owner. Nothing is withheld from him”: not even the wife. “And a child born of such a union would be regarded by the husband as his.” For, as Dr. Trumbull appositely comments, “are not—as they reason—these brother-friends of one blood—of one and the same life?”^372.3

The common meal, as we have seen, implies brotherhood. The rites of hospitality among many nations constitute a temporary brotherhood, and confer on the guest many of the privileges of a kinsman. This, it seems reasonable to think, may have been the ground of that widely extended custom of offering the host’s wife to his guest. The custom is too well known to require more than a passing reference. Nor do I propose to give more to another custom, that, namely of the exchange, temporary or permanent, of wives. Where it is not dictated by mere occasional wantonness, but is a regular institution, it is usually limited to brethren of the blood. These cases may not go very far: to understand the true value of their evidence they must be placed side by side with cases where the husband’s prior right is determined either by his death or divorce. Among the Arabs, if a man divorced his wife, his heirs had a right to take her. “That implies,” as Professor Robertson Smith points out with unanswerable force, “that the kin had an interest in {373} the woman’s marriage even while her husband lived, and that their interest became active as soon as he divested himself of his special claims on his wife. In short, the right of the heir is a modification of the older right of kinsmen to share each other’s marriages; and as soon as the exclusive right conferred on the husband by more modern law ceases and determines, whether by marriage [? death] or divorce, the older right of the kin revives.”^373.1 Although it does not appear that a similar privilege is exercised by the kindred among the Bengali tribes, their rights over a woman are usually guarded by the requirement that divorce can only take place with the consent of a council of relatives or a panchayat of the village or caste.^373.2 It is generally admitted now that the institution of the Levirate is traceable to polyandry wherein the husbands were united among themselves by the ties of blood. The Levirate was an institution deeply rooted in Hebrew polity, consecrated, if we may believe the traditions preserved in the most ancient Hebrew book now extant, by divine sanction under the tremendous penalty of death, and even in historic times enforceable by the public disgrace of a man who refused compliance.^373.3 It has only become obsolete among the Jews in Europe during the last three centuries, while those of Palestine still hold to it.^373.4 When a man died married but childless, leaving brothers, it was the duty of the eldest of the survivors to take the widow {374} and beget issue for the deceased; nor was any form of marriage necessary between him and her. The same rule was prescribed in the Laws of Manu to the Hindu Aryans. There a brother or some other kinsman, not merely of a dead man, but also of a man who, in consequence of disease or mutilation, was incapable of himself begetting issue, might be appointed for the purpose; and the reason is expressly declared in the Apastamba to be that the bride is given to the husband’s family, and not to the husband alone. Moreover, logically following out the idea of solidarity, Manu declares that if only one among brothers have a son, all have male offspring through that son; and conversely, if only one of all the wives of one husband bear a son, all are mothers of male children through that son.^374.1 If a Malagasy die childless, his next younger brother “must marry the widow to keep his brother in remembrance; the children of such marriages being considered as the elder brother’s heirs and descendants.”^374.2 The Basuto custom is the same.^374.3 But the Levirate is only a specialised form of a more general rule. It was developed when society had passed into the patriarchal phase, in order to preserve due succession. It shows how strong the feeling of solidarity of the kindred was. And that the wife was not regarded as no more than heritable property is brought into clear relief in the Hebrew and Hindu laws, where cohabitation ceased on the birth of a boy. Though this limitation be not observed by the Malagasy and Basutos, at least we cannot forget that the children begotten by the levir (that is, the man who took the widow) rank as his brother’s, and are entitled to his brother’s property. If the wife were {375} simply inherited, both she and the children she afterwards bore would become the property of the man to whom she passed.

Omitting as equivocal the numberless and widespread instances where the heir takes possession of his predecessor’s wives with the rest of his property, we may take note of some whose interpretation is less open to question. Usually among the aboriginal people of Bengal the younger brother, or cousin, of the deceased husband has the first claim on the widow, a claim which must be released before she is at liberty to wed any other person. The cases are few where, as among the Santals, the consent of the younger brother’s first wife must be procured; and they only exist where such consent would be necessary in any case to his second marriage.^375.1 Several tribes of the North-west Provinces practise the custom. Indeed, it seems usual among the aborigines over the greater part of India; and frequently no ceremony of any kind is necessary. Where, as among the Játs of the Panjáb, a ceremony is performed, it is of the simplest kind. The husband’s brother simply throws his scarf or cloak over the widow’s head.^375.2 If a Ját youth die betrothed, but before consummating the marriage, his father can claim the girl for another son, or, in default of a son, for any male relation in that degree.^375.3 A virgin widow among the Baiswars of South Mirzapur can be married, but it is usual to give some remuneration to the family of the deceased husband.^375.4 When a Habura is sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, or is transported for life, his {376} wives are taken by his brothers.^376.1 In the Hindu Koosh, while a man’s property passes to his children, his brother takes the widows. It is disgraceful to refuse them; and they can marry nobody else without the consent of their husband’s brothers.^376.2 An Afghan ought to marry his brother’s childless widow. If any other man offer first it is a grave insult to him.^376.3 Among the Ostiaks and other Turanian tribes, a younger brother is bound to marry his elder brother’s widow.^376.4 On the island of Sumatra, while the inheritance descends to the sons, the brothers in order of age have a right to the widow married by jujur, or purchase. In the event of their declining her successively they may give her in marriage to any relation on the father’s side, the person who takes her replacing the deceased. If she marry a stranger, the new husband may be adopted into the family to replace the deceased, or she may be married by purchase, as the relatives please.^376.5 On the adjacent island of Nias one of the sons may marry all the widows save his own mother; and if no son exercise this right, they pass to a brother. If they do not marry they must be maintained by the family of their dead consort.^376.6 On Engano a man in marrying pays the value of two hundred cocoa-nuts to the bride’s family. Yet he does not thereby acquire her for himself. On the contrary, he becomes part of her family; and if she die and he marry again, an indemnity must be paid to her relatives. If he die, however, {377} the widow must offer herself to his brothers; nor can she wed any one else until they have refused her.^377.1 The widow of a Gilbert Islander is taken by his surviving brother into his own hut, and she can then marry no one else.^377.2 A bachelor or widower among the Andaman Islanders is expected to marry his brother’s widow; and the term brother, as in most savage lands, includes what we call a cousin. Of the property of the deceased the widow retains as much as she requires for her personal use, dividing the rest between his male relatives.^377.3 Among the Sihanaka, one of the aboriginal tribes of Madagascar, a widow is stripped and in various ways ill-treated for several months, and only allowed to return home to her own kindred after having obtained a formal divorce from her husband’s family.^377.4 In Africa, individual property is hardly recognised by the Krumen of the Grain Coast: almost everything is possessed by the family community. When a Kruman dies his wife passes over to his brother or some other near relation. An Oromó widow can only marry with the consent of her husband’s brother. A Zulu is obliged to cohabit with all the widows of an elder brother. Among the Tedas in Sahara, if an affianced bridegroom die before completion of the marriage, his place is taken by his brother or nearest kinsman.^377.5 On the Slave Coast a younger brother was formerly compelled to marry the headwife of his elder brother deceased, while the subordinate wives devolved with the rest of the inheritance on the sons. {378} Compulsion has now become obsolete; but the headwife still resides with her husband’s relatives; and if she marry any other man than her first husband’s brother, the second husband repays to the relatives (apparently not to the heirs as such) of the first the amount originally paid for her.^378.1 In Natal, when a Kafir dies, “those wives who have not left the kraal remain with the eldest son. If they wish to marry again, they must go to one of their late husband’s brothers.” Children born of such a marriage, however, belong to the son.^378.2 On the western continent the Thlinkit, among whom we have already found traces of clan-marriage, require the eldest brother or nephew to marry the widow.^378.3 In Guatemala, where, as we know, the kindred of the husband bought the wife, she passed over into her husband’s clan, and was taken on his death by his brother or her stepson.^378.4 Among the Hidatsas it is a common practice for a man to marry his brother’s widow; but apparently this is subject to her consent.^378.5 When one of the Blackfeet, or one of the Omahas, died, his wives became the potential wives of his eldest brother, while his property passed to his sons, though a few horses were generally given to his brothers.^378.6 An Ojibway widow may be taken by her husband’s brother, or apparently by any one of the clan; and this is sometimes done at the grave by the ceremony of walking her over it, in which event she {379} is not required to undergo the terrible ordeal of mourning. Or she has a right to go to him, and he is bound to support her.^379.1 The Miwok of California destroy the property of the dead; but the eldest brother is entitled to the widow.^379.2 The Aztecs regarded it as a duty to marry a brother’s widow; and the reason given is that her children, if she had any, might not remain fatherless—a reason, however, which would not apply where she had none.^379.3 In Samoa, where property belonged to the kin, one of the brothers, or some other relative, took the wife; and her children were taught to regard him as their father. The reason here alleged was the desire to preserve the woman and her children to the family, whose number and influence were thus maintained.^379.4 In New Caledonia, where the property seems to descend to the eldest son, the husband’s brother is bound to marry the widow.^379.5 In the Loyalty Islands she could not marry again without the consent of her first husband’s family.^379.6 A Tasmanian woman became common property; but she might be given in marriage again.^379.7 In some at least of the islands of New Britain also, a widow became common property;^379.8 and a similar custom seems to have been followed by the Eskimo.^379.9 The natives of the west of Victoria divided the property of a departed tribesman equally among his widow and his children; but it was his brother’s duty to marry the widow if she had offspring, because he was bound to protect her {380} and rear the children. He seems to have been at liberty to marry her also if she were childless.^380.1 The duty or the right of a deceased husband’s brother to take the widow seems, in fact, to be general among the aborigines of Australia, and to be wholly disconnected with the right of succession to property. And the evidence that it is a survival of group-marriage is confirmed by the custom of the Gippsland tribes, which, there is reason to believe, sanctioned the occasional cohabitation of a single man with his living brother’s wife, and of a married man with his wife’s sister. “A man spoke of his sister-in-law as puppar-worcat, which means another wife; and when a wife died her sister not infrequently took her place.” In Europe, among the Moslem Albanians the sons succeed to the property, but the brother has a right to the widow with or without her consent. Nor can she marry any one else in the same village save with his consent. If, however, she marry into another family, her husband’s heirs are entitled to half the dowry. The brother of an affianced husband who dies is entitled to the bride on paying additional dowry.^380.2 A trace of the right of a surviving brother to the widow is perhaps found among the Scandinavians; and the conjecture derives some support from the conduct imputed to Frigg, the wife of Odin, who is accused by Loki of laying her husband’s two brothers in her bosom.^380.3

{381}

I have mentioned some cases in which payment for the widow who marries out of her husband’s kin, is made to the kin. A few others may be added. This is the custom of the Toaripi, Dori, and Koiari tribes of New Guinea. If she belong to the first-named tribe she remains with her husband’s relatives until her second marriage, only when she has children; if she belong to either of the latter she remains, whether with or without children.^381.1 In Kulu, Ladák, the widow could be sold by her husband’s relatives into a second marriage; but so long as she did not quit her husband’s house she was at liberty to keep a paramour.^381.2 Among the Smoos of Central America we are told that widows are the property of the husband’s relatives, to whom “widow-money” must be paid before they are allowed to marry.^381.3 In the western provinces of China, Mr. Cooper tells us, when a widow signifies her intention of marrying again, her deceased husband’s relations generally dispose of her to the highest bidder; but she cannot be forced to marry against her will: by which I understand that it rests with her to say whether she will marry or not; but if she decide to marry, her deceased husband’s relations have the right to determine whom she shall marry, and to receive the bride-price.^381.4

The foregoing examples all show the wife as bound to the husband’s kin. The right of a man to his wife’s sister, either in his wife’s lifetime, or after her death, or, as it is found among some races, the right of a woman to share her sister’s husband even in her lifetime, is equally widespread. I have incidentally alluded to it as practised by the {382} Gippsland tribes of Australia. Among the North American Indians, who preserve many traces of mother-right, the usage was common. The Blackfeet regarded all the younger sisters of a man’s wife as his potential wives. If he did not care to marry them they could not be married to any other man without his consent.^382.1 Among the Root-Diggers of California to a whole family of sisters the happy husband often added their mother; and the Seminole and Carib customs were the same. The Pawnee who had married an elder sister might demand all the younger ones as they arrived at maturity. An Osage was obliged to wait two years after his first marriage before demanding another of the same family; and after complying with this demand the parents might refuse him any more. Among the Hidatsas, as probably among other tribes, the wife’s sisters included her cousins according to our reckoning. A Mutsun wife would often press her husband to wed her sister or even her mother.^382.2 An Omaha can marry three wives, who are generally related. Sometimes a wife invites her husband to wed her sister, her aunt or her niece, because “she and I are one flesh.”^382.3 Among the Sioux and some other tribes the lover would attach to another man’s tent as many horses as corresponded in value to the daughters he desired to marry; and if the proposition were accepted they were all married at once.^382.4 In other cases it seems that marriage with one daughter only gave a right of preemption over the others.^382.5 Among some of {383} the tribes of Guiana the husband has to wait until his first wife is dead before marrying her sisters.^383.1 Similar regulations are found among the aborigines of Bengal. In many of their tribes a man may marry two sisters; but, in accordance with the rule as to marriage of a widow with a deceased husband’s brother, the second wife must be a younger sister of the first, not an elder. A second sister, however, cannot always be married during the lifetime of the first.^383.2 Among the Todas a woman became wife to several brothers, and her younger sisters, on attaining maturity, became successively her fellow-wives.^383.3 An Ostiak is allowed to take several sisters.^383.4 In the Laws of Manu it is provided that, “if, after one damsel has been shown, another be given to the bridegroom, he may marry them both for the same price.”^383.5 This refers, of course, to two damsels in the same family. Among the Somali of Eastern Africa a widower commonly marries his deceased wife’s sister.^383.6 On the other side of the continent a folktale from Angola represents the eldest of four sisters as replying to an offer of marriage: “Very well. Thou shalt marry me, if thou marriest us all, the four of us. If thou thinkest that thou wilt have me alone, the eldest, thou canst not marry me. It must be that we marry our one man, the four of us in the fourhood of one mother.” And the gallant had no choice but to fall in with her terms.^383.7 In historical times the Israelites were forbidden to take a {384} woman to her sister to be a rival to her in her lifetime;^384.1 but the more ancient practice, if we may judge by the legend of their eponymous hero as well as by analogies in other parts of the world, permitted it. Under supernatural guidance the Church has bettered the prohibition, so as to prevent the posthumous vexation of a wife by the succession of her sister to her husband’s affections, and has been at pains to give it the logical extension to marriage with a deceased husband’s brother, in the very teeth of the divine institution of the Levirate. It would be profane to call a bargain the provision whereby the English bishops once compounded for the sin of assenting to a nobleman’s union with his deceased wife’s sister, by condemning all such unions for the future. Among the heathen Hovas of Madagascar the first wife might at any time be divorced, unless she allowed her husband to marry her younger sisters and younger cousins. A Gilbert Islander had a right to dispose of his wife’s younger sisters.^384.2 In Samoa a younger sister often accompanied the bride and became an inferior wife to the bridegroom.^384.3 On the island of Mangaia, “if a man of position married the eldest girl of a slave family, the younger sisters became his as a matter of course, being only too glad to have a protector. Even amongst those of equal rank a man often had two or three sisters to wife at the same time. Even now, in Christian times, a woman feels herself to be deeply injured if her brother-in-law does not, on the death of his wife, ask her to become a mother to his children.”^384.4 How greatly it is to be regretted that they who have professed to christianise these poor, {385} benighted Polynesians have disregarded the Church’s canon against such marriages, and permitted so-called Christian homes to be contaminated by the presence of a deceased wife’s sister in the capacity of wife!

Until group-marriage had practically passed away, and society had organised itself into true clans, there could be no actual reception of the wife into the kin. We must therefore not look to so archaic a condition as group-marriage for rites of reception, or for the resulting status of the wife. Where the clan has been most completely organised, we may expect to find its results most logically carried out; and some of the most logical results will often remain even when society has passed into a still higher development. So it was in Rome, where the wife entered into the familia of her husband, or, if her husband had a father living and were still in his power, into that of her husband’s father. Her offering, on the day following her marriage, to her husband’s Penates seems to have been a solemn initiation, in so far at least as that had not been effected by the ceremonies of the confarreatio. This is also the meaning of somewhat similar rites performed by a bride in Ukrainia on entering her new home, where she is first welcomed by all the female neighbours of her bridegroom’s family,^385.1—and of many ceremonies of the same kind elsewhere, notably the Brahman rites in India. A Chinese married woman is taught to regard her husband’s parents and his remoter ancestors in every respect as if they were her own; while she ceases, on the other hand, to have any but a secondary interest in her own relatives. According to Confucius the very object of marriage was to furnish those who should preside at the sacrifices, among {386} which a prominent place is given to the ancestral offerings. This was indeed expressed in the formula of demand for the hand of a maiden in ancient times. And just as at Rome the bride offered sacrifices to her husband’s Penates, so in China, on the day after the wedding, she prepared and presented a sucking-pig to her husband’s parents, and when they had done eating she finished what was left.^386.1 In this way among the polite Chinese the union of the bride with her husband’s parents is signified and completed. I have already mentioned the Santali and other customs of Bengal, as well as that of the more barbarous islanders of Bonabe, who tattoo the wife with marks representing her husband’s ancestors.

Sometimes a man on marrying was received into the clan of the wife. It is now generally recognised that the words “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” could have originated only at a period when it was customary for a husband to go and dwell with his wife’s kin: that is to say, before the development of the patriarchal system on which the Hebrews in later times were organised. Professor Robertson Smith suggests, ingeniously and with probability, that the expression implies “that the husband is conceived as adopted into his wife’s kin”; for, as he has previously pointed out, both in Arabic and in Hebrew (notably in the priestly legislation of the latter) the word for flesh is equivalent to kindred or clan.^386.2 Residence is indeed one of the tests of kindred. But it is only one, and by no means a conclusive one. For this reason the stories of Isaac’s marriage and those of Jacob cannot safely be cited in support of {387} this suggestion. The curious incident of the bargain with Shechem is more to the point; for in that case a rite was to be undergone which would have the effect of making Shechemites and Israelites “one people.” If, however, we find cases of marriage where not only does the husband dwell with his wife and her family, but his property and earnings also go to them, or are shared in common with them, this will be further evidence of reception into the kin. Among the Kochh a man is taken on marriage to live with his wife and her mother, and all his property is made over to her.^387.1 The Bayaga, a tribe of dwarfs in Equatorial Africa, require the husband to live with his wife’s family, and all the produce of his hunting belongs to them. He may, however, return to his own community and take his wife, but only when he has a son, and that son has killed an elephant. And then he leaves the son behind to fill the place of the daughter taken away.^387.2 This appears to be an instance of the archaic system of mother-right in process of decay. Neither the case of the Bayaga nor that of the Kochh goes quite far enough to be decisive. The North American Indians had customs in their various tribes, which exhibited almost all gradations between the complete absorption of the husband in his wife’s clan, and the last stages of dissolution of the system of mother-right. Without discussing them we may turn to two examples in the East Indies where the matter is put beyond doubt. According to Brahman law the wife now enters the gotra {388} of her husband. The ceremonies are very elaborate, and include of course a solemn procession on the bridegroom’s part to fetch the bride. He is formally welcomed first by the bride’s father, and then by her mother. Follows a rite which, if it mean anything, is a survival of reception into the wife’s kin once practised either by the Aryan invaders of India, or the aboriginal tribes with whom they intermarried. It is called “Satusi or the seven lights of Hymen. Seven married ladies (including the bride’s mother or, if she be a widow, one of the bride’s aunts) in their best attire, each with a small torch made of chita-twig and cotton steeped in oil, go round the bridegroom in succession, led by the bride’s mother, who carries on her head a kulá or flat bamboo-basket, on which are placed twenty-one small lights made of dhatura-fruits. As they go round, they sprinkle libations of water, one of them blows a shell-trumpet, and all vociferate the hymeneal cry of ulu-ulu. After going seven times round the bridegroom, the lights are thrown one by one over his head, so that they fall behind him. The kulá is then picked up and placed in front of the bridegroom, and the bride’s mother takes her stand upon it, and touches the forehead of the bridegroom with water, paddy and durba-grass, betel and areca nut, white mustard-seed, curds, white sandal-paste, vermilion, a looking-glass, a comb, a bit of clay from the bed of the Ganges, a yak’s tail, shells, a cluster of plantains, and certain other odds and ends, while the rest of the women keep up the cry of ulu-ulu. The bridegroom’s height is measured with a thin thread, which the bride’s mother eats in a bit of plantain. She then places a weaver’s shuttle between his folded hands and ties them together with thread, and calls upon him, now that he has {389} been bound hand and foot, to bleat once like a sheep to signify his humility and subjection. Last of all, she touches his breast with a padlock and turns the key, whereby the door of speech is closed to the passage of hard words against the bride.”^389.1 Later accretions are obvious here, but the substance of the ceremony is ancient and can only be explained in one way. In Sumatra there was an old form of marriage, which has been prohibited for a century past, called ambel anak. A man thus married paid no money to the wife’s father, but entered his family on the footing of a son. He became entirely separated from his own kin, who renounced all interest in him, and he lost his right of inheritance. All his earnings belonged to his wife’s family, who became liable to any debts he might contract after marriage and responsible for his crimes, just as his own family were before. His wife’s family might divorce him, in which case he went forth naked as he came. The custom was evidently in decay long before its abolition, for the husband’s status was in some respects hardly so good as that of a natural-born son, while on the other hand there were provisions for enabling him to redeem himself, his wife and children, by paying her jujur or bride-price, and an additional sum for any daughters who had been born. But this could only be accomplished with the goodwill of his wife’s family, because he was incapable of accumulating any property apart from the common stock of the family.^389.2

The severance of the married person from the clan of which he or she has been previously a member is, as might be expected, sometimes the subject of a special symbol in {390} marriage ceremonies. Thus, among the Santals, when the clothes of a married pair have been tied together (the symbol among many peoples of their union), burning charcoal is pounded with the household pestle, and the glowing embers are extinguished with water. In this way the old household fire of the bride is, so far as she is concerned, put out for ever.^390.1 In Nepal the Sinuwár bride’s parents wash her feet when they give her to the bridegroom, and splash the water over their own heads. By doing this they believe that they wash from her, and as it were take back, the quality of membership of her original sept, and transfer her to the sept of the bridegroom. On the next morning the bride washes the bridegroom’s feet, and drinks the water, saying at the time that she does this as a sign that she has entered his sept, and is truly his wife.^390.2 Among the Wends there are traces of mother-right, though it is no longer the system on which their society is organised. The first night of marriage is always spent at the bride’s house; and sometimes, it would seem, the bridegroom takes up his permanent residence with his wife’s family. On such occasions he bids a solemn farewell, and says to his parents: “Henceforth you will see me no more, nor speak to me; for I am leaving you. Amen.”^390.3 The separation of a Chinese woman from her family on marriage is so complete, that when she returns home on a visit, no brother, nor even her father, may sit with her on the same mat, nor eat with her from the same dish.^390.4 The Marri of Manbhum do not even allow their {391} married daughters to enter the house.^391.1 Among the Rájputs a married daughter may never return to her father’s house without his special leave. He is not likely to send for her, because he must then give her a fresh dower. Conversely, neither he nor any of her near elder relations may go to the village whereinto she is married, nor even drink water from the village well; and though more distant relations taboo not the whole village, they may not eat or drink from her husband’s house.^391.2 Among the Hebrews a priest was forbidden to defile himself for the dead, except for his own kin. His married sister was not one of these, only a sister “a virgin which hath had no husband.” A stranger outside the priest’s kindred, though his guest or hired servant, was not permitted to eat of the heave-offering of the holy things. If a priest’s daughter were married to a stranger, she could not eat of it. But in this respect her separation seems not to have been absolute; for if she were divorced or became a widow, being childless, and so returned “unto her father’s house as in her youth,” she might “eat of her father’s bread.”^391.3 The change of kin was so marked among the Romans that one of their lawyers explained the word soror, a sister, as “quasi scorsum nata, because she is separated from the family wherein she was born, and passes to another.”^391.4

When the consequences of marriage are the severance from the family or clan of one of its members, and the union of that member to another family or clan, so as to become one flesh with it, and hardly less where, though the member in question be not lost to the clan, a special relationship is about to be entered upon with the other {392} clan for the purpose of producing new members for it to the exclusion of the former clan, it is obvious that each of the two families, or clans, has a very important interest in the transaction. The marriage would affect not only the two principals; it would extend to every member of the family, or clan, diminished, and every member of the family, or clan, thus enlarged and strengthened. Such an interest as this would entitle every member of both to be consulted; and their assent would be required to its validity. Such assent would be shown, as we have already noted, by the presence and assistance of the kindred at the act of marriage; or it might be signified by gifts. But, however shown, it would in many cases have to be purchased by gifts. I have already mentioned a number of instances where the price, or dowry, of the bride is contributed by the bridegroom’s kinsmen. We are about to deal with the converse case, wherein the price, however made up, is divided between the bride’s relatives.

Bride-purchase has been, at some time or other, practised almost all over the world; and where we do not find it still in all its ancient force we frequently find the relics of it. As, in the progress of civilisation, the bonds of the family are drawn tighter, the power of the father over his children increases, and that of the more distant kinsfolk decreases. The substantial price in such cases is paid to the parent; and the other kinsmen are recognised only by a smaller, frequently a nominal, present. Lastly, the gifts on both sides are transformed into a dowry for the bride, and into wedding presents intended for the behoof of the happy couple. In various nations the application of the marriage gifts is found in all stages of transition, from the rudest bargain and sale up to the settlements so dear to {393} English lawyers, and the useless toys which the resources of the newest culture enable us to bestow upon our friends on these interesting occasions, to assist their early efforts in housekeeping. The examples following are drawn, of course, from conditions of barbarism when purchase prevails, or when survivals of its former practice have not yet been all swept away. Into the general question of the extent of the kindred whose assent is necessary in early stages of civilisation I have no space to go. But incidentally we shall find evidence that the entire clan must have had a voice in the matter. Inasmuch, however, as this chapter has already trespassed on the reader’s patience to so great a length, I shall confine myself to a few of the more indisputable and pertinent instances. To attempt more would be to travel over ground which it would be impossible to survey in a satisfactory manner, without a discussion interesting indeed to the student of institutions, but altogether disproportionate to the present work.

Among races whose customs point unimpeachably to the need of obtaining the consent of the general body of the bride’s kinsmen we may begin with the Turanians. A bridegroom of the Hill tribes of Rajmahál is required to present not only a turban and a rupee to his father-in-law, and a piece of cloth and a rupee to his mother-in-law, but also to several of the nearest relations.^393.1 Striking are the ceremonies performed by two of the northern branches of this widespread race. After the purchase-money has been agreed upon, but before it is paid, among the Kirghiz the bridegroom is allowed to visit the bride. This is done by some tribes with great formality. The young man presents himself first to the oldest member of the bride’s family, and {394} asks permission to pitch his tent at the encampment. “This request being granted, he distributes presents among the members of the family, and begs them to use their efforts in persuading the bride to pay him a visit in his tent. As success always crowns their efforts, the bride makes her appearance in the tent, where the young couple are left alone. During this interview the marriage is consummated, though the union is not yet formally consecrated. They are now bound to each other, and neither can withdraw from the mutual obligation they have contracted without being exposed to the vengeance of the injured party.” Further presents are given to the relatives on the formal celebration of the marriage after the purchase-money has been paid.^394.1 Among the tribes of Turkestan the wedding takes place after the payment of the purchase-money to the father. Each party is represented by two witnesses at the wedding ceremony, and a mollah is employed to legalise the contract. All goes on smoothly until “the bride’s witnesses suddenly raise some objection, pretending that they are unwilling to deliver up the bride who is intrusted to their keeping, unless some suitable present is offered for renouncing, on their part, the great treasure placed in their custody.” Nor can the marriage proceed until they are satisfied.^394.2

The same part is played in Central Europe by the Wendish bridesmaids. The bride awaits her bridegroom sitting at a table by herself. When his procession arrives, the brautführer advances to the table and begs her politely to follow him to the wedding. The bridesmaids interfere, and refuse to give her up without being paid for it: they must have the whole table full of gold! After an {395} amount of haggling, which depends on the persuasive powers of the damsels and the wealth of the bridegroom, they are at length satisfied; and sometimes the business is not concluded until a considerable sum has been paid.^395.1 At an Ukrainian marriage, presents are made with ritual formalities to every one of the bride’s relations by name; and a formal agreement is entered into by which the number, and even the value, of these presents is declared. Among the persons present are women who are strangers to the immediate family. When the presents to the relatives have been settled, these women climb on a bench beside the family hearth, taking a sieve which they beat like a tambourine, clamouring also for their share of the ransom. And the bridegroom is compelled to throw some small pieces of money into the sieve for them. As M. Volkov, in detailing the proceedings, says, it is clear that all this represents a payment in respect of the bride for the benefit of her whole clan. Among the Bulgarians a like payment, distinguished from that to the father, is made in money for all the members of the family, or rather for the family-community. The father usually gives what he receives to his daughter by way of dowry.^395.2 The usage probably differs to some extent in various parts of Bulgaria. In Bessarabia the money paid to the father is used to defray the cost of the bride’s wardrobe, but clothing is also purchased for the bride’s relations. If I read the account correctly, the bridegroom also pays the bride’s mother a few ducats and presents articles of clothing to her sisters. Among other members of the South Slavonic stock the custom likewise varies, but all agree in requiring {396} presents to be made to all the near kindred of the bride. The minimum payment is set down by one reporter, writing of the practice in his own district, as twelve florins to the bride, ten to her father, two to her mother, six to each of her brothers, and to the other relations seven florins each.^396.1

The final difficulties on the part of the Wendish bridesmaids may be compared with the conduct of the women of the bride’s party at a marriage of the Banks’ Islanders. When the last instalments of the purchase-money have been paid, and the bridegroom’s father and his party, after the interposition of all sorts of difficulties, are on the point of succeeding in obtaining delivery of the bride, the women step in and refuse to give her up until an extra sum has been made over to them to induce them to let her go.^396.2 In Sindh also, as the bridegroom is about to enter the nuptial chamber, his bride’s sister, or a female cousin, opposes him and demands a gift of a few rupees, which he must pay ere he is allowed to pass.^396.3

A traveller in the earlier half of the last century relates that to a native of Cape Coast the cost of his wedding was seldom more than an ounce of gold among the bride’s relations, two suits of new clothes for the bride, and a fat goat and some palm-wine and brandy for the entertainment.^396.4 In the Zambesi basin to-day the matter is arranged by “the so-called brothers or next of kin,” who alone have the right to consent, the father having no voice in the matter. But what, if anything, is paid to them as the price of their goodwill, beyond a plentiful supply of pombe, {397} which is drunk together by the brethren on both sides after the wedding, I am not able to say.^397.1 It seems clear at all events that in many places the price may be commuted for a feast, or a feast may be added to it, and after the custom of purchase has died out the feast only may remain. So among the Arabs, for example, the stipulated sum which forms the dowry and belongs to the bride is paid to her father; but before the husband can claim his rights he has to feast the maiden and her relations and friends.^397.2

Further illustrations are hardly needed. The custom may be summed up in the words of Professor Hickson, describing what he observed in Minahassa, Celebes, where women enjoy an exceptionally high position: “It might seem also that the harta which is paid by the bridegroom for his bride is of a similar nature to the price paid for a slave, a beast of burden, or any other piece of property. The harta, however, should not be considered as a ‘price,’ it has rather the nature of a ‘compensation’ paid to the bride’s family for the loss of one of its working and child-producing members.”^397.3

The subject of the ceremonies and institutions of marriage is one of profound interest. It has engrossed the attention of many anthropologists and filled many volumes. The sketch, therefore, that I have here attempted of only one aspect of the subject is obviously meagre and imperfect. Yet I venture to hope that I have succeeded in throwing some further light upon the savage conception of a kindred as an undivided entity—a conception which has survived in a more or less complete form into high planes of civilisation. Rites analogous to that of the blood-covenant are found not merely to bind together {398} the individual husband and wife, but to unite the incoming member to the whole kindred. And although in the most archaic period whose remains are accessible to us it does not appear that these rites meant actual admission into the kin, their analogy easily lent itself to that construction as the organisation of society into clans drew closer and closer together, and especially as the patriarchal clan developed; and marriage at length came in many cases to operate as an actual severance from one kin and an entrance into another. The reason for the rights and privileges acquired by the whole kindred, alike whether marriage operated as a blood-covenant or not, is founded on, and springs directly from, the conception of the kin as one body whereof all the brethren were as literally members as the hand and the foot are members of the physical body of each man. To graft a new member upon such a body, or even to introduce a stranger into a special relation with a member of such a body, is to introduce him or her to a corresponding relation with all. Their rights may for the time be overridden by the paramount claim of the member for whose special behoof the stranger is introduced—a claim enforced often by strength, more often, perhaps, by custom; yet the moment the claim paramount is withdrawn, or suspended, the rights of the remaining members of the kindred arise and are capable of enforcement. They are sometimes also asserted on special occasions even against the claim paramount.

Society has developed, among almost all the higher races, into and through the patriarchal clan. Among many of the lower races who have not, when brought into contact with European culture, already thrown off their original social constitution, a marked tendency to develop in the {399} same direction has been found. Consequently most of our illustrations have been drawn from a condition of things where the bride has been transferred to the bridegroom’s home and has entered into special relations with the bridegroom’s kin. Of the converse case many examples which might have been adduced are complicated by the developing patriarchalism. Inquiry into these complications would have necessitated a volume rather than a chapter. Hence I have been compelled to pass over many a problem not only interesting but important to solve. But wherever I have found it possible to deal within the limits at my command with the case of a bridegroom entering into special relations with the bride’s kin, the same general principles have been observed to govern it.

{400}

In the last three chapters we have discussed some savage customs founded on the belief that the members of a kin are parts of an entire body and connected with one another by an indissoluble tie, so long as they remain members of that body and are not cut off by formal expulsion or renunciation, either with or without union to another similar body. Many other practices are derived from the same notion. I select a few of them for notice in the present chapter.

Prominent among them is the custom to which the name of the Couvade has been given: a name too deeply rooted now to be changed, albeit one founded on a mistake as to the use of the word and a limitation, untenable on scientific grounds, though inevitable in the then state of our knowledge, to certain remarkable developments of the usage. Dr. Tylor was the first to examine the custom in a critical manner. Since the publication of his Researches into the Early History of Mankind, it has been considered by numerous anthropologists, notably by Dr. Ploss, Dr. {401} Wilken, Mr. im Thurn, and more recently by Dr. von Dargun and Mr. Ling Roth; while Dr. J. A. H. Murray in his letters to The Academy has once for all disposed of the evidence for its existence in modern Europe and for the use of the word by the Béarnese, or by any French writers of authority, as a technical term in describing the alleged Béarnese custom. Mr. Ling Roth’s comprehensive paper on the subject happily relieves me from the necessity of dealing with it at length here.^401.1

The Couvade as generally explained is the custom which requires the father of a child, immediately after its birth, to lie-in as if he were a woman in childbed, while his wife, who has actually given birth to the babe, goes about her ordinary work, and of course waits upon her husband in his feigned sickness. But this definition is inadequate and misleading. In order to attain a true conception of the custom it is not enough to limit our observation to a small number of cases and in those cases to regard only the most prominent phenomena, because they strike us as the most ridiculous. We must clear our minds of the notion that the father takes the mother’s place, in the sense, at all events, that he is made to undergo the treatment she is entitled to, and at her expense. Whether from living a more active and open-air life than her more civilised sisters, or from physical causes more deeply seated, the ease with which a savage woman gives birth is much more like that of a wild beast. She will often deliver herself without aid; and, subject to the ceremonial rules of the tribe concerning {402} uncleanness, in a very little time she is ready to return to her usual occupations. Simulation of her sufferings, not to say disregard of them, by the husband is therefore in most cases out of the question.

Moreover, the lying-in of the husband, so far as it can be so termed, is only part of a large number of observances, by which he is bound, in the more fully developed forms of the custom, from the moment his wife conceives, or occasionally before, until the child is able to speak, or to digest the usual food of the tribe; and in many of these observances both before and after childbirth the wife is included; while she on her part is bound by other observances of a similar character. Thus, Signor Modigliani, sojourning with a native of Nias whose wife was in “an interesting condition,” was the innocent cause of an amusing domestic squabble. For his host in leaving his room one day stepped across the traveller’s outspread legs. This was a serious matter, because it was apt to cause misfortune to the unborn child. The wife did not fail to remind her imprudent husband of his folly, and carried her anger to such a height that he was glad to flee from the blows administered by means of the firewood intended for the domestic hearth. Nor was the quarrel made up without a gift from the traveller of one of his bags of rice. While staying at the house Signor Modigliani frequently obtained from the natives by barter serpents for his collection; and this was a continual cause of difficulties to his host, who was divided between his curiosity and desire to assist at the transaction on the one side, and on the other his dread of the consequences of seeing a dead snake—consequences only to be averted by running away at once to find and burn a living one. At length, however, Signor Modigliani {403} convinced him that it would be enough, when he found a snake, to seize it and simulate burning by passing it over a fire kindled for the purpose, and then to kill it in some other manner, as by suffocating it in alcohol for scientific purposes. Other acts too the Niasese father-expectant must avoid, as talking with Malays or Chinese, lest the child be unable to speak his own tongue, splitting a piece of wood or the atap-leaves wherewith the houses are roofed, lest the infant be born with harelip, eating of a pig found dead, lest the fœtus be born without attaining proper development, killing or cutting up chickens or pigs, lest the babe feel the wounds, eating of the great beetles of which the natives are very fond, lest the little one catch a cough. As reported by other travellers, both parents must abstain before the birth from some of these acts, as well as from passing over a spot where a man has been murdered, or a buffalo slain, or where a dog has been burnt for the purpose of giving effect to certain imprecations, else the child will be affected by the contortions of the dying man or beast. Nor dare they build a house, or thatch it, nor drive nails; and before breaking tobacco or siri it must be drawn out of the bag which contains it, or the babe cannot be born. They look in no mirror or bamboo-tube, lest the child squint. They eat no bujuwu (a kind of bird) or owl, lest he croak or whoop instead of speaking. They touch no monkey, lest the infant get eyes and forehead like a monkey’s. They enter no house where a corpse lies, else he will die. They eat of no pig killed for a funeral feast, lest he get the itch. They plant no pisang-trees, lest he suffer from ulcers. The consequence of eating a certain fish or striking a snake is indigestion to the child, of expressing or boiling-out oil is headache to him, of passing {404} over a place struck by lightning is to make his body black, of firing a field for agricultural purposes, or throwing salt into the pig’s food, or of swearing, is sickness to him; and to eat out of the vessel in which the food is cooked is to cause the babe to adhere to the after-birth.^404.1

This long list exhausts not the prohibitions in force on the island of Nias; but we may treat it as a sample not merely for that one island but for many other places, and pass on to a few instances of rules imposed at and after the time of delivery. On the Melanesian island of Saa, both before and after the birth, the father “will not eat pig’s flesh, and he abstains from movements which are believed to do harm, upon the principle that the father’s movements affect those of the child. A man will not do hard work; he keeps quiet lest the child should start, should overstrain itself, or should throw itself about as he paddles.” In the Banks’ Islands when the child is born both parents eat only what it could digest. “After the birth of the first child, the father does no heavy work for a month; after the birth of any of his children he takes care not to go into those sacred places into which the child could not go without risk.” In the New Hebrides “he does work in looking after his wife and child, but he must not eat shell-fish and other produce of the beach, for the infant would suffer from ulcers if he did. In Lepers’ Island the father is very careful for ten days; he does no work, will not climb a tree, or go far into the sea to bathe, for if he exert himself the child will suffer.”^404.2 Turning to the American continent, we will take the report of the latest traveller in the interior of Brazil, Dr. Karl von den Steinen. Here let it be noted that the father is so far {405} from imitating childbed, that the mother is, all over South America, usually delivered on the ground, whereas the father lies in his hammock. So it is among the Schingù Indians visited by Dr. von den Steinen. Their opinion was that the father lay in the hammock because he was obliged to fast, and that he took care of the child because he was obliged to remain at home, while the mother went out to her work, rather than from any intention to simulate the natural conduct of the mother. The father it is who cuts the navel-string; and he is not a free man until the string falls off the child. By these and other American peoples fish, flesh and fruit are tabooed to the father expressly on the ground that for him to eat them is all one as if the babe itself ate them. Among the Ipurina he is forbidden to taste tapir-flesh or pork for a whole year. On the other hand, what very much astonished the worthy apothecary of the Brazilian military colony, the Bororó father, when his child is sick, is in the habit of himself taking the medicine provided for the patient. The Bororó father and mother eat nothing for two days after the birth; and on the third day they may only take warm water: if the father ate anything both he and the infant would sicken. The mother, though she attends to her work, must not bathe until her menstruation has returned. The Paressí parents remain in the hut for five days, until the navel-string falls off; and the father is only allowed to taste water mingled with beijú, otherwise the baby would die.^405.1 The humorous accounts of the practice among the Tamanacs and Abipones, quoted at length by Dr. Tylor from the Abate Gilij and the Jesuit missionary Dobrizhoffer, need only be referred to here to emphasise the reason given in {406} both cases, namely, that the abstinence described is for the benefit of the offspring. To partake of certain food, to kill any animal, to sneeze, or to commit some other act, would injure the little one.

Readers who have followed the facts and arguments in the earlier chapters of this volume set forth will have no difficulty in arriving at the true interpretation of the usage. It is founded on the belief that the child is a part of the parent; and, just as even after apparent severance of hair or nails from the remainder of the body, the bulk is affected by anything which happens to the severed portion, so as well after as before the infant has been severed from the parent’s body, and in our eyes has acquired a distinct existence, he will be affected by whatever operates on the parent; and, conversely, the parent will feel whatever happens to him, as in some parts of England a mother absent for a while from her child is believed to feel her breasts painful when he cries.^406.1 The separation is only in appearance; the connection is preserved in spite of it. Hence whatever the parent ought for the child’s sake to do or avoid before severance it is equally necessary to do or avoid after. Gradually, however, as the infant grows and strengthens he becomes able to digest the same food as his parents, and to take part in the ordinary avocations of their lives. Precaution then may be relaxed, and ultimately remitted altogether. But the observance is attended with inconveniences. The parents’ labour is required in hunting, in agriculture, in warfare, in all the various ways in which the {407} life of a household or of a tribe is maintained. The custom therefore is liable to gradual diminution. It is worn away slowly, and compressed into a shorter period. With the tardy and half-unconscious recognition of natural laws it loses bit by bit its importance, until it fades away into little more than a ceremony. In spite of decay, however, and indeed in consequence of it, it may acquire another significance; and among a few tribes, as, for example, the Mundurucus, it becomes “the legal form by which the father recognises the child as his.” This result would have the effect of renewing its vitality. The change of intention is rare, and where the custom is found in its fullest development it is unknown. Accordingly, I venture with all respect to think it is a mistake to see in this legal form the origin of the Couvade, as Dr. Tylor has done, plausible though the explanation seems. Its origin really lies deeper; it lies in the widely pervasive conception of life I have endeavoured to exhibit in these chapters on the Life-token.

This mode of accounting for the practice may seem defective in that it fails to explain the martyrdom suffered by the Carib father, as detailed by Du Tertre. After the unfortunate father has endured a course of fasting for forty days the relatives and best friends, we are told, are invited to a feast, which they preface by scarifying him with agouti-teeth, and then having mashed in water sixty or eighty grains of strong pimento, or Indian pepper, they wash his wounds with the infusion. Not a sound, however, must be drawn from him by his agony, if he would not be deemed a coward and despised by all.^407.1 In like manner, among the aboriginal inhabitants of Celebes, if the first-born be a son the mother bathes the child in the nearest water-course, while the {408} father, fully armed and dressed in his finest garb, awaits her return. In his turn he then goes to bathe, and when he steps out of the water his neighbours are waiting for him to beat him with reeds all the way back to his dwelling. On arriving there, he seizes his bow and shoots three reed arrows over the hut, saying: “I wish much happiness to my son: may he grow up to be a valiant man.”^408.1 I do not know whether the Carib ceremony was performed on the birth of a girl, but the Minahassee ceremony is entirely omitted; and the extreme severities of the Carib fast were at all events confined to the first child. The object of the Minahassee father is unquestionable; and from it we may infer that of the Carib. In his person his son undergoes the first tests of his endurance, valour and skill. Success in this is doubtless the guarantee of the child’s courage and of his value to the tribe as hunter and warrior.

If this be so, the Carib tortures, it is evident, spring from the same root as other observances comprehended under the general name of the Couvade. Both in the Carib and Minahassee forms we find the tendency to emphasise the birth of the first child, or perhaps I should rather say, to relax the requirements in the case of after-born children. The tendency is not to be looked upon as a recognition of heirship, but as one arising naturally in the course of ceremonial decay. The first child is the most important; for it is a pledge of the continuance of the family or kindred, and brings very often an accession of honour, or at least of consideration, to its parents. Among peoples where conjugal fidelity is imperfectly developed, moreover, it is the one of whose parentage the father is best assured, and consequently the one on whose health and strength his {409} conduct will be likely, if not certain, to have influence. Thus the motives for the care of the offspring, and therefore for the special observance of all precautions, concentrate upon the first child; and if the custom be found irksome, or for any other reason be liable to loosen its hold, it will generally continue to be fully observed in respect of the first child, long after it has begun to fall into neglect on subsequent births.

The racial and geographical distribution of the practice is a more difficult question than it might at first sight appear, considering the number of authorities who have examined it. If we limit not the definition of the Couvade to the cases where the father actually lies down, but extend it, as it seems proper to do, to all those where he has before as well as after the birth to observe various taboos, in which the mother is often included—then we may find either the custom itself or relics of it over the greater part of the world. America, inhabited by a homogeneous race, displays it everywhere, even among the Eskimos of Greenland, save apparently in Tierra del Fuego. On the eastern continent Mr. Ling Roth puts the matter somewhat strongly when he says that it “is only met with in isolated and widely separated localities.” In Australia it is unknown; nor is there any record of it among the extinct Tasmanians. Summing up the facts, the same writer says: “The custom does not appear to exist or to have existed among those people to whom the term ‘most degraded’ is erroneously applied, people which were better described as savages living in the lowest known forms of culture, such as the Australians, Tasmanians, Bushmen, Hottentots, Veddahs, Sakeys, Aetas, and Fuegians. Neither does the custom exist among the so-called civilised portion of mankind. In {410} other words, Couvade appears at first sight to be limited to peoples who hold an intermediate position between those in the highest and those in [the] lowest states of culture. As such it may be said to represent an intermediate or transition state of mental development.”

We have no need to be surprised that the Couvade is not found in the lowest stage of savagery. The reckoning of kinship through the mother only, and the stories and superstitions which attribute impregnation to other causes than coition, point alike to an imperfect recognition in archaic times of the natural fact of fatherhood. It may further be suggested that where the claim of a father upon his child is still rather that of owner than of begetter, the recognition of the counter-claim of the child upon the father, and the application as between father and child of the belief underlying and directing other magical practices, will not yet have developed. It is probable, indeed, that the customs we include under the generic name of the Couvade would begin with the mother, and that when the fact of paternity was completely recognised, although legal kinship may not yet have come to be reckoned through the father, they would be extended to him. Their disappearance as men advanced in civilisation would, like that of all other customs, be a gradual one; and if they had become at all general we should be likely to discover relics of them among nations in the higher ranks of culture. Accordingly, although there is no authentic record of the existence of the masculine childbed in modern Europe, a number yet lingers of superstitions only referable to the Couvade. For example, just as in the island of Celebes we found the Minahassee father performing a rite intended to secure to his son the qualities of bravery and skill, so among the Esthonians the {411} father runs rapidly round the church during the baptismal service, that his child may be endowed with swiftness of foot.^411.1 In Altmark the mother busily reads her Bible and hymn-book while the child is being baptized, so that he may be able to learn easily; and with the same object the godparents must repeat together after the minister the passages from the Bible he brings into his exhortation.^411.2 The husband among the mixed population of East Prussia seems to have been limited in his choice of drink while his wife was lying-in.^411.3 Over a wide area of the Continent the mother is allowed to do very little work before her churching. In Altmark she must not spin; for in spinning she will wet her finger with her saliva, and that will cause the babe to slaver.^411.4 The reason assigned in Switzerland for a similar taboo is that she will spin the material for a rope for her child.^411.5 At the baptismal feast in Altmark the mother must taste of all the dishes if she wish the infant to thrive.^411.6 Galician Jews permit no member of a household where there is a young child to stay out after sunset, else the little one will be deprived of its rest.^411.7 In the last illustration we have an extension of the superstition beyond the immediate parents—an extension of which there are traces among savage peoples, like the Abipones, who are reported to have put other relatives as well as the parents upon restricted diet during a baby’s illness.

An interesting form of this extension has been referred to by Dr. Tylor in the third edition of the important work {412} in which he discusses the Couvade, where he notes that in Germany “it is believed that the habits and proceedings of the godfather and godmother affect the child’s life and character. Particularly, the godfather at the christening must not think of disease or madness lest this come upon the child; he must not look round on the way to church lest the child should grow up an idle stare-about; nor must he carry a knife about him for fear of making the child a suicide; the godmother must put on a clean shift to go to the baptism, or the baby will grow up untidy, etc. etc.”^412.1 I have already mentioned another instance from a land which, to-day at all events, is German in language and polity. There the duty of godparents is exactly parallel with that prescribed for the mother. So too it is held in the Erzgebirge and in Thuringia that the godfather must eat of all the dishes at the feast, for the babe will get a dislike to those left untasted; and in Thuringia he must not only not look about him in returning from church, but he must hasten back to the house, that the child may learn the sooner to run.^412.2 In the Sollingerwald each of the godparents must hold the babe for a little while; but the youngest of them presents it at the font, doubtless to ensure it a longer life.^412.3 In the Upper Palatinate even the priest’s conduct at the baptism will affect the child. If he stumble or stutter during the reading of the service, {413} the consequences are serious: the boy will become silly, the girl a nightmare; or if he leave a word out, the infant will never rest quietly in bed, but will be found feet uppermost. In Bohemia, the priest in stumbling as he reads will cause the child to talk in its sleep.^413.1 In the province of Posen, forgetfulness or mistake on the part of the priest results as in the Palatinate; and the only remedy is rebaptism.^413.2 The superstition, as we see, is not confined to Germany, though it may be more fully developed there than elsewhere; and without delaying upon examples drawn from Germany and Germanised lands, I proceed to cite a few from other countries before closing what I have to say on the Couvade. Among the Huzules, to have a Gipsy as godparent is to be lucky in horse-breeding and horse-dealing; and by the same people it is considered that if there be a difficulty in putting out the godparents’ candles after the service, the little newly made Christian will have a long life.^413.3 The peasantry of the Valsesia at the foot of Monte Rosa deem that if the godparents do not recite the creed with a clear voice the little one will stammer all its life. And whoever carries it to the church to be baptized must on no account look back, or the babe will always be timid and easily frightened.^413.4 In Provence on the other side of the Alps, as well as in Germany and Belgium, the opinion is widely prevalent that the child will resemble, morally and physically, his godparents. Hence great anxiety as to the choice of these important personages. They must be healthy in mind and body, and without any physical defect; for if either of them should be one-eyed, a stammerer, bandy-legged or a hunchback, nobody, in Provence at least, doubts {414} that the poor baby would suffer the like misfortune.^414.1 In Central France, if a godfather wish his godson to become an excellent and indefatigable singer, he has a ready way to realise the wish; for he has only to set the bells ringing full peal during the baptismal service, and the longer and more vigorously they dance and swell, the more skilful will the neophyte become in striking up an air or in leading a jig. The godfather, however, must not forget on leaving the church to imprint a chaste kiss on both cheeks of the godmother, else there is too much reason to fear the boy will grow up dumb, or at least a stammerer.^414.2 In the arrondissement of Corte, on the island of Corsica, if either of the sponsors forgets a single word in reciting the creed, the child becomes a wizard or witch, or else a mortolaio, that is to say, a ghost-seer.^414.3 The latter result also follows in Friuli;^414.4 while the Irish peasantry hold that if either of the sponsors fails to repeat verbatim after the priest the prayers and promises, the child will always have the power to see fairies or ghosts—which is reckoned unfortunate.^414.5 Among the Walloons the omission by the priest of certain of the sacramental words seems to have a similar effect.^414.6 It is a superstition scattered over a large part of Italy that if the priest make any mistake in the baptismal service, or omit to comply with every ritual prescription in baptizing a girl, she will become a witch;^414.7 and that stupidity or stammering will be the consequence of defects in the recitation {415} of the creed or prayers by the padrini is also commonly believed.^415.1

The fact is that in the popular mind sponsorship creates a new and real kindred between the godparent and the god-child, and not only between the godparent and god-child, but between the godparent and the godchild’s relations. The effect seems analogous to that of the blood-covenant. Among the wandering Gipsies of southern Hungary a rite similar to that of the blood-covenant is actually performed. The day when the child’s hair is first cut is kept as a festival. The godparents let some drops of their blood fall into a glass of brandy and some on a small piece of bread. The father then pours the brandy on the child’s head and crumbles the bread upon it, “that the child may grow and thrive.” In the same way when the tortures of the Carib father came to an end, the infant was sprinkled with some drops of blood from his wounds, with the object, we are told, of imparting his courage and spirit. So, too, some of the wandering Gipsies of northern Hungary wrap the babe after its birth in rags bedropt with some of the father’s blood.^415.2 The object in all these cases is to unite the child in the closest bond with the person whose blood is shed. Even where that person is the father himself the rite may perhaps be regarded as a formal adoption into the kin. More likely it is intended to promote the growth and health of the child by renewing the corporeal union already in existence by virtue of the natural blood-tie, or of the equivalent mystical bond forged, as between sponsor and child, by the sacrament of baptism. It would then correspond to one of those periodical renewals {416} of blood-brotherhood which we have dealt with on a former page. Some countenance is perhaps given to this suggestion by a practice of the Southern Slavs. The relationship of godfather and godchild is often created among them by the formal cutting of the child’s hair, as it seems also to have been among the ancient Germans. The ceremony can only take place once. The godfather cuts the hair in the form of a cross and drops it into a cup of water, into which he puts some money as a gift for the child; and the parent then entertains him at a feast and presents him with gifts in return. As the ceremony is not distinctive of any religious denomination, Christian and Moslem do not scruple to enter into the relationship of hair-cutting sponsorship with one another. It unites the families in ties so close as to involve them in one another’s blood-feuds; and a Moslem woman unveils before her child’s godfather, though a stranger and even a Christian. But, important as are the social and political effects of such an institution, it is not to them that I desire specially to direct attention in this connection; rather I desire to compare it with the Gipsy practices just mentioned. It is in great request in Bosnia as remedial treatment for a sickly child. The child is taken to a crossway; and the first passer-by is expected to cut the hair and thus become godfather.^416.1 Here it is surely intended to enter into a new corporeal union with an entire stranger, and so acquire a fresh stock of health. The objection to this explanation is that the godparent does not seem to take the hair away with him. I do not know if we can suppose that the ceremony has undergone deterioration, and that this part {417} of the proceeding has been lost because its exact reason has been forgotten. I am unable otherwise to account for it. In any case it is unquestionable that the relationship of gossipry in many countries is fully as intimate and sacred as that of blood. Amongst the Southern Slavs, we know, a godfather or an adoptive brother is often the person chosen in preference to any one, even a natural brother, to fill the delicate office of brautführer at a wedding. The Huzules regard sponsors as veritable additions to the family circle. They never choose them from among their neighbours; for there is often strife between neighbours; and strife between gossips, or persons related by the bond of sponsorship, would be a sin.^417.1 In some parts of Italy the godmother drinks at the baptismal feast out of the same cup with the mother:^417.2 clear evidence of the intimacy of their union.

One consequence of the relationship thus created is the prohibition of intermarriage. In comparatively early times the Church took over from the Roman law the interdiction of marriage between persons who were only akin by adoption. That interdiction was the direct and necessary result of the recognition of adoption as constituting a true kinship. The analogy of sponsorship at the font was too great to be overlooked; and in following the prohibition into the relationship between persons by this new tie the Church was merely reflecting the opinion of the people, who saw in it a fresh and solemn form of the adoption to which they had been accustomed from the days of savagery. Their horror of such marriages wherever sponsorship is yet a living reality may be illustrated by the superstition recorded in Berri not many years ago, that the fruit of the {418} union was not children but hairy monsters, which when disengaged from their mother’s womb would instantly take refuge under the bed, and when thence dislodged with a pitchfork would fly to the hearth, and after grinning and mowing at their persecutors for a while from the pot-hook above the hearth would eventually disappear, to the relief of every one, up the chimney.^418.1