The parallelism between this custom of “hunting the wren” and some of

those we have considered, especially the Gilyak procession with the bear,

and the Indian one with the snake, seems too close to allow us to doubt

that they all belong to the same circle of ideas. The worshipful animal is

killed with special solemnity once a year; and before or immediately after

death, he is promenaded from door to door, that each of his worshippers

may receive a portion of the divine virtues that are supposed to emanate

from the dead or dying god. Religious processions of this sort must have

had a great place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times,

if we may judge from the numerous traces of them which have survived in

folk-custom. A well-preserved specimen is the following, which survived in

the Highlands of Scotland and in St. Kilda down to the latter half of last

century. “On the evening before New Year’s Day, it is usual for the

cowherd and the young people to meet together, and one of them is covered

with a cow’s hide. The rest of the company are provided with staves, to

the end of which bits of raw hide are tied. The person covered with the

hide runs thrice round the dwelling-house, _deiseil_—_i.e._ according to

the course of the sun; the rest pursue, beating the hide with their

staves, and crying [here follows the Gaelic], ‘Let us raise the noise

louder and louder; let us beat the hide.’ They then come to the door of

each dwelling-house, and one of them repeats some verses composed for the

purpose. When admission is granted, one of them pronounces within the

threshold the _beannachadthurlair_, or verses by which he pretends to draw

down a blessing upon the whole family [here follows the Gaelic], ‘May God

bless this house and all that belongs to it, cattle, stones, and timber!

In plenty of meat, of bed and body-clothes, and health of men, may it ever

abound!’ Then each burns in the fire a little bit of hide which is tied to

the end of the staff. It is applied to the nose of every person and

domestic animal that belongs to the house. This, they imagine, will tend

much to secure them from diseases and other misfortunes during the ensuing

year. The whole of the ceremony is called _colluinn_, from the great noise

which the hide makes.”(437) From another authority,(438) we learn that the

hide of which pieces were burned in each house and applied to the inmates

was the breast part of a sheep-skin. Formerly, perhaps, pieces of the

cow-hide in which the man was clad were detached for this purpose, just as

in the Isle of Man a feather of the wren used to be given to each

household. Similarly, as we have seen, the human victim whom the Khonds

slew as a divinity was taken from house to house, and every one strove to

obtain a relic of his sacred person. Such customs are only another form of

that communion with the deity which is attained most completely by eating

the body and drinking the blood of the god.

In the “hunting of the wren,” and the procession with the man clad in a

cow-skin, there is nothing to show that the customs in question have any

relation to agriculture. So far as appears, they may date from the

pre-agricultural era when animals were revered as divine in themselves,

not merely as divine because they embodied the corn-spirit; and the

analogy of the Gilyak procession of the bear, and the Indian procession of

the snake is in favour of assigning the corresponding European customs to

this very early date. On the other hand, there are certain European

processions of animals, or of men disguised as animals, which may possibly

be purely agricultural in their origin;(439) in other words, the animals

which figure in them may have been from the first nothing but

representatives of the corn-spirit conceived in animal shape. But it is at

least equally possible that these processions originated in the

pre-agricultural era, and have only received an agricultural tinge from

the environment in which they have so long survived. But the question is

an obscure and difficult one, and cannot be here discussed.

§ 13.—Transference of evil.

The custom of killing the god has now been proved to have been practised

by peoples in the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society,

and the various reasons for observing the custom have been explained. One

aspect of the custom still remains to be noticed. The accumulated

misfortunes and sins of the whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying

god, who is supposed to bear them away for ever, leaving the people

innocent and happy. The notion that we can transfer our pains and griefs

to some other being who will bear them in our stead is familiar to the

savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical

and the mental. Because it is possible to transfer a load of wood, stones,

or what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies

that it is equally possible to transfer the burden of his pains and

sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he

acts, and the result is an endless number of often very unamiable devices

for putting off upon some one else the trouble which a man shrinks from

bearing himself. Such devices are amongst the most familiar facts in

folk-lore; but for the benefit of readers who are not professed students

of folk-lore, a few illustrations may be given.

It is not necessary that the pain or trouble should be transferred from

the sufferer to a person; it may equally well be transferred to an animal

or a thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to

convey the trouble to the first person who touches it. In some of the East

Indian islands epilepsy is believed to be cured by striking the patient on

the face with the leaves of certain trees and then throwing the leaves

away. The epilepsy is believed to have passed into the leaves, and to have

been thrown away with them.(440) To cure toothache some of the Australian

blacks apply a heated spear-thrower to the cheek. The spear-thrower is

then cast away, and the toothache goes with it, in the shape of a black

stone called _karriitch_. Stones of this kind are found in old mounds and

sandhills. They are carefully collected and thrown in the direction of

enemies, in order to give them toothache.(441) When a Moor has a headache,

he will sometimes take a lamb or a goat and beat it till it falls down,

believing that the headache will thus be transferred to the animal.(442)

After an illness, a Bechuana king seated himself upon an ox which lay

stretched on the ground. The native doctor next poured water on the king’s

head till it ran down over his body. Then the head of the ox was held in a

vessel of water till the animal expired; whereupon the doctor declared,

and the people believed, that the ox died of the king’s disease, which had

been transferred to it from the king.(443) Amongst the Malagasy the

vehicle for carrying away evils is called a _faditra_. “The faditra is

anything selected by the sikidy [divining-board] for the purpose of taking

away any hurtful evils or diseases that might prove injurious to an

individual’s happiness, peace, or prosperity. The faditra may be either

ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or anything else the sikidy may

choose to direct. After the particular article is appointed, the priest

counts upon it all the evils that may prove injurious to the person for

whom it is made, and which he then charges the faditra to take away for

ever. If the faditra be ashes, it is blown, to be carried away by the

wind. If it be cut money, it is thrown to the bottom of deep water, or

where it can never be found. If it be a sheep, it is carried away to a

distance on the shoulders of a man, who runs with all his might, mumbling

as he goes, as if in the greatest rage against the faditra for the evils

it is bearing away. If it be a pumpkin, it is carried on the shoulders to

a little distance, and there dashed upon the ground with every appearance

of fury and indignation.”(444) A Malagasy was informed by a diviner that

he was doomed to a bloody death, but that possibly he might avert his fate

by performing a certain rite. Carrying a small vessel full of blood upon

his head, he was to mount upon the back of a bullock; while thus mounted,

he was to spill the blood upon the bullock’s head, and then send the

animal away into the wilderness, whence it might never return.(445)

The Battas of Sumatra have a ceremony which they call “making the curse to

fly away.” When a woman is childless, a sacrifice is offered to the gods

of three grasshoppers, representing a head of cattle, a buffalo, and a

horse. Then a swallow is set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall

upon the bird and fly away with it.(446) At the cleansing of a leper and

of a house suspected of being tainted with leprosy, the Jews let a bird

fly away.(447) Amongst the Miaotse of China, when the eldest son of the

house attains the age of seven years, a ceremony called “driving away the

devil” takes place. The father makes a kite of straw and lets it fly away

in the desert, bearing away all evil with it.(448) In Morocco most wealthy

Moors keep a wild boar in their stables, in order that the jinn and evil

spirits may be diverted from the horses and enter into the boar.(449) The

Dyaks believe that certain men possess in themselves the power of

neutralising bad omens. So, when evil omens have alarmed a farmer for the

safety of his crops, he takes a small portion of his farm produce to one

of these wise men, who eats it raw for a small consideration, “and thereby

appropriates to himself the evil omen, which in him becomes innocuous, and

thus delivers the other from the ban of the _pemali_ or taboo.”(450) In

Travancore, when a Rajah is dangerously ill and his life is despaired of,

a holy Brahman is brought, who closely embraces the King, and says, “O

King! I undertake to bear all your sins and diseases. May your Highness

live long and reign happily.” Then the sin-bearer is sent away from the

country, and never allowed to return.(451) Amongst the Burghers or Badagas

of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, when a death has taken place,

the sins of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo calf. A set form of

confession of sins, the same for every one, is recited aloud, then the

calf is set free, and is never afterwards used for common purposes. “The

idea of this ceremony is that the sins of the deceased enter the calf, or

that the task of his absolution is laid on it. They say that the calf very

soon disappears, and that it is never after heard of.”(452)

Similar attempts to shift the burden of disease and sin from one’s self to

another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common in ancient and

modern Europe. Grave writers of antiquity recommended that, if a man be

stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an ass with his face to the tail,

or whisper in the ear of the ass, “A scorpion has stung me”; in either

case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from the man to the

ass.(453) A Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient’s nails, and

stick the parings with wax upon a neighbour’s door before sunrise; the

fever then passed from the sick man to his neighbour.(454) Similar devices

must have been practised by the Greeks; for in laying down laws for his

ideal state, Plato thinks it too much to expect that men should not be

alarmed at finding certain wax figures adhering to their doors or to the

tombstones of their parents, or lying at cross-roads.(455) In modern

Europe there is no end to such devices. Thus the Orkney Islanders will

wash a sick person and then throw the water down at a gateway, in the

belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be transferred to the

first person who passes through the gate.(456) A Bavarian cure for the

fever is to write upon a piece of paper, “Fever, stay away, I am not at

home,” and to put the paper in some person’s pocket. The latter then

catches the fever and the patient is rid of it.(457) Another cure is for

the patient to stick a twig of the elder-tree in the ground without

speaking. The fever then adheres to the twig, and whoever pulls up the

twig will catch the disease.(458) To get rid of warts, take a string and

make as many knots in it as you have warts. Then lay the string under a

stone. Whoever treads upon the stone will get the warts, and you will be

rid of them.(459) Gout may be transferred from a man to a tree thus. Pare

the nails of the sufferer’s fingers and clip some hairs from his legs.

Bore a hole in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the

hole again, and smear it with cow’s dung. If, for three months afterwards,

the patient is free of gout, then the oak has it in his stead.(460) A

Flemish cure for the ague is to go early in the morning to an old willow,

tie three knots in one of its branches, say, “Good-morrow, Old One, I give

thee the cold, good-morrow, Old One,” then turn and run away without

looking round.(461) A cure current in Sunderland for a cough is to shave

the patient’s head and hang the hair on a bush. When the birds carry the

hair to their nests, they will carry the cough with it. A Northamptonshire

and Devonshire cure is to put a hair of the patient’s head between two

slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog. The dog will get the cough

and the patient will lose it.(462) In the Greek island of Carpathus the

priest ties a red thread round the neck of a sick person. Next morning the

friends of the patient remove the thread and go out to the hillside, where

they tie the thread to a tree, thinking that they thus transfer the

sickness to the tree.(463)

The old Welsh custom known as “sin-eating” is another example of the

supposed transference of evil from one person to another. According to

Aubrey, “In the County of Hereford was an old Custome at funeralls to hire

poor people, who were to take upon them all the sinnes of the party

deceased. 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, which he was

to drinke up, and sixpence in money, in consideration whereof he took upon

him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her)

from walking after they were dead.... I believe this custom was heretofore

used over all Wales.... In North Wales the Sinne-eaters are frequently

made use of; but there, instead of a Bowle of Beere, they have a bowle of

Milke.”(464) According to a letter dated February 1, 1714-5, “within the

memory of our fathers, in Shropshire, in those villages adjoyning to

Wales, when a person dyed, there was notice given to an old sire (for so

they called him), who presently repaired to the place where the deceased

lay, and stood before the door of the house, when some of the family came

out and furnished him with a cricket, on which he sat down facing the

door. Then they gave him a groat, which he put in his pocket; a crust of

bread, which he eat; and a full bowle of ale, which he drank off at a

draught. After this he got up from the cricket and pronounced, with a

composed gesture, the ease and rest of the soul departed for which he

would pawn his own soul. This I had from the ingenious John Aubrey,

Esq.”(465) In recent years some doubt has been thrown on Aubrey’s account

of the custom.(466) The practice, however, is reported to have prevailed

in a valley not far from Llandebie to a recent period. An instance was

said to have occurred about forty years ago.(467) Aubrey’s statement is

supported by the analogy of similar customs in India. When the Rajah of

Tanjore died in 1801, some of his bones and the bones of the two wives,

who were burned with his corpse, were ground to powder and eaten, mixed

with boiled rice, by twelve Brahmans. It was believed that the sins of the

deceased passed into the bodies of the Brahmans, who were paid for the

service.(468) A Brahman, resident in a village near Raipúr, stated that he

had eaten food (rice and milk) out of the hand of the dead Rajah of

Biláspúr, and that in consequence he had been placed on the throne for the

space of a year. At the end of the year he had been given presents and

then turned out of the territory and forbidden apparently to return. He

was an outcast among his fellows for having eaten out of a dead man’s

hand.(469) A similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states

about Kángrá, and to have given rise to a caste of “outcaste” Brahmans. At

the funeral of a Rání of Chambá rice and _ghí_ were eaten out of the hands

of the corpse by a Brahman paid for the purpose. Afterwards a stranger,

who had been caught outside the Chambá territory, was given the costly

wrappings of the corpse, then told to depart and never show his face in

the country again.(470) In Oude when an infant was killed it used to be

buried in the room in which it had been born. On the thirteenth day

afterwards the priest had to cook and eat his food in that room. By doing

so he was supposed to take the whole sin upon himself and to cleanse the

family from it.(471) At Utch Kurgan in Turkistan Mr. Schuyler saw an old

man who was said to get his living by taking on himself the sins of the

dead and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer for their souls.(472)

§ 14.—Expulsion of evils,

These examples illustrate the primitive principle of the transference of

ills to another person, animal, or thing. In the instances cited the

principle is applied for the benefit of individuals only. But analogous

proceedings are employed by barbarous peoples to rid a whole community of

all their troubles at a blow. The frame of mind which prompts such

wholesale clearances of evil may be described in the language of Mr. Im

Thurn, for though he wrote of the Indians of Guiana in particular, his

description is capable of a much wider application. He says: “Thus the

whole world of the Indian swarms with these [spiritual] beings. If by a

mighty mental effort we could for a moment revert to a similar mental

position we should find ourselves surrounded by a host of possibly hurtful

beings, so many in number that to describe them as innumerable would fall

ridiculously short of the truth. It is not therefore wonderful that the

Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp-fire after dark, or, if

he is obliged to do so, carries a firebrand with him that he may at least

see among what enemies he walks; nor is it wonderful that occasionally the

air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings

that a peaiman [sorcerer], who is supposed to have the power of

temporarily driving them away, is employed to effect a general clearance

of these beings, if only for a time.”(473) Such general clearances of evil

influences may be divided into two classes, according as the expelled

evils are immaterial and invisible or are embodied in a material vehicle

or scapegoat. The former may be called the direct or immediate expulsion

of evils; the latter the indirect or mediate expulsion, or the expulsion

by scapegoat. We begin with examples of the former.

In the island of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any

misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse, howl,

and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil (_Marsába_), who is

supposed to be the author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap

took place they drive him step by step to the sea, and on reaching the

shore they redouble their shouts and blows in order to expel him from the

island. He generally retires to the sea or to the island of Lottin.(474)

The natives of New Britain ascribe sickness, drought, the failure of

crops, and in short all misfortunes, to the influence of wicked spirits.

So at times when many people sicken and die, as at the beginning of the

rainy season, all the inhabitants of a district, armed with branches and

clubs, go out by moonlight to the fields, where they beat and stamp on the

ground with wild howls till morning, believing that this drives away the

devils.(475) When a village has been visited by a series of disasters or a

severe epidemic, the Minahassa of Celebes lay the blame upon the devils

who are infesting the village and must be expelled from it. Accordingly,

early one morning all the people, men, women, and children, quit their

homes, carrying their household goods with them, and take up their

quarters in temporary huts which have been erected outside the village.

Here they spend several days, offering sacrifices and preparing for the

final ceremony. At last the men, some wearing masks, others with their

faces blackened, and so on, but all armed with swords, guns, pikes, or

brooms, steal cautiously and silently back to the deserted village. Then,

at a signal from the priest, they rush furiously up and down the streets

and into and under the houses (which are raised on piles above the

ground), yelling and striking on walls, doors, and windows, to drive away

the devils. Next, the priests and the rest of the people come with the

holy fire and march nine times round each house and thrice round the

ladder that leads up to it, carrying the fire with them. Then they take

the fire into the kitchen, where it must burn for three days continuously.

The devils are now driven away, and great and general is the joy.(476) The

Alfoers of Halmahera attribute epidemics to the devil who comes from other

villages to carry them off. So, in order to rid the village of the

disease, the sorcerer drives away the devil. From all the villagers he

receives a costly garment and places it on four vessels, which he takes to

the forest and leaves at the spot where the devil is supposed to be. Then

with mocking words he bids the demon abandon the place.(477) In the Key

Islands, south of New Guinea, when sickness prevails, the people erect a

stage on the shore and load it with meat and drink. Then the priest in

presence of the people bans the spirits which are causing the disease,

whereupon the people run back to the village at full speed, like

fugitives.(478)

In the island of Nias, when a man is seriously ill and other remedies have

been tried in vain, the sorcerer proceeds to exorcise the devil who is

causing the illness. A pole is set up in front of the house, and from the

top of the pole a rope of palm-leaves is stretched to the roof of the

house. Then the sorcerer mounts the roof with a pig, which he kills and

allows to roll from the roof to the ground. The devil, anxious to get the

pig, lets himself down hastily from the roof by the rope of palm-leaves,

and a good spirit, invoked by the sorcerer, prevents him from climbing up

again. If this remedy fails, it is believed that other devils must still

be lurking in the house. So a general hunt is made after them. All the

doors and windows in the house are closed, except a single dormer-window

in the roof. The men, shut up in the house, hew and slash with their

swords right and left to the clash of gongs and the rub-a-dub of drums.

Terrified at this onslaught the devils escape by the dormer-window, and

sliding down the rope of palm-leaves take themselves off. As all the doors

and windows, except the one in the roof, are shut, the devils cannot get

into the house again. In the case of an epidemic the proceedings are

similar. All the gates of the village, except one, are closed; every voice

is raised, every gong and drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the

devils are driven out and the last gate is shut behind them. For eight

days thereafter the village is in a state of siege, no one being allowed

to enter it.(479) When cholera has broken out in a Burmese village the

able-bodied men scramble on the roofs and lay about them with bamboos and

billets of wood, while all the rest of the population, old and young,

stand below and thump drums, blow trumpets, yell, scream, beat floors,

walls, tin-pans, everything to make a din. This uproar, repeated on three

successive nights, is thought to be very effective in driving away the

cholera demons.(480) When small-pox first appeared amongst the Kumis of

South-Eastern India, they thought it was a devil come from Arracan. The

villages were placed in a state of siege, no one being allowed to leave or

enter them. A monkey was killed by being dashed on the ground, and its

body was hung at the village gate. Its blood, mixed with small river

pebbles, was sprinkled on the houses, the threshold of every house was

swept with the monkey’s tail, and the fiend was adjured to depart.(481) At

Great Bassam, in Guinea, the French traveller Hecquard witnessed the

exorcism of the evil spirit who was believed to make women barren. The

women who wished to become mothers offered to the fetish wine-vessels or

statuettes representing women suckling children. Then being assembled in

the fetish hut, they were sprinkled with rum by the priest, while young

men fired guns and brandished swords to drive away the demon.(482) When

sickness was prevalent in a Huron village, and all other remedies had been

tried in vain, the Indians had recourse to the ceremony called

_Lonouyroya_, “which is the principal invention and most proper means, so

they say, to expel from the town or village the devils and evil spirits

which cause, induce, and import all the maladies and infirmities which

they suffer in body and mind.” Accordingly, one evening the men would

begin to rush like madmen about the village, breaking and upsetting

whatever they came across in the wigwams. They threw fire and burning

brands about the streets, and all night long they ran howling and singing

without cessation. Then they all dreamed of something, a knife, dog, skin,

or whatever it might be, and when morning came they went from wigwam to

wigwam asking for presents. These they received silently, till the

particular thing was given them which they had dreamed about. On receiving

it they uttered a cry of joy and rushed from the hut, amid the

congratulations of all present. The health of those who received what they

had dreamed of was believed to be assured; whereas those who did not get

what they had set their hearts upon regarded their fate as sealed.(483)

The observance of such ceremonies, from being occasional, tends to become

periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of

evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people

may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malignant influences

which have been long accumulating about them. Some of the Australian

blacks annually expelled the ghosts of the dead from their territory. The

ceremony was witnessed by the Rev. W. Ridley on the banks of the river

Barwan. “A chorus of twenty, old and young, were singing and beating time

with boomerangs.... Suddenly, from under a sheet of bark darted a man with

his body whitened by pipeclay, his head and face coloured with lines of

red and yellow, and a tuft of feathers fixed by means of a stick two feet

above the crown of his head. He stood twenty minutes perfectly still,

gazing upwards. An aboriginal who stood by told me he was looking for the

ghosts of dead men. At last he began to move very slowly, and soon rushed

to and fro at full speed, flourishing a branch as if to drive away some

foes invisible to us. When I thought this pantomime must be almost over,

ten more, similarly adorned, suddenly appeared from behind the trees, and

the whole party joined in a brisk conflict with their mysterious

assailants.... At last, after some rapid evolutions in which they put

forth all their strength, they rested from the exciting toil which they

had kept up all night and for some hours after sunrise: they seemed

satisfied that the ghosts were driven away for twelve months. They were

performing the same ceremony at every station along the river, and I am

told it is an annual custom.”(484)

Certain seasons of the year mark themselves naturally out as appropriate

moments for a general expulsion of devils. Such a moment occurs towards

the close of an Arctic winter, when the sun reappears on the horizon after

an absence of weeks or months. Accordingly, at Point Barrow, the most

northerly extremity of Alaska, and nearly of America, the Eskimo choose

the moment of the sun’s reappearance to hunt the mischievous spirit Tuña

from every house. The ceremony was witnessed a few years ago by the

members of the United States Polar Expedition, who wintered at Point

Barrow. A fire was built in front of the council-house, and an old woman

was posted at the entrance to every _iglu_ (Eskimo house). The men

gathered round the council-fire, while the young women and girls drove the

spirits out of every _iglu_ with their knives, stabbing viciously under

the bunk and deer-skins, and calling upon Tuña to leave the _iglu_. When

they thought he had been driven out of every hole and corner, they thrust

him down through the hole in the floor and chased him into the open air

with loud cries and frantic gestures. Meanwhile the old woman at the

entrance of the _iglu_ made passes with a long knife in the air to keep

him from returning. Each party drove the spirit towards the fire and

invited him to go into it. All were by this time drawn up in a semicircle

round the fire, when several of the leading men made specific charges

against the spirit; and each after his speech brushed his clothes

violently, calling on the spirit to leave him and go into the fire. Two

men now stepped forward with rifles loaded with blank cartridges, while a

third brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the fire. At the same time

one of the men fired a shot into the fire; and as the cloud of steam rose

it received the other shot, which was supposed to finish Tuña for the time

being.(485) In autumn, when heavy gales are raging, the Eskimo of Baffin

Land think that the female spirit Sedna dwells amongst them, and the most

powerful enchanter is employed to drive her out. Beside a small hole in

the centre of the floor a line of seal-skin is coiled up. Holding a

sealing-spear in his left hand the enchanter watches the hole in the

floor. Another sorcerer sits in the rear of the hut chanting songs to

attract Sedna. Now she is heard approaching under the floor of the hut.

When she reaches the hole the enchanter strikes her with his harpoon and

pays out the line. A severe struggle ensues, but ultimately Sedna flies to

her country, Adlivun. The performance is cleverly managed. When the

harpoon is drawn out of the hole it is covered with blood, and the heavy

breathing of Sedna can be distinctly heard under the floor.(486)

The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January, February, or March (the

time varied) with a “festival of dreams” like that which the Hurons

observed on special occasions.(487) The whole ceremonies lasted several

days, or even weeks, and formed a kind of Saturnalia. Men and women,

variously disguised, went from wigwam to wigwam smashing and throwing down

whatever they came across. It was a time of general licence; the people

were supposed to be out of their senses, and therefore not to be

responsible for what they did. Accordingly, many seized the opportunity of

paying off old scores by belabouring obnoxious persons, drenching them

with ice-cold water, and covering them with filth or hot ashes. Others

seized burning brands or coals and flung them at the heads of the first

persons they met. The only way of escaping from these persecutors was to

guess what they had dreamed of. On one day of the festival the ceremony of

driving away evil spirits from the village took place. Men clothed in the

skins of wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks, and their

hands with the shell of the tortoise, went from hut to hut making

frightful noises; in every hut they took the fuel from the fire and

scattered the embers and ashes about the floor with their hands. The

general confession of sins which preceded the festival was probably a

preparation for the public expulsion of evil influences; it was a way of

stripping the people of their moral burdens, that these might be collected

and cast out. This New Year festival is still celebrated by some of the

heathen Iroquois, though it has been shorn of its former turbulence. A

conspicuous feature in the ceremony is now the sacrifice of the White Dog,

but this appears to have been added to the festival in comparatively

modern times, and does not figure in the oldest descriptions of the

ceremonies. We shall return to it later on.(488) A great annual festival

of the Cherokee Indians was the Propitiation, “Cementation,” or

Purification festival. “It was celebrated shortly after the first new moon

of autumn, and consisted of a multiplicity of rigorous rites, fastings,

ablutions, and purifications. Among the most important functionaries on

the occasion were seven exorcisers or cleansers, whose duty it was, at a

certain stage of the proceedings, to drive away evil, and purify the town.

Each one bore in his hand a white rod of sycamore. ‘The leader, followed

by the others, walked around the national heptagon, and coming to the

treasure or store-house to the west of it, they lashed the eaves of the

roofs with their rods. The leader then went to another house, followed by

the others, singing, and repeated the same ceremony until every house was

purified.’ This ceremony was repeated daily during the continuance of the

festival. In performing their ablutions they went into the water and

allowed their old clothes to be carried away by the stream, by which means

they supposed their impurities removed.”(489)

In September the Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Situa, the

object of which was to banish from the capital and its vicinity all

disease and troubles. The festival fell in September because the rains

begin about this time, and with the first rains there was generally much

sickness. As a preparation for the festival the people fasted on the first

day of the moon after the autumnal equinox. Having fasted during the day,

and the night being come, they baked a coarse paste of maize. This paste

was made of two sorts. One was kneaded with the blood of children aged

five to ten years, the blood being obtained by bleeding the children

between the eye-brows. These two kinds of paste were baked separately,

because they were for different uses. Each family assembled at the house

of the eldest brother to celebrate the feast; and those who had no elder

brother went to the house of their next relation of greater age. On the

same night all who had fasted during the day washed their bodies, and

taking a little of the blood-kneaded paste, rubbed it over their head,

face, breast, shoulders, arms, and legs. They did this in order that the

paste might take away all their infirmities. After this the head of the

family anointed the threshold with the same paste, and left it there as a

token that the inmates of the house had performed their ablutions and

cleansed their bodies. Meantime the High Priest performed the same

ceremonies in the temple of the Sun. As soon as the Sun rose, all the

people worshipped and besought him to drive all evils out of the city, and

then they broke their fast with the paste that had been kneaded without

blood. When they had paid their worship and broken their fast, which they

did at a stated hour, in order that all might adore the Sun as one man, an

Inca of the blood royal came forth from the fortress, as a messenger of

the Sun, richly dressed, with his mantle girded round his body, and a

lance in his hand. The lance was decked with feathers of many hues,

extending from the blade to the socket, and fastened with rings of gold.

He ran down the hill from the fortress brandishing his lance, till he

reached the centre of the great square, where stood the golden urn, like a

fountain, that was used for the sacrifice of _chicha_. Here four other

Incas of the blood royal awaited him, each with a lance in his hand, and

his mantle girded up to run. The messenger touched their four lances with

his lance, and told them that the Sun bade them, as his messengers, drive

the evils out of the city. The four Incas then separated and ran down the

four royal roads which led out of the city to the four quarters of the

world. While they ran, all the people, great and small, came to the doors

of their houses, and with great shouts of joy and gladness shook their

clothes, as if they were shaking off dust, while they cried, “Let the

evils be gone. How greatly desired has this festival been by us. O Creator

of all things, permit us to reach another year, that we may see another

feast like this.” After they had shaken their clothes, they passed their

hands over their heads, faces, arms, and legs, as if in the act of

washing. All this was done to drive the evils out of their houses, that

the messengers of the Sun might banish them from the city. This was done

not only in the streets through which the Incas ran, but generally in all

quarters of the city. Moreover, they all danced, the Inca himself amongst

them, and bathed in the rivers and fountains, saying that their maladies

would come out of them. Then they took great torches of straw, bound round

with cords. These they lighted, and passed from one to the other, striking

each other with them, and saying, “Let all harm go away.” Meanwhile the

runners ran with their lances for a quarter of a league outside the city,

where they found four other Incas ready, who received the lances from

their hands and ran with them. Thus the lances were carried by relays of

runners for a distance of five or six leagues, at the end of which the

runners washed themselves and their weapons in rivers, and set up the

lances, in sign of a boundary within which the banished evils might not

return.(490)

The negroes of Guinea annually banish the devil from all their towns with

much ceremony. At Axim, on the Gold Coast, this annual expulsion is

preceded by a feast of eight days, during which mirth and jollity reign,

and “a perfect lampooning liberty is allowed, and scandal so highly

exalted, that they may freely sing of all the faults, villanies, and

frauds of their superiors as well as inferiors, without punishment, or so

much as the least interruption.” On the eighth day they hunt out the devil

with a dismal cry, running after him and pelting him with sticks, stones,

and whatever comes to hand. When they have driven him far enough out of

the town, they all return. In this way he is driven out of more than a

hundred towns at the same time. To make sure that he does not return to

their houses, the women wash and scour all their wooden and earthen

vessels, “to free them from all uncleanness and the devil.”(491) At

Onitsha, on the Quorra River, Mr. J. C. Taylor witnessed the celebration

of New Year’s Day by the negroes. It fell on 20th December 1858. Every

family brought a firebrand out into the street, threw it away, and

exclaimed as they returned, “The gods of the new year! New Year has come

round again.” Mr. Taylor adds, “The meaning of the custom seems to be that

the fire is to drive away the old year with its sorrows and evils, and to

embrace the new year with hearty reception.”(492) Of all Abyssinian

festivals that of Mascal or the Cross is celebrated with the greatest

pomp. The eve of the festival witnesses a ceremony which doubtless belongs

to the world-wide class of customs we are dealing with. At sunset a

discharge of firearms takes place from all the principal houses. “Then

every one provides himself with a torch, and during the early part of the

night bonfires are kindled, and the people parade the town, carrying their

lighted torches in their hands. They go through their houses too, poking a

light into every dark corner in the hall, under the couches, in the

stables, kitchen, etc., as if looking for something lost, and calling out,

‘Akho, akhoky! turn out the spinage, and bring in the porridge; Mascal is

come!’.... After this they play, and poke fun and torches at each

other.”(493)

Sometimes the date of the annual expulsion of devils is fixed with

reference to the agricultural seasons. Among the Hos of North-Eastern

India the great festival of the year is the harvest home, held in January,

when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own

expression, are full of devilry. “They have a strange notion that at this

period men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities, that it

is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by

allowing for a time full vent to the passions.” The ceremonies open with a

sacrifice to the village god of three fowls, two of which must be black.

Along with them are offered flowers of the Palás tree, bread made from

rice-flour, and sesamum seeds. These offerings are presented by the

village priest, who prays that during the year about to begin they and

their children may be preserved from all misfortune and sickness, and that

they may have seasonable rain and good crops. Prayer is also made in some

places for the souls of the dead. At this time an evil spirit is supposed

to infest the place, and to get rid of it men, women, and children go in

procession round and through every part of the village with sticks in

their hands, as if beating for game, singing a wild chant, and shouting

vociferously, till they feel assured that the evil spirit must have fled.

Then they give themselves up to feasting and drinking rice-beer, till they

are in a fit state for the wild debauch which follows. The festival now

“becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duty to their

masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for

women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they

become raging bacchantes.” Usually the Hos are quiet and reserved in

manner, decorous and gentle to women. But during this festival “their

nature appears to undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile

their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women

become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous

propensities.” The Mundaris, kinsmen and neighbours of the Hos, keep the

festival in much the same manner. “The resemblance to a Saturnale is very

complete, as at this festival the farm labourers are feasted by their

masters, and allowed the utmost freedom of speech in addressing them. It

is the festival of the harvest home; the termination of one year’s toil,

and a slight respite from it before they commence again.”(494)

Amongst some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes, as among the Hos and Mundaris,

the expulsion of devils takes place after harvest. When the last crop of

autumn has been got in, it is thought necessary to drive away evil spirits

from the granaries. A kind of porridge called _mool_ is eaten, and the

head of the family takes his matchlock and fires it into the floor. Then,

going outside, he sets to work loading and firing till his powder horn is

exhausted, while all his neighbours are similarly employed. The next day

is spent in rejoicings. In Chitral this festival is called

“devil-driving.”(495) On the other hand the Khonds of India expel the

devils at seed-time instead of at harvest. At this time they worship

Pitteri Pennu, the god of increase and of gain in every shape. On the

first day of the festival a rude car is made of a basket set upon a few

sticks, tied upon bamboo rollers for wheels. The priest takes this car

first to the house of the lineal head of the tribe, to whom precedence is

given in all ceremonies connected with agriculture. Here he receives a

little of each kind of seed and some feathers. He then takes the car to

all the other houses in the village, each of which contributes the same

things. Lastly, the car is conducted to a field without the village,

attended by all the young men, who beat each other and strike the air

violently with long sticks. The seed thus carried out is called the share

of the “evil spirits, spoilers of the seed.” “These are considered to be

driven out with the car; and when it and its contents are abandoned to

them, they are held to have no excuse for interfering with the rest of the

seed-corn.” Next day each household kills a hog over the seed for the

year, and prays to Pitteri Pennu. The elders then feast upon the hogs. The

young men are excluded from the repast, but enjoy the privilege of

waylaying and pelting with jungle fruit their elders as they return from

the feast. Upon the third day the lineal head of the tribe goes out and

sows his seed, after which all the rest may do so.(496)

The people of Bali, an island to the east of Java, have periodical

expulsions of devils upon a great scale. Generally the time chosen for the

expulsion is the day of the “dark moon” in the ninth month. When the

demons have been long unmolested the country is said to be “warm,” and the

priest issues orders to expel them by force, lest the whole of Bali should

be rendered uninhabitable. On the day appointed the people of the village

or district assemble at the principal temple. Here at a cross-road

offerings are set out for the devils. After prayers have been recited by

the priests, the blast of a horn summons the devils to partake of the meal

which has been prepared for them. At the same time a number of men step

forward and light their torches at the holy lamp which burns before the

chief priest. Immediately afterwards, followed by the bystanders, they

spread in all directions and march through the streets and lanes crying,

“Depart! go away!” Wherever they pass, the people who have stayed at home

hasten by a deafening knocking on doors, beams, rice-blocks, etc., to take

their share in the expulsion of devils. Thus chased from the houses, the

fiends flee to the banquet which has been set out for them; but here the

priest receives them with curses which finally drive them from the

district. When the last devil has taken his departure, the uproar is

succeeded by a dead silence, which lasts during the next day also. The

devils, it is thought, are anxious to return to their old homes, and in

order to make them think that Bali is not Bali but some desert island, no

one may stir from his own premises for twenty-four hours. Even ordinary

household work, including cooking, is discontinued. Only the watchmen may

show themselves in the streets. Wreaths of thorns and leaves are hung at

all the entrances to warn strangers from entering. Not till the third day

is this state of siege raised, and even then it is forbidden to work at

the rice-fields or to buy and sell in the market. Most people still stay

at home, striving to while away the time with cards and dice.(497)

In some parts of Fiji an annual ceremony took place which has much the

aspect of an expulsion of devils. The time of its celebration was

determined by the appearance of a certain fish or sea-slug (_balolo_)

which swarms out in dense shoals from the coral reefs on a single day of

the year, usually in the last quarter of the moon in November. The

appearance of the sea-slugs was the signal for a general feast at those

places where they were taken. An influential man ascended a tree and

prayed to the spirit of the sky for good crops, fair winds, and so on.

Thereupon a tremendous clatter, with drumming and shouting, was raised by

all the people in their houses for about half an hour. This was followed

by a dead quiet for four days, during which the people feasted on the

sea-slug. All this time no work of any kind might be done, not even a leaf

plucked nor the offal removed from the houses. If a noise was made in any

house, as by a child crying, a forfeit was at once exacted by the chief.

At daylight on the expiry of the fourth night the whole town was in an

uproar; men and boys scampered about, knocking with clubs and sticks at

the doors of the houses and crying “Sinariba.” This concluded the

ceremony.(498)

On the night before spring begins the Japanese throw roasted beans against

the walls and floors of their houses, crying thrice loudly, “Away from

here, wicked spirit!” but adding softly, “Enter, O god of riches!”(499)

Amongst some of the Hindus of the Punjaub on the morning after Diwali or

the festival of lamps (at which the souls of ancestors are believed to

visit the house) the oldest woman of the family takes all the sweepings

and rubbish of the family and throws them out, with the words, “Let all

dirt and wretchedness depart from here, and all good fortune come

in.”(500) In Tonquin a _theckydaw_ or general expulsion of malevolent

spirits commonly took place once a year, especially if there was a great

mortality amongst men or cattle, “the cause of which they attribute to the

malicious spirits of such men as have been put to death for treason,

rebellion, and conspiring the death of the king, general, or princes, and

in that revenge of the punishment they have suffered, they are bent to

destroy everything and commit horrible violence. To prevent which their

superstition has suggested to them the institution of this theckydaw as a

proper means to drive the devil away, and purge the country of evil

spirits.” The day appointed for the ceremony was generally the 25th of

February, one month after the commencement of the new year, which began on

the 25th of January. The intermediate month was a season of feasting,

merry-making of all kinds, and general licence. During the whole month the

great seal was kept shut up in a box, face downwards, and the law was, as

it were, laid asleep. All courts of justice were closed; debtors could not

be seized; small crimes, such as petty larceny, fighting, and assault,

escaped with impunity; only treason and murder were taken account of and

the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation

again. At the close of the saturnalia the wicked spirits were driven away.

Great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with flying

colours and all the pomp of war, “the general beginneth then to offer meat

offerings to the criminal devils and malevolent spirits (for it is usual

and customary likewise amongst them to feast the condemned before their

execution), inviting them to eat and drink, when presently he accuses them

in a strange language, by characters and figures, etc., of many offences

and crimes committed by them, as to their having disquieted the land,

killed his elephants and horses, etc., for all which they justly deserved

to be chastised and banished the country. Whereupon three great guns are

fired as the last signal; upon which all the artillery and musquets are

discharged, that, by their most terrible noise the devils may be driven

away; and they are so blind as to believe for certain, that they really

and effectually put them to flight.”(501)

In Cambodia the expulsion of evil spirits took place in March. Bits of

broken statues and stones, considered as the abode of the demons, were

collected and brought to the capital. Here as many elephants were

collected as could be got together. On the evening of the full moon

volleys of musketry were fired and the elephants charged furiously to put

the devils to flight.(502) In Siam the banishment of demons is annually

carried into effect on the last day of the old year. A signal gun is fired

from the palace; it is answered from the next station, and so on from

station to station, till the firing has reached the outer gate of the

city. Thus the demons are driven out step by step. As soon as this is done

a consecrated rope is fastened round the circuit of the city walls to

prevent the banished demons from returning. The rope is made of tough

couch-grass and is painted in alternate stripes of red, yellow, and

blue.(503) The Shans of Southern China annually expel the fire-spirit. The

ceremony was witnessed by the English Mission under Colonel Sladen on the

13th of August 1868. Bullocks and cows were slaughtered in the

market-place; the meat was all sold, part of it was cooked and eaten,

while the rest was fired out of guns at sundown. The pieces of flesh which

fell on the land were supposed to become mosquitoes, those which fell in

the water were believed to turn into leeches. In the evening the chief’s

retainers beat gongs and blew trumpets; and when darkness had set in

torches were lit and a party, preceded by the musicians, searched the

central court for the fire-spirit, who is supposed to lurk about at this

season with evil intent. They then searched all the rooms and the gardens,

throwing the light of the torches into every nook and corner where the

evil spirit might find a hiding-place.(504)

Annual expulsions of demons or of evil influences are not unknown in

Europe at the present day. Amongst the heathen Wotyaks, a Finnish people

of Eastern Russia, all the young girls of the village assemble on the last

day of the year or on New Year’s Day armed with sticks, the ends of which

are split in nine places. With these they beat every corner of the house

and yard, saying, “We are driving Satan out of the village.” Afterwards

the sticks are thrown into the river below the village, and as they float

down stream Satan goes with them to the next village, from which he must

be driven out in turn. In some villages the expulsion is managed

otherwise. The unmarried men receive from every house in the village

groats, flesh, and brandy. These they take to the field, light a fire

under a fir-tree, boil the groats, and eat of the food they have brought

with them, after pronouncing the words, “Go away into the wilderness, come

not into the house.” Then they return to the village and enter every house

where there are young women. They take hold of the young women and throw

them into the snow, saying, “May the spirits of disease leave you.” The

remains of the groats and the other food are then distributed among all

the houses in proportion to the amount that each contributed, and each

family consumes its share. According to a Wotyak of the Malmyz district

the young men throw into the snow whomever they find in the houses, and

this is called “driving out Satan;” moreover some of the boiled groats are

thrown into the fire with the words, “O god, afflict us not with sickness

and pestilence, give us not up as a prey to the spirits of the wood.” But

the most antique form of the ceremony is that observed by the Wotyaks of

the Kasan Government. First of all a sacrifice is offered to the Devil at

noon. Then all the men assemble on horseback in the centre of the village,

and decide with which house they shall begin. When this question, which

often gives rise to hot disputes, is settled, they tether their horses to

the paling, and arm themselves with whips, clubs of lime-wood, and bundles

of lighted twigs. The lighted twigs are believed to have the greatest

terrors for Satan. Thus armed, they proceed with frightful cries to beat

every corner of the house and yard, then shut the door, and spit at the

ejected fiend. So they go from house to house, till the Devil has been

driven from every one. Then they mount their horses and ride out of the

village, yelling wildly and brandishing their clubs in every direction.

Outside of the village they fling away the clubs and spit once more at the

Devil.(505) The Cheremiss, another Finnish people of Eastern Russia, chase

Satan from their dwellings by beating the walls with cudgels of lime-wood.

When he has fled to the wood, they pelt the trees with some of the

cheese-cakes and eggs which furnished the feast.(506)

In Albania on Easter Eve the young people light torches of resinous wood

and march in procession, swinging them, through the village. At last they

throw the torches into the river, crying, “Ha, Kore! we throw you into the

river, like these torches, that you may never return.”(507) In some

villages of Calabria the month of March is inaugurated with the expulsion

of the witches. It takes place at night to the sound of the church bells,

the people running about the streets and crying, “March is come.” They say

that the witches roam about in March, and the ceremony is repeated every

Friday evening during the month.(508) In the Tyrol the expulsion of

witches takes place on the first of May. On a Thursday at midnight bundles

are made up of resinous splinters, black and red spotted hemlock,

caper-spurge, rosemary, and twigs of the sloe. These are kept and burned

on May Day by men who must first have received plenary absolution from the

church. On the last three days of April all the houses are cleansed and

fumigated with juniper berries and rue. On May Day, when the evening bell

has rung and the twilight is falling, the ceremony of “burning out the

witches,” as it is called, begins. Men and boys make a racket with whips,

bells, pots, and pans; the women carry censers; the dogs are unchained and

run barking and yelping about. As soon as the church bells begin to ring,

the bundles of twigs, fastened on poles, are set on fire and the incense

is ignited. Then all the house-bells and dinner-bells are rung, pots and

pans are clashed, dogs bark, every one must make a noise. And amid this

hubbub all scream at the pitch of their voices,

“Witch flee, flee from here,

Or it will go ill with thee.”

Then they run seven times round the houses, the yards, and the village. So

the witches are smoked out of their lurking-places and driven away.(509)

At Brunnen in Switzerland the boys go about in procession on Twelfth

Night, carrying torches and lanterns, and making a great noise with horns,

cow-bells, whips, etc. This is said to frighten away the two female

spirits of the wood, Strudeli and Strätteli.(510)

§ 15.—Scapegoats.

Thus far the examples cited have belonged to the class of direct or

immediate expulsion of ills. It remains to illustrate the second class of

expulsions, in which the evil influences are either embodied in a visible

form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium, which

acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town. The

Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at

which the devils are represented by disguised men. “Twenty or thirty men

array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of

pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding

mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top

of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal

agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains,

with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the

frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind

can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children

flee for life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle

of fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air,

yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty

devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the

hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting

and clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in

getting into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold

a parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon

courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a

prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the

mountains.”(511) In spring, as soon as the willow leaves were full grown

on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great

annual festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of the

devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the village

from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a

buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a

plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was

chased from the village, the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes,

beating him with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.(512) On the last night

of the year the palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. Men

painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When

they have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round

the palace to keep them out.(513) The Kasyas, a hill tribe of Assam,

annually expel the demons. The ceremony takes place on a fixed month in

the year, and part of it consists in a struggle between two bands of men

who stand on opposite sides of a stream, each side tugging at the end of a

rope which is stretched across the water. In this contest, which resembles

the game of “French and English,” the men on one side probably represent

the demons.(514) At Carmona in Andalusia, on one day of the year, boys are

stripped naked and smeared with glue in which feathers are stuck. Thus

disguised, they run from house to house, the people trying to avoid them

and to bar their houses against them.(515) The ceremony is probably a

relic of an annual expulsion of devils.

Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are

understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle

which conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish

between occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the former.

The vehicle which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A

common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district of the

island of Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship

is made and filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, etc., which have been

contributed by all the people. A little sail is hoisted on the ship. When

all is ready, a man calls out in a very loud voice, “O all ye sicknesses,

ye small-poxes, agues, measles, etc., who have visited us so long and

wasted us so sorely, but who now cease to plague us, we have made ready

this ship for you, and we have furnished you with provender sufficient for

the voyage. Ye shall have no lack of food nor of _siri_ nor of _pinang_

nor of tobacco. Depart, and sail away from us directly; never come near us

again, but go to a land which is far from here. Let all the tides and

winds waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the

time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun

rise on you again.” Then ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore,

and let it drift away with the land-breeze, feeling convinced that they

are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next time. If

sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same sickness,

but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same manner.

When the demon-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the

village, whereupon a man cries out, “The sicknesses are now gone,

vanished, expelled, and sailed away.” At this all the people come running

out of their houses, passing the word from one to the other with great

joy, beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments.(516)

Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands.

Thus in Timorlaut, to mislead the demons who are causing sickness, a small

prao, containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage, is

allowed to drift away with wind and tide. As it is being launched, the

people cry, “O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this

poor land?” Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of

the flesh is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest

men says, “Old sir, I beseech you, make well the grandchildren, children,

women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink

palm-wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and make all the people

in the village well.” If the prao is stranded at any inhabited spot, the

sickness will break out there. Hence a stranded prao excites much alarm

amongst the coast population, and they immediately burn it, because demons

fly from fire.(517) In the island of Buro the prao which carries away the

demons of disease is about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars,

anchor, etc., and well stocked with provisions. For a day and a night the

people beat gongs and drums, and rush about to frighten the demons. Next

morning ten stalwart young men strike the people with branches, which have

been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water. As soon as they have

done so, they run down to the beach, put the branches on board the prao,

launch another prao in great haste, and tow the disease-burdened prao far

out to sea. There they cast it off, and one of them calls out,

“Grandfather Small-pox, go away—go willingly away—go visit another land;

we have made you food ready for the voyage, we have now nothing more to

give.” When they have landed, all the people bathe together in the

sea.(518) In this ceremony the reason for striking the people with the

branches is clearly to rid them of the disease-demons, which are then

supposed to be transferred to the branches. Hence the haste with which the

branches are deposited in the prao and towed away to sea. So in the inland

districts of Ceram, when small-pox or other sickness is raging, the priest

strikes all the houses with consecrated branches, which are then thrown

into the river, to be carried down to the sea;(519) exactly as amongst the

Wotyaks of Russia the sticks which have been used for expelling the devils

from the village are thrown into the river, that the current may sweep the

baleful burden away. In Amboina, for a similar purpose, the whole body of

the patient is rubbed with a live white cock, which is then placed on a

little prao and committed to the waves;(520) and in the Babar archipelago

the bark which is to carry away to sea the sickness of a whole village

contains a bowl of ashes taken from every kitchen in the village, and

another bowl into which all the sick people have spat.(521) The plan of

putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure

the demons after them, is not uncommon.(522)

The practice of sending away diseases in boats is known outside the limits

of the East Indian Archipelago. Thus when the people of Tikopia, a small

island in the Pacific, to the north of the New Hebrides, were attacked by

an epidemic cough, they made a little canoe and adorned it with flowers.

Four sons of the principal chiefs carried it on their shoulders all round

the island, accompanied by the whole population, some of whom beat the

bushes, while others uttered loud cries. On returning to the spot from

which they had set out, they launched the canoe on the sea.(523) In the

Nicobar Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, when there is much sickness in a

village or no fish are caught, the blame is laid upon the spirits. They

must be propitiated with offerings. All relations and friends are invited,

a huge pig is roasted, and the best of it is eaten, but some parts are

offered to the shades. The heap of offerings remains in front of the house

till it is carried away by the rising tide. Then the priests, their faces

reddened with paint and swine’s blood, pretend to catch the demon of

disease, and, after a hand-to-hand struggle, force him into a model boat,

made of leaves and decked with garlands, which is then towed so far to sea

that neither wind nor tide is likely to drive it back to the shore.(524)

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a

whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of

India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one retires after

sunset to his house. The priests then parade the streets, taking from the

roof of each house a straw, which is burnt with an offering of rice,

_ghi_, and turmeric, at some shrine to the east of the village. Chickens

daubed with vermilion are driven away in the direction of the smoke, and

are believed to carry the disease with them. If they fail, goats are

tried, and last of all pigs.(525) When cholera is very bad among the

Bhárs, Malláns, and Kurmís of India, they take a goat or a buffalo—in

either case the animal must be a female, and as black as possible—then

they tie some grain, cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back,

and turn it out of the village. It is conducted beyond the boundary, and

is not allowed to return.(526) The people of the city and cantonments of

Sagar being afflicted with a violent influenza, “I had an application from

the old Queen Dowager of Sagar to allow of a noisy religious procession,

for the purpose of imploring deliverance from this great calamity. Men,

women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to

the noise by ’raising their voices in psalmody,’ beating upon their brass

pots and pans with all their might, and discharging firearms where they

could get them. Before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which

had been purchased by general subscription, in order that every family

might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out eight miles,

where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the

animal returned the disease must return with it, and the ceremony be

performed over again.... It was, however, subsequently determined that the

animal should be a goat; and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I

have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy ceremonies

in cases of epidemics.”(527) Once, when influenza was raging in Pithuria,

a man had a small carriage made, after a plan of his own, for a pair of

scapegoats, which were harnessed to it and driven to a wood at some

distance, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely

ceased in the town. The goats never returned; had they done so, “the

disease must have come back with them.”(528) The idea of the scapegoat is

not uncommon in the hills of the Eastern Ghats. In 1886, during a severe

outbreak of small-pox, the people of Jeypur made “puja” to a goat, marched

it to the Ghats, and let it loose on the plains.(529) In Southern Konkan,

on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the

temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of

cooked rice covered with red powder, a wooden doll representing the

pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village

boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera was thus transferred

from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony

and passed on the scourge to its neighbours, and so on through a number of

villages.(530) When the Aymara Indians were suffering from a plague, they

loaded a llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people, and drove

the animal into the mountains, hoping that it would take the plague away

with it.(531) Sometimes the scapegoat is a man. Some of the aboriginal

tribes of China, as a protection against pestilence, select a man of great

muscular strength to act the part of scapegoat. Having besmeared his face

with paint, he performs many antics with the view of enticing all

pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only. He

is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and

women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the

town or village.(532) A Hindu cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the

Chamár caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a

red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle, taking the murrain

with him. He must not look back.(533)

The mediate expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material

vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible form, tends to

become periodic, and for a like reason. Thus every year, generally in

March, the people of Leti, Moa, and Lakor send away all their diseases to

sea. They make a prao about six feet long, rig it with sails, oars,

rudder, etc., and every family deposits in it some rice, fruit, a fowl,

two eggs, insects that ravage the fields, etc. Then they let it drift away

to sea, saying, “Take away from here all kinds of sickness, take them to

other islands, to other lands, distribute them in places that lie

eastward, where the sun rises.”(534) The Biajas of Borneo annually send to

sea a little bark laden with the sins and misfortunes of the people. The

crew of any ship that falls in with the ill-omened bark at sea will suffer

all the sorrows with which it is laden.(535) At the beginning of the dry

season, every year, the Nicobar islanders carry the model of a ship

through their villages. The devils are chased out of the huts, and driven

on board the little ship, which is then launched and suffered to sail away

with the wind.(536) At Sucla-Tirtha, in India, an earthen pot containing

the accumulated sins of the people is (annually?) set adrift on the river.

Legend says that the custom originated with a wicked priest who, after

atoning for his guilt by a course of austerities and expiatory ceremonies,

was directed to sail upon the river in a boat with white sails. If the

white sails turned black, it would be a sign that his sins were forgiven

him. They did so, and he joyfully allowed the boat to drift with his sins

to sea.(537) Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great

festival is celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way

of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total

annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. This annihilation is

supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware jar

filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the earth. A

train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then laid; and a match

being applied, the jar and its contents are blown up. The stones and bits

of iron represent the ills and disasters of the past year, and the

dispersion of them by the explosion is believed to remove the ills and

disasters themselves. The festival is attended with much revelling and

drunkenness.(538) At Old Calabar, in Guinea, the devils are expelled once

every two years. A number of figures called _nabikems_ are made of sticks

and bamboos, and fixed indiscriminately about the town. Some of them

represent human beings, others birds, crocodiles, and so on. After three

or four weeks the devils are expected to take up their abode in these

figures. When the night comes for their general expulsion, the people

feast and sally out in parties, beating at empty corners, and shouting

with all their might. Shots are fired, the _nabikems_ are torn up with

violence, set in flames, and flung into the river. The orgies last till

daybreak, and the town is considered to be rid of evil influences for two

years to come.(539) Mr. George Bogle, the English envoy sent to Tibet by

Warren Hastings, witnessed the celebration of the Tibetan New Year’s Day

at Teshu Lumbo the capital of the Teshu Lama. “The figure of a man,

chalked upon paper, was laid upon the ground. Many strange ceremonies,

which to me who did not understand them appeared whimsical, were performed

about it; and a great fire being kindled in a corner of the court, it was

at length held over it, and being formed of combustibles, vanished with

much smoke and explosion. I was told it was a figure of the devil.”(540)

On one day of the year some of the people of the Western Himalayas take a

dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or hemp, and having fed him

with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then

chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that, when they

have done so, no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the

year.(541) In some parts of Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New

Year’s Day to take a dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive

him out, saying, “Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of

cattle would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it

all light on your head!”(542) It appears that the white dogs annually

sacrificed by the Iroquois at their New Year Festival are, or have been,

regarded as scapegoats. According to Mr. J. V. H. Clark, who witnessed the

ceremony in January 1841, on the first day of the festival all the fires

in the village were extinguished, the ashes scattered to the winds, and a

new fire was kindled with flint and steel. On a subsequent day, men

dressed in fantastic costumes went round the village, gathering the sins

of the people. On the morning of the last day of the festival, two white

dogs, decorated with red paint, wampum, feathers, and ribbons were led

out. They were soon strangled, and hung on a ladder. Firing and yelling

succeeded, and half an hour later the dogs were taken into a house, “where

the peoples’ sins were transferred to them.” The dogs were afterwards

burnt on a pyre of wood.(543) According to the Rev. Mr. Kirkland, who

wrote last century, the ashes of the pyre upon which one of the white dogs

was burned were carried through the village and sprinkled at the door of

every house.(544) Formerly, however, as we have seen, the Iroquois

expulsion of evils was immediate and not by scapegoat.(545) The Jews

annually laid all the sins of the people upon the head of a goat and sent

it away into the wilderness.(546)

The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may

also be a human being. At Onitsha, on the Quorra River, two human beings

are annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the land. The victims are

purchased by public subscription. All persons who, during the past year,

have fallen into gross sins, such as incendiarism, theft, adultery,

witchcraft, etc. are expected to contribute 28 _ngugas_, or a little over

£2. The money thus collected is taken into the interior of the country and

expended in the purchase of two sickly persons “to be offered as a

sacrifice for all these abominable crimes—one for the land and one for the

river.” A man from a neighbouring town is hired to put them to death. The

sacrifice of one of these victims was witnessed by the Rev. J. C. Taylor

on 27th February 1858. The sufferer was a woman, about nineteen or twenty

years of age. She was dragged alive along the ground, face downwards, from

the king’s house to the river, a distance of two miles. The crowds who

accompanied her cried “Wickedness! wickedness!” The intention was “to take

away the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in a merciless

manner, as if the weight of all their wickedness was thus carried

away.”(547) In Siam it was formerly the custom on one day of the year to

single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter

through all the streets to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob

insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and after having carried her

through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill or a hedge of thorns

outside the ramparts, forbidding her ever to enter the walls again. They

believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences

of the air and of evil spirits.(548) The people of Nias offer either a red

horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to purify the land and obtain the

favour of the gods. Formerly, it is said, a man was bound to the same

stake as the buffalo, and when the animal was killed, the man was driven

away; no one might receive him, converse with him, or give him food.(549)

Doubtless he was supposed to carry away the sins and misfortunes of the

people.

In Tibet the ceremony of the scapegoat is marked by some peculiar

features. The Tibetan New Year begins with the new moon, which appears

about 15th February. For twenty-three days afterwards the government of

Lhásá, the capital, is taken out of the hands of the ordinary rulers and

entrusted to the monk of the Debang monastery who offers to pay the

highest sum for the privilege. The successful bidder is called the Jalno,

and he announces the fact in person through the streets of Lhásá, bearing

a silver stick. Monks from all the neighbouring monasteries and temples

assemble to pay him homage. The Jalno exercises his authority in the most

arbitrary manner for his own benefit, as all the fines which he exacts are

his by purchase. The profit he makes is about ten times the amount of the

purchase money. His men go about the streets in order to discover any

conduct on the part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with. Every

house in Lhásá is taxed at this time, and the slightest fault is punished

with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives all

working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over.

Meantime, all the priests flock from the neighbourhood to the

Máchindránáth temple, where they perform religious ceremonies. The temple

is a very large one, standing in the centre of the city, surrounded by

bazaars and shops. The idols in it are richly inlaid with gold and

precious stones. Twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have

authority, he assumes it again, and for ten days acts in the same

arbitrary manner as before. On the first of the ten days the priests

assemble as before at the Máchindránáth temple, pray to the gods to

prevent sickness and other evils among the people, “and, as a

peace-offering, sacrifice one man. The man is not killed purposely, but

the ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal.(550) Grain is thrown against

his head, and his face is painted half white, half black.” On the tenth

day, all the troops in Lhásá march to the temple and form in line before

it. The victim is brought forth from the temple and receives small

donations from the assembled multitude. He then throws dice with the

Jalno. If the victim wins, much evil is foreboded; but if the Jalno wins,

there is great rejoicing, for it is then believed that the victim has been

accepted by the gods to bear all the sins of the people of Lhásá.

Thereupon his face is painted half white and half black, a leathern coat

is put on him, and he is marched to the walls of the city, followed by the

whole populace, hooting, shouting, and firing volleys after him. When he

is driven outside the city, the people return, and the victim is carried

to the Sáme monastery. Should he die shortly afterwards, the people say it

is an auspicious sign; but if not, he is kept a prisoner at the monastery

for a whole year, after which he is allowed to return to Lhásá.(551)

Human scapegoats, as we shall see presently, were well known in classical

antiquity, and even in mediæval Europe the custom seems not to have been

wholly extinct. In the town of Halberstadt in Thüringen there was a church

which was said to have been founded by Charlemagne. In this church every

year a man was chosen, who was believed to be stained with heinous sins.

On the first day of Lent he was brought to the church, dressed in mourning

garb, with his head muffled up. At the close of the service he was turned

out of the church. During the forty days of Lent he perambulated the city

barefoot, neither entering the churches nor speaking to any one. The

canons took it in turn to feed him. After midnight he was allowed to sleep

on the streets. On the day before Good Friday, after the consecration of

the holy oil, he was readmitted to the church and absolved from his sins.

The people gave him money. He was called Adam, and was now believed to be

in a state of innocence.(552) At Entlebuch in Switzerland, down to the

close of last century, the custom of annually expelling a scapegoat was

preserved in the ceremony of driving “Posterli” from the village into the

lands of the neighbouring village. “Posterli” was represented by a lad

disguised as an old witch or as a goat or an ass. Amid a deafening noise

of horns, clarionets, bells, whips, etc. he was driven out. Sometimes

“Posterli” was represented by a puppet, which was drawn in a sledge and

left in a corner of the neighbouring village. The ceremony took place on

the Thursday evening of the last week but one before Christmas.(553)

Sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal. The people of Malabar share

the Hindu reverence for the cow, to kill and eat which “they esteem to be

a crime as heinous as homicide or wilful murder.” Nevertheless “the

Bramans transfer the sins of the people into one or more Cows, which are

then carry’d away, both the Cows and the Sins wherewith these Beasts are

charged, to what place the Braman shall appoint.”(554) When the ancient

Egyptians sacrificed a bull, they invoked upon its head all the evils that

might otherwise befall themselves and the land of Egypt, and thereupon

they either sold the bull’s head to the Greeks or cast it into the

river.(555) Now, it cannot be said that in the times known to us the

Egyptians worshipped bulls in general, for they seem to have commonly

killed and eaten them.(556) But a good many circumstances point to the

conclusion that originally all cattle, bulls as well as cows, were held

sacred by the Egyptians. For not only were all cows esteemed holy by them

and never sacrificed, but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they

had certain natural marks; a priest examined every bull before it was

sacrificed; if it had the proper marks, he put his seal on the animal in

token that it might be sacrificed; and if a man sacrificed a bull which

had not been sealed, he was put to death. Moreover, the worship of the

black bulls Apis and Mnevis, especially the former, played an important

part in Egyptian religion; all bulls that died a natural death were

carefully buried in the suburbs of the cities, and their bones were

afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt and buried in a single spot;

and at the sacrifice of a bull in the great rites of Isis all the

worshippers beat their breasts and mourned.(557) On the whole, then, we

are perhaps entitled to infer that bulls were originally, as cows were

always, esteemed sacred by the Egyptians, and that the slain bull upon

whose head they laid the misfortunes of the people was once a divine

scapegoat. It seems not improbable that the lamb annually slain by the

Madis of Central Africa is a divine scapegoat, and the same supposition

may partly explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle.(558)

Lastly, the scapegoat may be a divine man. Thus, in November the Gonds of

India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and at the

festival the god himself is said to descend on the head of one of the

worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of fit and, after

staggering about, rushes off into the jungle, where it is believed that,

if left to himself, he would die mad. As it is, he is brought back, but

does not recover his senses for one or two days. “The idea is, that one

man is thus singled out as a scapegoat for the sins of the rest of the

village.”(559) In the temple of the Moon the Albanians of the Eastern

Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves, of whom many were inspired and

prophesied. When one of these men exhibited more than usual symptoms of

inspiration and wandered solitary up and down the woods, like the Gond in

the jungle, the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain and

maintained him in luxury for a year. At the end of the year he was

anointed with unguents and led forth to be sacrificed. A man whose

business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had given

dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the

victim’s side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which the slain man

fell, omens were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the

body was carried to a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a

purificatory ceremony.(560) This last circumstance clearly indicates that

the sins of the people were transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish

priest transferred the sins of the people to the scapegoat by laying his

hand on the animal’s head; and since the man was believed to be possessed

by the divine spirit, we have here an undoubted example of a man-god slain

to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

The foregoing survey of the custom of publicly expelling the accumulated

evils of a village or district suggests a few general observations. In the

first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called the immediate

and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in intention; in other

words, that whether the evils are conceived of as invisible or as embodied

in a material form, is a circumstance entirely subordinate to the main

object of the ceremony, which is simply to effect a total clearance of all

the ills that have been infesting a people. If any link were wanting to

connect the two kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a

practice as that of sending the evils away in a boat. For here, on the one

hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other hand,

there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away. And a

scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle.

In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted to

periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the ceremony is

commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony takes place

usually coincides with some well-marked change of season—such as the close

of winter in the arctic and temperate zones, and the beginning or end of

the rainy season in the tropics. The increased mortality which such

climatic changes are apt to produce, especially amongst ill-fed,

ill-clothed, and ill-housed savages, is set down by primitive man to the

agency of demons, who must accordingly be expelled. Hence, in New Britain

and Peru, the devils are or were driven out at the beginning of the rainy

season. When a tribe has taken to agriculture, the time for the general

expulsion of devils is naturally made to agree with one of the great

epochs of the agricultural year, as sowing or harvest; but, as these

epochs themselves often coincide with changes of season, it does not

follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the

agricultural life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating this

great annual rite. Some of the agricultural communities of India and the

Hindoo Koosh, as we have seen, hold their general clearance of demons at

harvest, others at sowing-time. But, at whatever season of the year it is

held, the general expulsion of devils commonly marks the beginning of the

new year. For, before entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid

themselves of the troubles that have harassed them in the past; hence the

fact that amongst so many people—Iroquois, Tonquinese, Siamese, Tibetans,

etc.—the beginning of the new year is inaugurated with a solemn and public

banishment of evil spirits.

In the third place, it is to be observed that this public and periodic

expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a period of

general licence, during which the ordinary restraints of society are

thrown aside, and all offences, short of the gravest, are allowed to pass

unpunished. In Guinea and Tonquin the period of licence precedes the

public expulsion of demons; and the suspension of the ordinary government

in Lhásá previous to the expulsion of the scapegoat is perhaps a relic of

a similar period of universal licence. Amongst the Hos the period of

licence follows the expulsion of the devil. Amongst the Iroquois it hardly

appears whether it preceded or followed the banishment of evils. In any

case, the extraordinary relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct on

such occasions is doubtless to be explained by the general clearance of

evils which precedes or follows it. On the one hand, when a general

riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in immediate prospect, men

are encouraged to give the rein to their passions, trusting that the

coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast.

On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men’s minds are

freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an

atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they

overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the

ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation of feeling which it

excites is further stimulated by the state of physical wellbeing produced

by an abundant supply of food.(561)

Fourthly, the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is

especially to be noted; indeed, we are here directly concerned with the

custom of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are believed to be

transferred to a god who is afterwards slain. It may be suspected that the

custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much

more widely diffused than appears from the examples cited. For, as has

already been pointed out, the custom of killing a god dates from so early

a period of human history that in later ages, even when the custom

continues to be practised, it is liable to be misinterpreted. The divine

character of the animal or man is forgotten, and he comes to be regarded

merely as an ordinary victim. This is especially likely to be the case

when it is a divine man who is killed. For when a nation becomes

civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least

selects as victims only such criminals as would be put to death at any

rate. Thus, as in the Sacaean festival at Babylon, the killing of a god

may come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal.

If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and

carry away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested that in

the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of

two customs which were at one time distinct and independent. On the one

hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal

god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of

age. On the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a

general expulsion of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to

people to combine these two customs, the result would be the employment of

the dying god as a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away

sin, but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but,

since he had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they

might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their

sufferings and sins, in order that he might bear it away with him to the

unknown world beyond the grave.

The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as

we saw, appeared to hang about the European folk-custom of “carrying out

Death.”(562) Grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony

the so-called Death was originally the spirit of vegetation, who was

annually slain in spring, in order that he might come to life again with

all the vigour of youth. But, as we saw, there are certain features in the

ceremony which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the

marks of joy with which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or

burnt, and the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But

these features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death

was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat,

upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the

past year. Joy on such an occasion is natural and appropriate; and if the

dying god appears to be the object of that fear and abhorrence which are

properly due not to himself, but to the sins and misfortunes with which he

is laden, this arises merely from the difficulty of distinguishing or at

least of marking the distinction between the bearer and the burden. When

the burden is of a baleful character, the bearer of it will be feared and

shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with those dangerous

properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle. Similarly we

have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are dreaded and shunned

by East Indian peoples.(563) Again, the view that in these popular customs

the Death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit

of vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that its

expulsion is always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples.

For the Slavonic year began in spring;(564) and thus, in one of its

aspects, the ceremony of “carrying out Death” would be an example of the

widespread custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the past year

before entering on a new one.

We are now prepared to notice the use of the scapegoat in classical

antiquity. Every year on the 14th of March a man clad in skins was led in

procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and

driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius,(565) that is,

“the old Mars,”(566) and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding

the first full moon of the old Roman year (which began on 1st March), the

skin-clad man must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was

driven out at the beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a

god of war but of vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman

prayed for the prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and

his copses;(567) it was to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval

Brothers, whose business it was to sacrifice for the growth of the

crops,(568) addressed their petitions almost exclusively;(569) and it was

to Mars, as we saw,(570) that a horse was sacrificed in October to secure

an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his title of “Mars of

the woods” (_Mars Silvanus_) that farmers offered sacrifice for the

welfare of their cattle.(571) We have already seen that cattle are

commonly supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods.(572)

Once more, the fact that the vernal month of March was dedicated to Mars

seems to point him out as the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the

Roman custom of expelling the old Mars at the beginning of the New Year in

spring is identical with the Slavonic custom of “carrying out Death,” if

the view here taken of the latter custom is correct. The similarity of the

Roman and Slavonic customs has been already remarked by scholars, who

appear, however, to have taken Mamurius Veturius and the corresponding

figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be representatives of the old year

rather than of the old god of vegetation.(573) It is possible that

ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted in later

times even by the people who practised them. But the personification of a

period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the

Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the representative of the god appears

to have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation but also as a

scapegoat. His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god

of vegetation, as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise

if he is also a scapegoat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond

the boundaries, that he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other

lands. And, in fact, Mamurius Veturius appears to have been driven away to

the land of the Oscans, the enemies of Rome.(574)

The ancient Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat.

At Plutarch’s native town of Chaeronea in Boeotia, there was a ceremony of

this kind performed by the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each

householder at his own home. It was called the “expulsion of hunger.” A

slave was beaten with rods of the _agnus castus_, and turned out of doors

with the words, “Out with hunger, and in with wealth and health.” When

Plutarch held the office of chief magistrate of his native town he

performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and he has recorded the

discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.(575) The ceremony

closely resembles the Japanese, Hindoo, and Highland customs already

described.(576)

But in civilised Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than

the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided.

Whenever Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek

colonies, was ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to

offer himself as a scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the

public expense, being fed on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the

year he was dressed in sacred garments, decked with holy branches, and led

through the whole city, while prayers were uttered that all the evils of

the people might fall on his head. He was then cast out of the city.(577)

The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings

at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or

famine befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcasts as

scapegoats. One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other

for the women. The former wore round his neck a string of black, the

latter a string of white figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on

behalf of the women was a woman. They were led about the city and then

sacrificed, apparently by being stoned to death outside the city.(578) But

such sacrifices were not confined to extraordinary occasions of public

calamity; it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in

May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of

Athens and stoned to death.(579)

From the Lover’s Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island,

the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a

scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers

to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey

him beyond the boundary.(580) Doubtless these humane precautions were a

mitigation of an earlier custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to

drown. The custom of the scapegoat as practised by the Greeks of Asia

Minor in the sixth century B.C. was as follows. When a city suffered from

plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was

chosen to take upon himself all the evils by which the city was afflicted.

He was brought to a suitable place where dried figs, a barley loaf, and

cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten seven

times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig

and other wild trees. Afterwards he was burned on a pyre constructed of

the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were cast into the sea.(581) A

similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated by the Asiatic

Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.(582)

In the ritual just described the beating of the victim with squills,

branches of the wild fig, etc., cannot have been intended to aggravate his

sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him

with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by

W. Mannhardt.(583) He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a

magical power of averting evil influences, and accordingly hung them up at

the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites.(584)

Hence the Arcadian custom of beating the image of Pan with squills at a

festival or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed,(585) must have

been meant, not to punish the god, but to purify him from the harmful

influences which were impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions

as a god who should supply the hunter with game. Similarly the object of

beating the human scapegoat on the genital organs with squills, etc., must

have been to release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell

under which they might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency;

and as the Thargelia at which he was annually sacrificed was an early

harvest festival,(586) we must recognise in him a representative of the

creative and fertilising god of vegetation. The representative of the god

was annually slain for the purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining

the divine life in perpetual vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and

before he was put to death it was not unnatural to stimulate his

reproductive powers in order that these might be transmitted in full

activity to his successor, the new god or new embodiment of the old god,

who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the place of the one

slain.(587) Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of the

scapegoat on special occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops

did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be

attributed to some failure in the generative powers of the god whose

function it was to produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought he

was under a spell or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain

in the person of his representative, with all the ceremonies already

described, in order that, born young again, he might infuse his own

youthful vigour into the stagnant energies of nature. On the same

principle we can understand why Mamurius Veturius was beaten with rods,

why the slave at the Chaeronean ceremony was beaten with the _agnus

castus_ (a tree to which magical properties were ascribed),(588) why the

effigy of Death in north Europe is assailed with sticks and stones, and

why at Babylon the criminal who played the god was scourged before he was

crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of

the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant

influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.

The interpretation here given to the custom of beating the human scapegoat

with certain plants is supported by many analogies. With the same

intention some of the Brazilian Indians beat themselves on the genital

organs with an aquatic plant, the white _aninga_, three days before or

after the new moon.(589) We have already had examples of the custom of

beating sick people with the leaves of certain plants or with branches in

order to rid them of the noxious influences.(590) At the autumn festival

in Peru people used to strike each other with torches saying, “Let all

harm go away.”(591) Indians of the Quixos, in South America, before they

set out on a long hunting expedition, cause their wives to whip them with

nettles, believing that this renders them fleeter and helps them to

overtake the peccaries. They resort to the same proceeding as a cure for

sickness.(592) At Mowat in New Guinea small boys are beaten lightly with

sticks during December “to make them grow strong and hardy.”(593) In

Central Europe a similar custom is very commonly observed in spring. On

the 1st of March the Albanians strike men and beasts with cornel branches,

believing that this is very good for their health.(594) On Good Friday and

the two previous days people in Croatia and Slavonia take rods with them

to church, and when the service is over they beat each other “fresh and

healthy.”(595) In some parts of Russia people returning from the church on

Palm Sunday beat the children and servants who have stayed at home with

palm branches, saying, “Sickness into the forest, health into the

bones.”(596) In Germany the custom is widely known as _Schmeckostern_,

being observed at Eastertide. People beat each other, especially with

fresh green twigs of the birch. The beating is supposed to bring good

luck; the person beaten will, it is believed, be free of vermin during the

summer, or will have no pains in his back or his legs for a year.(597)

If the view here taken of the Greek scapegoat is correct, it obviates an

objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of

this chapter. To the theory that the priest of Nemi was slain as a

representative of the spirit of the grove, it might have been objected

that such a custom has no analogy in classical antiquity. But reasons have

now been given for believing that the human being periodically and

occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks was regularly treated as an

embodiment of a divinity. Probably the persons whom the Athenians kept to

be sacrificed were similarly treated as divine. That they were social

outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a man is not chosen to be

the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of his high moral

qualities or social standing. The divine afflatus descends equally on the

good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilised Greeks of

Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they regarded as incarnate

gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the supposition that at

the dawn of history a similar custom was observed by the semi-barbarous

Latins in the Arician Grove.

§ 16.—Killing the god in Mexico.

But the religion of ancient Mexico, as it was found and described by the

Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century, offers perhaps the closest

parallels to the rule of the Arician priesthood, as I conceive that rule

to have been originally observed. Certainly nowhere does the custom of

killing the human representative of a god appear to have been carried out

so systematically and on so extensive a scale as in Mexico. “They tooke a

captive,” says Acosta, “such as they thought good; and afore they did

sacrifice him unto their idolls, they gave him the name of the idoll, to

whom hee should be sacrificed, and apparelled him with the same ornaments

like their idoll, saying that he did represent the same idoll. And during

the time that this representation lasted, which was for a yeere in some

feasts, in others six moneths, and in others lesse, they reverenced and

worshipped him in the same maner as the proper idoll; and in the meane

time he did eate, drincke, and was merry. When hee went through the

streetes the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought him

an almes, with children and sicke folkes, that he might cure them, and

bless them, suffering him to doe all things at his pleasure, onely hee was

accompanied with tenne or twelve men lest he should flie. And he (to the

end he might be reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded upon a small

flute, that the people might prepare to worship him. The feast being come,

and hee growne fatte, they killed him, opened him, and eat him, making a

solempne sacrifice of him.”(598) For example, at the annual festival of

the great god Tezcatlipoca, which fell about Easter or a few days later, a

young man was chosen to be the living image of Tezcatlipoca for a whole

year. He had to be of unblemished body, and he was carefully trained to

sustain his lofty role with becoming grace and dignity. During the year he

was lapped in luxury, and the king himself took care that the future

victim was apparelled in gorgeous attire, “for already he esteemed him as

a god.” Attended by eight pages clad in the royal livery, the young man

roamed the streets of the capital day and night at his pleasure, carrying

flowers and playing the flute. All who saw him fell on their knees before

him and adored him, and he graciously acknowledged their homage. Twenty

days before the festival at which he was to be sacrificed, four damsels,

delicately nurtured, and bearing the names of four goddesses, were given

him to be his brides. For five days before the sacrifice divine honours

were showered on him more abundantly than ever. The king remained in his

palace, while the whole court went after the destined victim. Everywhere

there were solemn banquets and balls. On the last day the young man, still

attended by his pages, was ferried across the lake in a covered barge to a

small and lonely temple, which, like the Mexican temples in general, rose

in the form of a pyramid. As he ascended the stairs of the temple he broke

at every step one of the flutes on which he had played in the days of his

glory. On reaching the summit he was seized and held down on a block of

stone, while a priest cut open his breast with a stone knife, and plucking

out his heart, offered it to the sun. His head was hung among the skulls

of previous victims, and his legs and arms were cooked and prepared for

the table of the lords. His place was immediately filled up by another

young man, who for a year was treated with the same profound respect, and

at the end of it shared the same fate.(599)

The idea that the god thus slain in the person of his representative comes

to life again immediately, was graphically represented in the Mexican

ritual by skinning the slain man-god and clothing in his skin a living

man, who thus became the new representative of the godhead. Thus at an

annual festival a woman was sacrificed who represented Toci or the Mother

of the Gods. She was dressed with the ornaments, and bore the name of the

goddess, whose living image she was believed to be. After being feasted

and diverted with sham fights for several days, she was taken at midnight

to the summit of a temple, and beheaded on the shoulders of a man. The

body was immediately flayed, and one of the priests, clothing himself in

the skin, became the representative of the goddess Toci. The skin of the

woman’s thigh was removed separately, and a young man who represented the

god Cinteotl, the son of the goddess Toci, wrapt it round his face like a

mask. Various ceremonies then followed, in which the two men, clad in the

woman’s skin, played the parts respectively of the god and goddess.(600)

Again, at the annual festival of the god Totec, a number of captives

having been killed and skinned, a priest clothed himself in one of their

skins, and thus became the image of the god Totec. Then wearing the

ornaments of the god—a crown of feathers, golden necklaces and ear-rings,

scarlet shoes, etc.—he was enthroned, and received offerings of the first

fruits and first flowers of the season, together with bunches of the maize

which had been kept for seed.(601) Every fourth year the Quauhtitlans

offered sacrifices in honour of the god of fire. On the eve of the

festival they sacrificed two slaves, skinned them, and took out their

thigh bones. Next day two priests clothed themselves in the skins, took

the bones in their hands, and with solemn steps and dismal howlings

descended the stairs of the temple. The people, who were assembled in

crowds below, called out, “Behold, there come our gods.”(602)

Thus it appears that human sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have

prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, systematically offered on a

large scale by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior,

if indeed it was not distinctly superior, to that occupied by the Italian

races at the early period to which the origin of the Arician priesthood

must be referred. The positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence

of such sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to

strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which the

evidence is less full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the evidence

affords a fair presumption that the custom of killing men whom their

worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world.

Whether the general explanation which I have offered of that custom is

adequate, and whether the rule that the priest of Aricia had to die a

violent death is, as I have tried to show, a particular instance of the

general custom, are questions which I must now leave to the judgment of

the reader.