(M198) This myth, it is almost needless to observe, does not really

explain the custom. People do not usually observe a custom because on a

particular occasion a mythical being is said to have acted in a certain

way. But, on the contrary, they very often invent myths to explain why

they practise certain customs. Dismissing, therefore, the story of

Fireless and Homeless as a myth invented to explain why the Indians

abstain from eating a particular sinew, it may be suggested(767) that the

original reason for observing the custom was a belief that the sinew in

question was necessary to reproduction, and that deprived of it the slain

animals could not come to life again and stock the steppes and prairies

either of the present world or of the spirit land. We have seen that the

resurrection of animals is a common article of savage faith, and that when

the Lapps bury the skeleton of the male bear in the hope of its

resurrection they are careful to bury the genital parts along with it.

However, subsequent enquiries make it probable that the Indian practice of

cutting out the hamstring of deer has no other object than that of

preventing eaters of venison from going lame. Among the Cherokee, we are

told, “on killing a deer the hunter always makes an incision in the hind

quarter and removes the hamstring, because this tendon, when severed,

draws up into the flesh; ergo, any one who should unfortunately partake of

the hamstring would find his limbs drawn up in the same manner.”(768) Thus

the superstition seems to rest on the common principle of homoeopathic or

imitative magic, that an eater infects himself with the qualities of the

animal of whose flesh he partakes. Many instances of the application of

that principle have met us already.(769)

(M199) But some hunters hamstring the game for a different purpose; they

hope thereby to prevent the dead beast or its ghost from getting up and

running away. This is the motive alleged for the practice by Koui hunters

in Laos; they think that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose

their magical virtue, and that the slaughtered animal may consequently

come to life again and escape. To prevent that catastrophe they therefore

hamstring the beast as soon as they have butchered it.(770) When an

Esquimau of Alaska has killed a fox, he carefully cuts the tendons of all

the animal’s legs in order to prevent the ghost from reanimating the body

and walking about.(771) But hamstringing the carcase is not the only

measure which the prudent savage adopts for the sake of disabling the

ghost of his victim. In old days, when the Aino went out hunting and

killed a fox first, they took care to tie its mouth up tightly in order to

prevent the ghost of the animal from sallying forth and warning its

fellows against the approach of the hunter.(772) The Gilyaks of the Amoor

River put out the eyes of the seals they have killed, lest the ghosts of

the slain animals should know their slayers and avenge their death by

spoiling the seal-hunt.(773) The custom of putting out the eyes of

slaughtered animals appears to be not uncommon among primitive peoples,

and we may suspect that even where a different reason is alleged for it,

the true original motive was to blind the dangerous ghost of the injured

creature, and so to incapacitate it for retaliating on the slayer. Thus,

when a Samoyed has killed a wild reindeer, one of the first things he does

is to cut out the eyes and throw them away “in order to ensure a good bag

in future”; and he buries the eyes in some place where no woman or adult

girl is likely to step over them, since that also would spoil his luck in

the chase.(774) Among the tribes of South-east Africa hunters pluck out

the right eye of any animal they have killed and pour a charmed medicine

into the empty socket.(775) Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia

a man whose daughter has just arrived at puberty may not hunt or trap for

a month, or he will have no luck. Moreover, he should cut off the head of

the first grouse he snares, pluck out the eyes, and insert two small roots

of the _Zygadenus elegans_ Pursch. in the orbits and another in its mouth,

and having done so he ought to hang up the bird’s head above his pillow.

If he neglects these precautions, he will not be able to snare any more

grouse or other small game.(776) No doubt the ceremonial pollution

contracted by his daughter at this critical period of her life is supposed

to infect the hunter and render him unacceptable to the game;(777) hence

it seems a mere elementary dictate of prudence to hoodwink the grouse

effectually by putting out their eyes. Sometimes, perhaps, the cutting out

of the eyes of fierce and powerful animals may be a rational, not a

superstitious, precaution. Thus the Kamtchatkans, who stab with knives the

eyes of slain bears before they cut the carcases up, allege as their

reason for doing so that bears which seem to be dead of their wounds will

sometimes revive and kill their would-be killers.(778)

(M200) It appears to be a common custom with savage hunters to cut out the

tongues of the animals which they kill. On the analogy of the foregoing

customs we may conjecture that the removal of the tongues is sometimes a

precaution to prevent the ghosts of the creatures from telling their sad

fate to their sympathising comrades, the living animals of the same sort,

who would naturally be frightened, and so keep out of the hunter’s way.

Thus, for example, Omaha hunters remove the tongue of a slain buffalo

through an opening made in the animal’s throat. The tongues thus removed

are sacred and may not touch any tool or metal except when they are

boiling in the kettles at the sacred tent. They are eaten as sacred

food.(779) Indian bear-hunters cut out what they call the bear’s little

tongue (a fleshy mass under the real tongue) and keep it for good luck in

hunting or burn it to determine, from its crackling and so on, whether the

soul of the slain bear is angry with them or not.(780) In folk-tales the

hero commonly cuts out the tongue of the wild beast which he has slain and

preserves it as a token. The incident serves to shew that the custom was a

common one, since folk-tales reflect with accuracy the customs and beliefs

of a primitive age.(781) On the other hand, the tongues of certain

animals, as the otter and the eagle, are torn out and sometimes worn round

their necks by Thlinkeet and Haida shamans as a means of conferring

superhuman knowledge and power on their possessors.(782) In particular, an

otter’s tongue is supposed to convey a knowledge of “the language of all

inanimate objects, of birds, animals, and other living creatures” to the

shaman, who wears it in a little bag hung round his neck.(783) When a

Galla priest sacrifices an animal and decides that the omens are

favourable, he cuts out the tongue, sticks his thumb through it, and so

flays the animal.(784) In certain cases Gallas cut out the tongues of oxen

and wear them on their heads as tokens.(785) In Bohemia a fox’s tongue is

worn as an amulet to make a timid person bold;(786) in Oldenburg and

Belgium it is a remedy for erysipelas.(787) In Bohemia the tongue of a

male snake, if cut from the living animal on St. George’s Eve and placed

under a person’s tongue, will confer the gift of eloquence.(788) The

Homeric Greeks cut out the tongues of sacrificial victims and burned

them.(789) According to some accounts, the tongues of the victims were

assigned by the Greeks to Hermes, as the god of speech, or to his human

representatives the heralds.(790) On the principles of sympathetic magic

we might expect that heralds should taste the tongues of sacrificial

victims to strengthen their voices, or to acquire the gift of

tongues.(791)

(M201) The conjecture that the practice of cutting out the tongues of dead

animals may sometimes be a precaution to prevent their ghosts from telling

tales, is to some extent confirmed by a ceremony which the Bechuanas used

to observe after a battle. It was customary with them on these occasions

to sacrifice a fine black ox, called the expiatory victim (_pekou_), cut

off the tip of its tongue, and extract one of its eyes together with a

piece of the hamstring and a piece of the principal tendon of the

shoulder; and the severed parts were afterwards carefully fried, along

with some medicinal herbs, in a horn by a medicine-man. The reasons for

thus mutilating the animal were explained by a native to two French

missionaries. “If we cut out and purify the victim’s tongue,” said he,

“the motive is to induce the guardian deities to prevent the enemy from

speaking ill of us. We ask also that the sinews of their feet and hands

may fail them in the battle; and that their eyes may not cast a covetous

look on our herds.”(792) In this custom the sacrificial ox appears to be

treated as the ceremonial equivalent of the enemy; accordingly by cutting

out its tongue you obviously prevent your enemy from cursing you, for how

can he curse you if he has no tongue? Similarly, by hamstringing the beast

you ensure that the legs and arms of your adversary will fail him in the

battle, and by gouging out the ox’s eye you make perfectly certain that

the foe will never be able to cast a longing eye on your fat beeves. Thus

for all practical purposes the mutilation of the ox is quite as effective

as the mutilation of the enemy’s dead, which is sometimes practised by

savages from similar superstitious motives. Thus on the return from a

field of battle the Baganda used to cut up one or two of the enemy’s dead,

scoop out the eyes, cut off the ears, and lay the limbs on the road taken

by the returning army “to prevent evil following them.”(793) The nature of

the evil which the Baganda warriors feared to incur if they did not

mutilate the dead in this fashion, is not mentioned, but we may conjecture

that by gouging out the eyes and ears of their slain foes they hoped to

make their angry ghosts blind and deaf; or perhaps, upon the principles of

homoeopathic magic, they counted on maiming their living foes in like

manner. Some of the aborigines of Australia cut off the thumbs of their

dead enemies in order that their ghosts may not be able to throw

spears.(794) Other Australian tribes burn off the thumb nails of their own

dead to prevent the poor ghost from scratching a way for himself out of

the grave.(795) When the Tupi Indians of Brazil killed and ate a prisoner,

“the thumb was cut off because of its use in archery, an art concerning

which they were singularly superstitious; what was done with it does not

appear, except that it was not eaten like the rest.”(796) Perhaps these

Indians, like the Australians, thought by this mutilation to disarm the

dangerous ghost of their victim. When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of

Bering Strait used to cut the sinews of his arms and legs, “in order to

prevent the shade from returning to the body and causing it to walk at

night as a ghoul.”(797) In Travancore the ghosts of men who have been

hanged for murder are particularly dreaded; so in order to incapacitate

them from roaming about and attacking people, it used to be customary to

slice off a criminal’s heels with a sword or hamstring him at the moment

when he swung free from the ladder.(798) The Omaha Indians used to slit

the soles of a man who had been killed by lightning in order to prevent

his ghost from walking.(799) Among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia

murderers often inflicted shocking mutilations on the bodies of their

victims. “This was done, it is said, to prevent the spirit of the murdered

person from exacting vengeance, and even if only the joint of the first or

the little finger were cut off, such mutilation would suffice for this

purpose.”(800) These examples suggest that many other mutilations which

savages practise on their dead enemies may spring, not from the blind fury

of hatred, but from a cool calculation of the best mode of protecting

themselves against the very natural resentment of the ghosts; by

mutilating the corpse they apparently hope to maim the ghost and so to

render him incapable of harming them. At all events it appears that in

certain circumstances some savages treat the dead bodies of men and beasts

much alike, by hamstringing them in order to prevent their ghosts from

getting up and walking. So consistent and impartial is the primitive

philosopher in his attitude to the spirit world.

CHAPTER XV. THE PROPITIATION OF VERMIN BY FARMERS.

§ 1. The Enemies of the Crops.

(M202) Besides the animals which primitive man dreads for their strength

and ferocity, and those which he reveres on account of the benefits which

he expects from them, there is another class of creatures which he

sometimes deems it necessary to conciliate by worship and sacrifice. These

are the vermin that infest his crops and his cattle. To rid himself of

these deadly foes the farmer has recourse to many superstitious devices,

of which, though some are meant to destroy or intimidate the vermin,

others aim at propitiating them and persuading them by fair means to spare

the fruits of the earth and the herds. Thus Esthonian peasants, in the

island of Oesel, stand in great awe of the weevil, an insect which is

exceedingly destructive to the grain. They give it a fine name, and if a

child is about to kill a weevil they say, “Don’t do it; the more we hurt

him, the more he hurts us.” If they find a weevil they bury it in the

earth instead of killing it. Some even put the weevil under a stone in the

field and offer corn to it. They think that thus it is appeased and does

less harm.(801) Amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep

sparrows from the corn, the sower begins by throwing the first handful of

seed backwards over his head, saying, “That is for you, sparrows.” To

guard the corn against the attacks of leaf-flies (_Erdflöhe_) he shuts his

eyes and scatters three handfuls of oats in different directions. Having

made this offering to the leaf-flies he feels sure that they will spare

the corn. A Transylvanian way of securing the crops against all birds,

beasts, and insects, is this: after he has finished sowing, the sower goes

once more from end to end of the field imitating the gesture of sowing,

but with an empty hand. As he does so he says, “I sow this for the

animals; I sow it for everything that flies and creeps, that walks and

stands, that sings and springs, in the name of God the Father, etc.”(802)

The Huzuls of the Carpathians believe that the bite of the weasel is

poisonous and that the animal commits ravages on the cattle. Yet they take

care never to kill a weasel, lest the surviving kinsfolk of the deceased

should avenge his death on the herds of his murderer. They even celebrate

a festival of weasels either on St. Matthew’s day (9th August, old style,

21st August, new style), or on St. Catherine’s day (24th November, old

style, 6th December, new style). On that day no work may be done, lest the

weasels should harm the herds.(803) The following is a German way of

freeing a garden from caterpillars. After sunset or at midnight the

mistress of the house, or another female member of the family, walks all

round the garden dragging a broom after her. She must not look behind her,

and must keep murmuring, “Good evening, Mother Caterpillar, you shall come

with your husband to church.” The garden gate is left open till the

following morning.(804)

(M203) The attempts thus made by European peasants to mollify the rage and

avert the ravages of vermin have their counterpart in the similar

observances of savages. When the Matabele find caterpillars in their

fields they put an ear of corn in a calabash, fill the vessel up with

caterpillars, and set it down on a path leading to another village, hoping

thus to induce the insects to migrate thither.(805) The Yabim of German

New Guinea imagine that the caterpillars and worms which infest their

fields of taro are animated by the souls of the human dead; hence in order

to rid the crops of these vermin they politely request the insects to

leave the fields and repair to the village. “Ye locusts, worms, and

caterpillars,” they say, “who have died or hanged yourselves, or have been

killed by a falling log or devoured by a shark, go into the village.”(806)

There is a certain ant whose destructive ravages are dreaded by the people

of Nias. Generally they wage war on it by means of traps and other

devices; but at the time of the rice-harvest they cease to call the insect

by its common name, and refer to it under the title of Sibaia, a good

spirit who is supposed to protect the crop from harm.(807) In South

Mirzapur, when locusts threaten to eat up the fruits of the earth, the

people catch one, decorate his head with a spot of red lead, salaam to

him, and let him go. After these civilities he immediately departs along

with his fellows.(808) Among the Wajagga of German East Africa sorcerers

attempt to rid the fields of locusts by catching one of the insects, tying

its legs together, and letting it fly away, after charging the creature to

lead the swarm to the lands of a neighbouring and hostile chief.(809) The

Wagogo, another tribe of German East Africa, catch one of the birds which

infest their gardens, and, having drenched it with a charmed stuff, they

release the bird in the hope that it may entice all its companions away

into the forest.(810)

(M204) Sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer aims at hitting a happy

mean between excessive rigour on the one hand and weak indulgence on the

other; kind but firm, he tempers severity with mercy. An ancient Greek

treatise on farming advises the husbandman who would rid his lands of mice

to act thus: “Take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows: ‘I adjure

you, ye mice here present, that ye neither injure me nor suffer another

mouse to do so. I give you yonder field’ (here you specify the field);

‘but if ever I catch you here again, by the Mother of the Gods I will rend

you in seven pieces.’ Write this, and stick the paper on an unhewn stone

in the field before sunrise, taking care to keep the written side

up.”(811) In the Ardennes they say that to get rid of rats you should

repeat the following words: “_Erat verbum, apud Deum vestrum._ Male rats

and female rats, I conjure you, by the great God, to go out of my house,

out of all my habitations, and to betake yourselves to such and such a

place, there to end your days. _Decretis, reversis et desembarassis virgo

potens, clemens, justitiae._” Then write the same words on pieces of

paper, fold them up, and place one of them under the door by which the

rats are to go forth, and the other on the road which they are to take.

This exorcism should be performed at sunrise.(812) Some years ago an

American farmer was reported to have written a civil letter to the rats,

telling them that his crops were short, that he could not afford to keep

them through the winter, that he had been very kind to them, and that for

their own good he thought they had better leave him and go to some of his

neighbours who had more grain. This document he pinned to a post in his

barn for the rats to read.(813) The mouse is one of the most dreaded

enemies of the rice-crop in Celebes. Many therefore are the prayers and

incantations which prudent farmers resort to for the purpose of keeping

the vermin from their fields. Thus, for example, a man will run round his

field, saying, “Pruner is your name. Creep not through my rice. Be blind

and deaf. Creep not through my rice. If you must creep through rice, go

and creep through other rice.” The following formula is equally effective:

“Pruner is your real name. Mouse is your by-name. Down in the evening land

is the stone on which you ought to sit; in the west, in Java, is your

abode.” Or again: “O Longtail, Longtail, eat not my rice. It is the rice

of a prince. It is the field of one who is revered.”(814) The Aino of

Japan believe that God first created rats and mice at Erum kotan, which

means “rat place.” Indeed, there are a great many rats and mice there even

now, and the people of the village worship mice and offer them libations

and sacred sticks whittled at the top into shavings. Grateful for these

attentions, the mice spare the gardens and will not nibble at the roots

and the fruits. But if the people omit to worship the mice, or if they are

rash enough to speak evil of them, the creatures are angry and eat up the

garden produce. The havoc which rats and mice now work in the gardens of

the Aino every year is attributed to the modern neglect of the people to

worship the vermin.(815)

(M205) Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating

with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious

species, while the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East

Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in

great numbers, and burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two

of the captured mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of

white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let

them go.(816) In the Kangean archipelago, East Indies, when the mice prove

very destructful to the rice-crop, the people rid themselves of the pest

in the following manner. On a Friday, when the usual service in the mosque

is over, four pairs of mice are solemnly united in marriage by the priest.

Each pair is then shut up in a miniature canoe about a foot long. These

canoes are filled with rice and other fruits of the earth, and the four

pairs of mice are then escorted to the sea-shore just as if it were a real

wedding. Wherever the procession passes the people beat with all their

might on their rice-blocks. On reaching the shore, the canoes, with their

little inmates, are launched and left to the mercy of the winds and

waves.(817) When the farms of the Sea Dyaks or Ibans of Sarawak are much

pestered by birds and insects, they catch a specimen of each kind of

vermin (one sparrow, one grasshopper and so on), put them in a tiny boat

of bark well-stocked with provisions, and then allow the little vessel

with its obnoxious passengers to float down the river. If that does not

drive the pests away, the Dyaks resort to what they deem a more effectual

mode of accomplishing the same purpose. They make a clay crocodile as

large as life and set it up in the fields, where they offer it food,

rice-spirit, and cloth, and sacrifice a fowl and a pig before it.

Mollified by these attentions, the ferocious animal very soon gobbles up

all the creatures that devour the crops.(818) In some parts of Bohemia the

peasant, though he kills field mice and grey mice without scruple, always

spares white mice. If he finds a white mouse he takes it up carefully, and

makes a comfortable bed for it in the window; for if it died the luck of

the house would be gone, and the grey mice would multiply fearfully in the

dwelling.(819) In Albania, if the fields or vineyards are ravaged by

locusts or beetles, some of the women will assemble with dishevelled hair,

catch a few of the insects, and march with them in a funeral procession to

a spring or stream, in which they drown the creatures. Then one of the

women sings, “O locusts and beetles who have left us bereaved,” and the

dirge is taken up and repeated by all the women in chorus. Thus by

celebrating the obsequies of a few locusts and beetles, they hope to bring

about the death of them all.(820) When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or

field in Syria, the virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was

taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it.

Thereafter they conducted the “mother” to the place where the caterpillars

were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the

garden.(821) On the first of September, Russian girls “make small coffins

of turnips and other vegetables, enclose flies and other insects in them,

and then bury them with a great show of mourning.”(822) In South Africa a

plague of caterpillars is removed by a number of small Caffre girls, who

go singing through the fields. They wail as they pass through the

languishing crops, and thus invoke the aid and pity of some ancestral

spirits. The mournful rite ends with a dance on a plot of ground

overlooking the fields.(823)

(M206) On the shore of Delagoa Bay there thrives a small brown beetle

which is very destructive to the beans and maize. The Baronga call it

_noonoo_. In December or January, when the insects begin to swarm, women

are sent to collect them from the bean-stalks in shells. When they have

done so, a twin girl is charged with the duty of throwing the insects into

a neighbouring lake. Accompanied by a woman of mature years and carrying

the beetles in a calabash, the girl goes on her mission without saying a

word to any one. At her back marches the whole troop of women, their arms,

waists, and heads covered with grass and holding in their hands branches

of manioc with large leaves which they wave to and fro, while they chant

the words, “_Noonoo_, go away! Leave our fields! _Noonoo_, go away! leave

our fields!” The little girl throws her calabash with the beetles into the

water without looking behind her, and thereupon the women bellow out

obscene songs, which they never dare to utter except on this occasion and

at the ceremony for making rain.(824)

(M207) Another mode of getting rid of vermin and other noxious creatures

without hurting their feelings or shewing them disrespect is to make

images of them. Apollonius of Tyana is said to have cleared Antioch of

scorpions by making a bronze image of a scorpion and burying it under a

small pillar in the middle of the city.(825) Further, it is reported that

he freed Constantinople from flies by means of a bronze fly, and from

gnats by means of a bronze gnat.(826) In the Middle Ages Virgil passed for

an enchanter and is said to have rid Naples of flies and grasshoppers by

bronze or copper images of these insects; and when the waters of the city

were infested by leeches, he made a golden leech, which put a stop to the

plague.(827) It is reported that a mosque at Fez used to be protected

against scorpions by an image of a bird holding a scorpion in its

beak.(828) An Arab writer tells of a golden locust which guarded a certain

town from a plague of locusts; and he also mentions two brazen oxen which

checked a murrain among cattle.(829) Gregory of Tours tells us that the

city of Paris used to be free of dormice and serpents, but that in his

lifetime, while they were cleaning a sewer, they found a bronze serpent

and a bronze dormouse and removed them. “Since then,” adds the good

bishop, “dormice and serpents without number have been seen in

Paris.”(830) When their land was overrun with mice, the Philistines made

golden images of the vermin and sent them out of the country in a new cart

drawn by two cows, hoping that the real mice would simultaneously

depart.(831) So when a swarm of serpents afflicted the Israelites in the

desert, they made a serpent of brass and set it on a pole as a mode of

staying the plague.(832)

§ 2. Mouse Apollo and Wolf Apollo.

(M208) Some of the Greek gods were worshipped under titles derived from

the vermin or other pests which they were supposed to avert or

exterminate. Thus we hear of Mouse Apollo,(833) Locust Apollo,(834) and

Mildew Apollo;(835) of Locust Hercules and Worm-killing Hercules;(836) of

Foxy Dionysus;(837) and of Zeus the Fly-catcher or Averter of Flies.(838)

If we could trace all these and similar worships to their origin, we

should probably find that they were at first addressed, not to the high

gods as the protectors of mankind, but to the baleful things themselves,

the mice, locusts, mildew, and so forth, with the intention of flattering

and soothing them, of disarming their malignity, and of persuading them to

spare their worshippers. We know that the Romans worshipped the mildew,

the farmer’s plague, under its own proper name.(839) The ravages committed

by mice among the crops both in ancient and modern times are

notorious,(840) and according to a tradition which may be substantially

correct the worship of the Mouse (Smintheus) Apollo was instituted to

avert them.(841) The image of a mouse which stood beside Apollo’s tripod

in the god’s temple in the Troad,(842) may be compared with the golden

mice which the Philistines made for the purpose of ridding themselves of

the vermin; and the tame mice kept in his sanctuary, together with the

white mice which lived under the altar,(843) would on this hypothesis be

parallel to the white mice which the Bohemian peasant still cherishes as

the best way of keeping down the numbers of their grey-coated

brethren.(844) An Oriental counterpart of the Mouse Apollo is the ancient

pillar or rude idol which the Chams of Indo-China call _yang-tikuh_ or

“god rat,” and to which they offer sacrifices whenever rats infest their

fields in excessive numbers.(845)

(M209) Another epithet applied to Apollo which probably admits of a

similar explanation is Wolfish.(846) Various legends set forth how the god

received the title of Wolfish because he exterminated wolves;(847) indeed

this function was definitely attributed to him by the epithet

Wolf-slayer.(848) Arguing from the analogy of the preceding cases, we may

suppose that at first the wolves themselves were propitiated by fair words

and sacrifices to induce them to spare man and beast; and that at a later

time, when the Greeks, or rather the enlightened portion of them, had

outgrown this rude form of worship, they transferred the duty of keeping

off the wolves to a beneficent deity who discharged the same useful office

for other pests, such as mice, locusts, and mildew. A reminiscence of the

direct propitiation of the fierce and dangerous beasts themselves is

preserved in the legends told to explain the origin of the Lyceum or Place

of Wolves at Athens and of the sanctuary of Wolfish Apollo at Sicyon. It

is said that once, when Athens was infested by wolves, Apollo commanded

sacrifices to be offered on the Place of Wolves and the smell proved fatal

to the animals.(849) Similarly at Sicyon, when the flocks suffered heavily

from the ravages of wolves, the same god directed the shepherds to set

forth meat mixed with a certain bark, and the wolves devoured the tainted

meat and perished.(850) These legends probably reflect in a distorted form

an old custom of sacrificing to the wolves, in other words of feeding them

to mollify their ferocity and win their favour. We know that such a custom

prevailed among the Letts down to comparatively recent times. In the month

of December, about Christmas time, they sacrificed a goat to the wolves,

with strange idolatrous rites, at a cross-road, for the purpose of

inducing the wolves to spare the flocks and herds. After offering the

sacrifice they used to brag that no beast of theirs would fall a victim to

the ravening maw of a wolf for all the rest of that year, no, not though

the pack were to run right through the herd. Sacrifices of this sort are

reported to have been secretly offered by the Letts as late as the

seventeenth century;(851) and if we knew more of peasant life in ancient

Greece we might find that on winter days, while Aristotle was expounding

his philosophy in the Lyceum or Place of Wolves at Athens, the Attic

peasant was still carrying forth, in the crisp frosty air, his offering to

the wolves, which all night long had been howling round his sheepfold in a

snowy glen of Parnes or Pentelicus.

CHAPTER XVI. THE TRANSMIGRATION OF HUMAN SOULS INTO ANIMALS.

(M210) With many savages a reason for respecting and sparing certain

species of animals is a belief that the souls of their dead kinsfolk are

lodged in these creatures. Thus the Indians of Cayenne refuse to eat

certain large fish, because they say that the soul of some one of their

relations might be in the fish, and that hence in eating the fish they

might swallow the soul.(852) The Piaroas Indians of the Orinoco believe

that the tapir is their ancestor and that the souls of the dying

transmigrate into animals of that species. Hence they will never hunt the

tapir nor eat its flesh. It may even ravage their crops with impunity;

they will not attempt to ward it off or scare it away.(853) The Canelos

Indians of Ecuador also believe in the transmigration of souls; it is

especially under the form of jaguars that they expect to be born again;

hence they refuse to attack a jaguar except by way of righteous

retribution for some wrong he has done them.(854) The doctrine of

transmigration finds favour also with the Quixos Indians; an old man told

the Italian traveller Osculati that the soul is a breath which passes from

the human body into an animal, and on the death of the animal shifts its

quarters to another body.(855) The Caingua Indians of Paraguay think that

the souls of the dead which are unable to depart this earth are born again

in the shape of animals; for that reason many of them refuse to eat the

flesh of the domestic pig, because they say, “He was a man.”(856) Once

when a Spaniard was out hunting with two Piros Indians of Peru, they

passed a deserted house in which they saw a fine jaguar. The Indians drew

the Spaniard away, and when he asked why they did not attack the animal,

they said: “It was our sister. She died at the last rains. We abandoned

the hut and on the second night she came back. It was the beautiful

jaguar.”(857) Similarly a missionary remarked of the Chiriguanos Indians

of Bolivia that they must have some idea of the transmigration of souls;

for one day, while he was talking with a woman of the tribe who had left

her daughter in a neighbouring village, she started at sight of a fox

passing near and exclaimed, “May it not be the soul of my daughter who has

died?”(858) The Colombian Indians in the district of Popayan will not kill

the deer of their forests, and entertain such a respect for these animals

that they view with horror and indignation any one who dares to eat

venison in their presence. They say that the souls of persons who have led

a good life are in the deer.(859) In like manner the Indians of California

formerly refused to eat the flesh of large game, because they held that

the bodies of all large animals contained the souls of past generations of

men and women. However, the Indians who were maintained at the Spanish

missions and received their rations in the form of beef, had to overcome

their conscientious scruples in regard to cattle. Once a half-caste,

wishing to amuse himself at the expense of the devout, cooked a dish of

bear’s flesh for them and told them it was beef. They ate heartily of it,

but when they learned the trick that had been played on them, they were

seized with retchings, which only ended with the reappearance of the

obnoxious meat. A reproach hurled by the wild tribes at their brethren who

had fallen under European influence was “They eat venison!”(860)

Californian Indians have been known to plead for the life of an old

grizzly she-bear, because they thought it housed the soul of a dead

grandam, whose withered features had borne some likeness to the wrinkled

face of the bear.(861)

(M211) The doctrine of the transmigration of human souls into animal

bodies is viewed with great favour by the negroes of northern Guinea. In

different parts of the coast different species of animals are accounted

sacred, because they are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the

dead. Hence monkeys near Fishtown, snakes at Whydah, and crocodiles near

Dix Cove live in the odour of sanctity.(862) In the lagoon of Tendo, on

the Ivory Coast of West Africa, there is a certain sacred islet covered

with impenetrable scrub, on which no native dare set foot. It is peopled

only by countless huge bats, which at evening quit the island by hundreds

of thousands to fly towards the River Tanoe, which flows into the lagoon.

The natives say that these bats are the souls of the dead, who retire

during the day to the holy isle and are bound to present themselves every

night at the abode of Tano, the great and good fetish who dwells by the

river of his name. Paddling past the island the negroes will not look at

it, but turn away their heads. A European in crossing the lagoon wished to

shoot one of the bats, but his boatmen implored him to refrain, lest he

should kill the soul of one of their kinsfolk.(863) In the Mopane country

of South Africa there is, or used to be, no check on the increase of

lions, because the natives, believing that the souls of their chiefs

entered into the animals, never attempted to kill them; on the contrary,

whenever they met a lion they saluted him in the usual fashion by clapping

their hands. Hence the country was so infested by lions that people,

benighted in fields, often slept for safety in trees.(864) Similarly, the

Makanga, who occupy the angle between the Zambesi and Shire rivers,

refrain from killing lions because they believe that the spirits of dead

chiefs enter into them.(865) The Amambwe universally suppose that their

reigning chief turns at death into a lion.(866) The Bahima of Ankole, in

Central Africa, also imagine that their dead kings are changed into lions.

Their corpses are carried to a forest called Ensanzi, where they lie in

state for several days. At the end of that time the body is supposed to

burst and give forth a lion cub, which contains the spirit of the deceased

king. The animal is nurtured by priests till it is grown up, when it is

released and allowed to roam the forest with the other lions. It is the

duty of the priests to feed and care for the lions and to hold

communications with the dead kings when occasion arises. For that purpose

the priests always live in a temple in the forest, where they receive

frequent offerings of cattle for the lions. In this forest the lions are

sacred and may not be killed, but in other parts of the country they may

be slaughtered with impunity. Similarly, the Bahima think that at death

the king’s wives are changed into leopards; the transformation takes place

in like manner through the bursting of the dead bodies in a belt of the

same sacred forest. There the leopards are daily fed with offerings of

meat by priests, whose office is hereditary. Further, the Bahima are of

opinion that the spirits of dead princes and princesses come to life again

in the form of snakes, which burst from their dead bodies in another belt

of the same forest: there is a temple in the forest where priests feed and

guard the holy serpents. When the little snakes have issued from the

corpses of the princes, they are fed with milk till they are big enough to

go alone.(867) The El Kiboron clan of the Masai, in East Africa, imagine

that when married men of the clan are buried, their bones turn into

serpents. Hence the El Kiboron do not, like the other Masai, kill snakes:

on the contrary they are glad to see the reptiles in the kraal and set out

saucers of milk and honey for them on the ground. It is said that snakes

never bite members of the clan.(868) The Ababu and other tribes of the

Congo region believe that at death their souls transmigrate into the

bodies of various animals, such as the hippopotamus, the leopard, the

gorilla, and the gazelle; and on no account would a man eat the flesh of

an animal of the particular kind which he expects to inhabit in the next

life.(869) Some of the Caffres of the Zambesi region, in Portuguese

territory, who believe in the transmigration of human souls into the

bodies of animals, judge of the species of animals into which a dead

person has transmigrated by the resemblance which he bore to it in his

life. Thus, the soul of a big burly man with prominent teeth will pass

into an elephant; a strong man with a long beard will become a lion; an

ugly man with a large mouth and thick lips will be a hyaena; and so on.

Animals supposed to be tenanted by the spirits of the dead are treated as

sacred and invulnerable. When a Portuguese lady, named Dona Maria, to whom

the blacks were much attached, had departed this life, it chanced that a

hyaena came repeatedly by night to the village and carried off pigs and

kids. The lady’s old slaves would not do the creature the smallest hurt,

saying, “It is Dona Maria, our good mistress. She is hungry and comes to

her house seeking what she may devour.”(870)

(M212) The belief that the souls of the dead transmigrate into the bodies

of animals appears to be widely diffused among the tribes of Madagascar.

Thus, for example, the souls of the Betsileo are thought after death to be

reborn in boa-constrictors, crocodiles, and eels of a particular sort

according to their rank in life. It is the nobles, or at all events the

most illustrious of them, who have the privilege of turning into

boa-constrictors at death. To facilitate the transformation the corpse of

a dead noble is strapped to the central pillar of his house, and the

products of decomposition are collected in a silver bowl. The largest of

the worms which are bred in the putrid liquid is believed to contain the

soul of the dead nobleman and to develop in due time into a

boa-constrictor. Accordingly these huge serpents are regarded as sacred by

the Betsileo; nobody would dare to kill one of them. The people go down on

their knees to them and salute them, just as they would do to a real live

nobleman. It is a happy day when a boa-constrictor deigns to visit the

village which he formerly inhabited in human form. He receives an ovation

from his family. They go forth to meet him, spread silk for him to crawl

upon, and carry him off to the public square, where he is allowed to gorge

himself with the blood of a sacrificed ox. The souls of commoners of good

standing transmigrate into the bodies of crocodiles, and in their new form

still serve their old masters, particularly by announcing to them the

approach of the hour when they must shuffle out of the human frame into

the frame of boa-constrictors. Lastly, the scum of the population turn at

death into eels, and to render the change as easy for them as possible it

is customary to remove the bowels from the corpse and throw them into a

sacred lake. The eel that swallows the first mouthful becomes the domicile

of the soul of the deceased. No Betsileo would eat such eels.(871) Again,

the Antankarana, a tribe in the extreme north of Madagascar, believe that

the spirits of their dead chiefs pass into crocodiles, while those of

common folk are reborn in other animals.(872) Once more, the Tanala, a

tribe of south-eastern Madagascar, suppose that the souls of their dead

transmigrate into certain animals, such as scorpions and insects, which

accordingly they will not kill or eat, believing that the creatures will

in like manner abstain from injuring them.(873)

(M213) Some of the Nagas of Assam hold that the spirits of the departed,

after undergoing a cycle of changes in a subterranean world, are reborn on

earth in the form of butterflies or small house flies, only however in

that shape to perish for ever. Hence, when these small flies light on the

wine-cups of the living, the wassailers will not kill them for fear of

destroying some one of their ancestors.(874) For a like reason the

Angamis, one of the Naga tribes, carefully abstain from injuring certain

species of butterfly.(875) At Ang Teng, a large village of Upper Burma,

the river at a point above a dilapidated bridge swarms with fish, which

the people hold sacred, because they imagine them to be their dead come to

life again in a fishy form. In former days no one might kill one of these

fish under pain of death. Once a Shan, caught fishing with some dead fish

in his possession, was instantly hauled away and killed.(876) The people

of Kon-Meney in eastern Cochin China will not eat toads, because long ago

the soul of one of their chiefs passed at death into a toad. In his new

shape he appeared to his son in a dream, informed him of the

transformation, and commanded him to sacrifice a pig, a fowl, and millet

wine to his deceased parent, assuring him that if he complied with the

injunction the rice would grow well. The dutiful son obeyed the author of

his being; the toad appeared in the rice-fields watching over the growth

of the rice, and the crop was magnificent. For two generations the

sacrifices were duly offered, the toad appeared at the time of sowing, and

the granaries were full. Afterwards, however, the people neglected to

sacrifice to the toad and were punished accordingly by failure of the

crops and consequent famine.(877) Some of the Chams of Indo-China believe

that the souls of the dead inhabit the bodies of certain animals, such as

serpents, crocodiles, and so forth, the kind of animal varying with the

family. The species of animals most commonly regarded as tenanted by the

spirits of the departed are the rodents and active climbing creatures

which abound in the country, such as squirrels. According to some people,

these small animals are especially the abode of still-born infants or of

children who died young. The souls of these little ones appear in dreams

to their mourning parents and say: “I inhabit the body of a squirrel.

Honour me as such. Make me a present of a flower, a coco-nut, a cup of

roasted rice,” and so on. The parents discharge this pious duty, respect

these familiar spirits, ascribe illnesses to their displeasure, pray to

them for healing, and on their deathbed commend to their descendants the

care of such and such a spirit, as a member of the family.(878)

(M214) The Igorrots of Cabugatan, in the Philippines, regard the eels in

their stream as the souls of their forefathers. Hence instead of catching

and eating them they feed them, till the eels become as tame as carp in a

pond.(879) In the Sandwich Islands various people worshipped diverse kinds

of animals, such as fowls, lizards, owls, rats, and so forth. If a man who

adored sharks happened to have a child still-born, he would endeavour to

lodge the soul of the dead infant in the body of a shark. For this purpose

he laid the tiny body, together with a couple of roots of taro, some kava,

and a piece of sugar-cane, on a mat, recited prayers over it, and then

flung the whole into the sea, believing that by virtue of this offering

the transmigration of the child’s soul into the shark’s body would be

effected, and that henceforth the voracious monsters would spare all

members of the family who might otherwise be exposed to their attacks. In

the temples dedicated to sharks there were priests who, morning and

evening, addressed prayers to the shark-idol, and rubbed their bodies with

water and salt, which, drying on their skin, imparted to it an appearance

of being covered with scales. They also wore red stuffs, uttered shrill

cries, leaped over the sacred enclosure, and persuaded the credulous

islanders that they knew the exact moment when the children thrown into

the sea were turned into sharks. For this revelation they were rewarded by

the happy parents with a plentiful supply of little pigs, coco-nuts, kava,

and so on.(880) The Pelew Islanders believed that the souls of their

forefathers lived in certain species of animals, which accordingly they

held sacred and would not injure. For this reason one man would not kill

snakes, another would not harm pigeons, and so on; but every one was quite

ready to kill and eat the sacred animals of his neighbours.(881)

(M215) We have seen that the Battas of Sumatra seldom kill a tiger and

never without performing an elaborate ceremony to appease the animal’s

ghost. The reason alleged for treating tigers with this respect is that

the souls of the dead often transmigrate into these animals, and therefore

in killing a tiger a man never knows whether he is not killing a relative

of his own. If members of the totemic clan of the Tiger should happen to

be in a village when the carcase of a slain tiger is brought into it, they

are bound to pay special marks of honour to its remains by putting betel

in its mouth. A priest offers food and drink to the dead tiger, addresses

him as Grandfather, prays him not to be angry or frightened, and explains

to the gods the reasons for putting the animal to death.(882)

(M216) The Kayans of Borneo think that when the human soul departs from

the body at death it may take the form of an animal or bird. For example,

if a deer were seen browsing near a man’s grave, his relations would

probably conclude that his soul had assumed the shape of a deer, and the

whole family would abstain from eating venison lest they should annoy the

deceased.(883) Most of the Kalamantans, another tribe of Borneo, will kill

and eat deer freely, but there are exceptions to the rule. “Thus Damong,

the chief of a Malanau household, together with all his people, will not

kill or eat the deer _Cervulus muntjac_, alleging that an ancestor had

become a deer of this kind, and that, since they cannot distinguish this

incarnation of his ancestor from other deer, they must abstain from

killing all deer of this species. We know of one instance in which one of

these people refused to use again his cooking-pot which a Malay had

borrowed and used for cooking the flesh of this deer. This superstition is

still rigidly adhered to, although these people have been converted to

Islam of recent years.... The people of Miri, who also are Mohammedan

Malanaus, claim to be related to the large deer (_Cervus equinus_) and

some of them to the muntjac deer also. Now these people live in a country

in which deer of all kinds abound, and they always make a clearing in the

jungle around a tomb. On such a clearing grass grows up rapidly, and so

the spot becomes attractive to deer as a grazing ground; and it seems not

improbable that it is through frequently seeing deer about the tombs that

the people have come to entertain the belief that their dead relatives

become deer or that they are in some other way closely related to the

deer. The Bakongs, another group of Malanaus, hold a similar belief with

regard to the bear-cat (_Artictis_) and the various species of

_Paradoxurus_, and in this case the origin of the belief is admitted by

them to be the fact that on going to their graveyards they often see one

of these beasts coming out of a tomb. These tombs are roughly constructed

wooden coffins raised a few feet only from the ground, and it is probable

that these carnivores make their way into them in the first place to

devour the corpse, and that they then make use of them as lairs.”(884)

Among the Sea Dyaks, also of Borneo, the idea of metempsychosis is not

unknown. One of them used to treat a snake with the greatest kindness,

because he said it had been revealed to him in a dream that the spirit of

his grandfather dwelt in that snake.(885)

(M217) Some of the Papuans on the northern coast of New Guinea also

believe in the transmigration of souls. They hold that at death the souls

of human beings sometimes pass into animals, such as cassowaries, fish, or

pigs, and they abstain from eating the animals of the sort in which the

spirits of the dead are supposed to have taken up their abode.(886) For

example, at Masur in Dutch New Guinea there are people who imagine that

the spirits of their ancestors transmigrated into cassowaries, and

accordingly they will not partake of the flesh of the long-legged

bird.(887) In Simbang, a village at the mouth of the Bubui river in German

New Guinea, there is a family who will not harm crocodiles, not merely

because they fear the vengeance of the creatures, but also because they

reckon crocodiles their kinsfolk and expect that they themselves will turn

into crocodiles at death. As head of the family they recognise a certain

aged crocodile, everywhere known as “old Butong,” who is said to have been

born of a woman at Simbang.(888) They think that while they are at work in

the fields, and the houses stand empty, their ancestors come forth from

the river and repair to the place in the roof where the mysterious

bull-roarers are kept, which make a humming sound at the initiatory rites

of young men. But when the people return from the fields they find the

houses as empty and silent as when they left them: the spirits of their

forefathers have plunged into the river again. If a crocodile carries off

anybody, the natives are sure that the brute must be a stranger, not one

of their own crocodile kinsfolk, who never would do such a thing; and if

their neighbours at Yabim are so unfeeling as to kill a crocodile, the

Bubui people protest against the outrage and demand satisfaction. Some

Yabim people give out that after death their souls will be turned into

certain fabulous cave-haunting swine, and accordingly their relatives

refuse to spear or to eat the real wild swine. If these animals break into

and ravage the fields, their human kinsfolk attempt to appease them with

offerings of coco-nuts and other valuable articles.(889) Similarly in

Tamara, an island off the coast of German New Guinea, the people will not

eat pork, because it is their conviction that the souls of the dead

transmigrate into the bodies of pigs.(890) The Kai people, who inhabit the

rugged and densely wooded mountains inland from Finsch Harbour in German

New Guinea, imagine that the gloomy depths of some wild ravines are

haunted by the souls of the dead in the form of cuscuses and other

animals. None but the owner has the right to kill game in these dark and

awful gullies, and even he must propitiate the soul of every animal that

he slays in such a spot. For this purpose he spreads out offerings on the

carcase and presents them to the injured spirit, saying, “Take the gifts

and leave us the animal, that we may eat it.” After leaving the articles

long enough to allow the soul of the beast to abstract and convey away the

souls of the things, the hunter is free to cut up and consume the carcase.

Some years ago, when heavy rains caused a land-slip in these wild

mountains, and a house with its inmates was buried in the ruins, public

opinion in the neighbourhood attributed the disaster to the misconduct of

the deceased, who had failed to appease the soul of a boa-constrictor

slain by them on haunted ground.(891)

(M218) In the Solomon Islands a man at the point of death would gather the

members of his family about him and inform them of the particular sort of

creature, say a bird or a butterfly, into which he proposed to

transmigrate. Henceforth the family would regard that species of animal as

sacred and would neither kill nor injure it. If they fell in with a

creature of the kind, it might be a bird or a butterfly, they would say,

“That is papa,” and offer him a coco-nut.(892) In these islands sharks are

very often supposed to be ghosts, for dying people frequently announce

their intention of being sharks when they have put off their human shape.

After that, if any shark remarkable for its size or colour is seen to

haunt a certain shore or rock, it is taken to be somebody’s ghost, and the

name of the deceased is given to it. For example, at Ulawa a dreaded

man-eating shark received the name of a dead man and was propitiated with

offerings of porpoise teeth. At Saa, certain food, for example coco-nuts

from particular trees, is reserved to feed such a ghost-shark, but men of

whom it is positively known that after death they will be in sharks are

allowed by anticipation to partake of the shark-food in the sacred place.

Other men will sometimes join themselves to their company, and speaking

with the voice of a shark-ghost will say, “Give me to eat of that food.”

If such a man happens to be really possessed of supernatural power, he

will in due time become a shark-ghost himself; but it is perfectly

possible that he may fail. In Savo not very long ago a certain man had a

shark that he used to feed and to which he offered sacrifice. He swam out

to it with food, called it by name, and it came to him. Of course it was

not a common shark, but a ghost, the knowledge of which had been handed

down to him from his ancestors. Alligators also may lodge the souls of

dead Solomon Islanders. In the island of Florida a story was told of an

alligator that used to come up out of the sea and make itself quite at

home in the village in which the man whose ghost it was had lived. It went

by the name of the deceased, and though there was one man in particular

who had special connexion with it and was said to own it, the animal was

on friendly terms with everybody in the place and would even let children

ride on its back. But the village where this happened has not yet been

identified.(893) In the same island the appearance of anything wonderful

is taken as proof of a ghostly presence and stamps the place as sacred.

For example, a man planted some coco-nut palms and almond trees in the

bush and died not long afterwards. After his death there appeared among

the trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The animal was

accordingly assumed to be the ghost of the departed planter and went by

his name. The place became sacred, and no one would gather the fruits of

the trees there, until two young men, who had been trained in the

principles of Christianity, boldly invaded the sanctuary and appropriated

the almonds and coco-nuts.(894) It must not be supposed, however, that the

choice of transmigration open to a Solomon Islander is restricted to the

animal kingdom; he is free after death to become a vegetable, if he feels

so disposed. When a mission-school was established in the island of Ulawa

it was observed with surprise that the natives would not eat bananas and

had ceased to plant the tree. Enquiry elicited the origin of the

restriction, which was recent and well remembered. A man of great

influence, dying not long before, had forbidden the eating of bananas

after his death, saying that he would be in the banana. The older natives

would still mention his name and say, “We cannot eat So-and-so.”(895)

(M219) The doctrine of the reincarnation of human souls in the bodies

either of men or of animals, which meets us as an article of faith in so

many savage tribes, has a special interest for the historian of thought,

because it has been adopted more or less explicitly and employed, not

merely as a philosophical theory, but as a means of enforcing moral

lessons, by thinkers, teachers, and lawgivers among various civilised

peoples, notably in ancient India and Greece. Thus in the most famous of

old Indian law-books, _The Laws of Manu_, the penalties to be endured by

evil-doers in future births are described with a precision which leaves

nothing to be desired: the degradation of the birth is exactly

proportioned to the degree of moral guilt of the transgressor. For

example, if a man has the temerity to censure his teacher, even though the

censure is richly deserved, that rash man in his next birth will be an

ass; but if he defames his teacher falsely, he will be a dog; and if he is

so lost to all sense of propriety as to live at the expense of his

teacher, he will be a worm.(896) A faithless wife in her next

transmigration will be born a jackal.(897) A Brahman who misappropriates

money which he has received for a sacrifice will hereafter be either a

vulture or a crow for the period of one hundred years.(898) Men who

delight in doing hurt will be born as carnivorous animals, and those who

eat forbidden food will be degraded into worms. As for thieves, their lot

is a hard one, and it is harder in proportion to the value of the article

stolen. A man who steals gems will be born a goldsmith; a man who steals

grain will be born a rat; a man who steals honey will be born a stinging

insect; and a man who steals clarified butter will be born an ichneumon.

The penalty for stealing silk is to become a partridge, for stealing linen

a frog, for stealing vegetables a peacock, for stealing cooked food a

porcupine, for stealing uncooked food a hedgehog, and for stealing

molasses a flying-fox. And so on for the various degrees of moral

turpitude throughout the entire range of the animal kingdom.(899) Buddha

himself, who gave an immense extension to the doctrine of transmigration

by incorporating it in his religious or rather philosophical system, is

traditionally said to have undergone many animal births of various sorts

before he attained to his supreme dignity. Thus it is reported that he was

once a hare, once a dog, twice a pig, twice a frog, four times a serpent,

six times a snipe, ten times a lion, eleven times a deer, and eighteen

times a monkey; to say nothing of having been once a devil-dancer, twice a

thief, eighty-three times an ascetic, and so on.(900)

(M220) In ancient Greece also the theory of the transmigration of souls

found favour with the early philosophers Pythagoras and Empedocles, both

of whom, if we may trust tradition, appealed to their own personal

experience in support of the doctrine. According to ancient writers,

Pythagoras affirmed that he had been Euphorbus the Trojan in one of his

former lives, and in proof of the assertion he identified the shield of

Euphorbus among the Trojan spoils at Mycenae.(901) He would seem to have

held that human souls can transmigrate into animals or even into

plants;(902) and we may suppose that the possibility of such

transmigrations was at least one of the reasons he alleged for enjoining

the strictest of his disciples neither to kill nor to eat animals and to

abstain from certain vegetables, such as beans and mallows.(903) Certainly

at a later time these principles were maintained and these precepts

inculcated by Empedocles, who outdid the reminiscences of his predecessor

by asserting that he himself in former lives had been a boy, a girl, a

bush, a bird, and a fish.(904) Hence he denounced as a crime the practice

of killing and eating animals, since according to him a man could never

know but that in slaughtering and eating an animal he might be murdering

and devouring one of his dead kinsfolk, it might be his father or mother,

his son or daughter.(905) Thus from the doctrine of transmigration

Empedocles logically drew the same practical conclusion as the savage, who

abstains, for example, from killing and eating crocodiles or pigs because

he believes the souls of his departed relations to be embodied in

crocodiles or pigs: the only important difference between the savage and

the philosopher in this respect is that, whereas the savage venerates and

spares only animals of one particular species on the ground of their

possible affinity to himself, the philosopher on his own shewing was bound

to abstain from all animals whatever, since according to him the spirits

of his deceased relatives might be lurking in creatures of any species.

Hence while a faith in transmigration imposes but few restrictions on the

diet of a savage, since it leaves him free to partake of the flesh of

every sort of animals but one, the creed of Empedocles logically cut him

off from a flesh diet altogether and compelled him to live on vegetables

alone; indeed, if he had been rigidly logical, he must have denied himself

the use of vegetables also and perished of hunger, since on his theory

vegetables as well as animals may house the souls of the dead.(906)

However, like a wise man he sacrificed logic to life, and contented

himself with forbidding his disciples the use of a few vegetables, such as

beans and laurels,(907) while he suffered them to browse freely on all the

rest.

(M221) So far as we can gather the real opinions of Pythagoras and

Empedocles from the traditional history of the one and the miserably

mutilated writings of the other, they seem both, like Buddha, with whom

they had much in common, to have used the old savage doctrine of the

transmigration of souls mainly as a handle by which to impress on the

minds of their followers the necessity of leading an innocent, pure, and

even ascetic life in this world as the only means of ensuring a blissful

or at all events an untroubled eternity in a world to come.(908) At least

this is fairly certain for Empedocles, whose views are comparatively well

known to us through the fragments of his philosophical writings. From

these utterances of his, the genuineness of which seems to be beyond

suspicion, we gather that the psychology of Empedocles was a curious blend

of savagery and mysticism. He regarded the incarnation of the human soul

in a body of any sort as a punishment for sin, a degradation, a fall from

heaven, an exile from God, a banishment from a world of bliss to a world

of woe.(909) He describes the earth as a cavern,(910) a joyless land,

where men wander in darkness, a prey to murder and revenge, to swarms of

foul fiends, to wasting sickness and decay.(911) He speaks with pity and

contempt of the life of mortals as a wretched and miserable existence,

begotten of strife and sighs and prolonged as a punishment for their sins

through a series of transmigrations, until, by the exercise of virtue,

they have been born again as prophets, poets, physicians, and princes, and

so return at last to communion with the gods to live thenceforth free from

pain and sorrow, immortal, incorruptible, divine.(912) This view of human

destiny, this passionate scorn poured on the present world, this ecstatic

aspiration after a blissful eternity, the reward of virtue in a world to

come, are very alien from the cheerful serenity, the calm rationalism of

the ordinary Greek attitude towards existence on earth.(913) In his

profound conviction of the manifold sufferings inseparable from mortality,

in his longing to put off the burden of the body or what he calls “the

garment of flesh,”(914) in his tenderness for the lower animals and his

strong sense of kinship with them, Empedocles resembled Buddha, whose

whole cast of thought, however, was tinged with a still deeper shade of

melancholy, a more hopeless outlook on the future. Yet so close in some

respects is the similarity between the two that we might incline to

suppose a direct influence of Buddhism on Empedocles, were it not that the

dates of the two great thinkers, so far as they can be ascertained, appear

to exclude the supposition.(915)

(M222) But if on its ethical side the teaching of Empedocles may almost be

described as Buddhism relieved of its deepest shadows, on its scientific

side it curiously anticipated some speculations which have deeply stirred

the European mind in our own and our fathers’ days. For to his savage

psychology and religious mysticism Empedocles superadded a comprehensive

and grandiose theory of the material universe, which presents a close

analogy to that of Herbert Spencer. The scientific doctrine of the

conservation of energy or, as he preferred to call it, the persistence of

force, which Spencer made the corner-stone of his system, has its

counterpart in the Empedoclean doctrine of the conservation or

indestructibility of matter, the sum of which, according to him, remains

always constant, never undergoing either increase or diminution.(916)

Hence all the changes that take place in the physical world, according to

Empedocles, resolve themselves into the integration and disintegration of

matter, the composition and decomposition of bodies, brought about by the

two antagonistic forces of attraction and repulsion, which in mythical

language he called love and hate. And just as all particular things are

evolved by the force of attraction and dissolved by the force of

repulsion, a state of concentration or aggregation in the individual

perpetually alternating with a state of diffusion or segregation, so it is

also with the material universe as a whole. It, too, alternately contracts

and expands according as the forces of attraction and repulsion

alternately prevail. For it was the opinion of Empedocles that a long,

perhaps immeasurable, period of time, during which the force of attraction

prevails over the force of repulsion, is succeeded by an equally long

period in which the force of repulsion prevails over the force of

attraction, each period lasting till, the predominant force being spent,

its action is first arrested and then reversed by the opposite force; so

that the material universe performs a periodic and rhythmic movement of

alternate contraction and expansion, which never ceases except at the

moments when, the two opposite forces exactly balancing each other, all

things come to rest and equilibrium for a time, only however to return,

with the backward sweep of the cosmic pendulum, to their former state

either of consolidation or of dispersion. Thus under the influence of

attraction and repulsion matter is constantly oscillating to and fro: at

the end of a period of contraction it is gathered up in a solid globe: at

the end of a period of expansion it is diffused throughout space in a

state of tenuity which nowadays we might describe as gaseous. And this

gigantic see-saw motion of the universe as a whole has gone on and will go

on for ever and ever.(917)

(M223) The imposing generalisation thus formulated by Empedocles in the

fifth century before our era was enunciated independently in the

nineteenth century of our era by Herbert Spencer. Like his Greek

predecessor, the modern English philosopher held that the material

universe passes through alternate periods of concentration and

dissipation, of evolution and dissolution, according as the forces of

attraction and repulsion alternately prevail. The terms in which he sums

up his general conclusions might be used with hardly any change to

describe the conclusions of Empedocles. For the sake of comparison it may

be well to subjoin the passage. It runs as follows:—

“Thus we are led to the conclusion that the entire process of things, as

displayed in the aggregate of the visible Universe, is analogous to the

entire process of things as displayed in the smallest aggregates.

“Motion as well as matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the

change in the distribution of Matter which Motion effects, coming to a

limit in whichever direction it is carried, the indestructible Motion

thereupon necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally

coexistent forces of attraction and repulsion, which, as we have seen,

necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the Universe, also

necessitate rhythm in the totality of its changes—produce now an

immeasurable period during which the attractive forces predominating,

cause universal concentration, and then an immeasurable period during

which the repulsive forces predominating, cause universal

diffusion—alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolution. And thus there is

suggested the conception of a past during which there have been successive

Evolutions analogous to that which is now going on; and a future during

which successive other such Evolutions may go on—ever the same in

principle but never the same in concrete result.”(918)

(M224) The most recent researches in physical science tend apparently

rather to confirm than to invalidate these general views of the nature of

the universe; for if modern physicists are right in regarding the

constitution of matter as essentially electrical, the antagonistic forces

of attraction and repulsion postulated by Empedocles and Spencer would

resolve themselves into positive and negative electricity. On the other

hand the atomic disintegration which is now known to be proceeding in

certain of the chemical elements, particularly in uranium and radium, and

which is probably proceeding in all, suggests a doubt whether the universe

is really, as Spencer supposed, in process of integration and evolution

and not rather in process of disintegration and dissolution; or whether

perhaps the apparent evolution of the organic world is not attended by a

simultaneous dissolution of the inorganic, so that the fabric of the

universe would be a sort of Penelope’s web, which the great artificer

weaves and unweaves at the same time.(919) With such a grave doubt to

trouble the outlook on the future, we may perhaps say that Empedocles was

wiser than Herbert Spencer in leaving, as he apparently did, the question

undecided, whether during the epoch open to human observation the force of

attraction or that of repulsion has been and is predominant, and

consequently whether matter as a whole is integrating or disintegrating,

whether all things are gradually evolving into more complex and

concentrated forms, or are gradually dissolving and wasting away, through

simpler and simpler forms, into the diffused tenuity of their primordial

constituents.

(M225) Just as in his view of the constitution and history of the physical

universe Empedocles anticipated to some extent the theories of Spencer, so

in his view of the development of living beings he anticipated to some

extent the theories of Darwin; for he held that the existing species of

animals have been evolved out of inorganic matter through intermediate

sorts of monstrous creatures, which, being ill fitted to survive,

gradually succumbed and were exterminated in the struggle for

existence.(920) Whether Empedocles himself clearly enunciated the

principle of the survival of the fittest as well as the doctrine of

evolution, we cannot say with certainty; but at all events it is

significant that Aristotle, after stating for the first time the principle

of the survival of the fittest, illustrates it by a reference to

Empedocles’s theory of the extinction of monstrous forms in the past, as

if he understood the theory to imply the principle.(921)

(M226) It is a remarkable instance of the strange complexities and seeming

inconsistencies of human nature, that a man whose capacious mind revolved

ideas so far-reaching and fruitful, should have posed among his

contemporaries as a prophet or even as a god, parading the streets of his

native city bedecked with garlands and ribbons and followed by obsequious

crowds of men and women, who worshipped him and prayed to him that he

would reveal to them the better way, that he would give them oracles and

heal their infirmities.(922) In the character of Empedocles, as in that of

another forerunner of science, Paracelsus, the sterling qualities of the

genuine student would seem to have been alloyed with a vein of ostentation

and braggadocio; but the dash of the mountebank which we may detect in his

composition probably helped rather than hindered him to win for a time the

favour and catch the ear of the multitude, ever ready as they are to troop

at the heels of any quack who advertises his wares by a loud blast on a

brazen trumpet. With so many claims on the admiration of the wise and the

adulation of the foolish, we may almost wonder that Empedocles did not

become the founder, if not the god, of a new religion. Certainly other

human deities have set up in business and prospered with an intellectual

stock-in-trade much inferior to that of the Sicilian philosopher. Perhaps

Empedocles lacked that perfect sincerity of belief in his own pretensions

without which it seems difficult or impossible permanently to impose on

the credulity of mankind. To delude others successfully it is desirable,

if not absolutely necessary, to begin by being one’s self deluded, and the

Sicilian sage was probably too shrewd a man to feel perfectly at ease in

the character of a god.

(M227) The old savage doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which

Empedocles furbished up and passed off on his disciples as a philosophical

tenet, was afterwards countenanced, if not expressly affirmed, by another

Greek philosopher of a very different stamp, who united, as no one else

has ever done in the same degree, the highest capacity for abstract

thought with the most exquisite literary genius. But if he borrowed the

doctrine from savagery, Plato, like his two predecessors, detached it from

its rude original setting and fitted it into an edifying moral scheme of

retributive justice. For he held that the transmigration of human souls

after death into the bodies of animals is a punishment or degradation

entailed on the souls by the weaknesses to which they had been subject or

the vices to which they had been addicted in life, and that the kind of

animal into which a peccant soul transmigrates is appropriate to the

degree and nature of its weakness or guilt. Thus, for example, the souls

of gluttons, sots, and rakes pass into the bodies of asses; the souls of

robbers and tyrants are born again in wolves and hawks; the souls of sober

quiet people, untinctured by philosophy, come to life as bees and ants; a

bad poet may turn at death into a swan or a nightingale; and a bad jester

into an ape. Nothing but a rigid practice of the highest virtue and a

single-minded devotion to abstract truth will avail to restore such

degraded souls to their human dignity and finally raise them to communion

with the gods.(923) Though the passages in which these views are set forth

have a mythical colouring and are, like all Plato’s writings, couched in

dramatic form and put into the mouths of others, we need not seriously

doubt that they represent the real opinion of the philosopher

himself.(924) It is interesting and instructive to meet with the old

savage theory of the transmigration of souls thus masquerading under a

flowing drapery of morality and sparkling with the gems of Attic eloquence

in the philosophic system of a great Greek thinker. So curiously alike may

be the solutions which the highest and the lowest intellects offer of

those profound problems which in all ages have engaged the curiosity and

baffled the ingenuity of mankind.(925)

CHAPTER XVII. TYPES OF ANIMAL SACRAMENT.

§ 1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament.

(M228) We are now perhaps in a position to understand the ambiguous

behaviour of the Aino and Gilyaks towards the bear. It has been shewn that

the sharp line of demarcation which we draw between mankind and the lower

animals does not exist for the savage. To him many of the other animals

appear as his equals or even his superiors, not merely in brute force but

in intelligence; and if choice or necessity leads him to take their lives,

he feels bound, out of regard to his own safety, to do it in a way which

will be as inoffensive as possible not merely to the living animal, but to

its departed spirit and to all the other animals of the same species,

which would resent an affront put upon one of their kind much as a tribe

of savages would revenge an injury or insult offered to a tribesman. We

have seen that among the many devices by which the savage seeks to atone

for the wrong done by him to his animal victims one is to shew marked

deference to a few chosen individuals of the species, for such behaviour

is apparently regarded as entitling him to exterminate with impunity all

the rest of the species upon which he can lay hands. This principle

perhaps explains the attitude, at first sight puzzling and contradictory,

of the Aino towards the bear. The flesh and skin of the bear regularly

afford them food and clothing; but since the bear is an intelligent and

powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or atonement

to the bear species for the loss which it sustains in the death of so many

of its members. This satisfaction or atonement is made by rearing young

bears, treating them, so long as they live, with respect, and killing them

with extraordinary marks of sorrow and devotion. So the other bears are

appeased, and do not resent the slaughter of their kind by attacking the

slayers or deserting the country, which would deprive the Aino of one of

their means of subsistence.

(M229) Thus the primitive worship of animals assumes two forms, which are

in some respects the converse of each other. On the one hand, animals are

worshipped, and are therefore neither killed nor eaten. On the other hand,

animals are worshipped because they are habitually killed and eaten. In

both forms of worship the animal is revered on account of some benefit,

positive or negative, which the savage hopes to receive from it. In the

former worship the benefit comes either in the positive form of

protection, advice, and help which the animal affords the man, or in the

negative one of abstinence from injuries which it is in the power of the

animal to inflict. In the latter worship the benefit takes the material

form of the animal’s flesh and skin. The two forms of worship are in some

measure antithetical: in the one, the animal is not eaten because it is

revered; in the other, it is revered because it is eaten. But both may be

practised by the same people, as we see in the case of the North American

Indians, who, while they apparently revere and spare their totem

animals,(926) also revere the animals and fish upon which they subsist.

The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known

to us; but, so far as I am aware, there is no clear evidence that they

attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which

they kill and eat. The means which the Australians adopt to secure a

plentiful supply of game appear to be primarily based, not on

conciliation, but on sympathetic magic,(927) a principle to which the

North American Indians also resort for the same purpose.(928) Hence, as

the Australians undoubtedly represent a ruder and earlier stage of human

progress than the American Indians, it would seem that before hunters

think of worshipping the game as a means of ensuring an abundant supply of

it, they seek to attain the same end by sympathetic magic. This, again,

would shew—what there is good reason for believing—that sympathetic magic

is one of the earliest means by which man endeavours to adapt the agencies

of nature to his needs.

(M230) Corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship, there

are two distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god. On the one

hand, when the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless

killed—and sometimes eaten—on rare and solemn occasions. Examples of this

custom have been already given and an explanation of them offered. On the

other hand, when the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of

any one of the species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for

on the spot by apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a

powerful and dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday

atonement, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select

individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and

devotion. Clearly the two types of sacramental killing—the Egyptian and

the Aino types, as we may call them for distinction—are liable to be

confounded by an observer; and, before we can say to which type any

particular example belongs, it is necessary to ascertain whether the

animal sacramentally slain belongs to a species which is habitually

spared, or to one which is habitually killed by the tribe. In the former

case the example belongs to the Egyptian type of sacrament, in the latter

to the Aino type.

(M231) The practice of pastoral tribes appears to furnish examples of both

types of sacrament. “Pastoral tribes,” says a learned ethnologist, “being

sometimes obliged to sell their herds to strangers who may handle the

bones disrespectfully, seek to avert the danger which such a sacrilege

would entail by consecrating one of the herd as an object of worship,

eating it sacramentally in the family circle with closed doors, and

afterwards treating the bones with all the ceremonious respect which,

strictly speaking, should be accorded to every head of cattle, but which,

being punctually paid to the representative animal, is deemed to be paid

to all. Such family meals are found among various peoples, especially

those of the Caucasus. When amongst the Abchases the shepherds in spring

eat their common meal with their loins girt and their staves in their

hands, this may be looked upon both as a sacrament and as an oath of

mutual help and support. For the strongest of all oaths is that which is

accompanied with the eating of a sacred substance, since the perjured

person cannot possibly escape the avenging god whom he has taken into his

body and assimilated.”(929) This kind of sacrament is of the Aino or

expiatory type, since it is meant to atone to the species for the possible

ill-usage of individuals. An expiation, similar in principle but different

in details, is offered by the Kalmucks to the sheep, whose flesh is one of

their staple foods. Rich Kalmucks are in the habit of consecrating a white

ram under the title of “the ram of heaven” or “the ram of the spirit.” The

animal is never shorn and never sold; but when it grows old and its owner

wishes to consecrate a new one, the old ram must be killed and eaten at a

feast to which the neighbours are invited. On a lucky day, generally in

autumn when the sheep are fat, a sorcerer kills the old ram, after

sprinkling it with milk. Its flesh is eaten; the skeleton, with a portion

of the fat, is burned on a turf altar; and the skin, with the head and

feet, is hung up.(930)

(M232) An example of a sacrament of the Egyptian type is furnished by the

Todas, a pastoral people of Southern India, who subsist largely upon the

milk of their buffaloes. Amongst them “the buffalo is to a certain degree

held sacred” and “is treated with great kindness, even with a degree of

adoration, by the people.”(931) They never eat the flesh of the cow

buffalo, and as a rule abstain from the flesh of the male. But to the

latter rule there is a single exception. Once a year all the adult males

of the village join in the ceremony of killing and eating a very young

male calf,—seemingly under a month old. They take the animal into the dark

recesses of the village wood, where it is killed with a club made from the

sacred tree of the Todas (the _tûde_ or _Millingtonia_). A sacred fire

having been made by the rubbing of sticks, the flesh of the calf is

roasted on the embers of certain trees, and is eaten by the men alone,

women being excluded from the assembly. This is the only occasion on which

the Todas eat buffalo flesh.(932) The Madi or Moru tribe of Central

Africa, whose chief wealth is their cattle, though they also practise

agriculture, appear to kill a lamb sacramentally on certain solemn

occasions. The custom is thus described by Dr. Felkin: “A remarkable

custom is observed at stated times—once a year, I am led to believe. I

have not been able to ascertain what exact meaning is attached to it. It

appears, however, to relieve the people’s minds, for beforehand they

evince much sadness, and seem very joyful when the ceremony is duly

accomplished. The following is what takes place: A large concourse of

people of all ages assemble, and sit down round a circle of stones, which

is erected by the side of a road (really a narrow path). A very choice

lamb is then fetched by a boy, who leads it four times round the assembled

people. As it passes they pluck off little bits of its fleece and place

them in their hair, or on to some other part of their body. The lamb is

then led up to the stones, and there killed by a man belonging to a kind

of priestly order, who takes some of the blood and sprinkles it four times

over the people. He then applies it individually. On the children he makes

a small ring of blood over the lower end of the breast bone, on women and

girls he makes a mark above the breasts, and the men he touches on each

shoulder. He then proceeds to explain the ceremony, and to exhort the

people to show kindness.... When this discourse, which is at times of

great length, is over, the people rise, each places a leaf on or by the

circle of stones, and then they depart with signs of great joy. The lamb’s

skull is hung on a tree near the stones, and its flesh is eaten by the

poor. This ceremony is observed on a small scale at other times. If a

family is in any great trouble, through illness or bereavement, their

friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed; this is thought

to avert further evil. The same custom prevails at the grave of departed

friends, and also on joyful occasions, such as the return of a son home

after a very prolonged absence.”(933) The sorrow thus manifested by the

people at the annual slaughter of the lamb clearly indicates that the lamb

slain is a sacred or divine animal, whose death is mourned by his

worshippers,(934) just as the death of the sacred buzzard was mourned by

the Californians and the death of the Theban ram by the Egyptians. The

smearing each of the worshippers with the blood of the lamb is a form of

communion with the divinity;(935) the vehicle of the divine life is

applied externally instead of being taken internally, as when the blood is

drunk or the flesh eaten.

§ 2. Processions with Sacred Animals.

(M233) The form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from

house to house, that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence, has

been exemplified by the Gilyak custom of promenading the bear through the

village before it is slain.(936) A similar form of communion with the

sacred snake is observed by a Snake tribe in the Punjaub. Once a year in

the month of September the snake is worshipped by all castes and religions

for nine days only. At the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of

the Snake tribe, make a snake of dough which they paint black and red, and

place on a winnowing basket. This basket they carry round the village, and

on entering any house they say:—

“_God be with you all!_

_May every ill be far!_

_May our patron’s (Gugga’s) word thrive!_”

Then they present the basket with the snake, saying:—

“_A small cake of flour:_

_A little bit of butter:_

_If you obey the snake,_

_You and yours shall thrive!_”

Strictly speaking, a cake and butter should be given, but it is seldom

done. Every one, however, gives something, generally a handful of dough or

some corn. In houses where there is a new bride or whence a bride has

gone, or where a son has been born, it is usual to give a rupee and a

quarter, or some cloth. Sometimes the bearers of the snake also sing:—

“_Give the snake a piece of cloth,_

_And he will send a lively bride!_”

When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried and a

small grave is erected over it. Thither during the nine days of September

the women come to worship. They bring a basin of curds, a small portion of

which they offer at the snake’s grave, kneeling on the ground and touching

the earth with their foreheads. Then they go home and divide the rest of

the curds among the children. Here the dough snake is clearly a substitute

for a real snake. Indeed, in districts where snakes abound the worship is

offered, not at the grave of the dough snake, but in the jungles where

snakes are known to be. Besides this yearly worship, performed by all the

people, the members of the Snake tribe worship in the same way every

morning after a new moon. The Snake tribe is not uncommon in the Punjaub.

Members of it will not kill a snake, and they say that its bite does not

hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put clothes on it and give it a

regular funeral.(937)

(M234) Ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake

have survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very

primitive paganism. The best-known example is the “hunting of the wren.”

By many European peoples—the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern

Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and

Welsh—the wren has been designated the king, the little king, the king of

birds, the hedge king, and so forth,(938) and has been reckoned amongst

those birds which it is extremely unlucky to kill. In England it is

supposed that if any one kills a wren or harries its nest, he will

infallibly break a bone or meet with some dreadful misfortune within the

year;(939) sometimes it is thought that the cows will give bloody

milk.(940) In Scotland the wren is called “the Lady of Heaven’s hen,” and

boys say:—

“_Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,_

_That harry the Ladye of Heaven’s hen!_”(941)

At Saint Donan, in Brittany, people believe that if children touch the

young wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the fire of St. Lawrence,

that is, from pimples on the face, legs, and so on.(942) In other parts of

France it is thought that if a person kills a wren or harries its nest,

his house will be struck by lightning, or that the fingers with which he

did the deed will shrivel up and drop off, or at least be maimed, or that

his cattle will suffer in their feet.(943)

(M235) Notwithstanding such beliefs, the custom of annually killing the

wren has prevailed widely both in this country and in France. In the Isle

of Man down to the eighteenth century the custom was observed on Christmas

Eve or rather Christmas morning. On the twenty-fourth of December, towards

evening, all the servants got a holiday; they did not go to bed all night,

but rambled about till the bells rang in all the churches at midnight.

When prayers were over, they went to hunt the wren, and having found one

of these birds they killed it and fastened it to the top of a long pole

with its wings extended. Thus they carried it in procession to every house

chanting the following rhyme:—

“_We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,_

_We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,_

_We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,_

_We hunted the wren for every one._”

When they had gone from house to house and collected all the money they

could, they laid the wren on a bier and carried it in procession to the

parish churchyard, where they made a grave and buried it “with the utmost

solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call

her knell; after which Christmas begins.” The burial over, the company

outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced to music. About the

middle of the nineteenth century the burial of the wren took place in the

Isle of Man on St. Stephen’s Day (the twenty-sixth of December). Boys went

from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the centre of two

hoops, which crossed each other at right angles and were decorated with

evergreens and ribbons. The bearers sang certain lines in which reference

was made to boiling and eating the bird. If at the close of the song they

received a small coin, they gave in return a feather of the wren; so that

before the end of the day the bird often hung almost featherless. The wren

was then buried, no longer in the churchyard, but on the sea-shore or in

some waste place. The feathers distributed were preserved with religious

care, it being believed that every feather was an effectual preservative

from shipwreck for a year, and a fisherman would have been thought very

foolhardy who had not one of them.(944) Even to the present time, in the

twentieth century, the custom is generally observed, at least in name, on

St. Stephen’s Day, throughout the Isle of Man.(945)

(M236) A writer of the eighteenth century says that in Ireland the wren

“is still hunted and killed by the peasants on Christmas Day, and on the

following (St. Stephen’s Day) he is carried about, hung by the leg, in the

centre of two hoops, crossing each other at right angles, and a procession

made in every village, of men, women, and children, singing an Irish

catch, importing him to be the king of all birds.”(946) Down to the

present time the “hunting of the wren” still takes place in parts of

Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St. Stephen’s Day the boys

hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the middle of a mass of holly and ivy

on the top of a broomstick, and on St. Stephen’s Day go about with it from

house to house, singing:—

“_The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,_

_St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze;_

_Although he is little, his family’s great,_

_I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat._”

Money or food (bread, butter, eggs, etc.) were given them, upon which they

feasted in the evening.(947) In Essex a similar custom used to be observed

at Christmas, and the verses sung by the boys were almost identical with

those sung in Ireland.(948) In Pembrokeshire a wren, called the King, used

to be carried about on Twelfth Day in a box with glass windows surmounted

by a wheel, from which hung various coloured ribbons. The men and boys who

carried it from house to house sang songs, in one of which they wished

joy, health, love, and peace to the inmates of the house.(949)

(M237) In the first half of the nineteenth century similar customs were

still observed in various parts of the south of France. Thus at

Carcassone, every year on the first Sunday of December the young people of

the street Saint Jean used to go out of the town armed with sticks, with

which they beat the bushes, looking for wrens. The first to strike down

one of these birds was proclaimed King. Then they returned to the town in

procession, headed by the King, who carried the wren on a pole. On the

evening of the last day of the year the King and all who had hunted the

wren marched through the streets of the town to the light of torches, with

drums beating and fifes playing in front of them. At the door of every

house they stopped, and one of them wrote with chalk on the door _vive le

roi!_ with the number of the year which was about to begin. On the morning

of Twelfth Day the King again marched in procession with great pomp,

wearing a crown and a blue mantle and carrying a sceptre. In front of him

was borne the wren fastened to the top of a pole, which was adorned with a

verdant wreath of olive, of oak, and sometimes of mistletoe grown on an

oak. After hearing high mass in the parish church of St. Vincent,

surrounded by his officers and guards, the King visited the bishop, the

mayor, the magistrates, and the chief inhabitants, collecting money to

defray the expenses of the royal banquet which took place in the evening

and wound up with a dance.(950) At Entraigues men and boys used to hunt

the wren on Christmas Eve. When they caught one alive they presented it to

the priest, who, after the midnight mass, set the bird free in the church.

At Mirabeau the priest blessed the bird. If the men failed to catch a wren

and the women succeeded in doing so, the women had the right to mock and

insult the men, and to blacken their faces with mud and soot, when they

caught them.(951) At La Ciotat, near Marseilles, a large body of men armed

with swords and pistols used to hunt the wren every year about the end of

December. When a wren was caught it was hung on the middle of a pole,

which two men carried, as if it were a heavy burden. Thus they paraded

round the town; the bird was weighed in a great pair of scales; and then

the company sat down to table and made merry.(952)

(M238) The parallelism between this custom of “hunting the wren” and some

of those which 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 lasted in the Highlands of Scotland and in St. Kilda down at least

to the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was described to Dr.

Samuel Johnson in the island of Coll.(953) Another description of it runs

as follows: “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 the 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 of the 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. It is the principal remnant of

superstition among the inhabitants of St. Kilda.”(954)

(M239) A more recent writer has described the old Highland custom as

follows. Towards evening on the last day of the year, or Hogmanay, as the

day is called in Scotland, “men began to gather and boys ran about

shouting and laughing, playing shinty, and rolling ‘pigs of snow’ (_mucan

sneachda_), _i.e._ large snowballs. The hide of the mart or winter cow

(_seiche a mhairt gheamhraidh_) was wrapped round the head of one of the

men, and he made off, followed by the rest, belabouring the hide, which

made a noise like a drum, with switches. The disorderly procession went

three times _deiseal_, according to the course of the sun (_i.e._ keeping

the house on the right hand) round each house in the village, striking the

walls and shouting on coming to a door:

‘_The_ calluinn _of the yellow bag of hide,_

_Strike the skin (upon the wall)_

_An old wife in the graveyard,_

_An old wife in the corner,_

_Another old wife beside the fire,_

_A pointed stick in her two eyes,_

_A pointed stick in her stomach,_

_Let me in, open this._’

“Before this request was complied with, each of the revellers had to

repeat a rhyme, called _Rann Calluinn_ (_i.e._ a Christmas rhyme), though,

as might be expected when the door opened for one, several pushed their

way in, till it was ultimately left open for all. On entering each of the

party was offered refreshments, oatmeal bread, cheese, flesh, and a dram

of whisky. Their leader gave to the goodman of the house that

indispensable adjunct of the evening’s mummeries, the _Caisein-uchd_, the

breast-stripe of a sheep wrapped round the point of a shinty stick. This

was then singed in the fire (_teallach_), put three times with the

right-hand turn (_deiseal_) round the family, and held to the noses of

all. Not a drop of drink was given till this ceremony was performed. The

_Caisein-uchd_ was also made of the breast-stripe or tail of a deer,

sheep, or goat, and as many as chose had one with them.”(955) Another

writer who gives a similar account of the ceremony and of the verses sung

by the performers, tells us that the intention of putting the burnt

sheep-skin to the noses of the people was to protect them against

witchcraft and every infection.(956) The explanation, which is doubtless

correct, reminds us of the extraordinarily persistent hold which the

belief in sorcery and witchcraft has retained on the minds of the European

peasantry. Formerly, perhaps, pieces of the cow-hide in which the man was

clad were singed and put to the noses of the people, 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.(957) 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.

§ 3. The Rites of Plough Monday.

(M240) In the “hunting of the wren,” and the procession with the man clad

in a cow-skin, there is nothing to shew that the customs in question have

any relation to agriculture. So far as appears, they may date from a time

before the invention of husbandry 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 perhaps be purely agricultural in their origin; 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. Examples of

such dramatic and at the same time religious rites have been collected by

W. Mannhardt, who says of them in general: “Not only on the harvest field

and on the threshing-floor but also quite apart from them people loved to

represent the corn-spirit dramatically, especially in solemn processions

in spring and about the winter solstice, whereby they meant to depict the

return of the beneficent powers of summer to the desolate realm of

nature.”(958) Thus, for example, in country districts of Bohemia it is, or

used to be, customary during the last days of the Carnival for young men

to go about in procession from house to house collecting gratuities.

Usually a man or boy is swathed from head to foot in pease-straw and wrapt

round in straw-ropes: thus attired he goes by the name of the Shrovetide

or Carnival Bear (_Fastnachtsbär_) and is led from house to house to the

accompaniment of music and singing. In every house he dances with the

girls, the maids, and the housewife herself, and drinks to the health of

the good man, the good wife, and the girls. For this performance the

mummer is regaled with food by the good wife, while the good man puts

money in his box. When the mummers have gone the round of the village,

they betake themselves to the ale-house, whither also all the peasants

repair with their wives; “for at Shrovetide, but especially on Shrove

Tuesday, every one must dance, if the flax, the vegetables, and the corn

are to thrive; and the more and the higher they dance, the greater the

blessing which the people expect to crown their exertions.” In the

Leitmeritz district the Shrovetide Bear, besides being wrapt in straw,

sometimes wears a bear’s mask to emphasise his resemblance to the animal.

In the Czech villages the housewives pluck the pease-straw and other straw

from the Shrovetide Bear and put it in the nests of their geese, believing

that the geese will lay more eggs and hatch their broods better for the

addition of this straw to their nests. For a similar purpose in the Saaz

district the women put the straw of the Shrovetide Bear in the nests of

their hens.(959) In these customs the dancing for the express purpose of

making the crops grow high,(960) and the use of the straw to make the

geese and hens lay more eggs, sufficiently prove that the Shrovetide Bear

is conceived to represent the spirit of fertility both animal and

vegetable; and we may reasonably conjecture that the dances of the mummer

with the women and girls are especially intended to convey to them the

fertilising powers of the spirit whom the mummer personates.(961)

(M241) In some parts of Bohemia the straw-clad man in these Shrovetide

processions is called, not the Bear, but the Oats-goat, and he wears horns

on his head to give point to the name.(962) These different names and

disguises indicate that in some places the corn-spirit is conceived as a

bear and in others as a goat. Many examples of the conception of the

corn-spirit as a goat have already been cited;(963) the conception of him

as a bear seems to be less common. In the neighbourhood of Gniewkowo, in

Prussian Lithuania, the two ideas are combined, for on Twelfth Day a man

wrapt in pease-straw to represent a Bear and another wrapt in oats-straw

to represent a Goat go together about the village; they imitate the

actions of the two animals and perform dances, for which they receive a

present in every house.(964) At Marburg in Steiermark the corn-spirit

figures now as a wolf and now as a bear. The man who gave the last stroke

at threshing is called the Wolf. All the other men flee from the barn, and

wait till the Wolf comes forth; whereupon they pounce on him, wrap him in

straw to resemble a wolf, and so lead him about the village. He keeps the

name of Wolf till Christmas, when he is wrapt in a goat’s skin and led

from house to house as a Pease-bear at the end of a rope.(965) In this

custom the dressing of the mummer in a goat’s skin seems to mark him out

as the representative of a goat; so that here the mythical fancy of the

people apparently hesitates between a goat, a bear, and a wolf as the

proper embodiment of the corn-spirit. In Scandinavia the conception of the

spirit as a goat who appears at Christmas (_Julbuck_) appears to be

common. Thus, for example, in Bergslagshärad (Sweden) it used to be

customary at Christmas to lead about a man completely wrapt in corn-straw

and wearing a goat’s horns on his head: he personated the Yule-goat.(966)

In some parts of Sweden a regular feature of the little Christmas drama is

a pretence of slaughtering the Yule-goat, who, however, comes to life

again. The actor, hidden by a coverlet made of skins and wearing a pair of

formidable horns, is led into the room by two men, who make believe to

slaughter him, while they sing verses referring to the mantles of various

colours, red, blue, white, and yellow, which they laid on him, one after

the other. At the conclusion of the song, the Yule-goat, after feigning

death, jumps up and skips about to the amusement of the spectators.(967)

In Willstad after supper on Christmas evening, while the people are

dancing “the angel dance” for the sake of ensuring a good crop of flax,

some long stalks of the Yule straw, either of wheat or rye, are made up

into the likeness of a goat, which is thrown among the dancers with the

cry, “Catch the Yule-goat!” The custom in Dalarne is similar, except that

there the straw-animal goes by the name of the Yule-ram.(968) In these

customs the identification of the Yule-goat or the Yule-ram with the

corn-spirit seems unmistakable. As if to clinch the argument it is

customary in Denmark and Sweden to bake cakes of fine meal at Christmas in

the form of goats, rams, or boars. These are called Yule-goats, Yule-rams,

or Yule-boars; they are often made out of the last sheaf of corn at

harvest and kept till sowing-time, when they are partly mixed with the

seed-corn and partly eaten by the people and the plough-oxen in the hope

thereby of securing a good harvest.(969) It would seem scarcely possible

to represent the identification of the corn-spirit with an animal, whether

goat, ram, or boar, more graphically; for the last corn cut at harvest is

regularly supposed to house the corn-spirit, who is accordingly caught,

kept through the winter in the shape of an animal, and then mixed with the

seed in spring to quicken the grain before it is committed to the ground.

Examples of the corn-spirit conceived as a wether and a boar have met us

in a preceding part of this work.(970) The pretence of killing the

Yule-goat and bringing him to life again was probably in origin a magical

rite to ensure the rebirth of the corn-spirit in spring.

(M242) In England a custom like some of the preceding still prevails at

Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire on the Tuesday after Plough Monday, as I

learn from an obliging communication of Professor G. C. Moore Smith of

Sheffield University. He writes: “When I was at Whittlesey yesterday I had

the pleasure of meeting a ‘Straw-bear,’ if not two, in the street. I had

not been at Whittlesey on the day for nearly forty years, and feared the

custom had died out. In my boyhood the Straw-bear was a man completely

swathed in straw, led by a string by another and made to dance in front of

people’s houses, in return for which money was expected. This always took

place on the Tuesday following Plough-Monday. Yesterday the Straw-bear was

a boy, and I saw no dancing. Otherwise there was no change.”(971)

(M243) A comparison of this English custom with the similar Continental

customs which have been described above, raises a presumption that the

Straw-bear, who is thus led about from house to house, represents the

corn-spirit bestowing his blessing on every homestead in the village. This

interpretation is strongly confirmed by the date at which the ceremony

takes place. For the date is the day after Plough Monday, and it can

hardly be doubted that the old popular celebration of Plough Monday has a

direct reference to agriculture. Plough Monday is the first Monday of

January after Twelfth Day. On that day it used to be the custom in various

parts of England for a band of sturdy swains to drag a gaily decorated

plough from house to house and village to village, collecting

contributions which were afterwards spent in rustic revelry at a tavern.

The men who drew the plough were called Plough Bullocks; they wore their

shirts over their coats, and bunches of ribbons flaunted from their hats

and persons. Among them there was always one who personated a much

bedizened old woman called Bessy; under his gown he formerly had a

bullock’s tail fastened to him behind, but this appendage was afterwards

discarded. He skipped, danced and cut capers, and carried a money-box

soliciting contributions from the onlookers. Some of the band, in addition

to their ribbons, “also wore small bunches of corn in their hats, from

which the wheat was soon shaken out by the ungainly jumping which they

called dancing. Occasionally, if the winter was severe, the procession was

joined by threshers carrying their flails, reapers bearing their sickles,

and carters with their long whips, which they were ever cracking to add to

the noise, while even the smith and the miller were among the number, for

the one sharpened the plough-shares and the other ground the corn; and

Bessy rattled his box and danced so high that he shewed his worsted

stockings and corduroy breeches; and very often, if there was a thaw,

tucked up his gown skirts under his waistcoat, and shook the bonnet off

his head, and disarranged the long ringlets that ought to have concealed

his whiskers.” Sometimes among the mummers there was a Fool, who wore the

skin of a calf with the tail hanging down behind, and wielded a stick with

an inflated bladder tied to it, which he applied with rude vigour to the

heads and shoulders of the human team. Another mummer generally wore a

fox’s skin in the form of a hood with the tail dangling on his back. If

any churl refused to contribute to the money-box, the plough-bullocks put

their shoulders to the plough and ploughed up the ground in front of his

door.(972)

(M244) The clue to the meaning of these curious rites is probably

furnished by the dances or rather jumps of the men who wore bunches of

corn in their hats. When we remember how often on the Continent about the

same time of year the peasants dance and jump for the express purpose of

making the crops grow tall, we may conjecture with some probability that

the intention of the dancers on Plough Monday was similar; the original

notion, we may suppose, was that the corn would grow that year just as

high as the dancers leaped. If that was so, we need not wonder at the

agility displayed on these occasions by the yokels in general and by Bessy

in particular. What stronger incentive could they have to exert themselves

than the belief that the higher they leaped into the air the higher would

sprout the corn-stalks? In short, the whole ceremony was probably a

magical rite intended to procure a good crop. The principle on which it

rested was the familiar one of homoeopathic or imitative magic: by

mimicking the act of ploughing and the growth of the corn the mummers

hoped to ensure the success of the real ploughing, which was soon to take

place.

(M245) If such was the real meaning of the ritual of Plough Monday, we may

the more confidently assume that the Straw-bear who makes his appearance

at Whittlesey in Cambridgeshire on the day after Plough Monday represents

indeed the corn-spirit. What could be more appropriate than for that

beneficent being to manifest himself from house to house the very day

after a magical ceremony had been performed to quicken the growth of the

corn?

(M246) The foregoing interpretation of the rites observed in England on

Plough Monday tallies well with the explanation which I have given of the

very similar rites annually performed at the end of the Carnival in

Thrace.(973) The mock ploughing is probably practised for the same purpose

in both cases, and what that purpose is may be safely inferred from the

act of sowing and the offering of prayers for abundant crops which

accompany and explain the Thracian ceremony. It deserves to be noted that

ceremonies of the same sort and closely resembling those of Plough Monday

are not confined to the Greek villages of Thrace but are observed also by

the Bulgarians of that province at the same time, namely, on the Monday of

the last week in Carnival. Thus at Malko-Tirnovsko, in the district of

Adrianople, a procession of mummers goes through the streets on that day.

The principal personages in it bear the names of the _Kuker_ and

_Kukerica_. The _Kuker_ is a man clad in a goatskin. His face is blackened

with soot and he wears on his head a high shaggy hat made of an entire

skin. Bells jingle at his girdle, and in his hand he carries a club. The

_Kukerica_, who sometimes goes by the name of _Baba_, that is, “Old

Woman,” is a man disguised in petticoats with his face blackened. Other

figures in the procession are young men dressed as girls, and girls

dressed as men and wearing masks. Bears are represented by dogs wrapt in

bearskins. A king, a judge, and other officials are personated by other

mummers; they hold a mock court and those whom they condemn receive a

bastinado. Some of the maskers carry clubs; it is their duty to beat all

who fall into their hands and to levy contributions from them. The play

and gestures of the _Kuker_ and _Kukerica_ are wanton and lascivious: the

songs and cries addressed to the _Kuker_ are also very cynical. Towards

evening two of the company are yoked to a plough, and the _Kuker_ ploughs

a few furrows, which he thereupon sows with corn. After sunset he puts off

his disguise, is paid for his trouble, and carouses with his fellows. The

people believe that the man who plays the part of _Kuker_ commits a deadly

sin, and the priests make vain efforts to abolish the custom. At the

village of Kuria, in the district of Losengrad, the custom is in general

the same, but there are some significant variations. The money collected

by the mummers is used to buy wine, which is distributed among all the

villagers at a banquet in the evening. On this occasion a cake in which an

old coin has been baked is produced by the _Kuker_, broken into bits, and

so divided among all present. If the bit with the coin in it falls to a

farmer, then the crops will be good that year; but if it falls to a

herdsman, then the cattle will thrive. Finally, the _Kuker_ ploughs a

small patch of ground, “bending his body to right and left in order to

indicate symbolically the ears of corn bending under the weight of the

grain.” The others lay hold of the man with whom the coin was found, bind

him by the feet, and drag him over the land that has just been

ploughed.(974) In these observances the intention of promoting the

fertility of the ground is unmistakable; the ploughman’s imitation of the

cornstalks bending under their own weight is a simple case of homoeopathic

or imitative magic, while the omens drawn from the occupation of the

person who obtains the piece of cake with the coin in it indicate that the

ceremony is designed to quicken the herds as well as the crops. We can

hardly doubt that the same serious motive underlies the seemingly wanton

gestures of the principal actors and explains the loose character of the

songs and words which accompany the ceremony. Nor is it hard to divine the

reason for dragging over the fresh furrows the man who is lucky enough to

get the coin in the cake. He is probably looked on as an embodiment of the

corn-spirit, and in that character is compelled to fertilise the ground by

bodily contact with the newly-ploughed earth.

(M247) Similar customs are observed at the Carnival not only by Bulgarian

peasants in Thrace but also here and there in Bulgaria itself. In that

country the leading personage of the masquerade is the _Baba_, that is,

the Old Woman or Mother. The part is played by a man in woman’s clothes;

she, or rather he, wears no mask, but in many villages she carries a

spindle with which she spins. The _Kuker_ and the _Kukerica_ also figure

in the performance, but they are subordinate to the Old Woman or Mother.

Their costume varies in different villages. Usually they are clad in skins

with a girdle of lime-tree bark and five or six bells fastened to it; on

their back they wear a hump made up of rags. But the principal feature in

their attire consists of their masks, which represent the heads of animals

and men in fantastic combinations, such as the horned head of a man or a

bird, the head of a ram, a bull, and so on. Much labour is spent on the

manufacture of these masks. Early in the morning of Cheese Monday (the

Monday of the last week in Carnival) the mummers go about the village

levying contributions. Towards noon they form a procession and go from

house to house. In every house they dance a round dance, while the Old

Woman spins. It is believed that if any house-holder contrives to carry

off the Old Woman and secrete her, a blessing and prosperity will enter

into his dwelling; but the maskers defend the Old Woman stoutly against

all such attempts of individuals to appropriate her beneficent presence.

After the dance the mummers receive gifts of money, eggs, meal, and so on.

Towards evening a round dance is danced in the village square, and there

the Old Woman yokes the _Kuker_ and _Kukerica_ to a plough, ploughs with

it a small piece of ground, and sows the ground with corn. Next day the

performers reassemble, sell the presents they had collected, and with the

produce hold a feast in the house of the Old Woman. It is supposed that if

strange maskers make their way into a village, fertility will be drawn

away to the village from which they have come; hence the villagers resist

an inroad of strange maskers at any price. In general the people believe

that the masquerade is performed for the purpose of increasing the luck

and fertility of the village.(975)

(M248) In these Bulgarian rites, accordingly, we are not left to form

conjectures as to the intention with which they are practised; that

intention is plainly avowed, and it is no other than the one which we have

inferred for the similar rites observed in Thrace at the same season and

in England on Plough Monday. In all these cases it is reasonable to

suppose that the real aim of the ceremonial ploughing and sowing of the

ground is thereby, on the principles of homoeopathic or imitative magic,

to ensure the growth of the corn on all the fields of the community.

Perhaps we may go a step further and suggest that in the Bulgarian Old

Woman or Mother, who guides the plough and sows the seed, and whose

presence is believed to bring a blessing to any household that can

contrive to appropriate her, we have the rustic prototype of Demeter, the

Corn-Mother, who in the likeness of an Old Woman brought a blessing to the

house of Celeus, king of Eleusis, and restored their lost fertility to the

fallow Eleusinian fields. And in the pair of mummers, man and woman, who

draw the plough, may we not discern the rude originals of Pluto and

Persephone? If that is so, the gods of Greece are not wholly dead; they

still hide their diminished heads in the cottages of the peasantry, to

come forth on sunshine holidays and parade, with a simple but expressive

pageantry, among a gazing crowd of rustics, at the very moment of the year

when their help is most wanted by the husbandman.

(M249) Be that as it may, these rites still practised by the peasantry at

opposite ends of Europe, no doubt date from an extremely early age in the

history of agriculture. They are probably far older than Christianity,

older even than those highly developed forms of Greek religion with which

ancient writers and artists have made us familiar, but which have been for

so many centuries a thing of the past. Thus it happens that, while the

fine flower of the religious consciousness in myth, ritual, and art is

fleeting and evanescent, its simpler forms are comparatively stable and

permanent, being rooted deep in those principles of common minds which bid

fair to outlive all the splendid but transient creations of genius. It may

be that the elaborate theologies, the solemn rites, the stately temples,

which now attract the reverence or the wonder of mankind, are destined

themselves to pass away like “all Olympus’ faded hierarchy,” and that

simple folk will still cherish the simple faiths of their nameless and

dateless forefathers, will still believe in witches and fairies, in ghosts

and hobgoblins, will still mumble the old spells and make the old magic

passes, when the muezzin shall have ceased to call the faithful to prayer

from the minarets of St. Sophia, and when the worshippers shall gather no

more in the long-drawn aisles of Nôtre Dame and under the dome of St.

Peter’s.

NOTE: THE CEREMONY OF THE HORSE AT RICE-HARVEST AMONG THE GAROS.

(M250) Among the Garos, an agricultural tribe of Assam, the close of the

rice-harvest is celebrated by a festival in which the effigy of a horse

figures prominently. The intention of the ceremony is not stated, but

possibly it may be to ensure a good rice crop in the following year. If

so, the artificial horse of the Garos would be analogous to the October

horse of the Romans, as that animal has been explained by W. Mannhardt.

For the sake of comparison it may be well to subjoin Major A. Playfair’s

account of the Garo ceremony:—(976)

(M251) “When the rice harvest has been fully gathered in, the great

sacrifice and festival of the year, the _Wangala_ or _Guréwata_, takes

place. This is the most festive observance of the year, and combines

religious sacrifice with much conviviality. It is celebrated by all

sections of the tribe except the Duals and some Plains Garos. The cost of

the entertainment falls principally on the _nokma_ [headman] of the

village, who provides a pig to be eaten by his guests, and plenty of

liquor. Among the Akawés and Chisaks of the north and north-eastern hills

a curious feature of the ceremony is the manufacture of _guré_ or ‘horses’

out of pieces of plantain-stem for the body, and of bamboo for the head

and legs. The image of the ‘horse’ is laid on the floor of the _nokma’s_

house, and the assembled guests dance and sing around it the whole night

long, with the usual intervals for refreshments. Early the next morning,

the ‘horse’ is taken to the nearest river and launched on the water to

find its way down stream on the current. For those who possess the

necessary paraphernalia, the _guré_ takes the shape of a horse’s head of

large size, made of straw, and covered with cloth. I once saw one in the

village of Rongrong, which, when in use, was ornamented with discs of

brass on both sides of the face. Its eyes and ears were made of the same

metal, and between the ears were fixed a pair of wild goat’s horns. To the

head were attached a number of bronze bells similar to those hawked about

by Bhutia pedlars. The owner, a _laskar_, was unable to tell me whence

they came, but said that they were inherited from his wife’s mother, and

were many generations old.

(M252) “The manner in which this form of _guré_ is used is the following.

The head is mounted on a stick, which a man holds before him in such a way

that the head comes up to the level of his chest. Two straps pass over his

shoulders to relieve his hands of the weight. The body of the ‘horse’ is

then built round his own body with cane and cloth. For a tail, yak’s tails

are fastened in with his own hair, which, for the occasion, is allowed to

hang down instead of being tied up. The performer thus apparelled,

commences to dance a shuffling step to the usual music. In front of him

dances the priest, who goes through the pantomime of beckoning the animal

to come to him. The remaining guests of the _nokma_ [headman] form a

_queue_ behind the ’horse,’ and dance after it. When the first man gets

tired, another takes his place, and the dancing goes on right through the

night. A pleasant part of the performance is the pelting of the _guré_

with eggs. A piece of egg-shell was still sticking to the horn of the

_guré_ which was shown to me.

“Strictly speaking, this festival should last for three days and two

nights. When it is over, the _guré_ is taken to a stream and the body

thrown into the water, the head being preserved for another year. The

people who come to see it off, bring rice with them, and a meal by the

water’s edge closes the proceedings.

“At the _Wangala_, it is the custom to mix flour with water, and for the

assembled people to dip their hands into the mixture and make white

hand-marks on the posts and walls of the house and on the backs of the

guests.”

(M253) Can it be that the horse whose effigy is thus made at rice-harvest

and thrown into the water, while the head is kept for another year,

represents the spirit of the rice? If that were so, the pelting of the

head with eggs would be a charm to ensure fertility and the throwing of it

into water would be a rain-charm. And on the same theory the horse’s head

would be comparable to the horse-headed Demeter of Phigalia(977) as well

as to the head of the October horse at Rome, which was nailed to a wall,

probably to be kept there till next October. If we knew more about the

rites of the horse-headed Demeter at Phigalia, we might find that amongst

them was a dance of a man or woman who wore the mask of a horse’s head and

personated the goddess herself, just as, if I am right, the man who dances

disguised as a horse at the harvest festival of the Garos, represents the

spirit of the rice dancing among the garnered sheaves. The conjecture is

to some extent supported by the remains of the magnificent marble drapery,

which once adorned the colossal statue of Demeter or Persephone in the

sanctuary of the two goddesses at Lycosura, in Arcadia; for on that

drapery are carved rows of semi-human, semi-bestial figures dancing and

playing musical instruments; the bodies of the figures are those of women,

but their heads, paws, and feet are those of animals. Among the heads set

on the figures are those of a horse, a pig, a cat or a hare, and

apparently an ass.(978) It is reasonable to suppose that these dancing

figures represent a ritual dance which was actually performed in the rites

of Demeter and Persephone by masked men or women, who personated the

goddesses in their character of beasts.

INDEX.

Ab, a Jewish month, i. 259 _n._ 1

Ababu, a tribe of the Congo, ii. 288

Abchases of the Caucasus, ii. 105, 313

Abdication, temporary, of chief, ii. 66, 68

Aberdeenshire, harvest customs in, i. 158 _sqq._

Abipones, the, of Paraguay, i. 308, ii. 140

Acagchemem tribe of California, ii. 170

Achinese, the, i. 315

Acosta, J. de, quoted, i. 171 _sq._, ii. 86 _sqq._

Acropolis of Athens, ii. 40 _sq._

Actium, games celebrated at, i. 80, 85

Adair, James, ii. 264

Adeli, the, of the Slave Coast, ii. 116

Adonis, i. 214, 216, 258, 263;

and the boar, ii. 22 _sq._

_Aegis_, ii. 40

Aesculapius at Pergamus, ii. 85

Aeson and Medea, ii. 143

Agbasia, a Ewe god, ii. 59, 60

Agni, Indian god, ii. 120

_Agnus castus_, i. 116 _n._ 2

Agricultural year determined by observation of the Pleiades, i. 313 _sqq._

Agriculture, magical significance of games in primitive, i. 92 _sqq._;

origin of, 128 _sq._;

woman’s part in primitive, 113 _sqq._

Aino, the, ii. 144, 251, their ceremony at eating new millet, 52;

their worship of eagle-owls, eagles, and hawks, 199 _sq._;

their propitiation of mice, 278;

their ambiguous attitude towards the bear, 310 _sq._;

type of animal sacrament, 312 _sq._

—— of Japan, their custom of killing bears ceremonially, ii. 180 _sqq._

—— of Saghalien, their bear-festivals, ii. 188 _sqq._

Aïsawa or Isowa, order of saints in Morocco, i. 21

Ajumba hunter, ii. 235

A-Kamba, the, ii. 113

Alaskan hunters, ii. 238

Albania, custom as to locusts and beetles in, ii. 279

Alcyonian Lake, the, i. 15

Alder branches, sacrificial, ii. 232

Alectrona, daughter of the Sun, ii. 45

Alfoors of Minahassa, ii. 100

Alligators, souls of dead in, ii. 297

All Souls, Feast of, i. 30

Alur tribe, ii. 214

Alus, custom at, i. 25

Amambwe, the, ii. 287

Amaxosa Caffres, ii. 227

Amazons of Dahomey, ii. 149

Amazulu, the, i. 316

Amboyna, ii. 123

Amedzowe, the spirit land, ii. 105

Amei Awi, i. 93

American Indians, women’s agricultural work among the, i. 120 _sqq._;

their ceremonies at hunting bears, ii. 224 _sqq._;

personification of maize, i. 171 _sqq._

Ammon, ram sacrificed to, ii. 41;

the Theban, 172 _sq._

Ancestors, prayers to, i. 105;

images of, ii. 53;

offerings to spirits of, 111, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125

Ancestral Contest at the _Haloa_, i. 61;

at the Eleusinian Games, 71, 74, 77;

at the Festival of the Threshing-floor, 75

Ancient deities of vegetation as animals, ii. 1 _sqq._

Andaman Islanders, ii. 164

Andree, Dr. Richard, i. 307

Angamis (Angami), a Naga tribe of Assam, i. 244, ii. 291

Angel dance, the, ii. 328

Angoni, the, ii. 149;

burial custom among the, 99

Anhalt, harvest customs in, i. 226, 233, 279

Animal, corn-spirit as an, i. 270 _sqq._;

killing the divine, ii. 169 _sqq._;

worshipful, killed once a year and promenaded from door to door, 322

Animal embodiments of the corn-spirit, on the, i. 303 _sqq._

—— form, god killed in, i. 22 _sq._

—— god, two types of the custom of killing the, ii. 312 _sq._

—— masks worn by Egyptian kings, i. 260 _sq._

—— sacrament, types of, ii. 310 _sqq._

Animals torn to pieces and devoured raw in religious rites, i. 20 _sqq._;

language of, acquired by eating serpent’s flesh, ii. 146;

resurrection of, 200 _sq._, 256 _sqq._;

and men, savages fail to distinguish accurately between, 204 _sqq._;

wild, propitiation of, by hunters, 204 _sqq._;

bones of, not to be broken, 258 _sq._;

bones of, not allowed to be gnawed by dogs, 259;

savage faith in the immortality of, 260 _sqq._;

transmigration of human souls into, 285 _sqq._;

two forms of the worship of, 311;

processions with sacred, 316 _sqq._

_Anitos_, souls of ancestors, ii. 124

Anna Kuari, i. 244

Anointing the body as a means of acquiring certain qualities, ii. 162

_sqq._

Antankarana tribe of Madagascar, ii. 290

Anthesteria, the, i. 30 _sqq._

Anthropomorphism, i. 212

Antinous, games in honour of, i. 80, 85

Antiquity of the cultivation of the cereals in Europe, i. 79

Antrim, harvest customs in, i. 144, 154 _sq._

Ants, superstitious precaution against the ravages of, ii. 276

Apaches, the, ii. 242

Apes, ceremony after killing, ii. 235 _sq._

Apis, sacred bull, ii. 34 _sqq._

Apollo surnamed Locust and Mildew, ii. 282;

the Mouse, 282 _sq._;

Wolfish, 283 _sq._

Apollonius of Tyana, ii. 280

Apologies offered by savages to the animals they kill, ii. 215, 217, 218,

221, 222 _sqq._, 235 _sqq._, 243

Apple-tree, straw-man placed on oldest, ii. 6

Arabs, ii. 146, 164;

of Moab, harvest custom of the, i. 138

Arawak Indians, ii. 154

Arcturus, i. 47 _n._ 2, 51, 52

Ardennes, precautions against rats in the, ii. 277

Argyleshire, harvest customs in, i. 155 _sq._

Ariadne, Cyprian worship of, i. 209 _n._ 2

Aricia, many Manii at, ii. 94 _sqq._;

sacred grove at, 95

Arician grove, horses excluded from, ii. 40 _sqq._

Aristides, the rhetorician, on first-fruit offerings, i. 56;

on Eleusinian Games, 71

Aristotle, _Constitution of Athens_, i. 79;

on men of genius, ii. 302 _n._ 5

Arkansas Indians, ii. 134

Arriaga, J. de, i. 173 _n._

Art, Demeter and Persephone in, i. 43 _sq._

Artemis, Brauronian, ii. 41 _n._ 3

Artemisia and Mausolus, ii. 158

Artemision, a Greek month, ii. 8

Artificers, worship of the, ii. 60 _sq._

Aru Islands, ii. 145

Aryans of Europe, agriculture among the early, i. 129 _sq._;

totemism not proved for the, ii. 4

Ash Wednesday, i. 300

Ashantees, the, ii. 149;

their festivals of new yams, 62 _sq._

Ashes as manure, i. 117

—— of dead swallowed, ii. 156 _sqq._;

smeared on mourner, 164;

of human victim scattered on earth to fertilise it, i. 240;

scattered on fields, 249, 250, 251;

scattered with winnowing-fans, 260, 262

Assam, ii. 116;

agriculture in, i. 123;

_genna_ in, 109 _n._ 2;

head-hunting in, 256

Asses, transmigration of sinners into, ii. 299, 308

Assimilation of victims to gods, i. 261 _sq._;

of men to their totems or guardian animals, ii. 207 _sq._

Assiniboins, the, ii. 225

Assinie, W. African kingdom, ii. 63

Astronomy, origin of, i. 307

Asuras, the, ii. 120

Athamanes, the, of Epirus, i. 129

Athamas, King, i. 24, 25

Athena, sacrifices to, i. 56;

and the goat, ii. 40 _sq._

Athens, Queen of, married to Dionysus, i. 30 _sq._;

called “the Metropolis of the Corn,” 58;

ceremony at killing a wolf at, ii. 221;

the Lyceum at, 283, 284

Athletic competitions among harvesters, i. 76 _sq._

Atonement to animals for wrong done to them, ii. 310 _sq._

Attic months lunar, i. 52

Attica, vintage custom in, ii. 133

Attis, i. 2, 14, 214;

his relation to Lityerses, 255 _sq._;

and the pig, ii. 22

Attraction and repulsion, forces of, ii. 303 _sqq._

Augustine, i. 88

Augustus celebrates games at Actium, i. 80

Australia, totemism in, ii. 311

—— Northern, ii. 145

Australian aborigines, i. 126, 307 _sq._;

their mutilations of the dead, ii. 272

Australians, the Central, ii. 165

Austria, harvest customs in, i. 276, 292

Awe, Loch, i. 142

Awemba, the, i. 115;

of Northern Rhodesia, ii. 272 _sq._

Ayrshire, harvest customs in, i. 279

Aztecs, their festival at end of fifty-two years, i. 310 _sq._;

eating the god among the, ii. 86 _sqq._

Baba or Boba, name given to last sheaf, i. 144 _sq._;

“the Old Woman,” at the Carnival, ii. 332, 333

Bacchanals of Thrace, i. 17

Badagas, the, ii. 55

Baden, harvest customs in, i. 283, 286, 292, 298

Baganda, the, i. 118, ii. 64, 70 _n._ 1, 227, 253, 271 _sq._;

their offerings of first-fruits, 113;

their fear of the ghosts of animals, 231 _sq._

Bagobos, the, ii. 124;

of Mindanao, i. 240

Bahaus or Kayans of central Borneo, i. 92 _sqq._

_See_ Kayans

Bahima, their belief in transmigration, ii. 288

Bakongs, a tribe of Borneo, ii. 294

Bakundu of the Cameroons, burial custom of the, ii. 99

Bali, i. 314, ii. 278;

rice spirit in, i. 201 _sqq._

Ball, game of, played as a rite, ii. 76, 79

Balquhidder, cutting the Maiden at, i. 157

_Balum_, spirits of the dead, i. 104

Ba-Mbala, the, i. 119

Bananas, cultivated by women, i. 115, 118;

cultivated in South America, 120, 121;

cultivated in New Britain, 123;

cultivated in New Guinea, 123;

soul of dead man in, ii. 298

Banars, the, of Cambodia, ii. 33

Bangala, the, i. 119

Banks’ islanders, i. 313

—— Islands, burial custom in the, ii. 97

Barley awarded as a prize in the Eleusinian games, i. 73, 74, 75;

oldest cereal cultivated by the Aryans, 132

—— Bride among the Berbers, i. 178 _sq._

—— -cow, i. 289, 290

—— -mother, the, i. 131, 135

—— -sow, i. 298

—— -wolf, i. 271, 273

Baronga, the, ii. 280;

women’s part in agriculture among the, i. 114 _sq._

Barotsé, the, i. 115, ii. 159

Bassari, the, ii. 116

_Bassia latifolia_, ii. 119

Bastian, Adolph, quoted, ii. 313

Basutoland, i. 116;

inoculation in, ii. 158, 160

Basutos, the, ii. 148;

their customs as to the new corn, 110

Batari Sri, a goddess, i. 202

Batchelor, Rev. J., ii. 180 _n._ 2, 182 _n._ 2, 183, 184, 186 _n._, 198,

201

Bathing forbidden, i. 94

Bats, souls of dead in, ii. 287

Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, i. 196, 315, ii. 293;

their ceremonies at catching tigers, 216 _sq._

Battle, mock, ii. 75

Bavaria, harvest customs in, i. 147, 221 _sq._, 232, 282, 286, 287, 289,

296, 298, 299

Bean-cock, i. 276

—— -goat, i. 282

Beans, Spirit of, i. 177;

cultivated in Burma, 242;

forbidden as food by Empedocles, ii. 301

Bear, importance of the, for people of Siberia, ii. 191;

ambiguous attitude of the Aino towards the, 310 _sq._;

the corn-spirit as a, 325 _sqq._

—— -cats, souls of dead in, ii. 294

—— -dances, ii. 191, 195

—— -festivals of the Aino, ii. 182 _sqq._;

of the Gilyaks, 190 _sqq._;

of the Goldi, 197;

of the Orotchis, 197

—— -skin worn by woman dancer, ii. 223

—— the Great, constellation, i. 315

Bear’s liver, i. 187 _sq._;

heart eaten, ii. 146

“Beard of Volos,” i. 233

Bears killed ceremonially by the Aino, ii. 180 _sqq._;

souls of dead in, 286 _sq._;

processions with, in Europe, 326 _n._ 3

—— slain, propitiated by Kamtchatkans, Ostiaks, Koryak, Finns, and Lapps,

ii. 222 _sqq._;

by American Indians, 224 _sqq._

Beating a man clad in a cow’s hide, ii. 322 _sqq._

—— boys with leg-bone of eagle-hawk, ii. 165 _n._ 2

—— effigy of ox with rods in China, ii. 11 _sq._

—— people for good luck, i. 309