they indicate grief at his loss that is calculated to call down the
pity and compassion of every beholder, and to deprecate the wrath or
ill-humour of the deceased. It is very striking that while coarse and
scanty garments (sackcloth or bark-cloths among peoples who usually
wear cotton or wool, and mere loin-cloths or nothing at all among
peoples usually clad) are worn in place of more luxurious stuffs, a
frequently recurring prescription is old worn-out clothes. In the
Tonga Islands the mourners (who are always women) are “habited in
large old ragged mats--the more ragged, the more fit for the occasion,
as being more emblematical of a spirit broken down, or, as it were,
torn to pieces by {261} grief.”[261.1] In the hinterland of the
Sherbro in West Africa, on the mourning for a chief’s death, the
people most closely connected with him “presented an unkempt and
slovenly appearance, their bodies draped in the oldest and dirtiest of
their cloths.”[261.2] Among the Baganda on the other side of the
continent the mourning garb for an ordinary man is “old bark-cloths
and a girdle of dry plantain leaves: the hair is unkempt, the nails
are allowed to grow long like birds’ claws, and on the chest is a
white patch, a mixture of water and ashes.”[261.3] The custom of
strewing ashes on the person is very widely practised: more than one
example has been incidentally given. Among the Hebrews its use was not
confined to mourning for the dead; repentance in dust and ashes is a
familiar figure in English speech, and is derived from the Bible. The
general air of neglect and misery produced by these practices might be
paralleled in the mourning customs of most countries. Even in our own
island little more than a hundred years ago it was noted that the
chief mourner at a funeral in the parish of Llanvetherine,
Monmouthshire, and elsewhere wore a dirty cloth about his
head.[261.4] And of many peoples the description by a French writer
of the mourning garb among the Agni of Sanwi on the Ivory Coast would
hold literally true: “Old black loin-cloths, unwashed for a long time.
_On ne se peigne pas--on ne fait pas de toilette--on reste
modeste._”[261.5]
This is not all. Mourners fast, abstaining altogether from food or
indulging only in restricted diet, and that of an inferior kind. On
the island of Aurora all who are in mourning refrain from certain
food. The immediate relatives may not eat any cultivated food. {262}
They are limited to gigantic caladium, bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts,
mallow, and other things which must be sought in the bush where they
grow.[262.1] The ancient Hurons were forbidden, even in cold weather,
to eat warm food.[262.2] Among the Charruas of South America the
adult sons of a dead man remain for two days entirely naked in their
huts and almost without food.[262.3] In Togoland the Ewhe widow is
forbidden beans, flesh, fish, palm-wine and rum; any infringement of
these prohibitions would cost her life.[262.4]
Many nations add to their other rites that of laceration or even
mutilation of the body. In Central Australia the Warramunga women
fight with one another and cut one another’s scalps, and all who stand
in any near relation to the deceased, reckoned according to the
classificatory system--which greatly widens the area of
relationship--also cut their own scalps open with yam-sticks, the
actual widows even searing the wound with red-hot fire-sticks.[262.5]
It was forbidden to the ancient Hebrews, by what was evidently a
reform of a pre-existing custom, to make a baldness between the eyes
for the dead--in other words, to cut themselves on the brow.[262.6]
Among the Arawaks a drinking-feast is held, at which all the men of
the village assemble and scourge one another with whips made of a
climbing plant, until the blood runs in streams and strips of skin and
muscle hang down. Those who participate in the rite often die of their
wounds.[262.7] As if mere wounding were not enough, {263}
finger-joints are frequently cut off. In the Fiji Islands the
amputation of a finger-joint is a common sign of mourning. In one case
in Tonga when a king died orders were issued that one hundred fingers
should be cut off.[263.1] In Montana, one of the north-western states
of America, on the execution of four aborigines for murder in December
1890, they were mourned by two squaws, who scalped their children. One
of them gashed her own face, while the other cut off two of her
fingers and threw them into the grave.[263.2] When a Charrua dies his
widow and his married daughters and sisters amputate each of them a
finger-joint, besides inflicting other wounds on themselves.[263.3]
The illustration of practices like these might be multiplied
indefinitely. The same reason holds good for them all. In the lower
culture grief at a death is often intensified by fear--on the one
hand, of an accusation of witchcraft--on the other hand, of the
ill-will of the deceased himself, who is naturally disgusted to find
himself dead. Against the latter danger at any rate the forlorn
condition of the survivors, stiff with wounds, thrust like him from
the company of their friends and fellow-tribesmen, made to wear a
distinctive garb, often in rags or dirt, wailing, watching, fasting,
would constitute an appeal that even the ghost of a savage would feel
hard to resist. That this is actually the effect intended, in some
instances at least, is certain. A widow among the Salivas of South
America cuts her hair, and is not allowed to anoint herself as usual,
nor to wear any ornament, in order, we are expressly told, not to
irritate the departed, but to humble herself before him.[263.4] {264}
Nor must it be overlooked that wailing and lamenting, so usually part
of the rites practised especially by the chief mourners, such as
widows and near relations, would not favour concealment. On the
contrary, they would draw attention to the grief, and help even the
simplest and most easily deluded of ghosts to identify the mourner,
which they would seem indeed to be meant to do. But they would
powerfully deprecate his malice or revenge. In this connection the
belief of the Bañarwanda on the east of Lake Kivu, in German East
Africa, is interesting. To them the _bazimu_ (plural of _muzimu_) or
souls of the departed are by no means always kindly disposed, even the
best of them. They must be continually propitiated with offerings, or
they will cause calamities, either of themselves directly, or
indirectly by setting in motion the _imandwa_, semi-apotheosized
heroes. But the _muzimu_ does not begin his mischievous activities
until the mourning ceremonies are at an end. So long as they last the
survivors are quite safe from him, for he will not during that period
attack the living.[264.1]
Many customs, sometimes born of widely differing motives, converge in
a similarity of expression. Hence it is impossible in the present
state of our knowledge dogmatically to assert a single origin for
practices of a like character extending over so wide an area as those
we have just passed in review. They are the expression of the
psychological reaction caused by the shock of death and the consequent
breach of the circle of kinship or other social bonds. The taboo
results from the bewilderment and terror caused by the entry of death
into the circle. The conduct and garb of the mourners are the outcome
of grief and sympathy, but also of fear. That fear has for its object
survivors who have it in their {265} power to involve the mourners in
even a more terrible doom by an accusation of witchcraft. Even more,
it has regard to death itself, and to the inimical designs of him
whose earthly life has been severed, and who has thereby been
converted into an envious, and if not a malicious, at least a peevish
and easily angered, being, armed by his death with greater, because
more mysterious, powers. Mourning garb is often a device to secure his
compassion; it is often a defence against his overt attacks; but on
the whole tangible proof is lacking that it is a disguise to deceive
him.
THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE
OF MYLITTA
{266}
Among the religious rites of antiquity there was none more alien to
modern feeling than the sacrifice of chastity by every Babylonian
woman at the temple of Mylitta. It is described first and in most
detail by Herodotus, whose denunciation of it shows that to the Greeks
of the fifth century B.C. it was as abhorrent as it is to us.
According to this account, every woman once in her life was required
to sit down in the precincts of the temple of Mylitta wearing a wreath
of cord about her head, and there to wait until a stranger should
throw a silver coin into her lap and summon her with ritual words in
the name of the goddess to follow him. She was not allowed to refuse,
but was compelled to follow the first man who threw, and to have
sexual intercourse with him outside the temple. She might then depart
to her home, her duty to the goddess being fulfilled.[266.1] The
historian lets fall the observation that there was a similar custom in
some places in Cyprus. This has been supposed to be referred to by
Justin, who wrote probably after the establishment of Christianity,
but whose work consists of selections from Trogus Pompeius, a lost
writer of the Augustan age. He reports that it was the Cypriote custom
to send maidens before their marriage on certain days to seek their
dowry by prostitution on the seashore, {267} and to pay the offerings
to Venus for their future chastity. Dido on her way to Carthage
touched at the island at the very time, and took on board her fleet
eighty of these damsels, to be wives to her followers and assist in
peopling the city she was going to found.[267.1] We shall further
consider Justin’s statement hereafter. For the moment we pass on to
Heliopolis (Baalbec), where, the ecclesiastical historian Socrates
affirms, virgins were offered in prostitution to strangers.[267.2] He
does not, any more than Justin, connect this with a temple or a
divinity; but from Sozomen we gather that it was a religious
observance, inasmuch as the prostitution of virgins prior to their
marriage is stated to have been abolished by Constantine when he
destroyed the temple of Aphrodite.[267.3] A similar custom, according
to Ælian, was followed by the Lydians. And he expressly says that
when once the rite had been performed the woman remained ever
afterwards chaste, nor would a repetition be forgiven her on any
plea.[267.4] Herodotus, however, states that the daughters of the
common people in Lydia earned their dowries by a life of
prostitution.[267.5] The two writers are obviously referring to two
different customs. A third custom distinct from either is mentioned by
Strabo as practised by the Armenians, among whom even the highest
families of the nation consecrated their virgin daughters to the
service of the goddess Anaitis, to remain as prostitutes at her temple
before their marriage.[267.6]
{268}
What is the relation of these three customs? They have usually been
considered as closely connected. It may be, as Dr Frazer suspects,
that the real motive for the custom described as that of earning
dowries by prostitution was religious, rather than economical,
although my own suspicions point in another direction. But putting
that custom aside for further examination, both the others are
certainly portrayed as religious. As practised by the nations of
Western Asia for a thousand years prior to the fall of paganism they
were annexed to the cult of certain divinities. There is, however, a
broad distinction to be drawn between a custom requiring every woman
once in her lifetime to submit to the embraces of a stranger, and one
which consecrated a life of prostitution. Such a life was one of
devotion to the goddess as a more or less permanent servant. The other
custom demanded a single act which freed the worshipper for the rest
of her days. It may be freely conceded that the goddess at whose
temple, or on whose feast-day, the act was performed was endowed with
similar characteristics to those of the goddess in whose service the
life of prostitution was lived. It may even have been that sometimes
the same goddess had bands of harlots attached to her shrine, and also
required the sacrifice of the virginity of all other women in the
manner described. This perhaps, as we shall see, was the case in
Lydia. We should still need to investigate separately the two customs.
One of the most fertile sources of error in the interpretation of
custom is the fatal tendency of rites distinct, or even altogether
different in origin and intention, but similar in expression, to
converge. This convergence is accelerated by a variety of causes. The
natural vagueness of tradition, the forgetfulness of the exact
original meaning, the gradual predominance of one idea over another
owing {269} to circumstances which, for want of knowledge, we call
accidental, the tendency to repeat by way of precaution in one rite
acts which essentially belong to another, are all causes of the kind
referred to. Moreover, we have so often found in the similarity of
rite the real key to a common interpretation, that where convergence
does not in fact occur there is a temptation to read identity of
meaning into two rites having a superficial likeness. It behoves us,
therefore, to be on our guard, and to scrutinize with some scepticism
all cases where the identity both of act and intention is not
demonstrably complete.
The practices I have enumerated have all been interpreted as
expiations for marriage. Marriage, it is said,--the appropriation of
one or more women to one man--is an evolution from the primeval
condition of promiscuity. Religious prostitution, the _jus primæ
noctis_ and other customs are expiations exacted by society from women
who are thus appropriated. They witness to the primeval common rights
of the male sex, thus asserted for the last time by one or more on
behalf of all on abandoning the woman to the exclusive possession of
one of their number.
Now, if the interpretation in question be suitable for any of these
customs, it is more suitable for the single rite such as that at the
temple of Mylitta than for the exercise of prostitution over an
extended period; and it is to this rite that I desire more
particularly to call attention. I need hardly observe that the
explanation of the rite as an expiation for marriage does not by any
means follow of necessity from the theory of primitive promiscuity. On
the contrary it overlooks one of the peculiar features of the rite.
Alike at Babylon, at Heliopolis, and apparently at Cyprus (if Cyprus
be a case in point) the act has to be accomplished with a stranger. If
it were {270} a forfeit rendered to the general body of men, who might
have had a claim to temporary union but for the institution of
marriage, or if it were a formal witness of that claim, it would seem,
_prima facie_, more natural that it should be accomplished with some
one or more of the claimants, that is to say, with a member or members
of the same community. A similar rite of intercourse with a stranger
was practised, as Lucian relates, at Byblus. There it was the custom
at the mourning for Adonis to perform the well-known mourning rite of
cutting off the hair. Any woman who refused to do this was required to
exhibit herself on one day of the festival and undergo prostitution to
one of the strangers who resorted thither, handing over the price to
the goddess called by Lucian the Byblian Aphrodite.[270.1] The rite
as there practised therefore was, at all events in the second century
A.D., an alternative to the dedication of hair: it was a redemption
for the tresses that should have been sacrificed. Thus the woman would
repeat the expiation once a year, whether married or single, so long
as she was unwilling to shear her locks, or preferred the alternative
sacrifice of her chastity. There is no evidence that it ever had
anything to do with marriage; it certainly had not when Lucian wrote.
The rite at Byblus must, however, be distinguished from those we are
considering. They were performed by every woman without alternative,
but they were performed only once. If they were an expiation for
marriage we should expect to find them described as part of the
marriage rites. The Balearic islanders, the Nasamonians and the
Auziles in antiquity had, as well as many modern savages, such rites,
whether or not they can be properly explained as an expiation for
marriage. But at the most the rites with which we are now concerned
were a {271} preliminary to marriage--a necessary preliminary,
perhaps, but one that might have been accomplished at any period
before it. Indeed, so far as appears from Herodotus, the victim, if we
may call her so, of the Babylonian rite was not necessarily unmarried.
But comparison of the accounts of the practice at Heliopolis, in Lydia
and in Cyprus renders it fairly certain that it was only unmarried
women who were subjected to it, and that it was essentially a
sacrifice of maidenhood. A passing reference by Eusebius has been
interpreted to imply that at Heliopolis both married women and girls
were prostituted in the service of the goddess.[271.1] But Eusebius
says nothing about the goddess. His reference must be construed in the
light of Socrates’ statement that women were by the law of the country
required to be common, and hence the offspring was doubtful, for there
was no distinction between fathers and children.[271.2] Whatever else
those phrases may mean, they entirely negative the theory of expiation
for marriage. But they do not refer to the custom of prostituting
virgins to strangers, which the historian expressly distinguishes.
It may be objected to this reading of Herodotus that while he uses the
generic term women (γυναῖκες) in speaking of the victims, on the other
hand, in a previous chapter referring to the Babylonian marriage
customs, he {272} reports that once a year in every village the
marriageable maidens (παρθένοι) were all put up to auction, the
respective purchasers being required to give security that they would
marry them; and it was unlawful to give them in marriage in any other
way. The objection is of little weight. It is needless to consider
whether we are to understand the specific term παρθένοι literally.
Even if so, there would doubtless be ample time for the performance of
the rite at the temple of Mylitta between the auction and the
marriage. It does not appear that marriage followed the auction
immediately. Had that been contemplated, security would hardly have
been necessary. When the anniversary came round all the maidens who
had during the preceding year attained puberty and thus become ripe
for marriage (γάμων ὡραῖαι) were probably put up. Those who had not
previously undergone the rite would, if my interpretation be correct,
be required to submit to it before marriage.
It is superfluous to discuss other and obvious objections to the
theory of expiation for marriage. But the appearance of prostitution
which the rite presents demands further consideration. At Babylon,
although a piece of money passed, the payment seems to have been
merely _pro forma_. It mattered not how small the coin was, it could
not be refused. Whatever it was, Strabo tells us it was considered as
consecrated to the goddess. Lastly, the rite once performed, no gift,
were it ever so great, would be accepted to repeat it. The details of
the rite at Heliopolis and among the Lydians have not been preserved
to us; but we may with probability infer that they were similar. In
Lydia, indeed, if we are to trust both Ælian and Herodotus, two
distinct customs are traceable, namely, the sacrifice of virginity and
the life of prostitution to earn a dowry. A Greek inscription {273} of
the second century A.D., found at Tralles and referred to by Dr
Frazer, discloses also the existence of religious prostitution by
girls expressly chosen by the god and set apart for that end.[273.1]
This is a similar custom to that of the Armenian girls already
mentioned, and is not to be confounded with the prostitution mentioned
by the Father of History as practised by all the daughters of the
common people. Whatever may have been the origin of the latter, the
other two in the time of Ælian were connected with religion. On the
island of Cyprus we seem to find much the same state of things. If we
may believe Justin, the maidens earned their dowry by prostitution.
From other sources we learn that there were mysteries of the Cypriote
Aphrodite, which were said to have been instituted by Cinyras, king of
Paphos and father of Adonis. Into these mysteries there was a regular
initiation. Sexual matters no doubt formed their staple teaching; and
what classical and especially apologetic writers would call
prostitution would be practised. The legend ran that the daughters of
Cinyras, through the wrath of Aphrodite, united themselves with
strangers.[273.2] Probably it was believed to be in imitation of them
that the maidens of Cyprus sought prostitution on the seashore. In any
case the story indicates, as Dr Frazer has pointed out, “that the
princesses of Paphos had to conform to the custom as well as the women
of humble birth.” But if this be so, the object of the harlotry
alleged by Justin falls to the ground, since it would be unnecessary
for princesses to earn their dowry. It may be suspected, therefore,
that Justin or his authority has confounded two disparate customs,
that of earning the {274} dowry by prostitution, and that of a
religious sacrifice of virginity in connection with the mysteries of
Aphrodite, in which the other party to the rite was a stranger. Only
thus can we satisfactorily explain the limitation of the practice to
stated days, probably festivals of Aphrodite, and the phrase about
paying the offerings to her for future chastity.
The money payment, whether large or small, was in the Byblian rite, as
in the Babylonian and (if I interpret correctly) in the Cypriote
rites, consecrated to the goddess. We may infer that the same was the
case wherever else the rite was performed. At Byblus it was the
alternative to the consecration of the woman’s hair.
Prostitution--that is, sexual intercourse for hire--is not a primitive
practice. The appearance of prostitution in connection with religion
may be accounted for by the influence upon the religious practice of
the general practice of harlots. Analogy would suggest that
intercourse other than conjugal or the satisfaction of the genuine
passion of love demanded a monetary consideration. But when that
intercourse was the performance of a religious duty the money was not
kept as gain by the woman. It was not earned for herself, but devoted
to the goddess. Where bands of “harlots” were attached to a temple
their earnings probably went to swell the temple funds out of which
they were supported.[274.1] It may accordingly be suggested that the
hire was not an essential part of the rite, but merely an aftergrowth
in the process of adapting an older custom to the changing manners and
religious ideas of a growing civilization.[274.2]
{275}
Assuming, therefore, that the rite was a sacrifice of virginity to
which every woman was subjected, it would probably be performed either
on the attainment of puberty or as a preliminary to the marriage
ceremonies. But we gather from the historian’s account of the sale of
the village maidens around Babylon that the auction followed almost
immediately after the attainment of puberty, or within (say) a year at
the furthest. The practice of most ancient nations, as of nearly all
barbarous and savage peoples, and indeed of many in a high stage of
civilization, would lead us to expect that marriage would be entered
into within a very short time of the bride’s puberty. Sometimes
marriage even precedes puberty. Where, as more usual, it follows that
epoch of life, the rites incident to puberty must first be completed.
Among such rites defloration is not infrequently found. In this
respect the Australian tribes are notorious. In the Boulia district of
Northern Queensland the girl is compelled to intercourse with a number
of men.[275.1] Among the Dieri of South Australia a ceremony called
Wilpadrina is performed on the young women when they come to maturity,
in which the elder men claim and exercise a right to them, and that in
the presence of the other women.[275.2] The Arunta and Ilpirra tribes
in the centre of the continent perform a ceremony on every girl when
she arrives at a marriageable age, but before she has been taken over
by the husband to whom she has been allotted. As part of that ceremony
a number of men have access to her in ritual order; and the
intercourse {276} is often repeated the following day.[276.1]
Analogous proceedings are known in other parts of the world. The
central tribes of New Ireland have a women’s house in every village.
When a girl attains puberty she withdraws into a small house, called
_mbak_, built inside it. There it is said she has to remain for ten
months, only going outside at night. During this period she is waited
upon by the old women, and through their intervention every man who
chooses has access to her. On leaving the _mbak_ she belongs only to
the husband to whom she has probably been betrothed since
infancy.[276.2] In the west of the island of Serang between Celebes
and New Guinea, a girl after ceremonial bathing goes round clothed
with a sarong woven of the fibre of the _Pandanus repens_, at the
service of every man until her family have collected the necessary
materials for a feast. In certain districts, however, before actual
puberty the teeth are filed. When this operation is completed, a feast
is prepared of which the novice must taste everything. Further, an
earthen pot filled with spring-water is covered with a fresh
pisang-leaf. One of the old women then taking the index-finger of the
girl’s right hand thrusts it through the leaf as “a symbol of the
rupture of the hymen, or to show that the possession of virginity
means nothing for her.” The leaf is then displayed on the ridge of the
roof. This done, the women fall to eating and drinking. When they have
finished they begin singing to the accompaniment of drums. The men are
then admitted to the house. In some villages the old men have free
access that evening to the room of the girl in whose honour the feast
is given, while the other guests amuse themselves with {277} singing
outside. After this celebration the girl is entitled to free
intercourse with men, even before puberty.[277.1] In East-Central
Africa the Azimba maiden is artificially deflowered during a period of
retirement and instruction in the forest. When the retirement is over
she celebrates her attainment of puberty by a dance in which only
women take part. That night a man, hired by her father for the
purpose, sleeps with her, and once this is done she is supposed to
have no further intercourse with him. Often, however, she is already
married before puberty, and consequently no longer a maiden. None the
less is she taken from her husband that the puberty customs may be
performed. When she is brought back he himself sleeps with her
apparently as a ritual act, without the necessity of hiring a man for
the purpose.[277.2] Among the Wanyasa, or Mang’anja, at the southern
end of Lake Nyasa, ceremonies are performed similar to those of the
_Intonjane_ (girls’ puberty ceremonies) of South Africa, and every
girl on her return after the initiation must find some man “to be with
her,” otherwise she will die.[277.3] The _Intonjane_ among the
Kaffirs is well known to be an occasion of sexual indulgence. It may
be surmised that the ceremonies of the Suahili on the east coast were
originally similar to those just mentioned. But the Suahili have
become partially Arabized, though their Mohammedanism is little more
than a veneer over their heathen customs and belief. Among them now a
girl returns from her seclusion in silence and gives her hand to every
man she meets, receiving from him in return a few small coins.[277.4]
It is said that the girls of {278} the Wamegi, also a tribe near the
coast, are artificially deflowered at puberty by certain old
women.[278.1] Artificial defloration at puberty is also practised by
the Sawu Islanders. The Sakalava girls in Madagascar perform it on
themselves in case their parents have not previously taken the
trouble.[278.2] Other examples could be cited, but the subject need
not be pursued.
I would venture to suggest then that the Babylonian rite was a puberty
rite, and that a maiden was not admitted to the status and privileges
of adult life until she had thus been ceremonially deflowered. Among
those privileges, and the chief of them, was the gratification of the
sexual instinct. It was, therefore, a prerequisite to marriage.
Ceremonial defloration of the bride by others than her husband has
prevailed in many places. When marriage follows closely after puberty
it is difficult to determine whether the custom really belongs to the
puberty rites, or to those of marriage. I am not concerned here to
deny that among many peoples who practise it as part of the marriage
rites it may have been such _ab initio_. The determination of this
question would involve an examination of marriage customs extending
far beyond the space at my disposal. But it will be admitted that as
puberty rites gradually {279} became simplified or altogether obsolete
such a custom could only maintain existence as part of the marriage
rites. It is then usually (but, as we shall see, not always) performed
by one or more of the bridegroom’s friends or by an appointed
official, and ultimately degenerates into the _jus primæ noctis_
vested in some powerful personage, as a lord or priest. Nothing of the
sort appears in the accounts which have come down to us of the ancient
rite in Western Asia. In all of them (save among the Lydians) emphasis
is laid on the performance by a stranger. At Babylon our information
does not connect the rite with marriage at all. Elsewhere it is
referred to not as part of the marriage rites, but as a preliminary to
marriage.
That such a rite should be found annexed to the temple and worship of
a luxurious goddess causes no surprise; on the contrary, it is what
might have been anticipated. Every reader will call to mind numerous
examples of archaic rites which have become attached to Christian
festivals, and of Christian shrines which are simply shrines of an
earlier religion adapted and consecrated afresh under Christian names.
The difficulty of uprooting old customs, and their consequent
incorporation and adaptation by advancing culture or a new religion,
are phenomena too well known to be insisted on here. Probably the
Cypriote mysteries were adapted to the worship of Aphrodite from a
ruder stage in which no divinity was invoked. And if this could happen
once in Western Asia, it might have happened also at Babylon, at
Heliopolis and elsewhere. It is possible that other practices, such as
the prostitution of the Armenian girls at the temple of Anaitis, or
that of the Lydian and Paphian girls to earn their dowries, are no
more than the adaptation of a custom common enough in the lower {280}
barbarism, by which unmarried girls have unfettered liberty in their
sexual relations. The Armenian maidens, at all events, though spoken
of as harlots by Strabo, do not seem to have exercised their calling
for money, nor to have admitted indiscriminately to their favours all
who offered. They reserved themselves for their equals in rank, and
entertained them in their dwellings with more hospitality than in a
spinsters’ house in the Pacific Islands. The surmise may be indulged
that it was in fact originally, if not in later times, their way of
choosing husbands. The Lydian girls are expressly said to have
bestowed themselves in marriage.
Mannhardt contended (and his opinion is so far endorsed by Dr Frazer)
that the maidens who surrendered their virginity in connection with
the cult of a goddess like Aphrodite did so in imitation of their
divinity, as her representatives, the human players of her
part.[280.1] This may have been the mode by which the ancient custom
was adapted to the newer order of things. But it is submitted that it
is a very insufficient account of it. The custom must have been older
than any definite belief in the goddess’s habits or any story of her
various intrigues. Are we then to suppose that it was a magical rite
designed to promote the fertility of animal and vegetable life? Such
rites are known in both hemispheres. The great goddess worshipped
under different names throughout Western Asia personified, we may
concede, the reproductive energies of Nature. Many of the rites
employed in her cult are in the last analysis magical, and had for
their purpose to assist those energies. By a well-known mental process
magical efficacy is often ascribed to acts and usages not essentially
of a magical, nor indeed of a {281} ritual, character. Thus the
general prostitution of young girls to earn their dowries, and that of
widows--customs which are probably of quite a different origin--are
among certain tribes of Morocco held to be not without their effect on
the abundance of the crops.[281.1] Such a belief may have consecrated
lives of habitual harlotry in Armenia, in Lydia, and in Cyprus. It by
no means follows that every rite performed in the name of the goddess
acquired that meaning, still less that that was its primitive meaning.
Many such rites would be wholly personal. They would be intended to
secure personal blessings to the worshipper, and nothing more, though
everyone might have been required to perform them. It is needless to
suppose without express evidence that the rite described by Herodotus
as taking place at the temple of Mylitta had more than a personal
reference. The most obvious personal blessing to be secured from such
a goddess would be fertility. It is possible that this was the
intention here. Puberty customs are doubtless performed for the good
of the individual, and of the tribe or nationality through the
individual. We must not infer, however, that the personal blessing of
fertility was held to be the natural and direct outcome of the
sacrifice of virginity. That was not the way in which it would be
envisaged, however logical such an outcome may seem to us. The savage
would not expect the natural result, but one that we call magical. At
the stage represented by the Babylonian custom the blessing was
invoked from the goddess, and was her gift. In other words, it was not
that specific ritual act of coition, but future acts rendered licit
and consecrated by it which were expected to bear fruit. {282} This
interpretation is perhaps strengthened by a rite said to have been
regularly performed in the Troad. “Every maiden on the approach of her
marriage was required to go and bathe in the Skamandros, and standing
in the water to pronounce the sacred formula: ‘Skamandros, take my
maidenhood as a gift.’” Dr Farnell, citing the fictitious letter of
Aischines on which the evidence for the custom rests, observes: “The
letter narrates how a mortal assumed the human form of the god and
took a treacherous advantage; but originally, we may suppose, the rite
of consecration was not associated with any anthropomorphic divinity,
but was performed in the hope that the spirit of the river might enter
into the maiden, and that the child she might afterwards bear to her
wedded husband might thus be mystically akin to the guardian of the
land. The many early myths concerning heroines and princesses being
made pregnant by river-gods suggest that the ritual just described was
once prevalent in primitive Greece; for such myths could arise
naturally from such a custom.”[282.1] But the ritual itself suggests
that it is a relic of a still older rite parallel with the rite at the
temple of Mylitta.
The last of the problems connected with the rite is to explain why it
must be accomplished with a stranger. If, as has been alleged, the act
of defloration of a maiden were held to be in itself dangerous, it is
not easy to say why anyone, even a stranger, should undertake it,
unless he were strangely ignorant of the risk or strangely careless.
In some places, indeed, a maiden who had come to submit to the rite
may have been outwardly indistinguishable from one of the _hierai_;
and hence the man may have been unconscious {283} of his risk, or may
have been willing to undertake a risk thus diminished. But at Babylon
the women who came thus to offer themselves wore a distinctive
head-dress of cords, the emblem, perhaps, of their condition of
virginity. Moreover, they seem to have been penned in enclosures
divided from each other by ropes, which were broken to let them out
for the accomplishment of the rite. There was therefore no mistake as
to their status or object.[283.1] On the other hand, if the
defloration simply involved ritual impurity such as could be removed
by the proper ceremonies, it must be asked why the task was left to a
stranger. None of our ancient authorities have condescended to define
a stranger. We are probably to understand by that term one who was not
an inhabitant of the town or who was not a member of the community.
The analogy of certain Australian rites already referred to, and of
rites of marriage in some other parts of the world, would lead us to
suppose that what was really intended in the first instance was one
who was not eligible for sexual relations with the woman in the
ordinary course. Thus in Peru and New Granada “the nearest relations
of the bride and her most intimate friends” are said to have performed
the corresponding rite[283.2]; and even her father is credited {284}
with the labour among the Orang-Sakai of the Malay Peninsula, the
Battas of Sumatra, the Alfoers of Celebes, and on the Island of Ceylon
and the eastern Moluccas.[284.1] From this the more developed
morality of the Babylonians would recoil. Mr Crawley, commenting on
the Australian rite, surmises that in it “initiation” and marriage are
one, and that “initiation” ceremonies (that is to say, puberty
ceremonies) “of this kind are marriages to the other sex in
abstract.”[284.2] The surmise follows from his theory of the danger
of human contact, and especially of marriage, and the importance of
ceremonies to avert the peril. The theory itself--at all events pushed
to the length to which Mr Crawley pushes it--is very questionable. But
defloration at puberty, whether natural or artificial, is undoubtedly
(whatever else it may be) a formal introduction to sexual life. Such
introduction might be the more authoritative and emphatic if given by
one (or more) with whom sexual relations would not in future be
sustained. It is a ritual act. Ritual acts are acts out of the
ordinary course--often clean contrary to the ordinary course. Therein
consists their essence, their virtue. But in the growth of
civilization, with the emergence of a new religion or different
customs, the real meaning of a traditional rite is obscured, the rite
itself becomes decadent, and a new meaning is assigned to it. Hence a
puberty rite might easily become part of the cult of a goddess like
Mylitta.
Moreover, at the stage of decay which the rite had reached at Babylon
and elsewhere in Western Asia, the proviso that the person with whom
the act was performed must be a stranger might be intended to prevent
an {285} assignation. When the act had to be performed as a sacrifice
in honour of the goddess it might be regarded as a profanation to
perform it as an act of inclination with a favoured lover. The best
way to prevent this would be to require that it should be performed
with a chance stranger, who might further be looked upon, if
Mannhardt’s interpretation be correct, as a representative sent by the
goddess to play Adonis to the maiden’s Aphrodite. The rite at Byblus
lends countenance to this conjecture. It is supported also by the
artificial defloration enacted only in symbol by Roman brides, but in
grim earnest at the temples of Siva by brides in Southern India.
But we are able to carry the conjecture a step beyond this. Here I am
glad to avail myself of the criticism of Professor Westermarck, who
has pointed out that a semi-supernatural character is very generally
ascribed to strangers, and that intercourse with a stranger would thus
be productive of blessings--especially the blessing of fertility--to
the woman.[285.1] From the large collections on the subject of
relations with strangers brought together by Professor Frazer and
Professor Westermarck himself it results that a stranger is regarded
as uncanny. He is a being possessed of unknown powers for good or ill.
His _orenda_, as we have seen, is incalculable.[285.2] He must
therefore be either repulsed at once as a foe or received and treated
with extraordinary respect. The former course is not usually adopted
unless the strangers come in force or there are other circumstances
that suggest hostile intent. The latter course has given birth to laws
of hospitality recognized all over the world, however the exact
procedure may differ among different peoples. {286} But even in this
case the stranger is looked upon with suspicion until he has undergone
what M. van Gennep calls rites of aggregation to the group or society
to which he has come. These rites may be of the most simple character,
such as spitting upon his host or drinking a cup of water or coffee
from his host’s hand; or they may involve a trial of strength, an
exchange of gifts, the offering of sacrifices or entry into a
blood-covenant.[286.1]
The uncanny character thus attributed to a stranger includes not
merely the possession of magical powers. In a society where everyone,
or at least a large and unknown number of persons, is believed to be
endowed more or less with magical powers, this is a matter of course.
But a halo of still more mysterious possibility encircles a stranger:
he may be a superhuman Power, a dead man, or even a god. Hence arise
the numerous stories, many of which have been collected by Mr Gerould
in his monograph on _The Grateful Dead_, published by the Folk-Lore
Society in 1908. These stories usually represent the stranger as a
dead man to whom the hero has rendered some service, such as that of
burying his corpse. But perhaps the best known, and among the most
ancient is that found in the book of Tobit, where the stranger is the
angel Raphael. A tale even older and more widespread is preserved
among the Hebrew traditions as that of Lot and the two angels who
visited him in Sodom. Probably it was part of the common Semitic
stock, and as such would have been known at Babylon. Substantially the
same story is that of Baucis and Philemon reported by Ovid; and the
tale of Demeter’s wanderings and many another in Greek legend rest on
a common basis of belief. Continental folklore down to modern days
{287} identifies the unknown beggar as Jesus Christ Himself or, if a
woman, his Mother. The Bantu of South-West Africa tell of the great
goddess Nzambi who begs in disguise for a little palm-wine to slake
the thirst of her child. Refusal is followed in the night by
punishment; the smiling valley, like that of Sodom, is covered by the
waters of a lake; and the only person saved is he who had taken
compassion and granted the poor old mendicant’s request.[287.1] Lest
this be thought a tale imported from Europe, let me add that in Annam
a similar tale is told to account for three lakes in the province of
Thay Nguyen. There a beggar-woman is repulsed by all save an old widow
and her son, who give of their poverty food and a night’s lodging to
the miserable and unattractive creature. She turns out to be a
supernatural personage. She has come down to test the hearts of the
devotees who have flocked to a great religious festival periodically
held in the place. The hypocrites who repulsed her are all overwhelmed
in a deluge of waters; only the widow and her son are saved.[287.2]
To labour the proof is unnecessary. It is abundantly clear that a
stranger may be far more than mortal, and that this possibility has
deeply affected the evolution of hospitality. The stranger must be
conciliated. He must be bound by sacred ties to the host--ties which
he cannot break so long as he remains under the host’s protection.
Among the rites of aggregation--the rites effecting this union--M. van
Gennep reckons the use of the women frequently accorded to visitors in
the lower culture; and he suggests that the rite at the temple of
Mylitta was such a rite of aggregation. It may have been so. It may
have been expected of all masculine strangers at Babylon to unite
themselves with the natives by means {288} of this homage to the
goddess. All that can be said is that Herodotus gives no hint of it.
According to him it was only on the women that the duty lay--and that
no more than once in their lives--of submitting to the rite. The
mystery attaching to a stranger and involving the expectation of
divine blessing is a sufficient reason for the performance of the rite
with one who might be a god in person, and in any event must have been
held to be divinely sent; for chance is the servant of the gods.
Thence it is but a step (and the step was taken elsewhere, if not at
Babylon) to the substitution of the priest for the stranger or the
god; and the way is opened to the abuses of the _jus primæ
noctis_.[288.1]
Before dismissing the subject reference may be made to Professor
Cumont’s note on the subject of religious prostitution in _Les
Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain_ (Paris, 1907), pp. 143,
286, as showing the facility with which a learned and highly
distinguished scholar may fail to appreciate the complexity of the
problem. He makes no distinction between the three customs of
sacrifice of virginity, prostitution to earn a dowry, and a life of
religious prostitution in the service of the goddess. He refers them
all to the primitive constitution of the Semitic tribe, and explains
them as a modified form, become utilitarian, of an ancient exogamy.
Mating with a virgin, he holds, resulted in defilement; therefore she
was given first to a stranger; only after that could she be married to
a man of her own race. I pass by the confusion between the three
customs in question, to all of which his explanation will not equally
{289} apply. But if the explanation be correct for any of them, either
the ancient exogamy of the Semites must have been quite different from
exogamy as generally understood, or it must have been not merely
modified but transformed. Exogamy, as generally understood, has
nothing to do with race or nationality. It is simply the savage rule
corresponding to our table of prohibited degrees.[289.1] A man may
not marry or have sexual relations with one who is akin to him; every
member of his clan (not of his tribe or his race) is akin to him;
therefore, he cannot marry or have sexual relations with any member of
his clan. The origin of this rule is still disputed by
anthropologists, and we need not here discuss it. But since exogamy
bars a man from sexual relations with every member of his kin, it is
obvious that it cannot be merely a preliminary to marriage within the
kin. Where exogamy is the law, the bar is absolute; it is the law for
the whole of life; it is not intended to provide for a temporary union
outside the kin in order to prepare the way for a permanent union
within the kin. Exogamy, therefore, I submit, cannot explain these
customs.
THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF
DESTINY
{290}
In the following pages I propose to consider some of the auguries
which have been deemed necessary to the choice of a king. Kingship is
not found in the most archaic forms of society known to us. But where
the community is organized on the basis of monarchy the king tends to
be regarded as something more than ordinary humanity. He has powers
and privileges denied to other mortals. These very powers and
privileges and the sanctity of which they are the appanage entail,
however, taboos and penalties of the most burdensome description.
Professor Frazer has abundantly illustrated this side of royalty, and
has also fully discussed some of the means whereby pretensions to the
throne are enforced. But there remain others witnessing not less than
those he has described to the extraordinary position of a king. Some
of these and their echoes in folk-tale and romance will repay a little
attention.
The famous Coronation Stone has an authentic history of six hundred
years. At the time of the conquest of Scotland by Edward I., it was
the stone on which the kings of the Scots were, according to
immemorial custom, installed. Regarded by the Scots as sacred, it was
therefore removed by Edward’s order from Scone, where it stood, to
Westminster, and was enclosed in what is now, {291} and has been ever
since, the Coronation Chair. Its earlier history, as distinguished
from conjecture and legend, goes no further back than the middle of
the thirteenth century, or something less than half a century before
its removal to Westminster, when it is recorded by Fordun that
Alexander III. was solemnly placed upon it and hallowed to king by the
Bishop of St. Andrews (1249). But what is wanting in authentic history
has been abundantly made up in legend. The tale, of which there are
two versions, is the creation of a literary age. The Irish version
brings it, with the Tuatha Dé Danann, from Lochlann, or Scandinavia,
to Ireland. The Scottish version traces it on the other hand from
Egypt, whence it was carried by the Milesians. This was improved upon,
to the extent of identifying the stone with that used by Jacob as a
pillow on his journey from Beersheba to Haran. The attempt was thus
made, by connecting the ruling race in Scotland with the legends of
the Hebrew patriarchs, to confer upon the stone the united sanctity of
religion, of antiquity, and of patriotism.
In the course of its wanderings the stone is said to have reached
Tara; and it is declared to be the famous _Lia Fáil_, or Stone of
Destiny, one of the two wonders of Tara celebrated in Irish sagas. We
are indebted to the _Book of Lismore_, a fifteenth-century manuscript,
for an enumeration of the wonderful properties of the _Lia Fáil_. The
Colloquy with the Ancients, which is comprised in this precious
manuscript, records a number of Irish traditions, some of which would
else in all probability have perished beyond recovery. There we
learn--the account is put into the mouth of no less a personage than
Ossian himself--that “Anyone of all Ireland on whom an _ex parte_
imputation rested was set upon that stone: {292} then if the truth
were in him he would turn pink and white; but if otherwise, it was a
black spot that in some conspicuous place would appear on him.
Further, when Ireland’s monarch stepped on to it the stone would cry
out under him, and her three arch-waves would boom in answer: as the
wave of Cleena, the wave of Ballintoy, and the wave of Loch Rury; when
a provincial king went on it the flag would rumble under him; when a
barren woman trod it, it was a dew of dusky blood that broke out on
it; when one that would bear children tried it, it was a ‘nursing
drop’”--that is, says Mr Standish O’Grady, from whose translation I
quote, semblance of milk--“that it sweated.”[292.1] The Colloquy is
imperfect, the legible portion of the manuscript ceasing a line or two
further on, just as we are about to be told how it was that the stone
left Ireland.[292.2] Its subsequent adventures are related by
Keating, who says that it was sent to Feargus the Great, “to sit upon,
for the purpose of being proclaimed king of Scotland.” However, it is
not to the adventures of the stone, but to its properties that I wish
now to direct attention. With regard to the former, all that I need
add is that the legend has been subjected by Skene, and more recently
by Mr P. J. O’Reilly, to an exhaustive analysis, which renders it
clear that there is no trustworthy evidence that the stone of Tara is
the Coronation Stone. The antecedent improbability is great; and even
if it were indisputable that the stone in question was no longer at
Tara in the eleventh century, the chasm between that period and
Fergus, whose very existence only rested on legend, {293} would still
have to be bridged, and the variants of the story would need to be
reconciled.[293.1]
The properties of the stone of Tara were oracular; and the stone
itself was one of a large class of stones endowed in popular opinion
with divining powers, and actually resorted to for the purpose of
enquiry. When the reputation of an oracle is once established, it is
consulted for many purposes. Not only political, but juridical and
domestic purposes are enumerated by the author of the Colloquy in
regard to the _Lia Fáil_. Among these functions is the recognition of
the monarch. The phrase used in the Colloquy is ambiguous. It is not
stated why, or on what occasion, the stone was expected to make its
voice heard. In practice the only object of obtaining such a
recognition would be that of determining the succession to the throne.
Keating supplies the missing explanation. “It was a stone,” he says,
“on which were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person who
had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland at the time of
the men of Ireland being in assembly at Tara to choose a king over
them.”[293.2] Whether as a matter of fact the stone ever was
consulted with this object is another question. It is enough at {294}
present to know that Irish tradition asserted this use of the oracle.
In a semi-civilized community a disputed succession is of frequent
occurrence. To prevent a dispute, and to settle it when it arises,
various means are adopted. The usual Irish plan seems to have been the
custom of Tanistry. “During the lifetime of a chief,” Sullivan tells
us, “his successor was elected under the name of _Tanaiste_; and on
the death of the former the latter succeeded him. The _Tanaiste_ was
not necessarily the son of the chief: he might be his brother or
nephew; but he should belong to his _Fine_,” or family.[294.1]
That this mode of election was not always successful we may easily
believe. That it was the gradual outcome of the experience of a long
series of generations is probable. Where for one cause or another it
failed, how would the succession be determined? The most obvious means
would be either conflict or divination. According to the legends,
divination was sometimes actually used to determine the appointment of
king. On one occasion in the days of Conchobar, the famous King of
Ulster, the monarchy of Ireland had been vacant for seven years. This
state of things being found intolerable, a general assembly was held
at Tara to choose a king. The royal houses of Connaught, South
Munster, North Munster, and Leinster were there, but the Ulstermen
were absent; for there was bitter feud between Ulster and the rest of
Ireland, and they would not hold kingly counsel together. The mode of
election adopted was divination by means of a dream induced by certain
ceremonies. The ceremonies began with a bull-feast. A bull was killed,
and a man was gorged with its flesh and {295} broth. We are told “he
slept under that meal.” It is not incredible. Then “a true oration,”
which I understand to mean an incantation, was pronounced over him by
four Druids. He dreamed, and screamed out of his sleep, and related to
the assembled kings that he had seen in his dream “a soft youth,
noble, and powerfully made, with two red stripes on his skin around
his body, and he standing at the pillow of a man who was lying in a
decline at Emain Macha,” the royal palace of Ulster. Messengers were
accordingly sent thither, and the description was found to correspond
with that of Lugaidh Reo-derg, the pupil of Cuchulainn, who was then
lying ill. Lugaidh was brought to Tara, recognized as the subject of
the vision, and proclaimed as monarch of Ireland.[295.1]
This is not the only instance in Irish legend of election to the
throne by _incubatio_, or divination by means of a dream. Conaire,
whose tale is filled with incidents explicable only by the comparative
studies of ethnologists, was thus elected. Though really begotten by a
supernatural bird-man, he was regarded as the son of his predecessor,
Eterscéle. But this does not seem to have given him any title to
succeed. A bull-feast was accordingly given; and the bull-feaster in
his sleep at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing
along the road of Tara with a stone in his sling. Warned and
counselled by his bird-relatives, Conaire fulfilled these
requirements. He found three kings (doubtless of the under-kings of
Ireland) awaiting him, with royal raiment to clothe his nakedness, and
a chariot to convey him to Tara. It was a disappointment to the folk
of Tara to {296} find that their bull-feast and their spell of truth
chanted over the feaster had resulted in the selection of a beardless
lad. But he convinced them that he was the true successor, and was
admitted to the kingship.[296.1]
A traditional story is not a record of fact. It is a record only of
what is believed. Probably both Lugaidh Reo-derg and Conaire are
mythical personages, but their stories certainly embody what was
thought to be possible. The description of the election by divination
is substantially the same in both. It may therefore be taken, if not
as approximately correct, at least as showing that election by
divination was regarded among the ancient Irish as in the last resort
a reasonable and proper manner of ascertaining and appointing a king.
In this the Irish were by no means singular. The traditions of other
nations point to the same result, and the customs in various parts of
the world confirm it. The incident of election by divination is so
picturesque and so suitable for the purposes of a story-teller that it
is to be expected far more often in a tale than in real life. But that
the story-incident is based on actual practice, I think there is
sufficient ground for believing.
We will first shortly review a few stories of election by divination.
The Saxons of Transylvania tell of a peasant who had three sons, of
whom the youngest was despised by the others because he was weak and
small while they were tall and strong. In that kingdom God Himself
chose the king from time to time. The mode of ascertaining the divine
will was to call a general assembly of the people on the king’s meadow
in the largest commune of the country, and there to lay the crown at a
certain hour on a hillock or mound. All the bells in the {297} town
pealed forth together; and the crown slowly raised itself in the air,
floated round over the heads of the assembly, and finally alighted on
that of the destined sovereign. The two elder brothers made ready to
attend the ceremony, but bade the youngest remain at home in the
ashes, where his place was. However, he slipped out after them, and,
for fear they would see him, crept into a pigsty that stood at the end
of the town abutting on the meadow. The crown, passing over all the
people present, sank down upon the pigsty. Surprised and curious to
know what this strange proceeding meant, the people ran to the pigsty,
there found the trembling boy, and drawing him forth bowed the knee
and saluted him as the new king, called by God to occupy the
throne.[297.1]
In this Transylvanian _märchen_ the crown is the instrument of
divination. Going next to the dim and distant East we find other
emblems of royalty thus represented. In the _Jātaka_, the great book
of Buddhist Birth-stories, the supposititious child of a merchant’s
wife of Maghada is the hero of a similar adventure. He is, however, no
ordinary child but the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha in an earlier
birth. He was called Banyan, from having been found under a banyan
tree, where his own mother had forsaken him at his birth. Travelling
with two faithful companions who had been born on the same day as
himself, he came to Benares, and entering the royal park lay down upon
a slab of stone with his two companions beside it. The previous night
they had slept in the city under a tree at a temple. One of the youths
had awakened at dawn and heard some cocks quarrelling in the branches.
He listened, and learnt that whoever killed a certain one of these
birds and ate of his fat would become king that very day, he who ate
the middle flesh {298} would become commander-in-chief, and he who ate
the flesh about the bones would become treasurer. He killed the bird,
gave the fat to Banyan, the middle flesh to his other friend, and
gnawed the bones himself. Now the king of Benares was dead, and that
day the festal car was going forth with the five symbols of royalty,
the sword, the parasol, the diadem, the slippers, and the fan, within
it, to choose the king’s successor. As the three youths lay in the
royal park, the ceremonial chariot rolled up and stopped before them.
The chaplain (presumably a Brahman) followed. Removing the cloth from
Banyan’s feet he examined the marks upon them. “Why!” he exclaimed,
“he is destined to be king of all India, let alone Benares!” and he
ordered the gongs and the cymbals to strike up. This awoke Banyan, who
sat up. The chaplain fell down before him, saying: “Divine being, the
kingdom is thine.” “So be it,” quietly answered the youth; the
chaplain placed him upon the heap of precious jewels and sprinkled him
to be king.[298.1]
In a Calmuck tale the instrument of divination is not one of the royal
insignia, but a sacrificial cake. An assembly of the people is held to
choose a new khan; and it is decided to appeal to the judgement of
heaven by throwing a sacrificial cake, called _Baling_, apparently a
figure of dough, into the air, at the time of the sacrifice
(_Streuopfer_). On whosesoever head the cake fell, he should be
khan.[298.2]
A tale of the Teleut Tartars tells of a father who was enraged with
his son because he interpreted the cry of some birds, declaring that
they foretold that he himself would become emperor, and his father
would drink his urine. The father, in his anger, struck off his son’s
head. {299} He then killed his horse, skinned it, rolled his son’s
body in the hide and flung it into the sea. The waves carried the
package to a village, where an old woman found it. She opened the
leather, and the youth came out alive. The prince of that land had
died, leaving no son. His subjects took two golden posts, and fastened
on their tops two tapers. They then set up the posts in the middle of
the village. Everyone was required to jump through them, and the
tapers would fall on him who was to be the prince. But they
obstinately remained standing until the destined youth came, when they
both fell on his neck and burst into flame. If he had not become an
emperor, at least he was now a prince: and with that variation, the
whole of the bird’s prophecy was in due course fulfilled.[299.1] But
we need not follow it further. The hero of a Balochi tale likewise
falls under his father’s displeasure. His father was a king, and the
son took advantage of his royalty to break the crockery of his
father’s subjects. When the people complained, his father drove him
away. In the course of his wanderings, he came to a town where the
king had just died. The palace door was shut, and upon it was written:
“He whose hand shall open this door, shall be king of this city.” The
wandering prince, reading this, said: “Bismillah.” He pushed the door:
it opened. He entered, seated himself on the throne, and became
king.[299.2]
The _Kah-gyur_, a sacred work of Tibetan Buddhism dating back to the
eleventh century or thereabouts, contains a story of king Ánanda. The
name Ánanda is famous in the literature of Buddhism as that of a
favourite disciple of the master; but it is here used in the
indiscriminate way in which the mediæval friars used {300} the names
of Pompey, Titus, Pliny, and other famous Romans, in the _Gesta
Romanorum_. This king had five sons, of whom the youngest was endowed
with qualities better suited to a ruler than the others, and to whom
accordingly he desired to leave the kingdom. But he feared that if he
invested his youngest son with sovereign power, his kinsmen would
reproach him for having passed over his elder sons. As a way of escape
from the difficulty he decreed that after his death his sons should be
tested, and that he should be made king whom the jewel-shoes should
fit, under whom the throne should remain steadfast, and on whose head
the diadem should rest unshaken, whom the women should recognize, and
who should guess six objects to be divined by insight.[300.1] There
is a triple test here--divination by the royal insignia, the choice of
the harem, and the solution of a riddle. I shall return to the two
former tests. But before passing to another type of story I may note
that in the _Bakhtyár-Náma_, a Persian romance translated by Sir
William Ouseley, who brought it from the East in the early part of the
last century, there is a story in which the succession to the throne
is made to depend upon the solution of three riddles. The king having
died without issue, it was resolved to go to the prison and propound
three questions to the criminals confined there. He who answered best
was recognized as king.[300.2] Riddles are regarded in certain stages
of civilization as a test of more than ordinary wisdom. Their position
in the evolution of thought and custom is well worth investigation. It
is too large a subject for discussion here.
Occasionally the instrument of divination is wholly wanting, and the
first man met with is taken for king. {301} Among a tribe in Morocco
is told a tale of which the hero is made king, because he is the first
man found outside the city-gate when it is opened in the
morning.[301.1] Another of these stories is that of Ali Shar and
Zumurrud in the _Arabian Nights_. Ali Shar was a prodigal, and
Zumurrud was his favourite female slave. By a series of diverting
adventures which do not concern us, they are separated. After much
suffering, Zumurrud contrives to possess herself of a man’s clothes,
horse and sword. In the course of her wanderings she draws nigh to a
city-gate, where she finds the emirs and nobles with the troops drawn
up and waiting, as Conaire found the three kings waiting on the way to
Tara. The soldiery, on seeing her, dash forward. They dismount and
prostrate themselves before her, saluting her as lord and sultan. On
enquiry she learns that the sultan of the city is dead; and on such
occasions it is the custom that the troops sally forth to the suburbs,
there to sojourn for three days. Whoever comes during that time from
the quarter whence she has come is made king. Being a lady of
resource, she accepts the position, administers the kingdom with
efficiency, and ultimately finds means to avenge herself on her
enemies and to be reunited with her master, Ali Shar.[301.2] An
Indian folk-tale relates that in a certain city “it was the custom
that when the rája died the nobles of the kingdom used to take their
seats at the gate of the city, and the first man who appeared before
them they made their rája.”[301.3]
The same tale is told by the Taranchi Tartars, an {302} agricultural
people who are now settled in the valley of the Ili, a large river
flowing into Lake Balkash, in Central Asia. But it is told with this
difference. When the hero draws nigh to the gate of the city, all the
people cry out “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” On enquiring why they do this, they
reply: “Our ruler has been dead for three days. He had a magical bird,
which has been let fly, and on whosesoever head the bird settles, him
we raise to be our prince.” Here the augury is drawn from a
bird.[302.1]
In another Tartar _märchen_, this time from the west of Siberia, the
ruler of the town has grown old, and is desirous of retiring. He has a
bird which is let fly and chooses a woman. She is immediately accepted
as prince and installed in the place of the old man.[302.2] In a
Kurdish _märchen_ a special bird called “the bird of dominion” is
fetched, it is not said whence, for the purpose of the
divination.[302.3]
An animal of some kind is, in fact, the agent in most of these tales.
A Buddhist tale from Cambodia tells us that, the royal family having
become extinct, it was the custom to ask the royal family of another
kingdom to furnish a king. The council of mandarins determined to take
this course. Under the advice of an old astrologer horses were
harnessed to the carriage--we must understand, no doubt, the royal
carriage--and then allowed to go in any direction they pleased,
without a driver. This is described as consulting the horses. The
first day the horses re-entered the palace. The next day they drew the
carriage in the direction of a neighbouring kingdom. Twice, thrice the
carriage was turned back; but the {303} horses persisted in drawing it
again in the same direction. It was accordingly decided to demand a
prince from that kingdom.[303.1]
In the East, however, as might be expected, it is usually the royal
animal, the elephant, which thus confers the kingdom. I have already
cited one great collection of Indian tales. There is another, only
second to the _Jātaka_ in extent, the _Kathá Sarit Ságara_, or
Ocean of the Streams of Story, translated a few years ago by Dr
Tawney. It contains a _märchen_, perhaps derived from that older and
more famous collection, the _Panchatantra_, of a man who retired with
his wife to the forest, to practise austerities. While there he
rescued from the river a wretch whose hands and feet had been cut off,
and who had been thrown by his enemies into the stream to die. His
wife, probably sick of austerities, falls in love with the cripple
thus rescued, and plots her husband’s death. She succeeds in
precipitating him into the river; but instead of being drowned he is
thrown on the bank near a city. “Now it happened that at that time the
king of that city had just died, and in that country there was an
immemorial custom, that an auspicious elephant was driven about by the
citizens, and any man that he took up with his trunk and placed on his
back, was anointed king.” The hero of the story, who is “an
incarnation of a portion of a Bodhisattva,” is of course chosen; and
when he gets the chance he inflicts condign punishment on his
wife.[303.2] The elephant is here described as “an auspicious
elephant.” Sometimes he is called the “crown-elephant,” the special
property and symbol of royalty. So in a Tamil story we learn that the
king of {304} a certain city dying childless, on his death-bed called
his ministers together and directed them “to send his crown-elephant
with a flower-wreath in his trunk, and to choose him on whom the
elephant throws the garland, as his successor.”[304.1] In a folk-tale
from the far north of India it is “the sacred elephant” before whom
all the inhabitants are required to pass in file, and the animal is
expected to elect one of them to the vacant throne “by kneeling down
and saluting the favoured individual as he passed by, for in this
manner kings were elected in that country.”[304.2] In a story which
appears to come from Gujerat, the king dies without an heir, and the
astrologers prophesy that his heir would be the first who entered the
gates of the city on the morrow of the king’s decease, and around
whose neck the sacred elephant would throw a garland of
flowers.[304.3]
At other times the elephant alone does not make the choice. With him
is conjoined some other animal or symbol of royalty. A tale from
Kashmir speaks of a land where, when the king died, his elephant “was
driven all over the country and his hawk was made to fly here, there
and everywhere in search of a successor; and it came to pass that
before whomsoever the elephant bowed and on whosesoever hand the hawk
alighted, he was supposed to be the divinely chosen one.”[304.4] In
the _Kathákoça_, a collection of stories illustrating the tenets and
practice of Jainism, five ordeals, as they are expressly called, are
invoked. “The mighty elephant came into the garden outside the city.
There the elephant sprinkled Prince {305} Amaradatta [we have already
heard of sprinkling as a means of hallowing to kingship], and put him
on its back. Then the horse neighed. The two chowries fanned the
prince. An umbrella was held over his head. A divine voice was heard
in the air: ‘Long live King Amaradatta.’”[305.1]
In most of these cases the decision is clearly regarded as the
judgement of Heaven; and in every case the judgement of Heaven may at
least be inferred. The incident is hardly less a favourite in the West
than in the East. In the West, too, it is an appeal to the judgement
of Heaven. All the European stories, however, in which it occurs have
been recorded within the last century; consequently the incident in
question appears only in a very late form. Now an appeal to the
judgement of Heaven in the selection of a ruler is familiar to the
peasant mind of the continent in one solitary instance--that of the
choice of a pope. Accordingly this is the favourite, if not the only
form of the story as it is told in France, Italy, and Switzerland. The
charming collection by the late M. Luzel of religious and
quasi-religious tales of Lower Brittany contains one entitled “Pope
Innocent.” The hero is a son of the King of France cast off by his
parents, who attempt to put him to death. He sets out for Rome to be
present at the election of a new pope. On the way he falls in with two
Capuchin monks. The elder of them is gentle to him, the other
suspicious and hostile. The youth is a bit of a prig. Perhaps this is
not to be wondered at, seeing that he is endowed with supernatural
knowledge and power. These qualities make his conduct throughout the
journey enigmatical to the point of excusing, if not justifying, the
attitude of his unfriendly companion. {306} Everyone takes him for a
sorcerer; and the younger monk says in so many words to the other,
that they will be lucky if he do not bring them to the gallows or the
stake before reaching Rome. As they draw near the holy city, the boy
hears some birds in a hedge foretell that one of the three will be
made pope, just as the cocks were overheard in the story I have cited
from the _Jātaka_. Thereupon he enquires of each of his companions
what office he will give him if he (the monk) attain this dignity. The
elder monk promises to make him his first cardinal, the younger
contemptuously says he will make him beadle in his cathedral. Arrived
at Rome, they find that the choice of a pope proceeds in this way:
There are to be three days’ processions. Every pilgrim has to carry a
candle, not lighted, in his hand; and he whose candle lights of itself
is the person designated by God to the office of pope. The youth,
however, has no money to buy candles. So he carries merely a white
wand which he has cut in the hedge where the birds sang; and people,
seeing him, shrug their shoulders and exclaim: “Look at that poor
innocent!” It is, however, not the candle of an archbishop, or bishop,
or of any great dignitary of the church; it is not that of an abbot,
or a monk, or even of a simple priest, which lights; it is the boy
Innocent’s white wand. The omen is refused on the first day; nor is it
accepted until it has been repeated on the second and third days of
the ceremony. At last the premier cardinal kneels before him,
acknowledges him as pope and asks for his benediction. Thus Innocent
becomes pope at Rome, by the will of God.[306.1]
The story of Pope Innocent belongs to the cycle of the Outcast Child,
a well-known group of folk-tales, of which {307} the examples most
familiar to us are the story of King Lear and that of Joseph and his
brethren. The hero (or heroine) of these tales is cast off by his
relatives for reasons at the least excusable. Sometimes, as in the
Teleut tale already mentioned, his life is attempted. But in the end
he attains a place and dignity which enable him to compel recognition
of his wrongs, and, after the infliction of retributive humiliation,
to pardon the offenders. In these _märchen_ the pope is not always
chosen by the burning of a taper. In the Italian variants the
favourite method is by a dove which alights on the hero’s head. In a
Swiss story from the Upper Valais two snow-white doves settle on his
shoulders. In a Basque story, as the travellers approach Rome the
bells begin to ring of themselves. In a story from Upper Brittany the
will of Heaven is declared by a bell, which rings of itself when the
destined pope passes beneath it. In a story from Normandy the new pope
is indicated by “a portion of Heaven stooping upon him whom Jesus
would choose to govern His Church.” The collector, while faithfully
recording this singular phrase, is puzzled by it, and suggests that it
must mean a cloud resting on him.[307.1] In all cases it is quite
clear that the falling of the lot, however it may be accomplished, is
regarded as a direct expression of the divine will. The sacred
character of the Papacy, and the names of historical popes, as
Innocent and Gregory, given to the heroes, raise the suspicion that
these tales are something more than _märchen_, and lead directly to
the enquiry, not whether such prodigies have in fact been the means of
determining the succession to the popedom, but whether they have been
believed to have occurred.
Now it happens that this very event was reported in {308} connection
with the election of the great Pope Innocent III., in the year 1198.
Three doves, it was said, flew about the church during the
proceedings, and at last one of them, a white one, came and perched on
his right side, which was held to be a favourable omen.[308.1] In the
atmosphere of the Middle Ages an occurrence of the kind, if it
happened, could not fail to make a great impression on the popular
mind. The dove would be regarded as no less than the embodiment of the
Holy Spirit. Long before Innocent’s day--indeed before the Middle Ages
began--something like this would seem to have happened. It is recorded
by Eusebius that in the reign of the Emperor Gordian, who ruled from
A.D. 238 to 244, when all the brethren were assembled in the church
for the purpose of electing a successor to Anteros, Bishop of Rome,
suddenly a dove flew down from on high and sat on the head of Fabian.
Thereupon the assembly with one voice acclaimed him bishop and seated
him on the episcopal throne.[308.2]
Nor were popes alone thus honoured. Dr Conyers Middleton, in his once
famous _Letter from Rome_, records that “in the cathedral church of
Ravenna I saw, in mosaic work, the pictures of those archbishops of
the place who, as all their historians affirm, were chosen for several
ages successively by the special designation of the Holy Ghost, who in
a full assembly of the clergy and people, used to descend visibly on
the person elect in the shape of a dove.”[308.3] Among the apocryphal
stories in _The Book of Sir John Maundeville_ we are told that in the
convent on Mount Sinai are many lamps burning. The author, {309}
whoever he may have been, writes rather a muddled account of the
election of “prelate of the abbey.” I gather from it that each monk
has a lamp, and that when a prelate is chosen his lamp will light of
itself, if he be a good man and worthy of the office; if otherwise,
the lamp, though lighted, will go out. An inconsistent tradition ran
that the priest who sang mass for the deceased dignitary found written
upon the altar the name of him who was to be chosen in his place. But
though the miracle-monger who writes under the name of Sir John
Maundeville professes to have been at the monastery and questioned the
monks, he admits that he could not induce them to tell him the
facts.[309.1]
The marvels reported of the election of Christian bishops are told
with little variation of the election of other rulers. Paulus Diaconus
relates that when Liutprand, king of the Lombards, a contemporary of
Charles Martel, was thought to be dying, his subjects met outside the
walls of his capital, Pavia, at the church of St Mary ad
Perticas,[309.2] to choose a successor. Their choice fell on the
king’s nephew, Hildeprand, in whose hand they formally placed the
royal spear. Immediately a cuckoo flew down and settled on the point
of the spear, as it will be remembered a cuckoo in the Tartar story
settled on the kalender’s head. This, however, was reckoned by {310}
Lombard wiseacres as an evil omen. Their augury was so far justified,
that King Liutprand did not die after all, but recovered from his
sickness and was not well pleased that his subjects had been in such a
hurry to find a successor. Yet he did not refuse to recognize his
nephew as co-ruler; and when he at last died, Hildeprand succeeded
him.[310.1] Of another king of the Lombards, Desiderius, a
contemporary of Charles the Great, the story is told that the Lombard
nobles were meeting to choose a king at Pavia, and Desiderius, a pious
man of noble lineage who dwelt at Brescia, journeyed thither to be
present, accompanied by a serving man. At Leno, between Brescia and
Cremona, being weary, he lay down under a tree to sleep. As he slept
his servant beheld a snake crawl forth and wind itself round his head
like a crown. The servant was afraid to move, lest the snake might
injure his master; but after a while it uncoiled and crept away.
Desiderius meanwhile had dreamt that the crown of the Lombards was
placed on his head. When he reached Pavia, the dream was
fulfilled.[310.2]
It is said that in Senjero, a petty kingdom in the south of Abyssinia,
when the king dies the nobles assemble outside the city in the open
plain, and wait until a vulture or an insect settles on one of them,
who is then saluted as king.[310.3] Everyone is familiar with the
story told by {311} Herodotus concerning the election of a successor
to Smerdis the Magian, usurper of the throne of Persia, how it was
agreed that the successful conspirators should meet at sunrise, and
that he whose horse first neighed should be king. According to
Herodotus, Darius won by a trick of his groom. That may or may not
have been. What interests us in the story is that it was believed that
the succession on this occasion to the throne of Persia was determined
by an augury drawn from horses, and that the neighing of Darius’ horse
was instantly followed by the further manifestation of the will of
Heaven in thunder and lightning from a clear sky.[311.1] The
elephant, the horse and the divine voice of Indian _märchen_ here
find their counterpart, if not in actual fact, at least in the serious
belief of the venerable historian, and the people whose tradition he
reports. In this connection it must not be forgotten that among many
peoples, horses were sacred animals. They were sacrificed to the gods;
they were looked upon as in the counsels of the gods; their neighing
was a favourable omen. It is therefore not at all improbable that
Herodotus is here recording the mode of choice actually
adopted.[311.2]
Similarly in the annals of Kedda, a portion of the Malay Peninsula,
there is a story of the rajah who was dethroned and fled. His nobles
and queen sent to the King of Siam for a new ruler. He, having
consulted his astrologers, was advised that the true heir to the
throne could only be discovered by a supernaturally intelligent
elephant, named Kamala Jauhari, which was wandering about on the
confines of Kedda and Patani. When the envoys brought back the message
to the Kedda chiefs, {312} they decked the palace for a fête. “Then
all the people held a fast for seven days and nights.… On the night
of the seventh day the _dupa_ and incense were burned, and all sorts
of perfumes were diffused around, and at the same time the name of the
super-intelligent elephant was invoked to attend upon the four
_mantris_ [ministers]. Immediately almost there was a sound, like the
rushing of a coming tempest, from the East, with earthquakes,
agitations and terrific sounds. In the midst of all this uproar the
terrified spectators were delighted to see Kamala Jauhari standing at
the hall, and thrusting up her trunk into it. The four mantris
instantly rubbed her with cosmetics and bathed her with lime-juice,
while others applied cosmetics and sweet-smelling oils, rubbing these
over its whole body. Then a meal was served up to it, and put into its
mouth. The state howdah was now placed on its back, along with all its
appurtenances, curtains and hangings. Then one of the mantris read the
King of Siam’s letter close to the ear of Kamala Jauhari, acquainting
her that she was expected to assist in finding out a rajah for Kedda
by all means. When Jauhari heard all this, she bowed her head and
played her trunk, and then set forth in the direction of the East,
followed and attended by from three to four hundred men, having
banners and flags streaming in the wind, and being supplied with all
necessaries, and armed with various kinds of spears, held in hand.” It
is needless to say that the expedition thus pompously described was
successful in discovering the boy. The elephant caught him up in her
trunk, and, placing him on her back in the howdah, carried him off in
triumph to the palace, where he was forthwith clad in royal robes and
crowned.[312.1]
In Indian belief it is not only super-intelligent {313} elephants
which can discover the future occupant of a throne. The elephant is
the possession and symbol of royalty. But in the stories, other royal
properties are also instruments of divination for that purpose. That
these stories were founded on current superstitions is shown by the
fact that among the ornaments of the throne of the famous Tippoo,
conquered by the British at the end of the eighteenth century, was a
bird of paradise made of gold and covered with diamonds, rubies and
emeralds, and represented in the act of fluttering. Of this bird it
was believed that every head it overshadowed would, in time, wear a
crown. When Tippoo was defeated and slain, the Marquis Wellesley, at
that time governor-general, sent it home to the Court of Directors of
the East India Company.[313.1] It is now at Windsor.
Coming back to Europe, we find the succession to the throne of one of
the Scythian tribes determined by the possession of a certain stone.
The author of the work on the names of rivers and mountains attributed
to Plutarch relates that in the river Tanais a stone like a crystal
grows. It resembles in shape a man wearing a crown. When the king
dies, whosoever finds it, and can produce it in the assembly held on
the banks of the river to elect a new sovereign, is recognized as the
rightful successor.[313.2] For this statement Ctesiphon on Plants and
Aristobulus on Stones are cited, authors whose works are lost and who
are unknown by any other citations. It is, therefore, impossible for
us to judge how far they are likely to have known, or with what
accuracy they may have presented, the practice of the barbarous tribe
referred to. There can, however, be no doubt that election by
divination has been resorted to by peoples in many parts of the world.
The succession of Grand Lamas of Lhasa {314} supplies examples of both
story and custom. The custom used to be to write on slips of paper the
names of all likely male children born under miraculous portents (of
which anon) just after the death of the preceding Lama, to put these
slips into a golden urn and thus ballot for his successor (or, as it
is believed, his new incarnation) amid constant prayer. But the
Chinese court, which has a considerable stake in the decision, was
thought to influence the selection. The state-oracle has therefore
predicted disaster by the appearance of a monster as the Dalai or
Grand Lama, if the ancient practice were continued; and on a recent
vacancy, in 1876, he foretold the discovery, by a pious monk, of the
future Grand Lama, announcing that his discovery would be accompanied
by horse-neighings. He sent this monk to Chukorgye, where he dreamed
that he was to look in a certain lake for the future Dalai. There,
pictured in the bosom of the lake, the monk saw the child with his
parents in the house where he was born, and at the same instant his
horse neighed. In due course the child himself was found, and
successfully encountered the usual test, by recognizing the articles
which had belonged to him in his previous life. Every child who is a
candidate has to pass this test. He is confronted with a duplicate
collection of various sacred objects, and he is required to point out
among them the genuine possessions of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama
is not the only Grand Lama. The head of every lamasery, or convent of
lamas, bears this title. When the Grand Lama of such a lamasery dies,
his successor, or new incarnation, is sought first of all by
divination. A diviner is called in, who, after consulting his books,
directs the lamas where to look for the boy. When they have found him,
he has to pass a similar test to that just described. In addition he
has to submit to cross-examination {315} on the name and situation of
the lamasery, and how many lamas reside there, and on the habits of
the deceased Grand Lama, and the manner of his death.
The portents at the birth of a Dalai Lama are magnificent. It is not
irrelevant to mention them here, as they may be regarded as part of
the auguries which decide the succession. An official report from the
Chinese Commissioner to the Emperor, on such an occasion in the year
1839, declares, among other things, that it was ascertained that on
the night before the boy was born, a brilliant radiance of many
colours was manifested in the air, and the water in the well of the
temple courtyard changed to a milk-white colour. Seven days later a
flame appeared on the rock behind the post-station. When the rock was
examined, no trace of fire remained, but a sacred image and characters
were found, together with the print of footsteps. Moreover, on the
night when the child was born, the sound of music was heard, and milk
dropped upon the pillars of the house.[315.1]
The Buddhists are not the only sect in the Chinese Empire which has a
supreme head appointed by religious divination. The arch-abbot of
Taouism dwells in a princely residence on the Dragon and Tiger
Mountains, in the province of Kiang-si. “The power of this dignitary,”
we are told, “is immense, and is acknowledged by all the priests of
his sect throughout the empire.” The office has been confined for
centuries to one family or clan. When the arch-abbot dies, all the
male members of his clan are cited to appear at the official
residence. The name of each one is engraved on a separate piece of
lead, and deposited in a large earthenware vase filled with water.
Standing round this vase are priests who invoke the three persons of
the Taouist Trinity to cause the piece {316} of lead bearing the name
of the person on whom the choice of the gods has fallen, to come to
the surface of the water.[316.1]
The Taouist dignitary seems to possess only spiritual power, except
probably in his own monastery. The Dalai Lama, on the other hand,
retains some portion of civil rule. In both cases the person of the
ruler is looked upon as sacred. Among savage and barbarous nations the
office of priest or medicine-man is often not clearly distinguished
from that of temporal ruler. The instances in which the chief or king
is looked upon as divine, in which he is responsible for the weather,
in which he causes the crops to grow, and performs other superhuman
functions, are too numerous, and too well-known to be mentioned here.
Since the publication of _The Golden Bough_ they have been among the
commonplaces of folklore. I need only remind you that “the divinity
that doth hedge a king” is not confined to savagery and barbarism. It
has lasted far into civilization, and been sedulously cultivated for
political purposes by royalty in every age. A Roman Emperor was Divus
Augustus. When the dignity of king becomes hereditary, the monarch is
held to be at least descended from the gods. The Mikado traces his
descent from the Sun-goddess. King George V. traces his from Woden,
the war-god of the Anglo-Saxon tribes which colonized Britain in the
fifth and sixth centuries. It is true that this genealogy, at one time
seriously credited, is now treated as fable; but even yet the
coronation ceremonies of “His Sacred Majesty,” though not directly of
pagan origin, witness to the mysterious sanctity that surrounds him.
A view of kingship thus exalted renders it easy to understand why,
when circumstances compelled the choice {317} of a king, the divine
will must have been most anxiously consulted. It was not merely that
the qualities of a leader in battle, a wise judge and administrator,
and a prudent politician were needed. Luck and the favour of the gods
were more than these, to say nothing of the marks of godhead, which in
many cases it was necessary to discover in his person, conduct or
knowledge. Hence the choice of the people, or rather the recognition
by the people, would depend upon the auguries, or upon more direct
indications of the decision of Heaven. When Dagara, the King of
Karagwe, on the western shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, died, he left
behind him three sons, any of whom was eligible to the throne. The
officers of state put before them a small mystic drum. It was of
trifling weight, but, being loaded with charms, no one could lift it,
save he to whom the ancestral spirits were inclined as the successor.
Nor was this enough. The victor in this contest was required to
undergo a further trial of his right. He was made to sit, as he
himself informed Captain Speke, on the ground at a certain spot where
the land would gradually rise up under him, like a telescope, until it
reached the skies. The aspirant who was approved by the spirits was
then gradually lowered in safety; whereas, if not approved, the
elastic hill would suddenly collapse, and he would be dashed to
pieces. It is needless to add, that Rumanika, Captain Speke’s
informant, claimed to have gone through the ordeal with
success.[317.1]
{318}
Light is perhaps thrown on the matter by the final test actually
imposed on the successor elected to the throne of Ukerewe, an island
in the lake, and therefore adjacent to the kingdom of Karagwe. He is
taken to Kitale, the burial-place of the kings, about two kilometres
from the capital. There lies an immense stone rising like a donkey’s
back from the soil, beginning a few centimetres only above the earth,
and gently swelling until it attains the height of a little more than
a metre. It is called the _ruswa_. The provisionally proclaimed king,
with both hands laden with lances, bows and arrows, and wearing
gigantic native sandals, is required to climb it slowly and with short
steps to the top. If he be so unfortunate as to slip and fall on the
way, he is unworthy of the drum (the symbol of sovereignty), and is
driven away without pity. If, on the other hand, he successfully reach
the platform, or highest point of the rock, he is acclaimed in a
frenzy of excitement, the men breaking forth into a sham fight, the
women joyfully shouting “Yu, yu!” The test is over; he is definitely
king.[318.1] It is not impossible that, reduced to its final terms,
some such ordeal as this was what the candidate for the throne of
Karagwe actually underwent.
These are barbarous auguries. But all auguries and oracles are
barbarous. We do not know how Melchizedek was appointed King of Salem.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to him as “without
father, without mother, without genealogy,” as if there were something
peculiar in the omission of his pedigree, though in this respect he
did not differ from the other kings mentioned in the narrative.
However, the discovery at Tel-el-Amarna of letters from Ebed-tob, King
of Salem in the fifteenth century B.C., to his suzerain the {319} King
of Egypt, has rendered it possible to suppose that Melchizedek did not
come to the throne by inheritance, and consequently that his parentage
was unimportant. Ebed-tob, protesting his loyalty as an ally and a
tributary of the King of Egypt, says: “Neither my father, nor my
mother, (but) the oracle of the mighty king, established (me) in the
house of (my) father.” In other words, he states, as Professor Sayce
interprets the expression, “that his authority was not based on the
right of inheritance; he had been called to exercise it by a divine
voice.”[319.1] We must beware of drawing too large an inference from
a single phrase. Assuming that “the mighty king” is the god ’Shalim,
and not the suzerain whom he is addressing, there remains the question
what is meant by “the house of his father.” Evidently it is the royal
office; but is it not the royal office previously filled by his
ancestors? The correct view, I would suggest, is that the kingship
was, like that of Karagwe, descendible to any scion of the royal
house, subject to the decision of the oracle. The pedigree then would
be important, but not all-important. The god would decide among the
candidates. Some such arrangement would seem to have been recognized
in the heroic age of Greece, if we may trust the somewhat obscure
expressions of the _Odyssey_. There are examples in the Homeric poems
of kings who have succeeded to the inheritance of their sires.
Agamemnon is one. On the other hand, the position of Ulysses is
enigmatical. It is enigmatical in regard to Laertes, his father, who
was still alive; while, if Ulysses were dead, it would seem that
Telemachus, his son, would only have the first, but by no means an
indefeasible, claim. As Mr Crooke has pointed out, it results from
{320} the interview between Telemachus and the wooers in the first
book of the _Odyssey_, that some kind of divine nomination should
appoint the king, and that the choice might fall, not on Telemachus,
but on another of the Achæans in sea-girt Ithaca.[320.1] It is
dangerous to read into the poem what is not expressed. The poet is
describing an age already mythical, though no doubt he has embodied
considerable fragments of actual custom in the representation. He does
not detail the process of appointment of king. Consequently, all we
can safely say (and that on the assumption that here we have one of
the fragments of actual custom) is that the manners and whole
atmosphere of the poem correspond with a stage of culture in which the
will of the gods would be ascertained by augury. In this connection it
may not be irrelevant to refer to the early traditions of Rome. The
quarrel between Romulus and Remus concerned not merely the site of the
city, but also the founder after whose name it should be called--in
other words, the royal dignity. It was settled by an augury taken from
the flight of vultures. Numa, the successor of Romulus, though
elected, took care to assure himself by auguries that the gods
approved of the choice. It must be remembered that the legends, as we
have them, took shape under the republic when the ordinary human
process of election had been long established. The habit thus formed
probably affected them; and I think we are warranted in suspecting
that if we could recover them at a prior stage, we should find the
appointment of king resting on the will of the gods and ascertained by
divination.
{321}
No argument is needed to show that the form of tradition is affected,
even where the substance remains, by external changes. Customs
referred to in a legend may become obsolete and consequently
unintelligible; and the reference to them must of necessity be
modified into something which is understood, or it will be dropped
into oblivion. The tradition of the _Lia Fáil_, with which I started,
is an example. To step on the stone was to put one’s claim to
sovereignty to proof. As Keating relates, doubtless from some older
author, on it “were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person
who had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland.” But this
is the latest form of the tradition. We can, however, reconstruct the
earlier form by comparison with custom and tradition elsewhere. They
render it clear that the stone was once held to declare the divine
will as to the succession. Further back still, it may have been
regarded as itself endowed with power of choice.[321.1] Strictly
speaking, this is not augury, for augury is the ascertainment and
declaration of a higher will. But some such animistic belief may have
been the seed-plot out of which augury grew as gods properly so-called
were evolved. At the stage at which the tradition reaches us the _Lia
Fáil_ no longer either chooses on its own account or makes known the
choice of Heaven. At this stage, not only is it enchanted,
consequently diabolic rather than divine in the source of its power,
but also it merely points out him who has “the best right.” The
principle of {322} heredity is now firmly established; its application
alone is uncertain. When the principle is established and the
application certain, it is not necessary to consult an oracle.
The changes I thus venture to postulate are steps in the
disintegration of the myth. A Welsh tale now to be cited has taken a
further step in that it simply credits the instrument of divination
with the diagnosis of blood royal, the practical purpose of
determining the succession to the kingdom having disappeared.
According to Giraldus Cambrensis, it happened that in the time of
Henry I. Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Tudor, who, although he only held of the
king one commote, namely, a fourth part of the cantref of Caio, yet
was reputed as lord in Deheubarth, was returning from court by way of
Llangorse Lake, in Brecknockshire, with Milo, Earl of Hereford and
Lord of Brecknock, and Payn FitzJohn, who then held Ewyas, two of the
king’s secretaries and privy councillors. It was winter, and the lake
was covered with water-fowl of various kinds. Seeing them, Milo,
partly in joke, said to Gruffydd: “It is an old saying in Wales that
if the natural prince of Wales, coming to this lake, command the birds
upon it to sing, they will all immediately sing.” Gruffydd replied:
“Do you, therefore, who now bear sway in this country, command them
first.” Both Milo and Payn having made the attempt in vain, Gruffydd
dismounted from his horse, fell on his knees with his face to the
East, and after devout prayers to God, stood up, and making the sign
of the cross on his forehead and face, cried aloud: “Almighty and
all-knowing God, Lord Jesus Christ, show forth here to-day Thy power!
If Thou hast made me lineally to descend from the natural princes of
Wales, I command these birds in Thy name to declare it.” {323}
Forthwith all the birds, according to their kind, beating the water
with outstretched wings, began altogether to sing and proclaim it. No
wonder that all who were present were amazed and confounded, and that
Milo and Payn reported it to the king, who is said to have taken it
philosophically enough. “By the death of Christ!” (his customary
oath), he replied, “it is not so much to be wondered at. For although
by our great power we may impose injustice and violence upon those
people, yet they are none the less known to have the hereditary right
to the country.”[323.1]
In the same manner, in India snakes are supposed to be specially
gifted with the faculty of distinguishing persons of royal race or
born to rule.[323.2] One example will be enough. The Gandharbs of
Benares, a caste of singers and prostitutes, ascribe their origin to
Doman Deo, the second Raghubansi Râjput king of Chandrâvati. He had
a groom named Shîru, who one day went into the jungle to cut grass,
and fell asleep. While he slept, a cobra raised its hood over his
head, and a wagtail kept flying above him. In that condition his
master saw him, and afterwards asked him what he would do for him if
he became king. Shîru promised to make him his prime minister. Going
subsequently to Delhi, the throne of which was vacant, Shîru was
chosen emperor, in the manner with which we are already acquainted, by
an elephant laying a garland on his neck; and he redeemed his word by
making Doman Deo his wazîr.[323.3] In Further India a saga of the
Chams relates that Klong Garay, who plays a great part in their
legendary history, {324} was found by a companion of his wanderings,
after a temporary absence, sleeping and watched by two dragons, which
were licking his body. Then he knew, we are told, that Klong Garay was
of royal race.[324.1] The child of a king of Siam by a Naga, or
divine snake, being exposed, was found and adopted by a hunter. The
king’s subjects were compelled by law to work in turn for the king.
The hunter, when summoned, took with him his adopted child and laid it
in the shadow of the palace, to protect it from the rays of the sun
while he performed his task. But the spire of the palace inclined
before the child, and the shadow appeared to fly. This prodigy put the
king upon enquiry, and he identified his son by means of the ring and
mantle which he had given to the lady, and which had been found with
the child.[324.2] In the old English metrical romance of _Havelok the
Dane_, the hero is identified by means of a royal mark, “a croiz ful
gent,” shining brighter than gold on his right shoulder.
“It sparkede, and ful brith shon,
So doth the gode charbucle ston,
That men mouthe se by the lith
A peni chesen, so was it brith.”[324.3]
The romance in which the incident is found is a literary version of
the local tradition of Grimsby, still commemorated in the seal of the
corporation. The poem dates from the end of the thirteenth century.
There are two French versions which I have not seen. Professor Skeat
has epitomized the longer in the preface to his edition of the English
romance. In it a flame issues from Havelok’s mouth when he sleeps.
This is {325} a personal peculiarity, also found in the English lay.
His heirship to the throne of Denmark is determined by his ability to
blow a horn which none but the true heir could sound. Thus we are
brought back to the succession by divination from which we started,
and of which the simple diagnosis of royal descent is a corruption and
a weakening. It is preserved here, we know not by what cause, after
its true meaning had been forgotten. Adopted first of all into
tradition from living custom, when the custom was superseded by other
means of determining the succession it survived as a tradition until,
its true intent being gradually lost, while the hereditary principle
was strengthened and fenced about with sanctity, the incident faded
into a merely picturesque presentation, in some places of prophecy, in
other places of the claims of birth.
The study of folk-tales is often despised as mere trifling. But
traditional narratives must always occupy an important place in the
study of the past. Rightly used they have much to tell us of human
history, of human thought and the evolution of human institutions. It
may safely be said that of all the incidents that compose them there
is none which is not a concrete presentation either of human
institutions or of human belief. They are all thus in a sense the
outcome of actual human experiences. The stories of election by augury
are not wilder than the authentic facts. The telescopic mountain of
Karagwe, which Rumanika averred himself to have experienced, is at
least as wonderful as the groaning of the _Lia Fáil_, or the lighting
of a dry twig. Even if we may be allowed to rationalize it in the
manner suggested by the ordeal required of the chosen candidate for
the throne of the neighbouring Bakerewe, it remains evidence of the
belief imposed by the power of imagination in a moment {326} of
excitement. Analogous performances are averred by the votaries of what
is called spiritualism to have been exhibited in our own day by
mediums, and were solemnly recorded long ago in the witch-trials of
various European countries. In one of the stories I have cited we
found the dying monarch laying down among the conditions to be
fulfilled by his successor, that the women of the royal household
should recognize him. Secret intrigues of the harem are believed to
determine the devolution of many an Eastern crown. But that the formal
and ceremonial choice of the heir should be made by the wives of the
deceased ruler seems too grotesque to be known outside a fairy tale.
Yet this was the law a hundred years ago in the kingdom of Quiteve, on
the south-eastern coast of Africa. When a king died the queens (that
is to say, his legitimate wives) named the person who was to accompany
his body to the burial-place, and the person thus named became the
successor.[326.1] In an adjoining kingdom a similar law prevailed. It
was forbidden to any prince to enter the palace where the women were,
or to take possession of the kingdom without their consent, and
whoever entered by violence and took possession against their will,
lost his right of succession. The Portuguese friar, to whom we are
indebted for the information, records a case which happened while he
was in Sofala, and in which the claimant would have entered and
formally seated himself in the royal hall with the royal widows. They,
however, were unwilling to acknowledge him as their king and husband.
Accordingly they secretly summoned another member of the royal family,
seated him with them in the public {327} place, and sent officers
through the town to proclaim the new sovereign and call his subjects
to do homage. The pretender fled. This instance is the more remarkable
because the unsuccessful claimant had in his favour the nomination of
the previous monarch. Though this constituted not an indefeasible
title, it afforded at least a strong presumption in his favour. Yet it
was defeated, in accordance with established and publicly acknowledged
custom, by the choice of the harem.
Nor was the rule requiring the choice, or at any rate the recognition,
by the harem so redolent of the comic opera as it may seem, since the
women all became the wives of the new king.[327.1] This is usual in
Africa, and not in Africa only, but in other regions where a similar
type of polygamous monarchical society exists. It is most familiar to
us among the ancient Hebrews. Absalom, by taking possession of his
father’s harem, made a final and unqualified assertion of his
succession to the throne. Solomon evidently regarded Adonijah’s
request for Abishag the Shunammite as a pretension inconsistent with
his own sovereignty; for she had been part of King David’s harem,
though in fact no more than his nurse.[327.2] In these cases the
women had probably little to say in the matter. But by the customs of
the South-Eastern Bantu a man’s widows, though they are bound to the
family of the deceased, are allowed some latitude in the choice of the
individual man with whom they will mate. Among the Thonga, for
example, at the final distribution of the estate, any of the widows
who refuses to take the husband {328} to whom she has been
provisionally allotted will be permitted to exercise her own
preference.[328.1] The power accorded to the widowed queens of
Quiteve to choose their new husband was hardly an extension of this
liberty. That it drew with it incidentally the right to the kingdom
was a consequence which did not affect the principle.
[The End]