The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
By
James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool
Vol. XI. of XII.
Part VII: Balder the Beautiful.
The Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul.
Vol. 2 of 2.
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1913
CONTENTS
Chapter VI. Fire-Festivals in Other Lands.
§ 1. The Fire-walk.
§ 2. The Meaning of the Fire-walk.
Chapter VII. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires.
§ 1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires.
§ 2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires.
Chapter VIII. The Magic Flowers of Midsummer Eve.
Chapter IX. Balder and the Mistletoe.
Chapter X. The Eternal Soul in Folk-Tales.
Chapter XI. The External Soul in Folk-Custom.
§ 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things.
§ 2. The External Soul in Plants.
§ 3. The External Soul in Animals.
§ 4. A Suggested Theory of Totemism.
§ 5. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection.
Chapter XII. The Golden Bough.
Chapter XIII. Farewell to Nemi.
Notes.
I. Snake Stones.
II. The Transformation of Witches Into Cats.
III. African Balders.
IV. The Mistletoe and the Golden Bough.
Index.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
CHAPTER VI. FIRE-FESTIVALS IN OTHER LANDS.
§ 1. The Fire-walk.
(M1) At first sight the interpretation of the European fire customs as
charms for making sunshine is confirmed by a parallel custom observed by
the Hindoos of Southern India at the Pongol or Feast of Ingathering. The
festival is celebrated in the early part of January, when, according to
Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn, and the chief
event of the festival coincides with the passage of the sun. For some days
previously the boys gather heaps of sticks, straw, dead leaves, and
everything that will burn. On the morning of the first day of the festival
the heaps are fired. Every street and lane has its bonfire. The young folk
leap over the flames or pile on fresh fuel. This fire is an offering to
Sûrya, the sun-god, or to Agni, the deity of fire; it “wakes him from his
sleep, calling on him again to gladden the earth with his light and
heat.”(1) If this is indeed the explanation which the people themselves
give of the festival, it seems decisive in favour of the solar explanation
of the fires; for to say that the fires waken the sun-god from his sleep
is only a metaphorical or mythical way of saying that they actually help
to rekindle the sun’s light and heat. But the hesitation which the writer
indicates between the two distinct deities of sun and fire seems to prove
that he is merely giving his own interpretation of the rite, not reporting
the views of the celebrants. If that is so, the expression of his opinion
has no claim to authority.
(M2) A festival of Northern India which presents points of resemblance to
the popular European celebrations which we have been considering is the
Holi. This is a village festival held in early spring at the full moon of
the month Phalgun. Large bonfires are lit and young people dance round
them. The people believe that the fires prevent blight, and that the ashes
cure disease. At Barsana the local village priest is expected to pass
through the Holi bonfire, which, in the opinion of the faithful, cannot
burn him. Indeed he holds his land rent-free simply on the score of his
being fire-proof. On one occasion when the priest disappointed the
expectant crowd by merely jumping over the outermost verge of the
smouldering ashes and then bolting into his cell, they threatened to
deprive him of his benefice if he did not discharge his spiritual
functions better when the next Holi season came round. Another feature of
the festival which has, or once had, its counterpart in the corresponding
European ceremonies is the unchecked profligacy which prevails among the
Hindoos at this time.(2) In Kumaon, a district of North-West India, at the
foot of the Himalayas, each clan celebrates the Holi festival by cutting
down a tree, which is thereupon stripped of its leaves, decked with shreds
of cloth, and burnt at some convenient place in the quarter of the town
inhabited by the clan. Some of the songs sung on this occasion are of a
ribald character. The people leap over the ashes of the fire, believing
that they thus rid themselves of itch and other diseases of the skin.
While the trees are burning, each clan tries to carry off strips of cloth
from the tree of another clan, and success in the attempt is thought to
ensure good luck. In Gwalior large heaps of cow-dung are burnt instead of
trees. Among the Marwaris the festival is celebrated by the women with
obscene songs and gestures. A monstrous and disgusting image of a certain
Nathuram, who is said to have been a notorious profligate, is set up in a
bazaar and then smashed with blows of shoes and bludgeons while the
bonfire of cow-dung is blazing. No household can be without an image of
Nathuram, and on the night when the bride first visits her husband, the
image of this disreputable personage is placed beside her couch. Barren
women and mothers whose children have died look to Nathuram for
deliverance from their troubles.(3) Various stories are told to account
for the origin of the Holi festival. According to one legend it was
instituted in order to get rid of a troublesome demon (_rákshasí_). The
people were directed to kindle a bonfire and circumambulate it, singing
and uttering fearlessly whatever might come into their minds. Appalled by
these vociferations, by the oblations to fire, and by the laughter of the
children, the demon was to be destroyed.(4)
(M3) In the Chinese province of Fo-Kien we also meet with a vernal
festival of fire which may be compared to the fire-festivals of Europe.
The ceremony, according to an eminent authority, is a solar festival in
honour of the renewal of vegetation and of the vernal warmth. It falls in
April, on the thirteenth day of the third month in the Chinese calendar,
and is doubtless connected with the ancient custom of renewing the fire,
which, as we saw, used to be observed in China at this season.(5) The
chief performers in the ceremony are labourers, who refrain from women for
seven days, and fast for three days before the festival. During these days
they are taught in the temple how to discharge the difficult and dangerous
duty which is to be laid upon them. On the eve of the festival an enormous
brazier of charcoal, sometimes twenty feet wide, is prepared in front of
the temple of the Great God, the protector of life. At sunrise next
morning the brazier is lighted and kept burning by fresh supplies of fuel.
A Taoist priest throws a mixture of salt and rice on the fire to conjure
the flames and ensure an abundant year. Further, two exorcists, barefooted
and followed by two peasants, traverse the fire again and again till it is
somewhat beaten down. Meantime the procession is forming in the temple.
The image of the god of the temple is placed in a sedan-chair, resplendent
with red paint and gilding, and is carried forth by a score or more of
barefooted peasants. On the shafts of the sedan-chair, behind the image,
stands a magician with a dagger stuck through the upper parts of his arms
and grasping in each hand a great sword, with which he essays to deal
himself violent blows on the back; however, the strokes as they descend
are mostly parried by peasants, who walk behind him and interpose bamboo
rods between his back and the swords. Wild music now strikes up, and under
the excitement caused by its stirring strains the procession passes thrice
across the furnace. At their third passage the performers are followed by
other peasants carrying the utensils of the temple; and the rustic mob,
electrified by the frenzied spectacle, falls in behind. Strange as it may
seem, burns are comparatively rare. Inured from infancy to walking
barefoot, the peasants can step with impunity over the glowing charcoal,
provided they plant their feet squarely and do not stumble; for usage has
so hardened their soles that the skin is converted into a sort of leathery
or horny substance which is almost callous to heat. But sometimes, when
they slip and a hot coal touches the sides of their feet or ankles, they
may be seen to pull a wry face and jump out of the furnace amid the
laughter of the spectators. When this part of the ceremony is over, the
procession defiles round the village, and the priests distribute to every
family a leaf of yellow paper inscribed with a magic character, which is
thereupon glued over the door of the house. The peasants carry off the
charred embers from the furnace, pound them to ashes, and mix the ashes
with the fodder of their cattle, believing that it fattens them. However,
the Chinese Government disapproves of these performances, and next morning
a number of the performers may generally be seen in the hands of the
police, laid face downwards on the ground and receiving a sound
castigation on a part of their person which is probably more sensitive
than the soles of their feet.(6)
(M4) In this last festival the essential feature of the ceremony appears
to be the passage of the image of the deity across the fire; it may be
compared to the passage of the straw effigy of Kupalo across the midsummer
bonfire in Russia.(7) As we shall see presently, such customs may perhaps
be interpreted as magical rites designed to produce light and warmth by
subjecting the deity himself to the heat and glow of the furnace; and
where, as at Barsana, priests or sorcerers have been accustomed in the
discharge of their functions to walk through or over fire, they have
sometimes done so as the living representatives or embodiments of deities,
spirits, or other supernatural beings. Some confirmation of this view is
furnished by the beliefs and practices of the Dosadhs, a low Indian caste
in Behar and Chota Nagpur. On the fifth, tenth, and full-moon days of
three months in the year, the priest walks over a narrow trench filled
with smouldering wood ashes, and is supposed thus to be inspired by the
tribal god Rahu, who becomes incarnate in him for a time. Full of the
spirit and also, it is surmised, of drink, the man of god then mounts a
bamboo platform, where he sings hymns and distributes to the crowd leaves
of _tulsi_, which cure incurable diseases, and flowers which cause barren
women to become happy mothers. The service winds up with a feast lasting
far into the night, at which the line that divides religious fervour from
drunken revelry cannot always be drawn with absolute precision.(8)
Similarly the Bhuiyas, a Dravidian tribe of Mirzapur, worship their tribal
hero Bir by walking over a short trench filled with fire, and they say
that the man who is possessed by the hero does not feel any pain in the
soles of his feet.(9) Ceremonies of this sort used to be observed in most
districts of the Madras Presidency, sometimes in discharge of vows made in
time of sickness or distress, sometimes periodically in honour of a deity.
Where the ceremony was observed periodically, it generally occurred in
March or June, which are the months of the vernal equinox and the summer
solstice respectively. A narrow trench, sometimes twenty yards long and
half a foot deep, was filled with small sticks and twigs, mostly of
tamarind, which were kindled and kept burning till they sank into a mass
of glowing embers. Along this the devotees, often fifty or sixty in
succession, walked, ran, or leaped barefoot. In 1854 the Madras Government
instituted an enquiry into the custom, but found that it was not attended
by danger or instances of injury sufficient to call for governmental
interference.(10)
(M5) The French traveller Sonnerat has described how, in the eighteenth
century, the Hindoos celebrated a fire-festival of this sort in honour of
the god Darma Rajah and his wife Drobedé (Draupadi). The festival lasted
eighteen days, during which all who had vowed to take part in it were
bound to fast, to practise continence, to sleep on the ground without a
mat, and to walk on a furnace. On the eighteenth day the images of Darma
Rajah and his spouse were carried in procession to the furnace, and the
performers followed dancing, their heads crowned with flowers and their
bodies smeared with saffron. The furnace consisted of a trench about forty
feet long, filled with hot embers. When the images had been carried thrice
round it, the worshippers walked over the embers, faster or slower,
according to the degree of their religious fervour, some carrying their
children in their arms, others brandishing spears, swords, and standards.
This part of the ceremony being over, the bystanders hastened to rub their
foreheads with ashes from the furnace, and to beg from the performers the
flowers which they had worn in their hair; and such as obtained them
preserved the flowers carefully. The rite was performed in honour of the
goddess Drobedé (Draupadi), the heroine of the great Indian epic, the
_Mahabharata_. For she married five brothers all at once; every year she
left one of her husbands to betake herself to another, but before doing so
she had to purify herself by fire. There was no fixed date for the
celebration of the rite, but it could only be held in one of the first
three months of the year.(11) In some villages the ceremony is performed
annually; in others, which cannot afford the expense every year, it is
observed either at longer intervals, perhaps once in three, seven, ten, or
twelve years, or only in special emergencies, such as the outbreak of
smallpox, cholera, or plague. Anybody but a pariah or other person of very
low degree may take part in the ceremony in fulfilment of a vow. For
example, if a man suffers from some chronic malady, he may vow to Draupadi
that, should he be healed of his disease, he will walk over the fire at
her festival. As a preparation for the solemnity he sleeps in the temple
and observes a fast. The celebration of the rite in any village is
believed to protect the cattle and the crops and to guard the inhabitants
from dangers of all kinds. When it is over, many people carry home the
holy ashes of the fire as a talisman which will drive away devils and
demons.(12)
(M6) The Badagas, an agricultural tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in
Southern India, annually celebrate a festival of fire in various parts of
their country. For example, at Nidugala the festival is held with much
ceremony in the month of January. Omens are taken by boiling two pots of
milk side by side on two hearths. If the milk overflows uniformly on all
sides, the crops will be abundant for all the villages; but if it flows
over on one side only, the harvest will be good for villages on that side
only. The sacred fire is made by friction, a vertical stick of
_Rhodomyrtus tomentosus_ being twirled by means of a cord in a socket let
into a thick bough of _Debregeasia velutina_. With this holy flame a heap
of wood of two sorts, the _Eugenia Jambolana_ and _Phyllanthus Emblica_,
is kindled, and the hot embers are spread over a fire-pit about five yards
long and three yards broad. When all is ready, the priest ties bells on
his legs and approaches the fire-pit, carrying milk freshly drawn from a
cow which has calved for the first time, and also bearing flowers of
_Rhododendron arboreum_, _Leucas aspera_, or jasmine. After doing
obeisance, he throws the flowers on the embers and then pours some of the
milk over them. If the omens are propitious, that is, if the flowers
remain for a few seconds unscorched and the milk does not hiss when it
falls on the embers, the priest walks boldly over the embers and is
followed by a crowd of celebrants, who before they submit to the ordeal
count the hairs on their feet. If any of the hairs are found to be singed
after the passage through the fire-pit, it is an ill omen. Sometimes the
Badagas drive their cattle, which have recovered from sickness, over the
hot embers in performance of a vow.(13) At Melur, another place of the
Badagas in the Neilgherry Hills, three, five, or seven men are chosen to
walk through the fire at the festival; and before they perform the
ceremony they pour into an adjacent stream milk from cows which have
calved for the first time during the year. A general feast follows the
performance of the rite, and next day the land is ploughed and sown for
the first time that season. At Jakkaneri, another place of the Badagas in
the Neilgherry Hills, the passage through the fire at the festival “seems
to have originally had some connection with agricultural prospects, as a
young bull is made to go partly across the fire-pit before the other
devotees, and the owners of young cows which have had their first calves
during the year take precedence of others in the ceremony, and bring
offerings of milk, which are sprinkled over the burning embers.”(14)
According to another account the ceremony among the Badagas was performed
every second year at a harvest festival, and the performers were a set of
degenerate Brahmans called Haruvarus, who “used to walk on burning coals
with bare feet, pretending that the god they worshipped could allay the
heat and make fire like cold water to them. As they only remained a few
seconds, however, on the coals, it was impossible that they could receive
much injury.”(15)
(M7) In Japan the fire-walk is performed as a religious rite twice a year
at a temple in the Kanda quarter of Tokio. One of the performances takes
place in September. It was witnessed in the year 1903 by the wife of an
American naval officer, who has described it. In a court of the temple a
bed of charcoal about six yards long, two yards wide, and two feet deep
was laid down and covered with a deep layer of straw. Being ignited, the
straw blazed up, and when the flames had died down the bed of hot charcoal
was fanned by attendants into a red glow. Priests dressed in robes of
white cotton then walked round the fire, striking sparks from flint and
steel and carrying trays full of salt. When mats had been laid down at the
two ends of the fire and salt poured on them, the priests rubbed their
bare feet twice in the salt and then walked calmly down the middle of the
fire. They were followed by a number of people, including some boys and a
woman with a baby in her arms. “The Shintoists claim that, having been
perfectly purified by their prayers and ceremonies, no evil has any power
over them. Fire they regard as the very spirit of evil; so twice a year, I
believe, they go through this fire-walking as a kind of ‘outward and
visible sign of inward spiritual grace.’ ”(16)
(M8) In the island of Mbengga, one of the Fijian archipelago, once every
year a dracaena, which grows in profusion on the grassy hillsides, becomes
fit to yield the sugar of which its fibrous root is full. To render the
roots edible it is necessary to bake them among hot stones for four days.
A great pit is dug and filled with great stones and blazing logs, and when
the flames have died down and the stones are at white heat, the oven is
ready to receive the roots. At this moment the members of a certain clan
called Na Ivilankata, favoured of the gods, leap into the oven and walk
unharmed upon the hot stones, which would scorch the feet of any other
persons. On one occasion when the ceremony was witnessed by Europeans
fifteen men of the clan, dressed in garlands and fringes, walked unscathed
through the furnace, where tongues of fire played among the hot stones.
The pit was about nineteen feet wide and the men marched round it,
planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. When they emerged
from the pit, the feet of several were examined and shewed no trace of
scorching; even the anklets of dried tree-fern leaves which they wore on
their legs were unburnt. The immunity thus enjoyed by members of the clan
in the fiery furnace is explained by a legend that in former days a chief
of the clan, named Tui Nkualita, received for himself and his descendants
this remarkable privilege from a certain god, whom the chief had
accidentally dragged out of a deep pool of water by the hair of his
head.(17) A similar ceremony of walking through fire, or rather over a
furnace of hot charcoal or hot stones, has also been observed in
Tahiti,(18) the Marquesas Islands,(19) and by Hindoo coolies in the West
Indian island of Trinidad;(20) but the eye-witnesses who have described
the rite, as it is observed in these islands, have said little or nothing
as to its meaning and purpose, their whole attention having been
apparently concentrated on the heat of the furnace and the state of the
performers’ legs before and after passing through it.
(M9) “Another grand custom of the Hottentots, which they likewise term
_andersmaken_, is the driving their sheep at certain times through the
fire. Early in the day appointed by a kraal for the observance of this
custom, the women milk all their cows, and set the whole produce before
their husbands. ’Tis a strict rule at those times that the women neither
taste, nor suffer their children to touch, a drop of it. The whole
quantity is sacred to the men, who drink it all up before they address
themselves to the business of the fire. Having consumed the milk, some go
and bring the sheep together to the place where the fire is to be lighted,
while others repair to the place to light it. The fire is made of chips
and dry twigs and thinly spread into a long square. Upon the coming up of
the sheep, the fire, scattered into this figure, is covered with green
twigs to raise a great smoak; and a number of men range themselves closely
on both sides of it, making a lane for the sheep to pass through, and
extending themselves to a good distance beyond the fire on the side where
the sheep are to enter. Things being in this posture, the sheep are driven
into the lane close up to the fire, which now smoaks in the thickest
clouds. The foremost boggle, and being forced forward by the press behind,
seek their escape by attempting breaches in the ranks. The men stand close
and firm, and whoop and goad them forward; when a few hands, planted at
the front of the fire, catch three or four of the foremost sheep by the
head, and drag them through, and bring them round into the sight of the
rest; which sometimes upon this, the whooping and goading continuing,
follow with a tantivy, jumping and pouring themselves through the fire and
smoak with a mighty clattering and fury. At other times they are not so
tractable, but put the Hottentots to the trouble of dragging numbers of
them through; and sometimes, in a great press and fright, sturdily
attacking the ranks, they make a breach and escape. This is a very
mortifying event at all times, the Hottentots, upon whatever account,
looking upon it as a heavy disgrace and a very ill omen into the bargain.
But when their labours here are attended with such success, that the sheep
pass readily through or over the fire, ’tis hardly in the power of
language to describe them in all the sallies of their joy.” The writer who
thus describes the custom had great difficulty in extracting an
explanation of it from the Hottentots. At last one of them informed him
that their country was much infested by wild dogs, which made terrible
havoc among the cattle, worrying the animals to death even when they did
not devour them. “Now we have it,” he said, “from our ancestors, that if
sheep are driven through the fire, as we say, that is, through a thick
smoak, the wild dogs will not be fond of attacking them while the scent of
the smoak remains upon their fleeces. We therefore from time to time, for
the security of our flocks, perform this _andersmaken_.”(21)
(M10) When disease breaks out in a herd of the Nandi, a pastoral tribe of
British East Africa, a large bonfire is made with the wood of a certain
tree (_Olea chrysophilla_), and brushwood of two sorts of shrubs is thrown
on the top. Then the sick herd is driven to the fire, and while the
animals are standing near it, a sheep big with young is brought to them
and anointed with milk by an elder, after which it is strangled by two men
belonging to clans that may intermarry. The intestines are then inspected,
and if the omens prove favourable, the meat is roasted and eaten; moreover
rings are made out of the skin and worn by the cattle-owners. After the
meat has been eaten, the herd is driven round the fire, and milk is poured
on each beast.(22) When their cattle are sick, the Zulus of Natal will
collect their herds in a kraal, where a medicine-man kindles a fire, burns
medicine in it, and so fumigates the cattle with the medicated smoke.
Afterwards he sprinkles the herd with a decoction, and, taking some melted
fat of the dead oxen in his mouth, squirts it on a fire-brand and holds
the brand to each animal in succession.(23) Such a custom is probably
equivalent to the Hottentot and European practice of driving cattle
through a fire.
(M11) Among the Indians of Yucatan the year which was marked in their
calendar by the sign of _Cauac_ was reputed to be very unlucky; they
thought that in the course of it the death-rate would be high, the maize
crops would be withered up by the extreme heat of the sun, and what
remained of the harvest would be devoured by swarms of ants and birds. To
avert these calamities they used to erect a great pyre of wood, to which
most persons contributed a faggot. Having danced about it during the day,
they set fire to it at night-fall, and when the flames had died down, they
spread out the red embers and walked or ran barefoot over them, some of
them escaping unsmirched by the flames, but others burning themselves more
or less severely. In this way they hoped to conjure away the evils that
threatened them, and to undo the sinister omens of the year.(24)
(M12) Similar rites were performed at more than one place in classical
antiquity. At Castabala, in Cappadocia, the priestesses of an Asiatic
goddess, whom the Greeks called Artemis Perasia, used to walk barefoot
through a furnace of hot charcoal and take no harm.(25) Again, at the foot
of Mount Soracte, in Italy, there was a sanctuary of a goddess Feronia,
where once a year the men of certain families walked barefoot, but
unscathed, over the glowing embers and ashes of a great fire of pinewood
in presence of a vast multitude, who had assembled from all the country
round about to pay their devotions to the deity or to ply their business
at the fair. The families from whom the performers of the rite were drawn
went by the name of Hirpi Sorani, or “Soranian Wolves”; and in
consideration of the services which they rendered the state by walking
through the fire, they were exempted, by a special decree of the senate,
from military service and all public burdens. In the discharge of their
sacred function, if we can trust the testimony of Strabo, they were
believed to be inspired by the goddess Feronia. The ceremony certainly
took place in her sanctuary, which was held in the highest reverence alike
by Latins and Sabines; but according to Virgil and Pliny the rite was
performed in honour of the god of the mountain, whom they call by the
Greek name of Apollo, but whose real name appears to have been
Soranus.(26) If Soranus was a sun-god, as his name has by some been
thought to indicate,(27) we might perhaps conclude that the passage of his
priests through the fire was a magical ceremony designed to procure a due
supply of light and warmth for the earth by mimicking the sun’s passage
across the firmament. For so priceless a service, rendered at some
personal risk, it would be natural that the magicians should be handsomely
rewarded by a grateful country, and that they should be released from the
common obligations of earth in order the better to devote themselves to
their celestial mission. The neighbouring towns paid the first-fruits of
their harvest as tribute to the shrine, and loaded it besides with
offerings of gold and silver, of which, however, it was swept clean by
Hannibal when he hung with his dusky army, like a storm-cloud about to
break, within sight of the sentinels on the walls of Rome.(28)
§ 2. The Meaning of the Fire-walk.
(M13) The foregoing customs, observed in many different parts of the
world, present at least a superficial resemblance to the modern European
practices of leaping over fires and driving cattle through them; and we
naturally ask whether it is not possible to discover a general explanation
which will include them all. We have seen that two general theories have
been proposed to account for the European practices; according to one
theory the customs in question are sun-charms, according to the other they
are purifications. Let us see how the two rival theories fit the other
facts which we have just passed in review. To take the solar theory first,
it is supported, first, by a statement that the fires at the Pongol
festival in Southern India are intended to wake the sun-god or the
fire-god from his sleep;(29) and, second, by the etymology which connects
Soranus, the god of Soracte, with the sun.(30) But for reasons which have
already been given, neither of these arguments carries much weight; and
apart from them there appears to be nothing in the foregoing customs to
suggest that they are sun-charms. Nay, some of the customs appear hardly
reconcilable with such a view. For it is to be observed that the fire-walk
is frequently practised in India and other tropical countries, where as a
rule people would more naturally wish to abate than to increase the fierce
heat of the sun. In Yucatan certainly the intention of kindling the
bonfires cannot possibly have been to fan the solar flames, since one of
the principal evils which the bonfires were designed to remedy was
precisely the excessive heat of the sun, which had withered up the maize
crops.(31) Thus the solar theory is not strongly supported by any of the
facts which we are considering, and it is actually inconsistent with some
of them.
(M14) Not so with the purificatory theory. It is obviously applicable to
some of the facts, and apparently consistent with them all. Thus we have
seen that sick men make a vow to walk over the fire, and that sick cattle
are driven over it. In such cases clearly the intention is to cleanse the
suffering man or beast from the infection of disease, and thereby to
restore him or it to health; and the fire is supposed to effect this
salutary end, either by burning up the powers of evil or by interposing an
insurmountable barrier between them and the sufferer. For it is to be
remembered that evils which civilized men regard as impersonal are often
conceived by uncivilized man in the personal shape of witches and wizards,
of ghosts and hobgoblins; so that measures which we should consider as
simple disinfectants the savage looks upon as obstacles opportunely
presented to the attacks of demons or other uncanny beings. Now of all
such obstacles fire seems generally to be thought the most effective;
hence in passing through or leaping over it our primitive philosopher
often imagines that he is not so much annihilating his spiritual foe as
merely giving him the slip; the ghostly pursuer shrinks back appalled at
the flames through which his intended victim, driven to desperation by his
fears, has safely passed before him. This interpretation of the ceremony
is confirmed, first, by the observation that in India the ashes of the
bonfire are used as a talisman against devils and demons;(32) and, second,
by the employment of the ceremony for the avowed purpose of escaping from
the pursuit of a troublesome ghost. For example, in China “they believe
that a beheaded man wanders about a headless spectre in the World of
Shades. Such spectres are frequently to be seen in walled towns,
especially in the neighbourhood of places of execution. Here they often
visit the people with disease and disaster, causing a considerable
depreciation in the value of the houses around such scenes. Whenever an
execution takes place, the people fire crackers to frighten the headless
ghost away from the spot; and the mandarin who has superintended the
bloody work, on entering the gate of his mansion, has himself carried in
his sedan chair over a fire lighted on the pavement, lest the headless
apparition should enter there along with him; for disembodied spirits are
afraid of fire.”(33) For a like reason Chinese mourners after a funeral,
and persons who have paid a visit of condolence to a house of death, often
purify themselves by stepping over a fire of straw;(34) the purification,
we cannot doubt, consists simply in shaking off the ghost who is supposed
to dog their steps. Similarly at a coroner’s inquest in China the mandarin
and his subordinates hold pocket handkerchiefs or towels to their mouths
and noses while they are inspecting the corpse, no doubt to hinder the
ghost from insinuating himself into their bodies by these apertures; and
when they have discharged their dangerous duty, they purify themselves by
passing through a small fire of straw kindled on the pavement before they
enter their sedan-chairs to return home, while at the same time the crowd
of idlers, who have gathered about the door, assist in keeping the ghost
at bay by a liberal discharge of crackers. The same double process of
purification, or rather of repelling the ghost, by means of fire and
crackers is repeated at the gate of the mandarin’s residence when the
procession defiles into it.(35) Among some of the Tartars it used to be
customary for all persons returning from a burial to leap over a fire made
for the purpose, “in order that the dead man might not follow them; for
apparently in their opinion he would be afraid of the fire.”(36) “The
Yakuts bury their dead as a rule on the day of the death, and in order not
to take the demon of death home with them, they kindle fires on the way
back from the burial and jump over them in the belief that the demon of
death, who dreads fire, will not follow them, and that in this way they
will be freed from the persecutions of the hated demon of death.”(37) In
Sikkhim, when members of the Khambu caste have buried a corpse, all
persons present at the burial “adjourn to a stream for a bath of
purification, and, on re-entering the house, have to tread on a bit of
burning cloth, to prevent the evil spirits who attend at funerals from
following them in.”(38) Among the Fans of West Africa, “when the mourning
is over, the wives of the deceased must pass over a small lighted brazier
in the middle of the village, then they sit down while some leaves are
still burning under their feet; their heads are shaved, and from that
moment they are purified from the mourning—perhaps we should translate:
‘delivered from the ghost of their husband’—and may be divided among the
heirs.”(39) At Agweh, on the Slave Coast of West Africa, a widow used to
remain shut up for six months in the room where her husband was buried; at
the end of the time a fire was lighted on the floor, and red peppers
strewn in it, until in the pungent fumes the widow was nearly stifled.(40)
No doubt the intention was to rid her of her husband’s ghost in order that
she might mingle again in the world with safety to herself and others.
(M15) On the analogy of these customs, in which the purpose of the passage
through the fire appears to be unmistakable, we may suppose that the
motive of the rite is similar at the popular festivals of Europe and the
like observances in other lands. In every case the ritual appears to be
explained in a simple and natural way by the supposition that the
performers believe themselves to be freed from certain evils, actual or
threatened, through the beneficent agency of fire, which either burns up
and destroys the noxious things or at all events repels and keeps them at
bay. Indeed this belief, or at least this hope, is definitely expressed by
some of the people who leap across the bonfires: they imagine that all
ills are burnt up and consumed in the flames, or that they leave their
sins, or at all events their fleas, behind them on the far side of the
fire.(41) But we may conjecture that originally all the evils from which
the people thus thought to deliver themselves were conceived by them to be
caused by personal beings, such as ghosts and demons or witches and
warlocks, and that the fires were kindled for the sole purpose of burning
or banning these noxious creatures. Of these evil powers witches and
warlocks appear to have been the most dreaded by our European peasantry;
and it is therefore significant that the fires kindled on these occasions
are often expressly alleged to burn the witches,(42) that effigies of
witches are not uncommonly consumed in them,(43) and that two of the great
periodic fire-festivals of the year, namely May Day and Midsummer Eve,
coincide with the seasons when witches are believed to be most active and
mischievous, and when accordingly many other precautions are taken against
them.(44) Thus if witchcraft, as a great part of mankind has believed, is
the fertile source of almost all the calamities that afflict our species,
and if the surest means of frustrating witchcraft is fire, then it follows
as clearly as day follows night that to jump over a fire must be a
sovereign panacea for practically all the ills that flesh is heir to. We
can now, perhaps, fully understand why festivals of fire played so
prominent a part in the religion or superstition of our heathen
forefathers; the observance of such festivals flowed directly from their
overmastering fear of witchcraft and from their theory as to the best way
of combating that dreadful evil.