CHAPTER XI. THE EXTERNAL SOUL IN FOLK-CUSTOM.

§ 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things.

(M122) Thus the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or

shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events

in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to

shew that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a

real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a corresponding

set of customs.

(M123) We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for

battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body

may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the

savage removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or

imaginary peril. Thus among the people of Minahassa in Celebes, when a

family moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole

family in a bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the

moment of entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural

danger.(411) In Southern Celebes, when a woman is brought to bed, the

messenger who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him

something made of iron, such as a chopping-knife, which he delivers to the

doctor. The doctor must keep the thing in his house till the confinement

is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing

so. The chopping-knife, or whatever it is, represents the woman’s soul,

which at this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than

in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of the object; for were it

lost, the woman’s soul would assuredly, they think, be lost with it.(412)

But in Celebes the convenience of occasionally depositing the soul in some

external object is apparently not limited to human beings. The Alfoors, or

Toradjas, who inhabit the central district of that island, and among whose

industries the working of iron occupies a foremost place, attribute to the

metal a soul which would be apt to desert its body under the blows of the

hammer, if some means were not found to detain it. Accordingly in every

smithy of Poso—for that is the name of the country of these people—you may

see hanging up a bundle of wooden instruments, such as chopping-knives,

swords, spear-heads, and so forth. This bundle goes by the name of

_lamoa_, which is the general word for “gods,” and in it the soul of the

iron that is being wrought in the smithy is, according to one account,

supposed to reside. “If we did not hang the _lamoa_ over the anvil,” they

say, “the iron would flow away and be unworkable,” on account of the

absence of the soul.(413) However, according to another interpretation

these wooden models are substitutes offered to the gods in room of the

iron, whose soul the covetous deities might otherwise abstract for their

own use, thus making the metal unmalleable.(414)

(M124) Among the Dyaks of Pinoeh, a district of South-Eastern Borneo, when

a child is born, a medicine-man is sent for, who conjures the soul of the

infant into half a coco-nut, which he thereupon covers with a cloth and

places on a square platter or charger suspended by cords from the roof.

This ceremony he repeats at every new moon for a year.(415) The intention

of the ceremony is not explained by the writer who describes it, but we

may conjecture that it is to place the soul of the child in a safer place

than its own frail little body. This conjecture is confirmed by the reason

assigned for a similar custom observed elsewhere in the Indian

Archipelago. In the Kei Islands, when there is a newly-born child in a

house, an empty coco-nut, split and spliced together again, may sometimes

be seen hanging beside a rough wooden image of an ancestor. The soul of

the infant is believed to be temporarily deposited in the coco-nut in

order that it may be safe from the attacks of evil spirits; but when the

child grows bigger and stronger, the soul will take up its permanent abode

in its own body. Similarly among the Esquimaux of Alaska, when a child is

sick, the medicine-man will sometimes extract its soul from its body and

place it for safe-keeping in an amulet, which for further security he

deposits in his own medicine-bag. (416) It seems probable that many

amulets have been similarly regarded as soul-boxes, that is, as safes in

which the souls of the owners are kept for greater security.(417) An old

Mang’anje woman in the West Shire district of British Central Africa used

to wear round her neck an ivory ornament, hollow, and about three inches

long, which she called her life or soul (_moyo wanga_). Naturally, she

would not part with it; a planter tried to buy it of her, but in

vain.(418) When Mr. James Macdonald was one day sitting in the house of a

Hlubi chief, awaiting the appearance of that great man, who was busy

decorating his person, a native pointed to a pair of magnificent ox-horns,

and said, “Ntame has his soul in these horns.” The horns were those of an

animal which had been sacrificed, and they were held sacred. A magician

had fastened them to the roof to protect the house and its inmates from

the thunder-bolt. “The idea,” adds Mr. Macdonald, “is in no way foreign to

South African thought. A man’s soul there may dwell in the roof of his

house, in a tree, by a spring of water, or on some mountain scaur.”(419)

Among the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain there is a

secret society which goes by the name of Ingniet or Ingiet. On his

entrance into it every man receives a stone in the shape either of a human

being or of an animal, and henceforth his soul is believed to be knit up

in a manner with the stone. If it breaks, it is an evil omen for him; they

say that the thunder has struck the stone and that he who owns it will

soon die. If nevertheless the man survives the breaking of his soul-stone,

they say that it was not a proper soul-stone and he gets a new one

instead.(420) The emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an

astronomer that the life of Simeon, prince of Bulgaria, was bound up with

a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column

were removed, Simeon would immediately die. The emperor took the hint and

removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by

enquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in Bulgaria.(421) The deified kings

of ancient Egypt appear to have enjoyed the privilege of depositing their

spiritual doubles or souls (_ka_) during their lifetime in a number of

portrait statues, properly fourteen for each king, which stood in the

chamber of adoration (_pa douaït_) of the temple and were revered as the

equivalents or representatives of the monarchs themselves.(422) Among the

Karens of Burma “the knife with which the navel string is cut is carefully

preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some

way connected with it, for, if lost or destroyed, it is said the child

will not be long lived.”(423) Among the Shawnee Indians of North America

it once happened that an eminent man was favoured with a special

revelation by the Great Spirit. Wisely refusing to hide the sacred light

of revelation under a bushel, he generously communicated a few sparks of

the illumination to John Tanner, a white man who lived for many years as

an Indian among the Indians. “Henceforth,” said the inspired sage, “the

fire must never be suffered to go out in your lodge. Summer and winter,

day and night, in the storm, or when it is calm, you must remember that

the life in your body, and the fire in your lodge, are the same, and of

the same date. If you suffer your fire to be extinguished, at that moment

your life will be at its end.”(424)

(M125) Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man’s soul or strength is

sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is

cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboyna used to think

that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were

shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted

in denying his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately

confessed. One man, who was tried for murder, endured without flinching

the utmost ingenuity of his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing

with a pair of shears. On asking what this was for, and being told that it

was to cut his hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean

breast. In subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession

from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his

hair.(425) In Ceram it is still believed that if young people have their

hair cut they will be weakened and enervated thereby.(426)

(M126) Here in Europe it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of

witches and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could make any

impression on these miscreants so long as they kept their hair on. Hence

in France it was customary to shave the whole bodies of persons charged

with sorcery before handing them over to the torturer. Millaeus witnessed

the torture of some persons at Toulouse, from whom no confession could be

wrung until they were stripped and completely shaven, when they readily

acknowledged the truth of the charge. A woman also, who apparently led a

pious life, was put to the torture on suspicion of witchcraft, and bore

her agonies with incredible constancy, until complete depilation drove her

to admit her guilt. The noted inquisitor Sprenger contented himself with

shaving the head of the suspected witch or wizard; but his more

thorough-going colleague Cumanus shaved the whole bodies of forty-one

women before committing them all to the flames. He had high authority for

this rigorous scrutiny, since Satan himself, in a sermon preached from the

pulpit of North Berwick church, comforted his many servants by assuring

them that no harm could befall them “sa lang as their hair wes on, and

sould newir latt ane teir fall fra thair ene.”(427) Similarly in Bastar, a

province of India, “if a man is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is

beaten by the crowd, his hair is shaved, the hair being supposed to

constitute his power of mischief, his front teeth are knocked out, in

order, it is said, to prevent him from muttering incantations.... Women

suspected of sorcery have to undergo the same ordeal; if found guilty, the

same punishment is awarded, and after being shaved, their hair is attached

to a tree in some public place.”(428) So among the Bhils of India, when a

woman was convicted of witchcraft and had been subjected to various forms

of persuasion, such as hanging head downwards from a tree and having

pepper put into her eyes, a lock of hair was cut from her head and buried

in the ground, “that the last link between her and her former powers of

mischief might be broken.”(429) In like manner among the Aztecs of Mexico,

when wizards and witches “had done their evil deeds, and the time came to

put an end to their detestable life, some one laid hold of them and

cropped the hair on the crown of their heads, which took from them all

their power of sorcery and enchantment, and then it was that by death they

put an end to their odious existence.”(430)

§ 2. The External Soul in Plants.

(M127) Further it has been shewn that in folk-tales the life of a person

is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of

the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the

person.(431) Similarly among the natives of the Pennefather River in

Queensland, when a visiter has made himself very agreeable and taken his

departure, an effigy of him about three or four feet long is cut on some

soft tree, such as the _Canarium australasicum_, so as to face in the

direction taken by the popular stranger. Afterwards from observing the

state of the tree the natives infer the corresponding state of their

absent friend, whose illness or death are apparently supposed to be

portended by the fall of the leaves or of the tree.(432) In Uganda, when a

new royal enclosure with its numerous houses was built for a new king,

barkcloth trees used to be planted at the main entrance by priests of each

principal deity and offerings were laid under each tree for its particular

god. Thenceforth “the trees were carefully guarded and tended, because it

was believed that as they grew and flourished, so the king’s life and

power would increase.”(433) Among the M’Bengas in Western Africa, about

the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant

two trees of the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the

children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and

if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will soon

die.(434) In Sierra Leone also it is customary at the birth of a child to

plant a shoot of a _malep_-tree, and they think that the tree will grow

with the child and be its god. If a tree which has been thus planted

withers away, the people consult a sorcerer on the subject.(435) Among the

Wajagga of German East Africa, when a child is born, it is usual to plant

a cultivated plant of some sort behind the house. The plant is thenceforth

carefully tended, for they believe that were it to wither away the child

would die. When the navel-string drops from the infant, it is buried under

the plant. The species of birth-plant varies with the clan; members of one

clan, for example, plant a particular sort of banana, members of another

clan plant a sugar-cane, and so on.(436) Among the Swahili of East Africa,

when a child is born, the afterbirth and navel-string are buried in the

courtyard and a mark is made on the spot. Seven days afterwards, the hair

of the child is shaved and deposited, along with the clippings of its

nails, in the same place. Then over all these relics of the infant’s

person a coco-nut is planted. As the tree grows up from the nut, the child

likes to point it out to his playfellows and tell them, “This coco-nut

palm is my navel.” In planting the coco-nut the parents say, “May God

cause our child to grow up, that he or she may one day enjoy the coco-nut

milk of the tree which we plant here.”(437) Though it is not expressly

affirmed, we may perhaps assume that such a birth-tree is supposed to

stand in a sympathetic relation with the life of the person. In the

Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically

bound up with that of a tree.(438) The chief of Old Town in Calabar kept

his soul in a sacred grove near a spring of water. When some Europeans, in

frolic or ignorance, cut down part of the grove, the spirit was most

indignant and threatened the perpetrators of the deed, according to the

king, with all manner of evil.(439) Among the Fans of the French Congo,

when a chief’s son is born, the remains of the navel-string are buried

under a sacred fig-tree, and “thenceforth great importance is attached to

the growth of the tree; it is strictly forbidden to touch it. Any attempt

on the tree would be considered as an attack on the human being

himself.”(440) Among the Boloki of the Upper Congo a family has a plant

with red leaves (called _nkungu_) for its totem. When a woman of the

family is with child for the first time, one of the totemic plants is

planted near the hearth outside the house and is never destroyed,

otherwise it is believed that the child would be born thin and weak and

would remain puny and sickly. “The healthy life of the children and family

is bound up with the healthiness and life of the totem tree as respected

and preserved by the family.”(441) Among the Baganda of Central Africa a

child’s afterbirth was called the second child and was believed to be

animated by a spirit, which at once became a ghost. The afterbirth was

usually buried at the root of a banana tree, and afterwards the tree was

carefully guarded by old women, who prevented any one from going near it;

they tied ropes of fibre from tree to tree to isolate it, and all the

child’s excretions were thrown into this enclosure. When the fruit

ripened, it was cut by the old woman in charge. The reason for guarding

the tree thus carefully was a belief that if any stranger were to eat of

the fruit of the tree or to drink beer brewed from it, he would carry off

with him the ghost of the child’s afterbirth, which had been buried at the

root of the banana-tree, and the living child would then die in order to

follow its twin ghost. Whereas a grandparent of the child, by eating the

fruit or drinking the beer, averted this catastrophe and ensured the

health of the child.(442) Among the Wakondyo, at the north-western corner

of Lake Albert Nyanza, it is customary to bury the afterbirth at the foot

of a young banana-tree, and the fruit of this particular tree may be eaten

by no one but the woman who assisted at the birth.(443) The reason for the

custom is not mentioned, but probably, as among the Baganda, the life of

the child is supposed to be bound up with the life of the tree, since the

afterbirth, regarded as a spiritual double of the infant, has been buried

at the root of the tree.

(M128) Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born child

sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of

the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child’s

life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.(444) After a birth the

Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young

sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a _tohu oranga_ or sign of life

for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered

and died, the parents augured the worst for their child.(445) In the

Chatham Islands, when the child of a leading man received its name, it was

customary to plant a tree, “the growth of which was to be as the growth of

the child,” and during the planting priests chanted a spell.(446) In some

parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male child is planted together with a

coco-nut or the slip of a breadfruit-tree, and the child’s life is

supposed to be intimately connected with that of the tree.(447) With

certain Malayo-Siamese families of the Patani States it is customary to

bury the afterbirth under a banana-tree, and the condition of the tree is

afterwards regarded as ominous of the child’s fate for good or evil.(448)

In Southern Celebes, when a child is born, a coco-nut is planted and

watered with the water in which the afterbirth and navel-string have been

washed. As it grows up, the tree is called the “contemporary” of the

child.(449) So in Bali a coco-palm is planted at the birth of a child. It

is believed to grow up equally with the child, and is called its

“life-plant.”(450) On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo plant a

palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it

flourishes, they reckon on good fortune; but if it withers or dies, they

expect misfortune.(451) Amongst the Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, districts

of Dutch Borneo, it is customary to plant a fruit-tree for a child, and

henceforth in the popular belief the fate of the child is bound up with

that of the tree. If the tree shoots up rapidly, it will go well with the

child; but if the tree is dwarfed or shrivelled, nothing but misfortune

can be expected for its human counterpart.(452) According to another

account, at the naming of children and certain other festivals the Dyaks

are wont to set a _sawang_-plant, roots and all, before a priestess; and

when the festival is over, the plant is replaced in the ground. Such a

plant becomes thenceforth a sort of prophetic index for the person in

whose honour the festival was held. If the plant thrives, the man will be

fortunate; if it fades or perishes, some evil will befall him.(453) The

Dyaks also believe that at the birth of every person on earth a flower

grows up in the spirit world and leads a life parallel to his. If the

flower flourishes, the man enjoys good health, but if it droops, so does

he. Hence when he has dreamed bad dreams or has felt unwell for several

days, he infers that his flower in the other world is neglected or sickly,

and accordingly he employs a medicine-man to tend the precious plant, weed

the soil, and sweep it up, in order that the earthly and unearthly life

may prosper once more.(454)

(M129) It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany,

England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth

of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is

tended with special care.(455) The custom is still pretty general in the

canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a

pear-tree for a girl, and the people think that the child will flourish or

dwindle with the tree.(456) In Mecklenburg the afterbirth is thrown out at

the foot of a young tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the

tree.(457) In Bosnia, when the children of a family have died one after

the other, the hair of the next child is cut with some ceremony by a

stranger, and the mother carries the shorn tresses into the garden, where

she ties them to a fine young tree, in order that her child may grow and

flourish like the tree.(458) At Muskau, in Lausitz, it used to be

customary for bride and bridegroom on the morning of their wedding-day to

plant a pair of young oaks side by side, and as each of the trees

flourished or withered, so the good luck of the person who planted it was

believed to wax or wane.(459) On a promontory in Lake Keitele, in Finland,

there used to stand an old fir-tree, which according to tradition had been

planted by the first colonists to serve as a symbol or token of their

fortune. First-fruits of the harvest used to be offered to the tree before

any one would taste of the new crop; and whenever a branch fell, it was

deemed a sign that some one would die. More and more the crown of the tree

withered away, and in the same proportion the family whose ancestors had

planted the fir dwindled away, till only one old woman was left. At last

the tree fell, and soon afterwards the old woman departed this life.(460)

When Lord Byron first visited his ancestral estate of Newstead “he

planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an

idea that as _it_ flourished so should _he_.”(461) On a day when the cloud

that settled on the later years of Sir Walter Scott lifted a little, and

he heard that _Woodstock_ had sold for over eight thousand pounds, he

wrote in his journal: “I have a curious fancy; I will go set two or three

acorns, and judge by their success in growing whether I shall succeed in

clearing my way or not.”(462) Near the Castle of Dalhousie, not far from

Edinburgh, there grows an oak-tree, called the Edgewell Tree, which is

popularly believed to be linked to the fate of the family by a mysterious

tie; for they say that when one of the family dies, or is about to die, a

branch falls from the Edgewell Tree. Thus, on seeing a great bough drop

from the tree on a quiet, still day in July 1874, an old forester

exclaimed, “The laird’s deid noo!” and soon after news came that Fox

Maule, eleventh Earl of Dalhousie, was dead.(463) At Howth Castle in

Ireland there is an old tree with which the fortunes of the St. Lawrence

family are supposed to be connected. The branches of the tree are propped

on strong supports, for tradition runs that when the tree falls the direct

line of the Earls of Howth will become extinct.(464) On the old road from

Hanover to Osnabrück, at the village of Oster-Kappeln, there used to stand

an ancient oak, which put out its last green shoot in the year 1849. The

tree was conjecturally supposed to be contemporary with the Guelphs; and

in the year 1866, so fatal for the house of Hanover, on a calm summer

afternoon, without any visible cause, the veteran suddenly fell with a

crash and lay stretched across the highroad. The peasants regarded its

fall as an ill omen for the reigning family, and when King George V. heard

of it he gave orders that the giant trunk should be set up again, and it

was done with much trouble and at great expense, the stump being supported

in position by iron chains clamped to the neighbouring trees. But the

king’s efforts to prop the falling fortunes of his house were vain; a few

months after the fall of the oak Hanover formed part of the Prussian

monarchy.(465)

(M130) In the midst of the “Forbidden City” at Peking there is a tiny

private garden, where the emperors of the now fallen Manchu dynasty used

to take the air and refresh themselves after the cares of state. In

accordance with Chinese taste the garden is a labyrinth of artificial

rockeries, waterfalls, grottoes, and kiosks, in which everything is as

unlike nature as art can make it. The trees in particular (_Arbor vitae_),

the principal ornament of the garden, exhibit the last refinement of the

gardener’s skill, being clipped and distorted into a variety of grotesque

shapes. Only one of the trees remained intact and had been spared these

deformations for centuries. Far from being stunted by the axe or the

shears, the tree was carefully tended and encouraged to shoot up to its

full height. “It was the ‘Life-tree of the Dynasty,’ and according to

legend the prosperity or fall of the present dynasty went hand in hand

with the welfare or death of the tree. Certainly, if we accept the

tradition, the days of the present reigning house must be numbered, for

all the care and attention lavished on the tree have been for some years

in vain. A glance at our illustration shews the tree as it still surpasses

all its fellows in height and size; but it owes its pre-eminence only to

the many artificial props which hold it up. In reality the ‘Life-tree of

the Dynasty’ is dying, and might fall over night, if one of its artificial

props were suddenly to give way. For the superstitious Chinese—and

superstitious they certainly are—it is a very, very evil omen.”(466) Some

twelve years have passed since this passage was written, and in the

interval the omen has been fulfilled—the Manchu dynasty has fallen. We may

conjecture that the old tree in the quaint old garden has fallen too. So

vain are all human efforts to arrest the decay of royal houses by

underpropping trees on which nature herself has passed a sentence of

death.

(M131) At Rome in the ancient sanctuary of Quirinus there grew two old

myrtle-trees, one named the Patrician and the other the Plebeian. For many

years, so long as the patricians were in the ascendant, their myrtle-tree

flourished and spread its branches abroad, while the myrtle of the

plebeians was shrivelled and shrunken; but from the time of the Marsian

war, when the power of the nobles declined, their myrtle in like manner

drooped and withered, whereas that of the popular party held up its head

and grew strong.(467) Thrice when Vespasia was with child, an old oak in

the garden of the Flavian family near Rome suddenly put forth branches.

The first branch was puny and soon withered away, and the girl who was

born accordingly died within the year; the second branch was long and

sturdy; and the third was like a tree. So on the third occasion the happy

father reported to his mother that a future emperor was born to her as a

grandchild. The old lady only laughed to think that at her age she should

keep her wits about her, while her son had lost his; yet the omen of the

oak came true, for the grandson was afterwards the emperor Vespasian.(468)

(M132) In England children are sometimes passed through a cleft ash-tree

as a cure for rupture or rickets, and thenceforward a sympathetic

connexion is supposed to exist between them and the tree. An ash-tree

which had been used for this purpose grew at the edge of Shirley Heath, on

the road from Hockly House to Birmingham. “Thomas Chillingworth, son of

the owner of an adjoining farm, now about thirty-four, was, when an infant

of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which

he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a single branch to

be touched, for it is believed the life of the patient depends on the life

of the tree, and the moment that it is cut down, be the patient ever so

distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification ensues, and terminates

in death, as was the case in a man driving a waggon on the very road in

question.” “It is not uncommon, however,” adds the writer, “for persons to

survive for a time the felling of the tree.”(469) The ordinary mode of

effecting the cure is to split a young ash-sapling longitudinally for a

few feet and pass the child, naked, either three times or three times

three through the fissure at sunrise. In the West of England it is said

that the passage should be “against the sun.” As soon as the ceremony has

been performed, the tree is bound tightly up and the fissure plastered

over with mud or clay. The belief is that just as the cleft in the tree

closes up, so the rupture in the child’s body will be healed; but that if

the rift in the tree remains open, the rupture in the child will remain

too, and if the tree were to die, the death of the child would surely

follow.(470)

(M133) Down to the second half of the nineteenth century the remedy was

still in common use at Fittleworth and many other places in Sussex. The

account of the Sussex practice and belief is notable because it brings out

very clearly the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the

ruptured child and the tree through which it has been passed. We are told

that the patient “must be passed nine times every morning on nine

successive days at sunrise through a cleft in a sapling ash-tree, which

has been so far given up by the owner of it to the parents of the child,

as that there is an understanding it shall not be cut down during the life

of the infant who is to be passed through it. The sapling must be sound at

heart, and the cleft must be made with an axe. The child on being carried

to the tree must be attended by nine persons, each of whom must pass it

through the cleft from west to east. On the ninth morning the solemn

ceremony is concluded by binding the tree lightly with a cord, and it is

supposed that as the cleft closes the health of the child will improve. In

the neighbourhood of Petworth some cleft ash-trees may be seen, through

which children have very recently been passed. I may add, that only a few

weeks since, a person who had lately purchased an ash-tree standing in

this parish, intending to cut it down, was told by the father of a child,

who had some time before been passed through it, that the infirmity would

be sure to return upon his son if it were felled. Whereupon the good man

said, he knew that such would be the case; and therefore he would not fell

it for the world.”(471)

(M134) A similar cure for various diseases, but especially for rupture and

rickets, has been commonly practised in other parts of Europe, as Germany,

France, Denmark, and Sweden; but in these countries the tree employed for

the purpose is usually not an ash but an oak; sometimes a willow-tree is

allowed or even prescribed instead. With these exceptions the practice and

the belief are nearly the same on the Continent as in England: a young oak

is split longitudinally and the two sides held forcibly apart while the

sick child is passed through the cleft; then the opening in the tree is

closed, and bound up, and it is believed that as the cleft in the tree

heals by the parts growing together again, so the rupture in the child

will be simultaneously cured. It is often laid down that the ceremony must

be performed in the strictest silence; sometimes the time prescribed is

before sunrise, and sometimes the child must be passed thrice through the

cleft.(472) In Oldenburg and Mecklenburg they say that the cure should be

performed on St. John’s Eve (Midsummer Eve) by three men named John, who

assist each other in holding the split oak-sapling open and passing the

child through it.(473) Some people, however, prefer Good Friday or

Christmas Eve as the season for the performance of the ceremony.(474) In

Denmark copper coins are laid as an offering at the foot of the tree

through which sick persons have been passed; and threads, ribbons, or

bandages which have been worn by the sufferers are tied to a branch of the

tree.(475) In the Greek island of Ceos, when a child is sickly, the

parents carry it out into the country “and the father selects a young oak;

this they split up from the root, then the father is assisted by another

man in holding the tree open whilst the mother passes the child three

times through, and then they bind up the tree well, cover it all over with

manure, and carefully water it for forty days. In the same fashion they

bind up the child for a like period, and after the lapse of this time they

expect that it will be quite well.”(476)

(M135) In Mecklenburg, as in England, the sympathetic relation thus

established between the tree and the child is so close that if the tree is

cut down the child will die.(477) In the island of Rügen people believe

that when a person who has been thus cured of rupture dies, his soul

passes into the same oak-tree through which his body was passed in his

youth.(478) Thus it seems that in ridding himself of the disease the

sufferer is supposed to transfer a certain vital part of his person to the

tree so that it is impossible to injure the tree without at the same time

injuring the man; and in Rügen this partial union is thought to be

completed by the transmigration of the man’s soul at death into the tree.

Apparently the disease is conceived as something physical, which clings to

the patient but can be stripped off him and left behind on the farther

side of the narrow aperture through which he has forced his way; when the

aperture is closed by the natural growth of the tree, the door is as it

were shut against the disease, which is then unable to pursue and overtake

the sufferer. Hence the idea at the root of the custom is not so much that

the patient has transferred his ailment to the tree, as that the tree

forms an impervious barrier between him and the malady which had hitherto

afflicted him. This interpretation is confirmed by the following

parallels.

(M136) In those parts of Armenia which are covered with forests, many

great and ancient trees are revered as sacred and receive marks of homage.

The people burn lights before them, fumigate them with incense, sacrifice

cocks and wethers to them, and creep through holes in their trunks or push

lean and sickly children through them “in order to put a stop to the

influence of evil spirits.”(479) Apparently, they think that evil spirits

cannot creep through the cleft in the holy tree, and therefore that the

sick who have effected the passage are safe from their demoniacal

pursuers. The same conception of a fissure in a tree as an obstacle placed

in the path of pursuing spirits meets us in a number of savage customs.

Thus in the island of Nias, when a man is in training for the priesthood,

he has to be introduced to the various spirits between whom and mankind it

will be his office to mediate. A priest takes him to an open window, and

while the drums are beating points out to him the great spirit in the sun

who calls away men to himself through death; for it is needful that the

future priest should know him from whose grasp he will often be expected

to wrest the sick and dying. In the evening twilight he is led to the

graves and shewn the envious spirits of the dead, who also are ever

drawing away the living to their own shadowy world. Next day he is

conducted to a river and shewn the spirit of the waters; and finally they

take him up to a mountain and exhibit to him the spirits of the mountains,

who have diverse shapes, some appearing like swine, others like buffaloes,

others like goats, and others again like men with long hair on their

bodies. When he has seen all this, his education is complete, but on his

return from the mountain the new priest may not at once enter his own

house. For the people think that, were he to do so, the dangerous spirits

by whom he is still environed would stay in the house and visit both the

family and the pigs with sickness. Accordingly he betakes himself to other

villages and passes several nights there, hoping that the spirits will

leave him and settle on the friends who receive him into their houses; but

naturally he does not reveal the intention of his visits to his hosts.

Lastly, before he enters his own dwelling, he looks out for some young

tree by the way, splits it down the middle, and then creeps through the

fissure, in the belief that any spirit which may still be clinging to him

will thus be left sticking to the tree.(480) Again, among the Bilqula or

Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia “the bed of a mourner must be

protected against the ghost of the deceased. His male relatives stick a

thorn-bush into the ground at each corner of their beds. After four days

these are thrown into the water. Mourners must rise early and go into the

woods, where they stick four thorn-bushes into the ground, at the corners

of a square, in which they cleanse themselves by rubbing their bodies with

cedar branches. They also swim in ponds. After swimming they cleave four

small trees and creep through the clefts, following the course of the sun.

This they do on four subsequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day.

Mourners cut their hair short. The hair that has been cut off is burnt. If

they should not observe these regulations, it is believed that they would

dream of the deceased.”(481) To the savage, who fails to distinguish the

visions of sleep from the appearances of waking life, the apparition of a

dead man in a dream is equivalent to the actual presence of the ghost; and

accordingly he seeks to keep off the spiritual intruder, just as he might

a creature of flesh and blood, by fencing his bed with thorn-bushes.

Similarly the practice of creeping through four cleft trees is clearly an

attempt to shake off the clinging ghost and leave it adhering to the

trees, just as in Nias the future priest hopes to rid himself in like

manner of the dangerous spirits who have dogged his steps from the

mountains and the graves.

(M137) This interpretation of the custom is strongly confirmed by a

funeral ceremony which Dr. Charles Hose witnessed at the chief village of

the Madangs, a tribe of Kayans who occupy a hitherto unexplored district

in the heart of Borneo. “Just across the river from where we were

sitting,” says Dr. Hose, “was the graveyard, and there I witnessed a

funeral procession as the day was drawing to a close. The coffin, which

was a wooden box made from a tree-trunk, was decorated with red and black

patterns in circles, with two small wooden figures of men placed at either

end; it was lashed with rattans to a long pole, and by this means was

lifted to the shoulders of the bearers, who numbered thirteen in all, and

who then carried it to the burying-ground. After the mourners had all

passed over to the graveyard, a man quickly cut a couple of small sticks,

each five feet long and about an inch in diameter. One of these he split

almost the whole way down, and forced the unsplit end into the ground,

when the upper part opened like a V, leaving sufficient room for each

person to pass through. He next split the top of the other stick, and,

placing another short stick in the cleft, made a cross, which he also

forced into the ground. The funeral procession climbed the mound on which

the cemetery was situated, passing through the V of the cleft stick in

single file. As soon as the coffin had been placed on the stage erected

for the purpose, the people commenced their return, following on one

another’s heels as quickly as possible, each spitting out the words, ‘_Pit

balli krat balli jat tesip bertatip!_’ (‘Keep back, and close out all

things evil, and sickness’) as they passed through the V-shaped stick. The

whole party having left the graveyard, the gate was closed by the simple

process of tying the cleft ends of the stick together, and a few words

were then said to the cross-stick, which they call _ngring_, or the wall

that separates the living from the dead. All who had taken part in the

ceremony then went and bathed before returning to their homes, rubbing

their skins with rough pebbles, the old Mosaic idea of the uncleanness of

the dead, as mentioned in Numbers (chap. xix.), evidently finding a place

among their religious beliefs. It is apparently a great relief to their

minds to think that they can shut out the spirit of the deceased. They

believe that the spirit of the dead is not aware that life has left the

body until a short time after the coffin has been taken to the graveyard,

and then not until the spirit has had leisure to notice the clothes,

weapons, and other articles belonging to its earthly estate, which are

placed with the coffin. But before this takes place the gate has been

closed.”(482)

(M138) Here the words uttered by the mourners in passing through the

cloven stick shew clearly that they believe the stick to act as a barrier

or fence, on the further side of which they leave behind the ghost or

other dangerous spirit whose successful pursuit might entail sickness and

death on the survivors. Thus the passage of these Madang mourners through

the cleft stick is strictly analogous to the passage of ruptured English

children through a cleft ash-tree. Both are simply ways of leaving an evil

thing behind. Similarly the subsequent binding up of the cloven stick in

Borneo is analogous to the binding up of the cloven ash-tree in England.

Both are ways of barricading the road against the evil which is dogging

your steps; having passed through the doorway you slam the door in the

face of your pursuer. Yet it seems probable that the intention of binding

up the cleft in a tree through which a ruptured patient has been passed is

not merely that of shutting the door on the malady conceived as a personal

being; combined with this idea is perhaps the notion that in virtue of the

law of magical homoeopathy the rupture in the body of the sufferer will

close up exactly in the same measure as the cleft in the tree closes up

through the force of bandages and of natural growth. That this shade of

meaning attaches to the custom is rendered probable by a comparison of an

ancient Roman cure for dislocation, which has been preserved for us by the

grave authority of the elder Cato. He recommended that a green reed, four

or five feet long, should be taken, split down the middle, and held by two

men to the dislocated bones while a curious and now unintelligible spell

was recited; then, when the spell had been recited and the aperture in the

reed had closed, the reed was to be tied to the dislocated limb, and a

perfect cure might be expected. Apparently it was supposed that just as

the two sides of the split reed came together and coalesced after being

held apart, so the dislocated bones would come together and fit into their

proper places.(483)

(M139) But the usual idea in passing through a narrow aperture as a cure

or preventive of evil would seem to be simply that of giving the slip to a

dangerous pursuer. With this intention, doubtless, the savage Thays of

Tonquin repair after a burial to the banks of a stream and there creep

through a triangle formed by leaning two reeds against each other, while

the sorcerer souses them with dirty water. All the relations of the

deceased must wash their garments in the stream before they return home,

and they may not set foot in the house till they have shorn their hair at

the foot of the ladder. Afterwards the sorcerer comes and sprinkles the

whole house with water for the purpose of expelling evil spirits.(484)

Here again we cannot doubt that the creeping through the triangle of reeds

is intended to rid the mourners of the troublesome ghost. So when the

Kamtchatkans had disposed of a corpse after their usual fashion by

throwing it to the dogs to be devoured, they purified themselves as

follows. They went into the forest and cut various roots which they bent

into rings, and through these rings they crept twice. Afterwards they

carried the rings back to the forest and flung them away westward. The

Koryaks, a people of the same region, burn their dead and hold a festival

in honour of the departed a year after the death. At this festival, which

takes place on the spot where the corpse was burned, or, if that is too

far off, on a neighbouring height, they sacrifice two young reindeer which

have never been in harness, and the sorcerer sticks a great many reindeer

horns in the earth, believing that thereby he is dispatching a whole herd

of these animals to their deceased friend in the other world. Then they

all hasten home, and purify themselves by passing between two poles

planted in the ground, while the sorcerer strikes them with a stick and

adjures death not to carry them off.(485) The Tokoelawi in the interior of

Central Celebes hold a great sacrificial festival on the eighth day after

the death of a man or the ninth day after the death of a woman. When the

guests return homewards after the festival they pass under two poles

placed in a slanting direction against each other, and they may not look

round at the house where the death occurred. “In this way they take a

final leave of the soul of the deceased. Afterwards no more sacrifices are

offered to the soul.”(486) Among the Toboengkoe, another tribe in the

interior of Central Celebes, when a man buries his wife, he goes to the

grave by a different road from that along which the corpse is carried; and

on certain days afterwards he bathes, and on returning from the bath must

pass through a teepee-shaped erection, which is formed by splitting a pole

up the middle and separating the two split pieces except at the top. “This

he must do in order that his second wife, if he has one, may not soon

die.”(487) Here the notion probably is that the jealous ghost of the dead

wife seeks to avenge herself on her living rival by carrying off her soul

with her to deadland. Hence to prevent this catastrophe the husband tries

to evade the ghost, first by going to the grave along a different path,

and second by passing under a cleft stick, through which as usual the

spirit cannot follow him.

(M140) In the light of the foregoing customs, as well as of a multitude of

ceremonies observed for a similar purpose in all parts of the world,(488)

we may safely assume that when people creep through rings after a death or

pass between poles after a sacrifice to the dead, their intention simply

is to interpose a barrier between themselves and the ghost; they make

their way through a narrow pass or aperture through which they hope that

the ghost will not be able to follow them. To put it otherwise, they

conceive that the spirit of the dead is sticking to them like a burr, and

that like a burr it may be rubbed or scraped off and left adhering to the

sides of the opening through which they have squeezed themselves.

(M141) Similarly, when a pestilence is raging among the Koryaks, they kill

a dog, wind its guts about two poles, and pass between the poles,(489)

doubtless for the sake of giving the slip to the demon of the plague in

the same way that they give the slip to the ghost. When the Kayans of

Borneo have been dogged by an evil spirit on a journey and are nearing

their destination, they fashion a small archway of boughs, light a fire

under it, and pass in single file under the archway and over the fire,

spitting into the fire as they pass. By this ceremony, we are told, “they

thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free

from all baleful influences.”(490) Here, to make assurance doubly sure, a

fire as well as an archway is interposed between the travellers and the

dreadful beings who are walking unseen behind. To crawl under a bramble

which has formed an arch by sending down a second root into the ground, is

an English and Welsh cure for whooping-cough, rheumatism, boils, and other

complaints. In some parts of the west of England they say that to get rid

of boils the thing to do is to crawl through such a natural arch nine

times against the sun; but in Devonshire the patient should creep through

the arch thrice with the sun, that is from east to west. When a child is

passed through it for whooping-cough, the operators ought to say:

“_In bramble, out cough,_

_Here I leave the whooping-cough._”(491)

In Perigord and other parts of France the same cure is employed for

boils.(492) In Bulgaria, when a person suffers from a congenital malady

such as scrofula, a popular cure is to take him to a neighbouring village

and there make him creep naked thrice through an arch, which is formed by

inserting the lower ends of two vine branches in the ground and joining

their upper ends together. When he has done so, he hangs his clothes on a

tree, and dons other garments. On his way home the patient must also crawl

under a ploughshare, which is held high enough to let him pass.(493)

Further, when whooping-cough is prevalent in a Bulgarian village, an old

woman will scrape the earth from under the root of a willow-tree. Then all

the children of the village creep through the opening thus made, and a

thread from the garment of each of them is hung on the willow. Adults

sometimes go through the same ceremony after recovering from a dangerous

illness.(494) Similarly, when sickness is rife among some of the villages

to the east of Lake Nyassa, the inhabitants crawl through an arch formed

by bending a wand and inserting the two ends in the ground. By way of

further precaution they wash themselves on the spot with medicine and

water, and then bury the medicine and the evil influence together in the

earth. The same ceremony is resorted to as a means of keeping off evil

spirits, wild beasts, and enemies.(495)

(M142) In Uganda “sometimes a medicine-man directed a sick man to provide

an animal, promising that he would come and transfer the sickness to the

animal. The medicine-man would then select a plantain-tree near the house,

kill the animal by it, and anoint the sick man with its blood, on his

forehead, on each side of his chest, and on his legs above the knees. The

plantain-tree selected had to be one that was about to bear fruit, and the

medicine-man would split the stem from near the top to near the bottom,

leaving a few inches not split both at the top and at the bottom; the

split stem would be held open so that the sick man could step through it,

and in doing so he would leave his clothing at the plantain-tree, and

would run into the house without looking back. When he entered the house,

new clothes would be given him to wear. The plantain, the clothing, and

meat would be carried away by the medicine-man, who would deposit the

plantain-tree on waste land, but would take the meat and clothing for

himself. Sometimes the medicine-man would kill the animal near the hut,

lay a stout stick across the threshold, and narrow the doorway by

partially filling it with branches of trees; he would then put some of the

blood on either side of the narrow entrance, and some on the stick across

the threshold, and would also anoint with it the sick man, who would be

taken outside for the purpose. The patient would then re-enter the house,

letting his clothing fall off, as he passed through the doorway. The

medicine-man would carry away the branches, the stick, the clothing, and

the meat. The branches and the stick he would cast upon waste land, but

the meat and the clothing he would keep for himself.”(496) Here the notion

of transferring the sickness to the animal is plainly combined with, we

may almost say overshadowed by the notion that the ailment is left behind

adhering to the cleft plantain-stem or to the stick and branches of the

narrow opening through which the patient has made his way. That obviously

is why the plantain-stem or the stick and branches are thrown away on

waste land, lest they should infect other people with the sickness which

has been transferred to them.

(M143) The Kai of German New Guinea attribute sickness to the agency

either of ghosts or of sorcerers, but suspicion always falls at first on

ghosts, who are deemed even worse than the sorcerers. To cure a sick man

they will sometimes cleave a stick in the middle, leaving the two ends

intact, and then oblige the sufferer to insert his head through the cleft.

After that they stroke his whole body with the stick from head to foot.

“The stick with the soul-stuff of the ghosts is then hurled away or

otherwise destroyed, whereupon the sick man is supposed to recover.”(497)

Here the ghosts who cause the sickness are clearly supposed to be scraped

from the patient’s body by means of the cleft stick, and to be thrown away

or destroyed with the implement. The Looboos, a primitive tribe in the

Mandailing district of Sumatra, stand in great fear of the wandering

spirits of the dead (_soemangots_). But “they know all sorts of means of

protecting themselves against the unwelcome visits of the spirits. For

example, if a man has lost his way in the forest, he thinks that this is

the work of such a spirit (_soemangot_), who dogs the wanderer and bedims

his sight. So in order to throw the malignant spirit off the track he

takes a rattan and splits it through the middle. By bending the rattan an

opening is made, through which he creeps. After that the rattan is quickly

stretched and the opening closes. By this procedure the spirit (so they

think) cannot find the opening again and so cannot further follow his

victim.”(498) Here therefore, the passage through a cleft stick is

conceived in the clearest way as an escape from a spiritual pursuer, and

the closing of the aperture when the fugitive has passed through it is

nothing but the slamming of the door in the face of his invisible foe.

(M144) A similar significance is probably to be attached to other cases of

ceremonially passing through a cleft stick even where the intention of the

rite is not expressly alleged. Thus among the Ovambo of German South-West

Africa young women who have become marriageable perform a variety of

ceremonies; among other things they dance in the large and the small

cattle-kraal. On quitting the large cattle-kraal after the dance, and on

entering and quitting the small cattle-kraal, they are obliged to pass,

one after the other, through the fork of a cleft stick, of which the two

sides are held wide open by an old man.(499) Among the Washamba of German

East Africa, when a boy has been circumcised, two women bring a long

sugar-cane, which still bears its leaves. The cane is split at some

distance from its upper and lower ends and the two sides are held apart so

as to form a cleft or opening; at the lower end of the cleft a _danga_

ring is fastened. The father and mother of the circumcised youth now place

the sugar-cane between them, touch the ring with their feet, and then slip

through the cleft; and after them the lad’s aunt must also pass through

the cleft sugar-cane.(500) In both these cases the passage through the

cleft stick is probably intended to give the slip to certain dangerous

spirits, which are apt to molest people at such critical seasons as

puberty and circumcision.

(M145) Again, the passage through a ring or hoop is resorted to for like

reasons as a mode of curing or preventing disease. Thus in Sweden, when a

natural ring has been found in a tree, it is carefully removed and

treasured in the family; for sick and especially rickety children are

healed by merely passing through it.(501) A young married woman in Sweden,

who suffered from an infirmity, was advised by a wise woman to steal three

branches of willow, make them into a hoop, and creep through it naked,

taking care not to touch the hoop and to keep perfectly silent. The hoop

was afterwards to be burnt. She carried out the prescription faithfully,

and her faith was rewarded by a perfect cure.(502) No doubt her infirmity

was thought to adhere to the hoop and to be burnt with it. Similarly in

Scotland children who suffered from hectic fever and consumptive patients

used to be healed by passing thrice through a circular wreath of woodbine,

which was cut during the increase of the March moon and was let down over

the body of the sufferer from the head to the feet. Thus Jonet Stewart

cured sundry women by “taking ane garland of grene woodbynd, and causing

the patient pas thryis throw it, quhilk thairefter scho cut in nyne

pieces, and cast in the fyre.” Another wise woman transmitted the sick

“throw are girth of woodbind thryis thre times, saying, ‘I do this in name

of the Father, the Sone, and the Halie Ghaist.’ ”(503) The Highlanders of

Strathspey used to force all their sheep and lambs to pass through a hoop

of rowan-tree on All Saints’ Day and Beltane (the first of November and

the first of May),(504) probably as a means of warding off the witches and

fairies, who are especially dreaded at these seasons, and against whose

malignant arts the rowan-tree affords an efficient protection. In

Oldenburg when a cow gives little or no milk, they milk her through a hole

in a branch. In Eversten they say that this should be done through a ring

which an oak-tree has formed round the scar where a branch has been sawn

off. Others say the beast should be milked through a “witch’s nest,” that

is, through the boughs of a birch-tree which have grown in a tangle. Such

a “witch’s nest” is also hung up in a pig’s stye to protect the pig

against witchcraft.(505) Hence the aim of milking a cow through a “witch’s

nest” or through a natural wooden ring is no doubt to deliver the poor

creature from an artful witch who has been draining away the milk into her

own pail, as witches are too apt to do. Again, in Oldenburg sick children,

and also adults and animals, are passed through a ring of rough unwashed

yarn, just as it comes from the reel. To complete the cure you should

throw a hot coal thrice through the ring, then spit through it thrice, and

finally bury the yarn under a stone, where you leave it to rot. The writer

who reports these remedies explains them as intended to strip the

witchcraft, as you might say, from the bodies of the victims, whether

human or animal, on whom the witch has cast her spell.(506) Among the

Lushais of Assam “five to ten days after the child is born its body is

said to be covered with small pimples, its lips become black and its

strength decreases. The family then obtain a particular kind of creeping

plant called _vawm_, which they make into a coil. In the evening

everything in the house that has a lid or covering is uncovered, and the

child is thrice passed through this coil, which act is supposed to clear

the child’s skin and restore its strength. After this is finished, the

parents go to bed and the pots or other receptacles are covered again by

any of the other members of the family. The parents themselves must not

replace any of these lids for fear that they might shut up the spirit of

the child in them.”(507) When the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia

fear the outbreak of an epidemic, a medicine-man takes a large ring of

hemlock branches and causes every member of the tribe to pass through it.

Each person puts his head through the ring and then moves the ring

downwards over his body till it has almost reached his feet, when he steps

out of it, right foot first. They think that this prevents the epidemic

from breaking out.(508) In Asia Minor, “if a person is believed to be

possessed by an evil spirit, one form of treatment is to heat an

iron-chain red-hot, form it into a ring and pass the afflicted person

through the opening, on the theory that the evil spirit cannot pass the

hot chain, and so is torn from his victim and left behind.”(509) Here the

intention of the passage through the aperture is avowedly to shake off a

spiritual pursuer, who is deterred from further pursuit not only by the

narrowness of the opening but by the risk of burning himself in the

attempt to make his way through it.

(M146) But if the intention of these ceremonies is essentially to rid the

performer of some harmful thing, whether a disease or a ghost or a demon,

which is supposed to be clinging to him, we should expect to find that any

narrow hole or opening would serve the purpose as well as a cleft tree or

stick, an arch or ring of boughs, or a couple of posts fixed in the

ground. And this expectation is not disappointed. On the coast of Morven

and Mull thin ledges of rock may be seen pierced with large holes near the

sea. Consumptive people used to be brought thither, and after the tops of

nine waves had been caught in a dish and thrown on the patient’s head, he

was made to pass through one of the rifted rocks thrice in the direction

of the sun.(510) “On the farm of Crossapol in Coll there is a stone called

_Clach Thuill_, that is, the Hole Stone, through which persons suffering

from consumption were made to pass three times in the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Ghost. They took meat with them each time, and left some on

the stone. The bird that took the food away had the consumption laid upon

it. Similar stones, under which the patient can creep, were made use of in

other islands.”(511) Here it is manifest that the patient left his disease

behind him on the stone, since the bird which carried off the food from

the stone caught the disease. In the Aberdeenshire river Dee, at Cambus o’

May, near Ballater, there is a rock with a hole in it large enough to let

a person pass through. Legend runs that childless women used to wade out

to the stone and squeeze themselves through the hole. It is said that a

certain noble lady tried the effect of the charm not very many years ago

with indifferent success.(512) In the parish of Madern in Cornwall, near

the village of Lanyon, there is a perforated stone called the _Mên-an-tol_

or “holed stone,” through which people formerly crept as a remedy for

pains in the back and limbs; and at certain times of the year parents drew

their children through the hole to cure them of the rickets.(513) The

passage through the stone was also deemed a cure for scrofula, provided it

was made against the sun and repeated three times or three times

three.(514)

(M147) Near the little town of Dourgne, not far from Castres, in Southern

France, there is a mountain, and on the top of the mountain is a

tableland, where a number of large stones may be seen planted in the

ground about a cross and rising to a height of two to five feet above the

ground. Almost all of them are pierced with holes of different sizes. From

time immemorial people used to assemble at Dourgne and the neighbourhood

every year on the sixth of August, the festival of St. Estapin. The

palsied, the lame, the blind, the sick of all sorts, flocked thither to

seek and find a cure for their various infirmities. Very early in the

morning they set out from the villages where they had lodged or from the

meadows where for want of better accommodation they had been forced to

pass the night, and went on pilgrimage to the chapel of St. Estapin, which

stands in a gorge at the southern foot of the mountain. Having gone nine

times in procession round the chapel, they hobbled, limped, or crawled to

the tableland on the top of the mountain. There each of them chose a stone

with a hole of the requisite size and thrust his ailing member through the

hole. For there are holes to suit every complaint; some for the head, some

for the arm, some for the leg, and so on. Having performed this simple

ceremony they were cured; the lame walked, the blind saw, the palsied

recovered the use of their limbs, and so on. The chapel of the saint is

adorned with the crutches and other artificial aids, now wholly

superfluous, which the joyful pilgrims left behind them in token of their

gratitude and devotion.(515) About two miles from Gisors, in the French

department of Oise, there is a dolmen called Trie or Trie- Chateau,

consisting of three upright stones with a fourth and larger stone laid

horizontally on their tops. The stone which forms the back wall of the

dolmen is pierced about the middle by an irregularly shaped hole, through

which the people of the neighbourhood used from time immemorial to pass

their sickly children in the firm belief that the passage through the

stone would restore them to health.(516)

(M148) In the church of St. Corona at the village of Koppenwal, in Lower

Bavaria, there is a hole in the stone on which the altar rests. Through

this hole, while service was going on, the peasants used to creep,

believing that having done so they would not suffer from pains in their

back at harvest.(517) In the crypt of the old cathedral at Freising in

Bavaria there is a tomb which is reputed to contain the relics of St.

Nonnosius. Between a pillar of the tomb and the wall there is a narrow

opening, through which persons afflicted with pains in the back creep in

order to obtain thereby some mitigation of their pangs.(518) In Upper

Austria, above the Lake of Aber, which is a sheet of dark-green water

nestling among wooded mountains, there stands the Falkenstein chapel of

St. Wolfgang built close to the face of a cliff that rises from a little

green dale. A staircase leads up from the chapel to a narrow, dark,

dripping cleft in the rock, through which pilgrims creep in a stooping

posture “in the belief that they can strip off their bodily sufferings or

sins on the face of the rock.”(519) Women with child also crawl through

the hole, hoping thus to obtain an easy delivery.(520) In the Greek island

of Cythnos, when a child is sickly, the mother will take it to a hole in a

rock about half an hour distant from Messaria. There she strips the child

naked and pushes it through the hole in the rock, afterwards throwing away

the old garments and clothing the child in new ones.(521)

(M149) Near Everek, on the site of the ancient Caesarea in Asia Minor,

there is a rifted rock through which persons pass to rid themselves of a

cough.(522) A writer well acquainted with Asia Minor has described how he

visited “a well-known pool of water tucked away in a beautiful nook high

up among the Anatolian mountains, and with a wide reputation for sanctity

and healing powers. We arrived just as the last of a flock of three

hundred sheep were being passed through a peculiar hole in the thin ledge

of a huge rock to deliver them from a disease of the liver supposed to

prevent the proper laying on of fat.”(523) Among the Kawars of the Central

Provinces in India a man who suffers from intermittent fever will try to

cure it by walking through a narrow passage between two houses.(524) In a

ruined church of St. Brandon, about ten miles from Dingle, in the west of

Ireland, there is a narrow window, through which sick women pass thrice in

order to be cured.(525) The Hindoos of the Punjaub think that the birth of

a son after three girls is unlucky for the parents, and in order to avert

the ill-luck they resort to a number of devices. Amongst other things they

break the centre of a bronze plate and remove all but the rim; then they

pass the luckless child through the bronze rim. Moreover, they make an

opening in the roof of the room where the birth took place, and then pull

the infant out through the opening; and further they pass the child under

the sill of the door.(526) By these passages through narrow apertures they

apparently hope to rid the child of the ill-luck which is either pursuing

it or sticking to it like a burr. For in this case, as in many similar

ones, it might be hard to say whether the riddance is conceived as an

escape from the pursuit of a maleficent spirit or as the abrasion of a

dangerous substance which adheres to the person of the sufferer.

(M150) Another way of ridding man and beast of the clinging infection of

disease is to pass them through a hole dug in the ground. This mode of

cure was practised in Europe during the Middle Ages, and has survived in

Denmark down to modern times. In a sermon preached by St. Eloi, Bishop of

Noyon, in the sixth century, he forbade the faithful to practise

lustrations and to drive their sheep through hollow trees and holes in the

earth, “because by this they seem to consecrate them to the devil.”(527)

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 690 A.D., decreed that “if

any one for the health of his little son shall pass through a hole in the

ground and then close it behind him with thorns, let him do penance for

eleven days on bread and water.”(528) Here the closing of the hole with

thorns after the patient or his representative has passed through is

plainly intended to barricade the narrow way against the pursuit of

sickness personified as a demon; hence it confirms the general

interpretation here given of these customs. Again, Burchard, Bishop of

Worms, who died in A.D. 1025, repeated the same condemnation: “Hast thou

done what certain women are wont to do? I mean those who have squalling

babes; they dig the earth and pierce it, and through that hole they drag

the babe, and they say that thus the squalling babe ceases to squall. If

thou has done this or consented unto it, thou shalt do penance for fifteen

days on bread and water.”(529) At Fünen in Denmark, as late as the latter

part of the nineteenth century, a cure for childish ailments was to dig up

several sods, arrange them so as to form a hole, and then to pass the sick

child through it.(530) A simplified form of this cure is adopted in

Jutland. At twelve o’clock on a Thursday night you go to a churchyard, dig

up a circular piece of turf, and make a hole in it large enough to permit

the passage through it of your infant progeny. Taking the sod with you, go

home, salute nobody on the way, and speak to nobody. On getting to your

house, take the child and pass it thrice through the turf from right to

left; then take the turf back to the churchyard and replace it in

position. If the turf takes root and grows afresh, the child will recover;

but if the turf withers, there is no hope. Elsewhere it is at the hour of

sunset rather than of midnight that people cut the turf in the churchyard.

The same cure is applied to cattle which have been bewitched; though

naturally in that case you must cut a much bigger turf and make a much

bigger hole in it to let a horse or a cow through than is necessary for an

infant.(531) Here, again, the conception of a sympathetic relation,

established between the sufferer and the thing which has rid him of his

ailment, comes out clearly in the belief, that if the turf through which

the child has been passed thrives, the child will thrive also, but that if

the turf withers, the child will die. Among the Corannas, a people of the

Hottentot race on the Orange River, “when a child recovers from a

dangerous illness, a trench is dug in the ground, across the middle of

which an arch is thrown, and an ox made to stand upon it; the child is

then dragged under the arch. After this ceremony the animal is killed, and

eaten by married people who have children, none else being permitted to

participate of the feast.”(532) Here the attempt to leave the sickness

behind in the hole, which is probably the essence of the ceremony, may

perhaps be combined with an endeavour to impart to the child the strength

and vigour of the animal. Ancient India seems also to have been familiar

with the same primitive notion that sickness could, as it were, be

stripped off the person of the sufferer by passing him through a narrow

aperture; for in the Rigveda it is said that Indra cured Apala of a

disease of the skin by drawing her through the yoke of the chariot; “thus

the god made her to have a golden skin, purifying her thrice.”(533)

(M151) At the small village of Damun, on the Kabenau river, in German New

Guinea, a traveller witnessed the natives performing a ceremony of

initiation, of which the following rite formed part. The candidates for

initiation, six in number, were boys and lads of various ages from about

four years of age to sixteen or seventeen. The company betook themselves

to the bed of a small stream, where at the end of a gully a hollow in the

rocks formed a natural basin. At the entrance to the gully a sort of yoke,

so the traveller calls it, was erected by means of some poles, and from

the cross-piece plants were hung so as to make an arch. One of the men

took up his station in front of the arch, and as each candidate came up,

the man seized him, spat on his breast and back a clot of red spittle, and

gave him several severe blows with the stock of a plant. After that the

candidate, who had previously stripped himself naked, passed under the

leafy arch and bathed in the rocky pool at the other end of the gully. All

the time that this solemnity was proceeding another man sat perched on a

neighbouring rock, beating a drum and singing. Only men took part in the

ceremony.(534) Though no explanation of the ceremony is given by the

observer who witnessed it, we may suppose that by passing under the yoke

or arch the novices were supposed to rid themselves of certain evil

influences, whether conceived as spiritual or not, which they left behind

them on the further side of the barrier. This interpretation is confirmed

by the bath which each candidate took immediately afterwards. In short the

whole purpose of the rite would seem to have been purificatory.

(M152) With the preceding examples before us, it seems worth while to ask

whether the ancient Italian practice of making conquered enemies to pass

under a yoke may not in its origin have been a purificatory ceremony,

designed to rid the foe of some uncanny powers before dismissing him to

his home. For apparently the ceremony was only observed with prisoners who

were about to be released;(535) had it been a mere mark of ignominy, there

seems to be no reason why it should not have been inflicted also on men

who were doomed to die. This conjectural explanation of the ceremony is

confirmed by the tradition that the Roman Horatius was similarly obliged

by his fellow-countrymen to pass under a yoke as a form of purification

for the murder of his sister. The yoke by passing under which he cleansed

himself from his sister’s blood was still to be seen in Rome when Livy was

writing his history under the emperor Augustus. It was an ancient wooden

beam spanning a narrow lane in an old quarter of the city, the two ends of

the beam being built into the masonry of the walls on either side; it went

by the name of the Sister’s Beam, and whenever the wood decayed and

threatened to fall, the venerable monument, which carried back the

thoughts of passers-by to the kingly age of Rome, was repaired at the

public expense.(536) If our interpretation of these customs is right, it

was the ghost of his murdered sister whom the Roman hero gave the slip to

by passing under the yoke; and it may have been the angry ghosts of

slaughtered Romans from whom the enemy’s soldiers were believed to be

delivered when they marched under the yoke before being dismissed by their

merciful conquerors to their homes.

(M153) In a former part of this work we saw that homicides in general and

victorious warriors in particular are often obliged to perform a variety

of ceremonies for the purpose of ridding them of the dangerous ghosts of

their victims.(537) If the ceremony of passing under the yoke was

primarily designed, as I have suggested, to free the soldiers from the

angry ghosts of the men whom they had slain, we should expect to find that

the victorious Romans themselves observed a similar ceremony after a

battle for a similar purpose. Was this the original meaning of passing

under a triumphal arch? In other words, may not the triumphal arch have

been for the victors what the yoke was for the vanquished, a barrier to

protect them against the pursuit of the spirits of the slain? That the

Romans felt the need of purification from the taint of bloodshed after a

battle appears from the opinion of Masurius, mentioned by Pliny, that the

laurel worn by soldiers in a triumphal procession was intended to purge

them from the slaughter of the enemy.(538) A special gate, the _Porta

Triumphalis_, was reserved for the entrance of a victorious army into

Rome;(539) and it would be in accordance with ancient religious views if

this distinction was originally not so much an honour conferred as a

precaution enforced to prevent the ordinary gates from being polluted by

the passage of thousands of blood-guilty men.(540)

§ 3. The External Soul in Animals.

(M154) But in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely with inanimate

objects and plants that a person is occasionally believed to be united by

a bond of physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist

between a man and an animal, so that the welfare of the one depends on the

welfare of the other, and when the animal dies the man dies also. The

analogy between the custom and the tales is all the closer because in both

of them the power of thus removing the soul from the body and stowing it

away in an animal is often a special privilege of wizards and witches.

Thus the Yakuts of Siberia believe that every shaman or wizard keeps his

soul, or one of his souls, incarnate in an animal which is carefully

concealed from all the world. “Nobody can find my external soul,” said one

famous wizard, “it lies hidden far away in the stony mountains of

Edzhigansk.” Only once a year, when the last snows melt and the earth

turns black, do these external souls of wizards appear in the shape of

animals among the dwellings of men. They wander everywhere, yet none but

wizards can see them. The strong ones sweep roaring and noisily along, the

weak steal about quietly and furtively. Often they fight, and then the

wizard whose external soul is beaten, falls ill or dies. The weakest and

most cowardly wizards are they whose souls are incarnate in the shape of

dogs, for the dog gives his human double no peace, but gnaws his heart and

tears his body. The most powerful wizards are they whose external souls

have the shape of stallions, elks, black bears, eagles, or boars. Again,

the Samoyeds of the Turukhinsk region hold that every shaman has a

familiar spirit in the shape of a boar, which he leads about by a magic

belt. On the death of the boar the shaman himself dies; and stories are

told of battles between wizards, who send their spirits to fight before

they encounter each other in person.(541) In Yorkshire witches are thought

to stand in such peculiarly close relations to hares, that if a particular

hare is killed or wounded, a certain witch will at the same moment be

killed or receive a hurt in her body exactly corresponding to the wound in

the hare.(542) However, this fancy is probably a case of the general

European belief that witches have the power of temporarily transforming

themselves into certain animals, particularly hares and cats, and that any

hurts inflicted on such transformed animals are felt by the witches who

are concealed in the animals.(543) But the notion that a person can

temporarily transform himself into an animal differs from the notion that

he can deposit his soul for a longer or shorter period in an animal, while

he himself retains the human form; though in the cloudy mind of the

peasant and the savage the two ideas may not always be sharply

distinguished. The Malays believe that “the soul of a person may pass into

another person or into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious

relation can arise between the two that the fate of the one is wholly

dependent on that of the other.”(544)

(M155) Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the

conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of daily

life. The Mota word for soul is _atai_. “The use of the word _atai_ in

Mota seems properly and originally to have been to signify something

peculiarly and intimately connected with a person and sacred to him,

something that he has set his fancy upon when he has seen it in what has

seemed to him a wonderful manner, or some one has shewn it to him as such.

Whatever the thing might be the man believed it to be the reflection of

his own personality; he and his _atai_ flourished, suffered, lived, and

died together. But the word must not be supposed to have been borrowed

from this use and applied secondarily to describe the soul; the word

carries a sense with it which is applicable alike to that second self, the

visible object so mysteriously connected with the man, and to this

invisible second self which we call the soul. There is another Mota word,

_tamaniu_, which has almost if not quite the same meaning as _atai_ has

when it describes something animate or inanimate which a man has come to

believe to have an existence intimately connected with his own. The word

_tamaniu_ may be taken to be properly ‘likeness,’ and the noun form of the

adverb _tama_, as, like. It was not every one in Mota who had his

_tamaniu_; only some men fancied that they had this relation to a lizard,

a snake, or it might be a stone; sometimes the thing was sought for and

found by drinking the infusion of certain leaves and heaping together the

dregs; then whatever living thing was first seen in or upon the heap was

the _tamaniu_. It was watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives

believed that it came at call, and that the life of the man was bound up

with the life of his _tamaniu_, if a living thing, or with its safety;

should it die, or if not living get broken or be lost, the man would die.

Hence in case of sickness they would send to see if the _tamaniu_ was safe

and well. This word has never been used apparently for the soul in Mota;

but in Aurora in the New Hebrides it is the accepted equivalent. It is

well worth observing that both the _atai_ and the _tamaniu_, and it may be

added the Motlav _talegi_, is something which has a substantial existence

of its own, as when a snake or stone is a man’s _atai_ or _tamaniu_; a

soul then when called by these names is conceived of as something in a way

substantial.”(545)

(M156) From this account, which we owe to the careful and accurate

researches of the Rev. Dr. Codrington, we gather that while every person

in Mota has a second self or external soul in a visible object called an

_atai_, only some people have, it may be, a second external soul in

another visible object called a _tamaniu_. We may conjecture that persons

who have a _tamaniu_ in addition to an _atai_ are more than usually

anxious as to the state of their soul, and that they seek to put it in

perfect security by what we may call a system of double insurance,

calculating that if one of their external souls should die or be broken,

they themselves may still survive by virtue of the survival of the other.

Be that as it may, the _tamaniu_ discharges two functions, one of them

defensive and the other offensive. On the one hand, so long as it lives or

remains unbroken, it preserves its owner in life; and on the other hand it

helps him to injure his enemies. In its offensive character, if the

_tamaniu_ happens to be an eel, it will bite its owner’s enemy; if it is a

shark, it will swallow him. In its defensive character, the state of the

_tamaniu_ is a symptom or life-token of the state of the man; hence when

he is ill he will visit and examine it, or if he cannot go himself he will

send another to inspect it and report. In either case the man turns the

animal, if animal it be, carefully over in order to see what is the matter

with it; should something be found sticking to its skin, it is removed,

and through the relief thus afforded to the creature the sick man

recovers. But if the animal should be found dying, it is an omen of death

for the man; for whenever it dies he dies also.(546)

(M157) In Melanesia a native doctor was once attending to a sick man. Just

then “a large eagle-hawk came soaring past the house, and Kaplen, my

hunter, was going to shoot it; but the doctor jumped up in evident alarm,

and said, ‘Oh, don’t shoot; that is my spirit’ (_niog_, literally, my

shadow); ‘if you shoot that, I will die.’ He then told the old man, ‘If

you see a rat to-night, don’t drive it away, ’tis my spirit (_niog_), or a

snake which will come to-night, that also is my spirit.’ ”(547) It does

not appear whether the doctor in this case, like the giant or warlock in

the tales, kept his spirit permanently in the bird or in the animal, or

whether he only transferred it temporarily to the creature for the purpose

of enabling him the better to work the cure, perhaps by sending out his

own soul in a bird or beast to find and bring back the lost soul of the

patient. In either case he seems to have thought, like the giant or

warlock in the stories, that the death of the bird or the animal would

simultaneously entail his own. A family in Nauru, one of the Marshall

Islands, apparently imagine that their lives are bound up with a species

of large fish, which has a huge mouth and devours human beings; for when

one of these fish was killed, the members of the family cried, “Our

guardian spirit is killed, now we must all die!”(548)

(M158) The theory of an external soul deposited in an animal appears to be

very prevalent in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the Cameroons, and

the Gaboon.(549) In the latter part of the nineteenth century two English

missionaries, established at San Salvador, the capital of the King of

Congo, asked the natives repeatedly whether any of them had seen the

strange, big, East African goat which Stanley had given to a chief at

Stanley Pool in 1877. But their enquiries were fruitless; no native would

admit that he had seen the goat. Some years afterwards the missionaries

discovered why they could obtain no reply to their enquiry. All the

people, it turned out, imagined that the missionaries believed the spirit

of the King of Salvador to be contained in the goat, and that they wished

to obtain possession of the animal in order to exercise an evil influence

on his majesty.(550) The belief from the standpoint of the Congo savages

was natural enough, since in that region some chiefs regularly link their

fate to that of an animal. Thus the Chief Bankwa of Ndolo, on the Moeko

River, had conferred this honour on a certain hippopotamus of the

neighbourhood, at which he would allow nobody to shoot.(551) At the

village of Ongek, in the Gaboon, a French missionary slept in the hut of

an old Fan chief. Awakened about two in the morning by a rustling of dry

leaves, he lit a torch, when to his horror he perceived a huge black

serpent of the most dangerous sort, coiled in a corner, with head erect,

shining eyes, and hissing jaws, ready to dart at him. Instinctively he

seized his gun and pointed it at the reptile, when suddenly his arm was

struck up, the torch was extinguished, and the voice of the old chief

said, “Don’t fire! don’t fire! I beg of you. In killing the serpent, it is

me that you would kill. Fear nothing. The serpent is my _elangela_.” So

saying he flung himself on his knees beside the reptile, put his arms

about it, and clasped it to his breast. The serpent received his caresses

quietly, manifesting neither anger nor fear, and the chief carried it off

and laid it down beside him in another hut, exhorting the missionary to

have no fear and never to speak of the subject.(552) His curiosity being

excited by this adventure, the missionary, Father Trilles, pursued his

enquiries and ascertained that among the Fans of the Gaboon every wizard

is believed at initiation to unite his life with that of some particular

wild animal by a rite of blood-brotherhood; he draws blood from the ear of

the animal and from his own arm, and inoculates the animal with his own

blood, and himself with the blood of the beast. Henceforth such an

intimate union is established between the two that the death of the one

entails the death of the other. The alliance is thought to bring to the

wizard or sorcerer a great accession of power, which he can turn to his

advantage in various ways. In the first place, like the warlock in the

fairy tales who has deposited his life outside of himself in some safe

place, the Fan wizard now deems himself invulnerable. Moreover, the animal

with which he has exchanged blood has become his familiar, and will obey

any orders he may choose to give it; so he makes use of it to injure and

kill his enemies. For that reason the creature with whom he establishes

the relation of blood-brotherhood is never a tame or domestic animal, but

always a ferocious and dangerous wild beast, such as a leopard, a black

serpent, a crocodile, a hippopotamus, a wild boar, or a vulture. Of all

these creatures the leopard is by far the commonest familiar of Fan

wizards, and next to it comes the black serpent; the vulture is the

rarest. Witches as well as wizards have their familiars; but the animals

with which the lives of women are thus bound up generally differ from

those to which men commit their external souls. A witch never has a

panther for her familiar, but often a venomous species of serpent,

sometimes a horned viper, sometimes a black serpent, sometimes a green one

that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture, an owl, or other bird

of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch or wizard

has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual, never a species; and

when the individual animal dies the alliance is naturally at an end, since

the death of the animal is supposed to entail the death of the man.(553)

(M159) Similar beliefs are held by the natives of the Cross River valley

within the German provinces of the Cameroons. Groups of people, generally

the inhabitants of a village, have chosen various animals, with which they

believe themselves to stand on a footing of intimate friendship or

relationship. Amongst such animals are hippopotamuses, elephants,

leopards, crocodiles, gorillas, fish, and serpents, all of them creatures

which are either very strong or can easily hide themselves in the water or

a thicket. This power of concealing themselves is said to be an

indispensable condition of the choice of animal familiars, since the

animal friend or helper is expected to injure his owner’s enemy by

stealth; for example, if he is a hippopotamus, he will bob up suddenly out

of the water and capsize the enemy’s canoe. Between the animals and their

human friends or kinsfolk such a sympathetic relation is supposed to exist

that the moment the animal dies the man dies also, and similarly the

instant the man perishes so does the beast. From this it follows that the

animal kinsfolk may never be shot at or molested for fear of injuring or

killing the persons whose lives are knit up with the lives of the brutes.

This does not, however, prevent the people of a village, who have

elephants for their animal friends, from hunting elephants. For they do

not respect the whole species but merely certain individuals of it, which

stand in an intimate relation to certain individual men and women; and

they imagine that they can always distinguish these brother elephants from

the common herd of elephants which are mere elephants and nothing more.

The recognition indeed is said to be mutual. When a hunter, who has an

elephant for his friend, meets a human elephant, as we may call it, the

noble animal lifts up a paw and holds it before his face, as much as to

say, “Don’t shoot.” Were the hunter so inhuman as to fire on and wound

such an elephant, the person whose life was bound up with the elephant

would fall ill.(554)

(M160) The Balong of the Cameroons think that every man has several souls,

of which one is in his body and another in an animal, such as an elephant,

a wild pig, a leopard, and so forth. When a man comes home, feeling ill,

and says, “I shall soon die,” and dies accordingly, the people aver that

one of his souls has been killed in a wild pig or a leopard, and that the

death of the external soul has caused the death of the soul in his body.

Hence the corpse is cut open, and a diviner determines, from an inspection

of the inwards, whether the popular surmise is correct or not.(555)

(M161) A similar belief in the external souls of living people is

entertained by the Ibos, an important tribe of the Niger delta, who

inhabit a country west of the Cross River. They think that a man’s spirit

can quit his body for a time during life and take up its abode in an

animal. This is called _ishi anu_, “to turn animal.” A man who wishes to

acquire this power procures a certain drug from a wise man and mixes it

with his food. After that his soul goes out and enters into the animal. If

it should happen that the animal is killed while the man’s soul is lodged

in it, the man dies; and if the animal be wounded, the man’s body will

presently be covered with boils. This belief instigates to many deeds of

darkness; for a sly rogue will sometimes surreptitiously administer the

magical drug to his enemy in his food, and having thus smuggled the

other’s soul into an animal will destroy the creature, and with it the man

whose soul is lodged in it.(556) A like belief is reported to prevail

among the tribes of the Obubura Hill district on the Cross River in

Southern Nigeria. Once when Mr. Partridge’s canoe-men wished to catch fish

near a town of the Assiga tribe, the people objected, saying, “Our souls

live in those fish, and if you kill them we shall die.”(557)

(M162) The negroes of Calabar, at the mouth of the Niger, believe that

every person has four souls, one of which always lives outside of his or

her body in the form of a wild beast in the forest. This external soul, or

bush soul, as Miss Kingsley calls it, may be almost any animal, for

example, a leopard, a fish, or a tortoise; but it is never a domestic

animal and never a plant. Unless he is gifted with second sight, a man

cannot see his own bush soul, but a diviner will often tell him what sort

of creature his bush soul is, and after that the man will be careful not

to kill any animal of that species, and will strongly object to any one

else doing so. A man and his sons have usually the same sort of animals

for their bush souls, and so with a mother and her daughters. But

sometimes all the children of a family take after the bush soul of their

father; for example, if his external soul is a leopard, all his sons and

daughters will have leopards for their external souls. And on the other

hand, sometimes they all take after their mother; for instance, if her

external soul is a tortoise, all the external souls of her sons and

daughters will be tortoises too. So intimately bound up is the life of the

man with that of the animal which he regards as his external or bush soul,

that the death or injury of the animal necessarily entails the death or

injury of the man. And, conversely, when the man dies, his bush soul can

no longer find a place of rest, but goes mad and rushes into the fire or

charges people and is knocked on the head, and that is an end of it. When

a person is sick, the diviner will sometimes tell him that his bush soul

is angry at being neglected; thereupon the patient will make an offering

to the offended spirit and deposit it in a tiny hut in the forest at the

spot where the animal, which is his external soul, was last seen. If the

bush soul is appeased, the patient recovers; but if it is not, he dies.

Yet the foolish bush soul does not understand that in injuring the man it

injures itself, and that it cannot long survive his decease.(558)

(M163) Such is the account which Miss Kingsley gives of the bush souls of

the Calabar negroes. Some fresh particulars are furnished by Mr. Richard

Henshaw, Agent for Native Affairs at Calabar. He tells us that a man may

only marry a woman who has the same sort of bush soul as himself; for

example, if his bush soul is a leopard, his wife also must have a leopard

for her bush soul. Further, we learn from Mr. Henshaw that a person’s bush

soul need not be that either of his father or of his mother. For example,

a child with a hippopotamus for his bush soul may be born into a family,

all the members of which have wild pigs for their bush souls; this happens

when the child is a reincarnation of a man whose external soul was a

hippopotamus. In such a case, if the parents object to the intrusion of an

alien soul, they may call in a medicine-man to check its growth and

finally abolish it altogether, after which they will give the child their

own bush soul. Or they may leave the matter over till the child comes of

age, when he will choose a bush soul for himself with the help of a

medicine-man, who will also select the piece of bush or water in which the

chosen animal lives. When a man dies, then the animal which contains his

external soul “becomes insensible and quite unconscious of the approach of

danger. Thus a hunter can capture or kill him with perfect ease.”

Sacrifices are often offered to prevent other people from killing the

animal in which a man’s bush soul resides. The tribes of Calabar which

hold these beliefs as to the bush soul are the Efik and Ekoi.(559) The

belief of the Calabar negroes in the external soul has been described as

follows by a missionary: “_Ukpong_ is the native word we have taken to

translate our word _soul_. It primarily signifies the shadow of a person.

It also signifies that which dwells within a man on which his life

depends, but which may detach itself from the body, and visiting places

and persons here and there, again return to its abode in the man....

Besides all this, the word is used to designate an animal possessed of an

_ukpong_, so connected with a person’s _ukpong_, that they mutually act

upon each other. When the leopard, or crocodile, or whatever animal may be

a man’s _ukpong_, gets sick or dies, the like thing happens to him. Many

individuals, it is believed, have the power of changing themselves into

the animals which are their _ukpong_.”(560)

(M164) Among the Ekoi of the Oban district, in Southern Nigeria, it is

usual to hear a person say of another that he or she “possesses” such and

such an animal, meaning that the person has the power to assume the shape

of that particular creature. It is their belief that by constant practice

and by virtue of certain hereditary secrets a man can quit his human body

and put on that of a wild beast. They say that in addition to the soul

which animates his human body everybody has a bush soul which at times he

can send forth to animate the body of the creature which he “possesses.”

When he wishes his bush soul to go out on its rambles, he drinks a magic

potion, the secret of which has been handed down from time immemorial, and

some of which is always kept ready for use in an ancient earthen pot set

apart for the purpose. No sooner has he drunk the mystic draught than his

bush soul escapes from him and floats away invisible through the town into

the forest. There it begins to swell and, safe in the shadow of the trees,

takes on the shape of the man’s animal double, it may be an elephant, a

leopard, a buffalo, a wild boar, or a crocodile. Naturally the potion

differs according to the kind of animal into which a man is temporarily

converted. It would be absurd, for example, to expect that the dose which

turns you into an elephant should also be able to turn you into a

crocodile; the thing is manifestly impossible. A great advantage of these

temporary conversions of a man into a beast is that it enables the convert

in his animal shape to pay out his enemy without being suspected. If, for

example, you have a grudge at a man who is a well-to-do farmer, all that

you have to do is to turn yourself by night into a buffalo, an elephant,

or a wild boar, and then, bursting into his fields, stamp about in them

till you have laid the standing crops level with the ground. That is why

in the neighbourhood of large well-tilled farms, people prefer to keep

their bush souls in buffaloes, elephants, and wild boars, because these

animals are the most convenient means of destroying a neighbour’s crops.

Whereas where the farms are small and ill-kept, as they are round about

Oban, it is hardly worth a man’s while to take the trouble of turning into

a buffalo or an elephant for the paltry satisfaction of rooting up a few

miserable yams or such like trash. So the Oban people keep their bush

souls in leopards and crocodiles, which, though of little use for the

purpose of destroying a neighbour’s crops, are excellent for the purpose

of killing the man himself first and eating him afterwards. But the power

of turning into an animal has this serious disadvantage that it lays you

open to the chance of being wounded or even slain in your animal skin

before you have time to put it off and scramble back into your human

integument. A remarkable case of this sort happened only a few miles from

Oban not long ago. To understand it you must know that the chiefs of the

Ododop tribe, who live about ten miles from Oban, keep their bush souls,

whenever they are out on a ramble, in the shape of buffaloes. Well, one

day the District Commissioner at Oban saw a buffalo come down to drink at

a stream which runs through his garden. He shot at the beast and hit it,

and it ran away badly wounded. At the very same moment the head chief of

the Ododop tribe, ten miles away, clapped his hand to his side and said,

“They have killed me at Oban.” Death was not instantaneous, for the

buffalo lingered in pain for a couple of days in the forest, but an hour

or two before its dead body was discovered by the trackers the chief

expired. Just before he died, with touching solicitude he sent a message

warning all people who kept their external souls in buffaloes to profit by

his sad fate and beware of going near Oban, which was not a safe place for

them. Naturally, when a man keeps his external soul from time to time in a

beast, say in a wild cow, he is not so foolish as to shoot an animal of

that particular sort, for in so doing he might perhaps be killing himself.

But he may kill animals in which other people keep their external souls.

For example, a wild cow man may freely shoot an antelope or a wild boar;

but should he do so and then have reason to suspect that the dead beast is

the animal double of somebody with whom he is on friendly terms, he must

perform certain ceremonies over the carcase and then hurry home, running

at the top of his speed, to administer a particular medicine to the man

whom he has unintentionally injured. In this way he may possibly be in

time to save the life of his friend from the effects of the deplorable

accident.(561)

(M165) Near Eket in North Calabar there is a sacred lake, the fish of

which are carefully preserved because the people believe that their own

souls are lodged in the fish, and that with every fish killed a human life

would be simultaneously extinguished.(562) In the Calabar River not very

many years ago there used to be a huge old crocodile, popularly supposed

to contain the external soul of a chief who resided in the flesh at Duke

Town. Sporting vice-consuls used from time to time to hunt the animal, and

once a peculiarly energetic officer contrived to hit it. Forthwith the

chief was laid up with a wound in his leg. He gave out that a dog had

bitten him, but no doubt the wise shook their heads and refused to be put

off with so flimsy a pretext.(563) Again, among several tribes on the

banks of the Niger between Lokoja and the delta there prevails “a belief

in the possibility of a man possessing an _alter ego_ in the form of some

animal such as a crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is believed that such a

person’s life is bound up with that of the animal to such an extent that,

whatever affects the one produces a corresponding impression upon the

other, and that if one dies the other must speedily do so too. It happened

not very long ago that an Englishman shot a hippopotamus close to a native

village; the friends of a woman who died the same night in the village

demanded and eventually obtained five pounds as compensation for the

murder of the woman.”(564) Among the Montols of Northern Nigeria, “in many

of the compounds there will be found a species of snake, of a

non-poisonous sort, which, when full grown, attains a length of about five

feet and a girth of eight or nine inches. These snakes live in and about

the compound. They are not specially fed by the people of the place, nor

are places provided for them to nest in. They live generally in the roofs

of the small granaries and huts that make up the compound. They feed upon

small mammals, and no doubt serve a useful purpose in destroying vermin

which might otherwise eat the stored grain. They are not kept for the

purpose of destroying vermin, however. The Montols believe that at the

birth of every individual of their race, male and female, one of these

snakes, of the same sex, is also born. If the snake be killed, his human

partner in life dies also and at the same time. If the wife of a

compound-owner gives birth to a son, shortly after the interesting event,

the snake of the establishment will be seen with a young one of

corresponding sex. From the moment of birth, these two, the snake and the

man, share a life of common duration, and the measure of the one is the

measure of the other. Hence every care is taken to protect these animals

from injury, and no Montol would in any circumstances think of injuring or

killing one. It is said that a snake of this kind never attempts any

injury to a man. There is only one type of snake thus regarded.”(565)

Among the Angass, of the Kanna District in Northern Nigeria, “when a man

is born, he is endowed with two distinct entities, life and a _kurua_

(Arabic _rin_).... When the _rin_ enters a man, its counterpart enters

some beast or snake at the same time, and if either dies, so also does the

body containing the counterpart. This, however, in no wise prevents a man

from killing any game, etc., he may see, though he knows full well that he

is causing thereby the death of some man or woman. When a man dies, his

life and _rin_ both leave him, though the latter is asserted sometimes to

linger near the place of death for a day or two.”(566) Again, at the town

of Paha, in the northern territory of the Gold Coast, there are pools

inhabited by crocodiles which are worshipped by the people. The natives

believe that for every death or birth in the town a similar event takes

place among the crocodiles.(567)

(M166) In South Africa the conception of an external soul deposited in an

animal, which is so common in West Africa, appears to be almost unknown;

at least I have met with no clear traces of it in literature. The

Bechuanas, indeed, commonly believe that if a man wounds a crocodile, the

man will be ill as long as the crocodile is ill of its wound, and that if

the crocodile dies, the man dies too. This belief is not, apparently,

confined to the Bechuana clan which has the crocodile for its totem, but

is shared by all the other clans; all of them certainly hold the crocodile

in respect.(568) It does not appear whether the sympathetic relation

between a man and a crocodile is supposed by the Bechuanas to be lifelong,

or only to arise at the moment when the man wounds the animal; in the

latter case the shedding of the crocodile’s blood might perhaps be thought

to establish a relationship of affinity or sympathy between the two. The

Zulus believe that every man is attended by an ancestral spirit (_ihlozi_,

or rather _idhlozi_) in the form of a serpent, “which specially guards and

helps him, lives with him, wakes with him, sleeps and travels with him,

but always under ground. If it ever makes its appearance, great is the

joy, and the man must seek to discover the meaning of its appearance. He

who has no _ihlozi_ must die. Therefore if any one kills an _ihlozi_

serpent, the man whose _ihlozi_ it was dies, but the serpent comes to life

again.”(569) But the conception of a dead ancestor incarnate in a snake,

on which the welfare or existence of one of his living descendants

depends, is rather that of a guardian spirit than of an external soul.

(M167) Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to

be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the

floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was

completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then

remained sketched upon the ground was called the child’s _tona_ or second

self. “When the child grew old enough, he procured the animal that

represented him and took care of it, as it was believed that health and

existence were bound up with that of the animal’s, in fact that the death

of both would occur simultaneously,” or rather that when the animal died

the man would die too.(570) Among the Indians of Guatemala and Honduras

the _nagual_ or _naual_ is “that animate or inanimate object, generally an

animal, which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that

the weal and woe of the man depend on the fate of the _nagual_.”(571)

According to an old writer, many Indians of Guatemala “are deluded by the

devil to believe that their life dependeth upon the life of such and such

a beast (which they take unto them as their familiar spirit), and think

that when that beast dieth they must die; when he is chased, their hearts

pant; when he is faint, they are faint; nay, it happeneth that by the

devil’s delusion they appear in the shape of that beast (which commonly by

their choice is a buck, or doe, a lion, or tigre, or dog, or eagle) and in

that shape have been shot at and wounded.”(572) Herrera’s account of the

way in which the Indians of Honduras acquired their _naguals_, runs thus:

“The devil deluded them, appearing in the shape of a lion or a tiger, or a

coyte, a beast like a wolf, or in the shape of an alligator, a snake, or a

bird, that province abounding in creatures of prey, which they called

_naguales_, signifying keepers or guardians, and when the bird died the

Indian that was in league with him died also, which often happened and was

looked upon as infallible. The manner of contracting this alliance was

thus. The Indian repaired to the river, wood, hill, or most obscure place,

where he called upon the devils by such names as he thought fit, talked to

the rivers, rocks, or woods, said he went to weep that he might have the

same his predecessors had, carrying a cock or a dog to sacrifice. In that

melancholy fit he fell asleep, and either in a dream or waking saw some

one of the aforesaid birds or other creatures, whom he entreated to grant

him profit in salt, cacao, or any other commodity, drawing blood from his

own tongue, ears, and other parts of his body, making his contract at the

same time with the said creature, the which either in a dream or waking

told him, ‘Such a day you shall go abroad asporting, and I will be the

first bird or other animal you shall meet, and will be your _nagual_ and

companion at all times.’ Whereupon such friendship was contracted between

them, that when one of them died the other did not survive, and they

fancied that he who had no _nagual_ could not be rich.”(573) The Indians

were persuaded that the death of their _nagual_ would entail their own.

Legend affirms that in the first battles with the Spaniards on the plateau

of Quetzaltenango the _naguals_ of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of

serpents. The _nagual_ of the highest chief was especially conspicuous,

because it had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The

Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance, and at

the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.(574)