CHAPTER VIII.

The

Legend of Perseus

A STUDY OF TRADITION IN STORY

CUSTOM AND BELIEF: BY

Edwin Sidney Hartland

F.S.A

VOL. II.

THE LIFE-TOKEN

Published by David Nutt

in the Strand, London

1895

[IMPRINT]

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

NOTE

The discussion of the Life-token has proved so important, going down

to the very foundations of the savage philosophy of life, that I have

found it impossible to bring to a close this study of the Legend of

Perseus within the compass of two volumes. A third, however, will

complete the task, and will also include a supplementary

Bibliographical List and an Index.

I desire to add to the names of friends who have so kindly extended to

me their assistance in various ways, those of Mr. Edward Clodd, now

president of the Folklore Society, the Rev. W. Gregor, LL.D., Mrs.

Fanny D. Bergen, M. J. D. E. Schmeltz, the learned Curator of the

Ethnographical Museum at Leiden, and editor of the _Internationales

Archiv_, and Mr. W. R. Paton. To Mr. W. H. D. Rouse I have had

occasion to refer so frequently for assistance of various kinds,

constantly and ungrudgingly rendered, that I hardly know how to thank

him.

Highgarth, Gloucester,

_May_ 1895.

CONTENTS

{vi}

CHAPTER VIII.

The Life-token in Tale and Custom

Two classes of life-tokens; the one, originally connected with the

hero; the other, arbitrary--Examples given in previous

chapters--Examples from _märchen_ outside the Perseus cycle--The

magical mirror--The Life-token in mirror and well--Tokens of

Fidelity--Connection of the Life-token and External Soul--Birth

Ceremonies--Planting of trees and other life-tokens in

custom--Divination.

CHAPTER IX

Witchcraft: Sympathetic Magic

Folktale incidents presenting the divisibility of a person, continued

sympathy of severed portions of a person with the bulk, and the

endowment of the severed portions with consciousness--Modes of

witchcraft--Witchcraft upon objects identified with the

victim--Severed portions of the body--Footprints--Food--Dress--Objects

more remotely associated with the victim--Witchcraft upon arbitrary

objects--Name--Defences against witchcraft.

CHAPTER X

Witchcraft: Philtres--Preventive and remedial Leechcraft

Different kinds of love-potions--Hair and other substances taken from

the body--Clothing--Footprints--Dangers {vii} of carelessness over

severed parts of the body--Cure for warts--Doctrine of

Transplantation--Mistaken applications of--Doctrine of

Sympathy--Remedies derived from the dead--“A hair of the dog that bit

you.”

CHAPTER XI

Sacred Wells and Trees

Ceremonies at wells and trees in the British Islands--On the Continent

of Europe--Nails driven into trees and images--Analogous rites

elsewhere--Usual explanations discussed--Rites at cairns--True meaning

of the rites--Dedication of hair at sacred shrines and graves--Other

votive offerings.

CHAPTER XII

Totemism--The Blood Covenant--Customs connected with Saliva

Recapitulation--Union with the god--Totemism--Sacrifices--The Blood

Covenant--Its evolution--Its sacramental character--Its decay--Changes

in its effect--Saliva customs--Analogy to the Blood Covenant--Spitting

on infants--Spitting on various occasions--Against witchcraft--Saliva

of sacred personages.

CHAPTER XIII

Funeral Rites

The clan one body--The common meal--Eating the dead in

antiquity--Among modern savages--Survivals in modern Europe--Funeral

feasts--The Sin-eater--Similar customs in other countries--Eating with

the dead--Sacramental union with the dead--Smearing with ashes,

etc.--Wearing bones and other relics of {viii} the dead--Cutting

oneself for the dead--Mutilation--Gifts of hair to the dead--Burial in

a common grave--Custom of Ettá.

CHAPTER XIV

Marriage Rites

Analogy of marriage with admission into the clan--Custom of

_Sindra-dán_--Blood-rites--_Confarreatio_--Ritual food shared by all

guests--Meaning of the rite--Marriage constitutes a new relationship

on the part of the entire kin--Bridal dance and kiss--Nasamonian

rite--Group-marriage--Rights of the kin over husband or wife--The

Levirate--Reception by marriage into the kin--Consent of the kin.

CHAPTER XV

The Couvade and other illustrations of the strength of the

Blood-tie--Conclusion of the inquiry into the theory of the Life-token

The Couvade--Its true meaning--Not found among the lowest

savages--Sponsorship--Adoption--Collective responsibility of the

clan--The Blood-feud--Medical treatment of the kin for the disease of

one member--Solidarity of the family--Cannot be terminated even by

death--Sacramental conception of a kindred--The theory of life

underlying the Life-token--Conclusion of the inquiry into the

Life-token.

Endnotes

Press Notices

Errata

THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS

{1}

{2}

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

{3}

The life-tokens we have met with in previous chapters may be divided

into two classes, namely, such as have some original connection with

the hero, and such as are merely arbitrary. Of the first, the most

widespread and important is the tree that grows up from some portion

of the magical fish. In _The King of the Fishes_ and in the

corresponding Norman tale the tree is a rose-tree growing, in the one

case from the buried scales, in the other from the buried bones. In

one of the stories from Lorraine it will be remembered that some of

the fish’s bones were buried under a rose-tree, and there the babes

are subsequently found. Their life-tokens are not the tree, but three

roses growing upon it. In one of Grimm’s German tales we find two

golden lilies growing from two pieces of the fish. Two cypresses arise

from the fish’s tail in the Greek story. In the Hungarian Gipsy tale,

where the mother becomes pregnant by drinking from an _urme’s_ breast,

the _urme_ drops of her milk into two holes in the ground, whence the

life-tokens, two oak-trees, spring. The mermaid, in a Highland

_märchen_, gives twelve grains, of which three are for the fisher’s

wife and produce three boys, and three are to be planted and produce

trees of a kind unspecified. Equally, {4} doomed to death at the hands

of a Rakshasi, her fellow-wife, gives her son in a golden vessel a

small quantity of her own breast-milk, which will become red if his

father be killed, and more deeply red if she herself be slain.[4.1]

In both these cases there has been originally an organic connection

between the token and the person whose condition is indicated. Such a

connection is not common outside the Perseus cycle. Usually there is

no more connection traceable between the hero and his life-token than

that subsisting between an owner and his property, sometimes not so

much. At most it is founded in the planting by him, or at the time of

his birth, of the tree that serves as the token. A remnant of organic

connection, however, appears in the Panjâbi story about Prince

Lionheart. This personage was born in consequence of his mother’s

eating some barleycorns given her by a fakir. When the prince bids

farewell to his retainer, the knife-grinder, on whom he has bestowed a

kingdom and a bride, he gives him a barley-plant as a life-token. He

afterwards gives, in similar circumstances, a barley-plant each to his

other retainers, the blacksmith and the carpenter. His instructions

are that these plants be carefully tended and watered, for so long as

they flourish he will be alive and well; but if they droop, misfortune

will be at hand. The prince’s life is dependent on his sword. When the

sword is thrown into the fire, a burning fever comes over him: when

the hilt {5} comes off, his head rolls off; and at the same moment

every one of the barley-plants snaps, so that the ears fall to the

ground.[5.1] In a Bengali tale, and in the first of the tales in the

_Siddhi-Kür_, each of the heroes plants a “life-tree.”[5.2] In a

Karen tale the hero sets two plants, and directs his comrades, if the

plants wither, to come and seek for him.[5.3] Ibonia, a Malagasy hero,

plants arums and plantain-trees, saying to his parents: “If these grow

withered, then I am ill; and if they die, that is a sign that I also

am dead.”[5.4] The princess in a Russian tale, when her husband leaves

her, gives him a sackful of seeds, telling him to throw them on either

side of the road he travels: “Wherever they fall, that moment trees

will spring up; on the trees precious fruit will be hanging in beauty,

various birds will sing songs, and tom-cats from over the sea will

tell tales.” When he is drugged, the tree-tops begin to wither; and

the princess sets out after him.[5.5] An Indian story shows us the

lame prince, on undertaking an adventure, giving his mother a plant as

his life-token.[5.6] Apparently the plant is a growing one, but it

does not appear whether the prince had himself set it. A curious

example is found in a variant of Cinderella, collected by M. Cosquin

in Lorraine. Florine was a king’s only daughter. Her mother in dying

had commended above all things to her {6} daughter’s care a little

white lamb. This lamb gives her magical food. When her stepmother

discovers this, she feigns to be sick and persuades the king to kill

the lamb that she may eat of it. Ere it dies the lamb directs Florine

to gather its bones and put them on the pear-tree, whose branches will

thenceforward be adorned with pretty little golden bells, ringing

ceaseless chimes: if these bells be ever silent, it will be a sign of

misfortune. By her command over this magical tree Florine is enabled

to pluck and give to a certain king some of the bells, which her

stepsister cannot do. The king, therefore, marries her. In his absence

her stepmother throws the bride into the river and puts her own

daughter in her place. Forthwith the golden bells cease to chime. Now,

their sound could be heard two hundred leagues around. The king,

remarking that they have stopped, hastens home, and arrives just in

time to save the drowning heroine.[6.1] There is little doubt that the

tale in its more archaic shape exhibited both the lamb and the

pear-tree as transformations of the heroine’s mother, and in this way

connected with the heroine by a tie of blood.

It is not uncommon for the plants to be set by natural or adoptive

parents. The young Klepht in a modern Greek folksong begs his mother:

“Do thou plant a rose-tree, and plant a dusky clove,

And water them with sugar, and water them with musk.

So long they blossom, mother, so long they put forth flowers,

This son of thine will not be dead, but meet the Turks in battle.

But if the day of sorrow, the bitter day should come,

If the two trees fade together, and if their flowers fall,

Then I, too, shall be smitten, and thou shalt wear the black.”[6.2]

{7}

A Negro story from Angola represents one of the heroes, immediately on

his birth, as directing his parents to plant his _kilembe_, or

life-tree, at the back of the house.[7.1]

The Smyrnæan tale I have already mentioned in Chapter IV. brings

before us a childless queen, who is gifted by a dervish with three

apples. These she must eat, and she will then give birth to three

boys. At the birth of each a pumpkin is to be planted in the garden:

it will bring forth one fruit, wherein the child’s strength will

reside. Afterwards, when one of the pumpkins is cut and carried away,

the corresponding youth falls ill, until it is recovered.[7.2] Here

the pumpkin is rather the life itself than the life-token; but the

distinction, as we shall hereafter see, is not very important. A

Tirolese variant of _The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette_

describes the gardener who rescues the children as planting a

gilliflower for each of the two boys, and a rose for the girl.

Apparently this is done at the time he finds and adopts the babe. The

boys grow up and go away successively to seek the Three Beauties of

the World; and their flowers wither when they themselves are changed

into marble by the Medusa-witch.[7.3]

Often, however, the original planting is not mentioned. The twins, in

a Melanesian story from the island of Aurora, simply set a taboo upon

a banana belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu: “If you go

into the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at the

top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us; but if you

see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is ripening upwards, we

shall have killed him.”[7.4] A banana {8} growing by the hero’s hut is

also his life-token, in a Malagasy story.[8.1]

There is a large number of cases which need not detain us now, where

on departure the hero gives a flower that will continue fresh and

flourishing so long as he is hale and prosperous, but will fade on

misfortune or death happening to him. This is a markedly oriental form

of the Life-token, occurring repeatedly in India and among the Arabs

of modern Egypt.[8.2] In the _Sinhasana Dwatrinsatika_, or _Thirty-two

Stories of the Speaking Statues_, a Sanskrit work, Siva gives to

Vikram a lotus-flower, saying: “When this flower withers, then you

will know that you must die in six months, and prepare

accordingly.”[8.3] Here the ideas of the Life-token, the life itself,

and a prophetic message are all mixed up.

The knife stuck into a tree, to drip with blood, or to rust, if the

owner die, is a commonplace of Slavonic stories.[8.4] In a Serbian

tale the knife falls out when the hero is overpowered by the

witch.[8.5] When three brothers part on the search for a magical

pelican, in a Hungarian _märchen_, they mark a finger-post at the

cross-roads. Blood will ooze out of it, on the return of any of them,

if the absent one be in misery or captivity; but milk will flow if he

be well.[8.6] A German tale represents the brothers as each cutting a

tree. The cut becomes blood-red if either {9} of them be dead or in

need.[9.1] In the _Arabian Nights_ Bahman gives his hunting-knife to

Perizadah: it will become blood-stained on his death. The same

incident is found in Spain, in Iceland, and in Italy.[9.2] Elsewhere

other weapons are named. So long as a poniard can be drawn from its

sheath, in a tale obtained by M. Luzel at Plouaret in Lower Brittany,

no ill has happened to its owner; but if it stick, he is dead.[9.3]

Sikulume, in a Kaffir story, sticks his assagai in the ground before

he ventures among some cannibals, saying: “If it stands still, you

will know I am safe; if it shakes, you will know I am running; if it

falls down, you will know I am dead.”[9.4] An Epirote story makes one

of the twins say, when they part: “If the sword of either of us become

bloody, that will be a sign that the other one lies dying.”[9.5]

Among other articles of property, a rosary, or a ring, is the

favourite. Parwez, in the _Arabian Nights_, gives his sister a string

of one hundred pearls: while they run loose on the string, he is

living. The rosary also appears in a modern Arab folktale from Egypt

(already cited), in Catalonia, in Brittany, and in tales obtained at

Troyes in Champagne and at Mantua.[9.6] In Arab tales the ring

tightens round the finger when the giver of the ring suffers

mishap.[9.7] In a Vlach ballad it rusts.[9.8] More usually the {10}

stone it contains changes colour. This is the case in the old French

romance of _Flores et Blanchefleur_; and it reappears among the

Basques, in Italy, and, though rarely, in Russia.[10.1] In Sicily the

ring is originally the gift of a fairy, or rather a Fate, at the birth

of the three children borne by the heroine of a variant of _The Two

Sisters who envied their Cadette_.[10.2] The virtues ascribed of old

to precious stones were many; and we should have had cause for

surprise if we had not found gems in the list of life-tokens.

A handkerchief is a frequent gift. It becomes black, or more usually

besmirched with blood.[10.3] In a Vlach ballad just referred to, the

lady delivers to her husband her veil, adorned with a border of golden

broidery. “When the gold shall melt,” she says, “know thou that I am

dead.” In a modern Greek tale from the island of Syra, two brothers,

starting to seek for the magical bird Dikjeretto, leave their shirts

with their sister. If misfortune meet them, the shirts will turn

black.[10.4] Each of three brothers in a Lithuanian story sets up at

the crossway, ere they part, a blue banner, which will be stained with

red--in other words, with blood--in the event of his death.[10.5] In a

story from Southern Russia, Ivan Popyaloff, going to fight the snake

that withheld the daylight, hung up his gloves, desiring his brothers

to hasten to his help if blood dropped from them.[10.6] In {11}

another Russian story the hero thoughtfully puts a plate beneath, to

catch the blood.[11.1] Lemminkäinen, in the _Kalevala_, having

brushed his beautiful hair, flings the brush upon the oven-posts, and

declares that on harm’s happening to him it will shed blood.

Accordingly, when he is done to death in the Underworld, his wife is

made aware of the fact by the bristles dripping with gore.[11.2] Mats

made from the skins of beasts he has slain, and a pipe, are left

behind with his foster-mother by a young Micmac brave, who goes to

make war on the savage Culloos: she will see blood on them if he be

killed.[11.3] Strong Hans, in a tale from Syra, cannot be got to do

anything but play his cither. When he sallies forth to fight the ogre,

who has ravished away the king’s daughter, he tells his mother: “If

you see that the strings of my cither are broken, then up and seek

me!”[11.4] In an obscure passage of the _Popol Vuh_, the sacred book

of the Quiché, the heroes Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu appear to

leave as their life-token with their mother the india-rubber ball with

which they loved to play.[11.5] One of the Torres Straits islanders

told Professor Haddon a tale wherein a mother, while at work, breaks

her digging-stick, and at once concludes that something has happened

to her baby-boy. Sure enough it has; for a gust of wind had blown down

his basket-cradle, and a man and his wife passing by have found the

child in the grass and taken him away.[11.6] Here the instrument

neither belongs to, nor {12} is it indicated by, the person affected.

So in an Iroquois legend, when the hero starts in search of the

daughter of a neighbouring chief, his uncle, under whose tutelage he

is, brings out “a curious thing made of coloured string and elk-hair

of deep red, about a foot long. ‘I shall keep this by me,’ said he,

‘and so long as you are doing well it will hang as it is; but if you

are in danger it will come down itself almost to the ground, and if it

does reach the ground you will die.’”[12.1]

According to a _märchen_ told by the Transylvanian Armenians, a

maiden presses a gold coin into her lover’s hand and tells him that

when it is rusty she will be dead.[12.2] In the Russian tale of _Marya

Morevna_, the hero leaves successively his silver spoon, fork and

snuff-box with his three Animal Brothers-in-law, when he goes on the

perilous adventure of rescuing his fair wife from Koshchei the

Deathless. When he is killed and chopped into pieces by the ogre, all

the silver turns black.[12.3] The hero of a Tirolese tale and his

sister kindle two lights; and he declares that if one of them go out,

she must take it as a sign that something has happened to him and he

will nevermore return.[12.4] A candle is combined with the

handkerchief which becomes bloody in a Russian story. The youngest

brother going away in a Sicilian _märchen_ touches a vase of cloves

and utters the warning that the drying up of the cloves will be a

signal of his having been {13} turned to marble by the

Medusa-witch.[13.1] In Russian tales the hero’s horse stands in blood

up to his knees, or even up to his neck, or up to his ankles in tears,

when his master is dead.[13.2] In another Russian tale a glass of

water becomes tinged with blood.[13.3] And in a Servian tale the

eldest brother, on going out with the second, directs the youngest to

put a kettle on the fire to boil, and to keep stirring the fire

beneath it. If the water turn to blood, he is to let a little dog out

of the cellar, and bid it follow the way the two elder brothers have

taken.[13.4] Similarly in a Georgian story the prince fills a cup with

water and puts it near the fire. So long as it remains pure he will be

alive; but on its changing to blood he will be dead.[13.5] In the

Egyptian manuscript the elder brother is warned of his younger’s fate

by the beer he is about to drink turning into froth. Here again, it

will be noted, there is no apparent connection with the hero, save

that he has previously appointed this sign.

One of the magical objects most famous in tradition and in romantic

literature is the mirror wherein the beholder can see any object at

will. It became prominent in the dreams of science during the

sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when it is said to have

figured among the properties of astrologers. In English literature the

Enchanted Mirror is best remembered from the Squire’s Tale of

Cambuscan Bold, and by the admirable use of it in one of the

_Ingoldsby Legends_. I do not propose to discuss it here further than

is necessary to show its relations with the Life-token. The first time

we meet with it in literature is in Lucian’s _True History_. It is

found in the {14} moon, of enormous dimensions, lying over a well.

Anybody, we are told, who enters the well hears whatever is said upon

the earth; and anybody looking into the mirror sees as in a panorama

all the cities and nations of the world. The Greek Munchausen declares

that he saw his family and his entire fatherland; and whoever does not

believe him can go there and look for himself! A singular parallel is

found among the Dyaks of Borneo. According to their traditions, one of

the ancient fathers of the race climbed upon a gigantic tree to the

Pleiades, where he was hospitably entertained by a friendly being, who

introduced him to rice--a food until then unknown on earth. Being left

alone for a short time, the visitor peeped into a big jar, and there,

to his astonishment, saw, as in a mirror, his father’s house, with the

whole family party gathered in animated discussion. His spirits fell,

for he feared he should never return home from that immense distance.

But his host cheered him up; and after giving him a good dinner, and

some rice to plant, with full instructions as to its cultivation and

other hints on husbandry, he let him down by a rope to the earth

again. The adventurer, having thus got back in safety, taught his

people the lessons he had learned in the Pleiades; and he is still

venerated as the father of agriculture.[14.1] In the far west the Ynca

Yupanqui, if we may trust the Peruvian legend reported by Molina, once

went to visit his father Viracocha Ynca. Coming to a certain fountain,

he saw a piece of crystal fall into it; and within the crystal he

beheld the figure of a man dressed like an Ynca. From the back of his

head issued three brilliant rays like those of the sun. The royal

fringe was upon his head, and {15} ear-pieces, like those of the

Yncas, adorned his ears. Serpents twined around his arms and

shoulders. Upon his shoulders there was a lion, while the head of

another lion appeared between his legs. Yupanqui fled; but from within

the fountain the apparition called him by name. “Come hither,” it

said, “my son, and fear not, for I am the Sun, thy father. Thou shalt

conquer many nations: therefore be careful to pay great reverence to

me, and remember me in thy sacrifices.” Saying this, the apparition

vanished; but the crystal remained. The Ynca took care of it, and we

are told that thenceforth he saw in it everything he wanted.[15.1]

Mr. Clouston, in his notes to John Lane’s feeble continuation of the

Squire’s Tale, has brought together a large number of instances of

magical mirrors, beginning with Vergil the Magician and coming down to

the practices recorded by Mr. E. W. Lane and others in modern Egypt

and India.[15.2] A boy is ordinarily the agent in the last-mentioned

practices, and a spot of ink in the hollow of his hand the mirror. The

same practices were employed in classical antiquity, and were not

unknown during the Middle Ages. A German saga relates that a jewel of

crystal was by a mysterious stranger left as a gift with a burgess of

Nuremberg who had shown him hospitality for three days. If a chaste

boy looked into the crystal he would see a little man, who would show

him everything it was desired to know. So great was the reputation of

the {16} glass, that people used to threaten one another: “Speak the

truth, or I’ll go to the little man.”[16.1] In a Gipsy story from

Transylvania a king’s daughter possesses a mirror wherein she can see

everything in the world.[16.2] Another mirror with somewhat more

limited capacity was the gift of a mountain spirit in a German tale;

but it had other powers that resulted at last in a curse.[16.3] When

Vasco da Gama was sailing towards India, some of the Indian wizards

are said to have shown the people at Calicut in basins of water his

three ships.[16.4] The Egyptian and modern Indian practices are

ordinarily used for discovering thefts; and this was often the purpose

in Europe. In Tahiti and Hawaii the priest was sent for on similar

occasions. After some prayers he caused a hole to be dug in the floor

of the house, and filled with water. He continued his incantations

with a young plantain in his hand until he observed the image of the

thief in the water.[16.5] In the Isle of Man a notorious witch is

reported to have made use of a bowl of {17} water in order to divine

as to the safety of a herring-fleet.[17.1] The Otando fetish-man of

Equatorial Africa also uses a vessel of water; the Mpongwe fetish-man

uses a mirror.[17.2] In Borneo the _manang_, or medicine-man, is

frequently provided with a magical stone into which he can look and

see what is ailing a sick man, and prescribe for him

accordingly.[17.3] The Cakchiquels of Central America had a sacred

obsidian stone, which was their national oracle, and was mysteriously

connected with the origin of mankind. A stone, apparently identified

with this, is preserved in the church of Tecpan, Guatemala. It was

shown to Mr. Stephens, who describes it as “a piece of common slate,

fourteen inches by ten, and about as thick as those used by boys at

school, without characters of any kind upon it.”[17.4] No doubt the

eye of faith was required to see anything in it. Crystals are used by

the medicine-men of the Apaches for divining.[17.5] The Urim and

Thummim of Hebrew antiquity seem to have been objects of the same kind

of superstition. The “Mirror of Light” is not unknown even in these

days, and has been honoured with the attention of the Society for

Psychical Research.[17.6]

Lucian, in placing the mirror in a well, was probably {18} satirising

the belief in sacred wells which had properties like those he

attributed to the mirror. Such wells and pools are still to be found,

both in stories and in fact. A fairy in an Italian tale points out to

the hero a fountain which will be a mirror for him, into which he can

look, and to which he can give commands, and they will be

obeyed.[18.1] It was formerly believed at York that he who flung, on

May morning before the Minster clock struck one, five white stones

into a certain part of the Ouse near the city, would see in the water,

as in a mirror, whatever he might desire, whether past, present, or

future.[18.2] On the promontory of Tænarum, now Cape Matapan,

Pausanias tells us, was a famous fountain. In his day there was

nothing remarkable to be seen in it; but anciently those who pried

into its depths might see views of ports and ships. In the Cyaneæ,

hard by Lycia, too, there was a spring, into which whoso descended saw

whatever he wished to behold.[18.3] And there is a wonderful well in

Samoa, wherein a variety of scenes may be perceived by those who will

undertake the risk of being enticed into its stony depths.[18.4]

So far we have found no Life-token in mirror or well. A mirror or

well, however, which reveals to the inquirer only the health of one in

whom he has an interest, is obviously nothing more than a special

variety of the mirror {19} or well revealing anything or everything.

This is the variety mentioned in a Roman variant of _Beauty and the

Beast_, where Beauty, on taking leave of the Beast for a short time,

is given a mirror, into which she can look and see how he is.[19.1] In

a Swedish _märchen_ already cited, on the two comrades parting at a

crossway, one of them dips his knife into the fountain adjacent, and

says to the other: “It shall be to thee a sign that I am living so

long as the water of this spring is clear; but if it be red and

turbid, then I shall be dead, and I certainly expect that thou wilt

avenge my death.”[19.2]

This convenient way of obtaining news of absent friends is said to be

still in use. The Eskimo of Greenland, when a man has not returned in

due time from an expedition in his kayak, hold the head of his nearest

relation over a tub of water, and judge from the reflection beneath

whether the absent person has been upset, or is still sitting in the

boat, rowing.[19.3] In the island of Tahiti, if one, looking at the

water of certain springs, chance to see it tinged with blood, it is a

sign that one of the beholder’s friends is about to die.[19.4] Nor is

it different in our own country. Gulval Well, in Cornwall, answers

inquiries put with the proper formula. If the person asked after be

alive and well, the quiet water will instantly boil and bubble clear

and pure; if he be sick, the water becomes foul and puddled; if he be

dead, it remains calm and lifeless.[19.5] The legends accounting for

these phenomena in Tahiti and Cornwall are unrecorded. In the parish

of Kirkmichael, in the county of Banff, there {20} is a fountain

dedicated to St. Michael, and famous for its healing virtues. The

guardian of the well appears in the shape of a fly which, it is

believed, never dies. “To the eye of ignorance,” we are told, “he

might sometimes appear dead; but agreeably to the Druidic system, it

was only a Transmigration into a similar form, which made little

alteration on the real identity.” He was, in former days at all

events, constantly on duty. “If the sober matron wished to know the

issue of her husband’s ailment, or the love-sick Nymph that of her

languishing Swain, they visited the Well of St. Michael. Every

movement of the sympathetic Fly was regarded in silent awe; and as he

appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their

presages; their breasts vibrated with correspondent emotions.”[20.1]

Brand and Ellis quote from an old writer a passage concerning

fountains which prognosticate plenty or famine. The writer concludes

by saying: “Myselfe know some Gentlemen that confesse, if a certaine

Fountaine (being otherwise very cleane and cleare) be suddenly

troubled by meanes of a Worme unknowne, that the same is a personall

Summons for some of them to depart out of the world.”[20.2] These

superstitions frequently degenerated into mere divination. Dalyell

records that auguries as to the fate of {21} any one were drawn from

the finding of a dead or a living worm in a well in the parish of

Strathdon, and also in the well at Ardnacloich in Appin,

Argyllshire.[21.1] Sir John Lubbock quotes a striking instance from

Dr. Anderson’s account of the expedition to Western Yunnan. Three men

having gone to the Kakhyen hills, a report reached their families that

one of them had died. To ascertain which of them it was, the old women

were divining by means of needles and cotton-wool. Each needle

representing one of the absent men, threaded with a piece of

cotton-wool to act as a float, was let down gently into the water. As

the floats got thoroughly wetted, the needles would sink one after

another; and the man whose needle sank first would be the dead

one.[21.2] The water there was probably contained in a vessel; but the

principle, as we see from several instances already cited, is the

same. Before the temple of Demeter at Patras there was a spring that

was consulted on the issue of any disease. The method (and here,

perhaps, we touch the object of Lucian’s satire) was to let down a

mirror suspended by a cord so as just to allow the water lightly to

touch its edges, but not its face. After praying and clearing the air

with incense, the performers (probably priests) looked down into the

mirror, and thence perceived whether the patient would live or

die.[21.3] On the isle of Andros it is still the practice for Greek

maidens to hold a mirror over a well and to look in it for the face of

their future husbands reflected from the well below.[21.4] In Brittany

there are certain wells wherein children’s shirts are dipped. If a

shirt sink to the bottom, it is a sign of the child’s death within a

year. Contrariwise, {22} if the shirt swim, the child will live; and

to ensure its living and to preserve it from every kind of evil the

wet garment is immediately put on.[22.1] After that, nobody would deny

the child’s continued health to be a miracle. The superstition was not

by any means confined to Brittany; but it will suffice to give one

more example of it here. “Between the towns of Alten and Newton,” says

one of the Cottonian Manuscripts, “near the foot of Rosberrye

Toppinge, there is a Well dedicated to St. Oswald. The neighbours have

an opinion that a Shirt or Shift taken off a sick person and thrown

into that Well, will show whether the person will recover or die: for,

if it floated, it denoted the recovery of the party; if it sank, there

remained no hope of their life; and to reward the Saint for his

intelligence, they tear off a Rag of the Shirt, and leave it hanging

on the Briars thereabout; where I have seen such numbers as might have

made a fayre Rheme in a Paper Myll.”[22.2]

For divination of this kind no special connection would be necessary

between the life and the pool or fountain, such as is hinted at in the

quotation concerning the “Worme unknown.” This is not always so. At

Brereton, in Cheshire, is a lake whereon floating logs betokened the

death of the head of the family of Brereton.[22.3] Leonard Vair in his

book on charms and sortileges mentions a very curious case

communicated to him by Cardinal Granvelle. {23} At the monastery of

Saint Maurice on the borders of Burgundy, near to the Rhone, was a

fish-pond which was kept stocked with as many fish as there were

monks. When any of the monks fell sick (we are bound to believe it on

the authority of a bishop and cardinal), one of the fish floated on

the surface of the water, half dead; and if the monk were going to

die, the fish would die three or four days before him.[23.1] In like

manner, on a mountain in Franconia a fountain issues near the cradle

(_Stammhaus_) of an ancient noble family. The clear stream gushes

forth incessantly the whole year round; and it was believed to fail

only when one of the family was about to die.[23.2] It is reported of

the holy spring of Szörény that its water becomes blood-red as often

as a King of Hungary dies.[23.3] There is a crater-lake in Madagascar,

about eighty miles south-south-west of Antanánarívo, called

Tritriva. It is of a deep green colour, almost black. The natives hold

that there is an intimate and secret relation between the lake and the

members of a neighbouring tribe, the Zanatsara. When a tribesman is

taken ill, the waters of the lake are at once examined. If they are

troubled and become of a brown colour, it is a presage of death: if

they remain clear, {24} the patient will have a chance of life.[24.1]

In these cases we have precisely the conditions of the Life-token; and

we may be allowed to conjecture that other cases of inquiry after

absent friends, or divination for the sick, were originally limited to

persons believed to stand in some special relation with the fountain

consulted. Further, the stories and superstitions regarding mirrors

have evidently been transferred from pools and springs, to which they

must have originally attached. And in the Eskimo practice, and the

divination at Patras, and elsewhere, in the performances of Indian and

Egyptian conjurers and of the fetish-men and priests of Equatorial

Africa and the Pacific Islands, we may perhaps trace some of the

intermediate stages.

These pools and mirrors have led me to anticipate somewhat. And before

returning to Life-tokens a few words must be spent upon the cognate

subject of Tokens of Fidelity. The extension of the idea of a

life-token to a faith-token is obvious where the persons parted are

lovers or spouses. In such cases it would not be enough for one to

know that the other was living: constant assurance of the absent one’s

fidelity would be as necessary to the other’s happiness as his life.

There is another magical object, familiar in certain stages of

civilisation, with which the Faith-token may easily be confounded. I

mean the Test of Chastity, like the mirror in the beautiful tale of

_Zayn al-Asnam_, or Florimel’s girdle in the _Faerie Queene_. With

this test of chastity in a general sense we have not here to do; nor

is it necessary to discuss the Faith-token itself at any length.

In Eastern tales the Faith-token ordinarily assumes the {25} form of a

flower. In the _Tutinameh_, a soldier’s wife gives her husband on his

departure a rose which will remain fresh while she preserves her

purity.[25.1] In the _Kathá-sarit-Ságara_, the god Siva appears in a

dream to Guhasena and his wife Devasmitá when they are about to part,

and gives them a red lotus apiece, saying: “Take each of you one of

these lotuses in your hand. And if either of you shall be unfaithful

during your separation, the lotus in the hand of the other shall fade,

but not otherwise.” When they awoke, each beheld in the other’s hand a

red lotus, “and it seemed as if they had got one another’s

hearts.”[25.2] In a modern folktale obtained in the Panjáb the kind

of flower is not specified, but the incident is the same.[25.3] The

token appears also as a flower or a garland in several of the European

romances of chivalry; and in a Hungarian _märchen_ a king, going to

war, gives to his two daughters two wreaths which will wither if they

lose their maidenhood.[25.4] In a modern folksong of one of the Greek

islands, an apple-tree, questioned why it withers, replies:

“They plighted a youth and maiden beneath my shelter;

They swore by my branches that they would cling together,

And now, because I know they part, my leaves are turning yellow.”[25.5]

These stories have their counterpart in practice. Siva, the Hindu god

who is the agent in one of the stories just quoted, is a phallic

deity. Among the Mech of Bengal, a Mongoloid tribe just now in a

transitional state of religion between animism and the Hinduism which

is macadamising the innumerable aboriginal cults of India, a sij plant

{26} (_Euphorbia Indica_) grows in the courtyard of every house. This

plant is carefully tended as the abode of Siva and the emblem of

conjugal fidelity. If its leaves wither, something is wrong with one

of the women of the household.[26.1] A curious superstition of an

analogous kind was commonly practised among our own countrymen within

the memory of men only a few years dead. Lovers who desired to know

how they should succeed in their suit carried flowers called

bachelors’ buttons in their pockets, and judged of their good or bad

success by the flowers’ growing or not growing there.[26.2] So it is

noted among the superstitions prevalent in France two hundred years

ago, that, in order to know which of three or four persons loved one

the best, a corresponding number of thistles should be taken, the buds

cut off, and to each plant should be imputed the name of one of the

persons concerning whom it was intended to inquire. The thistles were

then to be placed under the head of the inquirer’s bed; and the one

representing the person who had most affection would put forth new

buds.[26.3] At Siena a maiden who wished to know how her love

progressed kept and tended a plant of rue. While it flourished all

went well; but if it withered it was a sign that the love she desired

had failed her.[26.4]

In the ballad of _Hind Horn_ the king’s daughter gives the hero a

jewelled ring. As long as the stone keeps its {27} colour, he may know

that she is faithful; but if it change its hue, he may ken she loves

another man. Professor Child, commenting on the ballad, adduces not

merely several variants and romances on the same subject, but also a

Roumanian ballad wherein a prince going to war gives his wife a ring

which will rust if he be dead, and a Silesian story and another

British ballad where the ring breaks in twain.[27.1] In these ballads

and stories we probably have the real meaning of plighting the troth

in the marriage service with a ring. Bacon, somewhere discussing the

superstition, gravely suggests that a trial should be made by two

persons of the effect of compact and agreement; that a ring should be

put on for each other’s sake, to try whether, if one should break his

promise, the other would have any feeling of it in his absence. The

hero of a North German tale receives from his bride the day after

marriage a snow-white shirt, which will turn black if she die, and

become stained and spotted if she be untrue.[27.2] A Hungarian

tradition speaks of a carbuncle which lighted up the neighbourhood of

a lake in the Carpathians while the consort of the king of the

water-fays was true to him; but when she fell in love with a mortal

prince it lost its splendour, and the king with his golden palace and

all his treasures sank into the black depths of the lake.[27.3] The

Faith-token is a piece of machinery too suggestive to be {28}

overlooked by poets and dramatists of more refined art than the

mediæval romancers. Davenant mentions an emerald, not set like the

Carpathian carbuncle on a palace tower, but worn by a lady, and

growing pale when her husband is unfaithful. Massinger’s play of _The

Picture_ turns upon a portrait of his wife given to the parting

knight, Mathias, by “a great scholar,” or magician, with these

instructions:

“Carry it still about you, and as oft

As you desire to know how she’s affected,

With curious eyes peruse it: while it keeps

The figure it now has, entire and perfect,

She is not only innocent in fact,

But unattempted; but if once it vary

From the true form, and what’s now white and red

Incline to yellow, rest most confident

She’s with all violence courted, but unconquer’d;

But if it all turn black, ’tis an assurance

The fort by composition or surprise

Is forced or with her free consent surrender’d.”

I do not propose, however, to trace the Faith-token through

literature. If a gift of doubtful benefit to a jealous lover, many a

literary artist in search of a plot has found it useful. Our business

is with the Life-token, to which we may now return. Tales of

life-tokens credited as facts are not very numerous. Perhaps one or

two of the stories already mentioned may be included in that category.

The rest may be treated together with superstitions and customs.

In many variants of the Perseus cycle, as well as in many of the

_märchen_ cited in the present chapter, we have found the life-token

to be a tree planted before or at the time of the hero’s birth, or

sometimes planted by himself or merely indicated by him. In the

Smyrnæan tale, it will be {29} remembered, the queen plants a pumpkin

on the birth of each of her sons. The pumpkin brings forth one fruit,

wherein the strength of the boy resides; and when it is cut the boy

falls ill. As I have already pointed out, the pumpkin would seem here

to be the life itself, and not merely the life-token. A distinction

between the life and the life-token is generally observed in

_märchen_. On the one hand, we have the story of Punchkin with his

hidden soul, in which the magician, or demoniacal enemy of the hero,

cannot be slain by any evil inflicted on his own body. His soul, or

life, must be sought out in a distant spot where, enveloped in various

coverings and protected by numerous defences, is a parrot, or an egg,

to destroy which is to kill the magician. On the other hand, we have

in the variants of _The King of the Fishes_ and other types the

mysterious token left at home while its owner sallies forth in search

of adventures. If he fall, or suffer reverses, the token at home, if a

tree or a flower, withers; if a knife, or a phial of liquid, or some

other article, it drops blood, or rusts, or changes colour, or

indicates in some other manner its sympathy with the hero’s fortunes.

This broad distinction is natural in a story the plot of which is made

to depend upon it. It is easy to understand, however, that the

distinction could not be maintained in any corresponding practical

superstition. To assume, for instance--what is quite possible--that

the lives of the monks of Saint Maurice were actually believed to be

bound up with those of the fishes in the fishpond of the monastery,

how could it be determined whether a fish’s death caused the death of

one of the brethren or only betokened it? In the course of the

following pages we shall meet with many cases of sympathy between a

child {30} and a tree or other object. The child’s death and the

withering of the tree, or some other corresponding change, are

believed to be coincident. Experience will very soon show that

sometimes the injury may happen to the child, sometimes to the

life-token. If the superstition survive, it can only do so by

supposing that both alike are vulnerable, and that the consequences of

an injury to either are mysteriously transmitted to the other.[30.1]

Even in a story, however, the distinction between the Life-token and

the “External Soul,” as Mr. Frazer calls it, is not always maintained.

In the tale of Prince Lionheart, referred to at the beginning of this

chapter, the hero derives his origin from a barleycorn. His

life-token, multiplied in a lavish oriental manner by three, consists

of three barley-plants. It is noteworthy that he directs that every

one of them shall be carefully tended, for so long as they flourished

he would be alive and well, and, on the contrary, if they drooped,

misfortune would be at hand: implying that his life and prosperity

were dependent upon them. His external soul proper is a sword. When

its hilt comes off, his head falls, and at the same instant the ear of

each of the barley-plants snaps. Other stories may easily be recalled

where a plant as the hero’s life-token is commended to the special

care of the friend or kinsman left behind, as if injury to the plant

would affect its absent owner. We shall, accordingly, be justified in

treating the Life-token and the External Soul as almost always one and

the same thing in belief and custom.

In the _Popol Vuh_, the twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, whose

birth I have already described in Chapter v., on starting for the

realm of Xibalba to avenge their {31} father’s death, plant each a

cane in the midst of their grandmother’s dwelling, that she may know

by its flourishing or fading whether they are alive or dead.[31.1]

According to a tradition of the province of Berri, in central France,

a local saint, Honoré de Buzançais, who flourished at the end of the

thirteenth century, in setting forth on a journey told his mother

that, by means of a certain laurel which had been planted the day he

was born, she would at any time be able to learn how he fared. The

tree would languish if he were ill, and wither if he died. He was

murdered, and the laurel withered at the same instant.[31.2] On the

island of Tahiti, a sacred tree, resembling the banian of India, was

said to have shot forth a new tendril at the birth of one of the kings

whose inauguration is described by Ellis; and this branch reached the

ground when the inauguration took place.[31.3] So Suetonius tells us

that thrice when the mother of the Emperor Vespasian gave birth to a

boy a certain ancient oak-tree belonging to the Flavian _gens_ and

sacred to Mars put forth a new shoot; and when the Emperor himself was

born the shoot was of such vitality that it grew to the size of the

old trunk itself.[31.4]

These are legends. In actual life, among the Maori, when the

navel-string came off a newborn child, the child was carried to a

priest. The cord was buried in a sacred place; and over it a young

sapling was planted, which was expressly regarded as the babe’s “Sign

of Life,” or life-token.[31.5] Another account states that the

placenta was buried and a tree planted over the spot. “Instances have

been known of territorial right being claimed in consequence {32} of

the placenta and umbilical cord having been buried in the vicinity,

the tree being pointed to as evidence.” Elsewhere in New Zealand the

cord was buried by the mother at the foot of some out-of-the-way tree

or bush, with certain mystic words. If the tree or bush decayed or

died, the child would not be expected to live long.[32.1] In Southern

Celebes a cocoa-nut is planted at the child’s birth, and watered with

the water in which the cord and after-birth have been washed. The

tree, as it grows up, is called the “contemporary” of the child.[32.2]

In Old Calabar a palm-tree is planted, so as to grow with the child,

and the after-birth is buried beside it.[32.3] The superstition is not

confined to these distant lands. In Pomerania the after-birth is

buried at the foot of a young tree; in Mecklenburg it is merely cast

there; in either case the child will grow with the tree, and thrive as

it thrives.[32.4]

{33}

It is obvious that in all these cases there is a connection

established between the child and the tree by means of the placenta.

The reasons for planting a tree are probably twofold. Not only is it

difficult to preserve the after-birth itself; it is also desired to

bring to bear upon the child all the gracious influences of Nature, to

aid in his growth and development. This is done by the intervention of

the young tree, which thus becomes more than a mere index of his

fortunes. The placenta is, in fact, a portion of the child

incorporated in the tree. A caul, which is as much a portion of the

child as the placenta, and which, unlike the latter, is easy of

preservation, was formerly regarded in this country as an index of the

health of the person who was so lucky as to be born with it. While he

remained alive and well, it was firm and crisp; if he sickened or

died, it became flaccid and relaxed.[33.1] Any fragment of a human

being may, indeed, become his life-token. A pathetic instance is on

record of a boy in Grafton County, New Hampshire, who, early in the

present century, was badly scalded, so that a piece of his skin, fully

one inch in diameter, sloughed off, and was carefully treasured by his

mother. When the boy came of age he left home, and was never heard of

after; but his mother used from time to time to examine the skin,

persuaded that so long as it was sound her son was alive and well, and

that it would not begin to decay until his death. She died about 1843;

and thenceforth her daughters kept the skin for their brother’s sake

as she had done, and with the same notions about its preservation and

decay.[33.2] In these examples we do not find the idea of the External

Soul. {34} The object, whether caul or skin, is kept merely to obtain

tidings of the absent. It is not united for his benefit to any living

organism like a tree; nor does it seem to be necessary to his life to

preserve it from harm.

Sometimes, however, the belief connected with the rite of planting at

a birth is more obscure, whether from the fault of those who have

recorded it, or because it has faded out of the memory of those who

perform it. The Fiji islanders bury the navel-string with a cocoa-nut,

which is intended to germinate and grow. The tree produced is

considered the property of the child.[34.1] Among the tribes of

Guatemala, and also of Virginia, the cord was cut upon an ear of

maize, and the grains thus besprent with blood were sown in the

infant’s name.[34.2] The umbilical cord of an Aztec boy was buried

with mimic weapons in a place where a battle might be expected to take

place on a future day. A girl’s cord, with domestic implements proper

to her sex, was buried under a _metate_, or stone whereon the maize

was crushed.[34.3] The interpretation of none of these presents any

difficulty, save that of the Aztec boy. But if we regard the cord as

his external soul, we may suppose that it was either put into a safe

place, or was expected to strengthen and encourage its owner on the

day of battle. The Badouj husband, in Java, buries the placenta in the

forest. We are told nothing as to {35} the situation in which it is

buried; if not at the foot of a tree, it is probably intended to be

hidden securely away.[35.1]

In other cases there appears no physical contact with the infant, or

with the accompaniments of its birth, though the intention is plain.

On the island of Bali, in the East Indies, a cocoa-palm is simply

planted. It is called the child’s “Life-plant,” and is believed to

grow up equally with him. When twins are born, in some Zulu tribes,

the father plants two euphorbia-trees near the door of the hut. Among

the Mbengas of Western Africa, when two babes are born on the same

day, two trees of the same kind are planted, and the people 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 die soon.” The life of

a newborn child is united by some of the Papuans with that of the tree

by driving a pebble into the bark. “This is supposed to give them

complete mastery over the child’s life; if the tree is cut down, the

child will die.”[35.2] Among the Sakalava of Madagascar, a tree called

Hàzomànitra (Fragrant Wood) is planted at the birth of a first

child. This is said to be a witness that the father acknowledges it as

his own.[35.3] But had he not acknowledged it, the child must

presumably have been put to death, so that this can hardly be the real

reason. According to the Babylonian Talmud it was a Hebrew practice to

plant a cedar at the birth of a boy, and {36} a pine at the birth of a

girl.[36.1] On the New Marquesas Islands a breadfruit-tree is set

apart for the use of every infant at its birth; or, if the parents be

too poor to do this, a sapling is immediately planted. The fruit of

the tree is taboo to every one save the child; even the parents dare

not touch it.[36.2] Among several European nations it is, or has been

up to recent times, the custom to plant a tree at the birth of a

child. When the poet Vergil was born, his parents are said to have

planted a poplar, in the hope that, as that tree overtopped all the

rest, their son’s greatness would outstrip all others’. Poplars are

still set in the neighbourhood of Turin when a girl is born; and they

become in after-years the maiden’s dower. In Switzerland an apple-tree

is set for a boy, a pear or a nut for a girl; and it is believed that

as the young tree flourishes, so will the child. In Aargau, in

particular, it was the custom, not many years back, to plant a

fruit-tree on the land of the commune for every infant that was born;

and if a father were enraged with a son who was at a distance, and

therefore out of his reach, he would go to the field and cut down the

tree planted at his son’s birth.[36.3] In England we still hear

sometimes of trees being planted at a birth. Count de Gubernatis, I

know not on what authority, asserts that there are families in Russia,

Germany, England, France, and Italy, whose practice it is to plant at

the birth of a {37} child a fruit-tree, which is loved and tended with

special care as the symbol of the child and of the child’s fate.[37.1]

Only thirty years ago it was the custom of the good folk of Liége to

plant a tree in the garden when a child was born: a custom which, it

seems, is still continued in some parts of Belgium.[37.2] In the

province of Canton, in China, although we are not informed that trees

are planted on the like occasions, we seem to have a relic of some

such practice in the superstition requiring a child’s fortune to be

told, in order to ascertain the particular idol or tree to which he

belongs. It is thought that a tree is planted in the spirit-world to

represent the life in this world, “and that the child is as much the

fruit of the tree as it is that of the womb.”[37.3] It is difficult to

see how such a thought could have originated, unless it were connected

with the planting of a tree in this world when the babe was born.

Nor is it only at a birth that the life-token is planted. Among the

English-speaking population on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake,

when one of a family leaves home, a bit of live-for-ever is stuck in

the ground to indicate the fortune of the absent one. It will flourish

if he prosper; otherwise it will wither or die.[37.4] An Italian {38}

work falsely attributed to Cornelius Agrippa gives the following

prescription for divining the health of a person far distant: Gather

onions on the Eve of Christmas, and put them on an altar, and under

every onion write the name of one of the persons as to whom

information is desired. When planted, the onion that sprouts the first

will clearly announce that the person whose name it bears is

well.[38.1] In the north-east of Scotland, when potatoes were dug for

the first time in the season a stem was put for each member of the

family, the father first, the mother next, and the rest in order of

age. Omens of the prosperity of the year were drawn from the number

and size of the potatoes growing from each stem.[38.2] Every Roman

emperor solemnly planted on the Capitol a laurel, which was said to

wither when he was about to die. It was the custom, too, of a

successful general at his triumph to plant in a shrubbery set by Livia

a laurel which was believed to fade after his death.[38.3] Marco Polo

records that the Great Khan planted the highways through his realm

with rows of trees, for the purpose of marking the roads; and that he

did it all the more readily because his astrologers and diviners told

him that he who planted trees lived long.[38.4] Why, unless his life

were bound up with the trees he planted? In British Guiana, when young

children are betrothed, as is the custom among the aborigines, trees

are planted by the respective parties in witness of the contract. {39}

If either tree happen to fade, the child it belongs to will die.[39.1]

The custom exists also in Germany. At Hochheim, Einzingen, and other

places in the neighbourhood of Gotha, a bridal pair plants at the

wedding, or shortly after, two young trees on the land of the commune.

If either of the trees perish, the spouse who planted it will shortly

die.[39.2] “On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo,” says Mr.

Frazer, quoting Professor Wilken, “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.”[39.3] What else than this can be the true meaning of the

ceremony practised by some of the Australian blacks when a boy attains

puberty? His two upper front teeth are knocked out, and his mother

carefully inserts them in the fork of the topmost branches of a young

gum-tree, which thereupon becomes taboo.[39.4] {40} The tree is not,

indeed, newly planted, but, as in the Papuan practice cited just now,

the boy’s fate is united with it. If a gipsy babe do not thrive in

Transylvania, the mother drops a little of her own blood in its mouth,

and rubs its saliva in the hole of a tree, repeating a rhyming formula

adjuring the child to grow like that tree.[40.1] When a child has been

passed, for hernia or some other disease, through a young tree split

for the purpose, the tree is forthwith bound up and plastered with mud

or clay so that it may grow together again; and according as this

treatment is successful on the tree, the child is expected to recover.

This, I need hardly remind the reader, is a superstition very widely

spread in Europe. In Mecklenburg, and most likely elsewhere, it is

believed that if the tree be felled the child will die.[40.2] So, too,

among the Buryats of Siberia, a shaman on the eve of his first

dedication cuts a magical stick from a growing birch. It must be of

some size, since a horse’s head is required to be carved at the top,

and a horse’s knee and hoof at the lower end. It must be so cut that

the birch will not wither from the excision, for that would be an ill

omen for the shaman.[40.3] His life, or at least his professional

success, is thus bound up with the life of the tree.

Of other species of life-tokens we may note the following. A tradition

of the Mojave Indians of Arizona relates that two twin brothers, in

starting to hunt, hung a quiver up by the lodge fire, and each tied a

long hair (no doubt one of his own) across the doorway. “If you see

that quiver fall,” they said to their wives, “that is a sign we are

dead; and {41} if the hairs break, we die.” The brothers are

treacherously murdered; the quiver falls and the hairs are

broken.[41.1] In this case we have the hairs originally part of the

heroes’ bodies, and the quiver was their property. Thus the reason why

these objects could be made life-tokens was the sympathy they retained

from their erewhile close connection with the brothers. This is,

however, by no means a necessity: the mere superscription of the name

is sufficient, as in the onion-charm cited a page or two back, to

establish the requisite sympathy. Tiglath-Uras, an Assyrian king,

caused a seal of crystal to be engraven with his name and title, and

with the words: “Whosoever buries my writing and my name, may Assur

and Rimmon destroy his name and his land! Whoever makes the seal

legible ensures the preservation of my life.”[41.2] Here the seal,

with its inscription, bears the aspect of the king’s external soul;

and it must be remembered in this connection that archaic belief

regards the name as a part of its owner. A similar character attaches,

in the opinion of many savages, to a portrait. This is the foundation

of the belief in witchcraft by means of a puppet or picture.[41.3] But

if the writing of a name or the accuracy of a likeness were {42}

important, it is clear that the superstition could not be traced far

back into the lower culture, and witchcraft could only be practised by

accomplished artists. Accordingly, it is enough to attribute the name

of the man to the object whereby it is proposed to represent him. In

Thuringia, if it be desired to know whether absent children or other

kinsmen be still living, all that is necessary is to stick a loaf of

bread with ears of corn before putting it into the oven to bake. Each

of the ears is designated by the name of one of the absent concerning

whom inquiry is made. If any of the ears be scorched in the process of

baking, the person symbolised is assuredly dead; if not, he is

living.[42.1] Either some such divination, or that lively presentation

which is but a step short of it, was recorded by Mr. Backhouse, who,

in visiting Tasmania, noticed one day a native woman arranging some

flat oval stones, about two inches wide and marked with black and red

lines. He learned that these represented absent friends, and one

larger than the rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinders Island,

known by the name of Mother Brown.[42.2]

As in the _märchen_ we have reviewed, so in sagas and in practical

superstition, mere ownership or the wearing of an object sets up a

connection with it, which remains even after parting with its

possession, and will render it an efficient life-token. This has been

already illustrated in the quiver of the Mojave saga. In a legendary

history of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Duke Lewis, her husband, when

setting out for the Crusade, sent her a ring, the stone of {43} which

would break when misfortune happened to him. It is curious that in

fact, if the Count de Montalembert’s investigations may be trusted,

the duke told his wife that if he sent her his ring it would be a

token that some misfortune had occurred.[43.1] In Italy it is believed

that if a woman take off her wedding-ring, her husband will run some

serious risk.[43.2] A Hungarian superstition declares that a garnet

remains of a beautiful red colour when its wearer is well, but turns

pale if he be sick or ailing.[43.3] But here the line between the

Life-token, or the External Soul, and the Fetish becomes very narrow.

So a Shawnee prophet tried to persuade Tanner that the fire in his

lodge was intimately connected with his life. At all seasons and in

all weathers it was to remain alight; for if he suffered it to be

extinguished, his life would be at an end.[43.4] Of a similar

character is the Negro luck-ball, so graphically described, with the

making thereof, by Miss Owen, and of which a specimen was obtained by

her for Mr. Leland. We will not here inquire into the composition of

this nasty but magical article; we will rest satisfied with knowing

that it receives the name of the person for whom it is intended, and

contains his soul. It is usually carried about by its owner; and the

agonies of a Negress who thought she had lost her ball are set forth

in Miss Owen’s book with humour. “No ball could be found. Then Aunt

Mymee went wild. Her morning duties were forgotten, she ran hither and

thither looking in all possible and impossible places of concealment,

and obstinately refusing to state what she had lost. Finally, with a

groan of despair, she flung herself down on her cabin floor in a {44}

cowering heap and quavered out that she would be better off in her

grave, for an enemy had stolen her luck-ball, and her soul as well as

her luck was in it.”[44.1] The North American Indians and many other

savages carry such objects; and of the same kind would appear to have

been that wonderful stone in the Chinese story, which contained

ninety-two grottoes representing the allotted years of its owner’s

life.[44.2]

Mr. Frazer, in the remarkable work to which I have been indebted for

numerous illustrations in the course of this chapter, refers to the

belief on the part of many peoples in the lower culture that the lives

of individual men and women are bound up with those of various

animals. In Rome the animals in question were snakes; and the

superstition was so widely spread that, according to Pliny, they

multiplied to an extent which would have rendered it impossible to

make head against their fecundity, if their numbers had not been kept

down by occasional conflagrations. The snake was, in fact, the

_genius_ of a man--his external soul, and therefore was carefully

guarded from all harm.[44.3] The Zulus also believe in an _ihlozi_, or

mysterious serpent, belonging to every man. It is usually invisible,

underground; but it may be killed, and then the man must die. In other

parts of the {45} world there is no such monopoly: all sorts of

animals are looked upon by different members of the same clan as their

second selves. Mr. Frazer frames from this a theory of totemism which

it is foreign to my present purpose to examine. Whatever may be

thought of the theory, it is clear that some aspects of the Totem, the

External Soul, and the Fetish approach one another very nearly, and

require a closer study than they have yet received from any scientific

anthropologist, with the exception of the distinguished author of _The

Golden Bough_.

Coming back to the Life-token proper, it would seem that it is

sometimes connected, not with the individual concerned, but with the

relative or friend left behind. When a Zulu warrior goes on a hostile

expedition his wife hangs up her own sleeping-mat against the door or

wall of the hut. If the shadow be cast sharp and clear, her husband is

well; if otherwise, “he will never look upon the sun again.”[45.1] The

Coptic Christian legends contain the same plentiful supply of miracles

which the accounts of other saints furnish. The life of the Coptic

saint Shnudi, by his disciple Visa, relates that another saint, Mar

Thomas, foretold to Shnudi that the latter should be informed of Mar

Thomas’s death by the breaking in two of the stone whereon Shnudi used

to sit and meditate.[45.2] In this case {46} Mar Thomas appoints the

life-token; and he displays a lofty recklessness about the condition

of furniture which does not belong to him. But the appointment by the

person whose life is the subject of inquiry is not usual, where the

token is in no way connected with him. The friend left behind can

generally manage a life-token without his assistance. Frequently,

however, the aid of a sorcerer is called in. Among the western

islanders of Torres Straits the sorcerer on these occasions goes

through some jugglery with a crocodile’s tooth, which he pretends to

swallow and bring out again through his hand. After this he sends it

on a journey in the direction where the man is supposed to be, and

divines his life or death by the condition of the tooth when it

returns.[46.1] In Brittany a sailor’s wife who has been long without

tidings of her husband makes a pilgrimage to one of the shrines

innumerable in that country, and lights before the saints a taper

wherewith she has provided herself. If her husband be yet alive and

well, it burns with a clear, steady flame; otherwise the flame will be

poor and intermittent, and will go out.[46.2] John Banks, a dramatist

of the Restoration, refers to one form of the superstition still, or

very lately, living in Scotland, as well as in other parts of Europe.

The passage runs as follows:--

“Douglas.

Last night, no sooner was I laid to rest,

But just three drops of blood fell from my nose

And stain’d my pillow, which I found this morning,

And wondered at.

Queen Mary.

That rather does betoken

Some mischief to thyself.{47}

Douglas.

Perhaps to cowards,

Who prize their own base lives; but to the brave,

’Tis always fatal to the friend they love.”[47.1]

Strictly speaking, this only announces the deaths of near relations:

it would be too dreadful if a man’s whole acquaintance made known

their deaths by bleeding him, or, as it is believed in Denmark, by

pinching him and thereby causing blue spots on his body.[47.2] Second

sight, however, also well known in Scotland, was not confined to

kindred; but it is of a ghostly nature, not dependent on material

objects.

Closely connected with the Life-token, as we have already seen, is

divination concerning the prospects of life of persons who are not

absent. This is a wide subject; and here we can only select a few

examples among those whose form is similar to those of the Life-token.

The Thuringian practice of divining as to absent members of the family

seems to be one of several Teutonic methods of divination by the

baking of bread. The decrees of Burchard of Worms, issued probably

early in the eleventh century, refer to the omen drawn on the first of

January by baking a loaf of bread in the name of any one and noting

how it rises and whether it becomes compact and light. Another

practice is described, of sweeping the hearth and placing grains of

barley on the heated place: if the grains popped, they indicated

danger; otherwise, if they remained quiet.[47.3] {48} At Rauen, in the

north of Germany, if a newly baked loaf have a crack, one of the

family will die.[48.1] In Suffolk, to overturn a loaf in the oven is

to have a death in the house.[48.2] In Saxony on the Bohemian border

the same augury is obtained by making as many little cakes as there

are persons in the house, giving to each cake the name of one of the

persons, and punching a hole in it with your finger. He whose hole

closes up in baking will die.[48.3] In Hungary on Saint Lucien’s Day a

feather is stuck in each cake, and the death-augury is drawn if the

feather be burnt in baking. On Christmas Eve in many places every one

eats a nut and fills the shell with water. If the shell be dry by the

next morning he must die during the year.[48.4]

Divination from the burning of candles is well known. On Twelfth

Night, in some parts of Ireland, as for example in Leitrim and

Roscommon, rushes were gathered and made into rushlights, each of the

length of six inches. They were stuck into a cake of cow-dung and

named from the members of the family. Then they were all lighted, and

the family knelt around them, telling their beads. The taper that

burnt out first indicated who should die soonest.[48.5] So Meleager’s

life, according to the classical story, departed when the brand

expired whereon it depended. In Thuringia, if an altar-light go out of

itself, one of the priests will die; but it does not appear whether

the candle must be entirely consumed.[48.6] In some towns of {49}

North Germany it is a common practice on a child’s birthday to give

him a cake with a “Life-light” placed on it. The light must not be

blown out, but suffered to burn to the end.[49.1] This is contrary to

the general rule at Chemnitz, and elsewhere, which declares that when

a candle goes out of itself, some one in the house will die--a

superstition especially regarded on Christmas Eve.[49.2] In Iceland,

if a man let a light die out slowly, he will have a long

death-struggle.[49.3] On the other hand, the Romans, if we may trust

Plutarch, never extinguished a lamp, but suffered it to burn

out.[49.4] Omens of this kind are frequently drawn at weddings. Two

candles represent the bride and bridegroom: the one whose candle first

expires will die first. Such is the belief in Thuringia and Esthonia,

as well as in Italy. Among the Southern Slavs and among the Bretons

the altar-candle opposite either of the spouses during the ceremony is

the one whose conduct in this respect is regarded. At Chemnitz it was

customary to allow the light to burn clean out in the bride-chamber,

perhaps for the same reason.[49.5]

{50}

In Denmark, Saint John’s-wort (_hypericum_) is gathered on Saint

John’s Day, and the plants are set between the beams under the roof.

If one of them grow upwards toward the roof, he whom it represents

will have a long life; if downward, sickness and death are

betokened.[50.1] The Saxons of Transylvania, and the Hungarians, are

said to place as many billets of wood as there are members of the

family present on Saint Sylvester’s Night (New Year’s Eve) in the open

air on or against a wall or a tree, giving each billet the name of a

person. Any of them falling before the morning forecasts the death of

him whose billet falls. Or a rag is thrown on a tree, and if it be

there in the morning the thrower expects luck in the coming year. On

Saint John’s Day wreaths are made of marsh-marigolds and thrown singly

thrice on the roof. If anybody’s wreath remain up, he will die before

the next summer.[50.2] The same principle is embodied in the Maori

custom of divining by means of sticks. Before they go to war they put

up two sticks, or two rows of sticks, with certain ceremonies. From

the way in which the wind blows the sticks or the manner in which they

fall, if thrown, omens are drawn as to the success of the war, or the

fate of the inquirer.[50.3] The Gipsies of the Danubian countries

divine as to the fate of their relatives by putting

flowers--apparently willow flowers--in a sieve on Saint George’s Eve,

one for each {51} member of the family. He whose flower is found

withered the next morning will die first.[51.1] In the Isle of Man, at

Hollantide, “as well as on the last night of the year, ivy-leaves

marked with the name of the family were put into water, and if one of

the leaves withered it was supposed that the person whose name was on

it would die before the end of the year.”[51.2]

The tales and superstitions we have examined in this chapter are

conclusive as to the wide range of a belief in the mysterious

connection of a man’s life and health with some object external to

himself. And they point with equal certainty to the belief that this

connection originates in some relationship, either natal or

established subsequently to birth by possession or ownership, or by

appointment of the person concerned. In other words, the external

object is believed to be, or to contain, a part of the man himself, or

the man and the external object are regarded as two parts of a greater

whole. This is the reason why, in _märchen_ belonging to _The King of

the Fishes_ and other types, the tree growing in the garden at home is

an index of the adventurer’s fate in the palace of the Medusa-witch.

Both the tree and the hero are sprung from the magical fish; both are

of his substance; and hence their sympathy. So, among the Maories and

in Pomerania, when the navel-string or after-birth is buried and a

tree planted over it, the latter would be conceived to absorb the

substance of the object at its root--that is to say, of something

which is already part of the child himself--and in that way become

connected with him. Our evidence, though extending from Polynesia and

Melanesia {52} to the East Indies, though good for Germany and for

portions of the American continent, does not directly establish the

practice of such burials as universal. But such a custom is a fair

inference wherever we find the planting of a tree at birth, especially

where, as in the majority of cases, the tree is looked upon as

betokening the child’s fate. Yet the custom could not have been one of

the most archaic. It must have been unknown so long as mankind were

wanderers having no settled places of abode or defined territory.

Earlier than this, therefore, must have been the belief that some

other relic such as hair, weapons, ornaments or clothes, which had

been in contact with their owner’s body, or even some more arbitrary

thing appointed by him, acquired the mysterious connection of which I

am speaking. By constant use, or by habitual wear, things not

originally part of a man would become inseparably associated with him

in the minds of all his acquaintance, impregnated with his

personality, identified with his corporeal presence. After a while

mere ownership would be enough to warrant the ascription of this

quality, at least to any portable object. The Maori claims of

territorial right, based upon the burial of the claimant’s after-birth

and navel-string, are instances of the subtle bond in native thought

between ownership and a personal substance like that which was

supposed to penetrate the trees whose existence was appealed to as

evidence. True, these claims could only be made by members of a

settled community, or of one whose limits of wandering were fixed. But

the state of thought they disclose is thoroughly archaic, rooted in a

still ruder past.

Not only, however, is a man’s property credited with the mysterious

sympathy which enables it to become his life-token. {53} It is not

even necessary for him to appoint a life-token for himself, whether

part of his property or not. Both in the stories and in actual life,

and that very low down in savagery, a kinsman is represented as able

to appoint a life-token, or at all events to divine, by the condition

of a perfectly arbitrary object, what is the fate of an absent person.

This power is with one exception limited to a kinsman. In the last

resort it is possible to obtain tidings of a distant friend through a

sorcerer. Here other beliefs are brought into play. Setting this

exceptional case aside, we may class all the others together under the

heads of Life-tokens--

1. By original corporeal connection with the absent person.

2. By virtue of his ownership.

3. By his appointment.

4. By corporeal connection with a kinsman of the absent person.

5. By virtue of a kinsman’s ownership.

6. By a kinsman’s appointment.

The appointment of a life-token not belonging to the person concerned,

or his kinsman, was, we may assume, at first by a magical formula, as

in the instance of the taboo set upon the banana by the twins in the

Melanesian story. In this way a consecration to the speaker, an

ἀνάθεμα, was performed, which would have the effect of ownership. In

course of time, and of the changes wrought by advancing civilisation,

the taboo would be forgotten; and a simple declaration of the

intention to make the object his life-token would remain. The cases of

appointment thus resolve themselves into ownership; and ownership, as

we have seen, is nothing but an extension of the idea of {54}

corporeal connection. The reason why the corporeal connection with a

kinsman, or his ownership of the life-token, is equivalent to that of

the absent hero, is because the kinsman, being of the same stock as

the hero, is deemed to have an original corporeal bond with him like

that of the tree in the _märchen_ growing from the bones or scales of

the fish from whose flesh the hero is sprung. They are both of the

same substance, two parts of a greater whole. This will be brought out

more clearly as we proceed. We are then face to face with the question

why separated portions of the same substance should remain in such

sympathy with one another that the condition of the one will betoken

the condition of the other. To explain this we must enter upon a wider

survey of savage customs and superstitions.