CHAPTER IX.

WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.

{55}

There are certain common folktale incidents we must first of all

notice, though it is unnecessary to do so at any great length. One of

them is found in a group of tales which I have elsewhere ventured to

classify under the name of _The Teacher and his Scholar_. A Greek

variant of these, from the island of Syra, referred to in an earlier

chapter, runs thus: A disguised demon promises children to a childless

king on condition of his repaying him with the eldest. The demon

thereupon gives the king an apple, to be eaten, one half by himself

and the other half by the queen. Three sons are born; and the eldest

is, notwithstanding all precautions, carried off by the demon. After

some time he finds means to escape from his master’s clutches,

accompanied by a princess whom the demon has held captive. During his

term of service he has learned how to transform himself at will; and

on parting for a while from the princess he takes lodgings with an old

woman. To make money, he changes into a mule, which his hostess offers

for sale; but he charges her to retain the halter. Afterwards he

changes into a bath-house, whereof she is to keep the key. By this

precaution he is able to return to his own form. Finally he changes

into a pomegranate, {56} which his father plucks; but the demon by a

trick nearly succeeds in getting possession of it. It falls in pieces,

and the seeds are scattered. The demon then takes the shape of a hen

and chickens; whereupon the hero becomes a fox and kills the hen and

chickens, but loses his eyes, for the hen has eaten two of the seeds.

He afterwards recovers his sight and marries the princess.[56.1]

The incident, here found, of the Transformation-fight occurs all over

Europe, and as far to the east as India. Its best-known variant is

embodied in the story of the Second Calender in the _Arabian Nights_;

but the _Siddhi-Kür_ contains one far more ancient, if we have regard

to the time when it was written down, though more modern in form than

many of the most recently collected folktales. Welsh tradition, as we

have seen, identifies the incident with the name of Taliessin. Ovid

describes metamorphoses undergone by Metra, daughter of Erisichthon,

in her flight from the successive masters to whom her ravenous father

sold her in order to procure himself food.[56.2] But all these tales

ignore the point which is important for our present inquiry, namely,

the divisibility of the hero’s person. It comes out, however, quite

clearly in the story just quoted, {57} and is exhibited in a twofold

manner. There is, first, the halter, or bridle, which must be retained

by the vendor, else the horse, or mule, will not be able to escape and

return to human form. Here the halter is probably the external soul.

So long as it is free its owner cannot be held within the purchaser’s

power. Secondly, there is the pomegranate, which falls into a thousand

pieces. In northern and western Europe, where the pomegranate grows

not, a heap of grain takes its place.[57.1] In Cashmere it becomes a

rose. In the Turkish romance of _The Forty Vezirs_, the rose, in

falling, changes to millet.[57.2] The pomegranate bursts, and its

seeds are scattered; the petals of the rose drop in a shower; the

grains of corn or millet are shed abroad. But the hero is still in

existence although divided thus. He cannot be destroyed until every

seed, every petal, every grain has been devoured. So long as a single

seed, petal, or grain escapes he can be restored to his pristine form.

In the same way in a North American tale the hero in the shape of an

eagle is killed, and repeatedly restored from a single feather. The

power of self-reconstitution from a fragment is frequently attributed

to wizards, not merely in tales but in living superstitions, and in

both tales and superstitions affords a reason for the entire

destruction of a magical foe.[57.3] For this cause, too, the hero of

the Greek story kills the hen and all the chickens into which the

demon transforms himself--a third example in the same tale of personal

divisibility.

{58}

The Helpful Beasts, to whom so many adventurers are indebted in our

Nursery Tales, furnish another incident illustrative of the same

faculty. In the Transformation-fight it is not necessary to manifest

the continued sympathy of the divided personality; but it is different

when a Helpful Beast offers one of its own limbs as the summons for

aid. Thus an ant will give one of its legs, a bird will give a

feather, or a lion one of its hairs, to be burnt, or fumigated, or

simply rubbed. On this being done the owner forthwith appears and

performs the necessary services.[58.1] In a Tirolese tale the power is

extended to a human being. A merchant’s daughter having fallen in love

with a golden-haired prince, is advised by a great sorceress to

procure three hairs from his head and beard, lay them in a jar with

warm ashes, and boil the contents a little. The prince would then

change into a dove, and fly hurriedly through the window into her

room, where she must have a basin of water ready for him. In this he

would dip himself and return to his proper form. The spell is

successful; but we need not follow the lady’s further fortunes.[58.2]

{59}

Nor is the incident restricted to _märchen_. A Pomeranian saga

records that a supernatural boar which haunted a pool in the forest of

Kehrberg once fell into a wolf-pit and could not get out. A courageous

man, hearing its grunting, approached; and the monster begged for

help. When it was released it tore three bristles from its hide, and,

giving them to its deliverer, said: “When thou art in deadly peril,

rub these three bristles between thy fingers, and I will be with thee

forthwith and save thee.” The man was the lord of a manor. He might

have been an Irish landlord for harshness; and this promise made him

worse than ever. Many of his serfs in desperation joined the

robber-bands that infested the forest; and one day they caught him in

an ambush. Nor would he have escaped the punishment of his misdeeds,

had he not quickly rubbed the bristles between his fingers. The boar

was at his side in an instant, and not one of his enemies escaped. I

wish I could add that the adventure made him repent of his evil ways.

His godless, frantic life continued to the end; and after death he

naturally found no rest in the grave. Wherefore, ever since, in

company with his friend the boar, he dwells in the pool and ranges the

forest, to the no small terror and danger of wayfarers.[59.1]

A belief of the kind of which these are the remains is put to a

practical use by the natives of Borneo, where it is said that the gift

of a tiger’s tooth to a chief of the Kinah tribe will make him a

friend for life. He will not dare to {60} fail the giver, or to turn

false to him, for fear of being devoured by the beast.[60.1] Here, and

in the stories, the portion of the animal’s body given away is still

linked by sympathy with the rest. What happens to it is felt by the

bulk. The apparent severance is continuous and real union.

A third incident found in European folktales endows the heroine’s

saliva with consciousness like her own. In a Danish tale, when Maiden

Misery is about to elope with Prince Wanderer from the Kobold who has

them both in his power, she heats the oven and puts two pieces of wood

to stand, one on either side. Then she spits on each of them and

whispers something to it. After she and the prince have started, the

Kobold wakes up and inquires: “Is the oven hot, Maiden Misery?” “No,

not yet,” answers one of the pieces of wood, but it sounded as if it

were she who answered. The Kobold turned over and went to sleep again.

After a while he awoke again and repeated the question. He got the

same answer and went to sleep once more. When he called out again

there was no reply. He got up and found the oven quite cold; but

Maiden Misery and Prince Wanderer had vanished, and so had the

Kobold’s wonderful steed.[60.2] The same device for delaying pursuit

appears in the Polish _märchen_ of Prince Unexpected. There the

maiden spits on one of the window-panes, and her spittle freezes. Then

she {61} locks up the room and escapes with the prince. When they are

well on their way King Bony awakes, and sends his servants for the

prince. The spittle answers in his voice: “Anon.” They are thus put

off twice before the door is broken open, and the spittle on the

window splits with laughter at the disappointed messengers.[61.1] In

another story from Poland, a brother desires to wed his sister, and

makes her various presents of robes, and a magical car. She shuts

herself in her room, puts on the dresses, and mounts the car. She

spits on the ground and commands the saliva to answer with the voice

of her maid, whom she has secretly sent away. The earth then opens at

her request and swallows her up. When the brother sends to know if she

be ready, the saliva replies: “She has just drawn one stocking on.”

The next time it answers: “She has just put her dress on: she will be

quite ready directly.” When the impatient brother himself comes, the

spittle taunts him in the most intelligent way:--

“Thy sister is far beneath;

This message did she bequeath:

Earth, open wide! When a sister is bride

To her brother, ’tis sin.”[61.2]

In a story from Hesse, Hänsel and Grethel are in a witch’s power.

They run away, but before going Grethel spits in front of the hearth.

So when the sleepy witch cries out to ask whether the water will soon

be hot, to cook Hänsel in, the saliva replies: “I am just fetching

it”; and to subsequent inquiries: “It’s boiling now,” {62} and “I am

just bringing it.” At last the spittle is dried up; and, receiving no

further answer, the witch gets out of bed, discovers the real state of

the case, and follows the children.[62.1] Among the Kaffirs, an

equivalent incident represents the misleading agent as tufts of hair.

The hero, rescuing his sister and her child from a band of cannibals,

directed her to pluck the hair from her head and scatter it about in

different directions. When the cannibals, coming to look for her,

called out, the tufts of hair answered; and the fugitives gained time

while the seekers were thus confused. Another Kaffir tale represents a

single feather of a certain magical bird as endowed with the entire

power of the bird after the latter has been swallowed by the

heroine.[62.2] The Cegihas of North America, a branch of the Sioux,

have a legend of a rabbit who overcame the black bears. He visited

their lodge; and at night on departing he left his fœces all round

the door, with instructions to give the scalp-yell as soon as it was

day. The fœces accordingly yelled as if a large number of persons

were attacking the lodge. The black bear rushed out and was killed by

the rabbit.[62.3]

In this case, too, we are fortunate in being able to produce evidence

that the belief on which the tale is grounded is still living. When a

Hungarian Gipsy is pursued as a thief, he scratches his left hand as

he runs, and smearing the spurting blood on any convenient object,

{63} exclaims: “Speak for me!” In this way he hopes to escape; and the

more scars a Gipsy has upon his left hand from this cause the more he

is honoured for his dexterity in stealing and evading pursuit.[63.1]

In Grimm’s tale of _The Goose-girl_, which belongs to the cycle of

_The Substituted Bride_, the maiden’s mother, on parting with her,

cuts her own finger, and, letting three drops of blood fall upon a

handkerchief, hands it to her daughter as a protection. The drops of

blood speak to her from time to time on the way, though it must be

owned their observations are not very helpful. When she loses them she

becomes powerless, and her waiting-maid ousts her from her place as

the bride.[63.2] It is impossible to misapprehend the meaning of the

three drops of blood. So long as the maiden keeps them she retains her

mother’s presence and protection, of which they are more than a

symbol.

The folktales I have just cited present in an ascending series, first,

the divisibility of a person, secondly, the continued sympathy of the

severed portions with the bulk, and thirdly, the endowment of each of

the severed portions with speech and power--in other words, with

consciousness and reason. The identification of the severed portions

with the whole is thus complete in the stories. Nor are we without

illustrations in practical superstition of this belief. The two

examples already given afford a striking exhibition of the truth which

I may perhaps be pardoned for insisting on with wearisome iteration,

that, namely, of the dependence of folktales on custom and belief. It

is, however, in the practices of witchcraft that we find the severed

portions of a person most frequently and completely {64} identified

with the whole. To some of these practices we will accordingly now

turn our attention.

Witchcraft is usually wrought in one or more of three ways--by

incantations or curses, by symbolic actions, or (and it is this only

with which we are now concerned) by acts done upon objects identified

with the person intended to be affected. Among these objects severed

portions of his body take the first rank.

In the old trials for witchcraft in this country we have full accounts

of the proceedings then regarded as effectual in causing injury by

witches. It is quite likely that some at least of the means mentioned

in the confessions of the accused were at times actually adopted. But

whether actually adopted or not, they are equally valuable for our

present purpose, since their efficacy was undoubted. On the 11th

March, 1618-9, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower were burnt

alive at Lincoln for sorcery. They had been, with Joan Flower, their

mother, confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at

Belvoir Castle. If we might credit their own confession under torture,

they had become dissatisfied with their employers, and had employed

the Black Art in order to gratify their spite. The mother had a

familiar spirit in the form of a cat, named Rutterkin. Their procedure

was to procure a lock of the hair of a member of the Earl’s family, or

to steal one of his gloves. The hair they burnt; the glove was thrown

by Joan Flower into boiling water, then repeatedly pricked with a

knife, and afterwards rubbed on the cat. These performances were

accompanied with words, bidding Rutterkin go and do some hurt to the

owner of the glove. Finally, the glove was burnt, and its owner fell

sick and died. Joan Flower vehemently protested her innocence, {65}

and asked for bread. Taking a piece, the unfortunate woman wished that

if she were guilty it might choke her. Immediately, so says the tale,

she fell stark dead. Other women were associated in the accusation,

and their confessions confirmed those of the sisters Margaret and

Philippa.[65.1]

The results of the practices of which these poor girls were convicted

were terrible enough to them, if not to their supposed victim. Yet if

their depositions exhausted their knowledge of the modes of witchcraft

they cannot have penetrated far into its mysteries. A jealous Italian

woman or a mischievous Gipsy, a North American Indian or an Australian

savage, could have given them points.

A Sienese or Tuscan maiden, for example, deserted by her lover, will

take some of his hair and put it into a toad’s mouth, or round a

toad’s legs. The animal is then imprisoned in a covered pot, or else

it is placed under a potsherd and bound to a tree. While the creature

lives in this torment, the faithless lover will pine away; and when it

dies, he will die also.[65.2] Wherefore a lock of hair is the most

precious gift, the mark of the highest confidence, a lover or friend

can bestow. In the province of Lucca, {66} indeed, it is almost always

refused; for even an imprecation uttered over it would render bald the

head whereon it had grown; and the women, when they comb their hair,

never throw the combings out of window, lest they be bewitched by some

one passing by.[66.1] Nor is less care taken elsewhere in Italy--not

to say throughout Europe--to burn the combings of the hair oneself or

to put them in a place of safety. Dr. Pitrè remembers a woman at

Palermo, who, when she was lying sick, having seen a man pick up one

of her hairs--as she thought, with malicious intent--jumped out of bed

and followed him in her shift, weeping and begging him to give it back

to her and not to do her any harm.[66.2] In Tuscany the hair is

occasionally boiled with a peppercorn and some other substance, the

operator repeating an incantation consigning the foe to death and the

society of witches. In Friuli the hair and blood of the victim are

boiled with nails, needles, knives and other pieces of iron.[66.3]

Even in some parts of England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised

to get a lock of his hair and boil it. Whilst it is simmering in the

pot he will have no rest.[66.4] In Belgium, as also about Mentone, it

is {67} possible to bewitch an enemy by putting one of his hairs into

an egg, and leaving it there to rot; so that one must burn any hairs

that fall out or are cut off, or at least spit or blow upon them as a

protection against witchcraft before throwing them away.[67.1] In

certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the hair or

nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried beneath the

elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or carefully

hidden, for fear of witches.[67.2] In Poland it is thought possible to

blind an enemy by threading one of his hairs in a needle which has

sewed three shrouds, and then passing it through a toad’s eyes, and

letting the poor brute go.[67.3] In Livonia, if you desire to bewitch

a girl to the extent of preventing her marriage, all that need be done

is to get hold of one of the pins with which her shift is fastened

over her breast, wind round it three hairs torn by the roots from her

head, and stick the pin in a corner in a northerly direction, or on

the first paling of the house, saying: “As long as this sticks here

the girl shall have no suitor.”[67.4] In Hungary and Transylvania

continual strife between a married pair can be secured by laying a

hair from each of their heads on the head of a corpse. They will have

no peace until {68} the hairs have decayed away.[68.1] On the other

hand, if a Magyar suspect another of an intention to injure him

secretly, he will possess himself of some hairs belonging to the

suspected person, and hang them in the chimney until they disappear in

the smoke: the enemy will then have abandoned his evil purpose.[68.2]

So likewise among the Pennsylvanian Germans a witch can be disabled by

securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and

firing a silver bullet into it.[68.3]

We pay European peoples the compliment of calling them civilised:

among savages the same methods are adopted. It was the belief of the

Clal-lum, a tribe of British Columbia, that if they could procure the

hair of an enemy and confine it with a frog in a hole, the head whence

it came would suffer the torments of the frog.[68.4] And a lock of

hair in the hands of certain women of the Chilcotin tribe would give

them power over the person from whose head the lock was severed.[68.5]

Any part of the body answers the same purpose among the

Greenlanders.[68.6] At the opposite extremity of the American

continent the Patagonians burn the hairs brushed out from their heads,

and all the parings of their nails, for they believe that spells may

be wrought upon them by any one who can obtain a {69} piece of

either.[69.1] In Central Brazil the Bakaïrí of one village fear the

medicine-men of another, holding that if they can get any portion of

their hair or blood, they will put it into a poison-calabash and so

cause illness to the original owner.[69.2] What the inhabitants of the

isle of Chiloe fear is that a foe will fasten a lock in the seaweed

where the tide flows: hence they often keep their hair very

short.[69.3] In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success

of any sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the

victim, such as the parings of his nails, a lock of his hair, saliva

or other secretions, or else a portion of his food. Accordingly, a

spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant of a chief of

the Sandwich Islands to receive his expectorations, which were

carefully buried every morning. And the Tahitians used to burn or bury

the hair they cut off; and every individual among them had his

distinct basket for food.[69.4] Among the Maoris “the usual way of

obtaining power over another was to obtain (European fashion) some of

the nail-parings, hair, etc., anything of a personal nature to act as

a medium between the bewitched person and the demon. Spells would be

muttered over these relics, then they were buried, and as they decayed

the victim perished.”[69.5] In the Banks’ Islands “there are three

principal kinds of charms by which evil was believed to be inflicted

through the power of ghosts.” One of these called _garata_ operated

through fragments of food, bits of hair or nail, “or anything closely

connected {70} with the person to be injured. For this reason great

care was used to hide or safely dispose of all such things.”[70.1]

Similar beliefs and practices obtain in the New Hebrides and the New

Marquesas.[70.2] At Matuku in Fiji, the priest of the god Tokalau, the

wind, “promises the destruction of any hated person in four days, if

those who wish his death bring a portion of his hair, dress or food

which he has left.” Happily the doom can be averted by bathing before

the fourth day. Most natives take the precaution of hiding the hair

they cut off in the thatch of their own huts.[70.3] Some of the Papuan

inhabitants of Timor-laut were delighted to make use of Mr. Forbes’

scissors to cut their hair; but they declined to allow the traveller

to retain any specimens, for they said they would die; and they

gathered up every scrap they could find.[70.4] Among the Australian

aborigines of Western Victoria an unsuccessful lover who can get a

lock of the lady’s hair covers it with fat and red clay and carries it

about with him for a year. The knowledge of this so depresses her that

she pines away and often actually dies. When a husband has, or

imagines, a grievance against his wife he cuts a lock of her hair

while she sleeps, and tying it to the bone hook of his spear-thrower

he covers it with a coating of gum. Then he goes away to a

neighbouring tribe and stays with them. At the first great meeting of

the tribes he gives the spear-thrower to a friend, who sticks it

upright before the camp-fire every night, and when it falls over, the

husband considers it a sign that his wife is dead. This process, and

the taunts to which the {71} deserted wife is subjected, seldom fail

to bring her to a sense of her duty of going to seek her husband,

apologising for her conduct and bringing him home. The natives are

very careful to burn their superfluous hair; and locks are only

exchanged by friends as a mark of affection. If a lock thus obtained

be lost it is a very serious matter. The loser of the lock will die;

and so strong is the belief, that he sometimes does die, unless the

person who holds the lock of his hair given in exchange be willing to

return it, and so undo the exchange.[71.1] Other tribes have the like

superstitions. Mr. Howitt records it as a general practice among the

natives of the south-east of Australia, and particularly of the

Wotjobaluk tribe, to procure a piece of the victim’s hair, “some of

his fæces, a bone picked by him and dropped, a shred of his opossum

rug, or at the present time of his clothes,” for the purpose of

injuring him. “If nothing else can be got, he may be watched until he

is seen to spit, when his saliva is carefully picked up with a piece

of wood and made use of for his destruction.” And the writer, a keen

observer, adds: “There is evidently a belief that doing an act to

something which is part of a person, or which even only belongs to

him, is in fact doing it to him. This is very clearly brought out by

the remark of one of the Wirajuri, who said to me: ‘You see, when a

black-fellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and

roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the

smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.’” Indeed, all over

Australia sorcery by means of hair is practised, or at least feared;

and the same is asserted of the now exterminated Tasmanians.[71.2] In

Sumatra {72} Mr. Forbes once noted a man carefully burying the scraps

after paring his finger-nails.[72.1] The approved method of killing a

foe at Amboyna is to take some of his hair or clothing, his quid of

betel chewed and ejected, or the measure of his footprint, and put it

into three bamboo cylinders, one of which is laid beneath a coffin,

another buried under the steps of the house, and the third flung into

the sea. To injure him it is apparently sufficient to put some of his

hair into a coffin, or a grave, or to bind it to the tail of a living

fish and return the creature to the water, or to stuff it into a

cranny in a house or boat.[72.2] In the Panjáb some wizards are

reputed to have the power of killing a woman by cutting off a lock of

her hair, and afterwards bringing her to life again even though she

had been buried.[72.3] And in Sindh no woman will give a lock of her

hair, even to her husband, for fear of the power he would thus

obtain.[72.4] Arab women are very careful to bury the parings of their

nails for fear of witchcraft.[72.5] The Rautiás, a caste of Chota

Nagpur in Bengal, partly Aryan and partly Dravidian, on the other

hand, while convinced that witches can act upon their victims through

bits of cut hair or nails, are guilty of the suicidal conduct of

neglecting to preserve or destroy such articles.[72.6] They seem,

however, exceptional in this respect among races in the lower culture.

On the Slave Coast of Africa, “anything that has belonged {73} to a

man, especially anything that has formed part of, or has come out of,

his body, such as hair-clippings, nail-parings, saliva, or the fæces,

can be used” to his detriment. “Hence it is usual for pieces of hair

and nails to be carefully buried or burned, in order that they may not

fall into the hands of sorcerers”; and the saliva of a chief is

gathered up and hidden or buried.[73.1] The Makololo used to burn or

bury their hair, lest, in the hands of a witch, it should be used as a

charm to afflict the owner with headache.[73.2] Among the Basuto hairs

or nail-parings of the person aimed at, or drops of his blood which he

had not taken the precaution of effacing with his foot where they

fell, were used by sorcerers in the manufacture of their charms. And

without prolonging the list it may safely be said that this

superstition is rife all over the continent.[73.3] Naturally the Negro

has carried it to America. A lady writing half a century ago relates

an incident which happened on the island of Antigua. A Negro boy had

been drowned; and one of his kinswomen contrived to cut off some hair

from the head of an acquaintance with whom she had a quarrel. This

hair she placed in the dead boy’s hand just before his coffin was

screwed down, at the same time pronouncing the word “Remember.” The

ghastly result was thus described by the Negro who told the tale: “De

pic’nee jumby trouble he [namely, the lady who had lost her hair] so

dat he no know war for do, till at last he go out of he head, an’ he

neber been no good since.”[73.4] Among the Negroes of the {74} United

States the recipe for driving an enemy mad is to get one of his hairs

and slip it inside the bark of a tree. When the bark grows over it his

intellect is gone for ever. But in fact everything “that pertains to

the body, such as nails, teeth, hair, saliva, tears, perspiration,

dandruff, scabs of sores even, and garments worn next the person,” is

employed in charms. A powerful conjurer told Miss Owen: “I could save

or ruin you if I could get hold of so much as one eye-winker or the

peeling of one freckle.”[74.1]

Prominent in the magical superstitions of some nations is blood. All

Europe holds that the pact with the devil must be signed with one’s

own blood. It is by handing over a portion of his blood that the

unhappy mortal puts himself in the power of the Father of Evil.

Without this gage his covenant would be voidable. A popular allegation

against the Freemasons in some places is that the candidate for

initiation is required to paint his own figure on the wall of the

lodge with blood taken from his finger. If thereafter he betray the

secrets he has sworn to keep, he can be slain by stabbing the portrait

thus made.[74.2] A German saying advises that blood let out of a vein

should always be thrown into running water.[74.3] There, of course, it

will always be free, it will speedily be lost, and no witchcraft can

be wrought upon it. The Transylvanian Saxons declare that if any

blood, saliva, or suchlike of a living person be put into a coffin

with the dead, the former will slowly languish and die.[74.4] The

blood or saliva, corrupting and decaying with the corpse, reacts upon

the living body {75} whence it has been derived. Similar is a Magyar

prescription for causing barrenness in a woman, namely, by rubbing a

dead man’s organ with her menses. In Hungary, too, if you wish to

render a bridegroom indifferent to his bride, take some of his blood,

or saliva, and with it smear the soles of the bride’s shoes before the

wedding, or write his name in his blood on a pigeon’s egg and contrive

that she shall tread unawares upon it. In either of these ways she

will tread out her husband’s love.[75.1] In Ireland, when a child is

vaccinated, the medical man is not allowed to take lymph from its arm

without giving some present, however trifling, in return; and Dr. C.

R. Browne records that when he was vaccinated in county Tipperary, his

arm, as the nurse reported, was kept inflamed because the doctor did

not put silver in his hand when taking the lymph.[75.2] The ground of

the superstition appears to be the belief in witchcraft. Payment is

always held to neutralise a witch’s power over a person through

something received from him, probably because what she gives in

exchange would confer a like power over her, and hence becomes a

hostage for her good faith.[75.3]

When a shaman among the Cherokees wishes to destroy a man, he hides,

and follows his victim about until the latter spits upon the ground.

Then he collects on the end of a stick a little of the dust moistened

with the saliva. “The possession of the man’s spittle gives him power

over the life of the man himself.” He puts it into a tube consisting

of a joint of the wild parsnip, “a poisonous plant {76} of

considerable importance in life-conjuring ceremonies,” together with

seven earthworms beaten into a paste, and some splinters from a tree

struck by lightning. With the tube thus prepared he goes to a tree

which has been lightning-struck. At its base he digs a hole, in the

bottom of which he lays a large yellow stone slab. Upon this he places

the tube and seven yellow pebbles. Then, filling up the hole with

earth, he builds a fire over it. The fire, we are told, is for the

purpose of destroying all trace of his work; but it may well be done

with another object. The yellow stones are said to represent trouble,

and to be substitutes for black stones, not so easily found, which

represent death. The shaman and his employer fast until after the

ceremony. The victim is expected to feel the effects at once: “his

soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is

dead.”[76.1] A traveller in Oregon relates how some Kwakiutl who were

exasperated against him took up his saliva when he spat, intending, as

they subsequently told him, to give it to the medicine-man, who would

charm his life away.[76.2] The custom, everywhere practised, of

obliterating all trace of the saliva after spitting, doubtless

originated in the desire to prevent such use of it.[76.3]

Sweat has been mentioned as one of the means of witchcraft among the

American Negroes. The Melanesians hold a leaf wherewith a man has

wiped the perspiration from his face an effective instrument for doing

him mischief.[76.4] The {77} fouler _excreta_ are quite as potent; and

this belief has been one of the most beneficial of superstitions. To

it is due the extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fæcal matter

which is almost universally a characteristic of savages. I shall

content myself with throwing into a footnote references to a few

passages of various authorities bearing on this means of

witchcraft.[77.1]

Sorcery may be wrought upon a foe through any of his teeth which have

been extracted. Wherefore the aborigines of Australia, among whom the

loss of a front tooth is the sign of admission to the privileges of

manhood, are very careful of the teeth which are knocked out. About

the river Darling in New South Wales, “the youth’s companions take the

tooth when it is extracted, and return it to him later with a present

of weapons, rugs, nets, and suchlike. The youth places the tooth under

the bark of a tree, near a creek, water-hole, or river: if the bark

grows over it, or it falls into the water, all is well; but should it

be exposed, and the ants run over it, it is believed that the youth

will suffer from a disease in the mouth.”[77.2] Of other tribes in

south-eastern Australia it is recorded that the extracted tooth is

taken care of by one of the old men. It {78} is passed from one

head-man to another, until it has made the complete circuit of the

community. It then returns to the youth’s father, and finally to

himself. He carries it always about with him; but it must on no

account be placed in his bag of magical substances, else great danger

will accrue to him.[78.1] In England and elsewhere children are

commonly told to burn their milk-teeth when taken out. In Belgium

about Liége the reason assigned is to obtain a tooth of gold. In

fact, the fear is that a witch may find it if thrown away, and injure

the child by its means, or that a dog, a cat or a wolf may swallow it,

in which event the new tooth growing in its place will be that of the

animal.[78.2] This particular form of the superstition is also found

in Sussex and Suffolk, and probably in other parts of England.[78.3]

Earth from a man’s footprints, on account of its close contact with

the person--and closer still it must have been before mankind was

shod--has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Out of a

number of illustrations of its use in witchcraft I select the

following from all quarters of the globe. Widely spread in Germany is

the belief that if a sod whereon a man has trodden--all the better, if

with naked foot--be taken up and dried behind the hearth or oven he

will parch up with it and languish, or his foot will be withered. He

will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking his footprint with

nails--coffin-nails are the best--or broken glass. Burchard of Worms

in the Middle Ages forbade the former practice; in still earlier times

and another country Pythagoras had forbidden the latter.[78.4] They

are still, {79} however, particularly recommended in various parts of

Germany and adjacent lands for punishing a thief, though it is equally

effectual to put tinder in his footprint, for he will thus be burnt,

or to fill a pouch with some of the earth he has trodden and beat it

twice a day with a stick until fire (!) come out of it: he will feel

the blows and die without fail if he bring not back the stolen goods.

According to Bezzenberger a Lithuanian, who finds a thief’s footmark,

takes it to the graveyard and selects a grave, wherefrom he draws out

the cross, thrusts the earth of the footprint into the hole and rams

down the cross upon it again. The thief then falls ill, and thus is

revealed.[79.1] In Italy and Russia one may be bewitched by similar

means to those used in Germany.[79.2] In Hungary, when a woman has a

child of unwedded love and desires to bind its father’s affections to

it, she digs up one of his footprints, drops {80} some of her own milk

into it and carefully puts it back, reversing its position toe to

heel.[80.1]

The use of the footprint survives in the British Islands, I think,

solely as a means of defence against witches. A correspondent of Mr.

Train, the historian of the Isle of Man, writing about half a century

ago, relates a story in which a colt was taken ill and there was

reason to fear the Evil Eye. A friend of the owner gathered the dust

of the road out of the footsteps of the suspected person, and rubbed

the animal with it. Thereupon it once more partook of food and rapidly

recovered.[80.2] Quite recently a parallel case has been reported, the

beast bewitched having been a calf.[80.3] Mr. Hollingsworth, in his

_History of Stowmarket_, published in 1844, says of a reputed witch

that, if any one followed her as she walked, and drove a nail or a

knife well into the ground through one of her footprints, she was

deprived of power to move another step until it was extracted.[80.4]

In Grafton County, New Hampshire, in the year 1852, a woman was seen

to stick a knitting-needle in the footmarks of another who was

regarded as a witch, under the belief that the steel had power to

fasten a witch in her tracks, so that she could not move. On this

occasion the device was ineffectual. There is always a reason for want

of success in such performances. The performer was satisfied that she

had broken the needle’s power by speaking. Elsewhere in New England

and in Canada an awl is prescribed for the purpose.[80.5] Further

south, the mixed white population of the Alleghanies recommend a nail

from the coffin wherein a corpse has {81} decayed to be driven with

three blows into a thief’s track; it will produce the same effect as

if it entered the robber’s foot. But you are cautioned to tie a string

round the nail’s head, so that it can be drawn out when requisite;

else the man will die.[81.1]

Savages, on the other hand, are more frequently reported as using the

footmark as a means of offence. The Karens of Burmah use the earth of

a man’s footprints for the purpose of making a magical image of

him.[81.2] The Pakoos strike an enemy’s footsteps with certain stones,

with the intention of causing his death.[81.3] On the Slave Coast of

Africa a magical powder thrown on a foe’s track renders him mad.[81.4]

The Kurnai and other Australian aborigines bury sharp fragments of

quartz, glass, bone or charcoal in the footmarks or in the place where

the victim has lain, under the belief that the substances will thus be

caused to enter his body.[81.5] In the west of Victoria--probably

elsewhere--the black-fellow possessed of supernatural powers, who in

hot weather comes upon the spoor of a kangaroo, follows it up, putting

live embers on it. He will follow it thus for two days, unless he

track it to a water-hole and spear it sooner.[81.6] This superstition,

to which a special name is given, and of which Mr. Dawson, a most

competent inquirer, failed to get any explanation, is analogous to the

practice of the North American Indians. A compound, called “hunter’s

medicine,” the preparation {82} whereof is taught to the neophyte in

the initiation ceremony of the Ojibways, is dropped on the track of

the animal pursued, to compel it to halt wherever it may be at that

moment.[82.1] The Zuñi hunter follows the trail until he finds a

place where the creature has lain down. He then deposits with certain

offerings a spider-knot, tied of set purpose awkwardly, of four

strands of yucca-leaves on the spot over which he supposes the

victim’s heart to have rested or passed. Immediately in front of it he

sticks a forked twig of cedar obliquely into the ground, leaning in

the direction opposite to that taken by the animal. Other ceremonies

follow, meant to have the effect of impeding and overcoming the

prey.[82.2]

With the foregoing may be compared some ceremonies practised in

Europe, the design of which, though not hostile, is to attach the

animal to one place and prevent it from straying. A German huntsman,

for example, sticks a coffin-nail into the trail of the game he

desires to retain in his preserve.[82.3] When a calf is born, a

Transylvanian Saxon farmer will take a peg of birch and drive it over

the head into the spot on which the calf has fallen.[82.4] So an

ancient English charm for the recovery of stolen cattle directed three

candles to be lighted and the wax dripped thrice into the hoof-track,

and the following invocation to be sung: “Peter, Paul, Patrick,

Philip, Mary, Bridget, Felicitas; in the name of God and the Church:

he who seeketh findeth.”[82.5] It seems to have required a perfect

{83} army of saints to stop one thief; but peradventure some of them

were talking, or in a journey, or sleeping, and could not attend to

the business.

Among the various instruments of witchcraft I have mentioned the

refuse of food. In the South Sea Islands this has been noted over and

over again by missionaries and travellers. In New Britain a native,

seized with fever, complained to Mr. Powell that one of his enemies

had bewitched him by obtaining the skins of some bananas he had eaten,

“making magic” over them and then burning them. For fear of this, Mr.

Powell explains, the natives are very careful to burn or hide the

refuse of anything they have been eating.[83.1] In the New Hebrides a

bit of a certain stone, taken with a prayer, is pounded up with a

fragment of food of the person to whom mischief is to be wrought; or

the refuse of his food, such as a banana-skin or a piece of sugar-cane

he has chewed, is simply burnt. An amphibious sea-snake called _mae_

is credited with supernatural power. It will do harm to men by taking

away morsels of their food into a sacred place, whereupon their lips

will swell and their bodies break out with ulcers.[83.2] In one of the

Solomon Islands there is a sacred pool haunted by a _Tindalo_, or

disembodied spirit, much resorted to for a similar purpose by persons

who know the place and the spirit. If the scraps of food thrown into

the pool are quickly devoured by a fish or a snake the thrower’s

object is accomplished: the man whose food has been pilfered for the

purpose will die. If otherwise, the _Tindalo_ is unwilling {84} to do

the mischief desired of him.[84.1] Without pausing to enumerate any

other cases it may be said in general terms that the superstition

which is the subject of this paragraph is found everywhere in

Australasia, Polynesia and Melanesia.[84.2]

Nor is it confined to the Southern Ocean. Among the Ainu double fruits

are liable to be the means of bewitching any one who is bold enough to

eat of them, unless he eat both.[84.3] In Europe, the Magyars

carefully throw into the fire the remains of food partaken of at the

Christmas feast; else the witches will make all sorts of evil charms

of them. In many places they are kneaded together into a sort of paste

in human form, and, with the words: “Eat fair ladies!” put into the

oven, where they are burnt up in the next baking. The bones are

frequently thrown into the open fire; and from their colour, and the

way they crack and split in the heat, prognostications of future

fortunes are drawn. Sometimes the bride buries close to the house the

bread-crumbs, bones and other relics of her wedding-feast, in order

“to strengthen the building.”[84.4] In both cases the anxiety to

secure the food from harm, once extended to food in general, seems to

have become restricted to special occasions. The reason alleged in the

case of a wedding is probably no more the real reason than that stated

in the {85} Mark of Brandenburg for not giving away a slice of bread

which has been bitten, lest, we are told, one quarrel with the

recipient.[85.1] People in Posen are counselled not to eat in the

presence of a stranger for fear of being bewitched through the remains

of their food, nor to take drink from a strange hand without saying as

a counterspell: “God bless it!”[85.2] About Chemnitz one is advised on

rising from a meal to leave no bread behind, lest somebody throw it

over the gallows, in which event hanging would be the doom awaiting

the person who had left it. In the neighbourhood of Ansbach he would

get off more lightly, since only toothache is threatened.[85.3] In

Belgium, things like milk or bread are never given to any one capable

of bewitching the giver, save in exchange for a centime or some other

trifle: the sale appears to destroy the evil power, a belief we have

already found elsewhere. Children are also forbidden to receive from a

woman whom they do not know cakes or sweetmeats, or if they do they

must throw them over their shoulders, as in fairy tales the drink

presented by supernatural beings is poured away by mortals; and a

similar caution is enjoined in Italy.[85.4]

Before dismissing the dangers which may arise from the remains of food

being tampered with, it may be well to mention a curious ordeal in use

among the Tunguses of Siberia. A fire is made and a scaffold erected

near the hut of the accused. A dog’s throat is then cut and the {86}

blood received in a vessel. The body is put on the wood of the fire,

but in such a position that it does not burn. The accused passes over

the fire, and drinks two mouthfuls of the blood, the rest whereof is

thrown into the fire; and the body of the dog is placed on the

scaffold. Then the accused says: “As the dog’s blood burns in the

fire, so may what I have drunk burn in my body; and as the dog put on

the scaffold will be consumed, so may I be consumed at the same time

if I be guilty.”[86.1] The effect intended to be produced on a guilty

man is obviously the operation of the sympathy between the blood

united with his body by drinking and the remainder of the blood and

the carcase of the dog as they are consumed, the one in the fire, and

the other by putrefaction or birds of carrion.

Clothes, from their intimate association with the person, have

naturally attained a prominent place among the instruments of

witchcraft. Among the Transylvanian Saxons, to put on an article of

clothing belonging to another is to put on his luck, provided it be

done undesignedly.[86.2] The German population of Pennsylvania

cherishes the belief that witches “acquire influence over any one by

becoming possessed of anything belonging to the intended victim, such

as a hair, a piece of apparel, or a pin. The influence acquired by the

witch is greater if such an article be voluntarily or unconsciously

handed to her by the person asked for it.”[86.3] For a similar reason,

the Votjaks hesitate even to sell any article of clothing they have

worn.[86.4] A pin from the maiden’s dress, it will be remembered, was

a necessary {87} part of the Livonian charm cited a few pages back;

one of the victim’s gloves appears in the confessions of the

unfortunate Margaret and Philippa Flower; and a parallel practice has

been recently recorded in Sicily.[87.1] At Mentone the witch with a

piece of her victim’s garment can render him sick.[87.2] An elaborate

Tuscan charm given by Mr. Leland prescribes the use of the hairs of

the victim, “or else the stockings, and those not clean, for there

must be in them his or her perspiration.”[87.3] As elsewhere, among

the Greco-Walachian population of Macedonia a newly born babe and its

mother are held to be specially subject to injury by supernatural

beings. To prevent this their clothes must not remain out of doors all

night; and the water in which they or the clothes have been washed

must be poured through pipes into the depths of the ground.[87.4] In

Germany, in Spain, in Asia Minor and in many other places a portion of

the witch’s dress is burnt to destroy her spells and restore the

object of her conjurations to health.[87.5] A Gipsy prescription to

recover a stolen horse is to bury the harness which may be left, to

kindle a fire over the spot and sing {88} an imprecation on the thief

and an invocation to the steed to return safe and sound.[88.1] Our

Anglo-Saxon forefathers thought it enough to sing over the

foot-shackles or the bridle the powerful invocation I mentioned just

now.

The Segoo conjurer on the Upper Niger uses a piece of cloth belonging

to the victim, or a little dirt that has been touched by his foot.

These he sticks by means of hen’s blood to a fetish charm prepared,

according to price, to kill or only to produce various degrees of

damage to his client’s foe.[88.2] In a Hottentot story a fugitive

throws off his mantle, and it immediately runs in another direction so

as to deceive and baffle his pursuers.[88.3] Here the garment is

represented as endowed with life and sympathy for its owner; but it

does not appear that when it was caught the pursuers thought it worth

while to destroy it with intent to slay the owner. As already

mentioned, a piece of an Australian native’s opossum rug, or any other

portion of his scanty dress, is sufficient to enable an enemy to

bewitch him.[88.4] The Maories and the Fiji islanders are equally

superstitious. It is related of the latter that if they have reason to

suspect others of plotting against them, they not only avoid eating in

their presence, or leaving any fragments of their food behind, but

they also dispose their clothing so that no part of it can be

removed.[88.5] On the island of Tanna, in the New Hebrides, a

_yolnuruk_, or wizard, can bewitch any one by means of a portion of

his food, the {89} unused part of a stick of tobacco, his belt or

garment, a stick he has had in his hand, the scrapings of a stone on

which he has sat, or in fact anything that has once touched his

body.[89.1] To a Tonga islander it was fatal to hide a portion of his

clothing in the family tomb of one of his relations of higher rank

than himself.[89.2]

Everywhere, indeed, it is dangerous to leave an article of a living

person’s dress in the possession of the dead. An old woman who went to

pray in the old church, now ruined, of Saint Martin at Bonn was

surprised by finding herself in a congregation of the departed. A

spectral Mass was, in fact, being celebrated by spectral priests, and

she was the only living being in the assembly. Her dead husband was

there; and, warned by him, she fled. But the door, in swinging-to as

she passed out, caught her cloak; and she had to leave it behind. She

sickened and died; and “the neighbours said it must be because a piece

of her clothes had remained in the possession of the dead.”[89.3] In

Germany and Denmark no portion of a survivor’s clothing must on any

account be put upon a corpse, else the owner will languish away as it

moulders in the grave; and the superstition has been carried by Saxon

settlers into the Land beyond the Forest.[89.4] Among the Poles, to

lay a maiden’s garland on the head of a dead body covers the maiden

herself with scabs; and the Masurs declare that if a bystander at an

open grave drop anything in, or if any article {90} belonging to a

living person be laid in it, he will die soon.[90.1] Conversely the

greatest caution is necessary in taking anything belonging to the

dead. Legends are common in Northern and Central Europe of persons who

have wittingly or unwittingly stolen shrouds. The thief always comes

to a bad end, or at least escapes only by the skin of his teeth. These

catastrophes are attributed to ghostly action; but a similar power is

ascribed to mere sympathy. To appropriate pieces of a coffin, or

flowers from a grave, to say nothing of bones or other parts of a

corpse, is, among the Saxons of the Seven Cities, to appropriate

ill-luck for the rest of one’s life. To hang rags from the clothing of

a dead man upon a vine is to render it barren. Even in taking his gear

in the most legitimate manner, pious formulæ and ceremonies must be

used; and then it will not last you long. In former times it was

charitably given to the poor.[90.2] To stick a nail from a coffin in a

living man’s shoe is, in Thuringia, to cause his death.[90.3] In the

New World the Caribs held that they could injure an enemy by wrapping

up some trifling object belonging to, or habitually used by, him with

the bones of one of their deceased friends, which were preserved for

that and other magical purposes.[90.4] The Aleutian Eskimo think that

the tools and garments of the dead remain in sympathy with him; “hence

their touch chills, and the sight of them inspires sadness.”[90.5]

Probably it is only a different interpretation of the same belief

which alike in Christian, in Mohammedan, and in {91} Buddhist lands

has led to the ascription of marvellous powers to the clothes and

other relics of departed saints. The divine power which was immanent

in these personages during life attaches not merely to every portion

of their bodies but to every shred of their apparel. The Ursuline nuns

of Quintin keep one of the principal schools in Brittany. When a girl

who has been their pupil marries and finds herself “in blessed

circumstances,” the pious nuns send her a white ribbon painted in blue

(the Virgin’s colour) with the words: “Notre Dame de Délivrance,

protégez nous.” Before despatching it, they touch with it the

reliquary of the parish church, which contains a fragment of the

Virgin Mary’s zone. The recipient hastens to put the ribbon around her

waist, and does not cease to wear it until her baby is born.[91.1] For

the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, though

that contact has ceased to outward appearance, is still in some subtle

connection with the goddess, and can, with the power it has thus

acquired, leaven its reliquary and everything that touches the

reliquary. Father De Acosta bears unconscious testimony to the real

character of this belief. Speaking of the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca,

he relates that upon the even of his feast the god was furnished by

the nobles with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken

off “and kept with as much or more reverence {92} than we doe our

ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments, of course, are meant; and the

writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll

many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and

pretious feathers, which served to no other vse but to be there, and

was [_sic_] worshipped as their god it selfe.”[92.1] Not to multiply

instances which might be adduced from the Arctic Ocean to the Southern

Sea, I will refer only to the sacred girdle worn by Tahitian kings.

The red feathers which adorned this girdle were taken from the images

of the gods. It “thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods,

the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of

power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was

designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that Mr. Ellis

says it “not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but

identified him with their gods.”[92.2]

Nor is it merely to clothes and personal ornaments that this intimate

and sympathetic connection with their owner’s life is ascribed. It

might be supposed that the constant visible and tangible association

of these things with the man himself might render it difficult to

disintegrate the image thus formed in the slowly working mind of a

savage, and that this might be the reason for their identification

(for it amounts to nothing less) with his personality. Or it might be

argued that, as is distinctly suggested in certain cases, they have

become saturated with his sweat by repeated use, and thereby become an

{93} outlying portion of his body. The identification, however, is

extended to things we should suppose more easily dissociated from him,

to things but rarely coming beneath his touch. The Wanyoro of Central

Africa imagine that straws from the thatch of a dwelling may be so

charmed as to bring calamity upon its owner.[93.1] When Captain Speke

was in Unyoro, the king, Kamrasi, sent some one to steal some grass

from the thatch of a Chopi chief, “in order that he might spread a

charm on the Chopi people, and gain such an influence over them that

their spears could not prevail against the Wanyoro.”[93.2] In the Isle

of Man, one fisherman can rob another of his luck by plucking a straw

from the latter’s cottage as he passes it on his way to fishing.[93.3]

A woman of Kirk Lonan in the same island confessed, on the 31st of

July 1712, to a charge of having taken up some earth from under a

neighbour’s door and burnt it to ashes, which she had given to her

cattle, “with an intention, as she owns, to make them give more

milk”--in other words, to a charge of stealing by magical means the

milk from her neighbour’s cows.[93.4] In Denmark, to steal

fishing-tackle is to rob the fisher of his luck. For a similar reason,

no Esthonian farmer is willing to give earth from his

cornfields.[93.5] In southern Bohemia the sweepings must not be

allowed to lie before the house-door, else the witches will be enabled

by its means to lame the inhabitants, as well as to ascertain what is

going on in the house.[93.6] In the Tirol an enemy can be ruined by

cutting a turf from one’s own ground and {94} throwing it on his roof;

while a Fijian can bewitch his foe by burying certain leaves in the

foe’s garden or hiding them in his thatch.[94.1] The Annamites are

said by Dr. Bartels, I know not on what authority, to effect a spell

of injury by driving a nail into a plank of the victim’s ship or one

of the posts of his house.[94.2] As long as the men are away from a

Dyak village on a warlike expedition their fires are lighted on their

hearths as if they were at home. “The mats are spread and the fires

kept up till late in the evening, and lighted again before dawn, so

that the men may not be cold. The roofing of the house is opened

before dawn, so that the men may not lie too long and so fall into the

hands of the enemy.”[94.3] The belief in the inseparable connection of

a person and his property seems to have limited to some slight extent

the indiscriminate almsgiving practised in many European, especially

Roman Catholic, countries. It is deemed prudent always to refuse

persons suspected of witchcraft; and at certain times, as on the

occasion of a birth or death, or even when a cow has calved, every one

must be refused. To give fire on these occasions, or on various days

of the year, is highly dangerous, and it is by no means safe at any

time. Mr. Frederick Starr, the Curator of the Natural History Museum

at New York, records a case of witchcraft that came under his own

notice among the German population of Pennsylvania, where the trouble

was traced to the giving of a match to the sorceress to {95} light her

pipe.[95.1] Nor is the superstition unknown to the American

aborigines, as witness the attempt mentioned in the last chapter of

the Shawnee prophet to persuade John Tanner that his life was

dependent on his lodge fire. And the Moravian missionaries found it in

Greenland, where one of the things a pregnant woman may not permit is

the lighting of a match at her lamp.[95.2]

In the _Mahábhárata_ an ascetic who is enraged with king

Dhritaráshtra accepts from the king the carcases of some cattle which

had died. Then he lighted a sacrificial fire and cut up the animals;

and “observant of rigid vows the great Dálvya-vaka poured

Dhritaráshtra’s kingdom as a libation on the fire with the aid of

those pieces of meat. Upon the commencement of that fierce sacrifice,

according to due rites, the kingdom of Dhritaráshtra began to waste

away, even as a large forest begins to disappear when men proceed to

cut it down.” The monarch, it need hardly be added, was soon reduced

to submission.[95.3] Here the foe is affected by rites performed upon

his cattle; and perhaps the same belief is the origin of the

resentment felt by a Samoan when he finds marks of a knife or hatchet

inflicted by another upon anything belonging to him, such as his

canoe, his breadfruit-tree, or even on a few taro-plants. We are told

that “he considers it is like cutting himself, and rages like a bear

to find out who has done it.”[95.4] The close connection held in cases

like these to subsist between {96} property and its owner is further

exemplified by the practice of the Pipiles of Central America, who had

special regulations for indulgence in marital embraces at the moment

of sowing.[96.1] So also when the Ynca Mayta Capac ordered certain

prisoners in one of the provinces he had conquered to be burnt alive,

the zealous people not only carried out the command but included in

the punishment all that the criminals had in their houses, destroying

the houses and strewing their sites with stones as accursed places.

“They also destroyed their flocks, and even pulled up the trees they

had planted. It was ordered that their land should never be given to

any one, but that it should remain desolate, _that no man might

inherit with it the evil deeds of its former owners_.”[96.2] Among the

Alfours of Posso in Celebes, when a man dies he is solemnly tried, and

every one is entitled to express an opinion upon his life. If the

decision be unfavourable he is buried without ceremony, provided his

debts be paid, and his goods are destroyed, for nobody can, and nobody

wishes to, inherit from him.[96.3] The spirit and intention evinced in

this destruction of a great offender’s property dictated the

extermination (or at least the story of the extermination) of Achan,

the son of Zerah, with the goods he had appropriated at the sack of

Jericho, his sons, and his daughters, “his oxen, and his asses, and

his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.” It was only when they

had been burnt and covered with a great heap of stones, as in the case

of the Peruvian prisoners, that “the Lord turned from the fierceness

of his anger.”[96.4] {97} Hardly an extension is it of the belief here

indicated which leads the Chinese to identify the produce of labour

with the labourer himself. In the Middle Kingdom grave-clothes are

procured long beforehand and kept in store for years. Professor De

Groot says: “Old age being a benefit the Chinese prefer above all

things, most people have the clothes in question cut out and sewed by

an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that,

whereas such a person is likely to live still a great number of years,

a part of her capacity to live still long must surely pass into the

clothes, and thus put off for many years the moment when they shall be

required for use.”[97.1] Traces of the same thought are found in the

German requirement that in making vinegar, to make it good, one must

look sour and be savage, and in the high value placed upon yarn spun

by a girl under seven years of age.[97.2]

But superstition stops not with a man’s property and the produce of

his labour any more than with portions of his body or his garments and

ornaments. Things arbitrarily associated with him, if the proper

ceremonies be observed, and the proper incantations muttered or sung,

may be made effectual instruments of injury as if they were parts of

himself. His name, it may be argued, is something peculiarly his own;

and a portrait, if any resemblance be traceable to the person

represented, may bear identification with him. But, as I have already

pointed out, likeness is by no means necessary. If it be enough, in

order to constitute a life-token, merely to attribute connection at

the will of the person inquiring concerning the absent, it must {98}

be enough also for the purpose of bewitching him. What is valid in the

one case must be valid in the other. So much has been written on the

aspects of savage thought concerning personal names and personal

portraits, and on the images made for the purposes of witchcraft, that

I need not do more than point out that the profane use of images for

witchcraft is exactly parallel to the sacred use of images of gods and

saints. If by sticking a pin into a waxen figure, or melting it in the

fire, I can torture and do to death the person whom the figure

represents, the converse process of honouring and feeding and

pacifying with incense and adoration will have its effect upon the

deity whose image is thus treated. Wherever he may be, he is present

by means of the sympathy between the picture or the statue and

himself, a sympathy thus indistinguishable from identity. Practically

of course this involves omnipresence. The difficulty is not felt by

the savage. If the theologian feel it, he can explain it away in a

crowd of unctuous phrases, or smother his common sense with the

authority of the Church. The scientific investigator can do neither.

The only theory of the superstition he can present is that which is

educed from a comparison of analogous cases, namely, that just as hair

and other portions of the body, when severed in outward appearance,

yet maintain an essential connection with it, so images bearing the

name of, or intended to represent, an absent man or a deity are an

extension of his person, bound to it by an invisible and indivisible

link. That a ceremony should be required to perfect the bond, to

complete the connection, is only to be expected; and naturally this

ceremony is fully developed in solemn and formal worship and the

higher sorcery. But the ritual of consecration depends upon another

principle--that {99} of the power of certain forms of words when

uttered in a prescribed manner to bring about the fulfilment of a

wish--the discussion whereof is foreign to this inquiry.

A few illustrations of the identity imputed for magical purposes to

arbitrary objects other than effigies may perhaps be interesting as

showing how far the imputation may be carried, and on how slender a

connection of thought in many cases it rests. On the Slave Coast,

Major Ellis reports that an enemy’s death may be compassed by wrapping

a tree-stump with palm-leaves and strips of calico, and hanging a

string of cowries on it, and then hammering the top with a stone while

pronouncing the victim’s name.[99.1] In the Congo region, an approved

method of bewitching mortally is to put a certain herb or plant into a

hole in the ground. As it decays, so the vigour and spirits of the

person aimed at will fail and decay.[99.2] In Fiji, a cocoa-nut is

buried beneath the temple hearth, with the eye upwards. A fire is kept

constantly burning on the hearth; and as it destroys the life of the

nut, so the health of the person represented by the nut fails, and he

ultimately dies.[99.3] In the Hervey Islands, the expanded flower of a

gardenia was stuck upright--no easy feat--in a cocoa-nut-shell cup of

water. The sorcerer would then offer a prayer for the death of the

person intended; and if the flower fell his prayer would be

successful.[99.4] In some districts of Sicily on Christmas Eve, at the

moment of the elevation of the host at midnight mass, an orange or a

lemon, previously charmed for the {100} purpose by a witch, must be

taken from the pocket, a piece of the rind torn off, and the fruit

stuck with pins. It is necessary to accompany the act with an

imprecation of as many pains and misfortunes on the unhappy victim as

the pins in the fruit. At Palermo an egg is used, a ribbon is attached

to one of the pins, and the egg is then hidden somewhere in the house

of the person to be injured.[100.1] In Bosnia, a maiden may be

detached from her lover by burying an egg before and another behind

her dwelling, saying the while: “It is not eggs I bury; I bury rather

her luck; her luck shall be turned to stone.” But the effect of the

charm may be dissipated by the maiden’s finding the eggs, throwing

them out of the farmyard, and retiring without looking round.[100.2]

In each of the foregoing cases the association with the victim appears

to be formed by the utterance of his name, though in the two last

there is further the introduction of the bespelled object into his

dwelling or its immediate vicinity. This effects a kind of contact

with him. It was the same in a spell cast over a maiden to whose aid

Saint Hilarion was once called. She had rejected the advances of a

young magician, who in return laid a copper plate engraved with

certain characters under the door of her dwelling. The effect was, as

we know from Saint Jerome, that she became possessed by a devil, who

boasted that he would not leave her until the copper plate was taken

away. But in Hilarion, who was so full of the Holy Spirit that he

could tell one devil from another by the smell, the tormentor had met

his match. The saint forbade the removal {101} of the plate; nor would

he bandy words with the demon, but delivered the girl by the sheer

strength of his prayers.[101.1] At Vate, one of the New Hebrides, if a

man were angry with another, he buried certain leaves by night close

to his foe’s house, so that the latter in coming forth in the morning

might step over them and be taken ill.[101.2] More direct contact is

set up with the person condemned to undergo the poison ordeal at

Blantyre, in Central Africa, when the ordeal is to be inflicted, as

frequently is the case, by proxy on a dog or a fowl, or some other

animal. The proxy is then tied by a string to the accused.[101.3] The

same result is obtained in the neighbourhood of Hermannstadt in

Transylvania on the occasion of a robbery, if restitution be desired,

by procuring a consecrated wafer and putting it upon any portion

remaining of the stolen property. The operator then sticks a needle

into the wafer, saying: “Thief, I stick thy brains; thou shalt lose

thy reason!” Again he sticks the needle in, saying: “Thief, I stick

thy hands to change thee to goodness!” A third time he sticks it in,

saying: “Thief, I stick thy feet to lame thee!” After this, if the

thief would avoid death, he must bring the stolen goods back.[101.4]

If, at the time of a death among the Poles, anything have been stolen,

a similar article or a piece of the same material is laid in the

coffin with the dead, and as it corrupts the thief withers away and

ultimately dies.[101.5] The concurrence of a theft with a death,

however, does not always happen so {102} conveniently. The Masurs,

therefore, reckon it sufficient to bury the article in the

churchyard.[102.1] In the Fiji Islands, Macdonald records that,

certain roots having been stolen, the sorcerers who were called in

placed the remains of the roots in contact with a poisonous plant. As

soon as this was known, two persons fell sick with a disease that

proved mortal; and before dying they confessed to the robbery.[102.2]

The principle applied in these instances appears to be a logical

extension of that which identifies a man with his property. The thief

is identified with the articles he has possessed himself of, and is

affected by means of a portion of the bulk to which they belong, and

whence he has severed them. In this country the identification is

usually arbitrary, no contact being attempted. The heart of some

animal, as a sheep, a hare, or a pigeon, is procured and stuck full of

pins; and a form of words is pronounced similar to those in the

Transylvanian example. In a case mentioned by Mr. Henderson as

occurring no longer ago than the year 1861, a live pigeon was thus

tortured and pierced to the heart, and then roasted, the object being

to punish and discover a witch who was believed to have killed some

horses by means of the Evil Eye. This kind of incantation is perhaps

more usual in philtres, or where the girl betrayed seeks to avenge

herself upon her lover. Mr. Henderson quotes the following directions

from _The Universal Fortune Teller_: “Let any unmarried woman take the

blade-bone of a shoulder of lamb, and borrowing a penknife (without

saying for what purpose) she must, on going to bed, stick the knife

once through the bone every night for nine nights {103} in succession

in different places, repeating every night while so doing these words:

’Tis not this bone I mean to stick,

But my lover’s heart I mean to prick;

Wishing him neither rest nor sleep

Till he comes to me to speak.

Accordingly at the end of the nine days, or shortly after, he will

come and ask for something to put to a wound inflicted during the time

you were charming him.”[103.1] Reginald Scot gives a charm “to spoile

a theefe, a witch, or anie other enemie, and to be delivered from the

evill,” by cutting a hazel-wand on Sunday morning before sunrise,

saying: “I cut thee, O bough of this summer’s growth, in the name of

him whom I mean to beat or maim.” The table is then to be covered,

using thrice the formula, “In nomine Patris, etc.,” and struck with

the wand, the performer repeating some apparently meaningless jargon

and a prayer to the Trinity to punish the object of vengeance.[103.2]

It would be easy, but tedious, to multiply examples. Let it suffice to

say that the spell here described is known in one form or other all

over Europe. Generally the substance practised upon is a part of some

animal, a puppet-figure, or else a candle or brand. In the last

chapter we have seen the candle or brand as Life-token. It is

immaterial whether the identification of the brand with a human being

be for the purpose of divination or of witchcraft. If the brand

indicate by its condition the condition of the person about whom I am

inquiring, then I can, by affecting the condition of the brand, affect

also that of the person in question. {104} The Bishop of Evreux in his

statutes of the year 1664 condemns, among other practices, the

purchase of a fagot to burn with incense and white alum at an uneven

hour of the day or night with a long and horrible imprecation against

an enemy by name. Mingled wine and salt were, we learn, poured over

the burning fagot in the course of the proceedings. As an alternative

the statutes mention the burning of nine, eleven, thirteen or fifteen

candles. And apparently the same ill effects were to be produced by

simply cursing the foe while putting out the lights in the dwelling,

and then rolling on the ground reciting the one hundred-and-eighth

psalm.[104.1]

This is a superstition familiar to us in the classic tale of Meleager.

When Althæa gave birth to him she was visited by the three Fates, who

placed a billet of wood on the fire and bespelled her child to live

until it was consumed. She snatched the brand from the flames,

extinguished them with water and kept it safely until the day she

beheld her two brothers brought home from the hunting of the

Calydonian boar, both dead by Meleager’s hand. In the madness of her

anger she fetched it forth, and after a struggle between her love as a

mother and her love as a sister she cast it on the fire. Meleager

absent and unwitting felt his entrails burning, and died in torture

when the brand was consumed. The writer of a work, ascribed to

Plutarch, on _Parallels between the Romans and the Greeks_, quotes in

a fragmentary way from Menyllus a story of one Mamercus, a son of Mars

by Sylvia the wife of {105} Septimius Marcellus. Mamercus’ life was by

his divine father bound up with a spear, which was burnt by his mother

under somewhat similar provocation to that of Althæa. The tale is yet

current in Epirus, in the Vosges, and among the Germans both in

Germany and Transylvania; and a few years ago I heard from the lips of

a collier on the wild upland between the vale of Neath and the vale of

Swansea a legend of a man named John Gethin, who had been overcome

with fright on raising the Devil and so put himself into the enemy’s

power. A fight ensued between the conjurer who accompanied him and the

Devil for Gethin’s body. The conjurer pulled and the Devil pulled,

until the unfortunate man was nearly torn in two. The conjurer at

length obtained from his adversary permission to keep him so long as a

candle which was part of his conjuring apparatus lasted. The candle

was instantly blown out, but though it was kept in a cool place it

wasted away, and with it John Gethin’s life, so that when he died the

candle was found to be entirely consumed. His body vanished; and the

coffin buried in the parish churchyard at Ystradgynlais, on the

borders of Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, contained nothing but

clay.[105.1] In the province of Posen it is said that every man has a

burning taper which is set up in a certain grove; and when it goes

out, the life of the man to whom it belongs goes out too.[105.2] This

is the foundation of an incident in a folktale known in many parts of

Europe, wherein Death takes a man down into his own abode and shows

him an array of candles {106} which are the lives of men, some long,

some short, and some on the point of extinction.

The superstitions we have discussed in the present chapter disclose a

parallel range to those of the Life-token. First we find witchcraft

exercised upon detached portions of the victim’s body, identified with

himself by the same process of thought as that analysed in the last

chapter. The remains of his food are equally liable to hostile

practices, because they are a portion of something which he has

incorporated into his own substance. Clothing and the dust or mud of

naked footprints would also be likely to retain sweat, hairs and

specks of skin available for the sorcerer’s purpose; and it may well

be believed that this was the original reason for treating other

articles of property in the like manner. But with the accumulation of

property of all kinds the real reason for the use of such things would

fade, and the procedure would degenerate into mere simulation. The

process would be facilitated by the superstition of regarding a man’s

name as a part of himself. Any one who knew another’s real name, by

imputing it to some convenient object, could identify that object with

his enemy, and work his will upon it, and upon his enemy through it.

There is, however, a wide tract of borderland where the underlying

reason for the practices is vague, and it is consequently difficult,

or impossible, to determine whether the injuries are believed to be

inflicted on something essentially part of the victim, or are no more

than symbolic. But here as elsewhere symbolism is the offspring of an

earlier practice; it is the form which remains when the real practice

can no longer be repeated. It points unmistakably to injuries

originally inflicted on something regarded as actually part of, and so

united with, the {107} victim, though in appearance detached, that he

will suffer all that it receives.

One of the most curious applications of the doctrine we have been

considering deserves a few illustrations before passing on. The

imputation of identity of a man’s property with himself would lead us

to expect that wherever the instrument of witchcraft could be found,

its destruction would be attended with injury and even destruction to

the sorcerer, as when in Silesia cattle are bewitched. In such a case,

any object found under the crib, or under the threshold, is put into a

bag and hung up in the chimney. The witch will then come and ask for

something. If she be refused, the cattle are saved and she herself

suffers.[107.1] A Danish tradition of a bewitched household relates

that under a large stone outside the dwelling was found a silken

purse, filled with claws of cocks and eagles, human hair and nails.

When it was burnt, the suspected witch died, and all sorcery was at an

end.[107.2] So too in the Isle of Man, Professor Rhys was told, by the

man who did it, of the burning of a reputed witch’s broomstick. She

died; and the man firmly believed that the burning of the broomstick

had caused her death.[107.3] On the Slave Coast, any one who wishes to

be revenged upon another prays to certain gods to send the owl, their

messenger, to eat out the heart of the offending person by night. “The

only mode of escape,” we are assured, “is to catch the bird and break

its legs and wings, which has the effect of breaking the legs and arms

of the person who sent it.”[107.4] A gruesome tale, {108} current

among the descendants of Scottish Highlanders settled in Ontario,

speaks of a large blue butterfly that frequented a certain farm, where

the churns were bewitched and the butter was of an inferior quality.

When the creature was persistently followed and killed the charm was

destroyed, and so was a neighbour, a lonely old woman who was wicked

enough not to go to church, and was on ill terms with the

community.[108.1] Tales of this kind are current in Germany and the

Netherlands, especially in connection with nightmare stories.[108.2]

The Gipsies of the Austrian empire believe that women become witches

by holding sexual intercourse with demons. From this a demon-spirit

passes over into the woman. She can send it at her will out of her own

body in the form of an animal to injure and slay her neighbours. This

it does by creeping while they sleep into their bodies, generally

through their mouths: whence Gipsies are very careful not to sleep

with the mouth open. Meantime the witch’s body lies as dead, and only

revives when the sleeper awakes and the spirit returns to its owner,

leaving its spittle behind in the victim’s intestines, to cause

sickness and even death. The antidote consists of certain

incantations, accompanied by the symbolic crushing of an egg and the

burning of portions of the witch’s hair, nails, clothing or the like.

The victim leaps nine times over the fire, calling out the witch’s

name, and then spits and makes water into the flames.[108.3] Here

nothing is said about catching the mischievous animal, as in the {109}

West African and some of the European examples; while in all alike the

close connection, amounting to an imputation of identity, between the

witch and the animal is related very nearly to the belief in the

witch’s power of self-transformation so commonly believed in western

Europe.

The Gipsy prescription, however, goes further. When the victim leaps

over the flames he symbolises an immolation that actually takes, or

used within recent times to take, place when cattle are bewitched. In

the earlier half of the last century a witch was believed to have been

burned to death at Ipswich by the process of burning alive a sheep she

had bewitched. “It was curious,” says Mr. Zincke, “but it was as

convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of the witch were the

only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This was

satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep,

by which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed

in the flames that consumed its body.” The same writer knew a woman at

Wherstead, in Suffolk, who had once baked alive a duck, one of a brood

believed by her to be under a spell.[109.1] In 1833 a man at

Woodhurst, in Huntingdonshire, was persuaded by his neighbours to

roast alive a pig belonging to a litter recently farrowed, all of

which with the sow were bewitched. The sorceress was expected to

appear during the ceremony, and doubtless to suffer with the tortured

beast.[109.2] More lately still, if a correspondent of the _Diss

Express_ can be trusted, an old woman at South Lopham burnt one of her

hens on a Sunday {110} at noon, about the year 1892, to put an end to

a spell laid upon her fowls by a neighbour.[110.1] Unhappily England

does not enjoy a monopoly of this cruel prescription. It was certainly

known in Germany. One of the directions in some folklore collected at

Gernsbach, near Spire, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century,

is: “If your hens, ducks, pigs, etc., die fast, light a fire in the

oven, and throw one of each kind in; the witch will perish with them.”

While it is included by implication in the more general precept

obtained at Pforzheim: “If a thing is bewitched, and you burn it, the

witch is sure to come, wanting to borrow something; give it, and she

is free; deny it, and she too must burn.”[110.2] The same prescription

is reported from Franconia.[110.3] At the present day it is usual to

wait until the bewitched animal be dead, and then its heart is taken

and stuck with pins, and frequently burnt, cooked, or suspended in the

chimney. Variants of the prescription deal in a similar manner with

other portions of the body. All over the west of Europe this is the

course taken; and immigrants from the Old World practise it in

Pennsylvania and the Alleghanies. In some countries the ceremony is

very elaborate, and great precautions are taken to prevent the witch

from entering the house while it is proceeding, or from borrowing

anything, lest the efficacy of the counter-spell be destroyed.[110.4]

Reginald Scot quotes a {111} direction for grilling the intestines of

a beast slain by witchcraft. They are to be trailed unto the house,

and not taken in at the door but drawn under the threshold. “As they

wax hot” on the gridiron, “so shall the witches entrailes be molested

with extreame heat and paine.” The doors must be made fast; for if she

can succeed in taking away a coal of the fire, her torments will

cease. To this end she will make extraordinary efforts, darkening the

house and troubling the air “with such horrible noise and earthquakes,

that,” writes an eye-witness, “except the doore had been opened, we

had thought the house would have fallen on our heads.”[111.1]

Sometimes the animal bewitched is shot, or it is deemed enough to beat

it, or to fumigate it with herbs, or, among the Poles, with the ashes

of a young snake caught on the festival of the Annunciation.[111.2] In

Germany, when a cow’s milk has been taken away by a witch, the

animal’s nostrils are burnt with a hot iron and its name is

changed.[111.3] The milk or urine of a bewitched animal is beaten,

pricked with a fork, cooked in a pot with pins and needles, or nails,

or poured on the dunghill.[111.4] When the milk only is affected, so

that butter cannot be made, it is common to beat it, or thrust a

red-hot poker into the churn, or to beat the churn. A farmer in the

State of Vermont, who had churned nearly all day without making

butter, “loaded his musket and fired the whole charge into the churn,”

saying that “the {112} witches had got into it.” The result was

satisfactory, for shortly afterwards the butter came; but what was the

effect of the shot upon the witches we are not told.[112.1]

A bewitched person is treated in precisely similar ways. The Abipones

pulled out the heart and tongue of a dead man, boiled them, and gave

them to a dog to devour, so that the author of his death might die

too.[112.2] Among the Masurs it is believed that if a person killed by

witchcraft be buried with the feet up, the guilty witch will be

discovered; for she cannot endure it, and must come to put the bier in

the proper position.[112.3] As an example of simulated destruction,

like that in the Gipsy counter-spell above quoted, we may cite the

treatment of a “heart-grown” child at Stamfordham, in Northumberland,

given by Mr. Henderson. The puny patient is brought before sunrise “to

a blacksmith of the seventh generation, and laid naked on the anvil.

The smith raises his hammer as if he were about to strike hot iron,

but brings it down gently on the child’s body.” This is done thrice,

and the child, though overlooked or otherwise bewitched, is sure to

thrive from that day.[112.4] In Suffolk, blood, hair and nails from

the victim were simmered, or fried. The witch was expected to come and

knock at the door, which in all such cases is fast shut, and ask to

borrow something. If denied, she would die.[112.5] Anne Baker, one of

the confederates of the sisters Flower, being examined concerning a

child of Anne Stammidge whom she was suspected of having bewitched to

death, gave most damnatory evidence against herself. She was {113}

charged “that upon the burning of the haire and the paring of the

nailes of the said childe, the said Anne Baker came in and set her

downe, and for one houre’s space coulde speake nothing”; and she

confessed “shee came into the house of the said Anne Stammidge in

great paine, but did not know of the burning of the haire and nailes

of the said childe, but saith she was so sick that she did not know

whither she went.”[113.1] A French writer a few years before this case

recorded the means taken by a Fleming who suffered from sorcery. He

cut his nails of hands and feet, threw them into a pot of fresh water,

and at night before he went to bed he put the pot on the fire and cast

in four large needles. When the water began to boil, the witch could

not resist coming to his house, for the needles pricked her like

spurs. She threw herself on his bed, but he threatened her with sword

and dagger; and other persons rushing in to his help she fled in the

form of a cat.[113.2] A mother and child at Spickendorf, in Prussia,

who were bewitched, were fumigated with nine kinds of wood, and the

straw was taken out of the cradle and thrust into the kitchen-furnace,

where no fire had been lighted for four weeks. A clear flame

immediately burst forth and burnt the straw. The witch came to the

house and tried to get in; but as the door was fastened she tried in

vain. The end of this tale ought to be the witch’s death and the

recovery of her victims. Unfortunately, however, it was the child who

died; and everybody said that the wise man who directed the ceremony

was called in too late for the fumigation to be effectual.[113.3]

{114}

Not merely the blood, hair and nails are dealt with: the remedy often

lies in the _exuviæ_ of the person bewitched. Preservation of the

urine in a closed vessel was prescribed when the patient was afflicted

by a witch in the shape of a nightmare. This was sure to bring the

sorceress to the house, for she would be unable to make water until

the vessel was opened. The prescription was, and still is, a favourite

in the Low Countries, and that not merely for nightmares. Sometimes,

there and elsewhere, it is considered necessary to boil the contents

of the vessel, or at least to hang it in the chimney, a course which

adds greatly to the witch’s torments. An old English recipe directs

the urine to be baked with meal into a cake.[114.1] On the island of

Lesbos a portion of the sufferer’s dress, or of the threshold of the

house where he dwells, is burnt to free him from the spell.[114.2] In

Italy it is usual to boil the clothes of a bewitched child, sometimes

taking the precaution of sticking a long fork into them now and again

during the process. The child will recover and the witch will die. At

Venice it is believed that the witch will present herself and ask for

salt; if it be given, the counter-charm is destroyed.[114.3] It is

generally believed, indeed, that sooner or later she will be compelled

to come to the house on some pretext. At Milan, in the spring of 1891,

a child was ill with some unknown and obstinate disorder--therefore

bewitched. By the advice of a woman who pretended to know something of

{115} medicine the parents boiled its clothes. A neighbour’s wife

happening to call at that moment out of kindness to inquire after the

little one, she was at once attacked by the parents. A raging crowd

assembled and pursued her to the church of Santa Maria del Naviglio.

There, before the altar itself, she was savagely beaten; her hair was

torn out; and, despite the interference of the parish priest, she was

finally dragged back to the house of the sick child, and with blows

and curses was ordered to disenchant her victim. Her protests of

innocence only called forth repeated howls, curses and blows. The

whole suburb of the Porta Ticinese was in an uproar; nor was it

without much trouble that the military police at length succeeded in

rescuing her more dead than alive, and in dispersing the mob. The

women who had torn her hair from her head went home and burnt it,

running afterwards to see if the child were not cured. They declared

they found it somewhat better, and exclaimed: “See now if it is not

true that she is a witch!”[115.1]

These cases all seem explicable by the supposition that the witch has

united herself in some way with the object of her spells, and thus

injury inflicted upon it, by any other hand than hers, will reach and

injure her. This is clearly so, for instance, where she bewitches

cattle to draw away their milk. There she may be punished by

vindictive action upon the milk, or upon the kine producing it. It is

hardly less clear where she has, in the shape of a nightmare,

appropriated an unfortunate man or animal as her steed; and the same

reasoning applies to all the rest. {116} Perhaps it may not be

considered an unwarrantable stretch of barbarous logic to regard the

casting of a spell as an act of appropriation parallel to theft.

Theft, however, like any other act of appropriation, sets up union

between the person appropriating, and the article appropriated.

Ownership, by the process of thought I have endeavoured already to

trace, is in fact union; and injury inflicted upon a man’s property is

in a literal sense inflicted on himself.