TOTEMISM--THE BLOOD COVENANT--CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.
{232}
Thus far, in pursuing our investigations into the significance of
the Life-token, we have arrived at the conclusion that the reason of
the mysterious sympathy between the hero and an object external to
himself is not merely that, actually or by imputation, the Life-token
has been part of his substance, but further that, notwithstanding
severance, it is still in unapparent but real connection with him, and
consequently any mischance he may suffer will be felt by the
Life-token and reflected in its condition. The converse is also true.
Any portion, actual or imputed, of the hero’s substance, detached from
him in appearance, continues in effect so united to him that injury to
it will redound to his injury and perhaps to his death. The Life-token
and the External Soul are thus equivalent; and they are equivalent not
merely in story, but also, and first of all, in human customs and
belief.
Moreover, the possibility of evil implies the contrary possibility of
good being received by a man through severed pieces of himself. This
belief has led to the practices we have considered in our last two
chapters. Whether for the healing of a specific disease, or for the
more general {233} purpose of promoting his wellbeing, anything which
has once been his, as a scrap of his body, his excrements or his
clothing, or which has simply been in contact, though only for a
moment, with him, is subjected to influences held to be beneficial,
with the expectation that they will in this way act upon him. The
belief and the practices it has engendered have thus to our eyes a
double aspect, physical and spiritual. But we must not forget that
everywhere in the earliest times, and among the lowest races even
yet--nay, the limitation need not be by any means so strict--among
peoples in all but the highest state of civilisation, no substantive
distinction is drawn between the physical and the spiritual. The
abstract entity we call a soul has no existence for them: it is a
philosophical speculation, whereof they have no conception. The soul,
to them, is but another body which quits at times in life this visible
frame, as a man quits his dwelling, on errands of business or
pleasure, and forsakes it finally at death, as a corpse is carried out
of doors. It is but a fragment of the man. It may take a fresh form,
become a new whole, new but the same; for it will differ only in form,
if indeed it will differ so much as in form. And the conception of
divinity current in the lower culture corresponds with that of the
soul. The god is precisely “a magnified, non-natural man,” though not
always in human shape, corporeal and subject to all corporeal wants
and infirmities, but endowed with potencies and privileges far beyond
those of ordinary men: potencies and privileges, however, the like of
which are attained sometimes with much fasting and striving and
patience by the greatest shamans. This corporeal nature of the god
enables man to enter into communion with him, to put and keep himself
in touch with him, to become {234} united with him. In the last
chapter we considered some methods whereby this may be done. Some
other methods remain to be mentioned; but it will be needless to
discuss them at length, because they have not long ago been made the
subject of a brilliant exposition by the late Professor Robertson
Smith, to which little or nothing can be added.
What seems, however, desirable for the purpose of completing our view
of the Life-token and the ideas connected with it, is to turn our
attention to some points in the social organisation of savage races,
and their survivals in societies, like our own, which have long been
organised on principles of a wholly different character. To these
points the next four chapters will be devoted. But the organisation of
archaic communities is bound up with their tribal worship. It is
accordingly necessary to have distinctly before our minds the relation
of the tribe to its god, and some at least of the usages expressive of
that relation. I shall therefore begin by summarising the results of
Professor Robertson Smith’s examination of Semitic institutions, as
far as they are relevant to our present inquiry, contributing only a
few further illustrations drawn from the usages of nations outside the
Semitic sphere.
At a certain period in the evolution of human institutions men are
organised in kindreds, called clans or _gentes_, deriving descent and
reckoning kinship exclusively through the mother. As a matter of fact,
hardly anywhere throughout the world is this organisation found in an
absolutely unadulterated condition; for it seems to have constantly
tended to pass over into an organisation where the kinship was
reckoned exclusively through the father. But in almost all parts of
the world many existing institutions, and institutions described, or
incidentally mentioned, by {235} writers ancient and modern, can only
be accounted for by postulating the former existence of a system of
kinship reckoned exclusively through females. The kindred or clan thus
formed believes itself to be descended from a _totem_, or ancestor to
whom honours are paid of a kind for which we have no other word than
_divine_--a word, however, implying a more exalted conception than any
to which the clan has yet attained. The totem is not in human shape.
Very generally it is an animal, sometimes a tree or other vegetable,
occasionally an inanimate object, such as the sun, the earth, wind,
salt, or even the rain or thunder. For the savage believes in
metamorphosis. We have already investigated at some length this
belief, in so far as it relates to changes effected by death and
birth. But it is by no means confined to these. Broadly speaking,
every object in the universe is regarded as alive; and every object is
capable of changing its shape without losing its identity. Death is
merely one way of doing so. To the savage, therefore, there is no
difficulty in believing that his ancestor is a turtle or a pine-tree,
for he knows no distinction between animal and vegetable, between
genus and genus. Nay, he will even hold with as little difficulty that
the same ancestor is both a turtle and a pine-tree, and will worship
him now under the one, and now under the other, form.
The clan bears a representation of the totem as its symbol or crest;
is usually called after its name; and the individual members dress and
adorn themselves to resemble it in their persons. It is forbidden to
kill, injure or treat with disrespect any animal or vegetable of the
species to which the totem belongs, for they are all akin. But, at
least when an animal, it is customary at stated times to {236} slay
and eat it in solemn festival wherein all the kin join.
The home of the clan is the home of its god; and wherever a society
has passed beyond the nomadic stage it will be found to have a
definite place consecrated to social reunion and worship. There the
totem-god is represented by an idol of some kind--ordinarily, in an
archaic stage of civilisation, by a post or a rough stone. This is his
dwelling-place, or the embodiment he chooses for the convenience of
his worshippers,--the god himself. Later, it becomes by degrees a
simulacrum, a piece of sculpture, until, in the most elevated form to
which paganism has attained, we arrive at masterpieces like those of
Phidias.
The stone god is also at first the altar. There the totem-beast is
slain, some of its blood is dashed upon the stone, and around it the
rest of the blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten by the clansmen.
This is probably the primitive form of sacrifice. It is not a gift to
the god, but a sacrament in which the whole kin--the god with his
clansmen--unites. In partaking of it each member of the kin testifies
and renews his union with the rest. The god himself is eaten, and yet
he is at the same time embodied in the sacred stone. Archaic thought
sees no contradiction in this. Our inquiries into the Life-token have
already shown that a man is separable into portions. The savage
conception of life permits of its division without destroying its
existence or its essential unity. Not only, therefore, is the totem
himself divisible: the kin, including the totem-god in every one of
his forms, is regarded as one entire life, one body, whereof each unit
is literally a member, a limb. The same blood runs through them all;
and elsewhere, as among the Hebrews, “the blood is the life.”
Literally {237} they may not be all descended from a common ancestry.
Descent is the normal, the typical, cause of kinship and a common
blood. It is the legal presupposition, a presumption not to be
rebutted. But kinship may also be acquired; and when it is once
acquired by a stranger he ranks thenceforth for all purposes as one
descended from the common ancestor. In a state of society organised on
the lines of kinship this is an important matter. A man who is not of
the kin is a stranger; and a stranger is a foe. The kinless man has no
rights, no protection: he is an outlaw. His hand is against every
man’s, and every man’s hand against him. To acquire kinship, the blood
of the candidate for admission into the kin must be mingled with that
of the kin. In this way he enters into the brotherhood, is reckoned as
of the same stock, obtains the full privileges of a kinsman.
The mingling of blood--the Blood-covenant as it is called--is a simple
though repulsive ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be made
in the neophyte’s arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of
the clansmen, upon whom the operation is repeated in turn by the
neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook
of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised
almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless
variations. Sometimes the blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with
water or wine. Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the
blood. Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, so
that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared upon them both.
Among the Kayans of Borneo the drops are allowed to fall upon a
cigarette, which is then lighted and smoked alternately by both
parties. But, {238} whatever may be the exact form adopted, the
essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is
mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the
Scythians, the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the
Medes. Many passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian _Book of the
Dead_, are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians are
full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered into the bond, which
means for us that it was customary among the Norsemen--as we know, in
fact, from other sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of
his day. It is described in the _Gesta Romanorum_. It is related of
the Huns or Magyars, and of the mediæval Roumanians. Joinville
ascribes it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi
Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth
century, found it there. In modern times every African traveller
mentions it; and most of them have had to undergo the ceremony. In the
neighbouring island of Madagascar, it is well known. All over the
Eastern Archipelago, in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the
Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian
empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the wild tribes
of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the Bedouins, and among the
autochthonous peoples of North and South America, the rite is, or has
been quite recently, in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in
Europe by the Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the
Abruzzi. The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken up
a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in this way. Most
savage peoples require their youths at the age of puberty to submit to
a ceremony which admits them into the brotherhood of the grown men,
and into all the rights {239} and privileges of the tribe. Of this
ceremony the blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is
also, either actually, or by symbol which represents an act once
literally performed, in the initiation-rite not only of the Mala Vita,
but of almost all secret societies, both civilised and uncivilised. In
the French department of Aube, when a child bleeds, he puts a little
of his blood on the face or hands of one of his playfellows, and says
to him: “Thou shalt be my cousin.” In like manner in New England, when
a school-girl, not many years since, pricked her finger so that the
blood came, one of her companions would say: “Oh, let me suck the
blood; then we shall be friends.”[239.1]
That the blood-covenant, whereby blood-brotherhood is assumed, is not
a primæval rite, is obvious from its artificial character. It has its
basis in ideas which must have been pre-existent, and which I have
endeavoured to make clear in this and the foregoing chapters. At the
same time its barbarism, and the wide area over which it is spread,
point with equal certainty to its early evolution, and to the fact
that it is in unison with conceptions essentially and universally
human. Even among races like the Polynesians and the Turanian
inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, where the rite itself may not
be recorded, there {240} are, as we shall hereafter see, unmistakable
traces of its influence on their customs.
As Society evolved, the clan-system gradually broke up over large
tracts of the earth’s surface. In the same measure as the clan relaxed
its hold upon the individual members, blood-brotherhood assumed a
personal aspect, until, having no longer any social force, it came to
be regarded as merely the most solemn and binding form of covenant
between man and man. For that purpose the gods of one or both were
frequently made party to the contract, and the blood of the
covenanters was smeared upon the idols as well as upon one another.
The deities thus continued to watch over a rite in which they had
originally taken part as members of a clan. For as the bonds of
kinship were loosened the totem developed into a god; and even so the
totem’s interest in the rite as a member of a clan developed into that
of a god as witness and avenger of the covenant. But though the
significance of the rite changed, its evolution was continuous.
Religion, like other forms of human thought and other human
institutions, has been a slow and constant growth. If the whole field
be surveyed, it will be found that there are no yawning chasms
dividing period from period, and cult from cult. Everything evolves by
processes analogous to those with which we are familiar in the
physical world. The totem, released from the bonds of kinship, and
soaring upward to the heaven of Godhead, ceases not to be worshipped
with rites appropriate only to the social reunions of the clan. True,
these rites are gradually modified; but alike by their symbolism and
by their barbarity they bear unfailing testimony to their real birth.
Such was the Hebrew practice of sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice
before the Lord, or {241} upon the mercy-seat, daubing it upon the
horns of the altar, or pouring it out at the base, and the converse
practice of sprinkling it upon the congregation, or putting it upon
the priest at his consecration. Among other nations the practice was
grosser still.
“Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice,”
by no means stood alone. The priest in Guatemala drew blood from his
tongue and other members, and anointed with it the feet and hands of
the image. And a similar custom is described by Spanish writers as
followed in both North and South America.[241.1] When Rome was at the
height of her civilisation Tibullus described the high priestess of
Bellona as lacerating her own arm with the sacrificial axe and
bespattering the goddess with her blood, and then as she stood there
inspired by the goddess with her oracle.[241.2] This doubtless is the
meaning of the passage relating the antics of the priests of Baal in
the contest with Elijah, when they leaped about the altar, crying
aloud, and cut themselves with knives and lances until the blood
gushed out upon them. Their object was not to maim or torture
themselves, but to renew their union with the god, {242} by shedding
their blood upon him. In course of time the rite would cease to be
understood, its practice would change, and then the mere torture, or
the outpouring of the blood without any care to bring it into contact
with the god, would be regarded as its object. This was perhaps the
stage at which Baal-worship had arrived in the time of Ahab. In the
Hebrew ritual it was the blood of the sacrifice and not of the
worshipper which was sprinkled, and so also in many other instances.
But then the victim was identified with the worshipper, or the latter
also partook of it by being himself sprinkled with the blood or eating
its flesh. The Scandinavian custom, for example, as delineated in the
_Heimskringla_ required that the blood should be drained into bowls,
and then with a rod or sprinkler “should the stall of the gods be
reddened, and the walls of the temple within and without, and the
men-folk also besprinkled; but the flesh was to be sodden for the
feasting of men.”[242.1] In either case the worshipper was brought
into union with the god. Elsewhere the same object is effected by the
substitution of some other substance for blood. Among the ceremonies
of purification imposed by certain of the non-Aryan tribes of Bengal
upon women after childbirth, is that of smearing with vermilion the
edge of the village well.[242.2] Vermilion is a very obvious symbol of
blood; and we shall hereafter see that, by these tribes and others, it
is its recognised substitute. Originally the well must have been
smeared with blood, and that {243} blood drawn from the offerer’s
veins. By the ceremonial union thus effected with the deity who dwells
in, or is identified with, the well, the woman would be purified.
The modes of thought portrayed in the ritual of sacrifice are entirely
analogous to those disclosed by the practices we discussed in the last
chapter. Their great aim is union with the deity. It is attained by
placing in contact with him something already part of ourselves, as
our blood, hair, clothing, or other property; or else the blood of a
victim of which we are about to consume the remainder, just as among
medical practices we found that of giving part of the patient’s food
to an animal before partaking of the rest, with the object of being
united with a healthy body. It may, indeed, be, if we were to trace
back the superstition in these medical cases, that the animal made use
of was at first a totem-beast. To investigate this, however, would
require much greater space than I have at command.
I have on an earlier page alluded to the compacts alleged to be made
with the Devil by a writing signed with the blood of the person who
enters into the contract. With this may be compared a practice said to
be sometimes followed on the Riviera, where two lovers write to one
another in their own blood in sign of fidelity.[243.1] A Breton
folktale represents the Devil as aiding the hero on condition of his
giving him a drop of his blood or a lock of his hair.[243.2] According
to an Icelandic saga, witches enter into a still closer relation with
the Father of Evil by {244} giving him of their blood to drink,[244.1]
thus constituting him their blood-brother; and the same belief seems
to be current among the Gipsies of the Danube valley, the Poles and
Esthonians.[244.2] To drink a witch’s blood was also a means of
destroying her witchcraft, and doubtless for the same reason: it
united her with her victim. Mannhardt quotes a case in Germany where,
no longer since than the year 1868, two ignorant men were sent to
prison for three months for assaulting a young woman whom they
believed to have bewitched a friend, drawing blood and compelling her
to drop it into his mouth.[244.3] But in general it is considered
quite sufficient simply to draw blood from her. According to the
Scottish prescription she should be “scored aboon her breath”--that
is, in the upper part of her face.[244.4] The superstition, of course,
has long been in decay. Merely to draw blood does not of itself
constitute blood-relationship; but the barbarous rite of the
blood-covenant having practically died out of north-western Europe,
the real reason of drawing blood has been forgotten. A similar
protection is invoked by Gipsy thieves in Servia. They make a certain
powder with which they mix drops of their own blood and put it into
the food of any one they suspect knows of their crime. In this way the
thief believes that he not merely prevents the person {245} who
consumes the mixture from betraying him, but on the other hand causes
him henceforth to cherish a friendly feeling towards him.[245.1]
More difficult of interpretation is a horrible usage of the Hurons of
North America. Unless they are belied, while torturing a prisoner to
death, they would sometimes open the aorta and mingle the blood that
gushed from it with some of their own, in the hope of being at all
times apprised of an enemy’s approach, and so assuring safety against
a sudden attack.[245.2] Let us compare it, however, with a few cases
of cannibalism. The Botocudos devoured their fallen enemies, in the
belief that they would thus be protected from the revenge of the dead
and would be rendered invulnerable by the arrows of the hostile
tribe.[245.3] The inhabitants of New Britain, notorious cannibals, eat
their enemies, and fix the arm- and leg-bones of the men at the
butt-end of their spears, thinking thus not only to acquire the
strength of the deceased owner of the bone, but also to become
invulnerable by his relatives.[245.4] When the Tchuktchis murder a man
they eat a piece of his heart or liver, in order to make his kindred
sick.[245.5] The Eskimo of Greenland do the like, because then the
relations of the murdered man will lack the courage to revenge his
death.[245.6] Even in the south of Italy it is still believed that a
murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste, or beslubber
himself with, his victim’s blood:[245.7] a superstition {246} which,
in these days, has sometimes the contrary effect of leading to his
discovery. By means of these examples we may perhaps conjecture the
origin of the widely prevalent custom of eating the dead body of an
enemy. Little doubt can at all events remain that the savage Hurons
intended so to unite themselves with their captive that they would be
secured from the blood-revenge of his kindred, and that it was against
the kindred and them only that the precaution was adopted. And if this
result could be attained by commingling the blood in a manner similar
to that of the blood-covenant, it could also be achieved by eating a
portion of the foe. Closely connected with cannibalism of the kind I
am referring to is the custom of _alumbi_ practised by several tribes
in Equatorial West Africa. It consists in serving in food to a guest
powder scraped from the skull of a deceased ancestor. “The idea is,
that by consuming the scrapings of the skull, the blood of their
ancestors enters into your body, and thus, becoming of one blood, you
are naturally led to love them and grant them what they wish.”[246.1]
In other words, a blood-covenant is entered into unwittingly by the
guest with his host; and it need hardly be said that the trick is only
played on those guests whose hearts a greedy host considers it is
worth his while to soften.
Naturally superstition extended the blood-covenant by analogy to the
lower animals, both in their relations with one another and with man,
and utilised it for human profit. Servian Gipsy thieves draw blood
from the left shoulder of a stolen beast, dry it to powder and mix the
powder with the fodder of other beasts which they intend to steal, so
as to be able to capture them without hindrance.[246.2] An {247}
Icelandic story is told of a fairy who used to send her kine to graze
with those of a peasant-farmer. One day the farmer found a fairy cow
in his stable. He cut its ear until it bled, and so appropriated the
animal, to the fairy’s great annoyance.[247.1] The story is incomplete
in not telling us what was done with the blood. It is clear, however,
that a bond of blood was created which, in the stage of civilisation
wherein the story arose, meant, as between man and one of the lower
animals, ownership. From the Arctic circle to the southern Sporades
may seem a far cry; yet it is from the island of Calymnos that we are
able to supply the missing detail. One day in the spring of last year
(1894) Mr. W. R. Paton saw a little girl, the daughter of a shepherd,
with her face besmeared with blood. Her mother told him, by way of
explanation, that the father had been marking the kids in his
daughter’s name. Further inquiry showed that it was the custom to mark
these animals by cutting their ears, every shepherd having his own
distinctive mark, that they were marked in the name of one or other
child of the family, and that some of the blood was smeared on the
face of the child in whose name they were marked.[247.2] A better
illustration could hardly be found of the manner in which the customs
of one country will throw light upon the customs and traditions of
another. Distance in space counts for naught where we are dealing with
similar conditions of culture.
This sketch of totemism, including the means of union and communion
between the clan and its totem on the one hand, and between the
individual members of the clan on the other hand, is hasty and
imperfect. Yet I hope it may {248} prove sufficient for our purpose,
the more so as the writings of Professor Robertson Smith and Mr.
Frazer, who have studied the subject with great detail, are happily
easy of access. Without, therefore, dwelling longer upon it we may
turn to glance at some of the modifications undergone by the ceremony
of the blood-covenant. A rite so barbarous would not maintain itself
unimpaired as culture advanced. Other rites are softened in course of
time; a part is taken for the whole, or a sham for the real thing; and
this is no exception. I have referred to some of the forms it has
assumed, but only to such as bear to the most casual observer the mark
and witness of the original whence they are derived. There remain to
be briefly considered some of the remoter variations.
The sacramental essence of the rite has escaped many modern
travellers. Yet it might have been thought obvious enough. It is,
perhaps, most clearly brought out where the blood is mingled with the
food of the participants. It has been well insisted on, and its
connection with the totem-sacrifice exhibited at length, by Professor
Robertson Smith. Nor, after what has been said about it in the
foregoing pages, and after the analogous superstitions discussed in
preceding chapters, is it necessary to dwell on the point here. But it
can excite no surprise that the rite should have degenerated into a
solemn meal eaten together by the persons entering into the new bond.
In early times no one would have a right to eat together save the
brethren of a clan; and on the other hand, all who ate together would,
presumably at least, be members of the same clan. Hospitality--the
relation of host and guest--would form the only exception; and
hospitality, as practised in savage and barbarous communities, may be
described as a temporary reception into the kin or family. {249} But
none save brethren habitually shared the common meal. To eat together,
therefore, would of itself be a sign, though not an infallible sign,
of kinship. Eating together is--not merely on solemn occasions, as the
sacrifice of the totem-beast, but in a lesser degree at other
times--an act of communion. The sharing of a common substance as food
unites those who partake of it in a common life: it makes them parts
of one another: they incorporate one another’s substance. This is the
significance of eating “things sacrificed to idols,” and of “sitting
at meat in an idol’s temple.” The idol is supposed to have partaken of
the meat; and those who afterwards eat of it share by that act the
idol’s life; they partake of his substance. This is the significance
of the offering of first-fruits; the bulk is holy and fit for the
worshippers’ food, because a portion, and through that portion the
whole, is first united with the god. What is true of special feasts,
and of communion with the god, holds good of everyday meals, and of
communion by the clansmen with one another. To admit a stranger into
the clan, then, it will be enough that he be allowed to partake of the
common meal. If the admission be simply for a temporary purpose as a
guest, it will take place without any extraordinary formalities. If a
permanent union be contemplated, then ceremonies must be performed
indicative of the intention, and uniting the parties in the
unmistakable bond of a common life.
One or two examples will suffice. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal have
now in many instances undergone a transformation, under the influence
of the dominant Aryan religion and organisation, from tribal
organisation and status into that of castes. The Mahilis, “a Dravidian
caste of labourers, palanquin-bearers and workers in bamboo, {250}
found in Chota Nagpur and Western Bengal,” readily admit “men of any
caste ranking higher than their own.” The person seeking admission
“has merely to pay a small sum to the headman of the caste and to give
a feast to the Mahilis of the neighbourhood. This feast he must attend
himself and signify his entrance into the brotherhood by tasting a
portion of the food left by each of the guests on the leaf which on
these occasions serves as a plate.”[250.1] The Máls of Western and
Central Bengal, another tribe which has become converted into a caste,
while still retaining many distinctly tribal practices, also admit
outsiders. The fashion among them is for the neophyte to give a feast
to the Máls of the neighbourhood, and to drink water wherein the
headman of the village has dipped his toes.[250.2] The Mysteries of
Greece and Western Asia were celebrated with the sacrifice and
consumption of the divine animal; and the persons who joined in the
ceremony entered into a brotherhood which, though in the latter times
of classic heathendom regarded as spiritual rather than literal, must
have derived its significance from a more archaic state of society,
when to partake of the totem-animal was to consummate the most sacred
rite of kinship. Among the Battas of Sumatra alliances are concluded
by the slaughter of a hog or cow. As soon as its throat is cut the
heart is torn out and divided into as many pieces as there are chiefs
present. The share of each is put on a pointed stick and roasted by
holding it over the fire. In turn the chiefs then hold up their
respective morsels, saying: “If I should ever violate my oath, I am
willing to be slaughtered like the bleeding animal which lies before
me, and to be {251} devoured like the piece of heart I am about to
eat.”[251.1] This oath, which is reported to be more than a mere form,
points back to an earlier period before the cow or the hog was
substituted for a man. In classical antiquity a blood-rite of this
kind is many times mentioned which not improbably may represent an
early form of the blood-covenant. In the oath said to have been
administered by Catiline to his fellow-conspirators, a slave was put
to death, and every one drank out of the same cup his blood mingled
with wine. The oath they swore was deemed irrevocable: it united them
like the brethren of one blood to support one another in life and
avenge one another’s death. The same is doubtless the meaning of the
act recorded by Herodotus of the Greek and Carian allies of
Psammenitus, when one of their number, Phanes of Halicarnassus,
deserted to Cambyses, the Persian invader of Egypt. They put to death
his sons in Phanes’ sight, drained their blood into a vase, which they
filled up with wine and water, and, having drunk it together, they
rushed madly but vainly on the foe.[251.2] And Diodorus Siculus
relates of Apollodorus, who aspired in the third century before Christ
to the government of the city of Cassandrea in Macedonia, that he slew
a youth to the gods, gave his fellow-conspirators the entrails to eat
and the blood mingled with wine to drink.[251.3] A relic of some such
ceremony is found in India. Among the Saráogi Baniyás, who are
reckoned of the Súdra caste, on the occasion of a marriage the
relatives only of the parties meet in a private apartment around the
figure of a Brahman, made in dough and filled with honey. The
bridegroom’s father, “armed with a miniature bow and arrows, topples
over the effigy, {252} which is then disembowelled, so to speak, of
its honey, into which all present dip a finger and suck it.”[252.1] In
the New World the bloodthirsty Aztecs ate their human sacrifices. The
Yncas, a little more human, offered and ate animals, called by De
Molina sheep. Their sacrament consisted of a pudding of
coarsely-ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the
idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim, before
distributing it to the people.[252.2] A curious rite is reported as
taking place among the Isubus, in the west of Africa, when entering
into a covenant to do some murderous or warlike deed. A pot is placed
upon the fire, and in the pot a stone, supposed to become by cooking
as soft as a plantain. It is then cut with a knife, and each of the
covenanting parties must swallow a piece, binding himself thereby to
do or abet the deed proposed.[252.3] A Danubian Gipsy saga relates the
mode of admission into a tribe. The chief eats with the candidate a
piece of salted bread, and gives him brandy in a glass. When the
brandy is drunk the glass is smashed.[252.4] Drinking, indeed, often
becomes the substitute for eating. Among the aborigines of Formosa the
manner of taking an oath of friendship is by putting their arms round
one another’s necks and drinking simultaneously from the same cup of
wine.[252.5] Among the Slavs the blood-covenant is still practised;
and the Church has taken it under her own protection. In her hands it
has become transformed into the ritual drinking of wine together. Thus
in Crnagora the comrades who are {253} about to enter into the bond of
brotherhood attend the church, where the priest awaits them. He hands
them the chalice, out of which they thrice drink wine together. They
kiss the cross, the gospels and the sacred images, and finally kiss
one another thrice upon the cheek. Afterwards the one on whose
suggestion the league is formed, gives a dinner to the brother of his
choice and adds to it some more valuable gift.[253.1]
But we have seen that an entirely different modification of the rite
early took place. The actual drinking of the blood was dropped in
favour of mixing it by inoculation,[253.2] or outwardly upon the
bleeding flesh. Among the Norsemen in later times the blood was drawn
from each party and simply allowed to flow together in their
footprints.[253.3] Herodotus describes the covenant among the Arabs on
the borders of Egypt. Blood was drawn with a sharp stone from the
thumb of either party. With a shred of each person’s robe it was then
smeared upon seven sacred stones, with an invocation to the divinities
Orotal and Alilat, whom the historian identifies with Dionysos and
Urania.[253.4] Professor Robertson Smith commenting on the passage
observes that the smearing on the stones “makes the gods parties to
the covenant, but evidently the {254} symbolical act is not complete
unless at the same time the human parties taste each other’s blood.”
And he surmises that “this was actually done, though Herodotus does
not say so. But,” he admits, “it is also possible that in the course
of time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed
sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred
stone.”[254.1] I cannot help thinking that what we have learnt in the
course of our previous inquiries may help us to the solution of the
difficulty. When Abruzzian girls hide their hairs in some secret place
of the sanctuary on vowing eternal friendship, they seem at first
sight to be performing an act parallel to that recorded of the Arabs;
and if so we need not suspect that Herodotus has omitted any feature
of the rite. Probably, however, the true explanation does not lie
here. We may suppose that the shreds torn by the master of the
ceremonies from either garment were roughly tied or twisted together
into a wisp, which was then dipped into the flowing blood of both
persons, and the blood thus mingled after the fashion of many tribes
before it was painted on the stones; or, in the alternative, that the
shred from the garment of the one person was dipped in the blood of
the other. We have had abundant evidence that a man’s clothes are
deemed a part of himself, and that what is done to them is done to
him. To dip a portion of my clothes in my friend’s blood, therefore,
is to unite me to him, to make him my blood-brother, without the
necessity of tasting his blood, or even of literally mixing our blood
together. In either way the act would be complete, and the historian’s
accuracy justified. Even less than this is necessary among other {255}
nations. A man is deemed a blood-brother if the blood of another touch
him only by accident and without any outpouring of his own blood. So
Dr. Livingstone involuntarily contracted blood-relationship with a
Balonda woman in opening a tumour in her arm, by the spurting of some
of her blood in his eye.[255.1] Similarly in the Irish saga of _The
Wooing of Emer_ we find Cuchulainn becoming the blood-brother of
Devorgoil by sucking from her wound the stone that had struck her from
his sling.[255.2] An Abruzzian prescription for epilepsy is for some
one on the first attack of the disease to strike the patient on the
ear with something of iron, so that the blood flows. The operator
becomes the “gossip” (_compare o comare_) of the person thus cured.
Here it seems to suffice if the blood simply touch the instrument
used: a much degraded form of the rite, comparable with that in the
Icelandic story of the fairy cow, and with the practice of scoring a
witch. In a variant remedy, however, a person unacquainted with the
patient bites the ear until the blood flows.[255.3]
A further modification of the rite appears in ancient Arabic
literature, whereby the blood shed is not that of one of the
contracting parties but of another human victim slain at the
sanctuary, and the hands of all who shared in the compact were simply
dipped into the gore. At first it would seem likely that the victim
was already a member of one of the clans entering into the alliance.
This was the case in the province of Zacatecas in Central America. The
victim chosen was first mercifully intoxicated to deaden his pain. It
does not appear that he was put to death; {256} but his ears were
pierced in turn by each member of the contracting clans, who rubbed
the spurting blood over his own body.[256.1] After a while, however,
the human victim would be dispensed with, or perhaps among many
nations the victim may always have been a sacred animal, originally of
course a totem-animal. So, among the Dyaks for the purpose of
reconciling two foes, or of welcoming a stranger, a fowl is killed and
its blood sprinkled over the parties and the dwelling.[256.2] In the
Chittagong Hills the Kumi and the Shendoos kill a goat or a heifer and
smear with its blood the feet and foreheads of the contracting
parties. Before doing so, however, the presiding chief takes a
mouthful of liquor from a cup and blows it over one party, blows
another mouthful over the other party and a third over the victim.
Some other ceremonies follow, including the imprecation frequently
occurring on any one who violates the compact.[256.3]
The ritual of other peoples deviates yet more from the type. The
cannibal Bondjos of Africa merely put red ochre on the arms and rub
them together.[256.4] Two men of the Limbu, a Bengali tribe of
Mongolian descent, contract brotherhood by a ceremony at which a
Brahman, or, when the parties are Buddhists, a Lama, presides and
reads mantras or mystic formulæ, while the two friends thrice
exchange rupees, handkerchiefs or scarves, and daub each other between
the eyebrows with a paste made of rice and curds. And the description
of the performance holds good of the Muriari and other tribes of the
same province.[256.5] {257} In other parts of the world the rite
further degenerates into the mere rubbing of noses, or the striking of
one another’s breasts with an exchange of names.[257.1] Our
hand-shaking is a pledge of goodwill and fidelity which, we can hardly
doubt, points to the same course of ceremonial decay. The exchange of
names, practised so frequently among savage peoples by intimate
friends, has no different effect. For the name being part of the
person, to confer it upon another and to take that other’s name in
exchange is to effect union as close as the mixture of one another’s
blood. Among the Abruzzians in Italy, as I mentioned just now, the
blood-rite is not yet extinct. It is practised in a milder form by two
girls who wish to swear eternal friendship after the manner of
maidens. Taking each other by the hand and repeating certain
prescribed rhymes, in which they pray with emphasis that the one who
breaks the bond may go straight to hell, each of them pulls a hair
from her own head and puts it on the other’s. Thenceforth they salute
one another as “Gossip,” and may safely make one another the recipient
of the most sacred confidences.[257.2]
It will readily be understood that the ceremony of the blood-covenant
cannot be thus truncated and altered in a variety of ways without a
corresponding change in the rights and liabilities, the privileges and
disabilities, entailed where the clan system is in the plenitude of
its sway. When a Dyak welcomes a stranger by sprinkling the blood of a
domesticated bird, or when two Italian girls exchange hairs, one party
to the performance is not admitted to the {258} kin of the other. No
legal tie of blood results from the ceremony. For all that, a tie is
formed. The tie of hospitality, or the tie of gossipry, is, in the
contemplation of the Italian peasant, or the Dyak, a tie involving
rights and duties similar within its limits to those of blood. So when
two Slavs enter into adoptive brotherhood, the evolution of society,
which has mollified the rude rite, has also shorn it of many of the
resulting consequences; and kinsmen of this kind often betroth their
children together while yet in the cradle, in order, we are expressly
told, to strengthen the bond between them[258.1]--a betrothal usually
impossible in archaic society, because as a rule marriage within the
kin is forbidden. But it does not come within my design to do more
than point out that these differences arise in the consequences, as
well as in the forms, of the rite, and in both cases from the same
cause--the growth of civilisation.
There is an analogous group of practices the material of which is not
the blood but the saliva. In an able and interesting paper, published
in the _Transactions_ of the International Folklore Congress of 1891,
Mr. J. E. Crombie has investigated the superstitions connected with
the use of saliva. His contention is that it is sometimes believed to
contain the element of life, that to spit upon another person is to
add to the latter’s store of life some of one’s own, and that for two
persons to spit upon one another is to effect an interchange of life.
And he refers in support of his argument to various customs, among
which may be mentioned the following. At the reception held by an
Osmanli mother after childbirth, every visitor who looks at the babe
is expected to spit on it and to {259} conceal her admiration under
such disparaging remarks as “Nasty, ugly little thing!” to show that
she does not envy or ill-wish it. Among the Masai spitting on another
expresses the greatest goodwill and best wishes. Pliny records the
classical habit of spitting on a lame man or an epileptic, the reason
given being to avoid fascination or repel contagion. For diseases of
different kinds fasting spittle is a remedy. To cite Pliny again, he
speaks of ophthalmia and crick in the neck being thus cured. Growing
pains in children are treated in the same manner. Among the Samoans,
when a man was ill his relatives used to assemble, and, after
confessing whether he had wished the sick man any evil, each of them
was required to take some water in his mouth and spurt it out towards
him. In making a bargain or contract of any kind the saliva is
employed. In Masailand the sale of a bullock is concluded by the
seller spitting on the animal’s head and the purchaser on the article
he is going to give in exchange. At Newcastle in old days when the
colliers combined for the purpose of raising their wages they were
said to spit together on a stone by way of cementing their
confederacy. So the Anses and the Wanes in making a covenant of peace
let fall into a vase each of them some of his saliva, out of which a
being was made endowed with the wisdom of them all. And Mr. Henderson
relates that in his school-days the highest pledge of faith two boys
could give to one another was to spit.[259.1]
{260}
The exigencies of a Congress-paper no doubt compelled Mr. Crombie to
shorten his list of examples. His conclusion is in harmony with the
opinions advocated in the present volume. But if those opinions be
correct we may go further than Mr. Crombie has ventured. The transfer
of saliva is more than a gift of a portion of the spitter’s life. It
is a gift of a portion of himself, which is thus put into the power of
the recipient as a pledge of goodwill. Nay, it is a bodily union with
the recipient, such as can be effected by a blood-covenant. Possibly
as Mr. Crombie suggests, it is, where an interchange of saliva occurs,
a form of blood-covenant consequent upon milder manners, like some of
the modifications we have already glanced at. Rather it seems to be a
more evanescent and less solemn, though still emphatic, form, intended
only for temporary purposes. I hope the examples I propose to adduce
will bear out this contention.
Let us first recall the uses to which we have, in previous chapters,
found saliva put. Equally with the other issues of the body, it is a
means of witchcraft whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps
done to death. In the same way it is available as a means of
compelling the love of one of the opposite sex. It is dangerous to
spit into the fire. To spit the half of a piece of bread which the
patient has been chewing, and has therefore {261} mixed with his
saliva, into a tree is in Transylvania a specific against toothache.
And to spit in certain prescribed places is a remedy for various
diseases. The natives of South America spit their coca-quids upon the
cairns in the Cordilleras; and every Basuto traveller spits upon the
pebble he is about to add to the heap outside the village he is
approaching. It is hard to put any meaning into these superstitions,
unless it be one that ignores the separation of the saliva from the
body of which it once formed a part. The _märchen_ cited in Chapter
IX., by causing the heroine’s spittle to answer for her, as if she
were present, after she has in fact fled from the ogre’s thraldom,
exaggerate the identification of the saliva with its owner to the
height of endowing it with a large measure of her consciousness and
personality. The same exaggeration is to be observed in a practice
among children in New England, doubtless derived from the old country,
of divining by means of saliva where a bird’s nest, or something else
for which they are searching, is. A boy will spit into the palm of his
hand and striking the spittle with the forefinger of the other hand
will say:
“Spit, spat, spot,
Tell me where that bird’s nest is,”
(or as the case may be); and the direction in which the spittle flies
will be that in which the search must be pursued.[261.1]
Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the
widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the
custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the
first century of the {262} Christian era, describes with great scorn a
grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle
and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle
finger.[262.1] Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross
on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative
from spells.[262.2] And over the whole of Europe it is the most
ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and
Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is
necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise,
to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents
with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it.
Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well
as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on
the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.[262.3] A visitor to
Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the
peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People
in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought
out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old
women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit
on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.[262.4]
The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the
same thing) of fairies appears, however, {263} to be only a
specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the
meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment
of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in
archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering
words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by
Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In
Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his
child.[263.1] Some such custom would seem to have been known in
Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.[263.2] When Mohammed’s
elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him
Hasan.[263.3] Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western
Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits
thrice in its face.[263.4] In Ashanti the father varies the
performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and
calling it by a name.[263.5] And in the Roman Catholic rite of
baptism--a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common
with these heathenish practices--the person operated on, whether babe
or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.
Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that
the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing
his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his
hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his
tongue.”[263.6] This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the
kissing of the pope’s toe, to express {264} mere subservience; but
other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In
north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by
the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before
punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered
inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense
of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of
his saliva.[264.1] At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the
Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in
one another’s hands.[264.2] On the other side of the continent, a
stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes
as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the
time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the
southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his
right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of
naturalisation.[264.3] Contact with the saliva thus effects union for
the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a
similar meaning {265} to the Somali rule which requires chance
passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.[265.1] If they thus unite
themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through
him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In
the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his
saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The
king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not
swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful
over his fetishes or his amulets.[265.2] And the Basuto diviners
believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose
their power and become like other mortals.[265.3] In these cases the
spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the
supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a
decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling
a drop or two of drink as a libation.
These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an
Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual
heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with
it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish,
and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of
water.[265.4] In Central America, whenever the native traveller came
to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of
travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and,
spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the
altar.[265.5] And in the last chapter I had occasion to {266} refer to
the customs of Basuto travellers, which also present the attempt at
union with the god in a form analogous to those just mentioned of the
Kafirs and Bissagos islanders.
So the custom of spitting on one’s money for luck appears to be an
emphatic way of identifying oneself with it. It is usual in England
for country people attending a market to sell, to spit on the first
money received and put it into a pocket apart; and the object is
rightly suggested in an old dictionary “to render it tenacious that it
may remain with them, and not vanish away like a fairy gift.”[266.1]
A Walloon receiving money from one suspected of sorcery bites it,
otherwise it would return to the sorcerer, together with all the
pieces in contact with it in the pocket.[266.2] The biting is
evidently a method of touching the coin with the saliva. So an Eskimo
licks anything which is given him; while in some parts of England it
is believed that to spit on a gift, such as a piece of money, is to
ensure more.[266.3] For the same reason, as noted in a previous
chapter, the Danubian Gipsy who desires to assure a maiden’s love will
obtain some of her hairs, spit on them, and then hide them in the
coffin of a dead man. A Transylvanian Saxon in a business matter,
before he pays the first money, spits on it, that it may bring him
more.[266.4] An Esthonian, if he be required to empty his purse, will
spit into it.[266.5] A Spaniard, in buying a lottery ticket, spits on
the money before handing it over, in the hope of thus securing the
winning {267} number. Others spit on the ground, put the foot on the
spittle, and only take it off on receiving the ticket.[267.1] The
Persian gamester, who always attributes losses to the Evil Eye, blows
on the cards or the dice, and feigns to spit on his money before
staking it on the game.[267.2] In France a player spits on his
chair.[267.3] The Cherokee fisherman, before baiting his hook, chews a
small piece of Venus’ Flytrap, and spits it upon the bait and the
hook, at the same time repeating an incantation addressed to the fish.
“Our spittle,” he says, “shall be in agreement,” implying, as Mr.
Mooney tells us, “that there shall be such close sympathy between the
fisher and the fish that their spittle shall be as the spittle of one
individual.”[267.4] A Girondin fisherman, having baited his hook,
spits on the worm to make the fish bite better.[267.5] In Norway the
fisherman also spits upon the bait for luck; the tradesman and the
working-man spit on the first money they take. In the Lofoden Islands
the fisherman’s wife accompanies him to the boat, and always spits in
it to bestow luck upon him.[267.6] In Upper Ogowe, in Africa, a
fetish-horn is shaken around a man to bring him luck, a certain herb
is chewed and the quid is spit out upon him; and in the same way
chewed herbs are spit upon a new-born child to preserve it from
spells. Among the Okandas of the same region, in order to assure to a
pirogue a prosperous voyage, the women come with a bouquet of leaves.
Striking the forepart of the vessel with the leaves, they make a noise
as of driving away something, and finally spit upon it.[267.7] Olenda,
the king of the Ashira in {268} Equatorial Africa, when he gave his
parting blessing to his sons and Du Chaillu, whom they were to
accompany on a journey, took a sugar-cane, and biting off a piece of
the pith spat a little of the juice in the hand of each of the party,
at the same time blowing on the hand.[268.1] In his book on the
Highlands of Æthiopia Major Cornwallis Harris describes a search for
a lost camel. The man who was sent on the search was given the rope
wherewith the animal had been fettered; but before it was put into his
hands, spells were muttered over it; and we are told that “the devil
was dislodged by the process of spitting upon the cord at the
termination of each spell.”[268.2] So in the old Roman Catholic
liturgy, when the priest puts his spittle on the ears and nose of the
person he is baptizing he says: “Effeta, quod est adaperire, in odorem
suavitatis; tu autem effugare, diabole, adpropinquavit enim judicium
Dei!”[268.3] This conjuring formula perhaps derives its value from the
blessed word _Effeta_, transliterated in our Bibles as _Ephphatha_,
used by Christ, and having nothing to do with the dislodgment of the
devil to which the latter part of the spell, like those muttered over
the camel-fetter, refers. Moreover, the dislodgement of the devil is
an incomplete explanation in both cases, as we shall see directly.
There is a remarkable method practised among some savages for quelling
a refractory wild animal when caught alive; and here, as in some other
instances, we find Western Africa in curious agreement with North
America. {269} Mr. Kane went out with a Cree Indian to hunt the
buffalo, and killed a cow which was followed by her calf. “Wishing,”
he says, “to take the calf alive, so that it might carry itself to the
camp, I pursued and caught it, and, tying my sash round its neck,
endeavoured to drag it along; but it plunged and tried so violently to
escape that I was about to kill it, when the Indian took hold of its
head, and turning up its muzzle, spat two or three times into it,
when, much to my astonishment, the animal became perfectly docile, and
followed us quietly to the camp, where it was immediately cooked for
supper.”[269.1] There is no ground for doubting the facts related by
the traveller, however we may account for them. The same procedure was
adopted by a turtle-fisher with whom Mr. Winwood Reade went sporting
on one occasion in Western Africa. A turtle was caught, and on being
hauled into the canoe the man “welcomed him by patting him on the head
and spitting down his mouth.” The turtles, however, are not always so
submissive as Mr. Kane’s buffalo-calf; for the fisherman showed Mr.
Reade a scar on his arm, which a turtle had once inflicted in
retribution.[269.2] Exactly the same prescription is adopted by the
Icelandic parson to lay a ghost. He spits down his throat, or in his
face; and the performance is said to be effective.[269.3]
In some of the foregoing illustrations protection against the Evil
Eye, or the driving away of evil spirits, has appeared as the reason
for spitting. The habit is one almost universal as a counter-charm to
witchcraft. If we look at it a little more closely we shall see that
it is ultimately {270} referable to the same idea as other spitting
customs, namely, that of effecting union between the person spitting
and the object on which his saliva falls. This may be done by spitting
upon one’s clothes, money, or other property, so as to guard them
against attack, as in the case of the gamester’s money or his chair.
In Chester County, Pennsylvania, Dr. Brinton records that boys always
used to spit on a pair of new boots; and it was important to prevent
others from doing the same: hence frequent struggles and teasing at
school.[270.1] The superstition is derived from Europe, where Reginald
Scot prescribed, centuries ago, and Pliny centuries before him,
spitting into the right shoe before putting it on: a similar practice
to that said to be still in use in some parts of Scandinavia of
spitting into one’s bed before lying down, spitting upon the floor
before rising, upon the grass before sitting down, or into a spring
before drinking from it.[270.2] Captain Binger’s host in one of the
villages on the tributaries of the upper Niger never put on his
trousers without spitting into them, and never sat down without
spitting on the seat.[270.3] A Clal-lum of North America on meeting an
enemy will spit into his own blanket if he happen to be wearing one at
the time.[270.4] In the same way a maiden in Theocritus, on repelling
a lover who attempted to kiss her, spat thrice in the breast of her
gown.[270.5] Pliny describes the Roman practice of spitting into the
lap as a method of asking pardon of the gods, when indulging in some
extravagant hope. It is {271} more probably to be assigned to the kind
of superstitions we are now dealing with. In the same chapter he
mentions the practice of spitting into one’s urine as a
counter-charm.[271.1] Parallel with the latter practice is that
alluded to by Delrio of spitting thrice on one’s hair-combings before
throwing them away.[271.2] In various parts of Italy, if a stone
become lodged in a horse’s hoof, it is usual to take the precaution of
spitting on it before throwing it away.[271.3] In addition to the
Scandinavian customs just mentioned we also find those of spitting on
throwing water out of doors, of spitting on the straw worn in the shoe
before throwing it away, into the bath-water of a new-born child, into
the water in which another has washed before washing in it oneself (a
practice not unknown in England) and others all referable to the same
purpose.[271.4] The Transylvanian Saxons used to spit on the four
corners of a new house, saying a prayer at each corner and kissing it;
and to protect their belongings from envy they spit and repeat a
certain spell every morning on stepping out over the threshold of the
house.[271.5] In Silesia it is proper to spit into the fodder given to
a horse, so as to protect it from witchcraft.[271.6] In Lesbos it is
customary to spit on beholding a handsome person (man or woman), a
sleek, well-fed horse, cow or sheep, a good milch-goat, or a fruitful
tree, {272} in order to preserve the object in question from the Evil
Eye.[272.1] In America a Negro, on turning back in a path, makes a
cross with his foot and spits in it, lest misfortune overtake him the
next time he passes that way.[272.2]
Another course is to spit on the witch. For this cause the Romans used
to spit on meeting not only a lame man, but apparently also an
epileptic; for although Pliny speaks of the latter habit as intended
to repel contagion, it is more likely a modification of an earlier
habit of spitting on the unfortunate person. In Sicily still it is the
custom to spit behind a hunchback or a sorcerer. A mother will spit at
any one who admires her child, the moment he has turned his back. And
when a woman is in the pains of childbirth, one of her attendant
friends will go to the window and spit thrice, looking sternly all
about, as if she hoped to find and reach with her saliva the witch who
is retarding delivery. The Roman nurses used to spit on the ground
when a stranger entered, or when any one looked at their sleeping
charges.[272.3] A Russian nurse, with less civilised manners, is said
to spit straight in the face of anybody who praises the babe without
adding: “God save the bargain!”[272.4] In Corsica a bewitched child is
made to spit in the witch’s mouth.[272.5] It is a Norse custom to spit
on meeting a witch. In the Gironde people sometimes spit thrice in
passing a witch’s dwelling. In Germany there seems to be a similar
practice when passing any haunted water by night. The Romans spat when
passing a place where they had incurred any danger. The intention here
is by spitting on the evil thing so to bring it on your side as to
prevent its doing you {273} any ill; and the same may be conjectured
of the incident said to occur in a Russian tale where the Devil is
made to flee by spitting upwards, and of the rite of exorcism on the
Gaboon, where the practitioner spits to right and left of the
possessed person. The Conibos of South America spit on the ground when
they meet evil spirits or persons whom they suppose capable of
injuring them.[273.1]
A third course is to get the witch to spit on her victim. This is
considered effective in the Aran Islands, where the possessor of an
evil eye is required to spit on any one whom he may have affected, and
to say: “God bless you!”[273.2] Captain Bourke mentions a Mexican case
where a horse was suffering from the Evil Eye. “The man accused of
casting the spell admitted his guilt, but said that he would cure the
animal at once. He filled his mouth with water, spat upon the horse’s
neck, and rubbed and patted the place until it was dry.” The horse
recovered in due course.[273.3] For the same reason in Italy the dust
of the witch’s footprint is flung over the person or cattle bewitched,
and the Persians scrape the mud from the sorcerer’s shoes and rub the
part affected.[273.4] The principle is that of taking “a hair of the
dog that bit you,” to which I have already sufficiently referred.
The saliva of sacred personages, as we might expect, is of much
importance. In this connection the performances of Christian as well
as heathen priests in exorcism and {274} other rites will be
remembered. The Tunguz shaman, called in to cure a sick man, “takes
the patient’s head between his hands, sucks his brow, spits in his
face, and fixedly looks at the affected part.”[274.1] A Tcheremiss
conjuror pronounces his spells over a vessel of water, beer, milk or
salt and bread, blows or spits upon the contents, and then gives them
to the invalid to drink or eat, as the case may be.[274.2] In Central
Australia the old men are the performers of all important tribal
ceremonies. They are credited with shamanistic powers; and their
treatment of disease is by spurting a mouthful of water over the
stricken member and then sucking it.[274.3] On the Paraguay River, the
Guaná medicine-man, when called to attend a patient, spits in the
course of his ceremonies strenuously on the suffering spot.[274.4]
Spitting, in fact, when performed by properly qualified practitioners,
is a powerful remedy. Vespasian is said to have restored his sight to
an inhabitant of Alexandria by spitting on his eyes.[274.5] The old
thaumaturgists of the Church were not wont to be outdone by any
one--not even by their Lord, still less by a heathen Pontifex Maximus.
Accordingly, we find Hilarion (the saint, it will be recollected, who
had so excellent a nose) repeating Vespasian’s miracle on a woman,
also in Egypt.[274.6] More purely spiritual are some other uses of
spitting. At Foochow, in China, when a family removes to a house
previously occupied {275} by another family, a priest first of all
cleanses the dwelling by spirting water from his mouth, or scattering
it direct from the bowl he carries; and on returning from a funeral
the priest stands at the house-door and spirts from his mouth water
over the members of the bereaved family to purify them, repeating as
he does so a short formula.[275.1] Among the Khonds the Meriah,
previous to his sacrifice, was paraded through the village, when hairs
were plucked from his head by the people, while some begged for a drop
of his saliva, with which they anointed their own heads.[275.2] Dr.
Wolf, when in Abyssinia, being mistaken for the new Abuna, or bishop,
was compelled to spit upon the people, and to have his feet washed
that the devotees might drink the water of ablution.[275.3] Cases like
these are ambiguous: a different and simpler interpretation may be put
upon them. In view, however, of other customs relating to saliva, we
shall probably not be straining the analogy by describing the
fundamental idea rather as the desire for union with the divinity,
than the ascription of an inherent power to his emanations.
Having now sketched the results arrived at by Professor Robertson
Smith and other distinguished anthropologists in reference to the
blood-covenant, and briefly discussed several forms of the rite, I
have endeavoured to put before {276} the reader a series of parallel
usages with saliva. This has led us to other superstitions more
closely related to those of sorcery, medicine and worship earlier
passed in review. In all these alike we have found the same ideas--the
ideas, namely, which form the core of the incident of the Life-token
and the practices it embodies. Armed with the conclusions drawn from
the consideration of the blood-covenant, we will go on to examine some
other social institutions and ceremonies on various planes of
civilisation.