CHAPTER XV.

THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE

BLOOD-TIE--CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE

LIFE-TOKEN.

{400}

In the last three chapters we have discussed some savage customs

founded on the belief that the members of a kin are parts of an entire

body and connected with one another by an indissoluble tie, so long as

they remain members of that body and are not cut off by formal

expulsion or renunciation, either with or without union to another

similar body. Many other practices are derived from the same notion. I

select a few of them for notice in the present chapter.

Prominent among them is the custom to which the name of the Couvade

has been given: a name too deeply rooted now to be changed, albeit one

founded on a mistake as to the use of the word and a limitation,

untenable on scientific grounds, though inevitable in the then state

of our knowledge, to certain remarkable developments of the usage. Dr.

Tylor was the first to examine the custom in a critical manner. Since

the publication of his _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_,

it has been considered by numerous anthropologists, notably by Dr.

Ploss, Dr. {401} Wilken, Mr. im Thurn, and more recently by Dr. von

Dargun and Mr. Ling Roth; while Dr. J. A. H. Murray in his letters to

_The Academy_ has once for all disposed of the evidence for its

existence in modern Europe and for the use of the word by the

Béarnese, or by any French writers of authority, as a technical term

in describing the alleged Béarnese custom. Mr. Ling Roth’s

comprehensive paper on the subject happily relieves me from the

necessity of dealing with it at length here.[401.1]

The Couvade as generally explained is the custom which requires the

father of a child, immediately after its birth, to lie-in as if he

were a woman in childbed, while his wife, who has actually given birth

to the babe, goes about her ordinary work, and of course waits upon

her husband in his feigned sickness. But this definition is inadequate

and misleading. In order to attain a true conception of the custom it

is not enough to limit our observation to a small number of cases and

in those cases to regard only the most prominent phenomena, because

they strike us as the most ridiculous. We must clear our minds of the

notion that the father takes the mother’s place, in the sense, at all

events, that he is made to undergo the treatment she is entitled to,

and at her expense. Whether from living a more active and open-air

life than her more civilised sisters, or from physical causes more

deeply seated, the ease with which a savage woman gives birth is much

more like that of a wild beast. She will often deliver herself without

aid; and, subject to the ceremonial rules of the tribe concerning

{402} uncleanness, in a very little time she is ready to return to her

usual occupations. Simulation of her sufferings, not to say disregard

of them, by the husband is therefore in most cases out of the

question.

Moreover, the lying-in of the husband, so far as it can be so termed,

is only part of a large number of observances, by which he is bound,

in the more fully developed forms of the custom, from the moment his

wife conceives, or occasionally before, until the child is able to

speak, or to digest the usual food of the tribe; and in many of these

observances both before and after childbirth the wife is included;

while she on her part is bound by other observances of a similar

character. Thus, Signor Modigliani, sojourning with a native of Nias

whose wife was in “an interesting condition,” was the innocent cause

of an amusing domestic squabble. For his host in leaving his room one

day stepped across the traveller’s outspread legs. This was a serious

matter, because it was apt to cause misfortune to the unborn child.

The wife did not fail to remind her imprudent husband of his folly,

and carried her anger to such a height that he was glad to flee from

the blows administered by means of the firewood intended for the

domestic hearth. Nor was the quarrel made up without a gift from the

traveller of one of his bags of rice. While staying at the house

Signor Modigliani frequently obtained from the natives by barter

serpents for his collection; and this was a continual cause of

difficulties to his host, who was divided between his curiosity and

desire to assist at the transaction on the one side, and on the other

his dread of the consequences of seeing a dead snake--consequences

only to be averted by running away at once to find and burn a living

one. At length, however, Signor Modigliani {403} convinced him that it

would be enough, when he found a snake, to seize it and simulate

burning by passing it over a fire kindled for the purpose, and then to

kill it in some other manner, as by suffocating it in alcohol for

scientific purposes. Other acts too the Niasese father-expectant must

avoid, as talking with Malays or Chinese, lest the child be unable to

speak his own tongue, splitting a piece of wood or the _atap_-leaves

wherewith the houses are roofed, lest the infant be born with harelip,

eating of a pig found dead, lest the fœtus be born without attaining

proper development, killing or cutting up chickens or pigs, lest the

babe feel the wounds, eating of the great beetles of which the natives

are very fond, lest the little one catch a cough. As reported by other

travellers, both parents must abstain before the birth from some of

these acts, as well as from passing over a spot where a man has been

murdered, or a buffalo slain, or where a dog has been burnt for the

purpose of giving effect to certain imprecations, else the child will

be affected by the contortions of the dying man or beast. Nor dare

they build a house, or thatch it, nor drive nails; and before breaking

tobacco or siri it must be drawn out of the bag which contains it, or

the babe cannot be born. They look in no mirror or bamboo-tube, lest

the child squint. They eat no _bujuwu_ (a kind of bird) or owl, lest

he croak or whoop instead of speaking. They touch no monkey, lest the

infant get eyes and forehead like a monkey’s. They enter no house

where a corpse lies, else he will die. They eat of no pig killed for a

funeral feast, lest he get the itch. They plant no _pisang_-trees,

lest he suffer from ulcers. The consequence of eating a certain fish

or striking a snake is indigestion to the child, of expressing or

boiling-out oil is headache to him, of passing {404} over a place

struck by lightning is to make his body black, of firing a field for

agricultural purposes, or throwing salt into the pig’s food, or of

swearing, is sickness to him; and to eat out of the vessel in which

the food is cooked is to cause the babe to adhere to the

after-birth.[404.1]

This long list exhausts not the prohibitions in force on the island of

Nias; but we may treat it as a sample not merely for that one island

but for many other places, and pass on to a few instances of rules

imposed at and after the time of delivery. On the Melanesian island of

Saa, both before and after the birth, the father “will not eat pig’s

flesh, and he abstains from movements which are believed to do harm,

upon the principle that the father’s movements affect those of the

child. A man will not do hard work; he keeps quiet lest the child

should start, should overstrain itself, or should throw itself about

as he paddles.” In the Banks’ Islands when the child is born both

parents eat only what it could digest. “After the birth of the first

child, the father does no heavy work for a month; after the birth of

any of his children he takes care not to go into those sacred places

into which the child could not go without risk.” In the New Hebrides

“he does work in looking after his wife and child, but he must not eat

shell-fish and other produce of the beach, for the infant would suffer

from ulcers if he did. In Lepers’ Island the father is very careful

for ten days; he does no work, will not climb a tree, or go far into

the sea to bathe, for if he exert himself the child will

suffer.”[404.2] Turning to the American continent, we will take the

report of the latest traveller in the interior of Brazil, Dr. Karl von

den Steinen. Here let it be noted that the father is so far {405} from

imitating childbed, that the mother is, all over South America,

usually delivered on the ground, whereas the father lies in his

hammock. So it is among the Schingù Indians visited by Dr. von den

Steinen. Their opinion was that the father lay in the hammock because

he was obliged to fast, and that he took care of the child because he

was obliged to remain at home, while the mother went out to her work,

rather than from any intention to simulate the natural conduct of the

mother. The father it is who cuts the navel-string; and he is not a

free man until the string falls off the child. By these and other

American peoples fish, flesh and fruit are tabooed to the father

expressly on the ground that for him to eat them is all one as if the

babe itself ate them. Among the Ipurina he is forbidden to taste

tapir-flesh or pork for a whole year. On the other hand, what very

much astonished the worthy apothecary of the Brazilian military

colony, the Bororó father, when his child is sick, is in the habit of

himself taking the medicine provided for the patient. The Bororó

father and mother eat nothing for two days after the birth; and on the

third day they may only take warm water: if the father ate anything

both he and the infant would sicken. The mother, though she attends to

her work, must not bathe until her menstruation has returned. The

Paressí parents remain in the hut for five days, until the

navel-string falls off; and the father is only allowed to taste water

mingled with _beijú_, otherwise the baby would die.[405.1] The

humorous accounts of the practice among the Tamanacs and Abipones,

quoted at length by Dr. Tylor from the Abate Gilij and the Jesuit

missionary Dobrizhoffer, need only be referred to here to emphasise

the reason given in {406} both cases, namely, that the abstinence

described is for the benefit of the offspring. To partake of certain

food, to kill any animal, to sneeze, or to commit some other act,

would injure the little one.

Readers who have followed the facts and arguments in the earlier

chapters of this volume set forth will have no difficulty in arriving

at the true interpretation of the usage. It is founded on the belief

that the child is a part of the parent; and, just as even after

apparent severance of hair or nails from the remainder of the body,

the bulk is affected by anything which happens to the severed portion,

so as well after as before the infant has been severed from the

parent’s body, and in our eyes has acquired a distinct existence, he

will be affected by whatever operates on the parent; and, conversely,

the parent will feel whatever happens to him, as in some parts of

England a mother absent for a while from her child is believed to feel

her breasts painful when he cries.[406.1] The separation is only in

appearance; the connection is preserved in spite of it. Hence whatever

the parent ought for the child’s sake to do or avoid before severance

it is equally necessary to do or avoid after. Gradually, however, as

the infant grows and strengthens he becomes able to digest the same

food as his parents, and to take part in the ordinary avocations of

their lives. Precaution then may be relaxed, and ultimately remitted

altogether. But the observance is attended with inconveniences. The

parents’ labour is required in hunting, in agriculture, in warfare, in

all the various ways in which the {407} life of a household or of a

tribe is maintained. The custom therefore is liable to gradual

diminution. It is worn away slowly, and compressed into a shorter

period. With the tardy and half-unconscious recognition of natural

laws it loses bit by bit its importance, until it fades away into

little more than a ceremony. In spite of decay, however, and indeed in

consequence of it, it may acquire another significance; and among a

few tribes, as, for example, the Mundurucus, it becomes “the legal

form by which the father recognises the child as his.” This result

would have the effect of renewing its vitality. The change of

intention is rare, and where the custom is found in its fullest

development it is unknown. Accordingly, I venture with all respect to

think it is a mistake to see in this legal form the origin of the

Couvade, as Dr. Tylor has done, plausible though the explanation

seems. Its origin really lies deeper; it lies in the widely pervasive

conception of life I have endeavoured to exhibit in these chapters on

the Life-token.

This mode of accounting for the practice may seem defective in that it

fails to explain the martyrdom suffered by the Carib father, as

detailed by Du Tertre. After the unfortunate father has endured a

course of fasting for forty days the relatives and best friends, we

are told, are invited to a feast, which they preface by scarifying him

with agouti-teeth, and then having mashed in water sixty or eighty

grains of strong pimento, or Indian pepper, they wash his wounds with

the infusion. Not a sound, however, must be drawn from him by his

agony, if he would not be deemed a coward and despised by all.[407.1]

In like manner, among the aboriginal inhabitants of Celebes, if the

first-born be a son the mother bathes the child in the nearest

water-course, while the {408} father, fully armed and dressed in his

finest garb, awaits her return. In his turn he then goes to bathe, and

when he steps out of the water his neighbours are waiting for him to

beat him with reeds all the way back to his dwelling. On arriving

there, he seizes his bow and shoots three reed arrows over the hut,

saying: “I wish much happiness to my son: may he grow up to be a

valiant man.”[408.1] I do not know whether the Carib ceremony was

performed on the birth of a girl, but the Minahassee ceremony is

entirely omitted; and the extreme severities of the Carib fast were at

all events confined to the first child. The object of the Minahassee

father is unquestionable; and from it we may infer that of the Carib.

In his person his son undergoes the first tests of his endurance,

valour and skill. Success in this is doubtless the guarantee of the

child’s courage and of his value to the tribe as hunter and warrior.

If this be so, the Carib tortures, it is evident, spring from the same

root as other observances comprehended under the general name of the

Couvade. Both in the Carib and Minahassee forms we find the tendency

to emphasise the birth of the first child, or perhaps I should rather

say, to relax the requirements in the case of after-born children. The

tendency is not to be looked upon as a recognition of heirship, but as

one arising naturally in the course of ceremonial decay. The first

child is the most important; for it is a pledge of the continuance of

the family or kindred, and brings very often an accession of honour,

or at least of consideration, to its parents. Among peoples where

conjugal fidelity is imperfectly developed, moreover, it is the one of

whose parentage the father is best assured, and consequently the one

on whose health and strength his {409} conduct will be likely, if not

certain, to have influence. Thus the motives for the care of the

offspring, and therefore for the special observance of all

precautions, concentrate upon the first child; and if the custom be

found irksome, or for any other reason be liable to loosen its hold,

it will generally continue to be fully observed in respect of the

first child, long after it has begun to fall into neglect on

subsequent births.

The racial and geographical distribution of the practice is a more

difficult question than it might at first sight appear, considering

the number of authorities who have examined it. If we limit not the

definition of the Couvade to the cases where the father actually lies

down, but extend it, as it seems proper to do, to all those where he

has before as well as after the birth to observe various taboos, in

which the mother is often included--then we may find either the custom

itself or relics of it over the greater part of the world. America,

inhabited by a homogeneous race, displays it everywhere, even among

the Eskimos of Greenland, save apparently in Tierra del Fuego. On the

eastern continent Mr. Ling Roth puts the matter somewhat strongly when

he says that it “is only met with in isolated and widely separated

localities.” In Australia it is unknown; nor is there any record of it

among the extinct Tasmanians. Summing up the facts, the same writer

says: “The custom does not appear to exist or to have existed among

those people to whom the term ‘most _degraded_’ is erroneously

applied, people which were better described as savages living in the

lowest known forms of culture, such as the Australians, Tasmanians,

Bushmen, Hottentots, Veddahs, Sakeys, Aetas, and Fuegians. Neither

does the custom exist among the so-called civilised portion of

mankind. In {410} other words, Couvade appears at first sight to be

limited to peoples who hold an intermediate position between those in

the highest and those in [the] lowest states of culture. As such it

may be said to represent an intermediate or transition state of mental

development.”

We have no need to be surprised that the Couvade is not found in the

lowest stage of savagery. The reckoning of kinship through the mother

only, and the stories and superstitions which attribute impregnation

to other causes than coition, point alike to an imperfect recognition

in archaic times of the natural fact of fatherhood. It may further be

suggested that where the claim of a father upon his child is still

rather that of owner than of begetter, the recognition of the

counter-claim of the child upon the father, and the application as

between father and child of the belief underlying and directing other

magical practices, will not yet have developed. It is probable,

indeed, that the customs we include under the generic name of the

Couvade would begin with the mother, and that when the fact of

paternity was completely recognised, although legal kinship may not

yet have come to be reckoned through the father, they would be

extended to him. Their disappearance as men advanced in civilisation

would, like that of all other customs, be a gradual one; and if they

had become at all general we should be likely to discover relics of

them among nations in the higher ranks of culture. Accordingly,

although there is no authentic record of the existence of the

masculine childbed in modern Europe, a number yet lingers of

superstitions only referable to the Couvade. For example, just as in

the island of Celebes we found the Minahassee father performing a rite

intended to secure to his son the qualities of bravery and skill, so

among the Esthonians the {411} father runs rapidly round the church

during the baptismal service, that his child may be endowed with

swiftness of foot.[411.1] In Altmark the mother busily reads her Bible

and hymn-book while the child is being baptized, so that he may be

able to learn easily; and with the same object the godparents must

repeat together after the minister the passages from the Bible he

brings into his exhortation.[411.2] The husband among the mixed

population of East Prussia seems to have been limited in his choice of

drink while his wife was lying-in.[411.3] Over a wide area of the

Continent the mother is allowed to do very little work before her

churching. In Altmark she must not spin; for in spinning she will wet

her finger with her saliva, and that will cause the babe to

slaver.[411.4] The reason assigned in Switzerland for a similar taboo

is that she will spin the material for a rope for her child.[411.5] At

the baptismal feast in Altmark the mother must taste of all the dishes

if she wish the infant to thrive.[411.6] Galician Jews permit no

member of a household where there is a young child to stay out after

sunset, else the little one will be deprived of its rest.[411.7] In

the last illustration we have an extension of the superstition beyond

the immediate parents--an extension of which there are traces among

savage peoples, like the Abipones, who are reported to have put other

relatives as well as the parents upon restricted diet during a baby’s

illness.

An interesting form of this extension has been referred to by Dr.

Tylor in the third edition of the important work {412} in which he

discusses the Couvade, where he notes that in Germany “it is believed

that the habits and proceedings of the godfather and godmother affect

the child’s life and character. Particularly, the godfather at the

christening must not think of disease or madness lest this come upon

the child; he must not look round on the way to church lest the child

should grow up an idle stare-about; nor must he carry a knife about

him for fear of making the child a suicide; the godmother must put on

a clean shift to go to the baptism, or the baby will grow up untidy,

etc. etc.”[412.1] I have already mentioned another instance from a

land which, to-day at all events, is German in language and polity.

There the duty of godparents is exactly parallel with that prescribed

for the mother. So too it is held in the Erzgebirge and in Thuringia

that the godfather must eat of all the dishes at the feast, for the

babe will get a dislike to those left untasted; and in Thuringia he

must not only not look about him in returning from church, but he must

hasten back to the house, that the child may learn the sooner to

run.[412.2] In the Sollingerwald each of the godparents must hold the

babe for a little while; but the youngest of them presents it at the

font, doubtless to ensure it a longer life.[412.3] In the Upper

Palatinate even the priest’s conduct at the baptism will affect the

child. If he stumble or stutter during the reading of the service,

{413} the consequences are serious: the boy will become silly, the

girl a nightmare; or if he leave a word out, the infant will never

rest quietly in bed, but will be found feet uppermost. In Bohemia, the

priest in stumbling as he reads will cause the child to talk in its

sleep.[413.1] In the province of Posen, forgetfulness or mistake on

the part of the priest results as in the Palatinate; and the only

remedy is rebaptism.[413.2] The superstition, as we see, is not

confined to Germany, though it may be more fully developed there than

elsewhere; and without delaying upon examples drawn from Germany and

Germanised lands, I proceed to cite a few from other countries before

closing what I have to say on the Couvade. Among the Huzules, to have

a Gipsy as godparent is to be lucky in horse-breeding and

horse-dealing; and by the same people it is considered that if there

be a difficulty in putting out the godparents’ candles after the

service, the little newly made Christian will have a long life.[413.3]

The peasantry of the Valsesia at the foot of Monte Rosa deem that if

the godparents do not recite the creed with a clear voice the little

one will stammer all its life. And whoever carries it to the church to

be baptized must on no account look back, or the babe will always be

timid and easily frightened.[413.4] In Provence on the other side of

the Alps, as well as in Germany and Belgium, the opinion is widely

prevalent that the child will resemble, morally and physically, his

godparents. Hence great anxiety as to the choice of these important

personages. They must be healthy in mind and body, and without any

physical defect; for if either of them should be one-eyed, a

stammerer, bandy-legged or a hunchback, nobody, in Provence at least,

doubts {414} that the poor baby would suffer the like

misfortune.[414.1] In Central France, if a godfather wish his godson

to become an excellent and indefatigable singer, he has a ready way to

realise the wish; for he has only to set the bells ringing full peal

during the baptismal service, and the longer and more vigorously they

dance and swell, the more skilful will the neophyte become in striking

up an air or in leading a jig. The godfather, however, must not forget

on leaving the church to imprint a chaste kiss on both cheeks of the

godmother, else there is too much reason to fear the boy will grow up

dumb, or at least a stammerer.[414.2] In the _arrondissement_ of

Corte, on the island of Corsica, if either of the sponsors forgets a

single word in reciting the creed, the child becomes a wizard or

witch, or else a _mortolaio_, that is to say, a ghost-seer.[414.3] The

latter result also follows in Friuli;[414.4] while the Irish peasantry

hold that if either of the sponsors fails to repeat _verbatim_ after

the priest the prayers and promises, the child will always have the

power to see fairies or ghosts--which is reckoned unfortunate.[414.5]

Among the Walloons the omission by the priest of certain of the

sacramental words seems to have a similar effect.[414.6] It is a

superstition scattered over a large part of Italy that if the priest

make any mistake in the baptismal service, or omit to comply with

every ritual prescription in baptizing a girl, she will become a

witch;[414.7] and that stupidity or stammering will be the consequence

of defects in the recitation {415} of the creed or prayers by the

_padrini_ is also commonly believed.[415.1]

The fact is that in the popular mind sponsorship creates a new and

real kindred between the godparent and the god-child, and not only

between the godparent and god-child, but between the godparent and the

godchild’s relations. The effect seems analogous to that of the

blood-covenant. Among the wandering Gipsies of southern Hungary a rite

similar to that of the blood-covenant is actually performed. The day

when the child’s hair is first cut is kept as a festival. The

godparents let some drops of their blood fall into a glass of brandy

and some on a small piece of bread. The father then pours the brandy

on the child’s head and crumbles the bread upon it, “that the child

may grow and thrive.” In the same way when the tortures of the Carib

father came to an end, the infant was sprinkled with some drops of

blood from his wounds, with the object, we are told, of imparting his

courage and spirit. So, too, some of the wandering Gipsies of northern

Hungary wrap the babe after its birth in rags bedropt with some of the

father’s blood.[415.2] The object in all these cases is to unite the

child in the closest bond with the person whose blood is shed. Even

where that person is the father himself the rite may perhaps be

regarded as a formal adoption into the kin. More likely it is intended

to promote the growth and health of the child by renewing the

corporeal union already in existence by virtue of the natural

blood-tie, or of the equivalent mystical bond forged, as between

sponsor and child, by the sacrament of baptism. It would then

correspond to one of those periodical renewals {416} of

blood-brotherhood which we have dealt with on a former page. Some

countenance is perhaps given to this suggestion by a practice of the

Southern Slavs. The relationship of godfather and godchild is often

created among them by the formal cutting of the child’s hair, as it

seems also to have been among the ancient Germans. The ceremony can

only take place once. The godfather cuts the hair in the form of a

cross and drops it into a cup of water, into which he puts some money

as a gift for the child; and the parent then entertains him at a feast

and presents him with gifts in return. As the ceremony is not

distinctive of any religious denomination, Christian and Moslem do not

scruple to enter into the relationship of hair-cutting sponsorship

with one another. It unites the families in ties so close as to

involve them in one another’s blood-feuds; and a Moslem woman unveils

before her child’s godfather, though a stranger and even a Christian.

But, important as are the social and political effects of such an

institution, it is not to them that I desire specially to direct

attention in this connection; rather I desire to compare it with the

Gipsy practices just mentioned. It is in great request in Bosnia as

remedial treatment for a sickly child. The child is taken to a

crossway; and the first passer-by is expected to cut the hair and thus

become godfather.[416.1] Here it is surely intended to enter into a

new corporeal union with an entire stranger, and so acquire a fresh

stock of health. The objection to this explanation is that the

godparent does not seem to take the hair away with him. I do not know

if we can suppose that the ceremony has undergone deterioration, and

that this part {417} of the proceeding has been lost because its exact

reason has been forgotten. I am unable otherwise to account for it. In

any case it is unquestionable that the relationship of gossipry in

many countries is fully as intimate and sacred as that of blood.

Amongst the Southern Slavs, we know, a godfather or an adoptive

brother is often the person chosen in preference to any one, even a

natural brother, to fill the delicate office of _brautführer_ at a

wedding. The Huzules regard sponsors as veritable additions to the

family circle. They never choose them from among their neighbours; for

there is often strife between neighbours; and strife between gossips,

or persons related by the bond of sponsorship, would be a sin.[417.1]

In some parts of Italy the godmother drinks at the baptismal feast out

of the same cup with the mother:[417.2] clear evidence of the intimacy

of their union.

One consequence of the relationship thus created is the prohibition of

intermarriage. In comparatively early times the Church took over from

the Roman law the interdiction of marriage between persons who were

only akin by adoption. That interdiction was the direct and necessary

result of the recognition of adoption as constituting a true kinship.

The analogy of sponsorship at the font was too great to be overlooked;

and in following the prohibition into the relationship between persons

by this new tie the Church was merely reflecting the opinion of the

people, who saw in it a fresh and solemn form of the adoption to which

they had been accustomed from the days of savagery. Their horror of

such marriages wherever sponsorship is yet a living reality may be

illustrated by the superstition recorded in Berri not many years ago,

that the fruit of the {418} union was not children but hairy monsters,

which when disengaged from their mother’s womb would instantly take

refuge under the bed, and when thence dislodged with a pitchfork would

fly to the hearth, and after grinning and mowing at their persecutors

for a while from the pot-hook above the hearth would eventually

disappear, to the relief of every one, up the chimney.[418.1]

The custom of Adoption seems to have arisen with the appearance of the

true family. The mode of admission into a totem-kin is by the

blood-covenant, and the neophyte becomes a blood-brother. But when the

smaller circle of the family emerges, containing only the parents and

their descendants either by monogamic or polygynic marriage, adoption

by the head of the family of a child from without is found a

convenient means of recruiting its numbers. For a long time adoption

into the family goes on side by side with admission by blood-covenant

into the kin. The object of both rites, though similar, is not

identical, inasmuch as the bodies into which admission is obtained are

not the same. The blood-covenant, therefore, is not ousted by

adoption, and only tends to disappear with the abandonment of the

clan-organisation. In fact, in the custom of Adoptive Brotherhood it

has continued among the Slavs to the present day. Adoption seems to

attain its greatest strength where what we may term legal kinship is

reckoned only on one side, whether through the father only or the

mother only. When legal kinship comes to coincide with natural kinship

the circle of the kin widens, and the organisation of society changes,

so as to render less needful the strengthening of the family by adding

artificially to its numbers; testamentary rights come into existence;

the {419} feeling of natural kinship dominates the legal idea; and

kinship by adoption ultimately vanishes. For this reason Adoption is

unknown to the English law, and the same may probably be said of other

modern nations, notwithstanding their ancestors may have practised it,

even where their law is an ancient system, adapted from time to time

to the development of national requirements, and not based upon a

revolutionary subversion of older institutions.

The ceremony of Adoption is sometimes found as a simulation of the act

of birth, at other times as suckling or a simulation of suckling.

Diodorus relates a legend of the adoption of Herakles by Hera which

doubtless exhibits the ceremony as practised by the prehistoric

Greeks. The scene, it will be remembered, is laid in Heaven; for it

was to make things agreeable there after the hero’s apotheosis that

Zeus persuaded his jealous and vindictive consort to take this course.

We are told that Hera having gone to bed, Herakles was brought close

to her body, in order to imitate a real birth; and she then dropped

him down from under her clothes to the ground. The writer adds that

even in his own day this was the rite of adoption observed by the

barbarians;[419.1] nor have we any reason to disbelieve him, seeing

that it is still practised by the Turks in Bosnia. In Dalmatia the man

who intends to adopt a son (the ceremony is the same if it be

performed by a woman) girds the son with one end of his girdle and

himself with the other, saying in the presence of witnesses: “This is

my son. I make over to him after my life my whole property.” A

Slavonic folksong represents an empress as taking the son {420} to be

adopted into the palace and passing him through her silken vest that

he might be called her heart’s child.[420.1] Here we are reminded of a

mediæval usage at weddings in France and Germany. In the former

country a canopy, or veil, was (and perhaps still is) held suspended

over the heads of the pair to be married while the service is being

performed. It bears the significant name of _abrifou_, or

fool-shelter. The Hessian practice, now extinct, was more picturesque.

The bridegroom wore a large black mantle; and as he stood with his

bride before the altar he flung with one strong sweep its ample folds

around her, so that both of them were covered by it. If the bride, or

her husband, had any child, born before marriage, and she took it

there and then under the canopy or the mantle, this act was sufficient

to render it legitimate.[420.2] The same usage may once have prevailed

in England; for a belief is said to have lingered into recent times

among “the folk” here that a mother might legitimate her children born

before marriage, by taking them under her clothes during the

ceremony.[420.3] Though the object of the practice is said to be

legitimation, the rite is that of adoption. Legitimation and Adoption

are in this connection convertible terms.

Elsewhere suckling is represented in the rite. Sir John Lubbock

mentions that “in Circassia the woman offered her breast to the person

she was adopting.” This was probably the form among the ancient

Egyptians. At all {421} events, they esteemed the milk-tie a very

sacred one;[421.1] as did the ancient Irish, with whom, and with the

Scandinavians, fosterage had a sanctity equal, if not superior, to the

tie of blood, without, however, involving the renunciation of the

original kin.[421.2] At the present time at Kambât, in the Eastern

Horn of Africa, the son to be adopted sucks blood from the breast of

his adoptive father.[421.3] In Abyssinia, “if a man wishes to be

adopted as the son of one of superior station or influence, he takes

his hand, and, sucking one of his fingers, declares himself to be his

‘child by adoption,’ and his new father is bound to assist him as far

as he can.”[421.4]

In general, the effect of Adoption was to transfer the adopted child

from his own family to that of the adoptive parent. At Rome the rite

included the _detestatio sacrorum_, or relinquishment of the original

household, and the _transitio in sacra_, or initiation into the new

worship. By these means the child was discharged from his natural

family and received into the new one.[421.5] The change of worship is,

in that plane of civilisation where the custom of adoption is most

fully developed, of the essence of the proceeding. Its very object

often is to preserve the ancestral cult by artificially providing

persons to carry it on. This is the most prominent idea in the _Laws

of Manu_.[421.6] Annexed to the ancestral cult was the inheritance.

Whosoever performed the one was entitled to the other, or {422} at

least to a share in the other. In course of time, as the duty decayed

and ceased to be acknowledged, the rights of property remained: an

excellent precedent for the English House of Lords in insisting on the

rights of property while looking askance at its duties. The adopted

child is in fact regarded exactly as a natural-born child; he obtains

all the privileges, and is charged with all the duties, restrictions

and disabilities of a natural-born child. He becomes of one flesh with

his new parents and their other offspring, whether natural or adopted.

He is entitled to support, to maintenance in his quarrels, to

protection, to his fair and equal share of the inheritance. He is

liable to obedience, to maintain the family quarrels, to assist in

paying the family debts and obligations, to unite in the family

worship; and he is debarred from marrying all whom the members of his

adopted family are restricted from marrying. As a consequence,

adoption can only take place with the assent of both families, or of a

council of elders or some more formal tribunal on behalf of the

community. Such a tribunal exercises the functions, not merely of

judge of the propriety of the adoption, but also of the necessary

witness to its validity. And if we do not find the formality always

complied with in the punctilious manner of the Roman law, we may

usually trace it with greater or less distinctness wherever the custom

of adoption has obtained.[422.1]

Passing, with this hasty sketch of Adoption, away from {423} the inner

circle of family relationships, let us look at one or two aspects of

the wider clan-life, illustrating the strength of the blood-tie.

“The birth-ties of kindred are reckoned the only strong ones,” says

Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, speaking of folksongs; and the

observation might be extended with hardly any qualification to every

species of tradition. The bond of blood has always proved stronger

than any other force that can sway human nature, until it encounters

the overmastering energy of one of the great world-religions, or

becomes distracted and spent amid the complexities of modern life.

Weakened as it is in Europe nowadays, it is yet not entirely

dissipated. Its claims are put forth more timidly, but they are still

within certain limits respected. To the utmost of those limits they

are still efficient instruments in the hands of the poet, the

playwright and the novelist,--and that not only on the moral side,

where we are accustomed to appeals founded upon kinship, but also on

what I may call the physical side. An unaccountable thrill, we are

told, shoots through a father who meets unwittingly a child whom he

has never seen, or has seen but for a moment long years before. This

involuntary recognition of the same blood is a convention not yet

wholly discarded by the writers who thus aim at affecting our

emotions, because it has not quite passed out of the shadowy region

bordering our clear beliefs into the limbo {424} of things that

neither prescribe our action nor convince and captivate our

imagination. But the Italian peasant, a thousand years behindhand, a

thousand leagues deeper in the realm where faith and fancy reign in

indissoluble consort on a double throne, undisturbed by the far-off

frontier raids of criticism and doubt,--the Italian peasant admits the

extreme demands of blood in the _vendetta_, and believes that when a

bottle supposed to contain a portion of the blood of Saint Januarius

“was presented to the body such joy was evinced that the blood had

nearly burst from the bottle.”[424.1] If such were the conduct of

blood severed for, say, fifteen centuries from the body of which it

had once formed part, what may not be expected of blood still flowing

in the veins of living men, themselves both parts of one body, the

kin,--blood whose stream has welled from the same fount only a

generation or so ago? In _The Book of the Pious_ by Jehuda ben Samuel

the Pious, who lived at Ratisbon about the year 1200, a story is told,

founded on the idea of the physical unity of a kindred. A rich man

died while travelling abroad, having at the time of his death a large

sum of money in his possession. The servant stole this money and gave

himself out as his master’s son. Shortly after the rich man’s

departure from home, however, a son was born to him, who, when grown

up, sought the aid of the Gaon Saadja. Saadja, it appears, was an

historical personage who flourished at Sura in the former half of the

tenth century. He advised the youth to apply to the king; and the king

commissioned Saadja to decide the matter. The Gaon, accordingly,

having the son {425} and the servant both brought before him, caused a

vein of each of them to be opened, and one of the bones of the dead

man to be fetched from his grave. He laid the bone first in the

servant’s blood, but without effect. He then laid it in the son’s

blood, which it immediately sucked up; for the bone and the blood, we

are told, were of one body. Saadja, therefore, gave judgment in favour

of the son, directing the estate to be restored to him.[425.1]

Two other examples may be given of widely sundered peoples among whom

essentially the same superstition is current. It is believed in the

west of Europe--certainly in Brittany and Flanders--that the body of

one drowned will bleed on the approach of a kinsman.[425.2] The Zulus

speak of sympathy by the navel. It is their conviction that a man will

recognise his kindred by some mysterious influence of the navel. “A

man,” they say, “knows one of his blood-relations by the navel. We

have been wondering at the treatment of the man by So-and-so. We

thought he knew him; yet he did not know him; he sympathised with him

by the navel only.”[425.3] Obviously this is the birth-tie.

The most instructive application of the doctrine that the kin is, in

much more than a metaphorical sense, one body, is to be found in the

collective responsibility of the clan. Illustrations might be cited

from every corner of the known world. But to do so would be to repeat

the same evidence, frequently in the same words, over and over again.

I shall, therefore, give only a few of the more striking instances.

I mentioned a page or two back the extreme demands of {426} blood as

found in the Italian _vendetta_. The words were only just written,

when I took up the newspaper of the day, and read an account of a

trial for murder arising out of a blood-feud in Dalmatia. The actors

in the tragedy were not Italians, but Slavs. The facts were shortly

these. Two brothers, having quarrelled with a neighbour about some

goats, threw themselves upon him with their daggers; but he defended

himself with his pistol, and, having killed one, was tried for murder.

The jury properly acquitted him, on the ground that he was only acting

in self-defence. Hardly had he left the prison when his surviving

assailant, with another brother, hastened to his house. They found

there only their foe’s wife and daughters; and they waited and

watched. Soon they espied the acquitted man’s younger brother, a boy

of fourteen, carrying a pitcher of water. Crying “The devil threw thee

in our way,” they seized him, and stabbed him so quickly that he had

no time even to cry out. They were speedily arrested, tried, found

guilty of murder, and condemned, the one to death, and the other to

eighteen years’ penal servitude. They protested against the sentence,

and appealed to the Court of Cassation at Vienna. There their counsel

had the assurance to plead that “in Dalmatia it is every man’s duty to

take vengeance where blood has been shed; and that the people feel it

right to pursue a family, one of whose members has killed a connection

of their own, as long as there is a male descendant.” This was a

little more than a civilised court of justice could stand; and it will

be no fault of the judges if the Dalmatian savages do not learn that

the unity of the kin is not a doctrine of modern jurisprudence.[426.1]

{427}

The story shows that we must regard the collective responsibility of

the clan as twofold; first looking at the offended clan, and then at

the offending. What Professor Robertson Smith points out concerning

the Semites is universally true, namely, that when a member of the

clan has been slain, the others say, not “The blood of such an one has

been spilt,” but “_Our_ blood has been spilt.” The injury is felt by

the entire body; and it is the business of the entire body to revenge

it. Conversely, not merely the man who commits the wrong is liable for

it. His whole kin is involved in the guilt, and must suffer for it

until atonement shall have been made. Colonel Ellis, writing of the

peoples of the Slave and Gold Coasts, lays down this rule in distinct

terms. “The family collectively,” he says, “is responsible for all

crimes and injuries to person or property committed by any one of its

members, and each member is assessible for a share of the compensation

to be paid. On the other hand, each member of the family receives a

share of the compensation paid to it for any crime or injury committed

against the person or property of any one of its members. Compensation

is always demanded from the family instead of from the individual

wrong-doer, and is paid to the family instead of to the individual

wronged.” And he draws attention to the resemblance of this custom of

collective responsibility and indemnification to that enunciated in

the old Welsh laws.[427.1]

Happily for mankind the blood-feud is not everywhere so relentless as

it is presented to us in Dalmatia. Even savages cannot afford to be

for ever engaged in warfare to the death; and that is what would

happen if blood were only to be wiped out by blood. The practice of

commuting {428} revenge for payment has therefore very generally

arisen. The distinction between crimes, as wrongs committed against

the State, and private injuries classed by lawyers as torts and

breaches of contract, is unknown in the lower stages of civilisation.

There was at first no State, and when the State came into existence it

was but loosely constituted. Public crimes were confined to treason

and the like: robbery and murder were nothing more than private

wrongs. Commutation for these was precisely on the same footing as for

insult or debt. It was no more unnatural to take payment for the

murder of a blood-brother than for a sheep; it no more interfered with

the course of justice or the rights of the State than the barter for a

tusk of ivory or a bag of gold-dust. To omit to pay the price of the

ivory or the gold-dust was as much a wrong against a clan to which, or

to one member of which, it was due, as to commit murder. The price of

a murder might be heavier, or it might not. But, alike, the price of

the goods or of the blood must be paid by the clan of the man indebted

or offending. To draw a line between wrongs done to the clan and

wrongs done to the individual required a much greater development, on

the one side, of the individual, on the other side, of the State, at

the expense of the clan or the family. Until that point had been

reached, whenever compensation was accepted for a wrong to the kin,

every member of the kin, as in the West African custom depicted by

Colonel Ellis, was entitled to his share; because the wrong to the kin

had reached and was shared by all. Among the Garos of Bengal,

proposals of marriage must come from the woman. If a man make the

first advances it is an insult, not to the individual woman, but to

the whole _mahári_ (literally, motherhood) or kin, “a {429} stain

only to be obliterated by the blood of pigs and liberal libations of

beer at the expense,” not of the individual offender, but of the

_mahári_ to which he belongs.[429.1] Going back to West Africa, we

find that on the river Comoe, as on the Slave Coast, where a man of

one community is indebted to a man of another community, the latter

has the right to seize the goods of any member of his debtor’s

community, on the ground that the group is collectively responsible

for the debts of its members.[429.2] Examples might be added from

every part of the globe; but they can be all summed up in the Fijian

philosophy as expressed by an old resident to Mr. Fison, while

explaining a bloody feud which lasted for years in reference to the

shooting of a dog. “It’s just like this, sir; in a manner o’ speakin’,

say as me and Tom Farrell here has a difficulty, and gets to punchin’

one another. If he plugs me in the eye, I don’t feel duty bound to hit

him back azackly on the same spot. If I can get well in on him

anywheres handy, I ain’t partickler. And that’s how these niggers

reckons it.”[429.3]

Nor does the solidarity of the kin for this purpose disappear without

difficulty even after the State has come into existence and

established its sole cognisance of crime. The offender’s relatives

continue liable with himself to punishment. This explains the

wholesale punishment of barbarous nations, involving persons whom we

should regard as absolutely innocent. Achan’s sons and daughters were

stoned with their father. The customs of the Habura in the North-west

Provinces of India require that when a crime has been committed by

members of a certain horde, {430} the chief shall determine who are to

be given up. “Usually a compromise is made with the police; two out of

six, or three out of eight, are made over to justice, the rest

escaping. All the chief does is to repeat a certain form of words, and

then, taking two of the grains of wheat offered to their god, he

places them on the head of the scapegoat. The oath of the brotherhood

is upon him, and whether he be guilty or not he confesses to the

police magistrate, or judge, and goes to the gallows or a life-long

exile, confident that his chief and brethren will, as they are bound,

feed and protect the wife and children he leaves behind, even before

their own.”[430.1] The ancient laws of Ireland provide elaborately for

the responsibility of the clan in respect of crimes committed by

members. In their case, however, the conception of the crime as a debt

due to the injured clan had not yet been wholly effaced; for the

provisions for sharing the compensation are equally elaborate.[430.2]

The customs of the Teutons recognised the same responsibility; and in

the corruption of blood and forfeiture of property to the crown which,

until the legislation of about a quarter of a century ago, were

entailed in this country by conviction not only for treason but for

any felony, we may discover the last remnant in modern laws of the

ancient rule of visiting the sins of the individual upon the whole of

his kindred.[430.3]

{431}

The forms of medical treatment examined in a former chapter exhibited

the connection which remained unsevered when portions of the body, or

of its issues, or clothing, had been detached; so that it was

sufficient to subject these objects to healing or sacred influences in

order to effect the cure of the man himself. But if the kin together

form one body in any substantial sense, the treatment of other members

than the one actually suffering, if not sufficient to restore him to

health, will at all events help his recovery. Among the Dieyerie of

South Australia, if a child meet with an accident, all its relations

are struck over the head with sticks or boomerangs until the blood

flows. And this blood-letting by deputy is held to alleviate the

infant’s pain.[431.1] In civilised times, when the feeling of kindred

has become attenuated and the real reason for this vicarious treatment

consequently lost, an intimate friend may sometimes take the place of

a relative. He may perform the pilgrimage, or undergo the remedy. A

Devonshire prescription for curing a friend of boils is to go into a

churchyard on a dark night and walk six times round the grave of a

person who has been interred the previous day, and crawl over it three

times. If the sufferer be a man the ceremony {432} must be performed

by a woman, and _vice versâ_.[432.1] Parallel with this are

pilgrimages made by a friend or relative in the name of a sick person,

of which I have cited some instances in a former chapter; and possibly

the same principle dictated the early Christian practice of “baptism

for the dead.”

I am not aware whether it is deemed enough by many savage peoples to

apply the remedy in this way, without also treating the patient

himself. That it is considered necessary in various parts of the world

to treat not only the sufferer but other members of his tribe,

presumably kinsmen, is quite certain. Among the Buryats of Siberia the

patient’s tribesmen take part in the ceremony of healing performed by

the shaman, and share the wine, tea and sour cream which is drunk by

the shaman and the patient.[432.2] The Wakuni, who inhabit a district

of Unyamwezi, treat a victim of witchcraft by killing a cow and

spotting with the blood his forehead, the root of his neck, his

insteps and the palms of his hands; and such of his kinsmen as are

present are similarly marked.[432.3] Dr. Matthews describes the mode

of cure he witnessed among the Navajo Indians of New Mexico. At one

stage of the ceremonies the sick woman and a companion were brought

into the medicine-lodge and made to sit on the divine portraits in dry

pigment which covered the floor. The medicine-man, having made a cold

infusion in an earthen bowl, dipped a brush, or sprinkler, made of

feathers, in the solution, sprinkled the picture, {433} touched the

figure of each divinity on the brow, mouth and chest with the brush,

and then administered the contents of the bowl to both women, in two

alternate draughts to each. What was left he himself drank, and handed

the bowl to the bystanders, “that they might finish the dregs, and let

none of the precious stuff go to waste”:[433.1] a pious economy, the

like of which is prescribed to one Christian sect in England by the

schedule to an Act of Parliament. In this Navajo ceremony, in addition

to the lady-companion and the bystanders, who perhaps were

blood-relations of the patient, the shaman himself partook of the

sacred beverage. It is not at all impossible, though no stress can be

laid upon the conjecture, that he also may have been of the woman’s

kin. Many North American tribes attach great importance to the

co-operation of kindred in the cure, and that to the exclusion of

other persons. The Cherokees, for instance, do not allow a

medicine-man to treat his own wife. Nay, they will not permit the

husband or wife of any sick person to send for a medicine-man. The

call must come from one of the sufferer’s blood-relations, among whom

wife or husband could not of course be. Their spells for the treatment

of rheumatism--the Crippler, as they appropriately call it--are very

elaborate; and in order to success the doctor is subjected to the same

taboos as the patient. Neither of them must touch a squirrel, a dog, a

cat or a mountain trout. Neither of them, if married, may approach his

wife for four nights. And according to another formula, the ceremony

must be performed by both shaman and patient fasting.[433.2]

It is, however, unnecessary to suppose that the medicine-man {434}

must be a kinsman of the sufferer. His very office brings him for the

time into sacramental relations with him, which would be quite

sufficient to account for his sharing both the potion and the taboos.

A curious parallel to the Navajo rite is found in a leech-book of our

Anglo-Saxon forefathers dating from the tenth century. To heal a man

of fever certain crosses and letters are directed to be written upon

the holy paten, and the opening words of Saint John’s Gospel are to be

sung over the writing. It is then to be washed off the paten with holy

water into the medicine. The creed, the paternoster, fourteen psalms

(including the hundred and nineteenth) and a solemn adjuration of the

fever are then to be sung over it. When all this conjuring was

finished, the leech and the sick man were each directed to sip thrice

of the drink thus sanctified.[434.1]

The rite of healing in which the kin are required to join is found in

every quarter of the globe. A common form is the slaughter of a beast

or fowl, or perhaps of several, as a sacrifice, followed of course by

a feast. Peoples as far apart in locality as they are in race are

recorded to have practised this mode of cure. It has been witnessed

alike among the Yakuts of Siberia, the Peguenches of Southern Chili,

the islanders of Luçon and Mindanos in the East Indies, the heathen

Dinkas of Central Africa and the Mohammedan inhabitants of

Timbuctoo.[434.2] At Ballyvorney in county Cork less than two

centuries ago an image of wood about two feet high, carved and painted

like a woman, was kept by one of the family of the O’Herlehys; and, we

are told, “when any one is sick of the small-pox {435} they send for

it, sacrifice a sheep to it, and wrap the skin about the sick person,

and the family [that is, as I understand it, the family of the sick

person] eat the sheep. But this idol hath now much lost its

reputation, because two of the O’Herlehys died lately of the

small-pox.”[435.1] An analogous rite is found in China. Ten men of ten

different families of the patient’s relatives and friends (formerly,

doubtless, of his kin only) become “security” for him. Each family

contributes one hundred cash, which go towards the expenses of the

feast, the remainder being found by the patient’s own family. The

feast is spread in a temple, when the food is first presented to the

idol, and the names of the “sureties” are written on a piece of paper

and burned before the god. Among other ceremonies, after the feast the

representative of the family carries home some of the rice, which is

made into congee for the sick man to eat.[435.2]

I have mentioned, in treating of witchcraft, a Dyak practice which

exhibits close connection between the house and absent members of the

family. It perhaps goes further, and displays the belief that the

conduct of a family at home affects an absent member. Similar customs,

pointing to such a belief, are recorded of the Thugs.[435.3] And

conversely, a tribesman of Lake Nyassa will eat no salt while on a

journey, lest his wife misconduct {436} herself at home.[436.1] This

mysterious effect can be due to nothing less than the essential

solidarity of the family. The matter is put plainly by the _I li_, one

of the sacred books of the Chinese, in the declaration that “father

and son are only one body, and so are husband and wife, and elder and

younger brothers.” And for this reason, we are told, the possessions

of a family are held in common[436.2]--a subject on which I have no

space to enter.

In strict analogy, it may be remarked, to the human kin is the view

entertained in the lower culture of the kinship of some orders of

brutes. Every species is a kindred united by a bond as close as that

which binds a human clan, so that sorcery may be wrought on all the

members by operating on one or two specimens. Is a garden in Hesse

infested with caterpillars, it suffices to go round it and crush a

caterpillar at each of three corners. From the fourth corner another

is taken and hung up in the chimney to dry in the smoke. As it dries

up, the caterpillars in the garden will wither and die.[436.3]

Possibly this mode of treatment only applies to such creatures as it

would be difficult to deal with individually. The subject may be worth

further inquiry: I can do no more than allude to it here in passing.

Connection as close as that of kindred could not be terminated by

death. We have already considered the efforts made to renew by

sacramental means the union with the dead. It remains to refer to a

superstition which regards the tie as indissoluble even in the grave.

Upon the lowest step of civilisation the Ainu of Yezo are very jealous

of their burial-places. They hide them in the depths of the forest, or

in some other spot, remote, unlikely {437} to be discovered, and

difficult to reach. Nothing angers them more than to know that a

stranger has been near their tombs.[437.1] The Tanalas of Madagascar

enclose the bodies of their dead in little huts erected in

inaccessible parts of the forest, and the living are forbidden to

intrude into the thickets where these huts are found.[437.2] The

Haidahs of British Columbia used to cremate their dead, because they

feared that their enemies would else get hold of the body and make

charms from it.[437.3] No reason is assigned by the traveller who

reports it for the Ainu feeling; none is assigned for the Tanala

practice; but we have perhaps the clue to both here, as well as to the

oft-sought origin of cremation among the prehistoric tribes of Europe.

If the dead man be a part of the whole body of the clan in anything

like a material sense, for a foe to obtain possession of any part of

the corpse would be a serious danger for the survivors. The belief of

the Narrinyeri of Australia was that if a sorcerer obtained a bone of

the totem animal of a hostile clan he could afflict the clan with

sickness.[437.4] In the Banks’ Islands burials are often secret, and

care is taken to prevent the bones from being dug up for arrows and

for charms.[437.5] In Equatorial Africa the Mpongwe kings are always

interred secretly, for fear that other tribes should dig up the head

to make a powerful fetish of the brains.[437.6] The precautions in the

last two cases depend, it may be, on the intrinsic value of the relics

of an able or powerful man rather than his relation to {438} those who

are in terror of the charms that may be made of his corpse. In the

higher civilisation of China, however, it is quite clear that the

condition of a corpse is of the greatest moment to the health and

prosperity of his descendants. Wherefore small iron nails are

scattered in the coffin, also hempseeds, peas and millet, and red

yeast, to cause the sons and grandsons of the dead to beget numerous

sons and become the ancestors of remoter progeny, and to provide them

with plenty of food for all time to come. Pith and rice-paper, which

will absorb the fluid products of decay, are scattered to cause the

descendants to become grand and of high rank. Two pairs of trousers

are spread over the corpse, stuffed with ingots of gold- and

silver-paper. “These are expected to enormously enrich the dead and

his offspring.” On the other hand, metal buttons are avoided on the

grave-clothes, because they will injure the body while it is decaying,

“and consequently cause great injuries also” to the posterity of the

deceased. And while the coffin, having been made and brought to the

house, is being prepared for the reception of the body, the mourners

abstain from wailing, “because manifestations of woe and distress

might cause real woe and distress to be enclosed in the coffin, and so

bring bad luck not only on the dead, but also on his descendants, the

fate of whom is most intimately bound up with the grave of their

ancestor.”[438.1] More than this, necromancers profess to be able to

tell the fortunes of the living by inspection of the bodies of their

dead ancestors, which, if not among the Chinese themselves, at all

events among certain of the wild tribes, are dug up for the purpose.

And it is on record that, in the various revolutions which have from

time to time convulsed {439} the country, the imperial mausolea have

been broken open “and the entombed corpses mangled and destroyed with

the object of bringing ruin on the imperial descendant seated on the

tottering throne.” The aboriginal Luh-N’zehtsze believe that health

depends on the cleanness of the bones of departed kinsmen.

Accordingly, when a man has been in the grave a year he is exhumed and

his bones are carefully washed; and whenever any of his family are

sick the same operation is at once performed, no matter how long or

how short the time since he was buried.[439.1] Even in Europe we have

the well-known superstition that the state and appearance of a corpse

before burial indicate whether other deaths in the family are to

follow, as if it be limp, or the eyes cannot be closed, and so forth.

According to Corean opinion, the prosperity of a dead man’s

descendants depends solely on the right choice of the place where he

is buried. Hence the utmost care is taken in its selection, and the

art of divining the proper spot is a special profession in the

country.[439.2] The Maori sentiment, it may be added, which regards as

one of the most frightful insults that can be flung at a man to tell

him to cook his great-grandfather, seems to spring from the same root.

The Maoris do not eat their relations: hence to bid a man cook his

father would be a great curse. But to tell him to cook his

great-grandfather would be far worse, because it would include “every

individual who has sprung from him.”[439.3] In other words, a man is

looked upon as one with all his {440} descendants. The belief in an

indissoluble corporal union must have preceded such an interpretation

of language which in terms only mentions the ancestor.

We may now sum up the results of our inquiry into the theory of the

Life-token. The length of the investigation is justified by the

importance of the subject in the long and wonderful history of

civilisation. I do not pretend here to give a complete account of

savage philosophy. In spite of the investigations of anthropologists

during the last thirty years, we are as yet far from being in a

position to form a satisfactory synthesis--a synthesis which will

reckon with the many-sided activity of the human mind, even in the

lower stages of its development, and will estimate at its due value

every influence, material as well as intellectual, which, entering in

early times into the stream of culture, deflected its current or added

to its volume, until it at last attained that irresistible force whose

direction we know though its issue remains dark and uncertain. My own

object is much humbler. And if I have succeeded in laying with any

measure of clearness before the reader the sacramental conception of

life underlying the incident of the Life-token, I must not be supposed

to depreciate as factors in savage culture other conceptions with

which I am not immediately concerned. I am quite aware, too, that much

that I have put forward, in so far as I have put forward anything new,

must be considered as yet only tentative and conjectural. Tradition,

conservative as it is, is in its nature shifting and liable to endless

combinations. It is, therefore, compounded of elements not merely

various, but often contradictory. This renders the task of

disentangling peculiarly difficult, needing patience that cannot be

discouraged, and an insight that long {441} familiarity with the ideas

of the uncivilised will not always give.

Starting from his personal consciousness, the savage attributes the

like consciousness to everything he sees or feels around him. And

holding that outward form is by no means of the essence of existence

or of individuality, he looks upon transformation as an ordinary

incident, happening to all men at death, happening to many men and

other creatures whensoever they will. From the capacity of

transformation to the capacity of division the step is not a long one.

To be transformed into a pomegranate or a heap of grain is to have

one’s life equally diffused through a thousand seeds, each of which is

endowed with the powers and possibilities of the whole. Scattered,

they may re-unite; and if all but one be destroyed, from that one a

new whole can be reproduced, or some other shape may be assumed

wherein will reside, undiminished and unobscured, all the

consciousness and all the power of the original. But what was regarded

as true of one shape was regarded as true of another. It was deemed to

be practicable so to sever one’s own personality as to secrete and

safeguard one’s life. This severed portion we call--we have no better

word--the External Soul. So long as the External Soul was unharmed the

man could not be slain. And conversely, its condition would be an

index of his. This perhaps is an inconsistency; but logical

consistency is not always important to savages. It is evident that if

the life be bound up with an object outside the man, the two will

decay and die together. The Life-token, therefore, or the External

Soul, must be carefully tended and watched, so as to preserve it and

promote its growth and prosperity, and through it the growth and

prosperity of {442} the person to whom it belongs, and of whom it is a

part. Any severed fragment of the substance of a man then assumes

importance. Though severed, it is, notwithstanding, inseparably

connected with him; and injury inflicted upon it would be felt by him.

On the other hand, care bestowed upon it and the promotion of its

well-being would redound to his advantage. Hence one of the methods of

witchcraft was to injure the severed portion of his substance, and one

of the methods of defence, both against witchcraft and more direct

attack, was to unite the severed portion with some divinity. But the

conception of life which regarded it as severable could not be

confined to actual portions of the substance. Whatever was closely

bound up with a man’s personality would be looked upon as part of

himself. His clothing and weapons, constantly associated with him,

would attract a measure of the consideration due to himself, would be

deemed fragments of his identity, would be filled with his life. And

as his property increased with civilisation it would all be included

in the same manner, until at last his mere appointment, the exercise

of that will and of that power which had been instrumental in

acquiring and guarding his property, became sufficient to create any

object his External Soul or Life-token.

Whether observation of the natural phenomenon of birth--the separation

of a child from its mother’s body--contributed to the evolution of

this train of superstition we do not know. We know, however, that,

parallel with the mode of thought which thus represented the

personality as divisible, and, so far as we can ascertain, on the same

plane of culture with it, a kindred descended in fact or by reputation

from a single mother, was held to be, in much more than a metaphorical

sense, one body. The kinsmen {443} were one flesh, members one of

another, by virtue of their common parent. That parent was, in the

lowest stage of civilisation in which we can trace it, generally held

to be a brute, a tree or some other vegetable, occasionally one of the

heavenly bodies, or even a rock. No difficulty would be felt in this

by a people who believed in the doctrine of Transformation. The object

so regarded as parent was the name and emblem of the kin. It was

sacred; and where, as it usually was, it was fit for food, it was

never eaten, save on certain solemn occasions when the kinsmen met to

signify and renew their union by partaking of a sacramental meal. When

the object was not eatable, it was represented on these occasions by

another which could be eaten. As civilisation advanced, the rites of

totemism gave place to, or grew into, the worship of anthropomorphic

gods, and the sacred ancestral object, or _totem_ as it is called,

sank into a symbol, or attendant, or into a special property of the

god who had superseded it.

I have endeavoured to trace the conception of the kindred, or clan, as

one body in a number of archaic practices. Beginning from the formal

reception into the kin by the blood-covenant, which has been fully

treated by Professor Robertson Smith, whose untimely death

anthropological science will long deplore, and by Dr. Trumbull, we

have devoted special attention to sacramental rites of burial and of

marriage. Other rites and superstitions have come under notice; nor

have we by any means exhausted the subject. We have found the unity of

the kin a vital conception penetrating savage life to its core. In the

words of Mr. Fison: “To the savage, the whole gens is the individual,

and he is full of regard for it. Strike the gens anywhere, and every

member of it considers himself {444} struck, and the whole body

corporate rises up in arms against the striker. The South Australian

savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose

divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and inanimate,

which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he

himself is part. They are ‘almost parts of himself,’ as Mr. Stewart

shrewdly remarks.”[444.1] Mr. Stewart would not have erred had he put

it more strongly still; and the South Australian savages are only in a

stage through which, there is reason to believe, every other people in

the world has passed or is passing: so many and so widely scattered

are its traces, and so deeply impressed are they upon human

institutions and beliefs.

The last part of our inquiry has not been useless to our more

immediate subject. It has not only shown us how consonant to other

human institutions and human thoughts is the belief in the Life-token

and the divisibility of the personality; but it has also furnished us

with the reason why the life-token was left behind when the hero

started on his adventures, why his brothers followed him, and why in

many cases the slaughtered dragon found an avenger. The hero and his

brothers were one body. The Medusa-witch, in striking him, struck

them; and their plain duty was revenge. So likewise when the hero slew

the dragon, the surviving kin of the dragon, whether mother or

brother, must in return compass the hero’s death. Moreover, we may see

in the same conception of life the reason why the mere appointment by

a kinsman is sufficient to create a life-token for the hero. If the

kinsman be of one body with the hero, separate yet united, his

appointment would be equivalent to that of the hero himself. He could

therefore {445} at any time divine with accuracy as to the condition

of his absent relative.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to insist on the universality of the

chain of beliefs discussed in the present volume. I have tried to put

before the reader instances from every quarter of the globe; and

though of course I have not literally proved the beliefs to be

universal, I think I have shown a distribution so wide and general as

to induce a very strong presumption of their existence among tribes

that have passed without mention, and even among tribes of whose

culture and modes of thought we are as yet ignorant. A conception of

life which we know to be held from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to

the islands of the Southern Seas we may reasonably believe to be

inseparable from human thought, at least until it has reached the

highest levels of culture; and we may therefore predicate it with

every probability not merely of living races whose traditions have yet

to be explored, but also of the prehistoric dead whose barrows, dumb

on this question, often betray only that other belief to which human

nature clings everywhere so pathetically--the belief in the life after

death. That belief, we may be sure, was not held alone. As we find it

in man to-day, so doubtless it was to be found ages ago: only one of a

cycle of beliefs which we may hope soon to be able to reconstruct, as

the geologist builds again a primæval monster from a single bone.

[End of vol. II]

ENDNOTES

CHAPTER VIII NOTES

[4.1]

Day, 71. Here what is probably the more archaic form of the incident,

namely, the gift of the life-token to at least one of the kin, is

preserved. The hero of one of Afanasief’s Russian tales gives a cup or

basin to his six companions. When the cup fills with blood they are to

come in search of him. ii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 376. The gift to other

than a kinsman is rare; but it occurs in the story of Prince

Lionheart, and in a Karen tale mentioned just below.

[5.1]

Steel and Temple, 47.

[5.2]

Day, 189; _Siddhi-Kür_, 55; Busk, _Sagas_, 106.

[5.3]

i. Cosquin, 26, quoting xxxiv. _Journ. As. Soc. Bengal_, pt. 2, 225.

In a Kabyle tale, apparently a variant of that given _supra_, vol. i.

p. 60, the hero plants two rods, telling his half-brother to visit

them every day: “if thou find mine dried up, know that I am dead.” De

Charencey, _Folklore_, 142, citing René Basset, in vi. _Giornale

della Società asiatica italiana_.

[5.4]

ii. _F.L. Journ._, 52.

[5.5]

Curtin, _Russians_, 239.

[5.6]

i. Cosquin, 220, citing _Indian Ant._ (1872), 115.

[6.1]

i. Cosquin, 248.

[6.2]

Rodd, 249.

[7.1]

Chatelain, 85, 278.

[7.2]

Legrand, 191.

[7.3]

Schneller, 68, Story No. 26.

[7.4]

Codrington, 401.

[8.1]

ii. _F.L. Journ._, 130.

[8.2]

Clouston, i. _Pop. Tales_, 171, citing Wilson’s _Descr. Catalogue of

Col. Mackenzie’s Oriental MSS._; Swynnerton, _Ind. Nights_, 336;

Spitta Bey, 125.

[8.3]

_Early Ideas_, 130.

[8.4]

Leskien, 547; Wenzig, 140; Wratislaw, 55 (Story No. 9), from Kulda’s

Moravian collection.

[8.5]

Denton, 273.

[8.6]

Jones and Kropf, 257, from Erdélyi.

[9.1]

Köhler, in a note, ii. Gonzenbach, 230, citing Simrock, No. 40.

[9.2]

iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 510; _El Folk-lore Andaluz_, 307; Maspons,

_Cuentos Pop. Cat._ 82 (it is here given by an old man, not by the

hero); i. _Rond._, 109; ii. Powell and Magnússon, 431; i. _Rivista_,

759.

[9.3]

i. _Mélusine_, 209.

[9.4]

Theal, 77.

[9.5]

ii. Von Hahn, 215.

[9.6]

Spitta Bey, _loc. cit._; Maspons, i. _Rond._, _loc. cit._; i.

_Mélusine_, 210, 214; v. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 737; Visentini, 206.

[9.7]

Burton, iv. _Suppl. Nights_, 245; Spitta Bey, _loc. cit._

[9.8]

Garnett, i. _Wom._, 23.

[10.1]

i. Cosquin, 71; Imbriani, 88, 106, 108 (Stories Nos. 6 and 7); i.

Comparetti, 27 (i. _F.L. Record_, 206), 274; Webster, 169; iv. Pitrè,

350. (In the last three cases the ring is the gift of the Beast to

Beauty.) Leskien, 548. Clouston also refers to a ballad by Leyden. i.

_Pop. Tales_, 171.

[10.2]

iv. Pitrè, 319 (Story No. 36); Crane, 17.

[10.3]

i. Comparetti, 26; Imbriani, 388; Leskien, 547; Jones and Kropf, 54,

from Kriza.

[10.4]

ii. Von Hahn, 45.

[10.5]

Leskien, 372.

[10.6]

Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 66, from Afanasief.

[11.1]

Leskien, 548, citing Nowosielsky. The dish appears elsewhere in

Russian tales for the same purpose in connection with a knife and a

handkerchief. One would hardly have given the Russian peasantry credit

for being so fastidious; but the explanation must be sought in the

beliefs discussed in the following chapters.

[11.2]

_Kalevala_, runes 12, 15.

[11.3]

Rand, 83.

[11.4]

ii. Von Hahn, 15.

[11.5]

_Popol Vuh_, 79.

[11.6]

i. _Folklore_, 65.

[12.1]

Erminnie A. Smith, in ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 94.

[12.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Armenier_, 146.

[12.3]

Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 89, from Afanasief.

[12.4]

Zingerle, _K.- und H.-Märchen_, 116. A candle is often found as the

life itself. Cf. i. _Bib. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 176, and a number of

tales of Godfather Death.

[13.1]

iv. Pitrè, 329.

[13.2]

Leskien, 548, citing Afanasief, etc.

[13.3]

Leskien, 547.

[13.4]

Denton, 266.

[13.5]

Wardrop, 53.

[14.1]

Featherman, _Papuo- and Malayo-Melanesians_, 283.

[15.1]

_The Fables and Rites of the Yncas_, by Christoval de Molina, in

Markham, _Rites and Laws_, 12.

[15.2]

Clouston, Lane’s _Squire’s Tale_, 299. This book was issued by the

Chaucer Society. The Folk-Lore Society has obtained the right of

reissuing it, with additions by Mr. Clouston; and it is to be hoped

that this will be done ere long. As to modern practices in India, see

also Burton, _Sindh_, 180; i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._ 85; iv. 51.

[16.1]

Apuleius, _Discourse on Magic_; Pröhle, _Sagen_, 232 (Story No. 173);

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 1770, 1773, 1774, 1775, quoting Hartlieb’s _Book

of All Forbidden Arts_ (1455); Kohlrusch, 260, note, quoting the same.

See also Scot, 211; ii. Brand, 604, note; Caxton, ii. _Recuyell_, 414;

Ostermann, 151.

[16.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Transs. Zig._, 112 (Story No. 47).

[16.3]

Pröhle, _Sagen_, 32 (Story No. 6). A mirror in a Chinese tale had the

property of fixing, or photographing, the face of any woman who looked

into it. The image could only be obliterated by another woman, or the

same woman in another dress, looking into it. ii. Giles, 32.

[16.4]

Lubbock, 253, quoting De Faira. Compare a Swedish tale in which a

lover is shown his sweetheart, by a Lapp magician, in a bucket of

water. Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 55, from Afzelius.

[16.5]

Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 378.

[17.1]

A. W. Moore, in v. _Folklore_, 214, citing _N. and Q._ (1852).

[17.2]

Winwood Reade, 252; Du Chaillu, _Ashangoland_, 173.

[17.3]

H. Ling Roth, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 118.

[17.4]

Brinton, _Cakchiquels_, 43, 69, 27.

[17.5]

J. G. Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 461.

[17.6]

v. _Am Urquell_, 163; H. Carrington Bolton, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._,

25. Mr. Andrew Lang, in _Cock Lane and Common Sense_ (London, 1894),

212, _et sqq._, has examined the practice of crystal-gazing. He brings

his wide knowledge of savage and other superstitious purposes to bear

upon the evidence, and comes to the conclusion that “we can scarcely

push scepticism so far as to deny that the facts exist, that

hallucinations are actually provoked,” by gazing into a ball of

crystal or glass. Indeed, he suggests that something more than

hallucination is provoked; but perhaps that is “only his fun.” He does

not _say_ it.

[18.1]

i. Comparetti, 269.

[18.2]

ii. Parkinson, 242. The story connected with this belief is, as Mr.

Parkinson reproduces it, anything but traditional, and I lay no stress

on it.

[18.3]

Pausanias, iii. 25; vii. 21.

[18.4]

Turner, _Samoa_, 101.

[19.1]

Busk, _F.L. Rome_, 117.

[19.2]

Cavallius, 81.

[19.3]

i. Crantz, 214.

[19.4]

iv. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 287.

[19.5]

Hunt, 290, note, quoting Gilbert, ii. _Parochial Hist. of Cornwall_,

121. Montluck Well, Logan, and Saint Mary’s Well, Kilmorie, both in

Wigtownshire, are resorted to for water for the sick. The waters of

both have the property of appearing in abundance if the augury be

favourable; if not, of diminishing. R. C. Hope, in xxviii.

_Antiquary_, 68, quoting Symson’s _Description of Galloway_ and iv.

_Statistical Account of Scotland_.

[20.1]

ii. Brand, 263, note, quoting xii. _Stat. Acc. Scot._, 464. The

spirits of wells often appear in animal form. See, for example, Von

Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 21. Cf. the water-bull and water-kelpie of

Scotland.

[20.2]

ii. Brand, 272, note, quoting _The Living Librarie, or Historical

Meditations_ (1621), 284.

[21.1]

Dalyell, 506, quoting Gordon, _MS. Notes and Observations_.

[21.2]

Lubbock, 244.

[21.3]

Pausanias, vii. 21.

[21.4]

Rodd, 185.

[22.1]

Southey, iv. _Commonplace Book_, 240, quoting an article in the

_Monthly Magazine_, March 1801, on Cambray’s _Voyage dans le

Finisterre_.

[22.2]

ii. Brand, 267, note.

[22.3]

Drayton, _Polyolbion_, ix. 90; Sir Philip Sidney, _The Seven Wonders

of England_, in Arber, ii. _Eng. Garner_, 183. Allusions to it by

Burton, Increase Mather, and others, are quoted, v. _N. and Q._, 8th

ser., 408; vi. 54.

[23.1]

Leonard Vair is quoted viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 122; and Wolf, _Nied.

Sag._, 259 (Story No. 162). Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 244,

quotes the same story from another writer, doubtless copied from Vair.

To dream of a dead fish is in Germany and Austria a presage of death.

Compare also with the superstitions mentioned in the above paragraph

the parallel superstition, of which effective use is often made in

modern literature, and which represents a household clock stopping

when the head of the family dies. At Pforzheim it was believed that

when the palace clock was out of order one of the reigning family

died. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1756, 1806, 1801.

[23.2]

Grimm, i. _D. Sagen_, 162.

[23.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 22.

[24.1]

vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 760, quoting Rev. James Sibree in _Proc. R.

Geog. Soc. of London_, Aug. 1891.

[25.1]

i. _Tutinameh_, 109.

[25.2]

i. _Kathá_, 86.

[25.3]

Swynnerton, _Ind. Nights_, 188.

[25.4]

Arany, cited by Köhler in his notes to _Posilecheata_, 209.

[25.5]

Rodd, 266.

[26.1]

ii. Risley, 89.

[26.2]

Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 244, quoting a note to Boswell’s

Shakespeare. The editor, Rev. J. W. Warter, says that the custom was

common enough within his recollection in Shropshire and Staffordshire.

[26.3]

Gerv. Tilb., 223, Liebrecht’s Appendix containing extracts from Jean

Baptiste Thiers, _Traité des Superstitions_, 2nd ed., Paris, 1697.

[26.4]

x. _Archivio_, 30.

[27.1]

i. Child, 187, 201. Both variants of the Scottish ballad of _Bonny Bee

Horn_ also include the incident; and in one of them, not only does the

ring change colour, but the stone bursts in three. ii. Child, 318.

[27.2]

Thorpe, _Yule-tide Stories_, 438, from Müllenhoff. It is a German

superstition that if a woman lose her garter in the street her husband

or lover is untrue. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1782, 1824. To lose the

wedding-ring is a presage of death. _Ibid._, 1808.

[27.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 19.

[30.1]

Compare Sir John Lubbock’s remarks on the relation between divination

and sorcery. Lubbock, 245.

[31.1]

_Popol Vuh_, 141, 191.

[31.2]

i. Cosquin, 71, citing Guérin, _Vies des Saints_.

[31.3]

Ellis, iii. _Polyn. Res._, 107.

[31.4]

Suet., _Vesp._, 5.

[31.5]

Taylor, 184.

[32.1]

Hooker, recording the evidence of a resident at Waimate, in i. _Journ.

Ethn. Soc., N.S._, 72, 73.

[32.2]

Frazer, ii. _Golden Bough_, 329, citing Matthes, _Bijdragen tot de

Ethn. van Zuid-Celebes_.

[32.3]

Burton, _Wit and Wisd._, 411.

[32.4]

Dr. A. Haas, in v. _Am Urquell_, 253; ii. Bartsch, 43. It seems that

according to an old German superstition the water in which a baby is

washed for the first time must be poured on trees. In the Canton of

Berne it must be poured on a fruitful, or a young, tree; and the

person charged with this duty must sing or shout, that the child may

learn to sing or shout well. Ploss, i. _Kind_, 79, citing Rothenbach,

_Volksthüml. aus d. Canton Berne_. A similar practice is found in

Austria. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1807. As a provision against ill-luck

and witches among the Magyars, the water is thrown half on a crossway

and half on a willow-tree. Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 69. The

Transylvanian Saxons, on the other hand, will not throw it where it

may be trodden on, lest the child die, or at least lose its sleep. The

proper place is beneath a tree, that the babe may strengthen. _Ibid._,

_Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 154.

[33.1]

ii. Brand, 453, citing Grose.

[33.2]

J. M. Currier, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 69.

[34.1]

Ploss, i. _Kind_, 79, citing Williams and Calvert; Featherman,

_Papuo-Mel._, 204.

[34.2]

Stoll, 68; Dorman, 293.

[34.3]

ii. Bancroft, 276. Was the future battlefield ascertained by

divination? Or how could it be known? Or is there some

misunderstanding on the part of the reporter? Compare the custom at

Tashkend, whereby, at the birth of a boy, the father buries a

mutton-bone, or, in the case of a girl, a rag-doll, under the floor of

the room where the birth has taken place. Schuyler, i. _Turkistan_,

140.

[35.1]

ii. _L’Anthropologie_, 369, citing Jacobs and Meyer, _Les Badoujs_.

[35.2]

Rev. J. Macdonald, in xx. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 132; Frazer, ii.

_Golden Bough_, 329, citing several authorities. See also Andree, ii.

_Ethnog. Par._, 21.

[35.3]

Sibree, 278.

[36.1]

Quoted by Singer, ii. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 300.

[36.2]

Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 85.

[36.3]

Ploss, i. _Kind_, 78, 79, citing Rochholz, _Alemann. Kinderlied und

Kinderspiel_. See also Mannhardt, i. _Baumcultus_, 49, _et seqq._ A

custom similar to the Piedmontese is practised by the Mohammedans of

Malabar, who plant a number of seeds of the Brazil-wood (_Cæsalpinia

Sappan_) at the birth of a daughter, whose dowry the trees become when

grown to maturity. Yule, ii. _Marco Polo_, 315, note.

[37.1]

De Gubernatis, i. _Myth. Plantes_, xxviii.

[37.2]

Monseur, 37; ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 148.

[37.3]

Norman G. Mitchell-Innes, in v. _F.L. Journ._, 223. Compare the

related superstition mentioned _ante_, vol. i., p. 179. We perhaps

find in Tirolese folklore a relic of the same superstition in the

belief that children are fetched from a sacred tree. Zingerle,

_Sitten_, 2, 100; _Sagen_, 110. I have already (_ante_, vol. i., p.

154, note) referred to the English saying that children come out of

the parsley-bed, and (_ibid._, p. 151, note) to the fancy of mothers

in the New Hebrides that a child is connected in origin with a

cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, or some such object.

[37.4]

Mrs. F. D. Bergen, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 152. Mrs. Bergen informs

me she obtained this on “the eastern peninsula of Maryland, near

Chestertown, opposite Baltimore.”

[38.1]

Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 53. Compare a German superstition, Grimm, _Teut.

Myth._, 1818 (956).

[38.2]

Gregor, 148.

[38.3]

The shrubbery grew from a laurel wreath dropped, in a chicken’s beak,

by an eagle into Livia’s bosom after her marriage. Suet., _Galba_, 1.

[38.4]

Yule, i. _Marco Polo_, 394 (bk. ii., ch. 28).

[39.1]

Bernau, 59.

[39.2]

Mannhardt, i. _Baumcultus_, 48.

[39.3]

Frazer, ii. _Golden Bough_, 329. Mr. Frazer also notices that in the

Cameroons the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound

up with that of a tree; but it does not appear how this is believed to

arise. Here, perhaps, I may call the attention of students to the

following superstitions as yet unexplained. The Makololo of the

Zambesi Valley object to plant mangoes, lest they die. (Does the mango

in growing absorb the planter’s life?) The native Portuguese of Tette

think that a man who plants coffee will never be happy after.

Livingstone, _Zambesi_, 47. In Southern India the person who sows

cocoa-nut seed is expected to die when the trees which grow from the

seeds he has planted bear fruit. Pandit Natesa Sastri, in i. _N. Ind.

N. and Q._, 101. On Bowditch Island in the South Pacific Ocean

cocoa-nuts could only be planted on the king’s death: he who planted

them at other times would die. Lister, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._,

54. In Devonshire and Gloucestershire parsley must not be

transplanted. Dyer, 3; _County F.L., Gloucestershire_, 54. I have

found the superstition still rife in Gloucestershire.

[39.4]

Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 152.

[40.1]

Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 9.

[40.2]

Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221.

[40.3]

Prof. V. M. Mikhailovskii, translated by O. Wardrop, in xxiv. _Journ.

Anthr. Inst._, 83.

[41.1]

ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 187.

[41.2]

v. _Records of the Past, N.S._, ix. Prof. Sayce has some little doubt

about the reading; but the sense appears clear enough.

[41.3]

“The squaws generally agreed that they had discovered life enough in

them [the portraits he had painted] to render my _medicine_ too great

for the Mandans, saying that such an operation could not be performed

without taking away from the original something of his existence,

which I put in the picture, and they could see it move, could see it

stir.… A great many have become again alarmed, and are unwilling to

sit, for fear, as some say, that they will die prematurely if painted;

and as others say, that if they are painted the picture will live

after they are dead, and they cannot sleep quiet in their graves.” i.

Catlin, 107, 109.

[42.1]

ii. Witzschel, 251. Cf. the superstition known from Britain to

Transylvania, that if bread in baking start, or a glass in the house

break without apparent cause, there will be a death.

[42.2]

Backhouse, 104.

[43.1]

i. Cosquin, 71.

[43.2]

Ostermann, 476.

[43.3]

Jones and Kropf, lxiv.

[43.4]

Tanner, 155.

[44.1]

Miss Owen, _Old Rabbit_, 178, 169.

[44.2]

i. Giles, 306.

[44.3]

Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xxix. 22; Jevons, Plutarch’s _Romane Questions_,

xlvii. See a curious tale pointing to a modern survival of this

belief, Pigorini-Beri, 58. In Switzerland at the present day, if a

peasant have a son born and a foal or lamb dropped at the same time,

the same name is given to both. Ploss, i. _Kind_, 189. Among the Poles

(who have, it may be remarked, a great regard for snakes) a secret

connection is believed to exist between cattle and lizards. Every cow

is held to have a particular lizard as its guardian. If the lizard be

killed, the cow will die, or at least will give blood instead of milk.

iii. _Am Urquell_, 272. This can hardly be said to favour Mr. Frazer’s

totemistic theory. See also vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 152; Burton, _Wit

and Wisd._, 390. The belief in widely separated countries like

Sardinia and India that it is lucky to have a snail in the house

appears to be connected with this superstition. See i. _Rivista_, 221.

[45.1]

Rev. J. Macdonald, in xx. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 131; Lubbock, 245,

quoting Arbousset’s _Tour to the Cape of Good Hope_.

[45.2]

Le Page Renouf, in xi. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, 185, citing

Amélineau’s translation. Compare the life-token in the story of _The

Two Brothers, suprà_, vol. i., p. 183.

[46.1]

Prof. Haddon, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 326.

[46.2]

Le Braz, 6.

[47.1]

Banks, _The Albion Queens_, quoted by Prof. Dr. George Stephens in ii.

_F.L. Record_, 200; Gregor, 204; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb.

Sachs._, 190. In an Icelandic tale three drops of blood fall on the

knife while eating, to announce a brother’s death. iii. _Am Urquell_,

5, citing Arnason.

[47.2]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1837; Thorpe, ii. _Northern Myth._, 273: both

quoting Thiele.

[47.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1744, 1745.

[48.1]

Kuhn und Schwartz, 436.

[48.2]

_Suffolk County F.L._, 30.

[48.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1788. Compare the Sardinian augury from piles of

salt. i. _Rivista_, 221.

[48.4]

Herrmann, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 310, 311.

[48.5]

L. L. Duncan, in v. _Folklore_, 192; vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 261.

[48.6]

ii. Witzschel, 254. Auguries as to the following harvest are drawn by

the Huzules from the burning of fruit with beechen brands on New

Year’s Night. Kaindl, 73. As to auguries at a baptism from the putting

out of the candle, see xii. _Archivio_, 530.

[49.1]

Kuhn und Schwartz, 431; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 160. At Buvrinner in

Hainaut pilgrimages are often made on behalf of the sick. On such an

occasion candles are lighted on the altar of the saint invoked. If the

flame be steady, it is a good sign; if it be wavering, a bad sign. ix.

_Rev. Trad. Pop._, 489.

[49.2]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1790, 1793.

[49.3]

ii. Powell and Magnússon, 641, from Arnason.

[49.4]

Plutarch, _Rom. Quest._, No. 75.

[49.5]

ii. Witzschel, 226, 231; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1843, 1794; Finamore,

_Trad. Pop. Abr._, 52; Ostermann, 348, 476; Krauss, _Sitte und

Brauch_, 396; Le Braz, 5. Compare the “wedding candlestick” at an

Irish wedding, v. _Folklore_, 188. In the province of Siena the

chances of life are calculated according as the candle in the church

gives greater or less light. xiii. _Archivio_, 412.

[50.1]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1835; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 271: both quoting

Thiele.

[50.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 56, 75; iv. _Zeits. des

Vereins_, 316.

[50.3]

Taylor, 205 (cf. also, 178); Lubbock, 245, citing Yate’s _New

Zealand_.

[51.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 148.

[51.2]

Moore, 125, 140; v. _Folklore_, 214.

CHAPTER IX NOTES

[56.1]

ii. Von Hahn, 33, referred to _suprà_, vol. i., p. 81.

[56.2]

_Suprà_, vol. i., p. 213; Jülg, 53; Ovid, _Metam._, viii. 848. So in

the island of Florida, when a man sells a pig he takes back its

_tarunga_, or soul, in a dracæna-leaf, which he hangs up in his

house, not, however, to recall the identical animal sold, but to

animate another pig, when littered. Codrington, 249. This explains a

custom in the south of France. When a farmer sells a calf he cuts off

a piece of its hair and makes the cow swallow it, “so that she may not

regret her calf, and that a better price may be got for it.” ix. _Rev.

Trad. Pop._, 581. The original reason doubtless was that the calf

might be born again of her.

[57.1]

See, among others, Schott, 198 (Story No. 18); Pineau, _F.L._, 145

(Story No. 5); Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 95 (Story No. 5); Coelho, 33

(Story No. 15); Luzel, _Le Magicien_, 28, citing Straparola, Night

viii., Story 5; Visentini, 37 (Story No. 8).

[57.2]

Steel, 15; Gibb, 255.

[57.3]

Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 56; Rand, 196, 248; vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 210.

[58.1]

See, among others, Dozon, 89 (Story No. 12); Von Wlislocki, _Transs.

Zig._, 111 (Story No. 47); _Volksdicht._, 286 (Story No. 44); Romero,

4 (Story No. 1); ii. Stumme, 62 (Story No. 4); Büttner, 122;

Georgeakis, 72 (Story No. 11); Wardrop, 30. In many cases the severed

member has the power, which would have belonged to its owner, of

changing the hero, so long as it is in his possession, into an animal

of the same kind. For instance, Wolf, _Deutsche Märchen_, 88 (Story

No. 20); Poestion, 212 (Story No 51); i. Cosquin, 166 (Story No. 15);

Carnoy, _Contes Franç._, 276; i. Comparetti, 240 (Story No. 55); v.

Pitrè, 215 (variant of Story No. 81), 386 (Story No. 106); i.

Finamore, pt. i., 90 (Story No. 19).

[58.2]

Schneller, 47 (Story No. 21). The spell is more usually performed by

the aid of some toy given by the hero, as in iv. Pitrè, 342 (Story

No. 38).

[59.1]

Jahn, _Volkssagen_, 148 (Story No. 182). In a Micmac legend the hero

is bidden to take a handful of hair of the moose or any other animal

rolled up between fingers and thumb, and blow it away. He will then be

able to see all the animals of that kind for a long distance around.

Rand, 358.

[60.1]

H. Ling Roth, in xxi. _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 112. The Kayans, one of

the peoples of Borneo, employ the teeth of tiger-cats in taking an

oath. The person swearing holds the teeth in his hand and calls on

them to harm him if he be not speaking the truth. This seems to be

another example of the same superstition. C. Hose, in xxiii. _ibid._,

165.

[60.2]

ii. Grundtvig, 115.

[61.1]

Wratislaw, 115 (Story No. 17), from Glinski.

[61.2]

Woycicki, 128. The story is a fragment. The incident it contains

usually forms the opening of the Catskin type of Cinderella stories.

See Miss Cox’s _Cinderella, passim_.

[62.1]

Grimm, i. _Tales_, 414, 224 (Story No. 56 and variant).

[62.2]

Theal, 123, 118. Compare the power of self-reconstitution from a

feather in the Cegiha tale referred to on p. 57.***

[62.3]

Dorsey, 18. Parallel with the development of the Life-token, we find

the spittle or blood sometimes omitted, and objects, which have never

been part of the heroine, endowed at her command with the power of

answering in her name. See vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 29; Rand, 163.

[63.1]

Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 66.

[63.2]

Grimm, ii. _Tales_, 10 (Story No. 89).

[65.1]

The Earl himself presided at some of the examinations, though it is

fair to say that, so far as appears, the charges of bewitching his

children were not gone into before him. The British Solomon, his royal

master, was not so scrupulous. ii. Nichols, pt. i., App. ix., 70,

reprinting a pamphlet of 1619, giving a full report of the case.

[65.2]

G. B. Corsi, in x. _Archivio_, 30; Leland, _Etruscan_, 329. An

extraordinary ritual for this purpose is quoted by De Mensignac from

Éliphas Lévi. De Mensignac, 45. Another prescription quoted by

Leland (_Etruscan_, 241) is for the maiden to take some of her

faithless lover’s hair and to invoke the aid of Saint Elisha against

him, at midnight in a cellar.

[66.1]

Felicina Giannini-Finucci, in xi. _Archivio_, 448. It seems enough in

Lucca for a deserted girl to wind her own hair round the toad’s legs,

or to introduce it into a cigar, in order to cause anguish to her

betrayer. _Ibid._, 453.

[66.2]

xvii. Pitrè, 115. See also Zanetti, 234; i. _Rivista_, 134, 319;

Ostermann, 511; De Mensignac, 48, note; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._,

11, 12; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1799, 1836; Zingerle, _Sitten_, 28.

[66.3]

Leland, _Etruscan_, 328. (The other substance was illegible in the

manuscript charm supplied to Mr. Leland. Compare the Tirolese tale

cited above, p. 58.) Ostermann, 517.

[66.4]

Addy, 74. Bodin, 369, relates a curious tale of a lascivious devil who

got a girl into his power by inducing her to give him a lock of her

hair. Barham has made powerful use of this incident in the _Ingoldsby

Leg._ (“A Passage in the Life of the late H. Harris, D.D.”).

[67.1]

Monseur, 91; i. _Mélusine_, 79, citing Auguste Hock; E. Polain, in

ii. _Bull. de F.L._, 145; J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._,

256. In the Tirol hairs not spit upon before being thrown away are

used by witches in the manufacture of hailstones and storms. Zingerle,

_Sitten_, 28.

[67.2]

O. Schell, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 211; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.

Siebenb. Sachs._, 150.

[67.3]

Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 151, citing Federowski.

[67.4]

Featherman, _Turanians_, 510.

[68.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. der Mag._, 136; _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._,

201.

[68.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleben Mag._, 78.

[68.3]

W. J. Hoffman, M.D., in ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 32.

[68.4]

Kane, 216.

[68.5]

Mrs. S. S. Allison, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 314. On the Rio

Grande people are warned to burn their hair, and not to throw it in

the path of others, lest it do the latter harm, and never to pick up

human hair lying in the road, especially women’s. J. G. Bourke, in

vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 136. This is an inversion of the ordinary

superstition.

[68.6]

Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 447.

[69.1]

Lieut. Musters, in i. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 197; Featherman,

_Chiapo-Mar._, 499; Bourke, 346.

[69.2]

Von den Steinen, 343.

[69.3]

Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 14.

[69.4]

Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 364.

[69.5]

E. Tregear, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 116; Featherman,

_Oceano-Mel._, 213.

[70.1]

Rev. Dr. Codrington, in x. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 283.

[70.2]

Codrington, 203; Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 93.

[70.3]

Lubbock, 246, quoting _Fiji and the Fijians_.

[70.4]

H. O. Forbes, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 17.

[71.1]

Dawson 36, 55.

[71.2]

A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 27; i. Curr, 46; iii.

178, 547; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 14; Roth, 77. Cf. Bourke, 146.

[72.1]

xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 17.

[72.2]

Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 13; Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80; both citing

Riedel.

[72.3]

iv. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 35, quoting _Settlement Report_ by Mr. F. C.

Channing.

[72.4]

Burton, _Sindh_, 179.

[72.5]

ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 252, citing _Voyages d’Ali Bey el Abassi_.

[72.6]

ii. Risley, 208.

[73.1]

Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 99.

[73.2]

Livingstone, _Zambesi_, 46.

[73.3]

Casalis, 292. For similar superstitions see Featherman, _Nigr._, 185,

475; v. _Mélusine_, 258; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 13, citing

Buchner, Fritsch and Hildebrandt; Du Chaillu, _Equat. Afr._, 427.

[73.4]

ii. _Antigua_, 65.

[74.1]

_Congress Report_ (1891), 244, 235.

[74.2]

iii. _Am Urquell_, 5.

[74.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1822.

[74.4]

Von Wlislocki, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 69. In Hungary the sole of the

corpse’s left foot must be rubbed with the blood.

[75.1]

A. F. Dörfler, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 268, 269, 270; Von Wlislocki,

_Volksleb. Mag._, 70, 71.

[75.2]

iv. _Folklore_, 358, 361.

[75.3]

But why, as in India, should stolen images of gods be held more

valuable than any others? See iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 118.

[76.1]

vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 392.

[76.2]

Ensign Niblack, in _Rep. Nat. Mus._ (1888), 354, quoting Dunn’s

_History of the Oregon Territory_.

[76.3]

See, in addition to cases already cited, Kane, 216; De Mensignac, 47,

_et seqq._; E. Tregear, in xix. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 123; i. Binger,

113.

[76.4]

Codrington, 203. Even a stone drawn out of a sick man’s body by a

medicine-man among the aborigines of Hayti seems to have been regarded

in the same magical light. The patient was adjured to “keep it safe.”

H. Ling Roth, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 254.

[77.1]

Dawson, 12, 54; iii. Curr, 178, 547; Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 93;

_Papuo-Mel._, 479; Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 99; iii. _Am

Urquell_, 150, 269 (a Magyar belief as to the cause of a woman’s

barrenness; see also Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 76); iv., 211;

Zingerle, _Sitten_, 73; ii. Witzschel, 270; i. _Mélusine_, 348;

Monseur, 92; Bourke, 146, 153, 378, 390, 465; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.

Siebenb. Sachs._, 52; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 11, 16. The same

superstition seems referred to in an ancient Egyptian festival song,

lii. _Archæologia_, 408, 471.

[77.2]

F. Bonney, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 128.

[78.1]

A. W. Howitt, in xiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 456.

[78.2]

E. Polain, in ii. _Bulletin de Folklore_, 10.

[78.3]

Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 44; _County F.L., Suffolk_, 132.

[78.4]

For a similar reason Pythagoras also directed his disciples on rising

from bed to shake out the impress of the body. Clem. Alex.,

_Stromata_, v. See also Diog. Laert., _Vita Pyth._, xvii.

[79.1]

Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 8, 9, 11, 12; P. Sartori, in iv. _Zeits.

des Vereins_, 42, 43, citing various authorities; _Am Urquell_, 289;

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1747, 1798, 1799, 1814, 1819. A horse may be

lamed by thrusting a knife or nail into his fresh footprint. _Ibid._,

1821, 1823.

[79.2]

xii. _Archivio_, 536; Leland, _Etruscan_, 301; iv. _Zeits. des

Vereins_, 42, 43. There is a curious Assyrian incantation from

Assurbanipal’s collection, the translation of which is uncertain, but

which appears to refer to these practices. Lenormant renders the line:

“He has torn my garment and dragged it in the dust of my feet.” This

is not a sorcerer’s proceeding; and it is of a sorcerer that complaint

is made. Dr. Bartels gives, I know not whence, the more probable

reading: “He has torn my clothes and mixed his magical herb with the

dust of my feet.” Lenormant, 61; Bartels, 34. Dr. Bartels deliberately

deprives his works of the greater part of their value by his omission

of references.

[80.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 81.

[80.2]

ii. Train, 157.

[80.3]

Moore, 95. Cf. Prof. Rhys, in ii. _Folklore_, 298.

[80.4]

_County F.L., Suffolk_, 201.

[80.5]

iv. _Journ. Amer. F.L._, 254, 152.

[81.1]

J. H. Porter, in vii. _Journ. Amer. F.L._, 113.

[81.2]

Tylor, _Early Hist._, 119. They are said also to stick poisoned claws

of animals into the footprints. iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 43.

[81.3]

H. Ling Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 235, citing A. R.

Colquhoun, _Amongst the Shans_.

[81.4]

Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 94.

[81.5]

A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 26.

[81.6]

Dawson, 54.

[82.1]

Hoffman, in vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 221.

[82.2]

F. H. Cushing, in ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 120.

[82.3]

iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 43.

[82.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 120.

[82.5]

i. _Sax. Leechd._, 392. The words “into the hoof-track,” are not

expressed; but the translator is almost certainly right in supplying

them.

[83.1]

Powell, 171.

[83.2]

Codrington, 183, 188; iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 711. Cf. Codrington, 49,

52 note, 203; B. T. Somerville, in xxiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 19.

[84.1]

Codrington, in x. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 309.

[84.2]

See for example Dawson, 54; i. Curr, 46, 49; ii. 245, 247; iii. 547;

A. W. Howitt, in xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 29; Featherman,

_Papuo-Mel._, 53, 76, 179, 222; _Oceano-Mel._, 55, 93, 213; Turner,

_Polynesia_, 89; Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 364; viii. _Rev. Trad.

Pop._, 59; Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 15, 16; Letourneau, _L’Év.

Rel._, 39, citing Taplin; Lubbock, 246, 250. Was not some reason of

this kind at the bottom of the taboo mentioned by Lubbock, 453?

[84.3]

Rev. J. Batchelor, in vii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 36.

[84.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 84, 88.

[85.1]

i. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 189.

[85.2]

Knoop, _Posen_, 88.

[85.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1784, 1805.

[85.4]

Monseur, 90; Ostermann, 515. Cf. _Science of Fairy Tales_, 142, _et

seqq._ There is a custom almost universal among the aborigines of

America of preserving the bones of animals eaten; but it cannot at

present be certainly ascribed to the order of ideas treated of in this

chapter. I reserve it, therefore, for further investigation.

[86.1]

viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 331, quoting Gmelin, _Voyage en Sibérie_.

[86.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 160.

[86.3]

W. J. Hoffman, M.D., in ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 32.

[86.4]

Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 12.

[87.1]

xviii. Pitrè, 129.

[87.2]

J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 255.

[87.3]

Leland, _Etruscan_, 354.

[87.4]

G. Sajaktzis, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 142. The Belgian

prescription is to throw the babe’s first bathwater on the fire, never

into the street or the ordinary sewer, for fear of spells. ii. _Bull.

de F.L._, 144. Cf. the German superstition that to rock an empty

cradle deprives the baby of rest. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1778.

[87.5]

J. Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 108, 115. In Posen a shred of the

bedclothes of the supposed witch is hung in the chimney. If a child be

the victim, a bit of the witch’s clothing is burnt and the child

fumigated with the smoke. Knoop, _Posen_, 87, 88. In the Abruzzi, a

portion of the witch’s dress is simply put on the affected animal.

Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 178.

[88.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 154.

[88.2]

Featherman, _Nigritians_, 347.

[88.3]

Theal, 78.

[88.4]

xvi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 29; i. Curr, 46; Dawson, 54.

[88.5]

Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 213; Lubbock, 247, quoting Tanner. Similar

was the belief of the people of the New Hebrides. xxiii. _Journ.

Anthr. Inst._, 19.

[89.1]

iv. _Rep. Austr. Ass._, 653.

[89.2]

Featherman, _Oceano-Mel._, 137.

[89.3]

Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, 242.

[89.4]

ii. Witzschel, 252, 258, 260; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1823, 1837; Von

Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 196; Strack, 56, quoting

Mannhardt. Especially, says Witzschel, if the survivor have perspired

in it.

[90.1]

iii. _Am Urquell_, 53; Töppen, 101.

[90.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 199, 200, 195.

[90.3]

ii. Witzschel, 258.

[90.4]

Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 277.

[90.5]

Reclus, 103.

[91.1]

Ploss, i. _Weib_, 504. Compare with this the Austrian superstition

that if women come in while another is in labour they shall quickly

take their aprons off and tie them round her, _or they will be barren

themselves_. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1806. That is to say, the aprons

will, when restored to their owners, be a bond of connection between

them and the child-bearing woman, so as to communicate to them her

virtue.

[92.1]

De Acosta, 378.

[92.2]

Ellis, iii. _Polyn. Res._, 108. Cf. Murdoch, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._,

438; Turner, _Polynesia_, 338; Roth, 76; Bourke, in vii. _Journ. Am.

F.L._, 120.

[93.1]

Featherman, _Nigr._, 111.

[93.2]

Speke, 531.

[93.3]

Prof. Rhys, in iii. _Folklore_, 84.

[93.4]

Moore, 82.

[93.5]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1830, 1846.

[93.6]

Andree, ii. _Ethnog. Par._, 11.

[94.1]

Zingerle, _Sitten_, 73; Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 222. At Mentone,

sorcery upon cattle may be counteracted by making the animal eat

vegetables stolen from the witch. ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 255.

[94.2]

Bartels, 31.

[94.3]

Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 56.

[95.1]

i. Brand, 11, note; Henderson, 74; Prof. Haddon, in iv. _Folklore_,

357; ii. Witzschel, 278; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1781, 1798, 1812;

Töppen, 72, 91; Wolf, _Niederl. Sag._, 475 (Story No. 391).

Illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely.

[95.2]

i. Crantz, 215.

[95.3]

Chandra Roy’s English translation of the _Mahabh._, quoted by

Clouston, iv. _Folklore_, 256.

[95.4]

Turner, _Polynesia_, 319.

[96.1]

iii. Bancroft, 507.

[96.2]

i. Garcilasso, 220.

[96.3]

Dr. Meyners d’Estrey, in iv. _L’Anthropologie_, 625, citing and

reviewing Baron van Hœvell, _Todjo, Posso, et Saousou_.

[96.4]

Josh. vii. 24-26.

[97.1]

i. De Groot, 60.

[97.2]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1780, 1782, 1803, 1806.

[99.1]

Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 95, 98.

[99.2]

Lubbock, 246, quoting Pinkerton.

[99.3]

_Ibid._, citing Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_.

[99.4]

ii. _Rep. Austr. Assn._, 341.

[100.1]

xvii. Pitrè, 129.

[100.2]

Dr. Krauss, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 174. The words of the spell indicate

a wider object than the specific one mentioned.

[101.1]

Bodin, 337, 367, citing Saint Jerome’s _Life of Saint Hilarion_.

Concerning Hilarion’s sense of smell, see Middleton, 89.

[101.2]

Turner, _Polynesia_, 394.

[101.3]

i. Macdonald, 204.

[101.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Sieb. Sachs._, 118.

[101.5]

B. W. Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 200.

[102.1]

Töppen, 101.

[102.2]

vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 617.

[103.1]

Henderson, 223, 175. See also Addy, 73, 79, 80, for analogous examples

in this country.

[103.2]

Scot, 219.

[104.1]

Quoted by Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 119, 220, from Jean Bapt. Thiers,

_Traité des Superstitions_, 1697. Modern examples may be found in

iii. _Am Urquell_, 84; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 75; vi.

_Mélusine_, 32. The psalm is cix. in our Bibles.

[105.1]

I have given two versions of this legend, vi. _F.L. Journal_, 125. See

also iv. _Mélusine_, 122; Sauvé, 238; Thorpe, iii. _N. Myth._, 9,

from Müllenhoff; Müller, _Siebenb. Sagen_, 148.

[105.2]

Knoop, in iii. _Zeits. des Volksk._, 233.

[107.1]

Emma Altmann, in iv. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 271.

[107.2]

Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 189, from Thiele. An analogous case is given

by Ostermann, 515, as occurring at Friuli.

[107.3]

ii. _Folklore_, 292.

[107.4]

Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 51.

[108.1]

C. A. Frazer, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 191.

[108.2]

ii. Witzschel, 267; Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 343; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._,

1803. The superstition has been carried in this form by Germans across

the Atlantic. iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 324; vii. 114.

[108.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 111.

[109.1]

_County F.L., Suffolk_, 190, quoting Zincke’s _Materials for the

History of Wherstead_.

[109.2]

Edward Peacock, in ii. _F.L. Journ._, 122, quoting Drakard’s _Stamford

News_ for 15th Oct. 1833.

[110.1]

vi. _N. and Q._, 8th ser., 6, quoting letter from Mr. W. H. Berry in

the _Diss Express_ of 23rd March 1894.

[110.2]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1800, 1803.

[110.3]

J. Tuchmann, in iv. _Mélusine_, 320, citing Wuttke.

[110.4]

_Ibid._, citing a variety of cases; Monseur, 92; Liebrecht, _Gerv.

Tilb._, 219, quoting Thiers, _Traité des Superstitions_; ii.

Witzschel, 270; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1805, 1824; Atkinson, 104;

Henderson, 218, 221; F. Starr, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 324; J. H.

Porter, in vii. _ibid._, 116. Cf. Knoop, _Posen_, 79.

[111.1]

Scot, 230, quoting _M. Mal._ Bodin gives from Spranger substantially

the same account. Bodin, 334. See also iv. _Mélusine_, 320.

[111.2]

vi. _Mélusine_, 229; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 156; ii.

Witzschel, 270; iii. _Am Urquell_, 238. Cf. a weird story, _ibid._,

317.

[111.3]

Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 229.

[111.4]

iv. _Mélusine_, 320; vi. 89; ii. Witzschel, 265; iv. _Journ. Am.

F.L._, 126.

[112.1]

iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 126; vi. 70; Bodin, 333; vi. _Mélusine_, 228.

[112.2]

ii. Dobrizhoffer, 267.

[112.3]

Töppen, 35.

[112.4]

Henderson, 187.

[112.5]

_County F.L., Suffolk_, 192, 202. See an elaborate spell, Henderson,

220.

[113.1]

Nichols, _loc. cit._

[113.2]

Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 376, quoting De Lancre, _Tableau de l’inconstance

des mauvais anges et démons_ (Paris, 1613), 348.

[113.3]

iv. _Zeits. f. Volksk._ 257.

[114.1]

R. Scot, 66; Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 346; Monseur, 92; Harou, 54;

Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 89; iv., 320; C. Dirksen, in iv. _Zeits.

des Vereins_, 324. An Italian woman whose milk was deficient enclosed

a drop or two in a nutshell, with similar results on the witch.

Ostermann, 376.

[114.2]

Georgeakis, 342.

[114.3]

i. _Rivista_, 386, 462, 935; vi. _Mélusine_, 108.

[115.1]

Leland, _Etruscan_, 360, quoting the _Secolo_ of Milan for 3rd March

1891. See also _ibid._, 282, 359, 361; Ostermann, 519. Midnight is in

general the proper time for performing the ceremony of boiling.

CHAPTER X NOTES

[118.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134.

[118.2]

ii. Laisnel de la Salle, 24.

[118.3]

H. Prahn, in i. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 182.

[119.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134.

[119.2]

_Ibid._, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34; iv. Kobert, 82.

[119.3]

Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80. For the Wendish maiden an alternative is

“eine unpaarige Zahl Haare vom Gemächte ganz klein zu schneiden, dass

sie nicht mehr sichtbar sind, und in Kartoffelen den Geliebten

genieszen zu lassen.” Conversely, “wenn bei den Wenden ein Bursche von

einem Mädchen geliebt sein will, so soll er sich Haare von ihrem

Gemächte verschaffen, sie in eine Nähnadel einfädeln und so bei

sich tragen.” _Ibid._

[119.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 57.

[119.5]

Bourke, 219, quoting a story from Paullini, _Dreck Apotheke_

(Frankfort, 1696).

[120.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 82, 203. The last seems also a

Transylvanian Saxon charm. _Ibid._, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 203.

[120.2]

_Ibid._, _Volksleb. Mag._, 78; ii. Brand, 605, quoting _The Comical

Pilgrim’s Pilgrimage into Ireland_.

[121.1]

A. F. Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269. A still more repulsive

Gipsy charm is reported by Dr. von Wlislocki, in which the hair,

saliva, blood, nail-parings, etc., of the man are worked up into a

dough and formed into a rough figure supposed to represent him. The

treatment of the figure is analogous to the other cases cited.

_Volksgl. Zig._, 104.

[121.2]

Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 134. I have not traced the authority for this:

probably it is Dr. von Wlislocki.

[121.3]

Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 79, citing Von Schulenburg, _Wendisches

Volksthum_.

[121.4]

F. Starr, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 323.

[121.5]

Apuleius, _Golden Ass_, iii.

[122.1]

Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 79, citing Wuttke. Wilken also mentions, but does

not detail, a hair-philtre among the Alfurs of Buru, in the East

Indies.

[122.2]

Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 168, citing Vuk.

[122.3]

Julie Filippi, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 462. The same tale is told at

Friuli concerning the amours of a Benedictine monk of the abbey of

Moggio. Ostermann, 317. See also _supra_, p. 66.***

[122.4]

i. Mannhardt, 48.

[122.5]

Von den Steinen, 558.

[123.1]

Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 80 notes, citing Wuttke.

[123.2]

Gregor, 86; Monseur, 34; ii. Witzschel, 286; Prahn, in i. _Zeits. des

Vereins_, 182; iii. _Am Urquell_, 59; v., 81; Von Wlislocki,

_Volksleb. Mag._ 76; Bourke, 216.

[123.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34.

[123.4]

Tuchmann in vi. _Mélusine_, 110.

[123.5]

Bourke, 223.

[124.1]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1747; W. R. Paton, in v. _Folklore_, 277, citing

three MSS. in his own possession. Aubrey (_Gentilisme_, 43)

conjectures with plausibility that the sport called _cocklebread_ is a

relic of this.

[124.2]

Owen, 142; Harou, 17.

[124.3]

Feilberg, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 4.

[124.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 57; iii. _Am Urquell_, 62.

[124.5]

Wolf, _Nied. Sagen_, 367; Ostermann, 310.

[125.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 134; _Volksdicht._, 150; iii. _Am

Urquell_, 12, 62, 93.

[125.2]

Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269, 270. Cf. _ibid._, 3.

[125.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 141. Cf. Ostermann, 316.

[125.4]

Von Henrici, in iv. Kobert, 92, 96; iii. _Am Urquell_, 4, 12, 13; iv.,

98; Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 69, 70, 71; _Volksgl. Zig._, 133;

_Volksgl. Mag._, 142; _Siebenb. Sachs._, 203; Felicina

Giannini-Finucci, in xi. _Archivio_, 453; Ostermann, 310; Rev. W.

Gregor in letter to me dated 8th Sept. 1893; Bourke, 217, 218; i.

_Sax. Leechd._, xlv., quoting the Italian philosopher Cæsalpinus;

Strack, 8, 15, 17, quoting a medical work of the seventeenth century

and other authorities; Leland, _Etr. Rom._, 294; v. _Folklore_, 277;

Von den Steinen, 558. An analogous superstition at Siena, see G. B.

Corsi, in xiii. _Archivio_, 475.

[125.5]

i. _Sax. Leechd._, xlv., quoting the Shrift-book of Ecgbert,

Archbishop of York; Strack, 15, quoting that of Theodore of

Canterbury; Bourke, 217, 219, citing various authors; iii. _Am

Urquell_, 268, 269; Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 71; Rev. W.

Gregor, in the above-cited letter, explains that this is the philtre

referred to by him, _op. cit._, 86.

[126.1]

Scot, 63; Bourke, 216, 217, citing various authors; vii. _Journ. Am.

F.L._, 133; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 167; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl.

Zig._, 82, 104. Aubrey (_Gentilisme_, 44) notices in Burchard’s

Decrees a reference to a custom on the part of women for the purpose

of awakening love, analogous to the nasty Annamite story (Landes, 150)

cited _suprà_, vol. i., p. 76. Among the authorities cited in this

and preceding notes may also be found details of the means of

destroying the charms by burning, treading out, and otherwise treating

the substances referred to.

[126.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 76.

[126.3]

Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 12.

[126.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 132.

[126.5]

Liebrecht, _Gerv. Tilb._, 72 note, apparently quoting Fin Magnussen;

De Mensignac, 19.

[127.1]

Gigli, 83.

[127.2]

vii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 380. A similar ceremony with different words,

_ibid._, 383.

[127.3]

Aug. Baumgart, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 83; Pigorini-Beri, 64.

[127.4]

Similarly for a cat. Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 231, 232; De

Mensignac, 76.

[127.5]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1785.

[128.1]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1828; Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 108.

[128.2]

iii. _L’Anthropologie_, 194. Another food-philtre is mentioned by Von

den Steinen, 558.

[128.3]

Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 268.

[128.4]

Von Wlislocki, iii. _Am Urquell_, 12. Another Gipsy charm applied to

clothing is given by Dr. von Wlislocki, _Volkgsl. Zig._, 134. I need

not detail it. In a Chaldean incantation already quoted, the victim

complains: “He has taken the enchanted philtre and has soiled my

garment with it.” Lenormant, 61. We may surmise that it consisted of

some of the nasty compounds referred to in previous paragraphs; but

the translation is too uncertain to lay any stress on it.

[129.1]

iv. _Zeits des Vereins_, 159, citing Wuttke.

[129.2]

Lucian, _Hetairai_, Dial. iv.

[129.3]

P. Sartori, in iv. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 159.

[129.4]

Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 77.

[130.1]

Garnett, ii. _Wom. Turk._, 237.

[130.2]

Mrs. French-Sheldon, in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 364. The power of

a white man is especially dreaded; but, as I understand Mrs.

French-Sheldon, the objection to part with the cloth applies to all

men, irrespective of colour.

[130.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 133.

[131.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 75, 203.

[131.2]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 34.

[131.3]

Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 165.

[132.1]

vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 69.

[132.2]

Mrs. Latham, in i. _F.L. Record_, 44; Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr.

Inst._, 235. Elsewhere in England you are advised to burn your hair

when cut off, lest the birds carry it away; but what the result of

their doing so would be I do not know. Addy, 142.

[132.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1804, 1822.

[132.4]

Zingerle, _Sitten_, 28.

[133.1]

Liebrecht, 333.

[133.2]

Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, in iv. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 153. Brain fever was

even feared in Massachusetts. Sarah B. Farmer, in vii. _Journ. Am.

F.L._, 252.

[133.3]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 81. This is the belief concerning

birds in Swabia. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1804.

[133.4]

xxii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 42, 116.

[133.5]

i. Binger, 371.

[133.6]

vi. _Mélusine_, 46.

[133.7]

Bent, 274.

[134.1]

Whymper, in viii. _Trans. Ethn. Soc._, N.S., 174.

[134.2]

i. _Mélusine_, 583, quoting _Le Tour du Monde_.

[134.3]

Von den Steinen, 558.

[134.4]

Taylor, 206 note, 207.

[134.5]

ii. _Mélusine_, 360.

[134.6]

B. W. Schiffer. in iv. _Am Urquell_, 74.

[134.7]

Hershon, _Talmudic Miscellany_ (Boston, 1880), quoted by Bourke, 347.

Compare the reason for the Australian native’s objection to passing

under a leaning tree, or to being stepped over, when lying down, by a

woman. iii. Curr, 179; ii. 301.

[135.1]

Aulus Gellius, x. 15.

[135.2]

iv. _Sacred Books of the East_, 186.

[136.1]

xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 164, 62. Cf. iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 190.

[136.2]

i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 76.

[136.3]

ii. Mitford, 266. So, too, in Korea, “old gentlemen keep a little bag

in which they assiduously collect the combings of their hair, the

strokings of their beard, and parings of their nails, in order that

all that belongs to them may be duly placed in their coffin at death.”

Griffis, 271.

[137.1]

Wilken, _Haaropfer_, 52, 50, 51.

[137.2]

De Mensignac, 9, citing Anne Raffenel, _Nouveau Voyage dans les Pays

des Nègres_, and Hovelacque, _Les Nègres de l’Afrique

sus-Equatoriale_. Mungo Park, 246, also describes the ceremony, but

does not mention the special point now under consideration.

[137.3]

Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, 249.

[138.1]

i. _Mélusine_, 549; i. Kirby, 91.

[138.2]

Webster, 71.

[138.3]

Arnason, ii. _Sagen_, 250.

[139.1]

Hillner, 21.

[139.2]

Ostermann, 375.

[139.3]

Zanetti, 145; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 69, 161, 163; ii. De Nino,

29. On the other hand, if a suckling woman give bread to a she-goat

and eat what the latter leaves, the milk passes from the goat to her.

Finamore, _op. cit._, 167.

[139.4]

ii. De Nino, 30; Zanetti, 148; Ostermann, 378.

[140.1]

Von Wlislocki, _Volksleben Mag._, 81.

[140.2]

Timmins, 213; Featherman, _Nigritians_, 364; Speke, 163, 205; Moore,

_Africa_, 35.

[140.3]

Kohlrusch, 340.

[140.4]

Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 240, quoting Thiers.

[140.5]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1795.

[140.6]

Temme, _Volkss. Altm._, 77.

[141.1]

iii. _Am Urquell_, 55, 212; iv., 274. Hot embers on other _excreta_

cause diarrhœa, in Italy at least. Zanetti, 58.

[141.2]

De Mensignac, 110.

[141.3]

Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 53; Spiess, _Obererz._, 38.

[141.4]

viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 546.

[141.5]

Addy, 125. The same superstition has recently been reported in the

case of an old woman who died a few years ago at Mawgan in Cornwall.

v. _Folklore_, 343. Compare the mythological reasons as to

nail-parings, _suprà_, p. 138, as to hair, p. 133, and the Korean

practice, p. 136, note.***

[141.6]

J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 113.

[142.1]

M. Angelini, in xiii. _Archivio_, 21; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._,

129.

[142.2]

Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 546. At Lesbos he throws it behind the

oven, and asks the oven for an iron tooth to crunch marbles and eat

biscuits. Georgeakis, 331. To the same order of ideas belongs the

custom, said to prevail among the Hindus, of throwing their milk-teeth

into a dung-pit and praying that their new teeth may grow as fast as a

dung-heap does. i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 102, citing G. T. Lushington,

in _Journ. As. Soc. Bengal_, 1833.

[142.3]

Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1797.

[143.1]

iii. _Am Urquell_, 198, from the collection of Dr. Colerus of Berlin.

The same remedy is prescribed by Etmuller (_Opera_, Lyons, 1690),

quoted Bourke, 412. It is also mentioned by Pettigrew, 97.

[144.1]

Liebrecht, in _Gerv. Tilb._, 245, quoting Thiers; vii. _N. and Q._,

8th ser., 6.

[144.2]

ii. Brand, 589, citing Shaw, _History of the Province of Moray_.

[144.3]

Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 86.

[144.4]

Ploss, ii. _Kind_, 221.

[144.5]

Von Wlislocki, _Siebenb. Sachs._, 85.

[144.6]

iii. _Am Urquell_, 198.

[145.1]

i. _Sax. Leechd._, 333.