stones are endowed with miraculous powers which correspond in their
nature to the shape of the stone. Thus a piece of water-worn coral on
the beach often bears a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence
in the Banks Islands a man who finds such a coral will lay it at the
root of one of his bread-fruit trees in the expectation that it will
make the tree bear well. If the result answers his expectation, he will
then, for a proper remuneration, take stones of less-marked character
from other men and let them lie near his, in order to imbue them with
the magic virtue which resides in it. Similarly, a stone with little
discs upon it is good to bring in money; and if a man found a large
stone with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her
litter, he was sure that to offer money upon it would bring him pigs.
In these and similar cases the Melanesians ascribe the marvellous
power, not to the stone itself, but to its indwelling spirit; and
sometimes, as we have just seen, a man endeavours to propitiate the
spirit by laying down offerings on the stone.[594] But the conception
of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere of magic,
and within that of religion. Where such a conception is found, as here,
in conjunction with purely magical ideas and practices, the latter may
generally be assumed to be the original stock on which the religious
conception has been at some later time engrafted. For there are strong
grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has
preceded religion. But to this point we shall return presently.
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of precious stones.]
The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious
stones; indeed it has been maintained, with great show of reason, that
such stones were used as amulets long before they were worn as mere
ornaments.[595] Thus the Greeks gave the name of tree-agate to a stone
which exhibits tree-like markings, and they thought that if two {p165}
of these gems were tied to the horns or neck of oxen at the plough,
the crop would be sure to be plentiful.[596] Again, they recognised
a milk-stone which produced an abundant supply of milk in women if
only they drank it dissolved in honey-mead.[597] Milk-stones are used
for the same purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the present
day;[598] in Albania nursing mothers wear the stones in order to
ensure an abundant flow of milk.[599] In Lechrain down to modern times
German women have attempted to increase their milk by stroking their
breasts with a kind of alum which they call a milk-stone.[600] Again,
the Greeks believed in a stone which cured snake-bites, and hence was
named the snake-stone; to test its efficacy you had only to grind
the stone to powder and sprinkle the powder on the wound.[601] The
wine-coloured amethyst received its name, which means “not drunken,”
because it was supposed to keep the wearer of it sober;[602] and two
brothers who desired to live at unity were advised to carry magnets
about with them, which, by drawing the twain together, would clearly
prevent them from falling out.[603] In Albania people think that if
the blood-stone is laid on a wound it will stop the flow of blood.[604]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the
sea.
Homoeopathic magic of the setting sun.
Homoeopathic magic of the pole-star.]
Amongst the things which homoeopathic magic seeks to turn to account
are the great powers of nature, such as the waxing and the waning moon,
the rising and the setting sun, the stars, and the sea. Elsewhere I
have illustrated the homoeopathic virtues ascribed to the waxing and
the waning moon:[605] here I will give an Arab charm of the {p166}
setting sun. When a husband is far away and his wife would bring him
home to her, she procures pepper and coriander seed from a shop that
faces the east, and throws them on a lighted brasier at sunset. Then
turning to the east she waves a napkin with which she has wiped herself
and says: “Let the setting sun return having found such and such an
one, son of such and such a woman, in grief and pain. May the grief
that my absence causes him make him weep, may the grief that my absence
causes him make him lament, may the grief that my absence causes him
make him break the obstacles that part us and bring him back to me.” If
the charm is unsuccessful, she repeats it one day at sunrise, burning
the same perfumes. Clearly she imagines that as the sun goes away in
the west and comes back in the east, it should at its return bring the
absent one home.[606] The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a
rule that after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent
with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. When the
pole-star appears, he should point it out to her, and, addressing the
star, say, “Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm be thou with
me, O thriving one!” Then, turning to his wife, he should say, “To me
Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband,
live with me a hundred autumns.”[607] The intention of the ceremony is
plainly to guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability
of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is
the wish expressed in Keats’s last sonnet:—
_Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—_
_Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night._
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of the tides.]
Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its
ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the {p167} principles of that
rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance which here engages our
attention, to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its
tides and the life of man, of animals, and of plants. In the flowing
tide they see not merely a symbol, but a cause of exuberance, of
prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real
agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weakness, and of
death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover sown when the tide is
coming in will grow well, but that if the plant be sown at low water
or when the tide is going out, it will never reach maturity, and that
the cows which feed on it will burst.[608] His wife believes that the
best butter is made when the tide has just turned and is beginning
to flow, that milk which foams in the churn will go on foaming till
the hour of high water is past, and that water drawn from the well or
milk extracted from the cow while the tide is rising will boil up in
the pot or saucepan and overflow into the fire.[609] The Galelareese
say that if you wish to make oil, you should do it when the tide is
high, for then you will get plenty of oil.[610] According to some
of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had been parted
from their bodies, remained in secret sympathy with the sea, and
were observed to ruffle when the tide was on the ebb.[611] Another
ancient belief, attributed to Aristotle, was that no creature can die
except at ebb tide. The belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed
by experience, so far as regards human beings, on the coast of
France.[612] Philostratus also assures us that at Cadiz dying people
never yielded up the ghost while the water was high.[613] A like fancy
still lingers in some parts of Europe. On the Cantabrian coast of Spain
they think that persons who die of chronic or acute disease expire
at the moment when the tide begins to recede.[614] In Portugal, all
along the coast of Wales, and on some parts of the coast of Brittany,
{p168} a belief is said to prevail that people are born when the tide
comes in, and die when it goes out.[615] Dickens attests the existence
of the same superstition in England. “People can’t die, along the
coast,” said Mr. Peggotty, “except when the tide’s pretty nigh out.
They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born till
flood.”[616] The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said
to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to
Kent.[617] Shakespeare must have been familiar with it, for he makes
Falstaff die “even just between twelve and one, e’en at the turning o’
the tide.”[618] We meet the belief again on the Pacific coast of North
America among the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Whenever a
good Haida is about to die he sees a canoe manned by some of his dead
friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to the spirit land.
“Come with us now,” they say, “for the tide is about to ebb and we
must depart.”[619] At the other extremity of America the same fancy
has been noted among the Indians of Southern Chili. A Chilote Indian
in the last stage of consumption, after preparing to die like a good
Catholic, was heard to ask how the tide was running. When his sister
told him that it was still coming in, he smiled and said that he had
yet a little while to live. It was his firm conviction that with the
ebbing tide his soul would pass to the ocean of eternity.[620] At Port
Stephens, in New South Wales, the natives always buried their dead at
flood tide, never at ebb, lest the retiring water should bear the soul
of the departed to some distant country.[621]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of grave-clothes in China.]
To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain complicated
charms, which concentrate in themselves the magical essence emanating,
on homoeopathic principles, from times and seasons, from persons and
from things. The vehicles employed to transmit these happy influences
{p169} are no other than grave-clothes. These are provided by many
Chinese in their lifetime, and most people have them cut out and sewn
by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that,
since such a person is likely to live a great many years to come, a
part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the clothes,
and thus stave off for many years the time when they shall be put to
their proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference in a
year which has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it seems
plain that grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will
possess the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree.
Amongst the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special
pains have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality.
It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word
“longevity” embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To present an
aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known as
“longevity garments,” is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial
piety and a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to
prolong the life of its owner, he often wears it, especially on festive
occasions, in order to allow the influence of longevity, created by
the many golden letters with which it is bespangled, to work their
full effect upon his person. On his birthday, above all, he hardly
ever fails to don it, for in China common sense bids a man lay in a
large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended in the
form of health and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired in the
gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influence at every pore, the
happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends and
relations, who warmly express their admiration of these magnificent
cerements, and of the filial piety which prompted the children to
bestow so beautiful and useful a present on the author of their
being.[622]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic applied to the sites of cities in China.]
Another application of the maxim that like produces {p170} like is seen
in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected
by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of
the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related
that long ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like
those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of the
neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net,
until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting
two tall pagodas in their midst. These pagodas, which still tower above
the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever since exercised the happiest
influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before
it could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp.[623]
Some thirty years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised
to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they
ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new
temple which had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a
tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was
serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would
have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a
succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the
local professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly
surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two
wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded
that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable of doing further
mischief.[624]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert threatened misfortune.]
Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an
evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent
destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real one. At Kampot, a
small seaport of Cambodia, a French official saw one morning a troop
of armed guards escorting a man who was loaded with chains. They
passed his house and went away towards the country, preceded by a man
who drew lugubrious sounds from a gong, and followed by a score of
idlers. The official thought it must be an execution and was surprised
to have heard nothing {p171} about it. Afterwards he received from
his interpreter the following lucid explanation of the affair. “In
our country it sometimes happens that a man walking in the fields
has nothing but the upper part of his body visible to people at a
distance. Such an appearance is a sign that he will certainly die
soon, and that is what happened last evening to the man you saw. Going
homewards across the plain he carried over his shoulder a bundle of
palms with long slender stems ending in fan-like tufts of leaves. His
family, returning from their work, followed him at a distance, and
soon they saw his head, shoulders, and arms moving along the road and
carrying the branches, while his body and legs were invisible. Struck
with consternation at the sight, his mother and wife repaired in all
haste to the magistrate and implored him to proceed against the man
after the fashion customary in such cases. The magistrate replied that
the custom was ridiculous, and that he would be still more ridiculous
if he complied with it. However, the two women insisted on it so
vehemently, saying it was the only way to avert the omen, that he
decided to do as they wished, and gave them his word that he would
have the man arrested next morning at sunrise. So this morning the
guards came to seize the poor man, telling him that he was accused of
rebellion against the king, and without listening to his protestations
of innocence they dragged him off to court. His family pretended to be
surprised and followed him weeping. The judges had him clapped into
irons and ordered him to instant execution. His own entreaties and the
prayers of his family being all in vain, he begged that the priests
of the pagoda might come and bear witness to his innocence and join
their supplications to those of his friends. They came in haste, but
receiving a hint how the wind lay they advised the condemned man to
submit to his fate and departed to pray for his soul at the temple.
Then the man was led away to a rice-field, in the middle of which a
banana-tree, stripped of its leaves, had been set up as a stake. To
this he was tied, and while his friends took their last leave of him,
the sword of the executioner flashed through the air and at a single
stroke swept off the top of the banana-tree above the head of the {p172}
pretended victim. The man had given himself up for dead. His friends,
while they knocked off his irons, explained to him the meaning of it
all and led him away to thank the magistrates and priests for what they
had done to save him from the threatened catastrophe.” The writer who
reports the case adds that if the magistrates had not good-naturedly
lent themselves to the pious fraud, the man’s family would have
contrived in some other way to impress him with the terror of death in
order to save his life.[625]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert threatened misfortune.]
Again, two missionaries were journeying not long ago through Central
Celebes, accompanied by some Toradjas. Unfortunately the note of a
certain bird called _teka-teka_ was heard to the left. This boded
ill, and the natives insisted that they must either turn back or pass
the night on the spot. When the missionaries refused to do either, an
expedient was hit upon which allowed them to continue the journey in
safety. A miniature hut was made out of a leafy branch, and in it were
deposited a leaf moistened with spittle and a hair from the head of one
of the party. Then one of the Toradjas said, “We shall pass the night
here,” and addressing the hair he spoke thus: “If any misfortune should
happen through the cry of that bird, may it fall on you.” In this way
the evil omen was diverted from the real men and directed against
their substitute the hair, and perhaps also the spittle, in the tiny
hut.[626] When a Cherokee has dreamed of being stung by a snake, he is
treated just in the same way as if he had really been stung; otherwise
the place would swell and ulcerate in the usual manner, though perhaps
years might pass before it did so. It is the ghost of a snake that has
bitten him in sleep.[627] One night a Huron Indian dreamed that he had
been taken and burned alive by his hereditary foes the Iroquois. Next
morning a council was held on the affair, and the following measures
{p173} were adopted to save the man’s life. Twelve or thirteen fires
were kindled in the large hut where they usually burned their prisoners
to death. Every man seized a flaming brand and applied it to the naked
body of the dreamer, who shrieked with pain. Thrice he ran round the
hut, escaping from one fire only to fall into another. As each man
thrust his blazing torch at the sufferer he said, “Courage, my brother,
it is thus that we have pity on you.” At last he was allowed to escape.
Passing out of the hut he caught up a dog which was held ready for
the purpose, and throwing it over his shoulder carried it through the
wigwams as a sacred offering to the war-god, praying him to accept the
animal instead of himself. Afterwards the dog was killed, roasted,
and eaten, exactly as the Indians were wont to roast and eat their
captives.[628]
[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert misfortune in Madagascar.]
In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced to a regular
system. Here every man’s fortune is determined by the day or hour of
his birth, and if that happens to be an unlucky one his fate is sealed,
unless the mischief can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by means
of a substitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are various.
For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second month
(February), his house will be burnt down when he comes of age. To take
time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the
infant will set up a shed in a field or in the cattle-fold and burn it.
If the ceremony is to be really effective, the child and his mother
should be placed in the shed and only plucked, like brands, from the
burning hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the
month of tears, and he who is born in it is born to sorrow. But in
order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over his future, he has
nothing to do but to take the lid off a boiling pot and wave it about.
The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent
the tears from trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed
that a young girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn,
descend before her with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity
as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a
shroud, and mourns over it like {p174} Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she takes a dozen or more other
grasshoppers, and having removed some of their superfluous legs and
wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow. The buzz of
the tortured insects and the agitated motions of their mutilated limbs
represent the shrieks and contortions of the mourners at a funeral.
After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue
their mourning till death releases them from their pain; and having
bound up her dishevelled hair she retires from the grave with the
step and carriage of a person plunged in grief. Thenceforth she looks
cheerfully forward to seeing her children survive her; for it cannot be
that she should mourn and bury them twice over. Once more, if fortune
has frowned on a man at his birth and penury has marked him for her
own, he can easily eraze the mark in question by purchasing a couple of
cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them. For who but the
rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?[629]
§ 3. _Contagious Magic_
[Sidenote: Contagious magic working by contact, not resemblance.
Magical sympathy between a man and the severed portions of his person,
such as his hair or nails.
Beneficial effect of this superstition in causing the removal of
refuse.]
Thus far we have been considering chiefly that branch of sympathetic
magic which may be called homoeopathic or imitative. Its leading
principle, as we have seen, is that like produces like, or, in other
words, that an effect resembles its cause. The other great branch of
sympathetic magic, which I have called Contagious Magic, proceeds upon
the notion that things which have once been conjoined must remain ever
afterwards, even when quite dissevered from each other, in such a
sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one must similarly
affect the other.[630] Thus the logical basis of Contagious Magic,
like that of Homoeopathic Magic, is a mistaken association of ideas;
its physical basis, if we may speak of such a thing, {p175} like the
physical basis of Homoeopathic Magic, is a material medium of some
sort which, like the ether of modern physics, is assumed to unite
distant objects and to convey impressions from one to the other. The
most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the magical sympathy
which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of
his person, as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession
of human hair or nails may work his will, at any distance, upon the
person from whom they were cut. This superstition is world-wide;
instances of it in regard to hair and nails will be noticed later on
in this work.[631] While like other superstitions it has had its
absurd and mischievous consequences, it has nevertheless indirectly
done much good by furnishing savages with strong, though irrational,
motives for observing rules of cleanliness which they might never
have adopted on rational grounds. How the superstition has produced
this salutary effect will appear from a single instance, which I will
give in the words of an experienced observer. Amongst the natives of
the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain “it is as a rule necessary for
the efficiency of a charm that it should contain a part of the person
who is to be enchanted (for example, his hair), or a piece of his
clothing, or something that stands in some relation to him, such as
his excrements, the refuse of his food, his spittle, his footprints,
etc. All such objects can be employed as _panait_, that is, as a medium
for a _papait_ or charm, consisting of an incantation or murmuring
of a certain formula, together with the blowing into the air of some
burnt lime which is held in the hand. It need hardly, therefore, be
said that the native removes all such objects as well as he can. Thus
the cleanliness which is usual in the houses and consists in sweeping
the floor carefully every day, is by no means based on a desire for
cleanliness and neatness in themselves, but purely on the effort
to put out of the way anything that might serve an ill-wisher as a
charm.”[632] I will now illustrate the principles of Contagious Magic
by examples, beginning with its application to various parts of the
human body. {p176}
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of teeth in Australia.]
Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice to knock out
one or more of a boy’s front teeth at those ceremonies of initiation
to which every male member had to submit before he could enjoy the
rights and privileges of a full-grown man.[633] The reason of the
practice is obscure; a conjecture on this subject has been hazarded
above.[634] All that concerns us here is the evidence of a belief
that a sympathetic relation continued to exist between the lad and his
teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums. Thus among
some of the tribes about the river Darling, in New South Wales, the
extracted tooth was placed under the bark of a tree near a river or
water-hole; if the bark grew over the tooth, or if the tooth fell into
the water, all was well; but if it were exposed and the ants ran over
it, the natives believed that the boy would suffer from a disease of
the mouth.[635] Among the Murring and other tribes of New South Wales
the extracted tooth was at first taken care of by an old man, and then
passed from one headman to another, until it had gone all round the
community, when it came back to the lad’s father, and finally to the
lad himself. But however it was thus conveyed from hand to hand, it
might on no account be placed in a bag containing magical substances,
for to do so would, they believed, put the owner of the tooth in great
danger.[636] The late Dr. Howitt once acted as custodian of the teeth
which had been extracted from some novices at a ceremony of initiation,
and the old men earnestly besought him not to carry them in a bag in
which they knew that he had some quartz crystals. They declared that
if he did so the magic of the crystals would pass into the teeth, and
so injure the boys. Nearly a year after Dr. Howitt’s return from the
ceremony he was visited by one of the principal men of the Murring
tribe, who had travelled some two hundred and fifty miles from his home
to fetch back the teeth. This man explained that he had been {p177}
sent for them because one of the boys had fallen into ill health,
and it was believed that the teeth had received some injury which had
affected him. He was assured that the teeth had been kept in a box
apart from any substances, like quartz crystals, which could influence
them; and he returned home bearing the teeth with him carefully wrapt
up and concealed.[637] In the Dieri tribe of South Australia the teeth
knocked out at initiation were bound up in emu feathers, and kept by
the boy’s father or his next-of-kin until the mouth had healed, and
even for long afterwards. Then the father, accompanied by a few old
men, performed a ceremony for the purpose of taking all the supposed
life out of the teeth. He made a low rumbling noise without uttering
any words, blew two or three times with his mouth, and jerked the teeth
through his hand to some little distance. After that he buried them
about eighteen inches under ground. The jerking movement was meant
to shew that he thereby took all the life out of the teeth. Had he
failed to do so, the boy would, in the opinion of the natives, have
been liable to an ulcerated and wry mouth, impediment in speech, and
ultimately a distorted face.[638] This ceremony is interesting as a
rare instance of an attempt to break the sympathetic link between a man
and a severed part of himself by rendering the part insensitive.
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of teeth in Africa, Europe, America, etc.
Teeth of mice and rats.]
The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth, lest these
should fall into the hands of certain mythical beings called _baloi_,
who haunt graves, and could harm the owner of the tooth by working
magic on it.[639] In Sussex some forty years ago a maid-servant
remonstrated strongly against the throwing away of children’s cast
teeth, affirming that should they be found and gnawed by any animal,
the child’s new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth of
the animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named
old Master Simmons, who had a {p178} very large pig’s tooth in his
upper jaw, a personal defect that he always averred was caused by his
mother, who threw away one of his cast teeth by accident into the
hog’s trough.[640] A similar belief has led to practices intended, on
the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace old teeth by new and
better ones. Thus in many parts of the world it is customary to put
extracted teeth in some place where they will be found by a mouse or a
rat, in the hope that, through the sympathy which continues to subsist
between them and their former owner, his other teeth may acquire the
same firmness and excellence as the teeth of these rodents. Thus in
Germany it is said to be an almost universal maxim among the people
that when you have had a tooth taken out you should insert it in a
mouse’s hole. To do so with a child’s milk-tooth which has fallen out
will prevent the child from having toothache. Or you should go behind
the stove and throw your tooth backwards over your head, saying,
“Mouse, give me your iron tooth; I will give you my bone tooth.” After
that your other teeth will remain good. German children say, “Mouse,
mouse, come out and bring me out a new tooth”; or “Mouse, I give you a
little bone; give me a little stone”; or “Mouse, there is an old tooth
for you; make me a new one.” In Bavaria they say that if this ceremony
be observed the child’s second teeth will be as white as the teeth of
mice.[641] Amongst the South Slavonians, too, the child is taught to
throw his tooth into a dark corner and say, “Mouse, mouse, there is a
bone tooth; give me an iron tooth instead.”[642] Jewish children in
South Russia throw their cast teeth on the roof with the same request
to the mouse to give them an iron tooth for a tooth of bone.[643] Far
away {p179} from Europe, at Raratonga, in the Pacific, when a child’s
tooth was extracted, the following prayer used to be recited:—
“_Big rat! little rat!_
_Here is my old tooth._
_Pray give me a new one._”
Then the tooth was thrown on the thatch of the house, because rats make
their nests in the decayed thatch. The reason assigned for invoking
the rats on these occasions was that rats’ teeth were the strongest
known to the natives.[644] In the Seranglao and Gorong archipelagoes,
between New Guinea and Celebes, when a child loses his first tooth, he
must throw it on the roof, saying, “Mouse, I give you my tooth; give
me yours instead.”[645] In Amboyna the custom is the same, and the
form of words is, “Take this tooth, thrown on the roof, as the mouse’s
share, and give me a better one instead.”[646] In the Kei Islands, to
the south-west of New Guinea, when a child begins to get his second
teeth, he is lifted up to the top of the roof in order that he may
there deposit, as an offering to the rats, the tooth which has fallen
out. At the same time some one cries aloud, “O rats, here you have
his tooth; give him a golden one instead.”[647] Among the Ilocans of
Luzon, in the Philippines, when children’s teeth are loose, they are
pulled out with a string and put in a place where rats will be likely
to find and drag them away.[648] In ancient Mexico, when a child was
getting a new tooth, the father or mother used to put the old one
in a mouse’s hole, believing that if this precaution were not taken
the new tooth would not issue from the gums.[649] A different and
more barbarous {p180} application of the same principle is the Swabian
superstition that when a child is teething you should bite off the
head of a living mouse, and hang the head round the child’s neck by a
string, taking care, however, to make no knot in the string; then the
child will teethe easily.[650] In Bohemia the treatment prescribed is
similar, though there they recommend you to use a red thread and to
string three heads of mice on it instead of one.[651]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of teeth: teeth of squirrels, foxes,
beavers, etc.
Teeth thrown towards the sun.]
But it is not always a mouse or a rat that brings the child a new and
stronger tooth. Apparently any strong-toothed animal will serve the
purpose. Thus when his or her tooth drops out, a Singhalese will throw
it on the roof, saying, “Squirrel, dear squirrel, take this tooth
and give me a dainty tooth.”[652] In Bohemia a child will sometimes
throw its cast tooth behind the stove, asking the fox to give him an
iron tooth instead of the bone one.[653] In Berlin the teeth of a fox
worn as an amulet round a child’s neck make teething easy for him,
and ensure that his teeth will be good and lasting.[654] Similarly,
in order to help a child to cut its teeth, the aborigines of Victoria
fastened to its wrist the front tooth of a kangaroo, which the child
used as a coral to rub its gums with.[655] Again, the beaver can
gnaw through the hardest wood. Hence among the Cherokee Indians, when
the loosened milk tooth of a child has been pulled out or has dropped
out of itself, the child runs round the house with it, repeating four
times, “Beaver, put a new tooth into my jaw,” after which he throws the
tooth on the roof of the house.[656] In Macedonia, a child carefully
keeps for a time its first drawn tooth, and then throws it on the roof
with the following invocation to the crow:— {p181}
“_O dear crow, here is a tooth of bone,_
_Take it and give me a tooth of iron instead,_
_That I may be able to chew beans_
_And to crunch dry biscuits._”[657]
We can now understand a custom of the Thompson Indians of British
Columbia, which the writer who records it is unable to explain. When
a child lost its teeth, the father used to take each one as it fell
out and to hide it in a piece of raw venison, which he gave to a dog
to eat. The animal swallowed the venison and the tooth with it.[658]
Doubtless the custom was intended to ensure that the child’s new teeth
should be as strong as those of a dog. In Silesia mothers sometimes
swallow their children’s cast teeth in order to save their offspring
from toothache. The intention is perhaps to strengthen the weak teeth
of the child by the strong teeth of the grown woman.[659] Amongst the
Warramunga of Central Australia, when a girl’s tooth has been knocked
out as a solemn ceremony, it is pounded up and the fragments placed in
a piece of flesh, which has to be eaten by the girl’s mother. When the
same rite has been performed on a man, his pounded tooth must be eaten
in a piece of meat by his mother-in-law.[660] Among the heathen Arabs,
when a boy’s tooth fell out, he used to take it between his finger and
thumb and throw it towards the sun, saying, “Give me a better for it.”
After that his teeth were sure to grow straight, and close, and strong.
“The sun,” says Tharafah, “gave the lad from his own nursery-ground a
tooth like a hailstone, white and polished.”[661] Thus the reason for
throwing the old teeth towards the sun would seem to have been a notion
that the sun sends hail, from which it naturally follows that he can
send you a tooth as smooth and white and hard as a hailstone. Among the
peasants of the Lebanon, when a child loses a milk tooth, he throws it
{p182} towards the sun, saying, “Sun, sun, take the ass’s tooth and give
me the deer’s tooth.” They sometimes say jestingly that the child’s
tooth has been carried off by a mouse.[662] An Armenian generally
buries his extracted teeth at the edge of the hearth with the prayer:
“Grandfather, take a dog’s tooth and give me a golden tooth.”[663]
In the light of the preceding examples, we may conjecture that the
grandfather here invoked is not so much the soul of a dead ancestor as
a mouse or a rat.
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of navel-string and afterbirth among the
Maoris and the aborigines of Australia.]
Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic
union with the body, after the physical connexion has been severed,
are the navel-string and the afterbirth, including the placenta. So
intimate, indeed, is the union conceived to be, that the fortunes of
the individual for good or evil throughout life are often supposed
to be bound up with one or other of these portions of his person,
so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is preserved and properly
treated, he will be prosperous; whereas if it be injured or lost, he
will suffer accordingly. Thus among the Maoris, when the navel-string
dropped off, the child was carried to a priest to be solemnly named
by him. But before the ceremony of naming began, the navel-string was
buried in a sacred place and a young sapling was planted over it.
Ever afterwards that tree, as it grew, was a _tohu oranga_ or sign of
life for the child.[664] In the Upper Whakatane valley, in the North
Island of New Zealand, there is a famous _hinau_ tree, to which the
Maoris used to attach the navel-strings of their children; and barren
women were in the habit of embracing the tree in the hope of thereby
obtaining offspring.[665] Again, among the Maoris, “the placenta
is named _fenua_, which word signifies land. It is applied by the
natives to the placenta, from their supposing it to be the residence
of the child: on being discharged it is immediately buried with {p183}
great care, as they have the superstitious idea that the priests, if
offended, would procure it; and, by praying over it, occasion the death
of both mother and child, by ‘praying them to death,’ to use their
own expression.”[666] Again, some of the natives of South Australia
regarded the placenta as sacred and carefully put it away out of reach
of the dogs,[667] doubtless because they thought that harm would come
to the child if this part of himself were eaten by the animals. Certain
tribes of Western Australia believe that a man swims well or ill,
according as his mother at his birth threw the navel-string into water
or not.[668] Among the Arunta of Central Australia the navel-string
is swathed in fur-string and made into a necklace, which is placed
round the child’s neck. The necklace is supposed to facilitate the
growth of the child, to keep it quiet and contented, and to avert
illness generally.[669] In the Kaitish tribe of Central Australia the
practice and belief are similar.[670] In the Warramunga tribe, after
the string has hung round the child’s neck for a time, it is given to
the wife’s brother, who wears it in his armlet, and who may not see the
child till it can walk. In return for the navel-string, the man makes a
present of weapons to the infant’s father. When the child can walk, the
father gives fur-string to the man, who now comes to the camp, sees the
child, and makes another present to the father. After that he keeps the
navel-string for some time longer, and finally places it in a hollow
tree known only to himself.[671] Among the natives on the Pennefather
river in Queensland it is {p184} believed that a part of the child’s
spirit (_cho-i_) stays in the afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes
the afterbirth away and buries it in the sand. She marks the spot by a
number of twigs which she sticks in the ground in a circle, tying their
tops together so that the structure resembles a cone. When Anjea, the
being who causes conception in women by putting mud babies into their
wombs, comes along and sees the place, he takes out the spirit and
carries it away to one of his haunts, such as a tree, a hole in a rock,
or a lagoon, where it may remain for years. But sometime or other he
will put the spirit again into a baby, and it will be born once more
into the world.[672]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of navel-string in New Guinea, Fiji, the
Caroline Islands, and the Gilbert Islands.]
In the Yabim tribe of German New Guinea the mother ties the
navel-string to the net in which she carries the child, lest any
one should use the string to the child’s hurt.[673] “In some parts
of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted together with
a cocoanut, or slip of a bread-fruit tree, and the child’s life is
supposed to be intimately connected with that of the tree. Moreover,
the planting is supposed to have the effect of making the boy a good
climber. If the child be a girl, the mother or her sister will take
the navel-string to the sea-water when she goes out fishing for the
first time after the childbirth, and she will throw it into the sea
when the nets are stretched in line. Thus the girl will grow up into a
skilful fisherwoman. But the queerest use I ever saw the string put to
was at Rotuma. There it has become almost obligatory for a young man,
who wants the girls to respect him, to make a voyage in a white man’s
vessel; and mothers come alongside ships anchored in the roadstead and
fasten their boy’s navel-string to the vessel’s chain-plates. This
will make sure of a voyage for the child when it has grown up. This,
of course, must be a modern development, but it has all the strength
of an ancient custom.”[674] In Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands,
the {p185} navel-string is placed in a shell and then disposed of in
such a way as shall best adapt the child for the career which the
parents have chosen for him. Thus if they wish to make him a good
climber, they will hang the navel-string on a tree.[675] In the
Gilbert Islands the navel-string is wrapt by the child’s father or
adoptive father in a pandanus leaf, and then worn by him as a bracelet
for several months. After that he keeps it most carefully in the hut,
generally hanging under the ridge-beam. The islanders believe that
if the navel-string is thus preserved, the child will become a great
warrior if it is a boy, or will make a good match if it is a girl. But
should the bracelet be lost before the child is grown up, they expect
that the boy will prove a coward in war, and that the girl will make
an unfortunate marriage. Hence the most anxious search is made for the
missing talisman, and if it is not to be found, weeks will pass before
the relations resign themselves to its loss. When the boy has grown to
be a youth and has distinguished himself for the first time in war, the
bracelet containing the navel-string is taken by the villagers, on a
day fixed for the purpose, far out to sea; the adoptive father of the
lad throws the bracelet overboard, and all the canoes begin to catch as
many fish as they can. The first fish caught, whether large or small,
is carefully preserved apart from the rest. Meantime the old women at
home have been busy preparing a copious banquet for the fishermen. When
the little fleet comes to shore, the old woman who helped at the lad’s
birth goes to meet it; the first fish caught is handed to her, and she
carries it to the hut. The fish is laid on a new mat, the youth and his
mother take their places beside it, and they and it are covered up with
another mat. Then the old woman goes round the mat, striking the ground
with a short club and murmuring a prayer to the lad’s god to help him
henceforth in war, that he may be brave and invulnerable, and that he
may turn out a skilful fisherman. The navel-string of a girl, as soon
as she is grown up, is thrown into the sea with similar ceremonies; and
the ceremony on land is the same except that the old woman’s prayer
is {p186} naturally different; she asks the girl’s god to grant that
she may have a happy marriage and many children. After the mat has
been removed, the fish is cooked and eaten by the two; if it is too
large to be eaten by them alone, the remainder is consumed by friends
and relations. These ceremonies are only observed for the children of
wealthy parents, who can defray the cost. In the case of a child of
poorer parents the bracelet containing the navel-string simply hangs up
till it disappears in one way or another.[676]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of navel-string and afterbirth in the
Moluccas.]
Among the Galelareese, to the west of New Guinea, the mother sometimes
keeps the navel-string till the child is old enough to begin to play.
Then she gives it as a plaything to the little one, who may take it
away; otherwise the child would be idiotic. But others plant the
navel-string with a banana-bush or a coco-nut.[677] The Kei islanders,
to the south-west of New Guinea, regard the navel-string as the brother
or sister of the child, according as the infant is a boy or a girl.
They put it in a pot with ashes, and set it in the branches of a tree,
that it may keep a watchful eye on the fortunes of its comrade.[678]
In the Babar Archipelago, between New Guinea and Celebes, the placenta
is mixed with ashes and put in a small basket, which seven women,
each of them armed with a sword, hang up on a tree of a particular
kind (_Citrus hystrix_). The women carry swords for the purpose of
frightening the evil spirits; otherwise these mischievous beings might
get hold of the placenta and make the child sick. The navel-string is
kept in a little box in the house.[679] In the Tenimber and Timorlaut
islands the placenta is buried in a basket under a sago or coco-nut
palm, which then becomes the property of the child. But sometimes it is
hidden in the forest, or deposited in a hole under the house with an
offering of betel.[680] In the {p187} Watubela islands the placenta
is buried under a coco-nut, _mangga_, or great fig-tree along with
the shell of the coco-nut, of which the pulp had been used to smear
the newborn child.[681] In many of the islands between New Guinea
and Celebes the placenta is put in the branches of a tree, often in
the top of one of the highest trees in the neighbourhood. Sometimes
the navel-string is deposited along with the placenta in the tree,
but often it is kept to be used as medicine or an amulet by the
child.[682] Thus in Ceram the child sometimes wears the navel-string
round its neck as a charm to avert sickness;[683] and in the islands
of Leti, Moa, and Lakor he carries it as an amulet in war or on a
far journey.[684] We cannot doubt that the intention of putting the
placenta in the top of a tall tree is to keep it, and with it the
child, out of harm’s way. In the islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe, and
Noessa Laut, to the east of Amboyna, the midwife buries the afterbirth
and strews flowers over it. Moreover, resin or a lamp is kept burning
for seven or three nights over the buried afterbirth, in order that
no harm may come to the child. Some people, however, in these islands
solemnly cast the afterbirth into the sea. Being placed in a pot and
closely covered up with a piece of white cotton, it is taken out to
sea in a boat. A hole is knocked in the pot to allow it to sink in the
water. The midwife, who is charged with the duty of heaving the pot
and its contents overboard, must look straight ahead; if she were to
glance to the right or left the child whose afterbirth is in the pot
would squint. And the man who rows or steers the boat must make her
keep a straight course, otherwise the child would grow up a gad-about.
Before the pot is flung into the sea, the midwife disengages the piece
of white cotton in which it is wrapt, and this cloth she takes straight
back to the house and covers the baby with it. In these islands it is
thought that a child born with a caul will enjoy in later years the
gift of second sight—that is, that he will be able to see things which
are hidden from common eyes, such as devils and evil spirits. But if
his parents desire to prevent {p188} him from exercising this uncanny
power, they can do so. In that case the midwife must dry the caul in
the sun, steep it in water, and then wash the child with the water
thrice; further, when the child is a little older, she must grind the
caul to powder, and give the child the powder to eat with its pap. Some
people keep the caul; and if the child falls ill, it is given water
to drink in which the caul has been steeped.[685] Similarly in the
Luang-Sermata islands a child born with a caul is counted lucky, and
can perceive and recognise the spirits of his ancestors.[686] A caul,
it may be said, is merely the fœtal membrane which usually forms part
of the afterbirth; occasionally a child is born with it wrapt like a
hood round its head.
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of the placenta in Celebes.]
In Parigi, a kingdom on the coast of Central Celebes, the placenta
is laid in a cooking-pot, and one of the mother’s female relations
carries the pot wrapt in white cotton and hidden under a petticoat
(_sarong_) to a spot beneath the house or elsewhere, and there she
buries it. A coco-nut is planted near the place. Going and coming the
woman is led by another, and must keep her eyes fast shut, for if
she looked right or left the child would squint, “because she is at
this time closely united with a part of the child, to wit its older
brother, in other words the placenta.” On her return to the house she
lies down on her sleeping-mat, still with closed eyes, and draws a
petticoat over her head, and another woman sprinkles her with water.
After that she may get up and open her eyes. The sprinkling with
water is intended to sever her sympathetic connexion with the child
and so prevent her from exercising any influence on it.[687] Among
the Tolalaki of Central Celebes turmeric and other spices are put on
the placenta, {p189} which is then enclosed in two coco-nut shells
that fit one on the other. These are wrapt in bark-cloth and kept in
the house. If the child falls ill, the coco-nut shells are opened and
the placenta examined. Should there be worms in it, they are removed
and fresh spices added. When the child has grown big and strong, the
placenta is thrown away.[688] Among the Toboongkoo of Central Celebes
the afterbirth is placed in a rice-pot with various plants, which are
intended to preserve it from decay as long as possible; it is then
carefully tied up in bark-cloth. A man and a woman of the family carry
the placenta away; in doing so they go out and in the house four times,
and each time they enter they kiss the child, but they take care not to
look to the right or the left, for otherwise the child would squint.
Some bury the placenta, others hang it on a tree. If the child is
unwell, they dig up the placenta or take it down from the tree, and
lay bananas, rice of four sorts, and a lighted taper beside it. Having
done so, they hang it up on a tree if it was previously buried; but
they bury it if it was formerly hung up.[689] The Tomori of Central
Celebes wash the afterbirth, put it in a rice-pot, and bury it under
the house. Great care is taken that no water or spittle falls on the
place. For a few days the afterbirth is sometimes fed with rice and
eggs, which are laid on the spot where it is buried. Afterwards the
people cease to trouble themselves about it.[690] In southern Celebes
they call the navel-string and afterbirth the two brothers or sisters
of the child. When the infant happens to be a prince or princess, the
navel-string and afterbirth are placed with salt and tamarind in a new
rice-pot, which is then enveloped in a fine robe and tightly corded up
to prevent the evil spirits from making off with the pair of brothers
or sisters. For the same reason a light is kept burning all night, and
twice a day rice is rubbed on the edge of the pot, for the purpose,
as the people say, of giving the child’s little brothers or sisters
something to eat. After a while this feeding, as it is called, takes
place at {p190} rarer intervals, and when the mother has been again
brought to bed it is discontinued altogether. On the ninth day after
the birth a number of coco-nuts are planted, with much ceremony, in
a square enclosure, and the water which was used in cleansing the
afterbirth and navel-string is poured upon them. These coco-nuts are
called the contemporaries of the child and grow up with him. When the
planting is done, the rice-pot with the navel-string and afterbirth is
carried back and set beside the bed of the young prince or princess,
and when his royal highness is carried out to take the air the rice-pot
with his two “brothers” goes out with him, swathed in a robe of state
and screened from the sun by an umbrella. If the prince or princess
should die, the afterbirth and navel-string are buried. Among common
people in South Celebes these parts of the infant are generally buried
immediately after the birth, or they are sunk in the deep sea, or hung
in a rice-pot on a tree.[691]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of the placenta and navel-string in Timor,
Savou, and Rotti]
In the island of Timor the placenta is called the child’s companion
and treated accordingly. The midwife puts it in an earthen pot and
covers it with ashes from the hearth. After standing thus three days
it is taken away and buried by a person who must observe silence in
discharging this duty.[692] In Savou, a small island to the south-west
of Timor, the afterbirth is filled with native herbs, and having been
deposited in a new pot, which has never before been used, is buried
under the house to keep off evil spirits. Or it is put in a new basket
and hung in a high toddy palm to fertilise it, or thrown into the sea
to secure a good catch of fish. The person who thus disposes of the
afterbirth may not look to the right or the left; he must be joyous
and, if possible, go singing on his way. If it is to be hung on a tree,
he must climb nimbly up, in order that the child may always be lucky.
These islanders ascribe a similar fertilising virtue to a caul. It is
dried and carefully kept in a box. When rice-stalks turn black and the
ears refuse to set, a man will take the box containing the caul and run
several {p191} times round the rice-field, in order that the wind may
waft the genial influence of the caul over the rice.[693] In Rotti,
an island to the south of Timor, the navel-string is put in a small
satchel made of leaves, and if the father of the child is not himself
going on a voyage, he entrusts the bag to one of his seafaring friends
and charges him to throw it away in the open sea with the express wish
that, when the child grows up and has to sail to other islands, he
may escape the perils of the deep. But the business of girls in these
islands does not lie in the great waters, and hence their navel-strings
receive a different treatment. It is their task to go afishing daily,
when the tide is out, on the coral reefs which ring the islands. So
when the mother is herself again, she repairs with the little satchel
to the reef where she is wont to fish. Acting the part of a priestess
she there eats one or two small bagfuls of boiled rice on the spot
where she intends to deposit the dried navel-string of her baby
daughter, taking care to leave a few grains of rice in the bags. Then
she ties the precious satchel and the nearly empty rice-bags to a stick
and fastens it among the stones of the reef, generally on its outer
edge, within sight and sound of the breaking waves. In doing so she
utters a wish that this ceremony may guard her daughter from the perils
and dangers that beset her on the reef—for example, that no crocodile
may issue from the lagoon and eat her up, and that the sharp corals and
broken shells may not wound her feet.[694]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of the placenta in Flores, Bali, and Java.]
In the island of Flores the placenta is put in an earthen pot, along
with some rice and betel, and buried by the father in the neighbourhood
of the house, or else preserved in one of the highest trees.[695] The
natives of Bali, an island to the east of Java, believe firmly that
the afterbirth is the child’s brother or sister, and they bury it in
the courtyard in the half of a coco-nut from which the kernel has not
been {p192} removed. For forty days afterwards a light is burned, and
food, water, and betel deposited on the spot,[696] doubtless in order
to feed the baby’s little brother or sister, and to guard him or her
from evil spirits. In Java the afterbirth is also called the brother
or sister of the infant; it is wrapt in white cotton, put in a new pot
or a coco-nut shell, and buried by the father beside the door, outside
the house if the child is a boy, but inside the house if the child is
a girl. Every evening until the child’s navel has healed a lamp is
lit over the spot where the afterbirth is buried. If the afterbirth
hangs in a rice-pot in the house, as the practice is with some people,
the lamp burns under the place where the rice-pot is suspended. The
purpose of the light is to ward off demons, to whose machinations the
child and its supposed brother or sister are at this season especially
exposed.[697] If the child is a boy, a piece of paper inscribed with
the alphabet is deposited in the pot with his placenta, in order that
he may be smart at his learning; if the child is a girl, a needle and
thread are deposited in the pot, that she may be a good sempstress,
and water with flowers in it is poured on the spot where the placenta
is buried, in order that the child may always be healthy; for many
Javanese think that if the placenta is not properly honoured, the child
will never be well.[698] Sometimes, however, women in the interior
of Java allow the placenta, surrounded with fruits and flowers and
illuminated by little lamps, to float down the river in the dusk of the
evening as an offering to the crocodiles, or rather to the ancestors
whose souls are believed to lodge in these animals.[699]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of placenta and navel-string in Sumatra.]
In Mandeling, a district on the west coast of Sumatra, the afterbirth
is washed and buried under the house or put in an earthenware pot,
which is carefully shut up and thrown {p193} into the river. This is
done to avert the supposed unfavourable influence of the afterbirth
on the child, whose hands or feet, for example, might be chilled by
it. When the navel-string drops off, it is preserved to be used as
a medicine when its former owner is ill.[700] In Mandeling, too,
the midwife prefers to cut the navel-string with a piece of a flute
on which she has first blown, for then the child will be sure to
have a fine voice.[701] Among the Minangkabau people of Sumatra the
placenta is put in a new earthenware pot, which is then carefully
closed with a banana leaf to prevent the ants and other insects from
coming at it; for if they did, the child would be sickly and given
to squalling.[702] In Central Sumatra the placenta is wrapt in
white cotton, deposited in a basket or a calabash, and buried in the
courtyard before the house or under a rice-barn. The hole is dug by a
kinsman or kinswoman according as the baby is a boy or a girl. Over the
hole is placed a stone from the hearth, and beside it a wooden spoon is
stuck in the ground. Both stone and spoon are sprinkled with the juice
of a citron. During the ceremony _koemajen_ is burned and a shot fired.
For three evenings afterwards candles are lighted at the spot,[703]
doubtless to keep off demons. Among the Battas of Sumatra, as among so
many other peoples of the Indian Archipelago, the placenta passes for
the child’s younger brother or sister, the sex being determined by the
sex of the child, and it is buried under the house. According to the
Battas it is bound up with the child’s welfare, and seems, in fact, to
be the seat of the transferable soul, of whose wanderings outside of
the body we shall hear something later on.[704] The Karo Battas even
affirm {p194} that of a man’s two souls it is the true soul that lives
with the placenta under the house; that is the soul, they say, which
begets children.[705]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of placenta and navel-string in Borneo,
India, and Assam.
Contagious magic of placenta and navel-string in the Patani States,
China, and Japan.]
In Pasir, a district of eastern Borneo, the afterbirth is carefully
treated and kept in an earthen pot or basket in the house until the
remains of the navel-string have fallen off. All the time it is in
the house candles are burned and a little food is placed beside the
pot. When the navel-string has fallen off, it is placed with the
placenta in the pot, and the two are buried in the ground near the
house. The reason why the people take this care of the afterbirth is
that they believe it able to cause the child all kinds of sickness and
mishaps.[706] The Malas, a low Telugu caste of Southern India, bury
the placenta in a pot with leaves in some convenient place, generally
in the back yard, lest dogs or other animals should carry it off;
for if that were to happen they fancy that the child would be of a
wandering disposition.[707] The Khasis of Assam keep the placenta in
a pot in the house until the child has been formally named. When that
ceremony is over, the father waves the pot containing the placenta
thrice over the child’s head, and then hangs it to a tree outside
of the village.[708] In some Malayo-Siamese families of the Patani
States it is customary to bury the afterbirth under a banana-tree, the
condition of which is thenceforth regarded as ominous of the child’s
fate for good or ill.[709] A Chinese medical work prescribes that
“the placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot under the
salutary influences of the sky or the moon, deep in the ground, and
with earth piled up over it carefully, in order that the child may be
ensured a long life. If it is devoured by a swine or dog, the child
loses its intellect; if insects or ants eat it, the child becomes
scrofulous; if crows or magpies swallow it, {p195} the child will have
an abrupt or violent death; if it is cast into the fire, the child
incurs running sores.”[710] The Japanese preserve the navel-string
most carefully and bury it with the dead in the grave.[711]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of placenta and navel-string in Africa,
especially among the Baganda.]
Among the Gallas of East Africa the navel-string is carefully kept,
sewn up in leather, and serves as an amulet for female camels, which
then become the child’s property, together with all the young they give
birth to.[712] The Baganda believe that every person is born with a
double, and this double they identify with the afterbirth, which they
regard as a second child. Further, they think that the afterbirth has a
ghost, and that the ghost is in that portion of the navel-string which
remains attached to the child after birth. This ghost must be preserved
if the child is to be healthy. Hence when the navel-string drops off,
it is rubbed with butter, swathed in bark-cloth, and kept through life
under the name of “the twin” (_mulongo_). The afterbirth is wrapt up
in plantain leaves and buried by the child’s mother at the root of a
plantain tree, where it is protected against wild beasts. If the child
be a boy, the tree chosen is of the kind whose fruit is made into beer;
if the child be a girl, the tree is of the kind whose fruit is eaten.
The plantain tree at whose root the afterbirth is buried becomes sacred
until the fruit has ripened and been used. Only the father’s mother may
come near it and dig about it; all other people are kept from it by
a rope of plantain fibre which is tied from tree to tree in a circle
round about the sacred plantain. All the child’s secretions are thrown
by the mother at the root of the tree; when the fruit is ripe, the
father’s mother cuts it and makes it into beer or cooks it, according
to the sex of the child, and the relatives of the father’s clan then
come and partake of the sacred feast. After the meal the father must
go in to his own wife, for should he neglect to do so, and should some
other member of the clan have sexual relations with his wife first, the
child’s spirit would leave it and go into the other woman. Further,
{p196} the navel-string plays a part at the ceremony of naming a
child, the object of which among the Baganda is to determine whether
the child is legitimate or not. For this purpose the navel-string (the
so-called “twin”) is dropped into a bowl containing a mixture of beer,
milk, and water; if it floats, the child is legitimate and the clan
accepts it as a member; if it sinks, the child is disowned by the clan
and the mother is punished for adultery. Afterwards the navel-string
or “twin” (_mulongo_) is either kept by the clan or buried along with
the afterbirth at the root of the plantain tree. Such are the customs
observed with regard to the afterbirth and navel-string of Baganda
commoners. The king’s navel-string or “twin,” wrapt in bark-cloths and
decorated with beads, is treated like a person and confided to the care
of the Kimbugwe, the second officer of the country, who has a special
house built for it within his enclosure. Every month, when the new moon
first appears in the sky, the Kimbugwe carries the bundle containing
the “twin” in procession, with fife and drums playing, to the king,
while the royal drum is beating in the royal enclosure. The king
examines it and hands it back to him. After that, the minister returns
the precious bundle to its own house in his enclosure and places it
in the doorway, where it remains all night. Next morning it is taken
from its wrappings, smeared with butter, and again set in the doorway
until the evening, when it is swathed once more in its bark-cloths and
restored to its proper resting-place. After the king’s death his “twin”
is deposited, along with his jawbone, in the huge hut which forms his
temple. The spirit of the dead king is supposed to dwell in these two
relics; they are placed on the daïs when he wishes to hold his court
and when he is oracularly consulted on special occasions.[713]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of navel-string and afterbirth in America.]
The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string with the greatest care,
and gave it to the child to suck whenever it fell ill.[714] In ancient
Mexico they used to give a boy’s {p197} navel-string to soldiers, to
be buried by them on a field of battle, in order that the boy might
thus acquire a passion for war. But the navel-string of a girl was
buried beside the domestic hearth, because this was believed to inspire
her with a love of home and a taste for cooking and baking.[715]
Algonquin women hung the navel-string round the child’s neck; if he
lost it, they thought the child would be stupid and spiritless.[716]
Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia the navel-string was
sewed up by the mother in a piece of buckskin embroidered with hair,
quills, or beads. It was then tied to the broad buckskin band which
extended round the head of the cradle on the outside. Many thongs hung
from it, each carrying fawn’s hoofs and beads that jingled when the
cradle was moved. If the navel-string were lost, they looked on it as a
calamity, for they believed that in after years the child would become
foolish or would be lost in the chase or on a journey.[717] Among the
Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia the afterbirth of girls is buried
at high-water mark, in the belief that this will render them expert
at digging for clam. The afterbirth of boys is sometimes exposed at
places where ravens will eat it, because the boys will thus acquire
the raven’s prophetic vision. The same Indians are persuaded that the
navel-string may be the means of imparting a variety of accomplishments
to its original owner. Thus, if it is fastened to a dancing mask,
which is then worn by a skilful dancer, the child will dance well.
If it is attached to a knife, which is thereafter used by a cunning
carver, the child will carve well. Again, if the parents wish their
son to sing beautifully, they tie his navel-string to the baton of a
singing-master. Then the boy calls on the singing-master every morning
while the artist is eating his breakfast. The votary of the Muses
thereupon takes his baton and moves it twice down the right side and
twice down the left side of the boy’s body, after which he gives the
lad some of his food to eat. That {p198} is an infallible way of making
the boy a beautiful singer.[718] Among the Cherokees the navel-string
of an infant girl is buried under the corn mortar, in order that the
girl may grow up to be a good baker; but the navel-string of a boy is
hung up on a tree in the woods, in order that he may be a hunter. Among
the Kiowas the navel-string of a girl is sewn up in a small beaded
pouch and worn by her at her belt as she grows to womanhood. If the
girl’s mother ever sells the belt and pouch, she is careful to extract
the navel-string from the pouch before the bargain is struck. Should
the child die, the pouch containing her navel-string would be fastened
to a stick and set up over her grave.[719]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of navel-string and afterbirth in Europe.
Child’s guardian spirit associated with the chorion.]
Even in Europe many people still believe that a person’s destiny is
more or less bound up with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus
in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a while wrapt up in
a piece of old linen, and then cut or pricked to pieces according as
the child is a boy or a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to
be a skilful workman or a good sempstress.[720] In Berlin the midwife
commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with a strict
injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as it is kept the
child will live and thrive and be free from sickness.[721] In Beauce
and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string neither
into water nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child
would be drowned or burned.[722] Among the Ruthenians of Bukowina
and Galicia, the owner of a cow sometimes endeavours to increase its
milk by throwing its afterbirth into a spring, “in order that, just as
the water flows from the spring, so milk may flow in abundance from
the udders of the cow.”[723] Some German peasants think that the
afterbirth of a cow must be hung up in an apple-tree, otherwise the cow
would not have {p199} a calf next year.[724] Similarly at Cleveland in
Yorkshire, when a mare foals, it is the custom to hang up the placenta
in a tree, particularly in a thorn-tree, in order to secure luck with
the foal. “Should the birth take place in the fields, this suspension
is most carefully attended to, while as for the requirements of such
events at the homestead, in not a few instances there is a certain tree
not far from the farm-buildings still specially marked out for the
reception of these peculiar pendants. In one instance lately, I heard
of a larch tree so devoted, but admittedly in default of the thorn; the
old thorn-tree long employed for the purpose having died out.”[725]
Again, in Europe children born with a caul are considered lucky;[726]
in Holland, as in the East Indies, they can see ghosts.[727] The
Icelanders also hold that a child born with a caul will afterwards
possess the gift of second sight, that he will never be harmed by
sorcery, and will be victorious in every contest he undertakes,
provided he has the caul dried and carries it with him.[728] This
latter belief explains why both in ancient and modern times advocates
have bought cauls with the hope of winning their cases by means of
them.[729] Probably they thought that the spirit in the caul would
prove an invincible ally to the person who had purchased its services.
In like manner the aborigines of Central Australia believe that their
sacred sticks or stones (_churinga_) are intimately associated with the
spirits of the dead men to whom they belonged, and that in a fight a
man who carries one of these sticks or stones will certainly vanquish
an adversary who has no such talisman.[730] Further, it is an ancient
belief in Iceland that the child’s guardian spirit or a part of its
soul has its seat in the chorion or foetal membrane, which usually
forms part of the afterbirth, but is known as the caul when the child
{p200} happens to be born with it. Hence the chorion was itself known
as the _fylgia_ or guardian spirit. It might not be thrown away under
the open sky, lest demons should get hold of it and work the child harm
thereby, or lest wild beasts should eat it up. It might not be burned,
for if it were burned the child would have no _fylgia_, which would
be as bad as to have no shadow. Formerly it was customary to bury the
chorion under the threshold, where the mother stepped over it daily
when she rose from bed. If the chorion was thus treated, the man had
in after life a guardian spirit in the shape of a bear, an eagle, a
wolf, an ox, or a boar. The guardian spirits of cunning men and wizards
had the shape of a fox, while those of beautiful women appeared as
swans. In all these forms the guardian spirits formerly announced their
coming and presented themselves to the persons to whom they belonged;
but nowadays both the belief and the custom have changed in many
respects.[731]
[Sidenote: Afterbirth or navel-string a seat of the external soul.]
Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly
the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister
of the infant, or as the material object in which the guardian spirit
of the child or part of its soul resides. This latter belief we have
found among the aborigines of Queensland, the Battas of Sumatra, and
the Norsemen of Iceland. In accordance with such beliefs it has been
customary to preserve these parts of the body, at least for a time,
with the utmost care, lest the character, the fate, or even the life
of the person to whom they belong should be endangered by their injury
or loss. Further, the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between
a person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very clearly in
the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in
ways which are supposed to influence for life the character and career
of the person, making him, if it is a man, a swift runner, a nimble
climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and
making her, if it is a woman, an expert fisher, a cunning sempstress,
a good cook or baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages {p201}
concerned with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less extent with
the navel-string, present a remarkable parallel to the widespread
doctrine of the transferable or external soul and the customs founded
on it. Hence it is hardly rash to conjecture that the resemblance is
no mere chance coincidence, but that in the afterbirth or placenta we
have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one) for the theory and
practice of the external soul. The consideration of that subject is
reserved for a later part of this work.[732]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic exemplified in the sympathetic connexion
supposed to exist between a wound and the weapon which inflicted it.
Bacon on the custom of anointing the weapon in order to heal the wound.
East Anglian practice of anointing the weapon instead of the wound.]
A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the
relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent
of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent
must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus
Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you
have only to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the
sufferer will be instantly alleviated.[733] In Melanesia, if a man’s
friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it
in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be
trifling and will soon subside. Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow
is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the means in his power.
For this purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and
chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the
wound. Further, they keep the bow near the fire to make the wound which
it has inflicted hot; and for the same reason they put the arrow-head,
if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful
to keep the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this
will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the nerves and
spasms of tetanus.[734] Similarly when a Kwakiutl Indian of British
Columbia had bitten a piece out of an enemy’s arm, he used to drink
hot water afterwards for the purpose of thereby inflaming the wound
in his foe’s {p202} body.[735] Among the Lkuñgen Indians of the same
region it is a rule that an arrow, or any other weapon that has wounded
a man, must be hidden by his friends, who have to be careful not to
bring it near the fire till the wound is healed. If a knife or an arrow
which is still covered with a man’s blood were thrown into the fire,
the wounded man would suffer very much.[736] In the Yerkla-mining
tribe of south-eastern Australia it is thought that if any one but
the medicine-man touches the flint knife with which a boy has been
subincised, the boy will thereby be made very ill. So seriously is
this belief held that if the lad chanced thereafter to fall sick and
die, the man who had touched the knife would be killed.[737] “It is
constantly received and avouched,” says Bacon, “that the anointing of
the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this
experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as
yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points
following: first, the ointment wherewith this is done is made of divers
ingredients, whereof the strangest and hardest to come by are the moss
upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a
bear killed in the act of generation.” The precious ointment compounded
out of these and other ingredients was applied, as the philosopher
explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even though the
injured man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The
experiment, he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the
weapon without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the result that
he was presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was anointed
again. Moreover, “it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet
if you put an instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into
the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will
serve and work the effect.”[738] Remedies of the {p203} sort which
Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still in vogue in the eastern
counties of England. Thus in Suffolk if a man cuts himself with a
bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon bright,
and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn or,
as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted
thorn. A man came to a doctor with an inflamed hand, having run a
thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was
festering, he remarked, “That didn’t ought to, for I greased the bush
well arter I pulled it out.” If a horse wounds its foot by treading on
a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve the nail, clean it,
and grease it every day, to prevent the foot from festering. Arguing
in the same way, a Suffolk woman, whose sister had burnt her face with
a flat-iron, observed that “the face would never heal till the iron
had been put out of the way; and even if it did heal, it would be sure
to break out again every time the iron was heated.”[739] At Norwich
in June 1902 a woman named Matilda Henry accidentally ran a nail into
her foot. Without examining the wound, or even removing her stocking,
she caused her daughter to grease the nail, saying that if this were
done no harm would come of the hurt. A few days afterwards she died of
lockjaw.[740] Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers think that if a horse
has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to grease the nail with
lard or oil and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not
recover. A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a
horse which had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost.
On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done to the
wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of
the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in
the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery
of the {p204} animal.[741] Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a
man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery
that the knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which the
sufferer is lying.[742] So in Bavaria you are directed to anoint a
linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you,
taking care to keep the sharp edge upwards. As the grease on the axe
dries, your wound heals.[743] Similarly in the Harz mountains they say
that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear the knife or the scissors
with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of
the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries,
the wound heals.[744] Other people, however, in Germany say that you
should stick the knife in some damp place in the ground, and that your
hurt will heal as the knife rusts.[745] Others again, in Bavaria,
recommend you to smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put it
under the eaves.[746]
[Sidenote: Further extensions of this case of contagious magic.]
The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and
German rustics, in common with the savages of Melanesia and America,
is carried a step further by the aborigines of Central Australia, who
conceive that under certain circumstances the near relations of a
wounded man must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate
their behaviour in other ways in order to ensure his recovery. Thus
when a lad has been circumcised and the wound is not yet healed, his
mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of lizard, or carpet
snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing
of the boy’s wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never
lets them out of her sight; at night she sleeps with them close to her
head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every day also she rubs her body
all over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son’s
recovery.[747] Another {p205} refinement of the same principle is due
to the ingenuity of the German peasant. It is said that when one of
his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse
will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and splints in due form.
For some days thereafter no one may sit on that chair, move it, or
knock up against it; for to do so would pain the injured pig or sheep
and hinder the cure.[748] In this last case it is clear that we have
passed wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the region
of homoeopathic or imitative magic; the chair-leg, which is treated
instead of the beast’s leg, in no sense belongs to the animal, and the
application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment
which a more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.
[Sidenote: Sympathetic connexion between a wounded person and his spilt
blood.
A sympathetic connexion is supposed to exist between a person and his
clothes, so that any injury done to the clothes is felt by the man.
Contagious magic of clothes.
Prussian custom of beating the garments which a thief has dropped.]
The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the
weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the
blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For
a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea,
are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with which their
wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these rags fell into
the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically thereby. Once
when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled constantly, came to
the missionaries to be treated, his faithful wife took great pains to
collect all the blood and cast it into the sea.[749] Strained and
unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the
belief that magic sympathy is maintained between a person and his
clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the
man himself, even though he may be far away at the time. That is why
these same Papuans of Tumleo search most anxiously for the smallest
scrap which they may have lost of their scanty garments,[750] and
why other Papuans, travelling through the thick forest, will stop and
carefully scrape from a bough any clot of red pomade which {p206} may
have adhered to it from their greasy heads.[751] In the Wotjobaluk
tribe of Victoria a wizard would sometimes get hold of a man’s opossum
rug and tie it up with some small spindle-shaped pieces of casuarina
wood, on which he had made certain marks, such as likenesses of his
victim and of a poisonous snake. This bundle he would then roast slowly
in the fire, and as he did so the man who had owned the opossum rug
would fall sick. Should the patient suspect what was happening, he
would send to the wizard and beg him to let him have the rug back.
If the wizard consented, “he would give the thing back, telling the
sick man’s friends to put it in water, so as to wash the fire out.” In
such cases, we are told, the sick man would feel cooled and would most
likely recover.[752] In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, a man who had
a grudge at another and desired his death would try to get possession
of a cloth which had touched the sweat of his enemy’s body. If he
succeeded, he rubbed the cloth carefully over with the leaves and twigs
of a certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs, and leaves into a
long sausage-shaped bundle, and burned it slowly in the fire. As the
bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and when it was reduced to
ashes, he died.[753] In this last form of enchantment, however, the
magical sympathy may be supposed to exist not so much between the man
and the cloth as between the man and the sweat which issued from his
body. But in other cases of the same sort it seems that the garment
by itself is enough to give the sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The
witch in Theocritus, while she melted an image or lump of wax in order
that her faithless lover might melt with love of her, did not forget to
throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her
house.[754] In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the
next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may
have shed in his flight; for it {p207} you beat it soundly, the thief
will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some
seventy or eighty years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was
detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him.
When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost
coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.[755] But in
Germany it is not every stick that is good enough to beat an absent man
with. It should be a hazel rod cut before sunrise on Good Friday. Some
say it should be a one-year-old hazel-sapling, and that you should cut
it with three strokes, looking to the east, in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Others think the best time for cutting the
rod is at the new moon on a Tuesday morning before sunrise. Once you
have got this valuable instrument, you have only to spread a garment on
a mole-hill or on the threshold, and to lay on with hearty goodwill,
mentioning the name of the person whom you desire to injure. Though he
may be miles off, he will feel every whack as if it descended on his
body.[756]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic may be wrought on a man through the
impressions left by his body in sand or earth, particularly through his
footprints.
Contagious magic of footprints.]
Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through
his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the
impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a
world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet
that made them. Thus the natives of south-eastern Australia think that
they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone,
or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are often attributed
by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man very lame, Mr. Howitt
asked him what was the matter. He said, “Some fellow has put _bottle_
in my foot.” He was suffering from rheumatism, but believed that an
enemy had found his foot-track and had buried in it a piece of broken
bottle, the magical influence of which {p208} had entered his foot.
On another occasion Mr. Howitt’s party was followed by a number of
strange natives who looked with great interest at the footprints of the
horses and camels. A black fellow with Mr. Howitt was much alarmed, and
declared that the strangers were putting poison in his footsteps.[757]
The Wyingurri, a tribe on the border of western Australia, have a
magical instrument made of resin and rats’ teeth which they call a
sun, because it is supposed to contain the solar heat. By placing it
on a man’s tracks they think they can throw him into a violent fever,
which will soon burn him up.[758] In the Unmatjera tribe of Central
Australia, when a boy has been circumcised he must hide in the bush,
and if he should see a woman’s tracks he must be very careful to jump
over them. For if his foot were to touch them, the spirit of the louse
which lives in the woman’s hair would go to him, and his head would be
full of lice.[759] In New Britain it is thought that you can cause the
sickness or death of a man by pricking his footprints with the sting
of a sting-ray.[760] The Maoris imagine that they can work grievous
harm to an enemy by taking up earth from his footprints, depositing
it in a sacred place, and performing a ceremony over it.[761] In
Savage Island a common form of witchcraft was to take up the soil on
which an enemy had set his foot, and to carry it to a sacred place,
where it was solemnly cursed, in order that the man might be afflicted
with lameness.[762] The Galelareese think that if anybody sticks
something sharp into your footprints while you are walking, you will
be wounded in your feet.[763] In Japan, if a house has been robbed by
night {p209} and the burglar’s footprints are visible in the morning,
the householder will burn mugwort on them, hoping thereby to hurt the
robber’s feet so that he cannot run far, and the police may easily
overtake him.[764] Among the Karens of Burma some people are said to
keep poison fangs for the purpose of killing their enemies. These they
thrust into the footprints of the person whom they wish to destroy,
and soon he finds himself with a sore foot, as if a dog had bitten
it. The sore rapidly grows worse till death follows.[765] Peasants
of northern India commonly attribute all sorts of pains and sores to
the machinations of a witch or sorcerer who has meddled with their
footprints.[766] For example, with the Chero, a Dravidian race of
labourers in the hill country of Mirzapur, a favourite mode of harming
an enemy is to measure his footprints in the dust with a straw and
then mutter a spell over them; that brings on wounds and sores in his
feet.[767] Such magical operations have been familiar to the Hindoos
from of old. In the _Kausika Sutra_, a book of sorcery, it is directed
that, while your foe is walking southward, you should make cuts in his
footprint with the leaf of a certain tree or with the blade of an axe
(it is not quite clear which is to be used); then you must tie dust
from the footprint in the leaf of a certain tree (_Butea frondosa_)
and throw it into a frying-pan; if it crackles in the pan, your enemy
is undone.[768] Another old Hindoo charm was to obtain earth from
the footprint of a beleaguered king and scatter it in the wind.[769]
The Herero of South Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion
and throw it on the track of an enemy, with the wish, “May the lion
kill you.”[770] The Ovambo of the same region believe that they can
be bewitched by an enemy through the dust or sand {p210} of their
footprints. Hence a man who has special reason to dread the spite of a
foe will carefully efface his footprints with a branch as fast as he
makes them.[771] The Ewe-speaking people of West Africa fancy they can
drive an enemy mad by throwing a magic powder on his footprints.[772]
Among the Shuswap and Carrier Indians of North-west America shamans
used to bewitch a man by taking earth from the spot on which he had
stood and placing it in their medicine-bags; then their victim fell
sick or died.[773] In North Africa the magic of the footprints is
sometimes used for more amiable purposes. A woman who wishes to attach
her husband or lover to herself will take earth from the print of his
right foot, tie it up with some of his hairs in a packet, and wear the
packet next her skin.[774]
[Sidenote: Contagious magic of footprints in Europe.]
Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in
Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man’s
footprint he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail
should be taken from a coffin.[775] A like mode of injuring an enemy
is resorted to in some parts of France.[776] It is said that there
was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was a
witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail
or a knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a
step till it was withdrawn.[777] More commonly, it would seem, in
Germany earth from the footprint is tied up in a cloth and hung in the
chimney smoke; as it dries up, so the man withers away or his foot
shrivels up.[778] The same practice and the same belief are said to
be common in Matogrosso, a province of Brazil.[779] A Bohemian {p211}
variation of the charm is to put the earth from the footprint in a
pot with nails, needles, broken glass, and so forth, then set the pot
on the fire and let it boil till it bursts. After that the man whose
footprint has been boiled will have a lame leg for the rest of his
life.[780] Among the Lithuanians the proceeding is somewhat different.
They dig up the earth from the person’s footprint and bury it, with
various incantations, in a graveyard. That causes the person to sicken
and die.[781] A similar practice is reported from Mecklenburg.[782]
The Esthonians of the island of Oesel measure the footprint with a
stick and bury the stick, thereby undermining the health of the man
or woman whose foot made the mark.[783] Among the South Slavs a
girl will dig up the earth from the footprints of the man she loves
and put it in a flower-pot. Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a
flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows
and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart’s love grow and
bloom, and never, never fade.[784] Thus the love-spell acts on the
man through the earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding
a treaty was based on the same idea of the sympathetic connexion
between a man and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled
each other’s footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of
fidelity.[785] In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort seem
to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse stepped on the
track of a wolf he was seized with numbness;[786] and a maxim ascribed
to Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man’s footprints with a nail
or a knife.[787]
[Sidenote: The contagious magic of footprints is used by hunters for
the purpose of running down the game.]
The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts
of the world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus a German
huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor
of the quarry, {p212} believing that this will hinder the animal from
escaping.[788] The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks
of the animals they were pursuing.[789] Hottentot hunters throw into
the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game,
believing that this will bring the animal down.[790] Thompson Indians
used to lay charms on the tracks of wounded deer; after that they
deemed it superfluous to pursue the animal any further that day, for
being thus charmed it could not travel far and would soon die.[791]
Similarly, Ojebway Indians placed “medicine” on the track of the first
deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would soon bring the
animal into sight, even if it were two or three days’ journey off; for
this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few
hours.[792] Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game
with a sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them
to come up with it.[793] If Esthonian peasants find a wolf’s dung on
a beast’s tracks, they burn it and scatter the ashes to the wind. This
gives the wolf a pain in his stomach and makes him lose his way.[794]
The Aino think that hares bewitch people. Hence if one of them sees the
track of a hare in the snow near his hut, he should carefully scoop it
up with a water-ladle and then turn it upside down, saying as he does
so that he buries the soul of the hare under the snow, and expressing
a wish that the animal may sicken and die.[795] In order to recover
strayed cattle, the Zulus take the animals’ dung and earth from their
footprints and place both in the chief’s vessel, round which a magic
circle is drawn. Then the chief says: “I have now conquered them. Those
cattle are now here; I am now sitting upon them. I do not know in what
way they will escape.”[796] {p213}
[Sidenote: Contagious magic wrought through the impressions of other
parts of the body.
Contagious magic of imprints.]
But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not the only
impression made by the body through which magic may be wrought on a
man. The aborigines of south-eastern Australia believe that a man may
be injured by burying sharp fragments of quartz, glass, and so forth in
the mark made by his reclining body; the magical virtue of these sharp
things enters his body and causes those acute pains which the ignorant
European puts down to rheumatism.[797] Sometimes they beat the place
where the man sat with a pointed stick of the he-oak (_Casuarina
leptoclada_), chanting an appropriate song at the same time; the stick
will enter his person and kill him, provided the place operated on is
still warm with the heat of his body.[798] At Delena, in British New
Guinea, a man will sometimes revenge himself on a girl who has rejected
his love by thrusting the spine of a sting-ray into the spot where she
has been sitting; afterwards he puts it in the sun for a day or two and
finally heats it over a fire. In a couple of days the girl dies.[799]
The natives of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea, efface the
marks they have left on the ground where they sat, lest magic should
be wrought on them thereby.[800] Before they leave a camping-place
some of the natives of German New Guinea are careful to stab the ground
thoroughly with spears, in order to prevent a sorcerer from making any
use of a drop of sweat or any other personal remains which they may
chance to leave behind.[801] We can now understand why it was a maxim
with the Pythagoreans that in rising from bed you should smooth away
the impression left by your body on the bed-clothes.[802] The rule was
simply an old precaution against magic, forming part of a whole code
of superstitious maxims which {p214} antiquity fathered on Pythagoras,
though doubtless they were familiar to the barbarous forefathers of the
Greeks long before the time of that philosopher.[803] To ensure the
good behaviour of an ally with whom they have just had a conference,
the Basutos will cut and preserve the grass on which the ally sat
during the interview.[804] Probably they regard the grass as a hostage
for the observance of the treaty, since through it they could punish
the man who sat on the grass if he should break faith. Moors who write
on the sand are superstitiously careful to obliterate all the marks
they made, never leaving a stroke or a dot in the sand when they have
done writing.[805] Another of the so-called maxims of Pythagoras bade
people in lifting a pot always to smooth away the imprint it left on
the ashes.[806] So in Cambodia they say that when you lift a pot from
the fire you should not set it down on the ashes; but that, if you must
do so, you should be careful, in lifting the pot from the ashes, to
efface the impression it has made. Otherwise they think that want will
knock at your door.[807] But this seems to be an afterthought, devised
to explain a rule of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old
notion probably was that a magician could sympathetically injure any
person who ate out of a pot by means of the impression which the pot
had left on the ashes; or, to be more explicit, contagious magic was
supposed to work through the impression of the pot to the pot itself,
through the pot to the meat contained in it, and finally through the
meat to the eater.
§4. _The Magician’s Progress_
[Sidenote: Public and private magic. The public magician who practises
his art for the good of the whole community, enjoys great influence and
may rise to be a chief or king.]
We have now concluded our examination of the general principles of
sympathetic magic. The examples by which I have illustrated them have
been drawn for the most part from what may be called private magic,
that is from magical {p215} rites and incantations practised for the
benefit or the injury of individuals. But in savage society there is
commonly to be found in addition what we may call public magic, that
is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community. Wherever
ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common good, it is obvious
that the magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and
becomes to some extent a public functionary. The development of such
a class of functionaries is of great importance for the political as
well as the religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of
the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical
rites, the magician rises into a position of much influence and repute,
and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The
profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most
ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect
of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could
offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker
brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage. Not
that the sorcerer is always a knave and impostor; he is often sincerely
convinced that he really possesses those wonderful powers which the
credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he
is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on
duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to
be more or less conscious deceivers; and it is just these men who in
virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win
for themselves positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding
authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the professional
sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of coolest head and
sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them safely. For
it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim
put forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be
maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly
the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extravagant pretensions
is in far greater peril and is much more likely to be cut short in his
career than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always expects
that his charms and {p216} incantations will produce their supposed
effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do, but
conspicuously and disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback: he
is not, like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to
account for the failure, and before he can find one he may be knocked
on the head by his disappointed and angry employers.
[Sidenote: Tendency of supreme power to fall into the hands of the
ablest and most unscrupulous men.]
The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the
supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest
intelligence and the most unscrupulous character. If we could balance
the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by
their superior sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly
outweighed the evil. For more mischief has probably been wrought in the
world by honest fools in high places than by intelligent rascals. Once
your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his ambition, and has no
longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often does, turn his
talents, his experience, his resources, to the service of the public.
Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power
have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether the power they
aimed at and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not.
In the field of politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may
end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime,
lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity. Such men,
to take two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius Caesar and
Augustus. But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in
his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it.
The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America,
might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest
dullard.
[Sidenote: The elevation of magicians to power tends to substitute a
monarchy for that primitive democracy, or rather oligarchy of old men
which is characteristic of savage society; and the rise of monarchy
seems to be an essential condition of the emergence of mankind from
savagery.]
Thus, so far as the public profession of magic affected the
constitution of savage society, it tended to place the control of
affairs in the hands of the ablest man: it shifted the balance of power
from the many to the one: it substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or
rather for an oligarchy of old men; for in general the savage community
is ruled, not by the whole body of adult males, but by a council of
{p217} elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and whatever
the character of the early rulers, was on the whole very beneficial.
For the rise of monarchy appears to be an essential condition of the
emergence of mankind from savagery. No human being is so hidebound by
custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state of society
consequently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion that the
savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a
slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits
of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and
rule him with a rod of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the
unwritten law to which he yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The
least possible scope is thus afforded to superior talent to change old
customs for the better. The ablest man is dragged down by the weakest
and dullest, who necessarily sets the standard, since he cannot rise,
while the other can fall. The surface of such a society presents a
uniform dead level, so far as it is humanly possible to reduce the
natural inequalities, the immeasurable real differences of inborn
capacity and temper, to a false superficial appearance of equality.
From this low and stagnant condition of affairs, which demagogues and
dreamers in later times have lauded as the ideal state, the Golden
Age, of humanity, everything that helps to raise society by opening a
career to talent and proportioning the degrees of authority to men’s
natural abilities, deserves to be welcomed by all who have the real
good of their fellows at heart. Once these elevating influences have
begun to operate—and they cannot be for ever suppressed—the progress
of civilisation becomes comparatively rapid. The rise of one man to
supreme power enables him to carry through changes in a single lifetime
which previously many generations might not have sufficed to effect;
and if, as will often happen, he is a man of intellect and energy
above the common, he will readily avail himself of the opportunity.
Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant may be of service in breaking
the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the savage. And as soon as
the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the
elders, and yields to the direction of a single strong and resolute
mind, it {p218} becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a
career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often
highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For
extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary
submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and
slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual
struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting
themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the
noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.
[Sidenote: Intellectual progress dependent on economic progress, which
is often furthered by conquest and empire.]
Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth of art and
science and the spread of more liberal views, cannot be dissociated
from industrial or economic progress, and that in its turn receives
an immense impulse from conquest and empire. It is no mere accident
that the most vehement outbursts of activity of the human mind have
followed close on the heels of victory, and that the great conquering
races of the world have commonly done most to advance and spread
civilisation, thus healing in peace the wounds they inflicted in war.
The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs are our witnesses in
the past: we may yet live to see a similar outburst in Japan. Nor, to
remount the stream of history to its sources, is it an accident that
all the first great strides towards civilisation have been made under
despotic and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt, Babylon,
and Peru, where the supreme ruler claimed and received the servile
allegiance of his subjects in the double character of a king and a god.
It is hardly too much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the
best friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty.
For after all there is more liberty in the best sense—liberty to think
our own thoughts and to fashion our own destinies—under the most
absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent
freedom of savage life, where the individual’s lot is cast from the
cradle to the grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom.
[Sidenote: Benefits rendered to civilisation by magic.]
So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of
the roads by which the ablest men have passed to supreme power, it has
contributed to emancipate mankind {p219} from the thraldom of tradition
and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook
on the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity. And when
we remember further that in another direction magic has paved the way
for science, we are forced to admit that if the black art has done much
evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child
of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and truth.
{p220}