Christmas Day, and consider it more or less of a religious duty to do
so, even though they shrink from the ordeal. It is an interesting
tendency, and at the same time one readily explained. Primitive men, and
our own remote ancestors, had few, if any, joys greater than those
afforded by an abundant meal of roasted meat. When a great beast such as
a mammoth was taken in a skilfully-prepared pitfall, and slaughtered,
the whole tribe of palaeolithic huntsmen assembled and gorged themselves
with its flesh, which, it seems fairly certain, they cooked on open
fires. The strongest seized the most and ate the most, and were able to
bear up the longest in something like full vigour until such time as
another big beast should be killed, and another opportunity for
“gorging” should arise, when they would naturally again get the largest
share, having eaten most on the previous occasion, and so being least
famished. Hence the belief that a great appetite is a fine thing, and
that the more you can eat, the stronger and better you are, is one of
the deeply-laid traditions of humanity which civilised men have
inherited from barbarians, and are only slowly commencing to criticise
and to put aside. The negroes who accompany European sportsmen in
Central Africa gorge themselves when elephants are killed, and a recent
account tells of the serious illness and danger to an expedition caused
by the whole countryside flocking to the carcasses of twenty-three
elephants killed by an ivory-hunter. The blacks continued to eat the
flesh of the elephants for three weeks, when it had become decidedly
“high,” and many died, whilst others took weeks to recover, in
consequence. The notion of “festivity,” which, especially in England,
has been, even in recent times, that of eating and drinking to excess,
is prehistoric and barbaric. Serious physiologists and medical men have
expressed the opinion that we shall never arrive at a satisfactory mode
of nourishing ourselves so as to take neither too much nor what is in
itself injurious to health, until the practice of seeking gaiety and
celebrating a memory or honouring a friend or friends by means of
profuse eating (often followed by wearisome speeches) has given place to
a mode of rejoicing which is more likely to produce hilarity and
lightness of heart, and less certain to be followed by painful and
injurious results. We certainly eat less and drink less of intoxicating
liquors than we did, but there is, it seems, still room for improvement.
To connect heavy feeding with Christmas, the third in rank of the great
festivals of the Church, is not a universal custom, and is, in fact, a
peculiarity of our own country, arising from the rearing and management
of cattle in early times, when English pasture land furnished a splendid
means of enriching its owners by the production of “hides” and leather.
Large numbers of cattle had to be stalled during winter and fed on
stored herbage, and a great many were at this season killed and the meat
“salted down,” since it would not pay to keep them on stored food. It
was not until the introduction of “root-crops” that oxen could be kept
in any number through the winter months. Hence there was an excess of
fresh meat and fat about Christmas time, and the “roast beef,” plum
puddings, and mincemeat of Christmas fare were abundant. The true
Christmas pudding and mince-pie had meat as part of their components,
and, of course, beef-suet enters largely into their composition at the
present day.
The practice of eating sweet fruits and preserves with meat (as in the
true mince-pie) still lingers in this country, but has become less
general than it is in Germany. We still eat red-currant jelly with roast
mutton, and also with hare, and apple sauce is considered appropriate to
roast pork and to goose; but pickled plums and cherries and sugared
crab-apples, which are usually taken with meat in Germany, are not known
to us. I have heard a schoolboy express indignation at being given plums
with roast meat. Mincemeat, for mince-pies, was originally (like a
“Cornish pasty,” in which raisins are mixed with meat) one of these
combinations of sweetness and strength—of sugar and meat—the taste for
which has unaccountably disappeared in these days of mechanical
uniformity and lack of “homely cheer.”
The introduction of the turkey as a Christmas dish dates from the early
time of the importation of that bird into Europe, namely, about 1550. It
is already spoken of in connection with Christmas fare in 1570. The
“turkey-cock,” as its full name was, is an American bird, and was
brought originally from Mexico to Europe, though it is possible that the
more northern American species may have been also introduced by the
navigator, Jean Cabot. There is a very gorgeous turkey-cock of
iridescent bright blue and green, with orange-red warts on his head and
neck, found in Honduras. But he has never been acclimatised. He is on
view in the Natural History Museum. The turkey belongs to the pheasant
family, and is compared by old writers to the peacock, and also to the
guinea-fowl (_Numida meleagris_ of ornithologists). Indeed, there was
great confusion when the turkey first arrived between it and the
guinea-fowl, and it appears to be owing to this mixing up of the two
birds that the American bird was called a turkey-cock, since the
guinea-fowl is an African bird, and came into the hands of Europeans
through Mussulman traders or “Turks.” So far did the confusion go that
the great Linnæus applied the Latin name _Meleagris_, which was that of
the guinea-fowl, to the “turkey” of America! Some people think that the
turkey-cock established his misleading name by his cry, which they say
is represented by the words “Turk-turk-turk.” Probably the turkey-cock,
though an American bird, was imported by traders who were called “Turkey
merchants” because their chief business was with the Levantine and
Morocco ports. Another mistake or vagueness as to the native home of the
turkey was hit upon by the French, who called it the _Poule d’Inde_,
whence their modern name for it, _Dindon_; and the same error is found
in an old German name for it, _Kalkuttisch Hün_ (from Calicut, on the
Malabar coast of India, where the turkey was introduced from America in
the seventeenth century, and has flourished ever since). The Swedish
name for the turkey is _Kalcon_, and is only a modification of this old
German name. Probably few animals or birds have been so persistently
misrepresented by the names given to them as the American bird which we
call the turkey.
Our farmyard names for him are far better. In Scotland they call him the
“Bubbly-jock,” which vividly suggests his airs and graces, whilst in
Suffolk we call him a “Gobble-cock.” I know an old farmhouse near
Woodbridge, in Suffolk, which bears the delightful name of “Gobblecock
Hall.” “The squire of Gobblecock Hall” would have furnished Randolph
Caldecott with inspiration for a Christmas picture story; and so,
indeed, would the country round the “Hall,” with its vast sandy tract,
ten miles long, known as Hollesley Heath, ending on the seashore near
Orford Castle.
The misleading indication as to the native land of an animal—due to the
name commonly applied to it—is remarkable in the case of the
guinea-pig. Though the guinea-fowl is correctly so called, since it
comes from the Guinea Coast of Africa, the guinea-pig has nothing to do
with that coast, but comes from South America! It is not a pig, but a
rodent, and it does not come from Guinea. It appears that the ships of
the “Guinea merchants” of this country established trading relations
with South American ports, and hence the little “pig” (Shakespeare calls
the hedgehog “hedge-pig”) which they brought home was called a
“guinea-pig,” just as the big “cock” imported by Turkey merchants was
called a “Turkey-cock.” The guinea-pig suffers other “indignities of
appellation.” The Germans call him _Meerschweinchen_, that is, “little
sea-pig.” Apparently “sea” pig, because he was brought over the sea. But
this leads to unjustifiable suggestions as to the guinea-pig’s
character. For the Germans call the porpoise _Meerschwein_, which would
seem to mean “pig of the sea”; and those imperfectly acquainted with the
German language have been known to take allusions made by German writers
to the former animal as intended to apply to the young of the latter.
Thus one reads in an English medical book of a number of “young
porpoises” being fed upon carrots when it was really “guinea-pigs” which
consumed this nutriment. The German physiologists, who often make use of
guinea-pigs in their investigations, now call them _Cobayas_, so as to
avoid any further misunderstanding. The French word for a porpoise,
_marsouin_, is a corruption of the German name _Meerschwein_.
I have pointed out above the origin of heavy feeding at Christmas.
Whether it is necessary or not to continue that precise mode of
celebration, the sentiments of peace and goodwill which belong to
Christmas, the meeting of kinsmen,—and, above all, the dedication of
many of its customs to children,—are things to be cherished and treated
tenderly. The 25th day of December was fixed by the Church for the
celebration of the birth of Christ, but it is fairly certain that the
period of the year indicated in the Gospel as that when the shepherds
were watching their flocks and saw the star of Bethlehem, was not
December, but October. It is also certain that the children owe their
share in Christmas to the combination with it of customs proper to the
Epiphany, which celebrates the bringing of gifts to the child Christ by
the wise men of the East. It appears that the greatest and gayest of the
feasts of pagan Rome—the “Saturnalia”—was held at the end of December,
and that the early Church in this, as in many other cases, adapted a
pagan custom to its own uses, and fixed the feast of the Nativity at
this date expressly in order to take over, as it were, the gaiety of the
Saturnalia. The brilliant foliage and berries of the holly-tree were
used for decorations at the Saturnalia, and thus became a Christmas
emblem. The fun and frolic of the Saturnalia were transferred to the
name of Christmas, and thus it comes about that the Yule Log and the
Lord of Misrule and the Abbot of Unreason, and also snapdragon and
clown, harlequin and columbine, are found in full swing at
Christmas-tide. Later St. Nicholas, who took the place of Neptune, and
was the patron saint of sailors, became associated with Christmas
celebrations as Santa Claus or Father Christmas. His regular day was at
the beginning of December, and so it was easy to postpone his
festivities to three weeks later.
Mistletoe is not a Christmas decoration. It comes to us from the Druids,
and belongs to the New Year. It is not allowed to appear in church, and
should not be hung up in private houses till Christmas is over and the
New Year has come. The hanging up of the mistletoe is in itself a
beautiful survival of an ancient worship, and should be associated in
our minds with Stonehenge and the prehistoric star temples, whose
priests were astronomers. On New Year’s Day they solemnly distributed
branches of the mistletoe to the people as a charm ensuring fertility.
In December there are many hundredweight of mistletoe cut down and
despatched from the ancient Druidical haunts of the Welsh border, and
from over-sea Brittany, to all-devouring London, where it is heedlessly
nailed up in doorways, and made the excuse for much giggling and
embracing. May those who read these lines treat it with due reverence,
and when they kiss beneath the beautiful strange branch with its white
berries, think of our ancestors—the noble youths and lovely maidens of
prehistoric days, who kissed three thousand years ago, and sent this
living token of their happy lives down the long ages—to us, distracted
hustlers of the motor-car. Prehistoric feeding may not be good for us,
but the prehistoric rite of the mistletoe must not be neglected in these
days of strange political aspirations on the part of those who have not
discovered its sedative virtue.
XL
THE ORIGIN OF OPIUM
That Europe is the original home of the opium-poppy, and not Asia, is
even more contradictory of our settled traditions and belief than the
fact that Europeans gave tobacco to the East. Yet it is the fact that
opium, like tobacco, came to the Far East from Europe. The opium-poppy
does not grow wild in Asia; it is a cultivated variety of a
Mediterranean poppy, the _Papaver setigerum_, which has a pale purple
flower, and was conveyed, long ago, by man from the Levant to Asia. We
have true poppies of four species which grow wild in England, all with
splendid scarlet or crimson petals, easily distinguished from one
another by the shape of the seedboxes, or capsules, which they form. If
you scratch the surface of the seed capsule of one of these poppies a
milky juice appears. It is this which is collected from the capsules of
the much larger opium-poppy in India and China, and when dried forms a
hard brown cake, which is called “opium.” It consists of resinous
matter, in which is contained a small quantity of the invaluable
narcotic called “morphia,” and also small quantities of other powerful
poisons.
The pale-purple poppy of the Mediterranean (_Papaver setigerum_) was
cultivated hundreds—even thousands—of years ago in the South of Europe
and on the Mediterranean shores of Africa—not for opium, but for the
oil which can be expressed from the seed, “poppy-seed oil.” The oil is
free from narcotic properties. The purple poppy is still cultivated for
that oil in France, and poppy-seed oil is an article of commerce used as
food, both in the pure state and for adulterating other oils. The
earliest cultivation of this poppy is even as remote in Europe as 7000
years, for we find that the Swiss lake-dwellers of the Stone Age
cultivated it, and that the variety they obtained was nearer to the wild
_Papaver setigerum_ than to its cultivated derivative, the modern
opium-poppy, _Papaver somniferum_. How and when it first was recognised
that the narcotic substance “opium” could be prepared from the juice
exuding from the cut capsule is not exactly known, but it is probable
that it was not until the early Middle Ages that the poppy was
cultivated for the habitual use of opium as a narcotic indulgence, and
that its earlier cultivation was, as to some extent at the present day,
for the sake of the oil contained in the seed, its use in medicine
requiring but a very small supply. The ancient Greeks were well
acquainted with the cultivated poppy. Homer mentions it, and at a much
later period Theophrastus and Dioscorides do so. They call it “mekon,”
and were aware of the somniferous properties of the sap. Dioscorides,
whose wonderful book on plants dates from the first century of our era,
speaks of the drug derived from the sap by the name “opos,” and it is
from that word that the name “opium” has come. The Romans cultivated the
poppy before the republic, and mixed its seeds with their flour in
making bread. The story of King Tarquin taking the governor of a
rebellious province into a poppy-field, lopping off the heads of the
taller poppies with his stick, and then turning to his visitor, without
a word, but with a look which said, “That is the way to govern”—is
evidence of the very early cultivation of the poppy by the Romans.
Hebrew writings do not mention the opium poppy, though it seems to be
certain that it has been cultivated in Asia Minor for at least 3000
years. There is no evidence that the plant was cultivated in more
ancient times in Egypt, although in Pliny’s time the Egyptians used the
juice of the poppy medicinally. In the Middle Ages it was, and in our
own day it is, one of the chief objects of cultivation in that country,
especially for the manufacture of opium.
The cultivated variety _P. somniferum_ of the present day differs from
the wild _P. setigerum_, in having the seed-capsule surmounted by ten or
twelve stigmas (the free ends of the leaves which are united to form the
capsule), instead of by eight as in the wild form. It seems that the
introduction of the poppy from the shores of the Mediterranean into
Persia, India, and China is due to Arab traders, and is coincident with
the rise of Mohammedanism; and it is probable that it was valued and
cultivated from that time onwards, not so much for the sake of its seed
and oil, as for the narcotic juice, which was made up by Arabian
“confectioners” into a kind of paste, and eaten, as were other vegetable
extracts—such as “bang,” from hemp—for the sake of the pleasurable
effects produced by its poisonous action on the nervous system. It is
certain that the opium poppy does not occur at all in the wild state in
the Middle and Far East. In 1516 opium was already an article of trade
from India to China. The poppy was cultivated, and the use of opium
known and frequent in India for some five centuries before that date.
Probably the cultivation of the plant in China was not started until the
eighteenth century.
It was the Chinese who hit upon the mode of indulging in opium by
smoking it in a pipe. There is no record, written or pictorial, of this
practice earlier than 1730, about fifty years before which date (1680)
we find the smoking of tobacco represented on Chinese pottery. Very soon
the Chinese were not content to import their opium from India, but large
areas were put under cultivation with the Indian poppy in China and
Manchuria. For a century or more the export of opium from India to China
continued and increased as the consumption of the drug increased, the
native Chinese production not being sufficient to meet the demand. In
1730 and 1796 the Chinese Government issued edicts forbidding the
smoking of opium, and in the last century the efforts of the Chinese
authorities to prevent the importation of Indian opium, whether with a
view to suppress a dangerous vice or to favour the home-grown article,
led to war with England. In some parts of China—for instance,
Amoy—three-fourths of the population are, or were until lately,
opium-smokers. Now it is believed that the Chinese Government is
genuinely determined to put a stop to the dangerous and enervating
indulgence in this narcotic, and the opium-growers of India will have to
limit their output, and employ their land and labour for other crops.
It is the fact that the eating of opium (for it is not “smoked” there)
does very little harm in India, since it is not used by a large
proportion of the people nor in excess. Many persons who have studied
the subject maintain that the widely-spread injury caused by opium in
China is due to the short time during which it has been in use there as
compared with India. It is held that a population after a few centuries
becomes immune to such poisonous but attractive indulgences by the
killing out of those who cannot resist excess—and the suggestion is
that the simplest way of dealing with such cravings for poison is to let
those who have them and cannot resist their demand, freely indulge and
die, and their stock with them. This is, however, a slow and tedious way
of eradicating an evil tendency. It may, perhaps, be the only way, and
hereafter, when the production by careful and restricted breeding of a
sound and healthy population becomes recognised as being part of the
duty of the makers and administrators of the law in civilised states, it
is not improbable that we shall see something of the kind deliberately
put into practice.
The opium-pipe and the mode of smoking at present in use in China are
very different from the pipe and smoking of tobacco used there or
elsewhere. I investigated the matter myself twenty years ago in an
opium-den near the London Docks, under the instruction of a polite
Chinaman. The opium-pipe has a very narrow cavity, about one-sixth of an
inch wide. The prepared opium, in a condition resembling treacle, is
smeared on the walls of the cavity with a pin, and the pipe is held to a
lighted lamp. The flame drawn into the pipe causes the opium to frizzle
and give off smoke, but it does not “light” and continue to burn. Each
whiff which the smoker inhales has to be procured by applying the pipe
to the lamp. The smoke is tasteless, and it requires a good deal of
patience and several re-smearings of the inside of the pipe before the
smoker begins to experience the pleasant effects of the drug. These
consist in the production of a sense of perfect contentment and
indifference to all trouble and care, whilst the imagination gives a
rose-colour, or an even more alluring aspect, to all that one sees or
thinks of—until a gentle sleep closes the scene.
The Chinese, having obtained the seeds, cultivated the opium-poppy, and
made opium before the prepared article was imported in any great
quantity from India. There is, of course, no doubt as to the injury
which is done to a population by the habitual use of opium. At the same
time, there is no one who knows anything about medicine and the use of
drugs who does not speak of opium with reverence and even affection.
Forty years ago, at a dinner-party where the leading physicians of
London were present, it was suggested that they should each write down
in order of merit the ten drugs to which they attached the greatest
value. I heard from one who was present that they all put opium in the
first place, and that mercury, iodide of potassium, and ipecacuanha
followed in that order in the majority of the lists. The value of opium
as a medicinal agent is one thing; its deadly effect on those who have
become victims to its daily use is another. The origin of the medicinal
use of opium can be traced to Egypt in Pliny’s time, but beyond that
nothing is known.
As I am writing of botanical matters, I may briefly refer to an
ambiguity about the names “banana” and “plantain.” There is no
difference (as is sometimes suggested) between the fruits indicated by
these two words. Our word “plantain” is merely a corruption of the
Spanish word _platano_, which is the name of the plane-tree. It was
loosely applied in South America by the Spanish colonists to the banana
palm (_Musa sapientum_), just as they called the North American bison a
buffalo, and as the Anglo-Americans call a stag an elk, and a red thrush
a robin. The banana palm is not an American tree, but was introduced
there from the East Indies by the early navigators, and was very soon
cultivated by the South American Indians as well as by the colonists.
There have been great authorities—for instance, Humboldt—who have
believed that there is a native South American banana palm as well as an
East Indian one; but the definite conclusion of botanists, after careful
inquiry, is that there is only one species, and that it is of South
Asian origin. There are an enormous number of cultivated
varieties—forty-four are described; they can all be arranged in two
groups, the large-fruited bananas (fruit 7 inches to 15 inches long),
and the small-fruited bananas, commonly called fig-bananas (fruits 1
inch to 6 inches long). All are equally entitled to the name “plantain”
as well as “banana.” The finest flavoured varieties are cultivated in
Hindustan, and there only, being often of very great value and rarity.
Those which come into the English market are chiefly, if not entirely,
of West Indian production. The foliage of the banana palm consists of
oblong leaves of magnificent size and unbroken surface; small trees are
to be seen in hothouses (they bear fruit at Kew), and are frequently
used for decorative purposes.