THUS in primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by

divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the

rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at

puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various

classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and

condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might

pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral

distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution

are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of

all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the

danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what

we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The

danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary;

imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may

kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these

persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual

danger shall neither reach them nor spread from them, is the object

of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to

say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with

which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by

contact with the outer world.

To the illustrations of these general principles which have been

already given I shall now add some more, drawing my examples, first,

from the class of tabooed things, and, second, from the class of

tabooed words; for in the opinion of the savage both things and

words may, like persons, be charged or electrified, either

temporarily or permanently, with the mysterious virtue of taboo, and

may therefore require to be banished for a longer or shorter time

from the familiar usage of common life. And the examples will be

chosen with special reference to those sacred chiefs, kings and

priests, who, more than anybody else, live fenced about by taboo as

by a wall. Tabooed things will be illustrated in the present

chapter, and tabooed words in the next.

2. Iron tabooed

IN THE FIRST place we may observe that the awful sanctity of kings

naturally leads to a prohibition to touch their sacred persons. Thus

it was unlawful to lay hands on the person of a Spartan king: no one

might touch the body of the king or queen of Tahiti: it is forbidden

to touch the person of the king of Siam under pain of death; and no

one may touch the king of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever,

without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from

his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his

suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the

injured monarch to his palace. Formerly no one might touch the king

of Corea; and if he deigned to touch a subject, the spot touched

became sacred, and the person thus honoured had to wear a visible

mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above

all, no iron might touch the king's body. In 1800 King

Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming

of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life.

It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the

lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the

king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst. Roman and Sabine

priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or

shears; and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the

sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of

cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb

and a pig must be offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool

was removed from the grove. As a general rule iron might not be

brought into Greek sanctuaries. In Crete sacrifices were offered to

Menedemus without the use of iron, because the legend ran that

Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war. The

Archon of Plataea might not touch iron; but once a year, at the

annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataea,

he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull. To

this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a

sharp splint of quartz, in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a

lad. Among the Ovambo of South-west Africa custom requires that lads

should be circumcised with a sharp flint; if none is to hand, the

operation may be performed with iron, but the iron must afterwards

be buried. Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, and

so on have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious

ceremonies. After the Pawnees had ceased to use stone arrow-heads

for ordinary purposes, they still employed them to slay the

sacrifices, whether human captives or buffalo and deer. Amongst the

Jews no iron tool was used in building the Temple at Jerusalem or in

making an altar. The old wooden bridge (_Pons Sublicius_) at Rome,

which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair

without the use of iron or bronze. It was expressly provided by law

that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with

iron tools. The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood

without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could

be taken out and replaced.

This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early

time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as

such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike. For everything

new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. "It is a

curious superstition," says a pioneer in Borneo, "this of the

Dusuns, to attribute anything--whether good or bad, lucky or

unlucky--that happens to them to something novel which has arrived

in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the

intensely hot weather we have experienced of late." The unusually

heavy rains which happened to follow the English survey of the

Nicobar Islands in the winter of 1886-1887 were imputed by the

alarmed natives to the wrath of the spirits at the theodolites,

dumpy-levellers, and other strange instruments which had been set up

in so many of their favourite haunts; and some of them proposed to

soothe the anger of the spirits by sacrificing a pig. In the

seventeenth century a succession of bad seasons excited a revolt

among the Esthonian peasantry, who traced the origin of the evil to

a watermill, which put a stream to some inconvenience by checking

its flow. The first introduction of iron ploughshares into Poland

having been followed by a succession of bad harvests, the farmers

attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and

discarded them for the old wooden ones. To this day the primitive

Baduwis of Java, who live chiefly by husbandry, will use no iron

tools in tilling their fields.

The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself

strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to

account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings

and priests and attributed by them to the gods; possibly this

aversion may have been intensified in places by some such accidental

cause as the series of bad seasons which cast discredit on iron

ploughshares in Poland. But the disfavour in which iron is held by

the gods and their ministers has another side. Their antipathy to

the metal furnishes men with a weapon which may be turned against

the spirits when occasion serves. As their dislike of iron is

supposed to be so great that they will not approach persons and

things protected by the obnoxious metal, iron may obviously be

employed as a charm for banning ghosts and other dangerous spirits.

And often it is so used. Thus in the Highlands of Scotland the great

safeguard against the elfin race is iron, or, better yet, steel. The

metal in any form, whether as a sword, a knife, a gun-barrel, or

what not, is all-powerful for this purpose. Whenever you enter a

fairy dwelling you should always remember to stick a piece of steel,

such as a knife, a needle, or a fish-hook, in the door; for then the

elves will not be able to shut the door till you come out again. So,

too, when you have shot a deer and are bringing it home at night, be

sure to thrust a knife into the carcase, for that keeps the fairies

from laying their weight on it. A knife or nail in your pocket is

quite enough to prevent the fairies from lifting you up at night.

Nails in the front of a bed ward off elves from women "in the straw"

and from their babes; but to make quite sure it is better to put the

smoothing-iron under the bed, and the reaping-hook in the window. If

a bull has fallen over a rock and been killed, a nail stuck into it

will preserve the flesh from the fairies. Music discoursed on a

Jew's harp keeps the elfin women away from the hunter, because the

tongue of the instrument is of steel. In Morocco iron is considered

a great protection against demons; hence it is usual to place a

knife or dagger under a sick man's pillow. The Singhalese believe

that they are constantly surrounded by evil spirits, who lie in wait

to do them harm. A peasant would not dare to carry good food, such

as cakes or roast meat, from one place to another without putting an

iron nail on it to prevent a demon from taking possession of the

viands and so making the eater ill. No sick person, whether man or

woman, would venture out of the house without a bunch of keys or a

knife in his hand, for without such a talisman he would fear that

some devil might take advantage of his weak state to slip into his

body. And if a man has a large sore on his body he tries to keep a

morsel of iron on it as a protection against demons. On the Slave

Coast when a mother sees her child gradually wasting away, she

concludes that a demon has entered into the child, and takes her

measures accordingly. To lure the demon out of the body of her

offspring, she offers a sacrifice of food; and while the devil is

bolting it, she attaches iron rings and small bells to her child's

ankles and hangs iron chains round his neck. The jingling of the

iron and the tinkling of the bells are supposed to prevent the

demon, when he has concluded his repast, from entering again into

the body of the little sufferer. Hence many children may be seen in

this part of Africa weighed down with iron ornaments.

3. Sharp Weapons tabooed

THERE is a priestly king to the north of Zengwih in Burma, revered

by the Sotih as the highest spiritual and temporal authority, into

whose house no weapon or cutting instrument may be brought. This

rule may perhaps be explained by a custom observed by various

peoples after a death; they refrain from the use of sharp

instruments so long as the ghost of the deceased is supposed to be

near, lest they should wound it. Thus among the Esquimaux of Bering

Strait "during the day on which a person dies in the village no one

is permitted to work, and the relatives must perform no labour

during the three following days. It is especially forbidden during

this period to cut with any edged instrument, such as a knife or an

axe; and the use of pointed instruments, like needles or bodkins, is

also forbidden. This is said to be done to avoid cutting or injuring

the shade, which may be present at any time during this period, and,

if accidentally injured by any of these things, it would become very

angry and bring sickness or death to the people. The relatives must

also be very careful at this time not to make any loud or harsh

noises that may startle or anger the shade." We have seen that in

like manner after killing a white whale these Esquimaux abstain from

the use of cutting or pointed instruments for four days, lest they

should unwittingly cut or stab the whale's ghost. The same taboo is

sometimes observed by them when there is a sick person in the

village, probably from a fear of injuring his shade which may be

hovering outside of his body. After a death the Roumanians of

Transylvania are careful not to leave a knife lying with the sharp

edge uppermost so long as the corpse remains in the house, "or else

the soul will be forced to ride on the blade." For seven days after

a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese abstain

from the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating

their food with their fingers. On the third, sixth, ninth, and

fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and Lithuanians

used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited

the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the

table and used no knives and the women who served up the food were

also without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were

left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations

or friends to feed them. When the meal was over the priest took a

broom and swept the souls out of the house, saying, "Dear souls, ye

have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth." We can now understand why

no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of the Burmese

pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as

divine, and it is therefore right that his sacred spirit should not

be exposed to the risk of being cut or wounded whenever it quits his

body to hover invisible in the air or to fly on some distant

mission.

4. Blood tabooed

WE have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even

name raw flesh. At certain times a Brahman teacher is enjoined not

to look on raw flesh, blood, or persons whose hands have been cut

off. In Uganda the father of twins is in a state of taboo for some

time after birth; among other rules he is forbidden to kill anything

or to see blood. In the Pelew Islands when a raid has been made on a

village and a head carried off, the relations of the slain man are

tabooed and have to submit to certain observances in order to escape

the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in the house, touch no raw

flesh, and chew betel over which an incantation has been uttered by

the exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered man goes away

to the enemy's country in pursuit of his murderer. The taboo is

probably based on the common belief that the soul or spirit of the

animal is in the blood. As tabooed persons are believed to be in a

perilous state--for example, the relations of the slain man are

liable to the attacks of his indignant ghost--it is especially

necessary to isolate them from contact with spirits; hence the

prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo is only the

special enforcement of a general precept; in other words, its

observance is particularly enjoined in circumstances which seem

urgently to call for its application, but apart from such

circumstances the prohibition is also observed, though less

strictly, as a common rule of life. Thus some of the Esthonians will

not taste blood because they believe that it contains the animal's

soul, which would enter the body of the person who tasted the blood.

Some Indian tribes of North America, "through a strong principle of

religion, abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of

any animal, as it contains the life and spirit of the beast." Jewish

hunters poured out the blood of the game they had killed and covered

it up with dust. They would not taste the blood, believing that the

soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or actually was the

blood.

It is a common rule that royal blood may not be shed upon the

ground. Hence when a king or one of his family is to be put to death

a mode of execution is devised by which the royal blood shall not be

spilt upon the earth. About the year 1688 the generalissimo of the

army rebelled against the king of Siam and put him to death "after

the manner of royal criminals, or as princes of the blood are

treated when convicted of capital crimes, which is by putting them

into a large iron caldron, and pounding them to pieces with wooden

pestles, because none of their royal blood must be spilt on the

ground, it being, by their religion, thought great impiety to

contaminate the divine blood by mixing it with earth." When Kublai

Khan defeated and took his uncle Nayan, who had rebelled against

him, he caused Nayan to be put to death by being wrapt in a carpet

and tossed to and fro till he died, "because he would not have the

blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in the

eye of Heaven and before the Sun." "Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar

maxim: 'One Khan will put another to death to get possession of the

throne, but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt. For

they say that it is highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan

should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the victim to be

smothered somehow or other.' The like feeling prevails at the court

of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is

reserved for princes of the blood."

The reluctance to spill royal blood seems to be only a particular

case of a general unwillingness to shed blood or at least to allow

it to fall on the ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day

persons caught in the streets of Cambaluc (Peking) at unseasonable

hours were arrested, and if found guilty of a misdemeanor were

beaten with a stick. "Under this punishment people sometimes die,

but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed, for their _Bacsis_

say that it is an evil thing to shed man's blood." In West Sussex

people believe that the ground on which human blood has been shed is

accursed and will remain barren for ever. Among some primitive

peoples, when the blood of a tribesman has to be spilt it is not

suffered to fall upon the ground, but is received upon the bodies of

his fellow-tribesmen. Thus in some Australian tribes boys who are

being circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the living

bodies of the tribesmen; and when a boy's tooth is knocked out as an

initiatory ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on

whose breast the blood flows and may not be wiped away. "Also the

Gauls used to drink their enemies' blood and paint themselves

therewith. So also they write that the old Irish were wont; and so

have I seen some of the Irish do, but not their enemies' but

friends' blood, as, namely, at the execution of a notable traitor at

Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien, I saw an old woman, which was his

foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartered and suck up

all the blood that ran thereout, saying that the earth was not

worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast

and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly." Among

the Latuka of Central Africa the earth on which a drop of blood has

fallen at childbirth is carefully scraped up with an iron shovel,

put into a pot along with the water used in washing the mother, and

buried tolerably deep outside the house on the left-hand side. In

West Africa, if a drop of your blood has fallen on the ground, you

must carefully cover it up, rub and stamp it into the soil; if it

has fallen on the side of a canoe or a tree, the place is cut out

and the chip destroyed. One motive of these African customs may be a

wish to prevent the blood from falling into the hands of magicians,

who might make an evil use of it. That is admittedly the reason why

people in West Africa stamp out any blood of theirs which has

dropped on the ground or cut out any wood that has been soaked with

it. From a like dread of sorcery natives of New Guinea are careful

to burn any sticks, leaves, or rags which are stained with their

blood; and if the blood has dripped on the ground they turn up the

soil and if possible light a fire on the spot. The same fear

explains the curious duties discharged by a class of men called

_ramanga_ or "blue blood" among the Betsileo of Madagascar. It is

their business to eat all the nail-parings and to lick up all the

spilt blood of the nobles. When the nobles pare their nails, the

parings are collected to the last scrap and swallowed by these

_ramanga._ If the parings are too large, they are minced small and

so gulped down. Again, should a nobleman wound himself, say in

cutting his nails or treading on something, the _ramanga_ lick up

the blood as fast as possible. Nobles of high rank hardly go

anywhere without these humble attendants; but if it should happen

that there are none of them present, the cut nails and the spilt

blood are carefully collected to be afterwards swallowed by the

_ramanga._ There is scarcely a nobleman of any pretensions who does

not strictly observe this custom, the intention of which probably is

to prevent these parts of his person from falling into the hands of

sorcerers, who on the principles of contagious magic could work him

harm thereby.

The general explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the

ground is probably to be found in the belief that the soul is in the

blood, and that therefore any ground on which it may fall

necessarily becomes taboo or sacred. In New Zealand anything upon

which even a drop of a high chief's blood chances to fall becomes

taboo or sacred to him. For instance, a party of natives having come

to visit a chief in a fine new canoe, the chief got into it, but in

doing so a splinter entered his foot, and the blood trickled on the

canoe, which at once became sacred to him. The owner jumped out,

dragged the canoe ashore opposite the chief's house, and left it

there. Again, a chief in entering a missionary's house knocked his

head against a beam, and the blood flowed. The natives said that in

former times the house would have belonged to the chief. As usually

happens with taboos of universal application, the prohibition to

spill the blood of a tribesman on the ground applies with peculiar

stringency to chiefs and kings, and is observed in their case long

after it has ceased to be observed in the case of others.

5. The Head tabooed

MANY peoples regard the head as peculiarly sacred; the special

sanctity attributed to it is sometimes explained by a belief that it

contains a spirit which is very sensitive to injury or disrespect.

Thus the Yorubas hold that every man has three spiritual inmates, of

whom the first, called Olori, dwells in the head and is the man's

protector, guardian, and guide. Offerings are made to this spirit,

chiefly of fowls, and some of the blood mixed with palmoil is rubbed

on the forehead. The Karens suppose that a being called the _tso_

resides in the upper part of the head, and while it retains its seat

no harm can befall the person from the efforts of the seven

_Kelahs,_ or personified passions. "But if the _tso_ becomes

heedless or weak certain evil to the person is the result. Hence the

head is carefully attended to, and all possible pains are taken to

provide such dress and attire as will be pleasing to the _tso._" The

Siamese think that a spirit called _khuan_ or _kwun_ dwells in the

human head, of which it is the guardian spirit. The spirit must be

carefully protected from injury of every kind; hence the act of

shaving or cutting the hair is accompanied with many ceremonies. The

_kwun_ is very sensitive on points of honour, and would feel

mortally insulted if the head in which he resides were touched by

the hand of a stranger. The Cambodians esteem it a grave offence to

touch a man's head; some of them will not enter a place where

anything whatever is suspended over their heads; and the meanest

Cambodian would never consent to live under an inhabited room. Hence

the houses are built of one story only; and even the Government

respects the prejudice by never placing a prisoner in the stocks

under the floor of a house, though the houses are raised high above

the ground. The same superstition exists amongst the Malays; for an

early traveller reports that in Java people "wear nothing on their

heads, and say that nothing must be on their heads . . . and if any

person were to put his hand upon their head they would kill him; and

they do not build houses with storeys, in order that they may not

walk over each other's heads."

The same superstition as to the head is found in full force

throughout Polynesia. Thus of Gattanewa, a Marquesan chief, it is

said that "to touch the top of his head, or anything which had been

on his head, was sacrilege. To pass over his head was an indignity

never to be forgotten." The son of a Marquesan high priest has been

seen to roll on the ground in an agony of rage and despair, begging

for death, because some one had desecrated his head and deprived him

of his divinity by sprinkling a few drops of water on his hair. But

it was not the Marquesan chiefs only whose heads were sacred. The

head of every Marquesan was taboo, and might neither be touched nor

stepped over by another; even a father might not step over the head

of his sleeping child; women were forbidden to carry or touch

anything that had been in contact with, or had merely hung over, the

head of their husband or father. No one was allowed to be over the

head of the king of Tonga. In Tahiti any one who stood over the king

or queen, or passed his hand over their heads, might be put to

death. Until certain rites were performed over it, a Tahitian infant

was especially taboo; whatever touched the child's head, while it

was in this state, became sacred and was deposited in a consecrated

place railed in for the purpose at the child's house. If a branch of

a tree touched the child's head, the tree was cut down; and if in

its fall it injured another tree so as to penetrate the bark, that

tree also was cut down as unclean and unfit for use. After the rites

were performed these special taboos ceased; but the head of a

Tahitian was always sacred, he never carried anything on it, and to

touch it was an offence. So sacred was the head of a Maori chief

that "if he only touched it with his fingers, he was obliged

immediately to apply them to his nose, and snuff up the sanctity

which they had acquired by the touch, and thus restore it to the

part from whence it was taken." On account of the sacredness of his

head a Maori chief "could not blow the fire with his mouth, for the

breath being sacred, communicated his sanctity to it, and a brand

might be taken by a slave, or a man of another tribe, or the fire

might be used for other purposes, such as cooking, and so cause his

death."

6. Hair tabooed

WHEN the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be

touched without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the

hair must have been a delicate and difficult operation. The

difficulties and dangers which, on the primitive view, beset the

operation are of two kinds. There is first the danger of disturbing

the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the process and may

revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly, there is

the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage

believes that the sympathetic connexion which exists between himself

and every part of his body continues to exist even after the

physical connexion has been broken, and that therefore he will

suffer from any harm that may befall the several parts of his body,

such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of his nails.

Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself

shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to

accidental injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who

might work magic on them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are

common to all, but sacred persons have more to fear from them than

ordinary people, so the precautions taken by them are

proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the peril is

not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where

the risk is thought to be more than usually great. The Frankish

kings were never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood

upwards they had to keep it unshorn. To poll the long locks that

floated on their shoulders would have been to renounce their right

to the throne. When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert

coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled

into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir; and

having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked

sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The

envoy showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her

choose whether the children should be shorn and live or remain

unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren

were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than

shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with

his own hand. The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, must

wear his hair long, and so must his grandees. Among the Hos, a negro

tribe of West Africa, "there are priests on whose head no razor may

come during the whole of their lives. The god who dwells in the man

forbids the cutting of his hair on pain of death. If the hair is at

last too long, the owner must pray to his god to allow him at least

to clip the tips of it. The hair is in fact conceived as the seat

and lodging-place of his god, so that were it shorn the god would

lose his abode in the priest." The members of a Masai clan, who are

believed to possess the art of making rain, may not pluck out their

beards, because the loss of their beards would, it is supposed,

entail the loss of their rain-making powers. The head chief and the

sorcerers of the Masai observe the same rule for a like reason: they

think that were they to pull out their beards, their supernatural

gifts would desert them.

Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their

hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the

Marquesans we are told that "occasionally they have their head

entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose

or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only

adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death

of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off

until they have fulfilled their promise." A similar custom was

sometimes observed by the ancient Germans; among the Chatti the

young warriors never clipped their hair or their beard till they had

slain an enemy. Among the Toradjas, when a child's hair is cut to

rid it of vermin, some locks are allowed to remain on the crown of

the head as a refuge for one of the child's souls. Otherwise the

soul would have no place in which to settle, and the child would

sicken. The Karo-Bataks are much afraid of frightening away the soul

of a child; hence when they cut its hair, they always leave a patch

unshorn, to which the soul can retreat before the shears. Usually

this lock remains unshorn all through life, or at least up till

manhood.

7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting

BUT when it becomes necessary to crop the hair, measures are taken

to lessen the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation.

The chief of Namosi in Fiji always ate a man by way of precaution

when he had had his hair cut. "There was a certain clan that had to

provide the victim, and they used to sit in solemn council among

themselves to choose him. It was a sacrificial feast to avert evil

from the chief." Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at

hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the

obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced

to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed

to cause. "He who has had his hair cut is in immediate charge of the

Atua (spirit); he is removed from the contact and society of his

family and his tribe; he dare not touch his food himself; it is put

into his mouth by another person; nor can he for some days resume

his accustomed occupations or associate with his fellow-men." The

person who cuts the hair is also tabooed; his hands having been in

contact with a sacred head, he may not touch food with them or

engage in any other employment; he is fed by another person with

food cooked over a sacred fire. He cannot be released from the taboo

before the following day, when he rubs his hands with potato or fern

root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and this food having

been taken to the head of the family in the female line and eaten by

her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New

Zealand the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for

hair-cutting; the people assembled in large numbers on that day from

all the neighbourhood.

8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails

BUT even when the hair and nails have been safely cut, there remains

the difficulty of disposing of them, for their owner believes

himself liable to suffer from any harm that may befall them. The

notion that a man may be bewitched by means of the clippings of his

hair, the parings of his nails, or any other severed portion of his

person is almost world-wide, and attested by evidence too ample, too

familiar, and too tedious in its uniformity to be here analysed at

length. The general idea on which the superstition rests is that of

the sympathetic connexion supposed to persist between a person and

everything that has once been part of his body or in any way closely

related to him. A very few examples must suffice. They belong to

that branch of sympathetic magic which may be called contagious.

Dread of sorcery, we are told, formed one of the most salient

characteristics of the Marquesan islanders in the old days. The

sorcerer took some of the hair, spittle, or other bodily refuse of

the man he wished to injure, wrapped it up in a leaf, and placed the

packet in a bag woven of threads or fibres, which were knotted in an

intricate way. The whole was then buried with certain rites, and

thereupon the victim wasted away of a languishing sickness which

lasted twenty days. His life, however, might be saved by discovering

and digging up the buried hair, spittle, or what not; for as soon as

this was done the power of the charm ceased. A Maori sorcerer intent

on bewitching somebody sought to get a tress of his victim's hair,

the parings of his nails, some of his spittle, or a shred of his

garment. Having obtained the object, whatever it was, he chanted

certain spells and curses over it in a falsetto voice and buried it

in the ground. As the thing decayed, the person to whom it had

belonged was supposed to waste away. When an Australian blackfellow

wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her

sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a

neighbouring tribe, where he gives it to a friend. His friend sticks

the spear-thrower up every night before the camp fire, and when it

falls down it is a sign that the wife is dead. The way in which the

charm operates was explained to Dr. Howitt by a Wirajuri man. "You

see," he said, "when a blackfellow doctor gets hold of something

belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the

fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor

fellow."

The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that if mice get a person's

shorn hair and make a nest of it, the person will suffer from

headache or even become idiotic. Similarly in Germany it is a common

notion that if birds find a person's cut hair, and build their nests

with it, the person will suffer from headache; sometimes it is

thought that he will have an eruption on the head. The same

superstition prevails, or used to prevail, in West Sussex.

Again it is thought that cut or combed-out hair may disturb the

weather by producing rain and hail, thunder and lightning. We have

seen that in New Zealand a spell was uttered at hair-cutting to

avert thunder and lightning. In the Tyrol, witches are supposed to

use cut or combed-out hair to make hailstones or thunderstorms with.

Thlinkeet Indians have been known to attribute stormy weather to the

rash act of a girl who had combed her hair outside of the house. The

Romans seem to have held similar views, for it was a maxim with them

that no one on shipboard should cut his hair or nails except in a

storm, that is, when the mischief was already done. In the Highlands

of Scotland it is said that no sister should comb her hair at night

if she have a brother at sea. In West Africa, when the Mani of

Chitombe or Jumba died, the people used to run in crowds to the

corpse and tear out his hair, teeth, and nails, which they kept as a

rain-charm, believing that otherwise no rain would fall. The Makoko

of the Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their beards

as a rain-charm.

If cut hair and nails remain in sympathetic connexion with the

person from whose body they have been severed, it is clear that they

can be used as hostages for his good behaviour by any one who may

chance to possess them; for on the principles of contagious magic he

has only to injure the hair or nails in order to hurt simultaneously

their original owner. Hence when the Nandi have taken a prisoner

they shave his head and keep the shorn hair as a surety that he will

not attempt to escape; but when the captive is ransomed, they return

his shorn hair with him to his own people.

To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the

dangerous uses to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is

necessary to deposit them in some safe place. The shorn locks of a

Maori chief were gathered with much care and placed in an adjoining

cemetery. The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their hair at the

temples. In the streets of Soku a modern traveller observed cairns

of large stones piled against walls with tufts of human hair

inserted in the crevices. On asking the meaning of this, he was told

that when any native of the place polled his hair he carefully

gathered up the clippings and deposited them in one of these cairns,

all of which were sacred to the fetish and therefore inviolable.

These cairns of sacred stones, he further learned, were simply a

precaution against witchcraft, for if a man were not thus careful in

disposing of his hair, some of it might fall into the hands of his

enemies, who would, by means of it, be able to cast spells over him

and so compass his destruction. When the top-knot of a Siamese child

has been cut with great ceremony, the short hairs are put into a

little vessel made of plantain leaves and set adrift on the nearest

river or canal. As they float away, all that was wrong or harmful in

the child's disposition is believed to depart with them. The long

hairs are kept till the child makes a pilgrimage to the holy

Footprint of Buddha on the sacred hill at Prabat. They are then

presented to the priests, who are supposed to make them into brushes

with which they sweep the Footprint; but in fact so much hair is

thus offered every year that the priests cannot use it all, so they

quietly burn the superfluity as soon as the pilgrims' backs are

turned. The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were buried

under a lucky tree. The shorn tresses of the Vestal Virgins were

hung on an ancient lotus-tree.

Often the clipped hair and nails are stowed away in any secret

place, not necessarily in a temple or cemetery or at a tree, as in

the cases already mentioned. Thus in Swabia you are recommended to

deposit your clipped hair in some spot where neither sun nor moon

can shine on it, for example in the earth or under a stone. In

Danzig it is buried in a bag under the threshold. In Ugi, one of the

Solomon Islands, men bury their hair lest it should fall into the

hands of an enemy, who would make magic with it and so bring

sickness or calamity on them. The same fear seems to be general in

Melanesia, and has led to a regular practice of hiding cut hair and

nails. The same practice prevails among many tribes of South Africa,

from a fear lest wizards should get hold of the severed particles

and work evil with them. The Caffres carry still further this dread

of allowing any portion of themselves to fall into the hands of an

enemy; for not only do they bury their cut hair and nails in a

secret spot, but when one of them cleans the head of another he

preserves the vermin which he catches, "carefully delivering them to

the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according

to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood

of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by

another, the blood of his neighbour would be in his possession, thus

placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence."

Sometimes the severed hair and nails are preserved, not to prevent

them from falling into the hands of a magician, but that the owner

may have them at the resurrection of the body, to which some races

look forward. Thus the Incas of Peru "took extreme care to preserve

the nail-parings and the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with

a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the walls; and if they

fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and put them

in their places again. I very often asked different Indians, at

various times, why they did this, in order to see what they would

say, and they all replied in the same words saying, 'Know that all

persons who are born must return to life' (they have no word to

express resurrection), 'and the souls must rise out of their tombs

with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that

we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a time when

there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place,

that they may be brought together more conveniently, and, whenever

it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place.'"

Similarly the Turks never throw away the parings of their nails, but

carefully stow them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the

belief that they will be needed at the resurrection. The Armenians

do not throw away their cut hair and nails and extracted teeth, but

hide them in places that are esteemed holy, such as a crack in the

church wall, a pillar of the house, or a hollow tree. They think

that all these severed portions of themselves will be wanted at the

resurrection, and that he who has not stowed them away in a safe

place will have to hunt about for them on the great day. In the

village of Drumconrath in Ireland there used to be some old women

who, having ascertained from Scripture that the hairs of their heads

were all numbered by the Almighty, expected to have to account for

them at the day of judgment. In order to be able to do so they

stuffed the severed hair away in the thatch of their cottages.

Some people burn their loose hair to save it from falling into the

hands of sorcerers. This is done by the Patagonians and some of the

Victorian tribes. In the Upper Vosges they say that you should never

leave the clippings of your hair and nails lying about, but burn

them to hinder the sorcerers from using them against you. For the

same reason Italian women either burn their loose hairs or throw

them into a place where no one is likely to look for them. The

almost universal dread of witchcraft induces the West African

negroes, the Makololo of South Africa, and the Tahitians to burn or

bury their shorn hair. In the Tyrol many people burn their hair lest

the witches should use it to raise thunderstorms; others burn or

bury it to prevent the birds from lining their nests with it, which

would cause the heads from which the hair came to ache.

This destruction of the hair and nails plainly involves an

inconsistency of thought. The object of the destruction is avowedly

to prevent these severed portions of the body from being used by

sorcerers. But the possibility of their being so used depends upon

the supposed sympathetic connexion between them and the man from

whom they were severed. And if this sympathetic connexion still

exists, clearly these severed portions cannot be destroyed without

injury to the man.

9. Spittle tabooed

THE SAME fear of witchcraft which has led so many people to hide or

destroy their loose hair and nails has induced other or the same

people to treat their spittle in a like fashion. For on the

principles of sympathetic magic the spittle is part of the man, and

whatever is done to it will have a corresponding effect on him. A

Chilote Indian, who has gathered up the spittle of an enemy, will

put it in a potato, and hang the potato in the smoke, uttering

certain spells as he does so in the belief that his foe will waste

away as the potato dries in the smoke. Or he will put the spittle in

a frog and throw the animal into an inaccessible, unnavigable river,

which will make the victim quake and shake with ague. The natives of

Urewera, a district of New Zealand, enjoyed a high reputation for

their skill in magic. It was said that they made use of people's

spittle to bewitch them. Hence visitors were careful to conceal

their spittle, lest they should furnish these wizards with a handle

for working them harm. Similarly among some tribes of South Africa

no man will spit when an enemy is near, lest his foe should find the

spittle and give it to a wizard, who would then mix it with magical

ingredients so as to injure the person from whom it fell. Even in a

man's own house his saliva is carefully swept away and obliterated

for a similar reason.

If common folk are thus cautious, it is natural that kings and

chiefs should be doubly so. In the Sandwich Islands chiefs were

attended by a confidential servant bearing a portable spittoon, and

the deposit was carefully buried every morning to put it out of the

reach of sorcerers. On the Slave Coast, for the same reason,

whenever a king or chief expectorates, the saliva is scrupulously

gathered up and hidden or buried. The same precautions are taken for

the same reason with the spittle of the chief of Tabali in Southern

Nigeria.

The magical use to which spittle may be put marks it out, like blood

or nail-parings, as a suitable material basis for a covenant, since

by exchanging their saliva the covenanting parties give each other a

guarantee of good faith. If either of them afterwards foreswears

himself, the other can punish his perfidy by a magical treatment of

the purjurer's spittle which he has in his custody. Thus when the

Wajagga of East Africa desire to make a covenant, the two parties

will sometimes sit down with a bowl of milk or beer between them,

and after uttering an incantation over the beverage they each take a

mouthful of the milk or beer and spit it into the other's mouth. In

urgent cases, when there is no time to spend on ceremony, the two

will simply spit into each other's mouth, which seals the covenant

just as well.

10. Foods tabooed

AS MIGHT have been expected, the superstitions of the savage cluster

thick about the subject of food; and he abstains from eating many

animals and plants, wholesome enough in themselves, which for one

reason or another he fancies would prove dangerous or fatal to the

eater. Examples of such abstinence are too familiar and far too

numerous to quote. But if the ordinary man is thus deterred by

superstitious fear from partaking of various foods, the restraints

of this kind which are laid upon sacred or tabooed persons, such as

kings and priests, are still more numerous and stringent. We have

already seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to eat or even

name several plants and animals, and that the flesh diet of Egyptian

kings was restricted to veal and goose. In antiquity many priests

and many kings of barbarous peoples abstained wholly from a flesh

diet. The _Gangas_ or fetish priests of the Loango Coast are

forbidden to eat or even see a variety of animals and fish, in

consequence of which their flesh diet is extremely limited; often

they live only on herbs and roots, though they may drink fresh

blood. The heir to the throne of Loango is forbidden from infancy to

eat pork; from early childhood he is interdicted the use of the

_cola_ fruit in company; at puberty he is taught by a priest not to

partake of fowls except such as he has himself killed and cooked;

and so the number of taboos goes on increasing with his years. In

Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco

(_arum acaule_), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods

of the people. The head chief of the Masai may eat nothing but milk,

honey, and the roasted livers of goats; for if he partook of any

other food he would lose his power of soothsaying and of compounding

charms.

11. Knots and Rings tabooed

WE have seen that among the many taboos which the Flamen Dialis at

Rome had to observe, there was one that forbade him to have a knot

on any part of his garments, and another that obliged him to wear no

ring unless it were broken. In like manner Moslem pilgrims to Mecca

are in a state of sanctity or taboo and may wear on their persons

neither knots nor rings. These rules are probably of kindred

significance, and may conveniently be considered together. To begin

with knots, many people in different parts of the world entertain a

strong objection to having any knot about their person at certain

critical seasons, particularly childbirth, marriage, and death. Thus

among the Saxons of Transylvania, when a woman is in travail all

knots on her garments are untied, because it is believed that this

will facilitate her delivery, and with the same intention all the

locks in the house, whether on doors or boxes, are unlocked. The

Lapps think that a lying-in woman should have no knot on her

garments, because a knot would have the effect of making the

delivery difficult and painful. In the East Indies this superstition

is extended to the whole time of pregnancy; the people believe that

if a pregnant woman were to tie knots, or braid, or make anything

fast, the child would thereby be constricted or the woman would

herself be "tied up" when her time came. Nay, some of them enforce

the observance of the rule on the father as well as the mother of

the unborn child. Among the Sea Dyaks neither of the parents may

bind up anything with a string or make anything fast during the

wife's pregnancy. In the Toumbuluh tribe of North Celebes a ceremony

is performed in the fourth or fifth month of a woman's pregnancy,

and after it her husband is forbidden, among many other things, to

tie any fast knots and to sit with his legs crossed over each other.

In all these cases the idea seems to be that the tying of a knot

would, as they say in the East Indies, "tie up" the woman, in other

words, impede and perhaps prevent her delivery, or delay her

convalescence after the birth. On the principles of homoeopathic or

imitative magic the physical obstacle or impediment of a knot on a

cord would create a corresponding obstacle or impediment in the body

of the woman. That this is really the explanation of the rule

appears from a custom observed by the Hos of West Africa at a

difficult birth. When a woman is in hard labour and cannot bring

forth, they call in a magician to her aid. He looks at her and says,

"The child is bound in the womb, that is why she cannot be

delivered." On the entreaties of her female relations he then

promises to loosen the bond so that she may bring forth. For that

purpose he orders them to fetch a tough creeper from the forest, and

with it he binds the hands and feet of the sufferer on her back.

Then he takes a knife and calls out the woman's name, and when she

answers he cuts through the creeper with a knife, saying, "I cut

through to-day thy bonds and thy child's bonds." After that he chops

up the creeper small, puts the bits in a vessel of water, and bathes

the woman with the water. Here the cutting of the creeper with which

the woman's hands and feet are bound is a simple piece of

homoeopathic or imitative magic: by releasing her limbs from their

bonds the magician imagines that he simultaneously releases the

child in her womb from the trammels which impede its birth. The same

train of thought underlies a practice observed by some peoples of

opening all locks, doors, and so on, while a birth is taking place

in the house. We have seen that at such a time the Germans of

Transylvania open all the locks, and the same thing is done also in

Voigtland and Mecklenburg. In North-western Argyllshire

superstitious people used to open every lock in the house at

childbirth. In the island of Salsette near Bombay, when a woman is

in hard labour, all locks of doors or drawers are opened with a key

to facilitate her delivery. Among the Mandelings of Sumatra the lids

of all chests, boxes, pans, and so forth are opened; and if this

does not produce the desired effect, the anxious husband has to

strike the projecting ends of some of the house-beams in order to

loosen them; for they think that "everything must be open and loose

to facilitate the delivery." In Chittagong, when a woman cannot

bring her child to the birth, the midwife gives orders to throw all

doors and windows wide open, to uncork all bottles, to remove the

bungs from all casks, to unloose the cows in the stall, the horses

in the stable, the watchdog in his kennel, to set free sheep, fowls,

ducks, and so forth. This universal liberty accorded to the animals

and even to inanimate things is, according to the people, an

infallible means of ensuring the woman's delivery and allowing the

babe to be born. In the island of Saghalien, when a woman is in

labour, her husband undoes everything that can be undone. He loosens

the plaits of his hair and the laces of his shoes. Then he unties

whatever is tied in the house or its vicinity. In the courtyard he

takes the axe out of the log in which it is stuck; he unfastens the

boat, if it is moored to a tree, he withdraws the cartridges from

his gun, and the arrows from his crossbow.

Again, we have seen that a Toumbuluh man abstains not only from

tying knots, but also from sitting with crossed legs during his

wife's pregnancy. The train of thought is the same in both cases.

Whether you cross threads in tying a knot, or only cross your legs

in sitting at your ease, you are equally, on the principles of

homoeopathic magic, crossing or thwarting the free course of things,

and your action cannot but check and impede whatever may be going

forward in your neighbourhood. Of this important truth the Romans

were fully aware. To sit beside a pregnant woman or a patient under

medical treatment with clasped hands, says the grave Pliny, is to

cast a malignant spell over the person, and it is worse still if you

nurse your leg or legs with your clasped hands, or lay one leg over

the other. Such postures were regarded by the old Romans as a let

and hindrance to business of every sort, and at a council of war or

a meeting of magistrates, at prayers and sacrifices, no man was

suffered to cross his legs or clasp his hands. The stock instance of

the dreadful consequences that might flow from doing one or the

other was that of Alcmena, who travailed with Hercules for seven

days and seven nights, because the goddess Lucina sat in front of

the house with clasped hands and crossed legs, and the child could

not be born until the goddess had been beguiled into changing her

attitude. It is a Bulgarian superstition that if a pregnant woman is

in the habit of sitting with crossed legs, she will suffer much in

childbed. In some parts of Bavaria, when conversation comes to a

standstill and silence ensues, they say, "Surely somebody has

crossed his legs."

The magical effect of knots in trammelling and obstructing human

activity was believed to be manifested at marriage not less than at

birth. During the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century,

it seems to have been commonly held in Europe that the consummation

of marriage could be prevented by any one who, while the wedding

ceremony was taking place, either locked a lock or tied a knot in a

cord, and then threw the lock or the cord away. The lock or the

knotted cord had to be flung into water; and until it had been found

and unlocked, or untied, no real union of the married pair was

possible. Hence it was a grave offence, not only to cast such a

spell, but also to steal or make away with the material instrument

of it, whether lock or knotted cord. In the year 1718 the parliament

of Bordeaux sentenced some one to be burned alive for having spread

desolation through a whole family by means of knotted cords; and in

1705 two persons were condemned to death in Scotland for stealing

certain charmed knots which a woman had made, in order thereby to

mar the wedded happiness of Spalding of Ashintilly. The belief in

the efficacy of these charms appears to have lingered in the

Highlands of Pertshire down to the end of the eighteenth century,

for at that time it was still customary in the beautiful parish of

Logierait, between the river Tummel and the river Tay, to unloose

carefully every knot in the clothes of the bride and bridegroom

before the celebration of the marriage ceremony. We meet with the

same superstition and the same custom at the present day in Syria.

The persons who help a Syrian bridegroom to don his wedding garments

take care that no knot is tied on them and no button buttoned, for

they believe that a button buttoned or a knot tied would put it

within the power of his enemies to deprive him of his nuptial rights

by magical means. The fear of such charms is diffused all over North

Africa at the present day. To render a bridegroom impotent the

enchanter has only to tie a knot in a handkerchief which he had

previously placed quietly on some part of the bridegroom's body when

he was mounted on horseback ready to fetch his bride: so long as the

knot in the handkerchief remains tied, so long will the bridegroom

remain powerless to consummate the marriage.

The maleficent power of knots may also be manifested in the

infliction of sickness, disease, and all kinds of misfortune. Thus

among the Hos of West Africa a sorcerer will sometimes curse his

enemy and tie a knot in a stalk of grass, saying, "I have tied up

So-and-so in this knot. May all evil light upon him! When he goes

into the field, may a snake sting him! When he goes to the chase,

may a ravening beast attack him! And when he steps into a river, may

the water sweep him away! When it rains, may the lightning strike

him! May evil nights be his!" It is believed that in the knot the

sorcerer has bound up the life of his enemy. In the Koran there is

an allusion to the mischief of "those who puff into the knots," and

an Arab commentator on the passage explains that the words refer to

women who practise magic by tying knots in cords, and then blowing

and spitting upon them. He goes on to relate how, once upon a time,

a wicked Jew bewitched the prophet Mohammed himself by tying nine

knots on a string, which he then hid in a well. So the prophet fell

ill, and nobody knows what might have happened if the archangel

Gabriel had not opportunely revealed to the holy man the place where

the knotted cord was concealed. The trusty Ali soon fetched the

baleful thing from the well; and the prophet recited over it certain

charms, which were specially revealed to him for the purpose. At

every verse of the charms a knot untied itself, and the prophet

experienced a certain relief.

If knots are supposed to kill, they are also supposed to cure. This

follows from the belief that to undo the knots which are causing

sickness will bring the sufferer relief. But apart from this

negative virtue of maleficent knots, there are certain beneficent

knots to which a positive power of healing is ascribed. Pliny tells

us that some folk cured diseases of the groin by taking a thread

from a web, tying seven or nine knots on it, and then fastening it

to the patient's groin; but to make the cure effectual it was

necessary to name some widow as each knot was tied. O'Donovan

describes a remedy for fever employed among the Turcomans. The

enchanter takes some camel hair and spins it into a stout thread,

droning a spell the while. Next he ties seven knots on the thread,

blowing on each knot before he pulls it tight. This knotted thread

is then worn as a bracelet on his wrist by the patient. Every day

one of the knots is untied and blown upon, and when the seventh knot

is undone the whole thread is rolled up into a ball and thrown into

a river, bearing away (as they imagine) the fever with it.

Again knots may be used by an enchantress to win a lover and attach

him firmly to herself. Thus the love-sick maid in Virgil seeks to

draw Daphnis to her from the city by spells and by tying three knots

on each of three strings of different colours. So an Arab maiden,

who had lost her heart to a certain man, tried to gain his love and

bind him to herself by tying knots in his whip; but her jealous

rival undid the knots. On the same principle magic knots may be

employed to stop a runaway. In Swazieland you may often see grass

tied in knots at the side of the footpaths. Every one of these knots

tells of a domestic tragedy. A wife has run away from her husband,

and he and his friends have gone in pursuit, binding up the paths,

as they call it, in this fashion to prevent the fugitive from

doubling back over them. A net, from its affluence of knots, has

always been considered in Russia very efficacious against sorcerers;

hence in some places, when a bride is being dressed in her wedding

attire, a fishing-net is flung over her to keep her out of harm's

way. For a similar purpose the bridegroom and his companions are

often girt with pieces of net, or at least with tight-drawn girdles,

for before a wizard can begin to injure them he must undo all the

knots in the net, or take off the girdles. But often a Russian

amulet is merely a knotted thread. A skein of red wool wound about

the arms and legs is thought to ward off agues and fevers; and nine

skeins, fastened round a child's neck, are deemed a preservative

against scarlatina. In the Tver Government a bag of a special kind

is tied to the neck of the cow which walks before the rest of a

herd, in order to keep off wolves; its force binds the maw of the

ravening beast. On the same principle, a padlock is carried thrice

round a herd of horses before they go afield in the spring, and the

bearer locks and unlocks it as he goes, saying, "I lock from my herd

the mouths of the grey wolves with this steel lock."

Knots and locks may serve to avert not only wizards and wolves but

death itself. When they brought a woman to the stake at St. Andrews

in 1572 to burn her alive for a witch, they found on her a white

cloth like a collar, with strings and many knots on the strings.

They took it from her, sorely against her will, for she seemed to

think that she could not die in the fire, if only the cloth with the

knotted strings was on her. When it was taken away, she said, "Now I

have no hope of myself." In many parts of England it is thought that

a person cannot die so long as any locks are locked or bolts shot in

the house. It is therefore a very common practice to undo all locks

and bolts when the sufferer is plainly near his end, in order that

his agony may not be unduly prolonged. For example, in the year

1863, at Taunton, a child lay sick of scarlatina and death seemed

inevitable. "A jury of matrons was, as it were, empanelled, and to

prevent the child 'dying hard' all the doors in the house, all the

drawers, all the boxes, all the cupboards were thrown wide open, the

keys taken out, and the body of the child placed under a beam,

whereby a sure, certain, and easy passage into eternity could be

secured." Strange to say, the child declined to avail itself of the

facilities for dying so obligingly placed at its disposal by the

sagacity and experience of the British matrons of Taunton; it

preferred to live rather than give up the ghost just then.

The rule which prescribes that at certain magical and religious

ceremonies the hair should hang loose and the feet should be bare is

probably based on the same fear of trammelling and impeding the

action in hand, whatever it may be, by the presence of any knot or

constriction, whether on the head or on the feet of the performer. A

similar power to bind and hamper spiritual as well as bodily

activities is ascribed by some people to rings. Thus in the island

of Carpathus people never button the clothes they put upon a dead

body and they are careful to remove all rings from it; "for the

spirit, they say, can even be detained in the little finger, and

cannot rest." Here it is plain that even if the soul is not

definitely supposed to issue at death from the finger-tips, yet the

ring is conceived to exercise a certain constrictive influence which

detains and imprisons the immortal spirit in spite of its efforts to

escape from the tabernacle of clay; in short the ring, like the

knot, acts as a spiritual fetter. This may have been the reason of

an ancient Greek maxim, attributed to Pythagoras, which forbade

people to wear rings. Nobody might enter the ancient Arcadian

sanctuary of the Mistress at Lycosura with a ring on his or her

finger. Persons who consulted the oracle of Faunus had to be chaste,

to eat no flesh, and to wear no rings.

On the other hand, the same constriction which hinders the egress of

the soul may prevent the entrance of evil spirits; hence we find

rings used as amulets against demons, witches, and ghosts. In the

Tyrol it is said that a woman in childbed should never take off her

wedding-ring, or spirits and witches will have power over her. Among

the Lapps, the person who is about to place a corpse in the coffin

receives from the husband, wife, or children of the deceased a brass

ring, which he must wear fastened to his right arm until the corpse

is safely deposited in the grave. The ring is believed to serve the

person as an amulet against any harm which the ghost might do to

him. How far the custom of wearing finger-rings may have been

influenced by, or even have sprung from, a belief in their efficacy

as amulets to keep the soul in the body, or demons out of it, is a

question which seems worth considering. Here we are only concerned

with the belief in so far as it seems to throw light on the rule

that the Flamen Dialis might not wear a ring unless it were broken.

Taken in conjunction with the rule which forbade him to have a knot

on his garments, it points to a fear that the powerful spirit

embodied in him might be trammelled and hampered in its goings-out

and comings-in by such corporeal and spiritual fetters as rings and

knots.

XXII. Tabooed Words

1. Personal Names tabooed

UNABLE to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage

commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or

thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal

association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two in

such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily through

his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part

of his person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital

portion of himself and takes care of it accordingly. Thus, for

example, the North American Indian "regards his name, not as a mere

label, but as a distinct part of his personality, just as much as

are his eyes or his teeth, and believes that injury will result as

surely from the malicious handling of his name as from a wound

inflicted on any part of his physical organism. This belief was

found among the various tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and

has occasioned a number of curious regulations in regard to the

concealment and change of names." Some Esquimaux take new names when

they are old, hoping thereby to get a new lease of life. The

Tolampoos of Celebes believe that if you write a man's name down you

can carry off his soul along with it. Many savages at the present

day regard their names as vital parts of themselves, and therefore

take great pains to conceal their real names, lest these should give

to evil-disposed persons a handle by which to injure their owners.

Thus, to begin with the savages who rank at the bottom of the social

scale, we are told that the secrecy with which among the Australian

aborigines personal names are often kept from general knowledge

"arises in great measure from the belief that an enemy, who knows

your name, has in it something which he can use magically to your

detriment." "An Australian black," says another writer, "is always

very unwilling to tell his real name, and there is no doubt that

this reluctance is due to the fear that through his name he may be

injured by sorcerers." Amongst the tribes of Central Australia every

man, woman, and child has, besides a personal name which is in

common use, a secret or sacred name which is bestowed by the older

men upon him or her soon after birth, and which is known to none but

the fully initiated members of the group. This secret name is never

mentioned except upon the most solemn occasions; to utter it in the

hearing of women or of men of another group would be a most serious

breach of tribal custom, as serious as the most flagrant case of

sacrilege among ourselves. When mentioned at all, the name is spoken

only in a whisper, and not until the most elaborate precautions have

been taken that it shall be heard by no one but members of the

group. "The native thinks that a stranger knowing his secret name

would have special power to work him ill by means of magic."

The same fear seems to have led to a custom of the same sort amongst

the ancient Egyptians, whose comparatively high civilisation was

strangely dashed and chequered with relics of the lowest savagery.

Every Egyptian received two names, which were known respectively as

the true name and the good name, or the great name and the little

name; and while the good or little name was made public, the true or

great name appears to have been carefully concealed. A Brahman child

receives two names, one for common use, the other a secret name

which none but his father and mother should know. The latter is only

used at ceremonies such as marriage. The custom is intended to

protect the person against magic, since a charm only becomes

effectual in combination with the real name. Similarly, the natives

of Nias believe that harm may be done to a person by the demons who

hear his name pronounced. Hence the names of infants, who are

especially exposed to the assaults of evil sprits, are never spoken;

and often in haunted spots, such as the gloomy depths of the forest,

the banks of a river, or beside a bubbling spring, men will abstain

from calling each other by their names for a like reason.

The Indians of Chiloe keep their names secret and do not like to

have them uttered aloud; for they say that there are fairies or imps

on the mainland or neighbouring islands who, if they knew folk's

names, would do them an injury; but so long as they do not know the

names, these mischievous sprites are powerless. The Araucanians will

hardly ever tell a stranger their names because they fear that he

would thereby acquire some supernatural power over themselves. Asked

his name by a stranger, who is ignorant of their superstitions, an

Araucanian will answer, "I have none." When an Ojebway is asked his

name, he will look at some bystander and ask him to answer. "This

reluctance arises from an impression they receive when young, that

if they repeat their own names it will prevent their growth, and

they will be small in stature. On account of this unwillingness to

tell their names, many strangers have fancied that they either have

no names or have forgotten them."

In this last case no scruple seems to be felt about communicating a

man's name to strangers, and no ill effects appear to be dreaded as

a consequence of divulging it; harm is only done when a name is

spoken by its owner. Why is this? and why in particular should a man

be thought to stunt his growth by uttering his own name? We may

conjecture that to savages who act and think thus a person's name

only seems to be a part of himself when it is uttered with his own

breath; uttered by the breath of others it has no vital connexion

with him, and no harm can come to him through it. Whereas, so these

primitive philosophers may have argued, when a man lets his own name

pass his lips, he is parting with a living piece of himself, and if

he persists in so reckless a course he must certainly end by

dissipating his energy and shattering his constitution. Many a

broken-down debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with disease, may

have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their awe-struck

disciples as a fearful example of the fate that must sooner or later

overtake the profligate who indulges immoderately in the seductive

habit of mentioning his own name.

However we may explain it, the fact is certain that many a savage

evinces the strongest reluctance to pronounce his own name, while at

the same time he makes no objection at all to other people

pronouncing it, and will even invite them to do so for him in order

to satisfy the curiosity of an inquisitive stranger. Thus in some

parts of Madagascar it is taboo for a person to tell his own name,

but a slave or attendant will answer for him. The same curious

inconsistency, as it may seem to us, is recorded of some tribes of

American Indians. Thus we are told that "the name of an American

Indian is a sacred thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself

without due consideration. One may ask a warrior of any tribe to

give his name, and the question will be met with either a

point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he cannot

understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches,

the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the

friend can tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy

from the other." This general statement applies, for example, to the

Indian tribes of British Columbia, as to whom it is said that "one

of their strangest prejudices, which appears to pervade all tribes

alike, is a dislike to telling their names--thus you never get a

man's right name from himself; but they will tell each other's names

without hesitation." In the whole of the East Indian Archipelago the

etiquette is the same. As a general rule no one will utter his own

name. To enquire, "What is your name?" is a very indelicate question

in native society. When in the course of administrative or judicial

business a native is asked his name, instead of replying he will

look at his comrade to indicate that he is to answer for him, or he

will say straight out, "Ask him." The superstition is current all

over the East Indies without exception, and it is found also among

the Motu and Motumotu tribes, the Papuans of Finsch Haven in North

New Guinea, the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea, and the Melanesians of

the Bismarck Archipelago. Among many tribes of South Africa men and

women never mention their names if they can get any one else to do

it for them, but they do not absolutely refuse when it cannot be

avoided.

Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is not permanent; it is

conditional on circumstances, and when these change it ceases to

operate. Thus when the Nandi men are away on a foray, nobody at home

may pronounce the names of the absent warriors; they must be

referred to as birds. Should a child so far forget itself as to

mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother would rebuke it,

saying, "Don't talk of the birds who are in the heavens." Among the

Bangala of the Upper Congo, while a man is fishing and when he

returns with his catch, his proper name is in abeyance and nobody

may mention it. Whatever the fisherman's real name may be, he is

called _mwele_ without distinction. The reason is that the river is

full of spirits, who, if they heard the fisherman's real name, might

so work against him that he would catch little or nothing. Even when

he has caught his fish and landed with them, the buyer must still

not address him by his proper name, but must only call him _mwele;_

for even then, if the spirits were to hear his proper name, they

would either bear it in mind and serve him out another day, or they

might so mar the fish he had caught that he would get very little

for them. Hence the fisherman can extract heavy damages from anybody

who mentions his name, or can compel the thoughtless speaker to

relieve him of the fish at a good price so as to restore his luck.

When the Sulka of New Britain are near the territory of their

enemies the Gaktei, they take care not to mention them by their

proper name, believing that were they to do so, their foes would

attack and slay them. Hence in these circumstances they speak of the

Gaktei as _o lapsiek,_ that is, "the rotten tree-trunks," and they

imagine that by calling them that they make the limbs of their

dreaded enemies ponderous and clumsy like logs. This example

illustrates the extremely materialistic view which these savages

take of the nature of words; they suppose that the mere utterance of

an expression signifying clumsiness will homoeopathically affect

with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen. Another

illustration of this curious misconception is furnished by a Caffre

superstition that the character of a young thief can be reformed by

shouting his name over a boiling kettle of medicated water, then

clapping a lid on the kettle and leaving the name to steep in the

water for several days. It is not in the least necessary that the

thief should be aware of the use that is being made of his name

behind his back; the moral reformation will be effected without his

knowledge.

When it is deemed necessary that a man's real name should be kept

secret, it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a

surname or nickname. As distinguished from the real or primary

names, these secondary names are apparently held to be no part of

the man himself, so that they may be freely used and divulged to

everybody without endangering his safety thereby. Sometimes in order

to avoid the use of his own name a man will be called after his

child. Thus we are informed that "the Gippsland blacks objected

strongly to let any one outside the tribe know their names, lest

their enemies, learning them, should make them vehicles of

incantation, and so charm their lives away. As children were not

thought to have enemies, they used to speak of a man as 'the father,

uncle, or cousin of So-and-so,' naming a child; but on all occasions

abstained from mentioning the name of a grown-up person." The

Alfoors of Poso in Celebes will not pronounce their own names. Among

them, accordingly, if you wish to ascertain a person's name, you

ought not to ask the man himself, but should enquire of others. But

if this is impossible, for example, when there is no one else near,

you should ask him his child's name, and then address him as the

"Father of So-and-so." Nay, these Alfoors are shy of uttering the

names even of children; so when a boy or girl has a nephew or niece,

he or she is addressed as "Uncle of So-and-so," or "Aunt of

So-and-so." In pure Malay society, we are told, a man is never asked

his name, and the custom of naming parents after their children is

adopted only as a means of avoiding the use of the parents' own

names. The writer who makes this statement adds in confirmation of

it that childless persons are named after their younger brothers.

Among the Land Dyaks children as they grow up are called, according

to their sex, the father or mother of a child of their father's or

mother's younger brother or sister, that is, they are called the

father or mother of what we should call their first cousin. The

Caffres used to think it discourteous to call a bride by her own

name, so they would call her "the Mother of So-and-so," even when

she was only betrothed, far less a wife and a mother. Among the

Kukis and Zemis or Kacha Nagas of Assam parents drop their names

after the birth of a child and are named Father and Mother of

So-and-so. Childless couples go by the name of "the childless

father," "the childless mother," "the father of no child," "the

mother of no child." The widespread custom of naming a father after

his child has sometimes been supposed to spring from a desire on the

father's part to assert his paternity, apparently as a means of

obtaining those rights over his children which had previously, under

a system of mother-kin, been possessed by the mother. But this

explanation does not account for the parallel custom of naming the

mother after her child, which seems commonly to co-exist with the

practice of naming the father after the child. Still less, if

possible, does it apply to the customs of calling childless couples

the father and mother of children which do not exist, of naming

people after their younger brothers, and of designating children as

the uncles and aunts of So-and-so, or as the fathers and mothers of

their first cousins. But all these practices are explained in a

simple and natural way if we suppose that they originate in a

reluctance to utter the real names of persons addressed or directly

referred to. That reluctance is probably based partly on a fear of

attracting the notice of evil spirits, partly on a dread of

revealing the name to sorcerers, who would thereby obtain a handle

for injuring the owner of the name.

2. Names of Relations tabooed

IT might naturally be expected that the reserve so commonly

maintained with regard to personal names would be dropped or at

least relaxed among relations and friends. But the reverse of this

is often the case. It is precisely the persons most intimately

connected by blood and especially by marriage to whom the rule

applies with the greatest stringency. Such people are often

forbidden, not only to pronounce each other's names, but even to

utter ordinary words which resemble or have a single syllable in

common with these names. The persons who are thus mutually debarred

from mentioning each other's names are especially husbands and

wives, a man and his wife's parents, and a woman and her husband's

father. For example, among the Caffres a woman may not publicly

pronounce the birth-name of her husband or of any of his brothers,

nor may she use the interdicted word in its ordinary sense. If her

husband, for instance, be called u-Mpaka, from _impaka,_ a small

feline animal, she must speak of that beast by some other name.

Further, a Caffre wife is forbidden to pronounce even mentally the

names of her father-in-law and of all her husband's male relations

in the ascending line; and whenever the emphatic syllable of any of

their names occurs in another word, she must avoid it by

substituting either an entirely new word, or, at least, another

syllable in its place. Hence this custom has given rise to an almost

distinct language among the women, which the Caffres call "women's

speech." The interpretation of this "women's speech" is naturally

very difficult, "for no definite rules can be given for the

formation of these substituted words, nor is it possible to form a

dictionary of them, their number being so great--since there may be

many women, even in the same tribe, who would be no more at liberty

to use the substitutes employed by some others, than they are to use

the original words themselves." A Caffre man, on his side, may not

mention the name of his mother-in-law, nor may she pronounce his;

but he is free to utter words in which the emphatic syllable of her

name occurs. A Kirghiz woman dares not pronounce the names of the

older relations of her husband, nor even use words which resemble

them in sound. For example, if one of these relations is called

Shepherd, she may not speak of sheep, but must call them "the

bleating ones"; if his name is Lamb, she must refer to lambs as "the

young bleating ones." In Southern India wives believe that to tell

their husband's name or to pronounce it even in a dream would bring

him to an untimely end. Among the Sea Dyaks a man may not pronounce

the name of his father-in-law or mother-in-law without incurring the

wrath of the spirits. And since he reckons as his father-in-law and

mother-in-law not only the father and mother of his own wife, but

also the fathers and mothers of his brothers' wives and sisters'

husbands, and likewise the fathers and mothers of all his cousins,

the number of tabooed names may be very considerable and the

opportunities of error correspondingly numerous. To make confusion

worse confounded, the names of persons are often the names of common

things, such as moon, bridge, barley, cobra, leopard; so that when

any of a man's many fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law are called by

such names, these common words may not pass his lips. Among the

Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, the custom is carried still

further so as to forbid the use even of words which merely resemble

the personal names in sound. It is especially the name of a

father-in-law which is thus laid under an interdict. If he, for

example, is called Kalala, his son-in-law may not speak of a horse

by its common name _kawalo;_ he must call it a "riding-beast"

(_sasakajan_). So among the Alfoors of the island of Buru it is

taboo to mention the names of parents and parents-in-law, or even to

speak of common objects by words which resemble these names in

sound. Thus, if your mother-in-law is called Dalu, which means

"betel," you may not ask for betel by its ordinary name, you must

ask for "red mouth"; if you want betel-leaf, you may not say

betel-leaf (_dalu 'mun_), you must say _karon fenna._ In the same

island it is also taboo to mention the name of an elder brother in

his presence. Transgressions of these rules are punished with fines.

In Sunda it is thought that a particular crop would be spoilt if a

man were to mention the names of his father and mother.

Among the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea persons who are related to

each other by marriage are forbidden to mention each other's names.

Among the connexions whose names are thus tabooed are wife,

mother-in-law, father-in-law, your wife's uncles and aunts and also

her grand-uncles and grand-aunts, and the whole of your wife's or

your husband's family in the same generation as yourself, except

that men may mention the names of their brothers-in-law, though

women may not. The taboo comes into operation as soon as the

betrothal has taken place and before the marriage has been

celebrated. Families thus connected by the betrothal of two of their

members are not only forbidden to pronounce each other's names; they

may not even look at each other, and the rule gives rise to the most

comical scenes when they happen to meet unexpectedly. And not merely

the names themselves, but any words that sound like them are

scrupulously avoided and other words used in their place. If it

should chance that a person has inadvertently uttered a forbidden

name, he must at once throw himself on the floor and say, "I have

mentioned a wrong name. I throw it through the chinks of the floor

in order that I may eat well."

In the western islands of Torres Straits a man never mentioned the

personal names of his father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law,

and sister-in-law; and a woman was subject to the same restrictions.

A brother-in-law might be spoken of as the husband or brother of

some one whose name it was lawful to mention; and similarly a

sister-in-law might be called the wife of So-and-so. If a man by

chance used the personal name of his brother-in-law, he was ashamed

and hung his head. His shame was only relieved when he had made a

present as compensation to the man whose name he had taken in vain.

The same compensation was made to a sister-in-law, a father-in-law,

and a mother-in-law for the accidental mention of their names. Among

the natives who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula in New

Britain to mention the name of a brother-in-law is the grossest

possible affront you can offer to him; it is a crime punishable with

death. In the Banks' Islands, Melanesia, the taboos laid on the

names of persons connected by marriage are very strict. A man will

not mention the name of his father-in-law, much less the name of his

mother-in-law, nor may he name his wife's brother; but he may name

his wife's sister--she is nothing to him. A woman may not name her

father-in-law, nor on any account her son-in-law. Two people whose

children have intermarried are also debarred from mentioning each

other's names. And not only are all these persons forbidden to utter

each other's names; they may not even pronounce ordinary words which

chance to be either identical with these names or to have any

syllables in common with them. Thus we hear of a native of these

islands who might not use the common words for "pig" and "to die,"

because these words occurred in the polysyllabic name of his

son-in-law; and we are told of another unfortunate who might not

pronounce the everyday words for "hand" and "hot" on account of his

wife's brother's name, and who was even debarred from mentioning the

number "one," because the word for "one" formed part of the name of

his wife's cousin.

The reluctance to mention the names or even syllables of the names

of persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be

separated from the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter

their own names or the names of the dead or of the dead or of chiefs

and kings; and if the reticence as to these latter names springs

mainly from superstition, we may infer that the reticence as to the

former has no better foundation. That the savage's unwillingness to

mention his own name is based, at least in part, on a superstitious

fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes, whether

human or spiritual, has already been shown. It remains to examine

the similar usage in regard to the names of the dead and of royal

personages.

3. Names of the Dead tabooed

THE CUSTOM of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead

was observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus, and at

the present day it is in full force among many savage tribes. Thus

we are told that one of the customs most rigidly observed and

enforced amongst the Australian aborigines is never to mention the

name of a deceased person, whether male or female; to name aloud one

who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their most

sacred prejudices, and they carefully abstain from it. The chief

motive for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the

ghost, although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows

undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the

names of the dead. Once Mr. Oldfield so terrified a native by

shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man fairly took

to his heels and did not venture to show himself again for several

days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white

man for his indiscretion; "nor could I," adds Mr. Oldfield, "induce

him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for

by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign

spirits." Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely

spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a

subdued voice as "the lost one" or "the poor fellow that is no

more." To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite the

malignity of Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed, which hovers on

earth for a time before it departs for ever towards the setting sun.

Of the tribes on the Lower Murray River we are told that when a

person dies "they carefully avoid mentioning his name; but if

compelled to do so, they pronounce it in a very low whisper, so

faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their voice." Amongst

the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of the

deceased during the period of mourning, unless it is absolutely

necessary to do so, and then it is only done in a whisper for fear

of disturbing and annoying the man's spirit which is walking about

in ghostly form. If the ghost hears his name mentioned he concludes

that his kinsfolk are not mourning for him properly; if their grief

were genuine they could not bear to bandy his name about. Touched to

the quick by their hard-hearted indifference the indignant ghost

will come and trouble them in dreams.

The same reluctance to utter the names of the dead appears to

prevail among all the Indian tribes of America from Hudson's Bay

Territory to Patagonia. Among the Goajiros of Colombia to mention

the dead before his kinsmen is a dreadful offence, which is often

punished with death; for if it happens on the _rancho_ of the

deceased, in presence of his nephew or uncle, they will assuredly

kill the offender on the spot if they can. But if he escapes, the

penalty resolves itself into a heavy fine, usually of two or more

oxen.

A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of

peoples so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of

Siberia and the Todas of Southern India; the Mongols of Tartary and

the Tuaregs of the Sahara; the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and

Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the

inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of Madagascar, and of

Tasmania. In all cases, even where it is not expressly stated, the

fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the

ghost. That this is the real motive with the Tuaregs we are

positively informed. They dread the return of the dead man's spirit,

and do all they can to avoid it by shifting their camp after a

death, ceasing for ever to pronounce the name of the departed, and

eschewing everything that might be regarded as an evocation or

recall of his soul. Hence they do not, like the Arabs, designate

individuals by adding to their personal names the names of their

fathers; they never speak of So-and-so, son of So-and-so; they give

to every man a name which will live and die with him. So among some

of the Victorian tribes in Australia personal names were rarely

perpetuated, because the natives believed that any one who adopted

the name of a deceased person would not live long; probably his

ghostly namesake was supposed to come and fetch him away to the

spirit-land.

The same fear of the ghost, which moves people to suppress his old

name, naturally leads all persons who bear a similar name to

exchange it for another, lest its utterance should attract the

attention of the ghost, who cannot reasonably be expected to

discriminate between all the different applications of the same

name. Thus we are told that in the Adelaide and Encounter Bay tribes

of South Australia the repugnance to mentioning the names of those

who have died lately is carried so far, that persons who bear the

same name as the deceased abandon it, and either adopt temporary

names or are known by any others that happen to belong to them. A

similar custom prevails among some of the Queensland tribes; but the

prohibition to use the names of the dead is not permanent, though it

may last for many years. In some Australian tribes the change of

name thus brought about is permanent; the old name is laid aside for

ever, and the man is known by his new name for the rest of his life,

or at least until he is obliged to change it again for a like

reason. Among the North American Indians all persons, whether men or

women, who bore the name of one who had just died were obliged to

abandon it and to adopt other names, which was formally done at the

first ceremony of mourning for the dead. In some tribes to the east

of the Rocky Mountains this change of name lasted only during the

season of mourning, but in other tribes on the Pacific Coast of

North America it seems to have been permanent.

Sometimes by an extension of the same reasoning all the near

relations of the deceased change their names, whatever they may

happen to be, doubtless from a fear that the sound of the familiar

names might lure back the vagrant spirit to its old home. Thus in

some Victorian tribes the ordinary names of all the next of kin were

disused during the period of mourning, and certain general terms,

prescribed by custom, were substituted for them. To call a mourner

by his own name was considered an insult to the departed, and often

led to fighting and bloodshed. Among Indian tribes of North-western

America near relations of the deceased often change their names

"under an impression that spirits will be attracted back to earth if

they hear familiar names often repeated." Among the Kiowa Indians

the name of the dead is never spoken in the presence of the

relatives, and on the death of any member of a family all the others

take new names. This custom was noted by Raleigh's colonists on

Roanoke Island more than three centuries ago. Among the Lengua

Indians not only is a dead man's name never mentioned, but all the

survivors change their names also. They say that Death has been

among them and has carried off a list of the living, and that he

will soon come back for more victims; hence in order to defeat his

fell purpose they change their names, believing that on his return

Death, though he has got them all on his list, will not be able to

identify them under their new names, and will depart to pursue the

search elsewhere. Nicobarese mourners take new names in order to

escape the unwelcome attentions of the ghost; and for the same

purpose they disguise themselves by shaving their heads so that the

ghost is unable to recognise them.

Further, when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some

common object, such as an animal, or plant, or fire, or water, it is

sometimes considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech

and replace it by another. A custom of this sort, it is plain, may

easily be a potent agent of change in language; for where it

prevails to any considerable extent many words must constantly

become obsolete and new ones spring up. And this tendency has been

remarked by observers who have recorded the custom in Australia,

America, and elsewhere. For example, with regard to the Australian

aborigines it has been noted that "the dialects change with almost

every tribe. Some tribes name their children after natural objects;

and when the person so named dies, the word is never again

mentioned; another word has therefore to be invented for the object

after which the child was called." The writer gives as an instance

the case of a man whose name Karla signified "fire"; when Karla

died, a new word for fire had to be introduced. "Hence," adds the

writer, "the language is always changing." Again, in the Encounter

Bay tribe of South Australia, if a man of the name of Ngnke, which

means "water," were to die, the whole tribe would be obliged to use

some other word to express water for a considerable time after his

decease. The writer who records this custom surmises that it may

explain the presence of a number of synonyms in the language of the

tribe. This conjecture is confirmed by what we know of some

Victorian tribes whose speech comprised a regular set of synonyms to

be used instead of the common terms by all members of a tribe in

times of mourning. For instance, if a man called Waa ( "crow")

departed this life, during the period of mourning for him nobody

might call a crow a _waa;_ everybody had to speak of the bird as a

_narrapart._ When a person who rejoiced in the title of Ringtail

Opossum (_weearn_) had gone the way of all flesh, his sorrowing

relations and the tribe at large were bound for a time to refer to

ringtail opossums by the more sonorous name of _manuungkuurt._ If

the community were plunged in grief for the loss of a respected

female who bore the honourable name of Turkey Bustard, the proper

name for turkey bustards, which was _barrim barrim,_ went out, and

_tillit tilliitsh_ came in. And so _mutatis mutandis_ with the names

of Black Cockatoo, Grey Duck, Gigantic Crane, Kangaroo, Eagle,

Dingo, and the rest.

A similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of

the Abipones of Paraguay, amongst whom, however, a word once

abolished seems never to have been revived. New words, says the

missionary Dobrizhoffer, sprang up every year like mushrooms in a

night, because all words that resembled the names of the dead were

abolished by proclamation and others coined in their place. The mint

of words was in the hands of the old women of the tribe, and

whatever term they stamped with their approval and put in

circulation was immediately accepted without a murmur by high and

low alike, and spread like wildfire through every camp and

settlement of the tribe. You would be astonished, says the same

missionary, to see how meekly the whole nation acquiesces in the

decision of a withered old hag, and how completely the old familiar

words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either

through force of habit or forgetfulness. In the seven years that

Dobrizhoffer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar

was changed thrice, and the words for crocodile, thorn, and the

slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied

vicissitudes. As a result of this habit, the vocabularies of the

missionaries teemed with erasures, old words having constantly to be

struck out as obsolete and new ones inserted in their place. In many

tribes of British New Guinea the names of persons are also the names

of common things. The people believe that if the name of a deceased

person is pronounced, his spirit will return, and as they have no

wish to see it back among them the mention of his name is tabooed

and a new word is created to take its place, whenever the name

happens to be a common term of the language. Consequently many words

are permanently lost or revived with modified or new meanings. In

the Nicobar Islands a similar practice has similarly affected the

speech of the natives. "A most singular custom," says Mr. de

Roepstorff, "prevails among them which one would suppose must most

effectually hinder the 'making of history,' or, at any rate, the

transmission of historical narrative. By a strict rule, which has

all the sanction of Nicobar superstition, no man's name may be

mentioned after his death! To such a length is this carried that

when, as very frequently happens, the man rejoiced in the name of

'Fowl,' 'Hat', 'Fire,' 'Road,' etc., in its Nicobarese equivalent,

the use of these words is carefully eschewed for the future, not

only as being the personal designation of the deceased, but even as

the names of the common things they represent; the words die out of

the language, and either new vocables are coined to express the

thing intended, or a substitute for the disused word is found in

other Nicobarese dialects or in some foreign tongue. This

extraordinary custom not only adds an element of instability to the

language, but destroys the continuity of political life, and renders

the record of past events precarious and vague, if not impossible."

That a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut

at the very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other

workers in this field. "The Klamath people," observes Mr. A. S.

Gatschet, "possess no historic traditions going further back in time

than a century, for the simple reason that there was a strict law

prohibiting the mention of the person or acts of a deceased

individual by _using his name._ This law was rigidly observed among

the Californians no less than among the Oregonians, and on its

transgression the death penalty could be inflicted. This is

certainly enough to suppress all historical knowledge within a

people. How can history be written without names?"

In many tribes, however, the power of this superstition to blot out

the memory of the past is to some extent weakened and impaired by a

natural tendency of the human mind. Time, which wears out the

deepest impressions, inevitably dulls, if it does not wholly efface,

the print left on the savage mind by the mystery and horror of

death. Sooner or later, as the memory of his loved ones fades slowly

away, he becomes more willing to speak of them, and thus their rude

names may sometimes be rescued by the philosophic enquirer before

they have vanished, like autumn leaves or winter snows, into the

vast undistinguished limbo of the past. In some of the Victorian

tribes the prohibition to mention the names of the dead remained in

force only during the period of mourning; in the Port Lincoln tribe

of South Australia it lasted many years. Among the Chinook Indians

of North America "custom forbids the mention of a dead man's name,

at least till many years have elapsed after the bereavement." Among

the Puyallup Indians the observance of the taboo is relaxed after

several years, when the mourners have forgotten their grief; and if

the deceased was a famous warrior, one of his descendants, for

instance a great-grandson, may be named after him. In this tribe the

taboo is not much observed at any time except by the relations of

the dead. Similarly the Jesuit missionary Lafitau tells us that the

name of the departed and the similar names of the survivors were, so

to say, buried with the corpse until, the poignancy of their grief

being abated, it pleased the relations "to lift up the tree and

raise the dead." By raising the dead they meant bestowing the name

of the departed upon some one else, who thus became to all intents

and purposes a reincarnation of the deceased, since on the

principles of savage philosophy the name is a vital part, if not the

soul, of the man.

Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of

her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her

in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in

her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear. If the

woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to

determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard. Among

the Khonds a birth is celebrated on the seventh day after the event

by a feast given to the priest and to the whole village. To

determine the child's name the priest drops grains of rice into a

cup of water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor. From the

movements of the seed in the water, and from observations made on

the person of the infant, he pronounces which of his progenitors has

reappeared in him, and the child generally, at least among the

northern tribes, receives the name of that ancestor. Among the

Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of Ifa, the god

of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul

has been reborn in the infant. As soon as this has been decided, the

parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the

manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if,

as often happens, they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the

necessary information. The child usually receives the name of the

ancestor who has been born again in him.

4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed

WHEN we see that in primitive society the names of mere commoners,

whether alive or dead, are matters of such anxious care, we need not

be surprised that great precautions should be taken to guard from

harm the names of sacred kings and priests. Thus the name of the

king of Dahomey is always kept secret, lest the knowledge of it

should enable some evil-minded person to do him a mischief. The

appellations by which the different kings of Dahomey have been known

to Europeans are not their true names, but mere titles, or what the

natives call "strong names." The natives seem to think that no harm

comes of such titles being known, since they are not, like the

birth-names, vitally connected with their owners. In the Galla

kingdom of Ghera the birth-name of the sovereign may not be

pronounced by a subject under pain of death, and common words which

resemble it in sound are changed for others. Among the Bahima of

Central Africa, when the king dies, his name is abolished from the

language, and if his name was that of an animal, a new appellation

must be found for the creature at once. For example, the king is

often called a lion; hence at the death of a king named Lion a new

name for lions in general has to be coined. In Siam it used to be

difficult to ascertain the king's real name, since it was carefully

kept secret from fear of sorcery; any one who mentioned it was

clapped into gaol. The king might only be referred to under certain

high-sounding titles, such as "the august," "the perfect," "the

supreme," "the great emperor," "descendant of the angels," and so

on. In Burma it was accounted an impiety of the deepest dye to

mention the name of the reigning sovereign; Burmese subjects, even

when they were far from their country, could not be prevailed upon

to do so; after his accession to the throne the king was known by

his royal titles only.

Among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his

tribe or the names of the progenitors of the chief, so far as he can

remember them; nor will he utter common words which coincide with or

merely resemble in sound tabooed names. In the tribe of the Dwandwes

there was a chief called Langa, which means the sun; hence the name

of the sun was changed from _langa_ to _gala,_ and so remains to

this day, though Langa died more than a hundred years ago. Again, in

the Xnumayo tribe the word meaning "to herd cattle" was changed from

_alusa or ayusa_ to _kagesa,_ because u-Mayusi was the name of the

chief. Besides these taboos, which were observed by each tribe

separately, all the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the

king who reigned over the whole nation. Hence, for example, when

Panda was king of Zululand, the word for "a root of a tree," which

is _impando,_ was changed to _nxabo._ Again, the word for "lies" or

"slander" was altered from _amacebo_ to _amakwata,_ because

_amacebo_ contains a syllable of the name of the famous King

Cetchwayo. These substitutions are not, however, carried so far by

the men as by the women, who omit every sound even remotely

resembling one that occurs in a tabooed name. At the king's kraal,

indeed, it is sometimes difficult to understand the speech of the

royal wives, as they treat in this fashion the names not only of the

king and his forefathers, but even of his and their brothers back

for generations. When to these tribal and national taboos we add

those family taboos on the names of connexions by marriage which

have been already described, we can easily understand how it comes

about that in Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself, and

that the women have a considerable vocabulary of their own. Members,

too, of one family may be debarred from using words employed by

those of another. The women of one kraal, for instance, may call a

hyaena by its ordinary name; those of the next may use the common

substitute; while in a third the substitute may also be unlawful and

another term may have to be invented to supply its place. Hence the

Zulu language at the present day almost presents the appearance of

being a double one; indeed, for multitudes of things it possesses

three or four synonyms, which through the blending of tribes are

known all over Zululand.

In Madagascar a similar custom everywhere prevails and has resulted,

as among the Zulus, in producing certain dialectic differences in

the speech of the various tribes. There are no family names in

Madagascar, and almost every personal name is drawn from the

language of daily life and signifies some common object or action or

quality, such as a bird, a beast, a tree, a plant, a colour, and so

on. Now, whenever one of these common words forms the name or part

of the name of the chief of the tribe, it becomes sacred and may no

longer be used in its ordinary signification as the name of a tree,

an insect, or what not. Hence a new name for the object must be

invented to replace the one which has been discarded. It is easy to

conceive what confusion and uncertainty may thus be introduced into

a language when it is spoken by many little local tribes each ruled

by a petty chief with his own sacred name. Yet there are tribes and

people who submit to this tyranny of words as their fathers did

before them from time immemorial. The inconvenient results of the

custom are especially marked on the western coast of the island,

where, on account of the large number of independent chieftains, the

names of things, places, and rivers have suffered so many changes

that confusion often arises, for when once common words have been

banned by the chiefs the natives will not acknowledge to have ever

known them in their old sense.

But it is not merely the names of living kings and chiefs which are

tabooed in Madagascar; the names of dead sovereigns are equally

under a ban, at least in some parts of the island. Thus among the

Sakalavas, when a king has died, the nobles and people meet in

council round the dead body and solemnly choose a new name by which

the deceased monarch shall be henceforth known. After the new name

has been adopted, the old name by which the king was known during

his life becomes sacred and may not be pronounced under pain of

death. Further, words in the common language which bear any

resemblance to the forbidden name also become sacred and have to be

replaced by others. Persons who uttered these forbidden words were

looked on not only as grossly rude, but even as felons; they had

committed a capital crime. However, these changes of vocabulary are

confined to the district over which the deceased king reigned; in

the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be employed in

the old sense.

The sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia

naturally extended also to their names, which on the primitive view

are hardly separable from the personality of their owners. Hence in

Polynesia we find the same systematic prohibition to utter the names

of chiefs or of common words resembling them which we have already

met with in Zululand and Madagascar. Thus in New Zealand the name of

a chief is held so sacred that, when it happens to be a common word,

it may not be used in the language, and another has to be found to

replace it. For example, a chief of the southward of East Cape bore

the name of Maripi, which signified a knife, hence a new word

(_nekra_) for knife was introduced, and the old one became obsolete.

Elsewhere the word for water (_wai_) had to be changed, because it

chanced to be the name of the chief, and would have been desecrated

by being applied to the vulgar fluid as well as to his sacred

person. This taboo naturally produced a plentiful crop of synonyms

in the Maori language, and travellers newly arrived in the country

were sometimes puzzled at finding the same things called by quite

different names in neighbouring tribes. When a king comes to the

throne in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name

in sound must be changed for others. In former times, if any man

were so rash as to disregard this custom and to use the forbidden

words, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to

death. But the changes thus introduced were only temporary; on the

death of the king the new words fell into disuse, and the original

ones were revived.

In ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials

who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might

not be uttered in their lifetime. To pronounce them was a legal

offence The pedant in Lucian tells how he fell in with these august

personages haling along to the police court a ribald fellow who had

dared to name them, though well he knew that ever since their

consecration it was unlawful to do so, because they had become

anonymous, having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred

titles. From two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the

names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea;

probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, which were

then thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis. The intention

doubtless was to keep the names a profound secret; and how could

that be done more surely than by sinking them in the sea? what human

vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim depths of the

green water? A clearer illustration of the confusion between the

incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its material

embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised

Greece.

5. Names of Gods tabooed