THE CHILD AS FETICH, DEITY, GOD.
Childhood shall be all divine.--_Proctor_.
A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss.--_Swinburne_.
Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
Their speech make dumb the wise,
By mute glad godhead felt within
A baby's eyes.--_Swinburne_.
_The Child as Fetich._
It is easy to understand how, among barbarous or semi-civilized peoples,
children born deformed or with any strange marking or defect should be
looked upon as objects of fear or reverence, fetiches in fact. Post
informs us regarding certain African tribes (127. I. 285, 286):--
"The Wanika, Wakikuyu, and Wazegua kill deformed children; throttle them
in the woods and bury them. The belief is, that the evil spirit of a
dead person has got into them, and such a child would be a great
criminal. The Somali let misformed children live, but regard them with
superstitious fear. In Angola all children born deformed are considered
'fetich.' In Loango dwarfs and albinos are regarded as the property of
the king, and are looked upon as sacred and inviolable."
Here we see at least some of the reasons which have led up to the eulogy
and laudation, as well as to the dread suspicion, of the dwarf and the
hunchback, appearing in so many folk-tales. We might find also, perhaps,
some dim conception of the occasional simultaneity of genius with
physical defects or deformities, a fact of which a certain modern school
of criminal sociologists has made so much.
Concerning albinos Schultze says (529. 82):--
"In Borneo albinos are objects of fear, as beings gifted with
supernatural power; in Senegambia, if they are slaves, they are given
their freedom, are exempted from all labour, and are cheerfully
supported at others' expense. In Congo the king keeps them in his palace
as 'fetiches which give him influence over the Europeans.' They are held
in such respect that they may take whatever they will; and he who is
deprived of his property by them, esteems himself honoured. In Loango
they are esteemed above the Gangas (priests), and their hair is sold at
a high price as a holy relic. Thus may a man become a fetich." At Moree,
in West Africa, Ellis informs us, "Albinos are sacred to Aynfwa, and, on
arriving at puberty, become her priests and priestesses. They are
regarded by the people as the mouth-pieces of the goddess." At Coomassie
a boy-prisoner was painted white and consecrated as a slave to the
tutelary deity of the market (438. 49, 88). Coeval with their revival of
primitive language-moulds in their slang, many of our college societies
and sporting clubs and associations have revived the beliefs just
mentioned in their mascots and luck-bringers--the other side of the
shield showing the "Jonahs" and those fetiches of evil import. Even
great actors, stock-brokers, and politicians have their mascots. We hear
also of mascots of regiments and of ships. A little hunchback, a dwarf,
a negro boy, an Italian singing-girl, a child dressed in a certain style
or colour, all serve as mascots. Criminals and gamblers, those members
of the community most nearly allied in thought and action with barbarous
and primitive man, have their mascots, and it is from this source that
we derive the word, which Andran, in his opera _La Mascotte_, has
lifted to a somewhat higher plane, and now each family may have a
mascot, a fetich, to cause them to prosper and succeed in life (390
(1888). 111, 112).
One of the derivations suggested for this word, viz. from _masque_
= _coiffe_, in the expression _ne coiffe_, "born with a caul,"
would make the _mascot_ to have been originally a child born with
the caul on its head, a circumstance which, as the French phrase _etre
ne coiffe_, "to be born lucky," indicates, betokened happiness and
good-fortune for the being thus coming into the world. In German the
caul is termed "Glückshaube," "lucky hood," and Ploss gives many
illustrations of the widespread belief in the luck that falls to the
share of the child born with one. A very curious custom exists in
Oldenburg, where a boy, in order to be fortunate in love, carries his
caul about with him (326. I. 12-14). Other accidents or incidents of
birth have sufficed to make fetiches of children. Twins and triplets are
regarded in many parts of the world as smacking of the supernatural and
uncanny. The various views of the races of mankind upon this subject are
given at length in Ploss (326. II. 267-275), and Post has much to say of
the treatment of twins in Africa. In Unyoro twins are looked upon as
"luck-bringers, not only for the family, but for the whole village as
well. Great feasts are held in their honour, and if they die, the house
in which they were born is burned down." Among the Ishogo, from fear
that one of the pair may die, twins are practically isolated and
_taboo_ until grown up (127. I. 282, 284).
To the Ovaherero, according to Ploss, "the birth of twins is the
greatest piece of good-fortune that can fall to the lot of mortals," and
such an event makes the parents "holy." Among this Kaffir people,
moreover: "Every father of twins has the right to act as substitute for
the village-chief in the exercise of his priestly functions. If the
chief is not present, he can, for example, exorcise a sick person. Even
the twin-child himself has all priestly privileges. For a twin boy there
is no forbidden flesh, no forbidden milk, and no one would ever venture
to curse him. If any one should kill a twin-child, the murderer's whole
village would be destroyed. As a twin-boy, he inherits the priestly
dignity at the death of the chief, and even when an older brother
succeeds the father as possessor of the village, it is, however, named
after the younger twin-brother, who is clothed with the priestly
dignity" (326. II. 271-274).
Among the Songish Indians of Vancouver Island, it is believed that
"twins, immediately after their birth, possess supernatural powers. They
are at once taken to the woods and washed in a pond in order to become
ordinary men." The Shushwap Indians believe that twins retain this
supernatural power throughout their lives (404. 22, 92).
Of children whose upper teeth break out before the lower, some primitive
tribes are in fear and dread, hastening to kill them, as do the Basutos,
Wakikuyu, Wanika, Wazegua, and Wasawahili. Among the Wazaramo, another
African people, such children "are either put to death, given away, or
sold to a slave-holder, for the belief is that through them sickness,
misfortune, and death would enter the house." The Arabs of Zanzibar,
"after reading from the Koran, administer to such a child an oath that
it will do no harm, making it nod assent with its head" (127. I. 287).
From what has preceded, we can see how hard it is sometimes to draw the
line between the man as fetich and the priest, between the divinity and
the medicine-man.
_Fetiches of Criminals._
It is a curious fact that St. Nicholas is at once the patron saint of
children and of thieves,--the latter even Shakespeare calls "St.
Nicholas's clerks." And with robbers and the generality of evil-doers
the child, dead or alive, is much of a fetich. Anstey's _Burglar
Bill_ is humorously exaggerated, but there is a good deal of
superstition about childhood lingering in the mind of the lawbreaker.
Strack (361) has discussed at considerable length the child (dead) as
fetich among the criminal classes, especially the use made of the blood,
the hand, the heart, etc. Among the thieving fraternity in Middle
Franconia it is believed that "blood taken up from the genitals of an
innocent boy on three pieces of wood, and carried about the person,
renders one invisible when stealing" (361. 41). The same power was
ascribed to the eating of the hearts (raw) of unborn children cut out of
the womb of the mother. Male children only would serve, and from the
confession of the band of the robber-chief "King Daniel," who so
terrified all Ermeland in the middle of the seventeenth century, it
would appear that they had already killed for this purpose no fewer than
fourteen women with child (361. 59). As late as 1815, at Heide in
Northditmarsch, one Claus Dau was executed for "having killed three
children and eaten their hearts with the belief of making himself
invisible" (361. 61).
This eating of little children's hearts was thought not alone to confer
the gift of invisibility, but "when portions of nine hearts had been
eaten by any one, he could not be seized, no matter what theft or crime
he committed, and, if by chance he should fall into the power of his
enemies, he could make himself invisible and thus escape." The eating of
three hearts is credited with the same power in an account of a robber
of the Lower Rhine, in 1645. In the middle of the last century, there
was executed at Bayreuth a man "who had killed eight women with child,
cut them open, and eaten the warm, palpitating hearts of the children,
in the belief that he would be able to fly, if he ate the hearts of nine
such children" (361. 58).
Only a few years ago (April, 1888), at Oldenburg, a workman named
Bliefernicht was tried for having killed two girls, aged six and seven
years. The examination of the remains showed that "one of the bodies not
only had the neck completely cut through, but the belly cut open, so
that the entrails, lungs, and liver were exposed. A large piece of flesh
had been cut out of the buttocks and was nowhere to be found, the man
having eaten it. His belief was, that whoever ate of the flesh of
innocent girls, could do anything in the world without any one being
able to make him answer for it" (361. 62).
Strack has much to say of the _main-de-gloire_ and the _chandelle
magique._ Widespread among thieves is the belief in the "magic
taper." At Meesow, in the Regenwald district of Pomerania, these tapers
are made of the entrails of unborn children, can only be extinguished
with milk, and, as long as they burn, no one in the house to be robbed
is able to wake. It is of the hands, however, of unbaptized or unborn
children that these tapers were most frequently made. At Nürnberg, in
1577 and 1701, there were executed two monsters who killed many women in
their pursuit for this fetich; at Vechta, in Oldenburg, the finger of an
unborn child "serves with thieves to keep asleep the people of the house
they have entered, if it is simply laid on the table"; at Konow, the fat
of a woman with child is used to make a similar taper. In the Ukrain
district of Poland, it is believed that the hand of the corpse of a
five-year-old child opens all locks (361. 42). This belief in the
_hand-of-glory_ and the _magic candle_ may be due to the fact
that such children, being unbaptized and unborn, were presumed to be
under the influence of the Evil One himself. Of the wider belief in the
_chandelle magique_ and _main-de-gloire_ (as obtained from
criminal adults) in Germany, France, Spain, etc., nothing need be said
here.
At Konow, in the Kammin district of Pomerania, "if a thief takes an
unborn child, dries it, puts it in a little wooden box, and carries it
on his person, he is rendered invisible to everybody, and can steal at
will" (361. 41).
The history of the robbers of the Rhine and the Main, of Westphalia, the
Mark, and Silesia, with whom the child appears so often as a fetich,
evince a bestiality and inhumanity almost beyond the power of belief.
_Magic._
But it is not to the criminal classes alone that superstitions of this
nature belong. Of the alchemy, magic, black art, sorcery, and
"philosophy" of the Dark Ages of Europe, the practice of which lingered
in some places well on into the seventeenth century, horrible stories
are told, in which children, their bodies, their souls even, appear as
fetishes. The baptism of blood is said still to be practised in parts of
Russia by parents "to preserve their child from the temptations of the
prince of darkness," and in 1874, "a country-school teacher of the
Strassburg district, and his wife, upon the advice of a somnambulist,
struck their own aunt with the fire-tongs until the blood flowed, with
which they sprinkled their child supposed to have been bewitched by her"
(361. 73). Here it is the blood of adults that is used, but the practice
demands the child's also. According to C. F. A. Hoffmann (1817), there
lived in Naples "an old doctor who had children by several women, which
he inhumanly killed, with peculiar ceremonies and rites, cutting the
breast open, tearing out the heart, and from its blood preparing
precious drops which were preservative against all sickness." Well known
is the story of Elizabeth Bathori, a Hungarian woman of the early part
of the seventeenth century, who, it is said, receiving on her face a
drop of blood which spurted from a waiting-girl whose ears she had
severely boxed, and noticing afterward, when she wiped it away, that her
skin at that spot appeared to be more beautiful, whiter, and finer than
before, resolved to bathe her face and her whole body in human blood, in
order to increase her charms and her beauty. Before her monstrous
actions were discovered, she is thought to have caused the death of some
650 girls with the aid of accomplices (361. 46).
_Fetiches of Religion._
The use of human blood in ritual has been treated of in detail by
Strack, and in his pages many references to children will be found. He
also discusses in detail the charge of the Anti-Semitics that the Jews
kill little children of their Christian neighbours for the purpose of
using their blood and certain parts of their bodies in religious rites
and ceremonies, showing alike the antiquity of this libel as well as its
baselessness. Against the early Christians like charges appear to have
been made by the heathen, and later on by the Saracens; and indeed, this
charge is one which is generally levelled at new-comers or innovators in
the early history of Christian religion and civilization. Strack points
out also that, during the contest of the Dominicans and Franciscans in
Bern, in 1507 A.D., it was charged that the former used the blood of
Jewish children, the eyebrows and hair of children, etc., in their
secret rites (361. 68, 69).
Brewer, who gives little credit to the stories, cites the account of
numerous crucifixions of children alleged to have been carried out by
Jews in various parts of Europe, for the purpose of using their flesh
and blood in their rituals, or merely out of hatred to the Christian
religion. The principal cases are: Andrew of Innspruck; Albert of
Swirnazen in Podolia, aged four (1598); St. Hugh of Lincoln, aged eleven
(1255); St. Janot of Cologne (1475); St. Michael of Sappendelf in
Bavaria, aged four and one-half (1340); St. Richard of Pontoise, aged
twelve (1182); St. Simon of Trent, aged twenty-nine months and three
days (1475); St. William of Norwich, aged twelve (1137); St. Wernier
(Garnier), aged thirteen (1227). The _Acta Sanctorum_ of the
Bollandists give a long list of nameless children, who are claimed to
have suffered a like fate in Spain, France, Hungary, Austria, Germany,
Italy, etc. The later charges, such as those made in the celebrated case
of the girl Esther Solymasi, whose death was alleged to have been
brought about by the Jews of Tisza-Eszlar in Hungary, in 1882, are
investigated by Strack, and shown to be utterly without foundation of
fact, merely the product of frenzied Anti-Semitism (191. 171-175).
The use of blood and the sacrifice of little children, as well as other
fetichistic practices, have been charged against some of the secret
religious sects of modern Russia.
_Dead Children._
In Annam the natives "surround the beds of their children suffering from
small-pox with nets, and never leave them alone, fearing lest a demon,
in the form of a strange child, should sneak in and take possession of
them" (397. 169, 242). This belief is akin with the widespread
superstitions with respect to changelings and other metamorphoses of
childhood, to the discussion of which Ploss and Hartland have devoted
much space and attention, the latter, indeed, setting apart some forty
pages of his book on fairy-tales to the subject.
In Devonshire, England, it was formerly believed lucky to put a
stillborn child into an open grave, "as it was considered a sure
passport to heaven for the next person buried there." In the Border
country, on the other hand, it is unlucky to tread on the graves of
unbaptized children, and "he who steps on the grave of a stillborn or
unbaptized child, or of one who has been overlaid by its nurse, subjects
himself to the fatal disease of the grave-merels, or grave-scab." In
connection with this belief, Henderson cites the following popular
verses, of considerable antiquity:--
"Woe to the babie that ne'er saw the sun,
All alane and alane, oh!
His bodie shall lie in the kirk 'neath the rain,
All alane and alane, oh!
"His grave must be dug at the foot o' the wall,
All alane and alane, oh!
And the foot that treadeth his body upon
Shall have scab that will eat to the bane, oh!
"And it ne'er will be cured by doctor on earth,
Tho' every one should tent him, oh!
He shall tremble and die like the elf-shot eye,
And return from whence he came, oh!" (469. 13).
Among the natives of the Andaman Islands, after a dead child has been
buried and the parents have mourned for about three months, the remains
are exhumed, cleansed at the seashore by the father, and brought back to
the hut, where the bones are broken up to make necklaces, which are
distributed to friends and relatives as mementos. Moreover, "the mother,
after painting the skull with _kòi-ob_--[a mixture of yellow ochre,
oil, etc.] and decorating it with small shells attached to pieces of
string, hangs it round her neck with a netted chain, called
_râb--._ After the first few days her husband often relieves her by
wearing it himself" (498. 74,75).
According to Lumholtz, "a kind of mummy, dried by the aid of fire and
smoke, is also found in Australia. Male children are most frequently
prepared in this manner. The corpse is then packed into a bundle, which
is carried for some time by the mother. She has it with her constantly,
and at night sleeps with it at her side. After about six months, when
nothing but the bones remain, she buries it in the earth. Full-grown men
are sometimes treated in this manner, particularly the bodies of great
heroes" (495. 278).
Among the western Eskimo, "the mother who loses her nursling places the
poor 'papoose' in a beautifully ornamented box, which she fastens on her
back and carries about her for a long while. Often she takes the
miserable mummy in her arms and makes it a kind of toilette,
disinfecting it, and removing the mouldiness" (523. 102).
According to the traveller Lander, a woman of Yoruba, in Africa,
"carries for some time a wooden figure of her lost child, and, when she
eats, puts part of her food to its lips"; and Catlin writes of the
Mandan Indians: "They place the skulls of their dead in a circle. Each
wife knows the skull of her former husband or child, and there seldom
passes a day that she does not visit it with a dish of the best cooked
food ... There is scarcely an hour in a pleasant day, but more or less
of these women may be seen sitting or lying by the skull of their dead
child or husband, talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing
language they can use (as they were wont to do in former days), and
seemingly getting an answer back" (Spencer, _Princ. of Soc.,_ 1882,
I. 332, 326).
Of the Nishinam Indians of California, Mr. Powers tells us: "When a
Nishinam wife is childless, her sympathizing female friends sometimes
make out of grass a rude image of a baby, and tie it in a miniature
baby-basket, according to the Indian custom. Some day, when the woman
and her husband are not at home, they carry this grass baby and lay it
in their wigwam. When she returns and finds it, she takes it up, holds
it to her breast, pretends to nurse it, and sings it lullaby songs. All
this is done as a kind of conjuration, which they hope will have the
effect of causing the barren woman to become fertile" (519. 318).
Of certain Indians of the northern United States we read, in the early
years of the present century: "The traders on the river St. Peter's,
Mississippi, report that some of them have seen in the possession of the
Indians a petrified child, which they have often wished to purchase; but
the savages regard it as a deity, and no inducement could bribe them to
part with it" (_Philos. Mag._ XXIX., p. 5).
_Child-Worship._
As Count D'Alviella has pointed out, we have in the apocryphal book of
the _Wisdom of Solomon_ the following interesting passage: "For a
father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he hath made an image of
his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god, which was then a
dead man; and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and
sacrifices."
Mrs. Stevenson, in a Zuñi tale of motherly affection, relates how, in
crossing a river in the olden time, the children clinging to their
mothers were transformed into such ugly and mischievous shapes that the
latter let many of them fall into the river. Some held their children
close, and on the other side these were restored to their natural forms.
Those who had lost their children grieved and would not be comforted; so
two twin-brothers--sons of the sun, they are called--went beneath the
waters of a lake to the dwelling of the children, who asked them to tell
how it fared with their mothers. Their visitors told them of the grief
and sorrow of the parents, whereupon the children said: "Tell our
mothers we are not dead, but live and sing in this beautiful place,
which is the home for them when they sleep. They will wake here and be
always happy. And we are here to intercede with the sun, our father,
that he may give to our people rain and the fruits of the earth, and all
that is good for them." Since that time these children have been
"worshipped as ancestral gods, bearing the name of kok-ko" (358. 541).
This reminds us strikingly of the great Redeemer, of whom it was said
that he is "an Advocate for us with the Father," and who himself
declared: "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I
would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you."
In not a few mythologies we meet with the infant god in the arms of its
mother or of some other woman. Of the goddess of pity in the Celestial
Empire we read: "The Chinese Lady of Mercy in her statues is invariably
depicted as young, symmetrical, and beautiful. Sometimes she stands or
sits alone. Sometimes she holds an infant god in her lap. Sometimes she
holds one, while a second plays about her knee. Another favourite
picture and statue represents her standing on the head of a great
serpent, with a halo about her face and brows, and spirits encircling
her. In the sixth, she stands upon a crescent, awaiting a bird
approaching her from the skies. In a seventh, she stands smiling at a
beautiful child on the back of a water-buffalo. In an eighth, she is
weeping for the sins of either humanity or the female portion of it. She
is the patron saint of all her sex, and intercedes for them at the great
throne of Heaven. She is a very old divinity. The Chinese themselves
claim that she was worshipped six thousand years ago, and that she was
the first deity made known to mankind. The brave Jesuit missionaries
found her there, and it matters not her age; she is a credit to herself
and her sex, and aids in cheering the sorrowful and sombre lives of
millions in the far East." We also find "the saintly infant Zen-zai, so
often met with in the arms of female representations of the androgynous
Kwanon."
Mr. C. N. Scott, in his essay on the "Child-God in Art" (344), is
hesitant to give to many mythologies any real child-worship or artistic
concept of the child as god. Not even Rama and Krishna, or the Greek
Eros, who had a sanctuary at Thespiae in Boeotia, are beautiful, sweet,
naive child-pictures; much less even is Hercules, the infant, strangling
the serpents, or Mercury running off with the oxen of Admetus, or
bacchic Dionysus. In Egypt, in the eleventh, or twelfth dynasty, we do
find a family of gods, the triad, father (Amun), mother (Maut), child
(Khuns). Mr. Scott follows Ruskin in declaring that classic Greek art
gives no real child-concept; nor does Gothic art up to the thirteenth
century, when the influence of Christianity made itself felt, that
influence which made art lavish its genius upon the Madonna and the
Santo Bambino--the Virgin and the Christ-Child.