_SECOND SIGHT: DIVINATION: UNIVERSALITY OF CERTAIN SUPERSTITIONS: FAIRIES
IN SCOTLAND._
There are many aspects of the Past which have an interest for the
psychological student as well as for the antiquary, and there are not a
few to which everybody may occasionally direct their attention with
advantage. We are too much inclined to put it aside as a “sealed book,”
which none but the scholar can open,--which, when opened, is hardly worth
the reading. Or we are attracted only by its picturesque and romantic
side, and take no heed of the valuable lessons which may be deduced upon a
careful examination. Yet, as all history is more or less the history of
human error and human folly, those chapters which treat of the credulities
and superstitions of the Past, must surely embody many warnings and much
counsel for the present.
Our glance at Halloween superstitions in Scotland reminds us of other old
Scottish practices, which serve to point a moral, if not to adorn a tale.
We have met with a volume by a Mr. Walter Gregor, which furnishes some
curious illustrative instances. On his vivid picture of the gloom and
desolation of a Scottish Sabbath, we will not dwell, for our readers will
probably have gathered from other sources, or even from personal
experience, an idea of the dreariness of that sombre institution in the
days when bigotry was mistaken for zeal, and the spirit was killed
outright by the letter. It is pleasanter to read of the strong yearning
for knowledge that then possessed the hearts of our Scottish youth; and
how, in the age before School Boards were conceived of, the parish school
supplied for twenty shillings per annum an education which fitted the
scholar for entering the University. No Royal Road to Learning had as yet
been discovered; and with much sweat of brain did the aspiring student
brood over his Homer or Virgil by the flickering light of the peat-fire.
When the time came for his removal to Glasgow or Aberdeen, thither he
trudged afoot with his little “all” in a knapsack slung from his sturdy
shoulders; and during the “sessions” it was a hard hand-to-hand fight with
poverty which he stoutly fought, while delving deep into classical and
mathematical lore; not forgetting occasional excursions into that vague
metaphysical region which has always had so keen an attraction for the
strong Scotch intellect. Our “present-day” students would too often
shrink, we suspect, from the sacrifices demanded of their forefathers, and
give way under the hardships which they endured, when a few potatoes and a
salt herring served for dinner, and all the expenses of the academical
year were covered by some twelve to sixteen pounds! We are by no means
sure that knowledge was not more valued when it was attainable only at
such a cost of self-denial and rigid effort; and we certainly believe that
it was more thorough, more entirely a man’s own, because it was wrung, so
to speak, from the reluctant goddess by strenuous, steadfast work and
sheer mental travail. To the Age of Gold and the Age of Iron has succeeded
the Age of Veneer; and we trouble ourselves too little now-a-days, in
spite of the teaching of Ruskin and Carlyle, about the solidness and
durability of the material, so long as it will take a ready polish.
But what a strange world was that of the Scotch peasant in those far off
days--far off at least they _seem_, on account of the immense social
revolution that has taken place, and set between the _now_ and the _then_
a profound chasm. Men often speak of the hard-headedness and
matter-of-fact stolidity of the Scotch nature; but is it not true that
below the surface lies an abundant fountain of wild, quaint, original
fancy? And how, in the olden time, it surrounded itself with signs and
omens and wonders! How it loved to put itself in communion, as it were,
with that _other_ world which lies beyond and yet around us, which
perplexes us with its subtle intelligence, which we cannot discern,
though of its presence we are always sensible! From the cradle to the
grave the Scotch peasant went his way attended by the phantoms of this
mysterious world; always recognising its warnings, always seeing the
shadows which it cast of coming events, and so burdening himself with a
weight of grim and eëry superstition, that we marvel he did not stumble
and grow faint, seeing that his dreary Calvinistic creed could have
brought him little hope or comfort. Nay, it is a question whether his
superstition did not partly grow out of, or was fostered by, his hard,
cold religion. Superstition is the shadow of Religion, and from the shadow
we may infer the nature of the substance or object that casts it.
But of these darker things we shall not speak. Let us trace a few of the
common traditions and customs of the people, though in doing so we
digress, perhaps, from the main lines of the present volume. While less
impressive than the mere mystical practices, they proceeded from the same
source,--an imagination haunted by the formidable presence of Nature, by
the forms of lofty mountains, by the mysteries of pine-clad ravines, and
the murmurs of storm-swept lochs and falling waters. For it has been truly
said that the Scotch people have been made what they are by Scotland; that
the Land has moulded and fashioned the People; and that in their
literature, their religion, their manners, their history, the influence is
seen of the physical characteristics of the country.
On the birth of a child--to begin at the beginning--we read that both
mother and offspring were “sained,” a lighted fir-candle being carried
three times round the bed, and a Bible, with a bannock or bread and cheese
being placed under the pillow, while a kind of blessing was indistinctly
uttered. Sometimes a fir-candle was set on the bed to keep off fairies. If
the new-born showed any symptoms of fractiousness, it was supposed to be a
changeling; and to test the truth of the supposition, the child was placed
suddenly before a peat-fire, when, if really a changeling, it made its
escape by the “lum,” throwing back words of scorn as it disappeared. Great
was the eagerness to get the babe baptised, lest it should be stolen by
the fairies. If it died unchristened, it wandered in woods and solitary
places, bewailing its miserable fate. In Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd,”
Bauldy, describing Manse the witch, says of her:--
“At midnight hours o’er the kirkyard she raves,
And howks unchristened weans out of their graves.”
It was considered “unlucky” to mention the name of an “unchristened wean;”
and even at baptism the name was commonly written on a slip of paper,
which was handed to the officiating minister. What care was taken that the
consecrated water should not enter the child’s eyes! For if such a mishap
occurred, his future life, wherever he went and whatever he did, would be
constantly marred by the presence of wraiths and phantoms. If the babe
remained quiet at the font, it was supposed to be destined to a brief
career; and hence, to extort a cry, the woman who received it from the
father would handle it roughly or even pinch it. If a boy and girl were
baptised together, much anxiety was evinced lest the girl should first
receive the rite. And why? In the “Statistical Account of Scotland,” the
minister of an Orcadian parish says: “Within these last seven years the
minister has been twice interrupted in administering baptism to a female
child before the male child, who was baptised immediately after. When the
service was over, he was gravely told he had done very wrong, for, if the
female child was first baptised, she would, on her coming to the years of
discretion, most certainly have a strong beard, and the boy would have
none.”
Following up the course of human life through the honeyed days of “wooing
and wedding,” we find it darkened still by the clouds of Superstition. If
a maiden desired to call up the image of her future husband, she read the
third verse, seventeenth chapter of the Book of Job after supper, washed
the supper dishes, and retired to bed without uttering a single word,
placing before her pillow the Bible, with a pin thrust through the verse
she had read. It is curious to observe the use of the Bible in these wild
and foolish customs: was it not an indirect testimony to the reverence,
not always intelligent, perhaps, but certainly sincere, in which the holy
book was held? Nor are we certain that it is not sometimes turned to worse
purposes in these “enlightened days,” when a pseudo-science seeks to
convert it into the battle-field of audacious theories, and an ignorant
intolerance too often professes to discover in its bright and blessed
pages an excuse for its uncharitable follies.
But we must continue our _resumé_. It is curious to read that the
wedding-dress might not be “tried on” before the wedding-day, and if it
did not fit, it might not be cut or altered, but was adjusted in the best
manner possible. The bride, on the way to church, was forbidden to look
back, for to do so was to ensure a succession of disasters and quarrels in
the married state. It was considered inauspicious, moreover, if she did
not “greet” or weep on the marriage-day; a superstition obviously
connected with the wide-spread idea of the necessity of propitiating the
Fates which inspired the advice of Amasis to the too fortunate
Polycrates,[66] that he should fine himself for his success by throwing
some costly thing into the sea. It was thought well to marry at the time
of the growing moon, and among fisher-folk a flowing tide was regarded as
“lucky.” These customs were puerile enough, undoubtedly, but before we
censure them too severely we may ask whether our modern bridals are wholly
free from superstitious observances; whether we do not still pretend to
“bribe” the fickle Fortune by showers of rice and old slippers rained on
the departing couple!
It is needless to say that the “last scene of all” was invested with all
the attributes of grotesque terror the wayward popular imagination could
invent. Before it took place the light of the “death-candle”--the Welsh
call it the “corpse-candle”--might be seen hovering from chamber to
chamber; or the cock crowed before midnight; or the “dead-drap,” a sound
as of water falling monotonously and lingeringly, broke the silence of the
night; or three dismal and fatal knocks were heard, at regular intervals
of one or two minutes’ duration; or over the doomed person fluttered the
image of a white dove. And when the spirit had departed, the doors and
windows were immediately opened wide; the clocks were stopped; the mirrors
were covered; and it was held to disturb the rest of the dead, and to be
fatal to the living, if a tear fell upon the winding sheet. And thus, from
the cradle to the grave, Superstition dogged the steps of life; nor even
at the grave did it cease to vex and worry the minds of men with the
fancies and visions born of excited imaginations.
That such fancies, that customs so wild and grotesque, should have existed
in Scotland, and among a well-educated people, down to a comparatively
recent date, might be matter of wonder, if we were not aware of the
tenacity with which the heart clings to the “use and wont” of the Past.
Nor trivial as some, and inexcusable as all of them seem to the
philosophic eye, is it wise to regard them too contemptuously. They seem
to us to show how difficult man found it to realise to himself the idea of
a living, personal GOD,--of a GOD, a FATHER, ever watching over the
welfare of His children, chastening them in His mercy, but never refusing
them the light of His countenance when they have sought Him with faith in
the hour of sorrow and darkness. For want of this strengthening,
consoling, elevating idea, he has endeavoured to support himself by the
feeble prop of superstitious credulity, and instead of yielding wholly and
trustfully to the love of GOD the FATHER, has vainly striven to secure
some glimpse or foreshadowing of the Future, and to avert evil by peurile
practices and idle traditions.
We may next be allowed to point out the kinship in superstition which
prevails all over the world; so that the observance or custom which seems
peculiar to England or Scotland, is found in India or Tartary. This
remarkable similarity indicates a certain general tendency to attach an
“ominous significance” to particular things and events. Take as an
illustration, the act of sneezing. In Asia as well as Europe, among
Semitic peoples as well as among Aryan, it is usual to connect with the
act some form of blessing. Sometimes the sneezer is blessed by the
bystander; sometimes he blesses himself; if a Mohammedan, he blesses GOD.
In Italy, for example, the salutation addressed to him runs: “May GOD
preserve you!” or “May you have children!” In Hindi it takes the form of
“Sadàji’s” (May you live for ever!) and a similar salutation is used by
the Jews of Austria.
But in different places and at different times sneezing has been made to
carry a very different meaning. Among the Arabs, if, while a person is
making an assertion which some may think hazardous or dubious, another
sneezes, the speaker appeals to the omen as a confirmation of what he is
saying. A writer in the “Calcutta Review” thinks this notion as old as the
Greeks of the time of Xenophon, as appears from a well known passage in
Chap. ii. Book iii. of the Anabasis: Ἐπεὶ περί σωτηρὶας ἡμῶν λεγόντον
οἰωνὸς τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ σωτῆρος ἐφάνη. Sneezing among the Hindus, if it occur
behind your back, is regarded as so unfavourable an omen, that they at
once abandon the work on which at the time they may have been engaged.
Various but not satisfactory attempts have been made to explain these
customs. Thus, the Mohammedan accounts for his “Al hamdu-l Allah” by the
tradition that, when the breath of life was breathed into the nostrils of
Adam, he sneezed, and immediately uttered those words. While in Europe the
custom of blessing the sneezer has been traced to the occurrence in Italy
in the middle ages of some fatal epidemic, of which one of the symptoms
was sneezing.
The superstition which regards as a favourable omen the throbbing of the
eye, was well known to the ancient Greeks, is common in England, and
flourishes all over India. In England, it is the man’s right eye and the
woman’s left that is auspicious; and so it was in the Greece of
Theocritus, and so it is in India and Persia.
The curious superstition that ghosts are visible to dogs, to which we find
an allusion in Homer’s Odyssey, still flourishes in India. It may have
originated in the place given to the dog in the mythology of both Greek
and Hindu, or in the position enjoyed by the watch-dog among all the
shepherd peoples of the world. The belief belongs to the Semitic as well
as the Aryan races; and its true origin after all may be the apparently
causeless howling of the dog at night,--the time when “spirits walk
abroad.” Whatever the ground of the belief, it is probably in itself the
cause of the superstition that the howling of dogs presages death or
misfortune.
Another singular coincidence of this kind is furnished “by the custom of
spitting on the breast as a charm against fascination.” In his “Greek
Antiquities,” Potter notes that it was an ancient Greek custom to spit
three times on the breast at the sight of a madman; and Theocritus has,--
τοιάδε μυθίζοισα τρὶς εἰς ἑὸν ἔπτυσε κόλπον.
“Precisely the same effect is attributed to the act among the Aryan
inhabitants of India, where its threefold repetition is also insisted on.
No sort of reason that we can imagine, can be found for this belief; and
in this case the idea is a complex one.
“The notion of a hiccough being an indication that some one is thinking of
the person affected, is equally common in Europe and in India.
“The same may be said of the superstition regarding an itching of the palm
of the hand; and further the idea that the palm should be rubbed against
something to make the event the more sure, prevails both in India and in
England. In England it should be ‘rubbed against wood,’ in India on the
forehead.”[67]
We supply but one more illustration, and that shall be in folk lore; a
nursery story which presents virtually the same features in the East as in
the West. The following is the Hindu parallel to the old Saxon nursery
tale of “The Woman that found a Silver Penny.” The coincidence will be
seen to be complete.
“Once upon a time, a little bird, on its way through the woods, picked up
a pea, and took it to the _barbhunja_ to be split; but, as ill luck would
have it, one half of it stuck fast in the mill-handle, and the _barbhunja_
being unable to get it out, the little bird went off to the carpenter, and
said, ‘Carpenter, carpenter, come and cut the mill-handle; my pea is in
the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I
take to foreign countries?’ ‘Be off,’ said the carpenter, ‘is it likely I
shall come and cut the mill-handle for the sake of a single pea?’
“Then the little bird went to the king, and said, ‘King, king, chide the
carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the mill-handle; my pea has stuck in
the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I
take to foreign countries?’ ‘Be off with you,’ said the king, ‘do you
think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to chide the
carpenter?’
“Then the little bird went to the queen, and said, ‘Queen, queen, speak to
the king; the king won’t chide the carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the
mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat,
what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the
queen said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single
pea I am going to talk to the king?’
“Then the little bird went to the snake, and said, ‘Snake, snake, bite the
queen; the queen won’t talk to the king; the king won’t chide the
carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the
socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what
shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the snake said, ‘Be off with you,
do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to bite the
queen?’
“Then the little bird went to the stick, and said, ‘Stick, stick, beat the
snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide
carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the
mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take
to foreign countries?’ But the stick said, ‘Be off with you, do you think
that for the sake of a single pea I am going to beat the snake?’
“Then the little bird went to the fire, and said, ‘Fire, fire, burn stick;
stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king;
king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in
the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and
what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the fire said, ‘Be off with
you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to burn the
stick?’
“Then the little bird went to the sea, and said, ‘Sea, sea, quench fire;
fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen;
queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut
mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat,
what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the
sea said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea
I am going to quench the fire?’
“Then the little bird went to the elephant, and said, ‘Elephant, elephant,
dry up the sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t
beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t
chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket
of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I
take to foreign countries?’ But the elephant said, ‘Be off with you, to
dry up the sea would take the whole host of elephants; do you think that
for the sake of a single pea I am going to assemble all of my kith and
kin?’
“Then the bird went to the _bhaunr_, (a tangled creeping plant,) and said,
‘_Bhaunr_, _bhaunr_, snare the elephant; elephant won’t drink up sea; sea
won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake
won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter;
carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the
mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take
to foreign countries?’ But the _bhaunr_ said, ‘Be off with you, do you
think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to snare the elephant?’
“Then the bird went to the mouse, and said, ‘Mouse, mouse, cut _bhaunr_;
_bhaunr_ won’t snare elephant; elephant won’t drink up sea; sea won’t
quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t
bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter;
carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the
mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take
to foreign countries?’ But the mouse said, ‘Be off with you, do you think
that for the sake of a single pea I am going to cut the _bhaunr_?’
“Then the bird went to the cat, and said, ‘Cat, cat, eat mouse; mouse
won’t cut _bhaunr_; _bhaunr_ won’t snare elephant; elephant won’t drink up
sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat
snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide
carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the
mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take
to foreign countries?’ And the cat said, ‘By all means; the mouse is my
natural prey, why should I not eat it?’
“So the cat went to eat the mouse; and the mouse went to cut the _bhaunr_,
saying,--
‘Hamko khao, a o, mat koi,
Ham bhaunr ko katat loi.’
‘Oh, oh, eat, oh! eat me no one, I will take and cut the _bhaunr_.’ And
the _bhaunr_ went to snare the elephant, saying, ‘Oh, cut, oh! cut me no
one, I’ll take and snare the elephant.’ And so on with each one, till it
came to the carpenter, who extracted the pea, and the bird took it, and
went away rejoicing.”
The close resemblance between this fable and the English one of “The
Silver Penny,” attests a common origin. For it cannot be supposed that
either was conveyed by means of oral communication from one country to the
other; and the only feasible conclusion seems to be that they are
different versions of a nursery tale which belonged to our common Aryan
forefathers. There can be no doubt as to its antiquity.[68]
* * * * *
Among the earlier superstitions of Scotland was a belief in the efficacy
of charms, or metrical incantations; a belief prevailing in almost every
country and period, and indirectly attesting man’s strong inward
conviction of the existence of another world. That communications could be
maintained with the unseen creatures that live in the air, and “the ooze;”
above, beneath, and around us; that they could be made to assume a bodily
form and presence; that storms could be raised or dispelled, evil
prevented, secrets discovered, diseases cured, love engendered,--and that
all this was possible by the utterance of certain words arranged in
metrical form, though generally perfectly meaningless, was never doubted.
Many of those used in Scotland evidently had their origin in the reputed
efficacy of verses among the ancients; and being of an early date, they
are often “intermixed with the formula of the Roman Catholic ritual.” Thus
we read that one Elspeth Reoch (in 1616) had been supernaturally
instructed to cure distempers by resting on her right knee while pulling a
certain herb “betwixt her midfinger and thumb, and saying of, _In nomine
Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_.” An old and popular charm for curing
cattle (1607), is given by Dalyell as follows:--[69]
“I charge thee for arrow shot,
For deer shot, for womb shot,
For eye shot, for tongue shot,
For liver shot, for lung shot,
For heart shot,--all the most:
In the Name of the FATHER, the SON, and HOLY GHOST.
To wind out of flesh and bone,
Into oak and stone:
In the Name of the FATHER, the SON, and HOLY GHOST.
Amen.”
Sometimes these invocations were accompanied by the administration of
medicinal herbs which had been gathered before sunrise. A woman accused of
witchcraft, in 1588, declared that she saw “the guid nychtbours makand
thair sawis with pains and fyres, and gadderit thair herbis before the
sone rysing as sche did.” Among the various remedies prescribed for “the
trembling fever,” or ague, by Katharine Oswald, one related to plucking up
a nettle by the root, three successive mornings, before sunrise. A
favourite time for this herb-gathering rite was Midsummer; a relic of the
old Pagan superstition connected with the sun’s position in the Zodiac.
The metrical charm then made use of was popular also in England,--
“Haile be thou, holie hearte,
Growing on the ground;
All in the Mount Calvarie
First wast thou found.
Thou art good for manie a sore,
And healest manie a wound;
In the Name of Sweet JESUS,
I take thee from the ground.”
“Bleeding at the touch,” has been accepted in several countries as a
revelation of guilt. A man suspected of murder was brought to the side of
the murdered man’s body, and forced to touch it; if the suspicions were
just, blood immediately oozed from the wound, or at the mouth, or nose.
Even at the man’s approach this sign of crime would appear. It is easy to
see how precarious and dangerous a test was this; how readily it might
release the guilty, and betray the innocent. Naturally therefore it was
not accepted without reluctance. A man and his sister had quarrelled; he
died suddenly, and his body was found in his own house, naked, and with a
wound on the face, but bloodless. “Although many of the neighbours in the
town came into the house to see the dead corpse, yet she, the sister,
never offered to come, howbeit her dwelling was next door, nor had she so
much as any seeming grief for his death. But the minister and bailiffs of
the town taking great suspicion of her in respect of her carriage,
commanded that she should be brought in. But when she came, she came
trembling all the way to the house; she refused to come nigh to the
corpse, or to touch, saying, that she never touched a dead corpse in her
life. But being earnestly entreated by the minister and bailiffs, and her
brother’s friends, who was killed, that she would but touch the corpse
softly, she granted to do it. But before she did it, the sun shining in at
the house, she expressed herself thus: ‘Humbly desiring, as the LORD made
the sun to shine and give light into that house, that also He would give
light in discovering that murder.’ And with these words, she touching the
wound of the dead man very softly, it being white and clean, without any
spot of blood or the like, yet immediately, while her finger was upon it,
the blood rushed out of it, to the great admiration of all the beholders,
who took it as one discovery of the murder, according to her own prayer.”
It will seem astonishing to readers of the present day that a poor
creature’s life could be taken away on such fanciful and uncertain
evidence.
We read that a Sir James Standsfield was found lying dead in a stream. His
body was interred precipitately. Two days afterwards it was exhumed and
partially dissected, the neck in particular being laid open, in order to
ascertain the cause of death. After being well cleansed, blood burst from
that side supported by his son Philip, on returning the body to the coffin
for re-interment--not an unlikely result from the straining of the
incisions--and it deeply stained his hand. He was arraigned, on this
slight ground, for parricide; and in the course of the trial it was
gravely argued that it was the will of Providence to disclose by this
peculiar incident a secret crime.
* * * * *
The preservation of health and the prolongation of life are necessarily
objects of interest to all mankind, and it was natural enough that around
them should flourish a rank growth of superstitions.
To ailing or diseased persons all kinds of potions, pills, and powders
were administered in the past as they are in the present; but whereas we
are now content with the mystic characters endorsed on his formula by the
physician, our ancestors were not satisfied unless certain mystical words,
numbers, or ceremonies accompanied them. The sign of the cross was in
constant requisition; or the medicine was to be taken according to
mystical numbers--thrice or nine times, as the case might be. For
hooping-cough was prescribed a draught from the horn of a living ox, nine
times repeated. The patient was also put “nine several times” in the
miller’s hopper.
The importance ascribed to the figure of a circle is probably a relic of
the influence of the old sun-worship. Consumptive invalids, or children
suffering from hectic fever, were thrice passed through a circular wreath
of woodbine, cut during the increase of the March moon, and let down over
the body from head to foot. We read of a sorceress who healed sundry women
by “taking a garland of green woodbine, and causing the patient to pass
thrice through it.” Afterwards, the garland was cut in nine pieces, which
were cast into the fire--generally an indispensable particular in
ceremonies of this kind. Another passed her patient through a heap of
green yarn, which the nurse shook, and then divided it into nine pieces,
which were buried in the lands of three owners. A certain Thomas Grieve
directed a patient to pass thrice through a heap of yarn, which he duly
burned. He also cured the wife of a Michael Glanis by having a hole broken
on the north side of the chimney, and putting a hoop of yarn thrice
through it, and taking it back at the door; and thereafter compelling the
patient to go nine times through the said hoop of yarn.
White of Selborne tells us of a custom, prevalent in his time in the south
of England, of stripping feeble and diseased children, and transmitting
them head foremost through an artificial cleft in a young tree, the
several parts of which were held forcibly asunder. The wound was then
bound up carefully, and it was expected that the child would recover as
the tree healed. If the cleft did not unite, the remedy proved abortive;
and if the tree were cut down, the patient relapsed or died.
Borlase speaks of a similar custom in Cornwall, except that a perforated
stone was used instead of a cleft tree.
In Persia, according to Alexander, passage through a long fissure or
crevice in a rock, by crawling on hands and knees, is employed as a test
of legitimate birth. And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,
to pass between the pillars supporting an altar and the neighbouring wall,
was practised as a like test. It has been suggested, as the meaning of
these various transmissions through cleft, aperture, skein of yarn, and
garland, that they are symbolical of regeneration; a second birth, whereby
a living soul is cleansed from its former impurities and imperfections.
Wilford speaks of a sanctified fissure in a rock in the East, to which
pilgrims resort “for the purpose of regeneration, by the efficacy of a
passage through this sacred type.”
* * * * *
The faculty of divining events, passing at a distance from the seer, or of
passively receiving a knowledge that such events are taking place, is the
well-known “second sight,” which plays so important a part in many
Scottish stories. “In the stricter acceptation of this faculty,” we are
told, “contemporary objects and incidents are beheld at the time, however
remote their locality, but neither those which have passed, nor those
which have yet to come. If extending to futurity, the subject of the
vision is about to be realised. Therefore the second sight borders only on
prognostication. It is affirmed to be more peculiar to Scotland, for very
faint analogy to such a property has been claimed for other countries: and
that the highlanders chiefly, together with the inhabitants of the insular
districts, or that portion of the kingdom less advanced, have enjoyed it
in the highest perfection. Marvellous to be told, they have said that
their cattle are gifted with it as well as themselves.”
The faculty was one which knew no distinction of age or sex, or class; it
was enjoyed by man and woman, young and old, rich and poor, high-born and
plebeians, and in many cases was inherited. It might occasionally be
imparted by a gifted person, or acquired by study and preparation. It is a
proof, were proof needed, of the living influence of the imagination, that
the vision beheld by one individual only, might be revealed to a companion
visionary, thus confirmed in his belief in the value of his new
prerogative; simply by the pressure of the seer’s right foot on the
novice’s left, holding one hand on his head, while he was admonished to
look over the master’s right shoulder. Thus, Lilly, the
astrologer--Butler’s “hight Sidrophel”--relates how one John Scott desired
William Hodges, an astrologer in Staffordshire, to show him the person and
features of the person he should marry. Hodges carried him into a field
not far from his home; pulled out his magic crystal; bade Scott set his
foot against his, and after awhile desired him to inspect the crystal, and
observe what he saw there. Of course he saw exactly what his fevered
wishes were resolved to see.
Ceremonies of a more fantastic character were sometimes involved, and
round the novice’s body was coiled a hair rope with which a corpse had
been bound to its bier. He was then required to look through a hole left
by the removal of a fir knot; and, on stooping, he was instructed to look
back between his legs, until an advancing funeral procession should cross
the boundary of the estates of two different owners. The inconvenience of
this complicated performance is obvious; it might also be dangerous; for
if the wind changed while the novice was girded with the mystical cord, he
was liable to the penalty of death.
A seer gifted with this wonderful faculty could not divest himself of it,
though often he would fain have done so. However acquired, it was a
perilous endowment, fraught with physical and mental suffering, and
reputed to be no gift from on high, but to have come from the Father of
Evil.
The objects seen were generally sad and sorrowful; calamities to persons
or nations. Woodrow says that before the Marquis of Argyll went to London
in 1660, he was playing “at the bullets,” or bowls, with some Scottish
gentlemen; when one of them, as the Marquis stooped down to lift the
bullet, “fell pale,” and said to those about him: “Bless me, what is this
I see? my lord with his head off, and all his shoulder full of blood?”
On one occasion, a gentleman joined a company, all of whom were very frank
and cheerful. He had no sooner entered than one of the guests, who had not
previously known him, showed much depression of spirit. Without taking any
notice of it the new-comer quickly rose, and went his way. The other
thereupon showed great concern, and wished he would remain; for he saw
him, he said, with a shroud up to his neck, and he knew that this sign
foreboded his death. In vain some of the company would have persuaded the
doomed man to take warning, but he departed, and having ridden a short
distance, he and his horse fell, and he broke his neck.
On the morning of the battle of Bothwell Bridge, that sore defeat to the
Covenanters--so vigorously described by Scott in his “Old Mortality”--Mr.
John Cameron, minister at Lochhead in Kintyre, fell into a fit of
melancholy, so that Mr. Morison, of his elders, observing him through his
chamber door, sore weeping and wringing his hands, knocked until he opened
to him. Then he asked what was the matter? Were his wife and children
well? “Little matter for them,” he answered; “our friends at Bothwell are
gone.” Mr. Morison told him it might be a mistake, and the offcome of his
gloomy thoughts: “No, no,” said he, “I see them flying as clearly as I see
the wall.” As near as they could calculate by the accounts they afterwards
obtained, this incident at the Lochhead of Kintyre was contemporaneous
with the flight of the Covenanters at Bothwell.
Munro, the Scotch soldier of fortune, who bore himself so gallantly in the
wars of Gustavus Adolphus, tells a story of a vision that was seen by a
soldier of his company on the morning of the storm of Stralsund in 1628.
One Murdo Macleod, born in Assen, a soldier of tall stature and valiant
courage, being sleeping on his watch, awoke at break of day, and “jogged”
two of his comrades lying by him, much to their indignation at his
“stirring them.” He replied: “Before long, you shall be otherwise
stirred.” A soldier called Allan Tough, a Lochaber man, recommending his
soul to GOD, asked him what he had seen: “That you shall never behold your
country again.” The other replied, the loss was but small, if the rest of
the company were well. He answered: “No, for there was great hurt and
dearth of many very near.” The other again asked, what others he had seen
who would perish. He then told by name sundry of his comrades who would be
killed. The other asked, what would become of himself. Eventually, he
described by their clothes all the officers who would be hurt. “A pretty
quick boy near by,” asked him, what would become of the Major (that is,
Munro himself?) “He would be shot, but not deadly,” was the answer,--and
so it proved.
A good deal is said of this _Taisch_, or “Second Sight,” in Dr. Johnson’s
“Journey to the Hebrides,” and some striking anecdotes are told. It was
just the thing to interest his moody temperament, with its terrible dread
of death and its longing to lift the curtain that hides from us the
Unseen. He seems, however, to have been unable to convince himself of the
actual existence of such a power; all the evidence he could collect failed
to advance his curiosity to conviction, so that he could not believe,
while remaining willing to believe. To use the noble words of Goethe,
nobly rendered by Coleridge:
“As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in To-day already walks To-morrow.”
_This_ it is not difficult to accept. It seems fitting that presages
should herald the death of kings and the revolutions of nations; but the
mind cannot convince itself that the spirits of the dead will cross the
shadowy borders to foretell the trivial accidents that chequer ordinary
lives. Yet, as Johnson says: “A man on a journey far from home falls from
a horse; another who is perhaps at work about the house, sees him bleeding
on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the place where the accident
befalls him. Another seer, driving home his cattle, or wandering in
idleness, or musing in the sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the
appearance of a bridal ceremony or funeral procession, and counts the
mourners or attendants, of whom, if he knows them, he relates the names,
if he knows them not he can describe the dresses.”
Woodrow tells of “a popish lady,” living near Boroughbridge, who dreamed
that she saw a coach, and a lady in it, almost lost in the river. She
directed her servants to watch during two nights, to guard against an
accident, but nothing happened. “On the third night, pretty late, the Lady
Shawfield came, and of a sudden the coach was overturned, and filled with
water. The coachman got upon one of the horses, to save his life. The good
and religious Lady Shawfield was for some time under water: and upon the
cry rising, the popish lady’s servants came to their assistance. With much
difficulty, the coach and lady in it were got out of the water.” And the
Lady Shawfield, being laid upon the bank, gradually recovered her senses.
In the early months of the Commonwealth, while Mackenzie of Tarbat,
afterwards Earl of Cromarty, was riding in a field among his tenants, who
were manuring barley, a stranger “called that way on his foot, and stopped
likewise, and said to the countrymen, ‘You need not be so busy about that
barley, for I see the Englishmen’s horses tethered among it; and other
parts mowed down for them.’ Tarbet asked him how he knew them to be
Englishmen, and if he had ever seen any of them? He said, ‘No; but he saw
them strangers, and heard the English were in Scotland, and guessed it
could be no other than they.’ In the month of July, the thing happened
directly as the man said he saw it.”
The influence exercised on the imagination by events in which we are
deeply interested, and the manner in which our hopes or fears are mistaken
for predictions, may be illustrated by two examples from antiquity. On the
day that Cæsar and Pompey contended at Pharsalia for the mastery of the
world, Cornelius, a priest and patrician of Padua, declared, under a
sudden impulse of passion, that he beheld the eddies and currents of a
desperate battle, and the fall and flight of many of the combatants,
eventually exclaiming: “Cæsar has conquered!” His hearers laughed at him,
but his words were afterwards verified, and it appeared that he had
foretold not only the day, but the incidents, and the result of the famous
battle in Thessaly. The anecdote is related on the authority of the
“Noctes Atticæ” of Aulus Gellius.
Dio Cassius tells a similar story about the assassination of the Emperor
Domitian at Rome, by his freedman Stephanus. “It is to be admired,” he
says, “that, as accurately proved by persons in either place, Apollonius
Thyanæus, ascending an eminence at Ephesus or elsewhere, cried out before
the multitude: ‘Well done, Stephanus, well done! Strike the murderer! thou
hast struck him, thou hast wounded him, he is slain!’” But it may well be
supposed that a secret understanding existed between Apollonius and the
murderer.
* * * * *
From “second sight” we pass on to “prediction” or “divination,” another of
the superstitious modes by which humanity has endeavoured to read the book
of the Future. In the north this power of prophecy was largely assumed by
women, a circumstance of which Scott has made ample and picturesque use in
more than one of his admirable fictions.
A woman foretold the tragical end of James I. of Scotland, in 1436. In the
early stage of a journey from Edinburgh to Leith, and in the midst of the
way, arose a woman of Ireland, who claimed to be a soothsayer, and as soon
as she saw the king, she cried with a loud voice, saying, “My lord king,
an ye pass this water, ye shall never turn again to live.” The king was
astonished at her words, for but shortly before he had fallen in with a
prophecy, that in the self-same year the King of Scots should be slain.
And as he rode onward, he called to him one of his knights, and commanded
him to return and speak with this woman, and ask of her what she would,
and what she meant by her loud crying: and she began and told him what
would befall the king if he passed that water. The king asked her how she
knew so much, and she said that Huthart told her so. “Sire,” quoth the
knight, “men may gallantly talk, nor take heed of yonder woman’s words,
for she is but a drunken fool, and wots not what she saith.” And so with
his folk he passed the water called the Scottish Sea, towards S. John’s
town [Perth,] about four miles from the country of the wild Scots, and
there, in a convent of Black Friars, outside the town, he held a great
feast. In the course of the revel came “the said woman of Ireland, who
called herself a divineress,” and made several vain attempts to gain
access to the king. Meanwhile the conspirators matured their plot, removed
the king’s guards, attacked him, and slew him.[70]
All the predictions which come true are preserved; we hear nothing of
those which fail, for no one has an interest in recording or repeating
them; hence an undue importance is gradually attached to what are nothing
more than remarkable coincidences. Many others are prophecies “after the
event.” Others are based on a careful calculation of probabilities. As in
the following example: An Orkney warlock, full of displeasure with James
Paplay, a proud and haughty chief, with whose character, doubtless, she
was well acquainted, broke forth into a torrent of predictive utterances:
“Thou art now the highest man that ever thou shalt be! Thou art gone to
shear thy corn, but it shall never do you good! Thou art going to set
house with thy wife,--ye shall have no joy of one another. Oil shall not
keep you and her; ye shall have such a meit-will [craving,] and shall have
nothing to eat, but be fain to eat grass under the stones and wair
(sea-weed) under the rocks.” It was seriously asserted that not only were
these predictions--or menaces--uttered, but that they were all fulfilled;
and it is possible that the prophet may have had something to do with
their fulfilment.
A curious anecdote is related of a Scottish minister, who, on the day of
the battle of Killiecrankie, was preaching at Anworth, and in his preface
before his prayer, according to his usual mode of homely expression, began
to this purpose: “Some of you will say, What news, minister? What news
about Clavers, who has done so much mischief in this country? That man
sets up to be a young Montrose, but as the LORD liveth, he shall be cut
short this day. Be not afraid,” added he, “I see them scattered and
flying: and as the LORD liveth, and sends this message by me, Claverhouse
shall no longer be a terror to GOD’S people. This day I see him
killed--lying a corpse.” And on that day, and at that hour, Claverhouse
fell[71] (July 27th, 1689.)
In their anxiety to obtain a glimpse of the dread writing in the Book of
Fate, men have resorted to divers strange expedients, applying to warlocks
and witches, or seeking to wring a response to their questionings from the
creatures of the Invisible World. The ceremony known as _Taghairm_, or
“Echo,” seems to have been peculiar to Scotland. The inquirer was wrapped
in a cow’s hide, his head being left free, and was carried by assistants
to a solitary spot, or left under the liquid arch formed by the “sheeted
column’s silvery perpendicular” in waterfall or cataract: there he
remained during the watches of the night, with phantoms fluttering round
about him, from whence he was supposed to derive the burden of the
oracular response he delivered to his comrades on the following day.
It is probable that this ceremony is the relic of some ancient form of
ritual. At all events, the skins of animals played an important part in
the old worship. When the Thebans slew a cow on the festival of Jupiter
Ammon, his image was clothed with the skin: all present in the temple then
struck the carcase, which was buried in a consecrated place.
Pausanias records that a temple in honour of the soothsayer Amphiaraus,
the reputed son of Apollo, stood in the territory of Oropus in Attica.
Votaries who resorted thither for the purpose of divination, underwent
certain lustrations, or purifying rites, sacrificed a ram, and, in
expectation of seeing visions, slept upon its skin.
Virgil, in one of the most elaborate scenes of the Æneid, represents to us
a similar oblation as being offered at a consecrated fountain, where the
priest, to prepare himself for the delivery of responses, slept on the
skin:--
“Et cæsarum ovium sub nocte silenti
Pellibus incubuit stratis, somnosque petivit;
Multa modis simulacra videt volitantia miris
Et varias audit voces.”[72]
It seems to have been an important part of the heathen ritual to make use
of the skin of the sacrificed animal for the purposes of clothing. Lucian,
describing the ceremonies practised in the temple of Hierapolis, says
that, on his arrival, the head and eyebrows of the novice were shaved; a
sheep was then sacrificed; he knelt on the skin, and covering his own head
with the head and feet of the animal, prayed that his offering might be
accepted while promising a worthier one.
The Spanish invaders of the New World discovered that the religion of its
most civilised race, the Aztecs, was founded upon human sacrifices. The
number of victims offered up to the Aztec gods is stated in figures which
seem almost incredible. Peculiar to the Aztec kingdom was the horrid
ceremony entitled “the flaying of men.” The Aztecs having demanded the
daughter of some neighbouring potentate as their queen, she was flayed on
the very night of her arrival by command of their deity, and a young man
clothed in her skin. In this originated the custom that a captive slave,
distinguished by the name, the honours, and the ornaments of the divinity,
should be sacrificed after a certain time; and another, clothed with his
skin, then exacted contributions for the service of the gods, which no
one, says Acosta, dared to refuse.
* * * * *
We have no space to dwell on the various forms of divination that were
wont to prevail. Almost everything in nature, from the stars of heaven to
the clods of earth, was made to give indications of coming events. The
historian of the darker Superstitions of Scotland brings together a few
striking illustrations.
If a certain worm in a medicinal spring on the top of a hill in Strathdon,
were found alive, it was a sign that the patient would live; and in a well
of Ardwacloich, in Appin, if the patient were to die, a dead worm was
found in it, and a live one, if he were to recover. In the district of
Lorn, the figures assumed by an egg dropped into water were supposed to
indicate the appearance of a future spouse. “Also, one of four vessels
being filled with pure, and another with muddy water, the third with milk,
and the fourth with meal and water; if the diviner blindfold dips his hand
in the first, it augurs that his spouse shall be led to the nuptial couch
in all her pristine purity; but otherwise if dipping in the second: if
finding his way to the milk, a widow shall fall to his lot; and an old
woman awaits him from the meal and water. Three vessels are used in the
south of Scotland; one of them empty; and should fate direct the diviner
hither, it augurs perpetual celibacy.”
* * * * *
A belief in Fairies was widespread, and has survived, in remote districts,
down even to our own time:
“Oft fairy elves
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”[73]
It is not easy to reconcile the conflicting details of the disposition,
manners, habits, and influence of these liliputian spirits which we meet
with in the early writers. But on a general survey it appears that they
were very diminutive; in their intercourse with mortals sometimes
good-tempered, sometimes malignant; that they loved and married, and had
offspring; that they were very merry, and loved to dance upon the green,
and fill the air with choral music; that they possessed stores of gold and
silver, which they distributed freely; that they were invisible, but could
at will present themselves to mortals; that they were very timid, and
would inflict a summary punishment upon intruders. Their influence was at
its highest on Friday, at noon, and at midnight.
Kirk, the Scotch minister of Aberfoyle, who died in 1688, relates some
other particulars of the “good people.” Their substance, he says, is
denser than air; too subtle to be pierced, and, like that of Milton’s
angels, reuniting when divided, or when any attempt is made to cleave it
asunder. Their voice is like unto whistling. They change their places of
abode every quarter of the year, floating near the surface of the earth;
and persons gifted with the second sight have often had fierce encounters
with them. The Highlanders, to preserve themselves and their cattle
against them, went regularly to church on the first Sunday of every
quarter, though they might not return during the interval. At the name of
GOD or JESUS they vanished into thin air. They were of both sexes, and
like mankind, they were mortal.
“Some meagre allusions appear to the Queen of the Fairies, and especially
by King James, whose immediate knowledge may have been derived from the
vignettes in Olaus Magnus, and the words of his own unhappy subjects, who
perished on account of their credulity. Alexoun Perisoma was convicted, on
her confession, of repairing to the ‘queen of Elfame,’ with whom she was
familiar. Jean Wire (1670) declared that, while she taught a school at
Dalkeith, a woman desired to be employed ‘to speik to the Queen of Fairie,
and strike ane battell in hir behalf with the said Queen.’” The name of
Titania is familiar enough to all lovers of English literature. There was
a necromancer or wizard, in the reign of Charles I., who affirmed he had
an incantation--“O Micol, Micol, regina Pigmiorum, veni,”--that Titania
could not resist. Lilly tells us that when it was tested at Hurst wood,
first a gentle murmurous sound was heard; then rose a violent whirlwind,
which swelled into a hurricane; and lastly the Fairy Queen appeared in all
her radiance.
Fairies generally dwelt in subterraneous abodes; in the interiors of
grassy hillocks, whence issued dulcet sounds and flashes of weird light;
sometimes the side of a hill opened, and exposed them to the gaze of the
belated wayfarer. No doubt they were seen everywhere by the potent gaze of
imagination; on the meads and in the groves, or curled up among the
bending flowers; for
“Visions as poetic eyes avow,
Hang from each leaf, and cling to every bough.”
They were reputed to be well skilled in the medical art, and to favoured
mortals they sometimes imparted their knowledge. It is difficult to
understand why they were credited with the abstraction of children, and
with the substitution of other beings in their place. For this curious
kind of theft was commonly attributed to them. A “wise woman”--a dealer in
simples and herbal potions--having failed to cure a child, declared that
“the bairn had been taken away, and an elf substituted.”
Besides the fairies, Scotland could boast of its spirits of the waters,
just as Germany had its Loreleys and Ondines.
We can gather, however, no definite information respecting the
water-kelpie, the water-horses, or the water-bull, or of another anomalous
animal called shelly-coat. Describing Lochlomond, Graham says:--“It is
reported by the countrymen living thereabouts, that they sometimes see the
hippopotam or water-horse, where the river Cudrie falls into it, a mile
west of the church of Buchanan.” A river known as the Ugly Burn, in the
county of Ross, springing from Loch Glaish, was regarded with awe by all
the countryside, as the retreat of the water-horse and other spiritual
beings. Shetland is represented as having possessed a handsome water-horse
which, when mounted, carried the rider into the sea. Mr. Dalyell, writing
in 1835, says, that the water-bull is still believed to reside in Loch Awe
and Loch Rannoch, nor, he adds, are witnesses wanting to bear testimony to
the fact. It was reputed to be invulnerable against all except silver
shot; though no one had put it to the proof. In the Isle of Man certain
persons who saw the water-bull in a field were unable to distinguish him
from one of the ordinary terrestrial species, nor did the cows show any
disposition to avoid him. But his progeny always turned out to be a rude
lump of flesh and skin, without bones.
The spirit of the sea was believed to be malicious, and capable of
inflicting injury. Allusions are frequent to “sea-trowis, meermen,
meermaids, and a number of little creatures coming from the sea” in
response to spell and charm. Nor must we forget the practice of pouring
out libations to the aquatic divinities. A century ago, in Crawford Muir,
when a tenant was evicted and another took his place, he cut the throat of
a black lamb and threw it into a stream, with a malediction both upon
stream and lamb.
To this futile department of human error we can, however, devote no more
space. To treat it adequately we should need at least a couple of volumes
as closely printed as the present.
INDEX.
Aborigines, the, of North America, 254.
African Superstitions, 171.
Ahetas, the, 153.
Ancestors, Worship of, 220.
Anecdotes of Khandikya and Kesidhwaja, 114.
Apples, Halloween, 293.
Ark-festival, an Indian, 90.
Ashi, the Rabbi, 72.
Asia, savage races of, 155.
Babylonian Talmud, the, 72.
Bouru, 146.
Brahman Religion, the, 14, 84.
Buddhism, 16.
Buddhists, Prayer-wheels of the, 1.
Buffalo-dance, the, 259.
Cannibalism, 250.
Caste, Brahman, 14.
Cat, adventures of a, 218.
Ceremonies, Hindu, 6;
Eskimo, 275.
Chandu, Palace of, 163.
Charms, Scottish, 310.
China, in, 119.
Chinese offerings to gods, 139.
Chinese temples, 132.
Chunda Sen, Babu Keshub, 97.
Chung-Yung, 123.
Confucianism, 119.
Confucius, Life of, 120.
Court of Justice, an Eskimo, 277.
Cumming, Miss Gordon, Experiences of, 1;
quoted, 3.
Daksha, sacrifice of, 103.
Debendunath Tagore, 97.
Devil-dancing, 91.
Divination, 319.
Dorians, the, 147.
Dyaks, the, 145.
Egg-trick, the, 169.
Equatorial Savage, the, 172.
Eskimos, the, 274.
Etu, the, 221.
Fairies, belief in, 323.
Feast of Lanterns, the, 129.
Fetich-man, the, 174.
Fiji-islanders, the, 230.
Fire-superstitions, 290.
Fish-charmers, Brahman, 87.
Flagellants, the, 279.
Gemara, the, 69.
Gods, belief in, 12.
Halloween, 288.
Health-superstitions, 313.
Hilarion, S., 280.
Hindu Mythology, the, 99.
Hindus, the, 203.
Hindu Temples, Ceremonies of the, 6.
Hiouen-thsang, Career of, 26.
Idol Worship, 221.
Indians, North American, 254.
Jerusalem Talmud, the, 72.
Jewish Superstitions, 68.
Jugglery, 163.
Khudas, the, 89.
King, or, the Five Canonical Works, 125.
Lao-tsze, the Chinese Philosopher, 129.
Lun-Yu, the, 124.
Magianism, 43.
Maize, Indian reverence for the, 273.
Malays, among the, 142.
Maories, the, 241.
Medicine-bag, the Indian, 265.
Medicine-man, the Indian, 174;
the Eskimo, 274.
Meng-tze, the, 124.
Mishna, the, 68.
Mongols, the, 157.
Müller, Max, quoted, 10.
Nâgpanchanic Festival, the, 210.
New Zealand, 241.
North American Indians, the, 254.
Nursery tale, a Hindu, 307.
Old age, African veneration of, 172.
Orang-lauts, the, 152.
Ormuzd and Ahriman, 191.
Ostiaks, the, 158.
Paharis, the Customs of, 87.
Papeiha’s witness to Christianity, 215.
Papuan Tribes, the, 147.
Parsees, the, 43.
Peace-pipe, the Indian, 270.
Polo, Marco, 161.
Polynesian Sacrifices, 228.
Polynesian Superstitions, 214.
Prayer-Wheels of the Buddhists, 1.
Public Games, 109.
Puranas, the, 99.
Rammohun Roy, Life of, 92.
Red Men, the, 257.
Religion, Brahman, 14, 84;
Buddhism, 16;
Parsee, 43;
Chinese, 119;
among the Malays, 142;
the Dyaks, 145;
in Bouru, 146;
among the Papuan tribes, 147;
the Orang-lauts, 152;
Savage nations of Asia, 155;
in Tibet, 161;
Zabianism, 186;
in Polynesia, 214;
among the Fiji-islanders, 230;
the Maories, 241;
North American Indians, 254.
Rudra, Origin of, 103.
Samoans, the, 219.
Samojedes, 155.
San-tsing, the Chinese deity, 131.
Scottish Superstitions, 288.
Second Sight, 290, 300, 314.
Serpent-worship, 186.
Shae-tung, the, 129.
Shamanism, 91.
Shang-te, the, of the Chinese, 131.
Slamatan Bromok, the, 142.
Snake-charmers, 87.
Stylites, S. Simeon, 281.
Sun-worship, 8, 200.
Superstitions, African, 171.
Supreme Being, belief in a, 11.
Taboo, or Tapu, 241.
Tadibe, the, 156.
Ta-heo, the, 123.
Talmud, the, 68.
Taossi, the, 132.
Taouism, 129.
Tehu-Chor, the, 3.
Thibetan Prayer or Litany, the, 4.
Tibet, in, 161.
Topes, the, 203.
Typhon and Osiris, 173.
Vishnu Purana, the, 100.
Weather-conjuring among the Mongols, 159.
Williams, Rev. John, 214.
Yadageri, 160.
Zabianism, 186.
Zendavesta, the, 43.
Zoroaster, 45.
Zulu Witch-finders, 180.
J. MASTERS AND CO., PRINTERS, ALBION BUILDINGS, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Miss Gordon Cumming, “From the Hebrides to the Himalayas,” ii. 226,
227.
[2] Max Müller, Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims, pp. 5, 6.
[3] Rig-Veda, i. 164, 46.
[4] Rig-Veda, x. 121, by Max Müller.
[5] The thought in this paragraph, and several of the expressions, are
from Max Müller.
[6] So in Shelley’s lyrical drama of “Prometheus Unbound:”--
“_Mercury_ (addressing Prometheus.) Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove’s power?
_Prometheus._ I know but this, that it must come.
_Mercury._ Alas!
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain.
_Prometheus._ They last while Jove must reign; nor more nor less
Or I desire or fear.”
[7] Max Müller, pp. 13, 14.
[8] Professor Wilson propounded a theory to the effect that there never
was any such man as Buddha, but the theory has found few supporters.
[9] The name “Sakya” is made into “Sakya-muni,”--_muni_ in Sanskrit
meaning “solitary,” (Greek, μόνος,) alluding to his solitary habits; and
to Gautama is often prefixed “Sramana,” or “ascetic.”
[10] Max Müller, pp. 14, 15.
[11] Max Müller, pp. 15, 16, 17.
[12] The following sketch is founded on M. Stanislas Julien’s “Voyages des
Pélerins Buddhistes,” and on Max Müller’s review of that valuable work.
[13] Max Müller, p. 36.
[14] Voyages des Pélerins Bouddhistes. Vol. I. Histoire de la Vie de
Hiouen-thsang, et ses Voyages dans l’Inde, depuis l’an 629 jusqu’en 645,
par Hoeï-li et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par Stanislas Julien.
Vol. II. Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en
Chinois, en l’an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Français, par
Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857. B. Duprat.
[15] Hoeï-li terminates the last book of his biography of the Master with
a long and pompous panegyric of Hiouen-thsang. This _morceau_, which forms
(says Stanislas Julien,) twenty-five pages in the Imperial edition and ten
in the _Nan-king_, offers an analysis of the life and voyages of the
Master of the Law; but it contains no new fact or one of any interest in
relation to the history and geography of India or the Buddhist literature.
No English version has appeared of M. Julien’s elaborate translation of
the Chinese History of Hiouen-thsang.
[16] More correctly, Avesta-Zend.
[17] Sanscrit, _Avasthâ_. This is Haug’s conjecture.
[18] The Pazend language was identical with the Parsi, i.e., the ancient
Persian.
[19] Dogs are here associated with man on account of their high value in
an early stage of civilisation. Zarathustra protected them by special
ordinances and penalties.
[20] The bridge _Chinavat_ by which the souls of the good crossed into
Paradise; a fancy afterwards adopted by Muhámad.
[21] Quarles.
[22] Emanuel Deutsch, “Literary Remains,” (edit. 1874, pp. 32, 33.)
[23] E. Deutsch, Literary Remains, p. 55, sqq.
[24] The Tinnevelly Shawars, by R. Caldwell, Madras, 1849.
[25] Calcutta Review, lii. 112, 113.
[26] We are reminded by this extravagance of great King Arthur’s sumptuous
feast at Carlisle, as described by Mr. Frere (“Whistlecraft”):--
“They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.
“Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard,
Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacock, swan and bustard,
Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and in fine
Plum-puddings, pancakes, apple-pies and custard;
And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cyder of our own;
For porter, punch and negus were not known.”
[27] That is, the crooked. One of the other Puranas calls her Trivakra (or
thrice-deformed.)
[28] The Yoga philosophy prescribes about eighty-four postures. The one to
which allusion is made in the text consisted of sitting with your legs
crossed underneath you, and laying hold of your feet, on each side, with
your hands.
[29] That is, the silent repetition of prayer.
[30] Others say in 479 B.C., at the age of seventy.
[31] A strong spirituous liquor, distilled from wine.
[32] In Rashiduddin’s “History of Cathay” we read: “In the reign of
Din-Wang, the twentieth King of the eleventh dynasty, _Tai Shang Lao Kun_
was born. This person is stated to have been accounted a prophet by the
people of Khita; his father’s name was Han; like Shak-muni (Buddha) he is
said to have been conceived by light, and it is related that his mother
bore him in her womb no less a period than eighty years. The people who
embraced his doctrine were called ش ش _Shan-shan_ or _Shin-shin_.” The
title used by Rashiduddin signifies “the Great Supreme Venerable Ruler.”
[33] Robert Fortune, “Three Years’ Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of
China,” p. 170, et sqq.
[34] “Three Years’ Wanderings,” p. 185.
[35] Fortune, pp. 190, 191.
[36] M. de la Gironiere, cit. in “The Eastern Archipelago,” pp. 522, 526,
527.
[37] Col. Yule, “Book of Sir Marco Polo,” Vol. I. pp. 306, 307.
[38] Edward Melton, “Engelsch Edelmans Zeldzaame en Gedenkwaardige Zee en
Land Reizen,” &c., 1660, 1677, p. 468.
[39] Miss Gordon Cumming. “From the Hebrides to the Himalayas,” ii. 68,
69.
[40] This chapter is adapted from Mr. Winwood Reade’s “Savage Africa,”
(Edit. 1863.)
[41] “A Year’s Housekeeping in South Africa,” p. 173.
[42] Lady Barker, “A Year’s Housekeeping in South Africa,” p. 179.
[43] Abridged from Lady Barker, “A Year’s Housekeeping in South Africa,”
pp. 181-184.
[44] Quoted from Chwolson (“Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus,” 1856,) by
Chambers.
[45] Deane, p. 49.
[46] Isaac McLellan.
[47] Deane, pp. 370-373.
[48] Deane, pp. 446, 447.
[49] “Tree and Serpent-worship,” by James Fergusson, (edit. 1868.)
[50] “Asiatic Researches,” Vol. XX. p. 85.
[51] Fergusson, “Tree and Serpent-worship,” p. 93.
[52] “We know,” says Mr. Fergusson, “that two of the principal Vedic
gods--Indra (the firmament) and Agni (fire)--were adopted into their
pantheon by the early Buddhists, and it seems more reasonable to connect
this appearance of fire with the pre-existing worship of Agni than with
any far-fetched allusion to solar worship.” But what was Agni but a type
of the sun?
[53] Col. Meadows Taylor, Appendix to Fergusson’s “Tree and
Serpent-worship,” pp. 236, 237.
[54] John Williams, “Missionary Enterprises,” p. 48.
[55] Rev. J. Williams, “Missionary Enterprises,” pp. 143-146 (edit. 1841.)
[56] “South Sea Bubbles,” by the Earl and the Doctor, pp. 114-117.
[57] R. F. Burton, “Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa.”
[58] Tennyson.
[59] Cooper, pp. 102, 104.
[60] Cooper, p. 105.
[61] Dishes.
[62] Empty.
[63] Puffed.
[64] Ash, or cinder.
[65] Saucy child.
[66] The unbounded good fortune of Polycrates, King of Samos, awakened the
fear of his friend, Amasis, King of Egypt, who wrote to warn him of the
jealousy of the gods:--
“This counsel of thy friend disdain not--
Invoke Adversity!
And what of all thy worldly gear,
Thy deepest heart esteems most dear,
Cast into yonder sea!”
[67] Calcutta Review, LI. iii.
[68] Calcutta Review, LI., 118. In the Gaelic we find a similar story,
called “Moorochug and Meenachug.”
[69] We have Anglicised Mr. Dalyell’s version. See his “Darker
Superstitions of Scotland,” p. 22. (Edit. 1835.)
[70] This is the subject of D. G. Rossetti’s fine poem, “The King’s
Tragedy.”
[71] At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his
little band of cavalry. He bade them follow him, and rode forward. But it
seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the lowland Scotch should in both
armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned round,
stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited them to come on. As
he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the lower part of his
left side. A musket ball struck him: his horse sprang forward, and plunged
into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from both armies the fall of the
victorious general. A person named Johnstone was near him, and caught him
as he sank down from the saddle. “How goes the day?” said Dundee. “Well
for King James,” answered Johnstone; “but I am sorry for your lordship.”
“If it is well for him,” answered the dying man, “it matters the less for
me.” He never spoke again: but when, half an hour later, Lord Dunfermline
and some other friends came to the spot, they thought that they could
still discover some faint remains of life. The body, wrapped up in two
plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair.--_Macaulay_, chap. xiii.
[72] Æneid. lib. vii. l. 87.
[73] Milton.