par la civilisation de son temps, poussait en sa faveur le cri de liberté
et formulait ses droits.” As a footnote to the foregoing we read the
following extract from Cicero: “Crepitus æque liberos ac ructus esse
opportere.”—(Lib. 9, Epist. 22.)
“Memento quia ventus est vita mea.”—(Job. vii. 9.)
“Pedere te mallem, namque hoc nec inutile, dicit Symmachus, et risum res
movet ista simul.”—(Martial, vii. 17, 9.)
“‘Le Tonnerre, ce n’est qu’un Pet;’ c’est Aristophane qui le dit.” Βροντὴ
καὶ πορδή, ὁμοίω—(“Nućes.”)
All the preceding from Bib. Scat., article, “Oratio pro Guano Humano.”
Consult Aristophanes, “The Clouds,” act v. scene 2.
“Dissertation sur le dieu Pet,” par M. Claude Terrin.—This author is
stated to have cited from Clemens Romanus and Saint Cæsar.—(See Bib.
Scat., p. 37.)
Suetonius has the following remarks upon the Roman Emperor Claudius: “It
is said too that he intended to publish an edict ... allowing to all
people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension occasioned
by flatulence.” This was upon “hearing of a person whose modesty, under
such circumstances, had nearly cost him his life.”—(“Claudius,” xxxii.)
Plutarch asks the question: “Question 95. Why was it ordained that they
that were to live chaste should abstain from pulse?... Or rather was it
because they should bring empty and slender bodies to their purifications
and expiations? For pulse are windy and cause a great deal of excrements
that require purging off. Or is it because they excite lechery by reason
of their flatulent and windy nature?” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s English
translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 254.)
“The fact that in honor of the arrival of friends, the house is swept and
strewn with sand, and that the people bathe at such occasions, shows that
cleanliness is appreciated. The current expression is that the house is
so cleaned that no bad smell remains to offend the guest. For the same
reason the Indian takes repeated baths before praying, ‘that he may be
agreeable to the Deity.’”—(“Report on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada,”
Dr. Franz Boas, British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting, 1889, p. 19.)
“Saul went into a cave ‘ut purgaret ventrem.’”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p.
25.)
XXII.
OBSCENE TENURES.
In close connection with this worship of Bel-Phegor, if there ever was
such a worship, may be examined the obscene tenures by which certain
estates in England were held in “sergeantcy.” No less an authority than
Buckle, the historian, deemed an investigation of these not beneath
the dignity of his intellect, as may be ascertained by a glance at his
article “Contributions to the History of the Pet,” in his “Commonplace
Book,” p. 472. He refers to “Miscellanea Antica Anglicana,” Blount’s
“Ancient Tenures,” Luther’s “Table Talk” (as above), Dulaure’s “Des
Divinités Génératrices,” Niebuhr’s “Description of Arabia,” Gifford’s
edition of Ben Jonson, “The Staple of News,” by Ben Jonson, Wright’s
“Political Ballads,” in vols. iii. and vii. of the Percy Society’s
publications. With the exception of the first named, all the above have
been examined, and a transcription made of the notes, which will be found
inserted in their proper place.
“The Lord of the Manor of Essington holds tenure from the lord of the
Manor of Hilton in this way. He, the first named, must bring a goose
each New Year to the hall of the Manor of Hilton, and drive it at least
three times around the fire, ‘while Jack of Hilton is blowing the fire.’
This Jack of Hilton is an image of brass, of about twelve inches high,
kneeling on his left knee, and holding his right hand upon his head,
and his left upon pego, or his viretrum, erected, having a little hole
at the mouth, at which, being filled with water, and set to a strong
fire, which makes it evaporate like an aelopile, it vents itself in
constant blast, so strongly that it is very audible, and blows the fire
fiercely.”—(Blount, “Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors,” Hazlitt’s
edition, London, 1874, p. 118.)
This recalls the “mannikin” of Brussels, which may have superseded some
long since forgotten local deity; it still serves political purposes
occasionally.
Blount’s work was first issued under the title of “Jocular Tenures.”
The prevalence of phallic worship all over Flanders should be adverted to
in mentioning the “mannikin” of Brussels.
Dulaure (“Des différens Cultes,” Paris, 1825, vol. ii. p. 272 _et seq._)
describes the phallic shrines of Saints Foutin, Guerlichon _et al._ “Anne
d’Autriche, épouse de Louis XIII., y alla en pélerinage,”—that is, to the
shrine of Saint Foutin.
He also shows that the use of the “raclure” of these phallic saints
prevailed in France until the opening years of the present century.
“Rowland, le Sarcere, holds one hundred and ten acres of land in
Hemington, County of Suffolk, by serjeantcy, for which on Christmas Day,
every year, before our sovereign lord the King of England, he should
perform altogether and at once a leap, a puff, and a fart.”—(Idem, p.
154.)
“One Baldwin also formerly held these lands by the same service,
and was called by the nickname of Baldwin le Peteur, or Baldwin the
Farter.”—(Idem, p. 154.)
Dr. Fletcher, president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D.
C., called attention to the fact that reference to the above tenure of
Baldwin, “per saltum, sufflatum, et pettum,” is given in the Ingoldsby
Legends, “The Spectre of Tappington,” based upon Blount. Ducange, in
his “Glossarium,” proves the antiquity of these tenures, which go back,
so far as known, to the earliest years of the fourteenth century.—(See
Ducange, article “Bombus.”)
Ducange also describes the peculiar custom governing the admission of
“filia communis” into the “villa Montis Lucii,” of which more anon.
“Barrington, in his ‘Observations on the Statutes,’ speaking of the
people, says: ‘They were also, by the customs prevailing in particular
districts, subject to services not only of the most servile, but
the most ludicrous nature.’ ‘Utpote Die Nativitatis Domini coram eo
saltare, buccas cum sonitu inflare, et ventrum crepitum edere.’ (Struvii
Jurispr. Feud. p. 541.) Sir Richard Cox, in his ‘History of Ireland,’
likewise mentions some very ridiculous customs which continued in the
year 1565.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 515, article
“Fool-Plough and Sword-Dance.”)
“Monstrelet, en décrivant une fête que donna en 1453 le duc de Bourgogne,
dit qu’on y voyait: une pucelle qui, de sa mamelle, versait hypocras en
grande largesse; à côté de la pucelle était un jeune enfant qui, de sa
broquette, rendait eau rose.”—(Chroniq. vol. iii. fol. 55 v.; Dulaure,
“Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. i. p. 324, footnote.)
That these customs, absurd, obscene, irrational, as they appear in the
light of to-day, had their origin in the mists of antiquity is not at all
improbable; neither is it a violent assumption to attribute a religious
origin to them. It is conceded that they had all the force of legalized
customs; and law was anciently part and parcel of religion’s dower.
The remarks of Ducange are inserted because they may not be readily
accessible to every reader. He quotes from Camden and Spellman.
Baldwin “Qui tenuit terras in Comitatu Suffolciensi, per serjenciam pro
qua debuit facere, singulis annis (die Natali Domini), coram Domino Rege,
unum saltum, unum sufflatum, et unum bombulum.”
“Hemingston, wherein Baldwin le Petteur (observe the name) held land by
serjeantcy (thus an ancient book expresses it), for which he was obliged
every Christmas Day to perform before our lord the King of England one
saltus, one sufflatus, and one bumbulus; or as it is read in another
place, he held it by a saltus, a sufflus, and a pettus,—that is (if I
apprehend it aright), he was to dance, make a noise with his cheeks, and
let a fart. Such was the plain, jolly mirth of those days.”—(Camden,
“Brittania,” edition of London, 1753, vol. i. p. 444.)
Grimm was impressed with the undeniable intermixture of the old religious
doctrine with the system of law; for the latter, “even after the adoption
of the new faith, would not part with certain old forms and usages.”
(“Teutonic Mythol.,” introduc. p. 12.) In another paragraph he says: “I
shall try elsewhere to show in detail how a good deal in the gestures and
attitudes prescribed for certain legal transactions savors of priestly
ceremony at sacrifice and prayer.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 92.)
XXIII.
TOLLS OF FLATULENCE EXACTED OF PROSTITUTES IN FRANCE.
Another odd usage of which no explanation has been transmitted is thus
described by Ducange, Dulaure, and others:—
“En outre, chaque fille publique qui se livre à quelque homme que ce
soit, lorsqu’elle entre pour la première fois dans la ville de Montlucon,
doit payer sur le pont de cette ville quatre deniers, ou y faire un
pet.”—(Dulaure, “des Divin. Générat.” p. 279, quoting from Ducange,
“Glossarium,” article “Bombus.”)
In a work by the Abbé Roubaud, entitled “La Pétérade, poême en quatre
chants,” we are informed, “Il renvoie à Ducange pour prouver qu’en France
on admettait les pets comme monnaie de cours en paiement des péages....
Bombi pro scudis valebant.”—(“Bib. Scatalogica,” p. 48.)
If we may believe Victor Hugo, the custom of the “péage” at the bridge
of Montluc was generally known to the people of France in the fifteenth
century. Thus, in the first chapter of “Notre Dame,” the populace of
Paris, at the Feast of Fools, are represented as indulging in much
badinage,—
“Dr. Claude Choart, are you seeking Marie la Giffards?”
“She’s in the Rue de Glatigny.”
“She’s paying her four deniers,—quatuor denarios.”
“Aut unum bumbum.”
Dulaure again quotes Ducange in regard to the tolls demanded of public
women first crossing the bridge at Montluc. He finds description of
this peculiar toll in registers dating back to 1398; he also sees
the resemblance between this toll and the tenure of the Manor of
Essington.—(See “Traité des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 315, footnote.)
Surgeon Robert M. O’Reilly, U. S. Army, states that among the Irish
settlers who came to the United States in the closing hours of the last
century the expression was common, in speaking of Flatulence, to term it
“Sir-Reverence.”
“Sir-Reverence. In old writers, a common corruption of ‘save reverence,’
or ‘saving your reverence,’—an apologetic phrase used when mentioning
anything deemed improper or unseemly, and especially a euphemism for
_stercus humanum_.” “‘Cagada,’ a surreverence.”—(Stevens’s “Sp. Dict.,”
1706.)
“Siege, stool, sir-reverence, excrement.”—(Bishop Wilkins’s “Essay
towards a Philosophical Language,” 1688, p. 241.)
“Thoo grins like a dog eating sir-reverence.” (Holderness, “Glossary,
English Dialect Society.”) Compare Spanish _salvanor_, anus.
(Stevens.)—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smith Palmer, London, 1882.)
THE SACRED CHARACTER OF BRIDGE-BUILDING.
It is quite within the bounds of argument and proof to show that the
Romans looked upon the building of a bridge as a sacred work. Upon no
other hypothesis can we make clear why their chief priest was designated
“the Greatest Bridge-Builder” (the Pontifex Maximus). That this idea was
transmitted to the barbarians who occupied Continental and insular Europe
would be a most plausible presumption, even were historical evidence
lacking.
Concerning the tolls exacted from the prostitutes who crossed certain
bridges in France, and the tenures by which certain estates were held
in England, we have to bear in mind that during the Middle Ages bridges
were erected by bodies or associations of bridge-builders, which seem to
have been secret societies. “It seems not improbable that societies or
lodges of bridge-builders existed at an early period, and that they were
relics of the policy of Roman times; but the history of such societies
is involved in obscurity. The Church appears to have taken them up and
encouraged them in the twelfth century, and then they were endowed
with a certain religious character.... The order of bridge-builders
at Avignon, with the peculiar love of punning which characterized the
Middle Ages, were called ‘fratres pontificales,’ and sometimes ‘fratres
pontis’ and ‘factores pontium.’ ... According to Ducange (Gloss. v.
fratres pontis), their dress was a white vest with a sign of a bridge
and cross of cloth on the breast.” (“Essays on Archæological Subjects,”
Thomas Wright, London, 1861, vol. ii. p. 137 _et seq._, article “Mediæval
Bridge-Builders.”) In this connection it may be just as well to remember
that the Pope of Rome is still the Pontifex Maximus.
Knowing that bridges were constructed by secret societies, we have
fought out half our battle; for these secret societies were undoubtedly
under the patronage and protection of some god in heathen times, or of
some saint in later days, reserving for the honor of the latter the
same ritual which had been consecrated to the devotion of the heathen
predecessor.
The following from Fosbroke is pertinent: “Plutarch derives the word
‘Pontifex’ from sacrifices made upon bridges,—a ceremony of the highest
antiquity. These priests are said to have been commissioned to keep
the bridges in repair, as an indispensable part of their office. This
custom no doubt gave birth to the chapel on London bridge, and the
offerings were of course for repairs.” In another place he mentions “the
annexation of chapels to almost all our bridges of note.”—(“Cyclopædia of
Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. i. pp. 62, 146, article “Bridges.”)
“Gottling (Gesch. d. Rom. Staatsv. p. 173) thinks that ‘Pontifex’ is only
another form for ‘pompifex,’ which would characterize the pontiffs only
as the managers and conductors of public processions and solemnities.
But it seems far more probable that the word is formed from _pons_
and _facere_, ... and that consequently it signifies the priest who
offered sacrifices upon the bridge.”—(“Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities,” William Smith, LL. D., Boston, 1849, article “Pontifex.”)
“Les Romains avaient réuni en collége sacerdotal leurs constructeurs de
ponts.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 116.)
Among the Romans—who were the great architects of the European world, and
whose aqueducts, baths, roads, and bridges have never been approached in
strength or beauty by those of any other nation about them—it was to be
expected that the title of the great priest should be Pontifex Maximus,
on the same principle that among the Todas of the Nilgherris, who are
pre-eminently a pastoral race, the chief medicine man or priest is
called Palal, “meaning the Great Milker.”—(See for these statements “Les
Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 260, article “Les Monticules des Nilgherris.”)
The legends of the Middle Ages, all over Europe, from South Germany to
Scandinavia, are filled with references to bridges, mills, and churches,
but especially bridges, built by the Devil exclusively or by his
assistance; and in every case there is the suggestion of human sacrifice
having been offered.
“As a rule, the victims were captive enemies, purchased slaves or great
criminals.... Hence, in our own folk-tales, the first to cross the
bridge, the first to enter the new building or the country, pays with
his life, which meant falls a sacrifice.... In folk-tales we find traces
of the immolation of children; they are killed as a cure for leprosy,
they are walled up in basements.... Extraordinary events might demand the
death of kings’ sons and daughters, nay, of kings themselves.”—(“Teutonic
Mythology,” Grimm, vol. i. p. 46.)
“When the Devil builds the bridge, he is either under compulsion from
men or is hunting for a soul; but he has to put up with the cock or
chamois, which is purposely made to run first across the new bridge,”
or “they make a wolf scamper through the door” of the new church, or a
goat.—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 102.)
“When the new bridge at Halle, finished in 1843, was building the
common people fancied a child was wanted to be walled into the
foundations.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 1142.)
“In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid,
it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood
flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards
buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to
the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder
entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body or a
part of it, or his shadow, and buries them under the foundation-stone, or
he lays the foundation-stone on the man’s shadow. It is believed that the
man will die within a year.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 144.)
It is not our purpose to carry this part of the discussion farther. The
curious may consult Grimm, who shows the frequency with which human
victims were walled up alive in new castles, ramparts, bridges, and
other structures. As time passed on and man grew wiser, there was a
substitution of a coffin as a symbol of the human victim; in stables a
calf or a lamb was buried alive under the main door, sometimes a cock or
a goat; under altars, a live lamb; in newly opened graveyards, a live
horse. All this testimony points conclusively to the fact that every such
structure was begun at least under auspices from which all traces and
suggestions of heathenism had not yet been eliminated; consequently we
shall not be very much in error in deciding that there was some survival
of a religious rite in the peculiar ceremony insisted upon at crossing
the bridge of Montluc, or that it, as all others, was built by architects
who still adhered to the old cultus, and had influence enough with the
rustic population to secure the incorporation of certain features of a
sacred character belonging to the superseded ritual, and which have come
down to us, or almost to us, in a more or less mutilated and distorted
condition.
A very interesting article is to be found in “Mélusine,” Paris, May 5,
1888, which may be read with great profit at this moment; it is entitled
“Les Rites de la Construction,” and relates the popular tradition of the
failure to maintain a bridge at a place called Resporden, in Cornwall, as
each was swept away by flood almost as soon as completed. The good people
of the vicinity suspected sorcery and witchcraft, and consulted a witch,
whose directions were couched in these terms: “Si les gens de Resporden
veulent avoir un pont qui ne fasse plus la culbute, ils devront enterrer
vivant dans les fondations un petit garçon de quatre ans.... On placera
l’enfant dans une futaille défoncée, tout nu, et il tiendra d’une main
une chandelle bénite, de l’autre un morceau de pain.”
An unnatural mother was found who gave her infant son for the sacrifice,
receiving some compensation, and the poor victim was walled up alive
as directed; the bridge was completed, and has since withstood all the
ravages of storm and freshet; but the tale still repeats the last words
of the hapless babe,—
“Ma chandelle est morte, ma mère,
Et de pain, il ne me reste miette.”
The unnatural mother very properly went insane in a few days after the
sacrifice; and the wail of the abandoned babe is still to be heard in the
moaning of the winds and the sobs of the rains that fall upon Resporden.
XXIV.
OBSCENE SURVIVALS IN THE GAMES OF THE ENGLISH RUSTICS.
The rough games of the English rustics are not altogether free from
vestiges of the same nature as have been recorded of the Arabian sheik
in preceding pages. For example, in Northumberland, England, there was a
curious diversion called “F⸺g for the pig.” Brand gives no explanation
of the custom, which may be allied to the jocular tenures mentioned by
Blount, and with them to the worship of Bel-Phegor. Brand says: “The
ancient grossièreté of our manners would almost exceed belief. In the
stage directions to old Moralites we often find, ‘Here Satan letteth a
f⸺.’”—(“Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 9, article “Country Wakes.”)
In London itself such “survivals” lingered down to very recent periods.
“In former times the porters that plyed at Billingsgate used civilly to
entreat and desire every man that passed that way to salute a post that
stood there in a vacant place. If he refused to do this, they forthwith
laid hold of him, and by main force bouped his ⸺ against the post; but
if he quietly submitted to kiss the same, and paid down sixpence, then
they gave him a name, and chose some one of the gang for his godfather.
I believe this was done in memory of some old image that formerly stood
there, perhaps of Belius or Belin.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol.
ii. p. 433, article “Kissing the Post.”)
All these customs, absurd as they seem to us, may have been parts of
the ritual of deities of the same class as Bel-Phegor, who looked after
the excreta perhaps, and the organs connected therewith; some kind of
a tribute was demanded, and none could be more appropriate than the
offering of the parts or the submission to some pain inflicted upon them
by those in charge of the shrine.
Crossing the Atlantic, a custom suspiciously like the preceding, was
still to be heard of, as a rough boyish prank, in Philadelphia, Penn.,
thirty or more years ago. Whenever it happened that any boy was guilty
of flatulence, all the party of school-boys would cry, “Touch wood!” and
run to touch the nearest tree-box; those who were slow in doing this were
pounded by the more rapid ones.
“Then, lads and lasses, merry be,
...
And, to make sport,
I f⸺t and snort.”
(“The Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,” supposed to be by
Ben Jonson, quoted in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,”
London, 1875, p. 420.)
The following memoranda from Buckle, “Commonplace Book,” seem to have no
value beyond merely filthy stories:—
“Ludlow’s f⸺ was a prophetique trump;
There never was anything so jump;
’Twas a very type of a vote of this rump,
Which nobody can deny.”
Ludlow is a stanch Republican. The incident alluded to was a subject
of much merriment, and exercised the pen of some of the choicest poets
of the latter half of the seventeenth century.—(“Ballad: A New Year’s
Gift for the Rump,” Jan. 5, 1659, and footnote in Percy Society’s “Early
English Poetry,” London, 1841, vol. iii. p. 176.)
“And then my poets,
The same that writ so subtly of the fart.”
(“The Alchemist,” Ben Jonson, act ii. scene 1.)
“Who the author alluded to should be I cannot say. In the collection of
poems called ‘Musarum Deliciæ; or, The Muse’s Recreation,’ by Sir John
Ennis and Dr. Smith, there is a poem called ‘The Fart censured in the
Parliament House.’ It was occasioned by an escape of that kind in the
House of Commons. I have seen part of this poem ascribed to an author
in the time of Elizabeth, and possibly it may be the thing referred
to by Jonson.” (Whalley.) But Gifford, from whose later editions I
have drawn my material, comments to the effect that “this escape, as
Whalley calls it, took place in 1607, long after the time of Elizabeth.
The ballad is among the Harleian Manuscripts, and is also printed in
the State Poems; it contains about forty stanzas of the most wretched
doggerel.”—(Gifford’s edition of Jonson, London, 1816.)
“The Fool of Cornwalle.” “I was told of a humorous knight dwelling in
the same countrey (that is, Cornwall), who upon a time, having gathered
together in one open market-place a great assemblie of knights, squires,
gentlemen, and yeomen, and whilst they stood expecting to heare some
discourse or speech to proceed from him, he, in a foolish manner (not
without laughter), began to use a thousand jestures, turning his eyes
this way and then that way, seeming always as though presently he
would have begun to speake, and at last, fetching a deepe sigh, with
a grunt like a hogge, he let a beastly loud fart, and tould them that
the occasion of this calling them together was to no other end but that
so noble a fart might be honoured with so noble a company as there
was.”—(“Jack of Dover’s Quest of Inquiry,” in Percy Society, vol. vii. p.
30, London, 1852. “Jack of Dover,” A.D. 1604.)