placed by witches or the devil, and in restoring impaired virility. But
it was sometimes employed in a manner savoring so strongly of impiety
that Beckherius preferred not to speak further.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,”
p. 122.)
Flemming tells us that we should not pass over in silence the fact that
human seed has been employed by some persons as medicine. They believed
that its magnetic power could be used in philters, and that by it a
lover could feed the flame of his mistress’s affections; hence from it
was prepared what was known as “magnetic mummy,” which, being given to a
woman, threw her into an inextinguishable frensy of love for the man or
animal yielding it,—a suggestion of animal worship. Others credited it
with a wonderful efficacy in relieving inveterate epilepsy, or restoring
virility impaired by incantation or witchcraft; for which purpose it was
used while still fresh, before exposure to the air, in pottage, mixed
with the powder of mace. Flemming alludes to a horrible use of relics,
good and bad, upon which human semen had been ejaculated; but this
involved so much of the grossest impiety that he declined to enter into
full details.—(“De Remediis ex Corpore Humano desumtis,” Samuel Augustus
Flemming, Erfurt, 1738, p. 22.)
The love-philter described in the preceding paragraph recalls a somewhat
analogous practice among the Manicheans, whose eucharistic bread was
incorporated or sprinkled with human semen, possibly with the idea that
the bread of life should be sprinkled with the life-giving excretion.[65]
The Albigenses, or Catharistes, their descendants, are alleged to have
degenerated into or to have preserved the same vile superstition.[66]
Understanding that these allegations proceed from hostile sources, their
insertion in this category has been permitted only upon the theory that
as the Manichean ethics and ritual present resemblances to both the
Parsee and Buddhist religions (from which they may to some extent have
originated), there is reason for supposing that ritualistic ablutions,
aspersions, and other practices analogous to those of the great sect
farther to the east, may have been transmitted to the younger religion in
Europe.
The following is taken from an episcopal letter of Burchard, Bishop of
Worms:—
“N’avez vous pas fait ce que certaines femmes ont coutume de faire?
Elles se dépouillent de leurs habits, oignent leur corps nu avec du
miel, étendent à terre un drap, sur lequel elles répandent du bléd, se
roulent dessus à plusieurs reprises; puis elles recueillent avec soin
tous les grains qui se sont attachés à leur corps, les mettent sur
la meule qu’elles font tourner à rebours. Quand ils sont réduits en
farine, elles en font un pain qu’elles donnent à manger à leurs maris
afin qu’ils s’affaiblissent et qu’ils meurent. Si vous l’avez fait, vous
ferez pénitence pendant quarante jours au pain et à l’eau.... Fecisti
quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Tollunt menstruum suum sanguinem
et immiscent cibo vel potui, et dant viris suis ad manducandum vel ad
bibendum, ut plus diligantur ab eis.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres
facere solent? Prosternunt se in faciem, et discoopertis natibus, jubent
ut supra nudas nates, conficiatur panis, et eo decocto tradunt maritis
suis ad comedendum. Hoc ideo faciunt ut plus exardescant in amorem
illarum. Si fecisti duos annos per legitimas ferias pœnitias.”—(Dulaure,
“Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 262 _et seq._)
The method of divination by which maidens strove to rekindle the expiring
flames of affection in the hearts of husbands and lovers by making cake
from dough kneaded on the woman’s posterior, as given in preceding
paragraph, seems to have held on in England as a game among little girls,
in which one lies down on the floor, on her back, rolling backwards and
forwards, and repeating the following lines:—
“Cockledy bread, mistley cake,
When you do that for our sake.”
While one of the party so lay down the rest of the party sat round; they
lay down and rolled in this manner by turns.
Cockle Bread. This singular game is thus described by Aubray and Kennett:
“Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call ‘moulding of cockle
bread,’ viz.: they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees
as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro, as if they were
kneading of dough, and say these words:
‘My dame is sick, and gone to bed,
And I’ll go mould my cockle bread,
Up with my heels, and down with my head!—
And this is the way to mould cockle bread.’”
—(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 414, article
“Cockle Bread.”)
These words “mistley” and “cockledy” were not to be found in any of the
lexicons examined, or in the “Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial
English” of Thomas Wright, M. A., London, 1869, although in the last was
the word “mizzly” meaning “mouldy.” It may possibly mean mistletoe.
“Cockle is the unhappy ‘lolium’ of Virgil, thought, if mixed with bread,
to produce vertigo and headache; therefore, at Easter, parties are made
to pick it out from the wheat. They take with them cake, cider, and
toasted cheese. The first person who picks the cockle from the wheat has
the first kiss of the maid and the first slice of the cake.”—(Fosbroke,
“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1040.)
Vallencey describes a very curious ceremony among the Irish in the month
of September. “On the eve of the full moon of September ... straw is
burnt to embers, and in the embers each swain in turn hides a grain,
crying out, ‘I’ll tear you to pieces if you find my grain.’ His maiden
lover seeks, and great is her chagrin if she does not find it. On
producing it, she is saluted by the company with shouts; her lover lays
her first on her back, and draws her by the heels through the embers,
then turning her on her face repeats the ceremony until her nudities are
much scorched. This is called _posadamin_, or the meal-wedding.... When
all the maidens have gone through this ceremony, they sit down and devour
the roasted wheat, with which they are sometimes inebriated.”—(“De Rebus
Hibernicis,” vol. ii. p. 559.)
He undoubtedly means ergot; he himself says that it is “a grain that is
sometimes found growing amongst the wheat in Ireland.” He also calls
these “weddings” a “Druidical custom.”—(Idem, p. 598.)
A similar phallic dance is alluded to in John Graham Dalyell’s
“Superstitions of Scotland,” Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.
In Sardinia “the village swains go about in a group ... to wait for the
girls who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here
a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those
who wish to be ‘sweethearts of Saint John’ act as follows: The young
man stands on one side of the bonfire, and the girl on the other; and
they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping a long stick, which they
pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting
their hands thrice rapidly into the flames.” At this dance, we read of “a
Priapus-like figure, made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden
by the Church, has fallen into disuse.” (“The Golden Bough,” Frazer,
vol. i. p. 291.) “In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over
midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax
grow tall.”—(Idem, p. 293.)
“Amongst the Kara-Kirghis barren women roll themselves on the ground
under a solitary apple-tree in order to obtain offspring.” (Idem, vol.
i. p. 73.) That this is a manifestation of tree worship, the author
leaves us no room to doubt; and a consultation of his text will be
rewarded by several examples of a still more definite character,—such
as marriage with trees, wearing the bark as a garment in the hope of
progeny, etc.
Hoffman mentions a widow among the Pennsylvania Germans who “became
impressed with a boatman with whom she casually became acquainted, and
as he evinced no response to her numerous manifestations of regard, she
adopted the following method to compel him to love her, even against his
will. With the blade of a penknife she scraped her knee until she had
secured a small quantity of the cuticle, baked it in a specially prepared
cake, and sent it to him, though with what result is not known. The woman
was known to have the utmost faith in the charm.”—(“Folk-Medicine of
Pennsylvania Germans,” American Philosophical Society, 1889.)
“I was at Madrid in 1784.... A beggar, who generally took his stand at
the door of a church, had employed his leisure in inventing and selling
a species of powder to which he attributed miraculous effects. It was
composed of ingredients the mention of which would make the reader
blush. The beggar had drawn up some singular formularies to be repeated
at the time of taking the powder, and required, to give it its effect,
that those who took it should put themselves into certain postures more
readily imagined than described. His composition was one of those amorous
philtres in which our ignorant ancestors had so much faith; his, he
pretended, had the power of restoring a disgusted lover and of softening
the heart of a cruel fair one.”—(Bourgoanne’s “Travels in Spain,” in
Pinkerton, vol. v. p. 413.)
“When a young man is trying to win the love of a reluctant girl he
consults the medicine-man, who then tries to find some of the urine and
saliva which the girl has voided, as well as the sand upon which it has
fallen. He mixes these with a few twigs of certain woods, and places them
in a gourd, and gives them to the young man, who takes them home, and
adds a portion of tobacco. In about an hour he takes out the tobacco and
gives it to the girl to smoke; this effects a complete transformation in
her feelings.”—(“Conversation with Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola,
translated by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
Lovers who wished to increase the affections of their mistresses were
recommended to try a transfusion of their own blood into the loved one’s
veins.—(Flemming, “De Remediis,” etc., p. 15.)
See notes taken from Flemming, under “Perspiration;” also under
“After-Birth and Woman’s Milk,” and under “Catamenial Fluid.”
Beaumont and Fletcher may have had such customs in mind when writing “Wit
without Money.”
“_Ralph._ Pray, empty my right shoe, that you made your chamber-pot, and
burn some rosemary in it.”—(v. i.)
Rosemary, like juniper (q. v.), was extensively used for disinfecting
sleeping apartments.
ANTI-PHILTERS.
To protect the population from the baleful effects of the love-philter,
there was, fortunately, the anti-philter, in which, strangely enough, we
come upon the same ingredients. Thus mouse-dung, applied in “the form of
a liniment, acts as an antiphrodisiac,” according to Pliny (lib. xxviii.
cap. 80). “A lizard drowned in urine has the effect of an antiphrodisiac
upon the man whose urine it is.” (Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 49.) “The same
property is to be attributed to the excrement of snails and pigeon’s
dung, taken with oil and wine.”—(Idem.)
A powerful antiphrodisiac was made of the urine of a bull and the ashes
of a plant called “brya.” “The charcoal too of this wood is quenched
in urine of a similar nature, and kept in a shady spot. When it is the
intention of the party to rekindle the flames of desire, it is set on
fire again. The magicians say that the urine of a eunuch will have a
similar effect.”—(Idem, lib. xxiv. cap. 42.)
“According to Osthanes ... a woman will forget her former love by taking
a he-goat’s urine in drink.”—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 77.)
Hen-dung was an antidote against philters, especially those made of
menstrual blood. “Contra Philtra magica, in specie ex sanguine menstruo
femineo.” (“Chylologia,” p. 816, 817.) Dove-dung was also administered
for the same purpose, but was not quite so efficacious.
A journeyman cabinet-maker had been given a love-potion by a young woman,
so that he couldn’t keep away from her. His mother then bought a pair of
new shoes for him, put into them certain herbs, and in them he had to
run to a certain town. A can of urine was then put into his right shoe,
out of which he drank, whereupon he perfectly despised the object of his
former affection.
A prostitute gave a love-potion to a captain in the army. Some of her
ordure was placed in a new shoe, and after he had walked therein an hour,
and had his fill of the smell, the spell was broken. Paullini here quotes
Ovid,—
“Ille tuas redolens Phineu medicamina mensas
Non semel est stomacho nausea facta meo.”
A man was given in his food some of the dried ordure of a woman whom
he formerly loved, and that created a terrible antipathy toward
her.—(Paullini, p. 258.)
“The seeds of the tamarisk mixed in a drink or meat with the urine of a
castrated ox will put an end to Venus.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p.
43, quoting Pliny, lib. 21, c. 92.)
“Galenos says that the priests eat rue and agnus castus, it seems, as a
refrigerative.”—(Idem, p. 43.)
The herb rue was used by the Romans as an amulet against witchcraft, and
was also employed in the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic Church.—(Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 315, article “Rural Charms.”)
An examination of the best available authorities upon the properties of
this plant disclosed the following: “It was formerly called ‘herb of
grace’ (see Hamlet, act iv. scene 5), because it was used for sprinkling
the people with holy water. It was in great repute among the ancients,
having been hung about the neck as an amulet against witchcraft, in
the time of Aristotle.... It is a powerful stimulant.” (Chambers’s
Encyclopædia, article “Rue.”) “Rue is stimulant and anti-spasmodic; ...
occasionally increases the secretions.... It appears to have a tendency
to act upon the uterus; ... in moderate doses proving emmenagogue, and
in larger producing a degree of irritation in the organ which sometimes
determines abortion; ... taken by pregnant women, ... miscarriage
resulted; ... used in amenorrhœa and in uterine hemorrhages.” (“United
States Dispensatory,” Philadelphia, 1886, article “Ruta.”) Here are
presented almost the same conditions as were found in the mistletoe,—the
plant had a direct, irritant action upon the genito-urinary organs,
and in all probability was employed to induce the sacred urination and
to asperse the congregation with the fluid for which holy water was
afterwards substituted.
Rue and agnus castus are mentioned by Avicenna as medicines which “coitus
desiderium sedant.” (Vol. i. pp. 266, b 45, 406, a 60.) The same author
(vol. i. p. 906, a 63) mentions rue with the testicles of a fox as an
Aphrodisiac, and the testicles of the goat are mentioned in the same
connection.—(Idem, p. 907, b 67.)
Dulaure (“Des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288) speaks of certain
“fasciniers” or charlatans, who vended secretly love-philters to barren
women. “Ils prononçaient pour opérer leurs charmes des mots latins et
avaient l’intention de fixer dans les alimens des époux une poudre
provenant des parties sexuelles d’un loup.”
Beckherius repeats the antidote for a love-philter of placing some of the
woman’s ordure in the man’s shoe: “Si, in amantis calceum, stercus amatæ
ponatur;” and he also cites the couplet from Ovid already quoted, p. 225.
“Secundines” were also employed to render abortive the effects of
philters. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Schroderi dilucidati Zoölogia,
vol. ii. p. 265.) “In philtris curandis spiritus secundinæ vel pulvis
secundinæ mirabilis facit.” This was of great use in epilepsy, but should
be, if possible, “secundinam mulieris sanæ, si potest esse primiparæ et
quæ filium enixa fuit.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 271.)
Against philters, as well as to counteract the efforts of witches
attacking people just entering the married state, by such maleficent
means as “ligatures,” and other obstacles, ordure was facile princeps as
a remedy. Likewise, to break up a love affair, nothing was superior to
the simple charm of placing some of the ordure of the person seeking to
break away from love’s thraldom in the shoe of the one still faithful.
It is within the bounds of possibility that this remedy would be found
potential even in our own times, if faithfully applied. “Contra philtra,
item pro ligatis et maleficiatis a mulieribus sequens Johannes Jacobus
Weckerus ... pone de egestione seu alvi excremento ipsius mulieris
mane in fotulari dextro maleficiati et statim cum ipse sentiet fœtorum
solvitur maleficium.... Quod si in amantis calceum stercus amatæ
posueris, ubi odorem senserit, solvitur amor,” etc. (several examples are
given).—(“Chylologia,” p. 791.)
Mr. Chrisfield, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., imparts
a fact which dovetails in with the foregoing item in a very interesting
manner. He says that, in his youth, which was passed on the Eastern Shore
of Maryland, he learned that, among the more ignorant classes of that
section it was a rule that when a father observed the growing affection
of his son for some young girl, he should endeavor to obtain a little of
her excrement, and make the youth wear it under the left arm-pit; if he
remained constant in his devotion after being subjected to this test,
the father felt that it would be useless to interpose objection to the
nuptials.
There is a case mentioned in Scotland in which “aversion was inspired on
the part of the female.” To remedy this “the man got a cake” (ingredients
not mentioned) “to be put under his left arm, betwixt his shirt and his
skin, observing silence, until the nuptial couch was sprinkled with water
and the mystical cake withdrawn.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” Dalyell,
p. 305.)
One might safely wager guineas to shillings that, in the above example
the mystical cake was the legitimate descendant of one formerly
compounded of very unsavory ingredients, and that the water with which
the nuptial couch was to be sprinkled, had replaced a fluid closely
related to the liquid employed by the Hottentots on such occasions.
“To procure the dissolving of bewitched and constrained love, the
party bewitched must make a jakes (i. e. privy) of the lover’s shoe.
And to enforce a man, how proper soever he be, to love an old hag, she
gives unto him to eate (among other meates) her own dung.”—(Scot’s
“Discoverie,” p. 62.)
This subject of “Nouer l’aiguillette” is referred to by Dulaure.—(“Traité
des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288.)
“If a man makes water upon a dog’s urine, he will become disinclined to
copulation, they say.”—(Pliny, lib. xxx. c. 49.)
“Beware thee that thou mie not where the hound mied; some men say that
there a man’s body changeth so that he may not, when he cometh to bed
with his wife, bed along with her.”—(De Med. de Quad. of Sextus Placitus,
from “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 365.)
XXXI.
SIBERIAN HOSPITALITY.
A curious manifestation of hospitality has been noticed among the
Tchuktchi of Siberia: “Les Tschuktschi offrent leurs femmes aux
voyageurs; mais ceux-ci, pour s’en rendre dignes, doivent se soumettre à
une épreuve dégoûtante. La fille ou la femme qui doit passer la nuit avec
son nouvel hôte lui présente une tasse pleine de son urine; il faut qu’il
s’en rince la bouche. S’il a ce courage, il est regardé comme un ami
sincère; sinon, il est traité comme un ennemi de la famille.”—(Dulaure,
“Des Divinités Génératrices,” Paris, 1825, p. 400.)
Among the Tchuktchees of Siberia, “it is a well known custom to use
the urine of both parties as a libation in the ceremony; and likewise
between confederates and allies, to pledge each other and swear eternal
friendship.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, p. 318.)
The presentation of women to distinguished strangers is a mark of savage
hospitality noted all over the world, but never in any other place with
the above peculiar accompaniment; yet Mungo Park assures his readers
that, during his travels in the interior of Africa, a wedding occurred
among the Moors while he was asleep. He was awakened from his doze by an
old woman bearing a wooden bowl, whose contents she discharged full in
his face, saying it was a present from the bride.
Finding this to be the same sort of holy water with which a Hottentot
priest is said to sprinkle a newly married couple, he supposed it to be
a mischievous frolic, but was informed that it was a nuptial benediction
from the bride’s own person, and which, on such occasions, is always
received by the young unmarried Moors as a mark of distinguished
favor.—(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. ii. p.
152, article “Bride-Ales.” See also Mungo Park’s “Travels in Africa,” New
York, 1813, p. 109.)
In Hottentot marriages “the priest, who lives at the bride’s kraal,
enters the circle of the men, and coming up to the bridegroom, pisses
a little upon him. The bridegroom receiving the stream with eagerness
rubs it all over his body, and makes furrows with his long nails that
the urine may penetrate the farther. The priest then goes to the outer
circle and evacuates a little upon the bride, who rubs it in with the
same eagerness as the bridegroom. To him the priest then returns, and
having streamed a little more, goes again to the bride and again scatters
his water upon her. Thus he proceeds from one to the other until he has
exhausted his whole stock, uttering from time to time to each of them
the following wishes, till he has pronounced the whole upon both: ‘May
you live long and happily together. May you have a son before the end
of the year. May this son live to be a comfort to you in your old age.
May this son prove to be a man of courage and a good huntsman.’”—(Peter
Kolbein, Voy. to the Cape of Good Hope, in Knox, “Voyages,” London, 1777,
vol. ii. pp. 399, 400. This statement of Kolbein is cited by Maltebrun,
Univ. Geog. vol. ii. article “Cape of Good Hope,” but he also mentions
Thurnberg, Sparmann and Foster as authorities. Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp.
89 and 141, likewise quotes from Thurnberg on this subject.)
“Have I not drunk to your health, swallowed flap-dragons, eat glasses,
drank wine, stabbed arms, and done all the offices of protested gallantry
for your sake?”—(Marston’s “Dutch Courtesan,” London, 1605; see also
footnote on the same point in the “Honest Whore,” Thomas Dekkar, 1604,
edition of London, 1825. “Dutch flap-dragons,” “Healths in urine.” See
also “A New Way to Catch the Old One,” Thomas Middleton, 1608, ed. of
Rev. Alex. Dyce, London, 1840; footnote to above: “Drinking healths in
urine was another and more disgusting feat of gallantry.” Again, for
flap-dragons, see in “Ram Alley,” by Ludovick Barry, 1611, ed. of London,
1825.)
In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” M’lle Laubert, Paris,
1790, Prince Constipati is entertained by the Princess Clysterine; “elle
lui donna de la limonade, de la façon d’Urinette” (p. 17).
Brand has a very interesting chapter, entitled “Drinking Wine in the
Church at Marriages,” in which it appears that the custom prevailed
very generally among nations of the highest civilization, of having the
bride, groom, and invited guests, share in a cup or chalice, filled
with some intoxicant; in England, a country which has never raised the
grape, this drink is wine; in Ireland, it was whiskey. Brand traces it
back to a Gothic origin, but he himself calls attention to the breaking
of wine-glasses at the marriage ceremony among Hebrews, from which
circumstance a still greater antiquity may be inferred.
“Cobbler’s punch,” urine with a cinder in it.—(Grose, “Dictionary of
Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
“A beautiful lady, bathing in a cold bath, one of her admirers, out of
gallantry, drank some of the water.”—(Idem, article “Toast.”)
“We were told that the priest (of the Hottentots) certainly gives
the nuptial benediction by sprinkling the bride and groom with his
urine.”—(Lieut. Cook, R. N., in “Hawkesworth’s Voyages,” London, 1773,
vol. iii. p. 387.)
Similar statements are to be found in the writings of Hahn and others of
the Dutch missionaries to the natives of South Africa.
The malevolence of witchcraft seems to have taken the greatest pleasure
in subtle assaults upon those just entering the married state.
Fortunately, amulets, talismans, and counter-charms were within reach of
all who needed them. The best of all these was thought to be urination
through the wedding-ring.—(See Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 305.)