may be introduced into the corps of fetich priests, but they have to pay
dearly for the honor.... Every morning before sunrise and every evening
at sunset the aspirants were heard singing in choir, directed by an
old fetich priestess.” These ceremonies of consecration “last several
days.... The crinkled hair which is completely shaved off of some, and
only from the crown of the head of others, the aspersion of lustral
water, the imposition of the new name.”—(“Fetichism,” Rev. P. Baudin, New
York, 1885, pp. 74, 75.)
“One observer of the customs of the blacks has stated in the journal of
the Anthropological Society of London that in the Hunter River District
of New South Wales, the catechumens at some parts of the Bora ceremonies
are required to eat ordure; but I have made diligent inquiries in the
same locality and elsewhere, but have found nothing to corroborate his
statement. Similarly, in one district in Queensland, it is said that the
blacks, whether at the Bora or not I cannot say, make cup-like holes in
the clay soil, collect their urine in them, and drink it afterwards. This
latter statement may be true, but I have never been able to substantiate
it by information from those who know. Various considerations, however,
lead me to think it possible that our blacks, in some places at least
(for their observances are not everywhere the same), may use ordure and
urine in that way, thinking that the evil spirit will be propitiated by
their eating in his honor that which he himself delights to eat; just as
in Northwestern India a devotee may be seen going about with his body
plastered all over with human dung in honor of his god. And our blacks
have good reason to try to propitiate this unclean spirit (Gunungdhukhya)
in every possible way, for they believe that he can enter their bodies,
and effecting a lodgment in their abdomen, feed there on the foulest of
the contents, and thus cause cramps, fits, madness, and other serious
disorders. The non-Aryan population of India have similar beliefs;
for among the devil-worshippers of Western India there are certain
malignant spirits called Bhutas; and these in their habits are similar to
Gunungdhukhya. They too cause mischief by taking possession of the body,
and they delight to devour human beings; they too live in desert places,
especially among tall trees. They take the forms of men and animals, and
prowl about in burial-grounds, and eat the carcasses.”—(Personal letter
from John Frazer, LL.D., dated Sydney, New South Wales, December 24,
1889.)
This correspondent has struck the keynote of the curious behavior of the
prophet Ezekiel and others. Believing, as was believed in their day, that
deities ate excrement, why should not they, the representatives of the
gods, eat it too? And if a god enter into a man’s body to eat excrement,
why should not the victim feed him on that which is so acceptable, and by
gorging him free himself from pain?
See, under “War Customs,” the use of the drink _wysoccan_ by the Indians
of Virginia, in their ceremonies of initiation.
See, under “Ordeals and Punishments,” page 254, in regard to the belief
of the Australians.
WAR-CUSTOMS.—ARMS AND ARMOR.
It is remarkable that we should be able to adduce any example of the
employment of excrementitious matter in war customs; not that we should
not suspect their existence, but because on occasions of such importance
the medicine-men, who arrogate to themselves so much consequence in
all military affairs, would naturally be more careful to conceal their
performances from profane eyes. There is very little reason to doubt
that a fuller examination would be rewarded with new facts of additional
interest and value.
When the Dutch were besieging Batavia, in the Island of Java, in 1623,
the natives daubed themselves with human ordure, in all likelihood for
some vague religious purpose,—“a 1629, in obsidione Batavos obsessos, in
defectu aliorum ad defensionem necessariorum requisitorum hostes suos
Indos stercore humano ex cloacis collecto, ollisque in ipsorum nuda
corpora conjecto, fugasse.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 795.)
“Les Malais se servent de l’urine pour tremper leurs fameux criss. Ils
enfoncent ces poignards dans la terre, et pendant un certain temps,
ils viennent uriner de manière que cette terre soit toujours imbibée
d’urine.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Bernard, Cannes, France, dated July
7, 1888.)
Against what was known in the Middle Ages as “magical impenetrability,”
human ordure was in high repute. The sword or “machete” of the person
exposed to attack from such an enemy should be rubbed in pig-dung. But
let Schurig tell his own story: “Scilicet, priusquam cum adversario hujus
rei suspecto congrediaris, cuspis machæræ vel gladii, stercori suillo
infigatur; vel si eminus agendum, globuli bomberdis infarciendi per
sphincterem ani ducantur; quod certissimum dicitur antidotum contra hanc
non minus quam Diaboli Incantationes.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 791, par. 64.)
Frommann states that arms may be bewitched so that they can do
harm; but he makes no mention of human or animal excreta in such
connection.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 654.)
“Dum gladio quo vulnus fuit inflictum sive cruento sive non cruento
applicatur unguentum quod vocant magneticum armarium quo curatur vulnus.”
(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.) This magnetic ointment was made of human
ordure and human urine.
See also page 298 of this volume.
“The Scythians prefer mares for the purposes of war, because they can
pass their urine without stopping in their career.”—(Pliny, lib. viii.
cap. 66.)
The “black drink” of the Creeks and Seminoles was an emetic and cathartic
of somewhat violent nature. It was used by the warriors of those tribes
when about to start out on the war-path or engage in any important
deliberations.—(See Cornwallis Clay’s dissertation upon the Seminoles of
Florida, in “Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology,” Washington, D. C.,
1888.)
The “black drink” of the Creeks was made from the Iris Versicolor
(Natural order, Iridacæa), “an active emeto-cathartic, abundant in swampy
grounds throughout the Southern States.”—(See Brinton, “Myths of the New
World,” New York, 1868, p. 274.)
Beverly mentions “a mad potion,” “the Wysoccan,” used by the Indians of
Virginia during “an initiatory ceremony called Huskansaw, which took
place every sixteen or twenty years,” which he calls “the water of
Lethe,” and by the use of which they “perfectly lose the remembrance
of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their
language.”—(“Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 349, quoting Beverly’s “History
of Virginia,” London, 1722, p. 177.)
See, under “Insults,” p. 256, for the war customs of the Samoans. See
also “Catamenia;” “Witchcraft.”
XXXIV.
HUNTING AND FISHING.
The African hunter in pursuit of game, such as elephants, anoints himself
“all over with their dung.”—(Father Merolla, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p.
251, “Voyage to Congo.”) This, he says, is merely to deceive the animal
with the smell.
Pliny relates that in Heraklea the country-people poisoned panthers with
aconite. But the panthers had sense enough to know that human excrement
was an antidote. (Lib. xxviii. c. 2.) Again in lib. viii. c. 41 he tells
of the aconite-poisoned panther curing itself by eating human excrement.
Knowing this fact, the peasants suspend human excrement in a pot so high
in the air that the panther exhausts itself in jumping to reach it, and
dies all the sooner.
Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 774) has the above tale, but has taken it from
Claudius Æmilianus, as well as Pliny.
The reindeer Tchuktchi feign to be passing urine in order to catch their
animals which they want to use with their sleds. The reindeer, horses,
and cattle of the Siberian tribes are very fond of urine, probably on
account of the salt it contains, and when they see a man walking out from
the hut, as if for the purpose of relieving his bladder, they follow him
up, and so closely that he finds the operation anything but pleasant.
“The Esquimaux of King William’s Land and the adjacent peninsula often
catch the wild reindeer by digging a pit in the deep snow, and covering
it with thin blocks of snow, that would break with the weight of an
animal. They then make a line of urine from several directions, leading
to the centre of the cover of the pitfall, where an accumulation of snow,
saturated with the urine of the dog, is deposited as bait. One or more
animals are thereby led to their destruction.”—(Personal letter from the
Arctic explorer, W. H. Gilder, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)
“The dogs of the Esquimaux are equally fond of excrement, especially
in cold weather, and when a resident of the Arctic desires to relieve
himself, he finds it necessary to take a whip or a stick to defend
himself against the energy of the hungry dogs. Often, when a man wants to
urge his dog-team to greater exertion, he sends his wife or one of the
boys to run ahead, and when at a distance, to stoop down and make believe
he is relieving himself. The dogs are thus spurred to furious exertion,
and the boy runs on again, to repeat the delusion. This never fails of
the desired effect, no matter how often repeated.”—(Idem.)
“I only know one superstitious use of excrement,—that wherein the
hooks were placed round some before the fishing incantations began.”
(“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthrop.
Institute,” London, 1889.) This bears a very close resemblance to certain
of the uses of cow-dung in India.
The people of Angola, west coast of Africa, when about to set out on a
hunt, are careful to collect the dung of the elephant, antelope, and
other kinds of wild animals, and hand them to the medicine-man, who makes
a magical compound out of them, and places it in a horn. It then serves
as an amulet, and will ensure success in the hunt.—(“Muhongo,” an African
boy from Angola; interpretation made by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
XXXV.
DIVINATION.—OMENS.—DREAMS.
Among the ancients there was a method of divination by excrementitious
materials.—(See “Scatomancie,” in Bib. Scat. p. 28.)
“Gaule, in his ‘Mag-Astromancers Posed and Puzzled’ (p. 165), enumerates
as follows the several species of divination.” (Here follows a list of
fifty-three kinds.) One of the kinds enumerated is “Spatalomancy, by
skin, bones, excrement.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” pp. 329, 330.)
In the “Rhudhiradhyaya, or Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the
Calica Puran, in the 4th vol. “Asiatic Researches,” 4th ed., London,
1807, the following is stated in regard to human victims: “If, at the
time of presenting the blood, the victim discharges fæces or urine, or
turns about, it indicates certain death to the sacrificer.”
The Peruvians had one class of wizards (i. e., medicine-men) who “told
fortunes by maize and the dung of sheep.”—(“Fables and Rites of the
Yncas,” Padre Cristoval de Molina, translated by Clement C. Markham,
Hakluyt Society Transactions, London, 1873, vol. xlviii., p. 14. Molina
resided in Cuzco, as a missionary, from 1570 to 1584.)
“Les Hachus (a division of the Peruvian priesthood) consultaient l’avenir
au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux.”—(Balboa,
“Histoire de Pérou,” p. 29, in Ternaux, vol. xv.)
See, also, D. G. Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” New York, 1868, pp.
278, 279.
Ducange, enumerating the pagan superstitions which still survived
in Europe in A.D. 743, mentions divination or augury by the dung of
horses, cattle, or birds: “De auguriis vel avium, vel equorum, vel boum
stercoracibus.”—(Ducange, Glossary, article “Stercoraces.”)
“What wise man would think that God would commit his counsel to a dog,
an owle, a swine, or a toade; or that he would hide his secret purposes
in the dung or bowels of beastes?” Reg. Scot (“Discoverie,” p. 150),
speaking of the omens consulted by Spaniards, English, and others,
says: “Among the rustics of France, to dream of ordure was regarded as a
sign of good luck; in like manner, to have a ball, or anything that one
carried in the hand, fall in ordure, was also a sign of good fortune.”
“To dream of ordure means that somebody is going to try to bewitch
you.”—(“Muhongo,” a boy from Angola, Eastern Africa, in conversation with
Captain Bourke; translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
This belief in the good or bad prognostications to be derived from dreams
about ordure, was very widely disseminated. “Luck, or Good Luck. To tread
in Sir Reverence; to be bewrayed; an allusion to the proverb, ‘Sh-tt-n
luck is good luck.’”—(“Grose, Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
“Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or spring, comes out of the dark-blue
bird of night, we can understand the popular Italian and German
superstition, that when the excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is
an omen of good luck. The excrement of the mythical bird of night, or
winter, is the sun.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” Angelo de Gubernatis, vol. ii. p.
176, London, 1872.)
“When a Hindu child’s horoscope portends misfortune or crime, he is
born again from a cow, thus: being dressed in scarlet, and tied on a
new sieve, he is passed between the hind legs of a cow, forward through
the fore legs to the mouth, and again in the reverse direction, to
simulate birth; the ordinary birth ceremonies (aspersion, etc.) are
then gone through, and the father smells his son as a cow smells her
calf.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 33.)
To put one’s foot in dung is supposed by the French peasantry to imply
the acquirement of wealth.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
Among the Kamtchatkans, if a child has been born in stormy weather, they
believe that to be a bad omen, and that the child will cause storm and
rain wherever it goes. As soon as it is grown and can speak, they purify
it, and appease heaven by the following method: During a most violent
storm of wind and rain, the child is compelled to walk naked, holding a
cup or shell of Mytues high above its head, around the ostrag and all
balagans and dog huts, and to say the following prayer to Billukai and
his Kamuli: “Gsaulga, set yourselves down and stop urinating or storming;
this shell is used to salty but not to sweet water; you make me very wet,
and I almost freeze to death; besides, I have no clothing; see how I
tremble.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Divination by urine seems to have been superseded by holy water in a
“chrystall.” Scot, speaking of the latter mode, says: “They take a glass
vial, full of holy water, ... on the mouth of the vial or urinall,”
etc.—(“Discoverie,” p. 188.)
There is among children in the United States and England, and possibly
on the continent of Europe as well, a superstition to the effect that
the one who plucks the dandelion will become addicted to the habit of
urinating in bed during sleep. The author has been unable to trace the
origin of the curious notion or to obtain any explanation of it.
“Leontodon. Dandelion. Children that eat it in the evening
experience its diuretic effects in the night, which is the reason
that other European nations as well as the British vulgarly call
it piss-a-bed.”—(Encyclopædia, Philadelphia, Penn., 1797, article
“Leontodon.”)
“The following compendious new way of magical divination, which we find
so humorously described in Butler’s ‘Hudibras’ as follows, is affirmed by
M. Le Blanc, in his ‘Travels,’ to be used in the East Indies:—
“‘Your modern Indian magician
Makes but a hole in th’ earth to pisse in,
And straight resolves all questions by it,
And seldom fails to be in th’ right.’”
(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 331, article “Divination.”)
Cicero makes no mention of a method of divination by excrement, although,
as shown by the references from the “Bib. Scat.” and from Ducange, such
methods must have been in vogue.
The Kamtchatkans believe that “if they ease nature during sleep, it
signifies guests of their nation.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Montfaucon says that the Roman Haruspices “observed in the beasts that
were sacrificed not only the entrails in general, but also the gall and
bladder in particular.”—(“L’Antiquité expliquée,” lib. i. part 1, cap. 6.)
See extract from Gilder’s “Schwatka’s Search,” under “Mortuary
Ceremonies,” p. 262. See “Witchcraft,” “Amulets and Talismans,”
“Urinoscopy,” “Virginity,” “Sterility,” “Courtship and Marriage,”
“Childbirth.”
XXXVI.
ORDEALS AND PUNISHMENTS, TERRESTRIAL AND SUPERNAL.
In beginning this chapter it is fair to say that oaths will herein be
regarded as a modified form of the ancient ordeal, in which the affiant
invokes upon himself, if proved to have sworn falsely, the tortures of
the ordeal, mundane or celestial, which in an older form of civilization
he would have been obliged to undergo as a preliminary trial.
The author learned while campaigning against the Sioux and Cheyennes, in
1876-1877, that the Sioux and Assinaboines had a form of oath sworn to
while the affiant held in each hand a piece of buffalo chip.
Among the Hindus, “sometimes the trial was confined to swallowing
the water in which the priest had bathed the image of one of the
divinities.... The negroes of Issyny dare not drink the water into
which the fetiches have been dipped when they affirm what is not the
truth.”—(“Phil. of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. ii. p.
123.)
They formerly may have drunk the urine of the god or priest.
In “the ‘Domesday Survey,’ in the account of the city of Chester, vol.
i. p. 262, we read: ‘Vir sive mulier falsam mensuram in civitate faciens
deprehensus, IIII solid. emendab. Similiter malam cervisiam faciens, aut
in Cathedra ponebatur stercoris, aut IIII solid. de prepotis.’”—(Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 103, article “Ducking Stool.”)
“The ducking stool was a legal punishment. Roguish brewers and bakers
were also liable to it, and they were to be ducked in stercore in the
town ditch.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, p. 401, London,
1849.)
In Loango, Africa, “When a man is suspected of an offence he is carried
before the king,” and “is compelled to drink an infusion of a kind of
root called ‘imbando.’ ... The virtue of this root is that, if they
put too much into the water, the person that drinketh it cannot void
urine.... The ordeal consists in drinking and then in urinating as a
proof of innocence.”—(See “Adv. of Andrew Battell,” in Pinkerton’s
“Voyages,” vol. xvi. p. 334.)
In Sierra Leone the natives have a curious custom to which they subject
all of their tribe suspected of poisoning. They make the culprit drink a
certain “red water; after which for twenty-four hours he is not allowed
to ease nature by any evacuation; and should he not be able to restrain
them, it would be considered as strong a proof of his guilt as if he had
fallen a victim to the first draught.”—(Lieutenant John Matthews, R. N.,
“Voyage to Sierra Leone,” 1785, London, 1788, p. 126.)
In the Hindu mythology, “slanderers and calumniators, stretched upon
beds of red-hot iron, shall be obliged to eat excrements.”—(Southey,
“Commonplace Book,” 1st series, London, 1849, p. 249. He also refers to 2
Kings xviii. 27, and to Isaiah xxxvi. 12.)
“D’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs
dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourris d’excréments.”—(Majer. Dict.
Mythol. en Allemagne, t. 2, p. 46; Bib. Scat., p. 12.)
Herodotus relates that Pheron, the son of Sesostris, conqueror of Egypt,
became blind, and remained so for ten years.
“But in the eleventh year an oracle reached him from the city of Buto,
importing that the time of his punishment was expired, and he should
recover his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had
intercourse with her own husband only, and had known no other man.”
Herodotus goes on to relate that Pheron tried the urine of his own wife
and that of many other women ineffectually; finally he was cured by
the urine of a woman whom he took to wife; all the others he burnt to
death.—(“Euterpe,” part ii. cap. 3.)
In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” par M’lle Laubert,
Paris, 1790, King Petaud orders Prince Gadourd to be buried alive in
ordure,—a punishment which would have suggested the author’s acquaintance
with Brahminical literature even had she not confessed it in these terms:
“Genre de supplice qui n’était pas nouveau puisque d’après le système
religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste
à être nourri d’excréments.”
The Africans have an ordeal,—“a superstitious ordeal, by drinking the
poisonous Muave,” which induces vomiting only, according to Livingston
(“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 120). This may or may not be the “red drink”
of Lieutenant Matthews cited above.
Under the head of “Latrines,” allusion has been made to the prohibition,
in the laws of the Thibetan Buddhists, against throwing ordure upon
growing plants, etc. There is another case mentioned by Rockhill,
which may as well be inserted here: “Si une bhikshuni jette des
excréments de l’autre côté d’un mur sans y avoir regardé, c’est un
pacittiya.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Soc.
Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)
In the words just quoted we find the definition of the offence as a
“pacittiya,” or sin. The punishment for each sin or class of sins was
carefully regulated and well understood in Thibetan nunneries.
“Cock-stool.” “A seat of ignominy ... in which scolding or immoral
women used to be placed formerly as a punishment; ... same as ‘sedes
Stercoraria.’”—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smythe-Palmer, London, 1882.
See also Chambers’s “Book of Days,” vol. i. p. 211.)
The Chinese have a very curious and very horrible mode of punishment;
criminals of certain classes are enclosed in barrels or boxes filled
with building lime, and exposed in a public street to the rays of the
noon-day sun; food in plenty is within reach of the unfortunate wretches,
but it is salt fish, or other salt provision, with all the water needed
to satisfy the thirst this food is certain to excite, but in the very
alleviation of which the poor criminals are only adding to the torments
to overtake them when by a more copious discharge from the kidneys the
lime shall “quicken” and burn them to death.
In the famous bull of Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester, cited in “Tristram
Shandy,” the delinquent was to be cursed, “mingendo, cacando.”—(See
“Tristram Shandy,” Lawrence Sterne, ed. of London, 1873, vol. i. p. 188.)
“Fasting on bread and drinking water defiled by the excrement of a fowl”
are among the disciplinary punishments cited in Fosbroke’s “Monachism,”
London, 1817, p. 308, note.
This specimen of monastic discipline may be better understood when
read between the lines. The veneration surrounding chicken-dung in the
religious system of the Celts, prior to the introduction of the Christian
religion, could be uprooted in no more complete manner than by making
its use a matter of scorn and contempt; history is replete with examples
wherein we are taught that the things which are held most sacred in one
cult are the very ones upon which the fury and scorn of the superseding
cultus are wreaked. On this point read the notes taken from the pamphlet
of Mr. James Mooney, in regard to the superstitions attaching to the uses
of chicken-dung among the Irish peasantry.
“I have mentioned the sacrifice of cocks by Kelts; it was, and still
is, all over Asia, the cheap, common, and very venial substitute for
man.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. ii. p. 274.)
We may reasonably infer that the dung of chickens as used by the Irish is
a representative of, and a substitute for, human ordure.
The Easter season which has preserved and transmitted to our times
so many pagan usages, has among its superstitions one to the effect
that “every person must have some part of his dress new on Easter day,
or he will have no good fortune that year. Another saying is that
unless that condition be fulfilled, the birds are likely to spoil your
clothes.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. i. p. 165, art. “Easter Day.”)
The Kalmucks believe in many places of future punishment, one of
them being “un de ces séjours est couvert d’une nuée d’ordures et de
vidanges.” (Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 552.) This is the belief
inculcated by their Lamas.