and eaten. “The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did
not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the
cattle-stall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 70.)
In cases of sickness “the inhabitants of a village are forbidden to wash
themselves for a number of days, ... and to clean their chamber-pots
before sun-rise.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Dr. Franz Boas, in Sixth An.
Rep. Bur. of Ethnol. Wash. D. C. 1888, p. 593.)
“We have seen that in modern Europe, the person who cuts or binds or
threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands
of his fellow-laborers. For example, he is bound up in the last sheaf and
thus encased is carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water,
thrown on a dunghill, etc.”—(“The Golden Bough,” i. 367.)
In several parts of Germany, the Fool of the Carnival was buried under a
dung-heap. (Idem, vol. i. p. 256.) Further on, is given this explanation:
“The burying of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap
is natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilizing
influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death.”—(Idem, vol. i. p.
270.)
“In Siam it was formerly the custom, on one day of the year, to single
out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through
all the streets, to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted
her and pelted her with dirt; and, after having carried her through the
whole city, they threw her on a dunghill.... They believed that the woman
thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil
spirits.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 196.)
In Suabia there is a rough harvest game in which one of the laborers
takes the part of the sow; he is pursued by his comrades and if they
catch him “they handle him roughly, beating him, blackening or dirtying
his face, throwing him into filth.... At other times he is put in a
wheelbarrow.... After being wheeled round the village, he is flung on a
dunghill.”—(Idem, vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.)
The negroes of Guinea are firm believers in the theory of Obsession,
and have a god “Abiku” who “takes up his abode in the human body.” He
generally bothers little children, who sometimes die. “If the child
dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap to be devoured by wild
beasts.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)
“The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January” with “a festival
of dreams.... It was a time of general license.... Many seized the
opportunity of paying off old scores by belaboring obnoxious persons, ...
covering them with filth and hot ashes.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p.
165, quoting Charlevoix, “La Nouvelle France.”)
“During the madder harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand, a stranger
passing by a field where the people are digging the madder roots, ‘will
sometimes call out to them, Koortspillers’ (a term of reproach). Upon
this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and if they catch him,
they bring him back to the madder field and bury him in the earth up to
his middle at least, jeering at him all the while; they then ease nature
before his face.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 379.)
“Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where
a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves for a certain time
against interruption.... The fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers
resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger proves that they
consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed.”—(Idem, p. 380.)
In connection with the above, the following deserves consideration:
“Reverence. An ancient custom which obliges any person easing himself
near the highway or footpath, on the word ‘reverence’ being given him
by a passenger, to take off his hat with his teeth, and, without moving
from his station, to throw it over his head, by which it frequently falls
into the excrement. This was considered as a punishment for the breach of
delicacy. A person refusing to obey this law might be pushed backwards.
Hence, perhaps, the term ‘sir-reverence.’”—(Grose, “Dict. of Buckish
Slang.”)
It is more likely that the practice had some connection with the fear of
witchcraft, or the evil eye of the stranger; we can hardly credit that
peasantry living in an age when the highest classes received their guests
at bedside receptions, “ruelles,” or in their “cabinets d’aisance,” would
be squeamish in the trifling matter just alluded to.
In Japan “When any of these panders die ... their bodies are cast upon a
dunghill.”—(John Saris, in Purchas, i. 368, A.D. 1611.)
“The tricks of the fayry called Pach.” “I smurch her face if it be
cleane, but if it be durty, I wash it in the next pisse-pot I can
finde.”—(“Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Black Letter, London, 1628, in
Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 205.)
But the “women fayries,” under similar circumstances, “wash their faces
and hands with a gilded child’s clout.”—(Idem, p. 206.)
“Their own spirits too will have nothing but excrement to eat, if during
life the rites of the Bora (Initiation) have not been duly performed.
With this compare the declaration of the Indian Manes (xii. 71) that a
Kahatya who has not done his duty, will, after death, have to live on
ordure and carrion. And in the Melanesian Hades the ghosts of the wicked
have nothing to eat but vile refuse and excrement.”—(Personal Letter from
John Frazer, LL.D., to Captain Bourke, dated Sydney, New South Wales,
Dec. 24, 1889.)
The Australians believed that if a man did not allow the septum of the
nose to be pierced, he would suffer in the next world. “As soon as ever
the spirit Egowk left the body, it would be required, as a punishment, to
eat Toorta-gwannang” (filth not proper for translation).—(“Aborigines of
Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 274.)
Among some of the Australian tribes is found a potent deity named
“Pund-jel,” whom Mr. Andrew Lang thinks may be the Eagle-Hawk. “As
a punisher of wicked people, Pund-jel was once moved to drown the
world, and this he did by a flood which he produced (as Dr. Brown
says of another affair) by a familiar Gulliverian application of
hydraulics.”—(“Myth, Rit., and Relig.,” Lang, London, 1887, ii. 5.)
Maurice cites five meritorious kinds of suicide, in the second of which
the Hindu devotee is described as “covering himself with cow-dung,
setting it on fire, and consuming himself therein.”—(Maurice, “Indian
Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. ii. p. 49.)
“Throw this slave upon the dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iii. sc. 6.)
When Squire Iden killed Jack Kade he exclaimed:—
“Hence will I drag thee, headlong by the heels,
Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave.”—(2 K. Henry, vi. 10.)
“_Steward._ Out, dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iv. sc. 6.)
“Forbearance from meat and work are also prescribed to a single woman
in case the sun or moon (though we should rather call it a bird flying
by) should let any uncleanness drop upon her; otherwise, she might
be unfortunate, or even deprived of her life.”—(Crantz, “History of
Greenland,” London, 1767, vol. i. p. 216.)
The “bitter water” of the Hebrew ordeals by which the woman accused of
unfaithfulness was either proved innocent, or had her belly burst upon
drinking, presents itself in this connection.—(See Numbers v.)
Dante, in his cap. xiii. speaks of those condemned for flattery: “a crowd
immersed in ordure.”—(Cary’s translation.)
Ducange alludes to what may have been an ordeal or a punishment: “Aquam
sordidam et stercoratem super sponsam jactare.”—(“In Lege Longobardi,”
lib. i. tit. 16, c. 8.)
The Hebrew prophets sat on dungheaps while the recalcitrant people
of Israel were warned: “Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces,
even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with
it.”—(Malachi ii. 3.)
By reference to another portion of this volume, it will be seen that
stercoraceous matter was deemed potent in frustrating witchcraft. Thus
a mother was ordered to throw a “changeling” child upon a dunghill (p.
403.) The prostitutes of Amsterdam kept horse-dung in their houses for
good luck, etc. Consequently, when we read of the corpses of criminals or
witches having been thrown upon dunghills, we may let fancy indulge the
idea that it was to render nugatory any schemes the ghost might cherish
of wreaking revenge.
The historian Suetonius relates that the unfortunate Roman emperor
Vitellius was pelted with excrement before being put to death.
Among the unlawful acts for Brahmans or Kshatriyas who are compelled to
support themselves by following the occupations of Vaisyas, is selling
sesamum, unless “they themselves have produced it by tillage.... If he
applies sesamum to any other purpose but food, anointing, and charitable
gifts, he will be born again as a worm, and together with his ancestors
be plunged into his own ordure.”—(“Vasishtha,” cap. ii. 27-30. “Sacred
Books of the East,” Oxford, 1882, vol. xiv., edition of Max Müller. This
is one of the oldest of the Sacred Books. The same prohibition is to be
found in “Prasna” 11, “Adhyaya” 1, “Kandika” 2.)
XXXVII.
INSULTS.
It is somewhat singular to find in the myths of the Zuñis—the very
people among whom we have discovered the existence of this filthy rite
of urine-drinking—an allusion to the fact that to throw urine upon
persons or near their dwellings was to be looked upon as an insult of
the gravest character. During the early winter of 1881 the author was at
the Pueblo of Zuñi, New Mexico, while Mr. Frank H. Cushing was engaged
in the researches which have since placed him at the head of American
anthropologists, and then heard recited by the old men the long myth of
the young boy who went to the Spirit Land to seek his father. One of the
incidents upon which the story-tellers dwelt with much insistence was the
degradation and ignominy in which the boy and his poor mother lived in
their native village, as was shown by the fact that their neighbors were
in the habit of emptying their urine vessels upon their roof and in front
of their door.
The threat made against the Jews by Sennacherib (in Isaiah xxxvi. 12)
deserves consideration in this connection; and also the threat in the Old
Testament, “There shall not be left one that pisses against the wall.”
“Connected with the Samoan wars, several other things may be noted, such
as consulting the gods, ... haranguing each other previous to a fight,
the very counterpart of Abijah, King of Judah, and even word for word
with the filthy-tongued Rabshakeh.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, p. 194.)
The people of Samoa have a myth relating a separation which occurred
between the natives of several islands, due to the fact that the men and
women living on Tutuaila “began to make a dunghill of their floating
island.”—(Olosenga, idem, p. 225.)
“Nebuchadnezzar likewise gave Zedekiah (after he had made him dance and
play before him a long while) a laxative drink, so that, like a beastly
old fellow (as there are many such betwixt York and London), _totus
deturpatus fuit_, he smelt as ill as your Ajax.” In a marginal reference,
he adds: “According to an old ballad,—
‘And all to b⸺n was he, was he.’”
—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)
This behavior, disgusting as it appears to us in all its features,
had its parallel in the conduct of a prominent member of European
aristocracy, who was wont to indulge his anger in a manner strikingly
similar to the above at such moments as seemed to be proper for the
punishment of his servants. His name is suppressed at the request of the
correspondent furnishing the item.
Niebuhr says that the grossest insult that can be offered to a man,
especially a Mahometan, in Arabia, is to spit upon his beard, or to say
“De l’ordure sur ta barbe.”—(“Desc. de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 26.)
Niebuhr’s remarks in regard to the offence taken by the Bedouins at such
an infraction of their etiquette as flatulence are repeated in a vague
and guarded form by Maltebrun (“Univ. Geog.,” vol. ii. part “Arabia”).
In Angola, Africa, the greatest insult is, “Go and eat s—t.”—(Muhongo.)
“Dunghill. A coward. A cock-pit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled
dunghills.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Slang,” London, 1811.)
Tailors who accepted the wages prescribed by law were styled “Dung” by
the “Flints,” who refused them.—(Idem.)
Among the rough games of English sailors was one, “The Galley,” in which
a mopful of excrement was thrust in a landsman’s face.—(Idem.)
In Angola, Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives;
but any license of this kind taken while strangers are in the vicinity
is regarded as a deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” translated by Rev. Mr.
Chatelain.)
In the report of one of the early American explorations to the
Trans-Missouri region occurs the story that the Republican Pawnees,
Nebraska, once (about 1780-90) violated the laws of hospitality by
seizing a calumet-bearer of the Omahas who had entered their village,
and, among other indignities, making him “drink urine mixed with bison
gall.”—(“Long’s Expedition,” Philadelphia, 1823, vol. i. p. 300.)
Bison gall itself sprinkled upon raw liver, just warm from the carcass,
was regarded as a delicacy. The expression “excrement eater” is applied
by the Mandans and others on the Upper Missouri as a term of the vilest
opprobrium, according to Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army (author
of “Hidatsa,” and other ethnological works of authority), whose remarks
are based upon an unusually extended and intelligent experience.
“They gave me the abuse of the Punjabi, ... pelting me with sticks and
cow-dung till I fell down and cried for mercy.”—(“Gemini,” Rudyard
Kipling, in “Soldiers Three,” New York, 1890.)
“May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food; may the
drains of the city be thy drink.”—(“The Chaldean Account of Genesis,”
George Smith, New York, 1880.)
Among the Cheyenne expressions of contempt is to be found one which
recalls the objurgations of the Bedouins; namely, _natsi-viz_, or
“s—t-mouth.”—(Personal notes of September 25, 1878, interview with the
chiefs of the Northern Cheyennes, Ben Clark, interpreter.)
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who has made such prolonged and careful studies of
the manners and myths of the tribes of the Siouan stock, is authority for
the statement that the worst insult that one Ponca can give another is to
say, “You are an eater of dog-dung;” and it is noticeable that the words
of the expression are rarely used in the language of every-day life. He
gives other examples from myths, etc., and supplies a variant of the
story narrated by Captain Long; but as all this is to appear in one of
the Doctor’s coming books, it is omitted from these pages.
The Kamtchatkans say, “May you have one hundred burning lamps in your
podex,” “Eater of fæces with his fish-spawn,” etc.—(Steller, translated
by Bunnemeyer.)
“Stercus.” As a term of abuse.—“Nolo stercus curiæ dici
Glauciam.”—(Cicero, “De Oratoribus,” 3, 41, 164; Andrew’s “Latin
Dictionary,” New York, 1879, article “Stercus.”)
Caracalla put to death those who made water in front of his statues.
“Damnati sunt eo tempore (that is, the end of his wars with the
Germans) qui urinam in eo loco ferrant in quo statuæ aut imagines erant
principis.”—(Ælius Lampridius, “Life of the Emperor Caracalla,” edition
of Frankfort, 1588, p. 186, lines 43 and 44.)
There are some very singular laws of the ancient Burgundians in regard
to abusive words. “Si quis alterum concagatum clamaverit, 120 denariis
mulctetur.”—(Barrington, “Obs. on the Statutes,” London, 1775, p. 315.)
“I’ll pick thy head upon my sword,
And piss in thy very visonomy.”
(“Ram Alley,” Ludowick Barry, 1611, edition of London, 1825.)
“The devil’s dung in thy teeth.”
(“The Honest Whore,” Thomas Dekkar, 1604, edition of London, 1825.)
“Again the coarsest word, _khara_. The allusion is to the vulgar saying,
‘Thou eatest skitel’ (that is, ‘Thou talkest nonsense’). Decent English
writers modify this to ‘Thou eatest dirt;’ and Lord Beaconsfield made it
ridiculous by turning it into ‘eating sand.’”—(“Arabian Nights,” Burton’s
edition, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223.)
Readers of classical history will recall the incident of the outrage
perpetrated by the mob of Tarentum upon the person of the Roman
ambassador Posthumus, 282 B.C. A buffoon in the street threw filth upon
his toga. The ambassador refused to be mollified, and tersely telling
his assailants that many a drop of Tarentine blood would be required to
wash out the stains, took out his departure. A cruel war followed, and
the Tarentines were reduced to the rank of a conquered province.—(See
“History of Rome,” Victor Duruy, English translation, Boston, 1887, vol.
i. p. 462.)
“When the multitude had come to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened
bread, and the Roman cohort stood over the temple, ... one of the
soldiers pulled back his garment, and stooping down after an indecent
manner, turned his posteriors to the Jews, and spake such words as might
be expected upon such a posture.” The narration describes the riot which
followed as a result, and ten thousand people were killed.—(See Josephus,
“Wars of the Jews,” book ii. edition of New York, 1821.)
The dispute between Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Arch-Duke of
Austria, which resulted afterwards in the incarceration of the English
king in a dungeon, had its rise in the great insult of throwing the
Austrian standard down into a privy. Matthew of Paris says distinctly
that Richard himself did this. “Now he, being over well disposed to
the cause of the Norman, waxed wroth with the Duke’s train, and gave
a headstrong, unseemly order for the Duke’s banner to be cast into a
cesspool.”—(See “The Third Crusade and Richard the First,” T. A. Archer,
in “English History from Contemporary Writers,” New York, 1889.)
“_Bigot._ Out, dunghill! Darest thou brave a nobleman?”
(“King John,” iv. 3.)
“_Gloster._ Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?”
(“1 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)
“_York._ Base dunghill villain and mechanical.”
(“2 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)
“‘Khara,’ meaning dung, is the lowest possible insult. ‘Ta-kara’ is the
commonest of insults, used also by modest women. I have heard a mother
use it to her son.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 59, footnote.)
XXXVIII.
MORTUARY CEREMONIES.
A Parsi is defiled by touching a corpse. “And when he is in contact
and does not move it, he is to be washed with bull’s urine and
water.”—(“Shapast la Shayast,” cap. 2.; “Sacred Books of the East,” Max
Müller, editor, Oxford, 1880, pp. 262, 269, 270, 272, 273, 279, 281, 282,
333, 349.)
In the cremation of a Hindu corpse at Bombay, the ashes of the pyre were
sprinkled with water, a cake of cow-dung placed in the centre, and around
it a small stream of cow-urine; upon this were placed plantain-leaves,
rice-cakes, and flowers.—(“Modern India,” Monier Williams, p, 65.)
“They who return from the funeral must touch the stone of Priapus,
a fire, the excrement of a cow, a grain of sesame, and water,—all
symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have
destroyed.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 49.)
The followers of Zoroaster were enjoined to pull a dead body out of the
water. “No sin attaches to him for any bone, hair, grass, flesh, dung,
or blood that may drop back into the water.”—(Fargard VI., Vendidad,
Zendavesta, Darmesteter’s edition; Max Müller’s edition of the “Sacred
Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 70.)
“There dies a man in the depths of the vale; a bird takes flight from
the top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale, and it eats up
the corpse of the dead man there; then up it flies from the depths of
the vale to the top of the mountain; it flies to some one of the trees
there,—of the hard-wooded or the soft-wooded, and upon that tree it
vomits, it deposits dung, it drops pieces from the corpse.... If a man
chop any of that wood for a fire, he is not regarded as defiled because
... Ahura-Mazda answered, ‘There is no sin upon any man for any dead
matter that has been brought by dogs, by birds, by wolves, by winds, or
by flies.’”—(Fargard V., of same work.)
If a dog had died on a piece of ground, the ground had to lie fallow for
a year; at the end of that time, “they shall look on the ground for any
bones, hair, flesh, dung, or blood that may be there.”—(Fargard VI.)
If the clothing of the dead “has not been defiled with seed or sweat
or dirt or vomit, then the worshippers of Mazda shall wash it with
gomez.”—(Fargard VII. Gomez (bull-urine) again alluded to as the great
purifier on pp. 78-80, 104, 117, 118, 122, 123, 128, 182, 183, 212.)
The sacred vessels that had been defiled by the touch of a corpse were to
be cleaned with gomez.—(Idem, pp. 91, 92.)
The most efficacious gomez was that of “an ungelded bull.”—(Idem, p. 212.)
“They shall cover the surface of the grave with ashes or
cow-dung.”—(Fargard VIII.)
“Let the worshippers of Mazda here bring the urine wherewith the
corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard VIII.
See, also, p. 201 of this volume.)
In describing the funerals of the Eskimo, Gilder says: “The closing
ceremony was a most touching one. After ‘Papa’ had returned from the
grave, Armow went out of doors and brought in a piece of frozen something
that it is not polite to specify, further than that the dogs had entirely
done with it, and with it he touched every block of snow on a level with
the beds of the igloo. The article was then taken out of doors and tossed
up in the air, to fall at his feet; and by the manner in which it fell he
could joyfully announce that there was no liability of further deaths in
camp for some time to come.”—(“Schwatka’s Search,” Gilder, p. 234.)
“The Africans have an evil spirit called ‘Abiku,’ who takes up his
abode in the human body.” This spirit is believed to cause the
death of children. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the
dirt-heap.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)
There is also a purification of the soul of the dying by the same
peculiar methods. In Coromandel,[68] the dying man is so placed that his
face will come under the tail of a cow; the tail is lifted, and the cow
excited to void her urine. If the urine fall on the face of the sick man,
the people cry out with joy, considering him to be one of the blessed;
but if the sacred animal be in no humor to gratify their wishes, they are
greatly afflicted.
“The inhabitants of the coast of Coromandel carried those of their sick
who were on the point of death, as a last resource, to the back of a fat
cow, whose tail they twisted to make her urinate; if the cow’s urine
spread over the whole face of the patient, it was a very good sign to the
dirty rascals.”—(Paullini, pp. 80, 81.)
With equal solicitude does the Hottentot medicine-man follow the remains
of his kinsmen to the grave, aspersing with the same sacred liquid
the corpse of the dead and the persons of the mourners who bewail his
fate.[69]
At Hottentot funerals, “two old men, the friends or relations of the
deceased, enter each circle and sparingly dispense their streams upon
each person, so that all may have some; all the company receive their
water with eagerness and veneration. This being done, each steps into
the hut, and taking up a handful of ashes from the hearth, comes out
by the passage made by the corpse, and strews the ashes by little and
little upon the whole company. This, they say, is done to humble their
pride.”—(Kolbein, p. 401.)
“It is a pity that men in a savage state should take delight in doing
that which is nasty, but such is the fact. It is a very common custom for
the tribe, or that portion of it who are related to the one who has died,
to rub themselves with the moisture that comes from the dead friend. They
rub themselves with it until the whole of them have the same smell as
the corpse.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 131.) But in a
footnote he adds that some of the Australians will not touch a dead body
with the naked hand.
In the mortuary ceremonies of the Encounter Bay tribe (South
Australians), “the old women put human excrement on their heads,—the sign
of deepest mourning.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 113.)