with his own urine; some recommended an addition of garlic or
assafœtida.—(Frommann, “Tract. de Fascinat.,” pp. 961, 962.)
“Jorden, in his curious treatise, ‘Of the Suffocation of the Mother,’
1603, p. 24, says: ‘Another policie Marcellus Donatus tells us of, which
a physitian used toward the Countesse of Mantua, who, being in that
disease which we call melancholia hypochondriaca, did verily believe
that she was bewitched, and was cured by conveying of nayles, needles,
feathers, and such like things, into her close-stool when she took
physicke, making her believe that they came out of her bodie.’”—(Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 13, article “Sorcerers.”)
Schurig prescribed hen and dove dung for the cure of the
bewitched.—(“Chylologia,” p. 817.)
Beckherius highly extolled human ordure for the same purpose.—(“Med.
Microcosmus,” p. 113.)
“The catamenial blood of women was looked upon as efficacious in chasing
away demons.”—(Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 154, quoting Sinistrari.)
In Scotland, “they put a small quantity of salt into the first milk of
a cow, after calving, that is given to any person to drink. This is
done with a view to prevent skaith (harm), if it should happen that
the person is not canny.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 165, art.
“Salt-Falling.” Compare the foregoing with what Sir Samuel Baker tells us
about African superstitions on the same subject.)
“On line 160, Reinerstein’s and Retz’s edition of Lucian’s ‘Dea Syra,’
4vo, vol. iii. p. 654, you will find human dung mentioned as a medicine
or charm, and urine some lines lower.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W.
Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11,
1888.)
One of the most curious features about Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology”
(Stallybrass’ translation, London, 1882), is the absence of any mention
of the use of human or animal ordure or urine in any manner, either
medicinally or religiously, or to baffle witchcraft. He may have issued a
supplement, in which all this may have been corrected; but if he did not,
then his work is most singularly defective.
Mr. Sylvester Baxter states that in a recent conversation with Mr. Frank
H. Cushing, near Tempe, Arizona, he learned that in Mr. Cushing’s youth,
people in Central and Western New York were still using charms against
witchcraft, and that Mr. Cushing was personally acquainted with a family
which had prepared a decoction, one of whose ingredients was human urine;
this as a preventive of witchcraft. The locality referred to was about
eighteen miles from Rochester, N. Y.
“Spitting into recently voided urine prevents one from getting ‘warrle’
on his eyes.” (Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.) This remedy goes
back to Pliny.
“To unbewitch the bewitched, you must spit in the pot where you have made
water.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 263, art. “Saliva,” quoting
from Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie.”)
“Several fetid and stinking matters, such as old urine, are excellent
means for keeping away all kinds of evil-intentioned spirits and
ghosts.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Edinburgh, 1875,
pp. 50, 452.)
“The Manxmen still place a vessel full of water outside their doors at
night, to enable the fairies (who, they say, were the first inhabitants
of their island,) to wash themselves, and prevent them from doing
harm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 494, art. “Fairy Mythology.”)
It is certainly singular to find here a trace of the custom noted as
existing among the Laplanders and the people of Siberia, who placed tubs
of urine for the same purpose, urine being used in ordinary ablutions.
In England, there was a superstition that the woman who made water upon
nettles would be “peevish for a whole day.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol.
iii. p. 359, art. “Divination by Flowers.”)
Fosbroke (“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii.) says that this proverb
is ancient. “Nettles were in ancient times regarded as an aphrodisiac.”
Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 795) repeats the story to the effect that
the Laplanders calked the inner seams of their ships with the ordure
of virgins to increase their speed. The Laplanders, when any of their
reindeer die of disease, abandon their camp, being careful “to burn all
the excrement of the animal before they depart.”—(Leem’s “Account of
Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 484. See previous citations
from Sauer in regard to the Yakuts of Siberia.)
The story was current in California, about twenty years since, that the
immigrants to that state from Missouri and Arkansas, in the gold-mining
days, had the custom of depositing their evacuations, before starting
on the march of the day, in the camp-fires of the preceding night.
Nothing was learned of the meaning, if any, of the custom. Nursing
women sprinkled a few drops of their milk on the burning coals in the
fireplace, to ensure an abundant flow.—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.)
The author has been fortunate in obtaining a copy of the address of Mr.
James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., upon the
“Medical Mythology of Ireland.”
This interesting and extremely valuable contribution, which can be found
in the “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society for 1887,”
leaves no uncertainty in regard to the mystic powers ascribed by the
Celtic peasantry to both urine and ordure. Urine and chicken-dung are
shown to be potent in frustrating the mischief of fairies; “fire, iron,
and dung” are spoken of as the “three great safeguards against the
influence of fairies and the infernal spirits.” Dung is carried about the
person, as part of the contents of amulets; and children suffering from
convulsions are, as a last resort, bathed from head to foot in urine, to
rescue them from the clutches of their fairy persecutors. See also p.
377, in regard to the “dwarves,” who, in England, seem to be the same as
fairies.
Du Chaillu, in his “Land of the Midnight Sun,” makes no reference to the
use, in any manner, by the inhabitants of that region, of excrementitious
materials for any purposes. His stay was of such an extremely short
duration, that his observations cannot be compared with those made by
Leems and others, from whom information has already been extracted.
A curious survival, in France, of the Parsi custom of the “Nirang” is
demonstrated in the May number of “Mélusine,” Paris, 1888, entitled “Le
Nirang des Parsis, en Basse Bretagne.”
“J’ai passé mon enfance, jusqu’à l’âge de quatorze ans, dans un vieux
manoir breton, du nom de Keramborgne, dans la commune de Plouarte,
arrondissement de Lannion. Le manoir paternel était bien connu des
malheureux et des mendiants errants ... qui venaient demander le vivre
et le couvert pour la nuit.... Parmi les pauvres errants qui étaient les
hôtes les plus assidus de Keramborgne ... se trouvait une vieille femme
nommée Gillette Kerlohiou, qui connaissait toutes les nouvelles du pays
... et, de plus, avait la réputation d’être quelque peu sorcière, et de
guérir certaines maladies par des oraisons et des herbes dont elle seule
avait le secret.... Un matin que Gillette avait passé la nuit à l’étable
... elle marmottait des prières.... Une vache s’étant mise à uriner,
la vieille mendiante se précipita vers elle, reçut de l’urine dans le
creux de sa main et s’en frotta la figure à plusieurs reprises.... Ce
que voyant le vacher, il la traita de salope et de vieille folle. Mais
Gillette lui dit, sans s’émouvoir: ‘Rien n’est meilleur, mon fils, que
de se laver la figure, le matin, en se levant, avec de l’urine de la
vache, et même avec sa propre urine si l’on ne peut se procurer de celle
de vache. Quand vous avez fait cette ablution, le matin, vous êtes, pour
toute la journée, à l’abri des embûches et des méchancetés du diable, car
vous devenez invisible pour lui.’”
The writer of the above, M. F.-M. Luzel, learned from the other peasants
and beggars standing about that the belief expressed by the old woman was
fully concurred in by her comrades.
“Nos paysannes de France se lavaient les mains dans leur urine ou dans
celle de leurs maris, ou de leurs enfants, pour détourner les maléfices
ou en empêcher l’effet.”—(Réclus, “Les Primitifs,” p. 98.)
Father Le Jeune must have been on the track of something corresponding to
an ur-orgy among the Hurons when he learned that the devil imposed upon
the sick, in dreams, the duty of wallowing in ordure if they hoped for
restoration to health.[81]
This penitential wallowing was retained by nations of a high order of
advancement, the ordure of primitive times being generally superseded by
clay and other less filthy matter.
“Let it suffice to display the points where Greek found itself in harmony
with Australian and American and African practice.... 3. The habit of
daubing persons about to be initiated with clay, ... or anything else
that is sordid, and of washing this off, apparently by way of showing
that old guilt is removed, and a new life entered upon.”—(“Myth, Ritual,
and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 282.)
“Plutarch, in his essay on superstition, represents the guilty man who
would be purified actually rolling in clay.”—(Idem, p. 286.)
The following is described as the Abyssinian method of exorcising a
woman: The exorcist “lays an amulet on the patient’s heaving bosom, makes
her smell of some vile compound, and the moment her madness is somewhat
abated begins a dialogue with the Bouda (demon), who answers in a woman’s
voice. The devil is invited to come out in the name of all the saints;
but a threat to treat him with some red-hot coals is usually more
potent, and after he has promised to obey, he seeks to delay his exit
by asking for something to eat. _Filth and dirt_ are mixed and hidden
under a bush, when the woman crawls to the sickening repast and gulps it
down with avidity.”—(From an article entitled “Abyssinian Women,” in the
“Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., October 17, 1885.)
“A Pretty Charme or Conclusion for one Possessed.... The possessed body
must go upon his or her knees to church, ... and so must creep without
going out of the way, being the common highway, in that sort how foul and
dirty soever the same may be, or whatsoever lie in the way, not shunning
anything whatsoever, untill he come to the church, where he must heare
masse devoutly.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 178.)
By the Irish peasantry urine was sprinkled upon sick children.[82]
American boys urinate upon their legs to prevent cramp while swimming.
In Stirling, Scotland, “a certain quantity of cow-dung is forced into
the mouth of a calf immediately after it is calved, or at least before
it has received any meat; owing to this, the vulgar believe that witches
and fairies can have no power ever after to injure the calf.”—(Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 257, article “Rural Charms.”)
Frommann gives a preparation of twenty-five ingredients for freeing
infants from witchcraft (fascinatio); but neither human nor animal egestæ
are mentioned.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 449, 450.)
Cox, in his history of Ireland, gives a description of the trial of Lady
Alice Kettle, of Ossory, charged with being a witch, and with sacrificing
to a familiar spirit at night, at cross-roads, nine red cocks and nine
peacock’s eyes, and with sweeping the streets of Kilkenny, “raking all
the filth towards the doors of her son, William Outlaw, murmuring and
muttering secretly with herself these words:—
“‘To the House of William, my son,
Hie all the Wealth of Kilkenny town.’”
—(“History of Ireland,” London, 1639, vol. i. p. 102. The date of the
above was about 1325.)
This story is quoted by Vallencey, “Collect. de Rebus Hibernicis,”
Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 369, and by Henry C. Lea, “History of the
Inquisition,” New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 457; it is originally to be
found in Camden.
In the Island of Guernsey, within the present generation, “John Lane,
of Anneville, Lane Parish,” has been tried on the charge of “having
practised necromancy,” and “induced many persons in the country parishes
to believe that they were bewitched,” and that he could drive away the
devil and other bad spirits “by boiling herbs to produce a certain
perfume not at all grateful to the olfactory nerves of demons, ... and
the sprinkling of celestial water.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol.
iii. p. 66, article “Sorcerers.”)
In the valuable compilation of superstitious practices interdicted by
Roman Catholic councils Thiers includes the persons who bathe their hands
with urine in the morning to avert witchcraft or nullify its effect. He
says, too, that Saint Lucy was reputed to be a witch, for which reason
the Roman Judge, Paschasius, at her trial sprinkled her with urine.[83]
See the extract just quoted from “Mélusine.”
The Romans had a feast to the mother of all the gods, Berecinthia, in
which the matrons took their idol and sprinkled it with their urine.[84]
Berecinthia was one of the names under which Cybele or Rhea, the primal
earth goddess, was worshipped by the Romans and by many nations in the
East. Her priests, the Galli, emasculated themselves in orgies whose
frenzy was of the same general type as the Omophagi of the Greeks,
previously described.
The emasculation of the priests of Cybele was performed with a piece of
Samian pottery.—(See footnote to Rev. Lewis Evans’ translation of the
Satires of Lucilius, lib. vii., edition of New York, 1860.)
The priests of Cybele were by some supposed to have received the name of
Galli from the River Gallus, “near which these priests inflicted upon
themselves the punishment we are speaking of.... The effect of the water
of that river was to throw them into fits of enthusiasm,—‘qui bibit, inde
furit,’ as Ovid has it.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation,
London, 1740, vol. ii. p. 563.)
“Here they set down their litters at night and bedew the very image of
the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses
their abominations.”—(Juvenal, Sixth Satire, describing the rites of Bona
Dea, translated by Rev. Lewis Evans, M.A., Wadhams College, Oxford, New
York, 1860.)
Father Baudin speaks of the secret society called the “Ogbuni:” “From
what I have been able to learn, this society is simply an institution
similar to the secret societies of the pagan people of ancient times,
where the members were initiated into the infamous mysteries of the great
goddess.” (Negroes of Guinea.)—(“Fetichism and Fetich-worshippers,”
Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 64.)
The Eskimo living near Point Barrow have a yearly ceremony for driving
out an evil spirit which they call Tuna. Among the ceremonies incident to
the occasion is this: One of the performers “brought a vessel of urine
and flung it on the fire.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 164,
quoting “Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow,”
Washington, 1885, p. 42.)
It is strange to encounter in races so diverse apparently as the Greeks
and the Hottentots the same rites of emasculation and urine sprinkling.
The sect of the “Skoptsi” or the “Eunuchs,” in Russia, “base their
peculiar tenets on Christ’s saying, ‘There are some eunuchs which were
born so from their mother’s womb, and there are some eunuchs which were
made eunuchs of men, and there be eunuchs which have made themselves
eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it
let him receive it’ (Matt. xix. 12).”—(Heard, “Russian Creed and Russian
Dissent,” p. 265.)
“This heresy, which is the most modern of all, probably owes its origin
to influences from the East slowly filtering through the lower ranks of
the population.”—(Idem, p. 267.)
Reginald Scot tells the story of a quack who preyed upon the fears of
patients suffering from tympanitis, telling them they had vipers in their
bellies, which vipers he would try to smuggle into the patient’s “ordure
or excrement, after his purgations.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 198.)
Schurig relates that the countrywomen in Germany, if after milking their
cows for a long time they were unable to bring the proper quantity of
butter, suspected that they were under the spell of a witch; to undo this
spell it was only necessary to mix some fresh milk with human ordure and
throw the mixture down the privy; or human ordure was applied to the
teats of the cows, much as Sir Samuel Baker has shown the Africans will
do in our day. “Quippe quæ, siquando in conficiendo butyro, per tempus
frustra laborarunt, suspicione veneficii cujusdam seductæ lac vaccinum
recens emulsum stercori humano commixtum cloacæ simul infundunt, atque
sic illico a Veneficio liberantur.... Si ferrum ignitum una stercore
humano lacte vaccino consperso inseras, veneficæ pustulas inducet....
Contra magicam lactis vaccarum ablationem, ipsarum ubera stercore humano
aliquamdiu inungi solent.” And he ends his paragraph by quoting the
dictum of Johannis Michaelis, “Sine omni fascinatione et superstitione
proprio stercore efficere possit.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 788, 789,
par. 62.)
Compare with the information derived from Paullini.
The above practice seems to have been transplanted to Pennsylvania, with
its more objectionable features omitted.
“The housewife sometimes finds difficulty in butter-making, the spell
being believed to be the work of a witch.... The remedy was to plunge a
red-hot poker into the contents of the churn, when the spell was broken,
and the butter immediately began to form.”—(“Folk-Lore of the Penn’a
Germans.”)—(Hoffman, in “Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore,” 1889.)
From all this it would appear plausible to assume that the “ripening of
cheese” in human urine was originally induced by a desire to avert the
evils of witchcraft. Refer also to the notes from Sir Samuel Baker.
In “South Mountain Magic,” Mrs. M. V. Dahlgren, Boston, Mass., 1882,
may be found references to the bewitching of milk and cream, and to the
remedy employed of putting in hot stones or “a wedge of hot iron” (pp.
165-167). In this partial “survival,” we see the disappearance of the
more objectionable features of the practices of the old country. Mrs.
Dahlgren’s book treats of the superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans
living close to the Maryland border.
“The urine casters, a set of quacks almost within our own recollection,
had a peculiar jargon, which it is not necessary to attend to.”—(“Medical
Dictionary,” Bartholomew Parr, M. D., Philadelphia, Penn’a, 1819, art.
“Urine.”)
When cattle had been killed by witchcraft, Reginald Scot gave a long
formula for detecting the culprit; among other things, the farmer was
directed to “traile the bowels of the beast unto your house ... into the
kitchen, and there make a fire, and set ouer the same a grediron, and
thereupon lay the inwards or bowels, and as they wax hot, so shall the
witches’ entrails be molested with extreme heat and pain.”—(“Discoverie,”
p. 198. It should be observed that there are no directions about
“cleaning” the bowels of the animal.)
Among the modes of detecting witches in England, were “by shaving off
every hair of the witch’s body. They were also detected by putting
hair, parings of the nails, and urine of any person bewitched into a
stone bottle, and hanging it up in the chimney.”—(Cotta, in his “Short
Discovery of the Unobserved Dangers,” p. 54, speaks of “the burning of
the dung or urine of such as are bewitched.”) In “A Pleasant Grove of New
Fancies,” by H. R. 8vo, London, 1857, p. 76, we have:—
“A charm to bring in the witch,
To house the hag you must do this:
Commix with meal, a little p—
Of him bewitched; then forthwith make
A little wafer or a cake;
And this rarely baked, will bring
The old hag in; no surer thing.”
Among other methods given for baffling witches and making their evil
deeds turn upon themselves, we find: “taking some of the thatch from over
the door; or a tyle, if the house be tyled ... sprinkle it over with the
patient’s water.... Put salt into the patient’s water and dash it upon
the red hot tyle.” Another: heat a horse-shoe red hot and “quench him
in the patient’s urine.... Having the patient’s urine, set it over the
fire.... Put into it three horse-nails and a little salt.... Or, heat a
horse-shoe red hot” and “quench him several times in the urine.” Still
another: “stop the urine of the patient close up in a bottle, and put
into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a little white salt, keeping
the urine always warm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. pp. 170 _et seq._,
art. “Sorcery and Witchcraft.”)
“To ascertain if one be bewitched, take his urine and boil it in a
new, unused pot; if it foam up, he is not bewitched; if not, it is
uncertain. Or, take clean ashes, put them in a new pot, let the patient
urinate thereon. Tie up the pot, and let it stand in the sun; then
break the ashes apart; if the person be bewitched, hairs will be found
therein.”—(Paullini, pp. 260, 261.)
“Neither can I belieue (I speak it with reuerence unto graue judgments)
that ... the burning of the dung or vrine of such as are bewitched,
or floating bodies aboue the water, or the like, are any trial of a
witch.”—(“A Short Discouerie of the Unobserued Dangers of Seuerall sorts
of Ignorant and Vnconsiderate Practisers of Physicke in England,” John
Cotta, London, 1612, p. 54.)
Beckherius inclined to believe that human teeth, taken medicinally,
would break down witchcraft: “Contra maleficia et veneficia prodesse
scribit.”—(“Med. Microcosmus,” p. 265.)
“On New Year’s Day they (the Highlanders) burn juniper before their
cattle, and on the first Monday in every quarter, sprinkle them with
urine.”—(“Pennant’s Tour in Scotland,” in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 90.)
“Les rustres slaves secouaient sur leur bétail des herbes de la
Saint Jean, bouillies dans de l’urine pour le préserver des mauvais
sorts.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 98.)
We should not forget that from the earliest recorded times the cedar and
juniper have been devoted to sacred offices. “The god of the cedar, to
which tree was ascribed a peculiar power to avert fatal influences and
sorcery.” (This, among the Accadians, the earliest known inhabitants of
Mesopotamia.)—(See “Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 178.)
From a very early date, urine seems to have been symbolized or superseded
by holy water, salt and water, “celestial water,” “fore-spoken water,”
juniper water, or wine or water, according to circumstances. “For lung
disorders in cattle ... take fennel and hassock, etc.... make five
crosses of hassuck-grass, set them on four sides of the cattle, and one
in the middle; sing about the cattle Benedicam, etc.... Sprinkle holy
water upon them, burn about them incense.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii.
p. 57; the same remedy for diseased sheep, idem, p. 57.)
“If a horse or other beast be shot (elf-shot) take seed of dock and
Scotch wax, let a mass priest sing twelve masses over them, and put holy
water on the horse.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 47; again, vol. iii. p. 157.)
“When a contagious disease enters among cattle, the fire is extinguished
in some villages round; then they force fire with a wheel, or by
rubbing a piece of dry wood upon another, and therewith burn juniper
in the stalls of the cattle that the smoke may purify the air about
them; they likewise boil juniper in water which they sprinkle upon the
cattle.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 286, art. “Physical Charms,”
quoting Shaw’s “History of the Province of Moray in Scotland.” Brand
thinks that “this is, no doubt, a Druid custom.”)
Scot, in his “Discoverie” (p. 157), says: “Men are preserved from
witchcraft by sprinkling of holy water,” etc. (Idem, vol. i. p. 19, art.
“Sorcery.”) “For the devils are observed to have delicate nostrils,
abominating and flying some kind of stinks; witness the flight of the
evil spirit into the remote parts of Egypt, driven by the smell of the
fish’s liver, burnt by Tobit.” Conjurors are reported as always careful
to “first exorcise the wine and water which they sprinkle on their
circle.”—(Idem, vol. iii. pp. 55, 57, art. “Sorcery.”)