Among the peasantry of Ireland there are in use certain prehistoric
arrow-heads, believed by them to be fairy darts. “When an illness is
supposed to be due to the influence of the fairies, ... this ‘fairy dart’
... is put into a tumbler and covered with water, which the patient then
drinks, and if the fairies are responsible for his sickness, he at once
recovers.”—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” Mooney, Amer. Phil. Soc.,
1887.)
And in like manner,—as has already been shown of the sacred character
attaching, among the people of the far East, to water, wine, or milk
which had been poured over the lingam,—the women of France solaced
themselves with the hope that children would come to those who drank
an infusion containing scrapings from the phalli, existing until the
outbreak of the French revolution, at Puy en Velay, in the church of
Saint Foutin, in the shrine of Saint Guerlichon, near Bruges, in the
shrine of Guignolles, near Brest; and in that of an ancient statue of
Priapus, at Antwerp.[86]
XLVIII.
BURLESQUE SURVIVALS.
A new task now presents itself, the examination into burlesque survivals
of rites and usages no longer countenanced as matters of religious
importance.
Religion is not content with being tenacious of its ceremonial; it often
goes so far as to sanctify reversions to usages and modes of thought
which have passed out of the recollection of the people; in doing this,
it is frequently necessary that some explanation be invented, as the
hierophants themselves are generally ignorant of the true reasons for
their conduct; but more ordinarily mankind accepts and complies with
ritualistic precepts without inquiry, and even with a vague belief that
the more archaic a practice may be, the more efficacy it must necessarily
have in securing protection and good fortune.
The Hindu festival of Holi, Huli, or Hulica, familiar to most readers,
has thus been outlined by a recent witness as celebrated in the provinces
near Oudeypore.[87] The proceedings are characterized as saturnalia,
attended with much freedom and excessive drunkenness:
“The importance of the study of popular traditions, though recognized
by men of science, is not yet understood by the general public. It is
evident, however, that the mental tokens which belong to one intellectual
stock, which bear the stamp of successive ages, which connect the
intelligence of our day with all periods of human activity, are worthy
of serious consideration. Much of this time-honored currency is rude
and shapeless, it may be ore scarcely marked by the die; but among the
treasures silver and gold are not wanting. An American superstition
may require for its explanation reference to Teutonic mythology, or
may be directly associated with the philosophy, monuments, and arts of
Hellas.... It is, however, now a recognized principle that higher forms
can only be comprehended by the help of the lower forms out of which
they grew.... The only truly scientific habit of mind is that wide and
generous spirit of modern research which, without disdain and without
indifference, embraces all aspects of human thought, and endeavors in
all to find a whole.”—(Prof. W. W. Newell, in “Journal of American
Folk-Lore,” Jan.-March, 1889.)
“It is not too much to assert, once for all, that meaningless customs
must be survivals; that they had a practical, or at least ceremonial
intention when and where they first arose; but are now fallen into
absurdity from having been carried on in a new state of society, where
their original sense has been discarded.”—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B.
Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. i. p. 85.)
“I believe that no custom which we find among early races was initiated
without some very good reason why, though those who practise it may long
have lost it, and even have been obliged to invent a new one, utterly
different from the original, to explain the rite which they ignorantly
practise.”—(Personal letter from J. W. Kingsley, Esq., M. D., Brome Hall,
Scole, England.)
“The serious business of ancient society may be seen to sink into
the sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger
on in nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old-world life
may be modified into new-world forms, still powerful for good and
evil.”—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B. Tylor, London, 1871, vol. i. p. 15.)
And again: “Religion holds on, with the tenacity of superstition, to all
that has ever been practised.”—(“Custom and Myth,” Andrew Lang, New York,
1885, p. 241.)
A brighter light will be thrown upon future investigations by regarding
folk-lore and folk-usage, especially folk-medicine, as the crystalization
of primordial religious thought and practice.
“It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally
recognized, that, in spite of their fragmentary character, the popular
superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and
most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of
the Aryans. Indeed, the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his
mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this
day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionized
the educated world, have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost
beliefs, he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees
still grew, and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now
stand.
“Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should
either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the
peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled
by reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living
tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of ancient
religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of
thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of
mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of
literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years
of traditional life. But the mass of the people, who do not read books,
remain unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so
it has come about that in Europe, at the present day, the superstitious
beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are
generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the
most ancient literature of the Aryan race.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G.
Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, Preface, viii, ix.)
The people of Rangoon, Siam, observe a peculiar usage at the time
of their New Year. Every man, woman, boy, or girl is armed with a
“squirt-gun,” with which all people on the street are drenched.[88]
Elliott, apparently quoting from Zagoskin (a Russian explorer, _temp._
1843), says that the Alaskans have “entertainments” in the “kashga.”
“It sometimes happens, on these occasions, that lovers of fun sprinkle
the women with oil, or with that fluid which they use in place of soap,
squirted from small bladders concealed about their persons, and such
jokes are never resented.”—(“Our Arctic Province,” Henry W. Elliott, New
York, 1887, p. 392.)
“From the very beginning effigies of the most revolting indecency are set
up in the gates of the town and in the principal thoroughfares.
“Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang,
crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of a bright red vegetable powder.
With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of
dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color. Groups of people
standing at the windows retaliate with the same projectile, or squirt
with _wooden syringes red and yellow streams of water into the streets
below_.”
The Nautch dances reach the acme of voluptuousness, and the accompanying
chants are filled with suggestiveness. The author here quoted says that
Holica was the Indian Venus.
An eminent authority says that “this red powder (_gulàl_) is a sign of
a bad design of an adulterous character. During the holi holidays the
Maharaj throws _gulàl_ on the breasts of female and male devotees, and
directs the current of some water of a yellow color from a syringe upon
the breasts of females.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient
Names,” p. 393.)
This “yellow water” may be a survival of and a refinement upon urine.
The Apaches and Navajoes, close neighbors of the Zuñis, have had until
very recently (and may still celebrate) the dance of the Joshkân, in
which clowns scatter upon the spectators, from bladders wound round their
bodies, water, said to be representative of urine.
Among the Aztecs there was a festival allowing the fullest license to
clowns, armed with bladders filled with red powder or fine pieces of
maguey paper attached by strings to short poles. With these bladders
all persons caught in the streets, especially women and girls, were
mercilessly buffeted.—(Sahagun, vol. ii. in Kingsborough’s “Mexican
Antiquities,” vol. vi. p. 33, and again vol. vii. p. 83.)
His account says that in the seventeenth month, which was called
“Tititl,” and corresponded almost to our winter solstice, the
Mexican year being divided into eighteen months of twenty days each,
beginning with our February, the Aztec populace played a game called
“nechichiquavilo.”
All the men and boys who wished to play this game made little bags or
nets, filled with the pollen of the rush, called “espadaña,” or with
paper cut in fine pieces. These were attached to cords or ribbons half a
yard long, in such a manner that a blow could be struck with them. Others
made these bags like gloves, which they stuffed as above stated, or with
leaves of green maize. No one was allowed, under penalty, to put into
these bags any stones, or anything else which could hurt.
The boys at once began to play this game, in the way of a sham-battle,
hitting each other on the head, or wherever else they could. As the
fun increased the more mischievous of the boys began to beat the young
maidens passing along the street. At times three or four young boys
would attack one girl, and beat her so hard as to weary her and make
her cry. The more prudent of the young girls, in going from point to
point, carried a club with which to defend themselves. Some of the
boys concealed the bag, and when any old women carelessly approached
they would suddenly begin to beat them, crying out, “Chichiquatzinte
mantze!”—which means, “Our mother, this is the bag of the game!”[89]
The following is Torquemada’s description:—
“In the festival in honor of the goddess Yamatecuhtli, or “principal old
woman,” in the seventeenth month of the Mexican calendar, all the people
of the city made bags after the manner of purses, and stuffed them full
of hay and straw and other things, which would have no weight and do no
harm, and, attaching them to a cord, carried them hidden under their
cloaks. With these bags they buffeted all the women they met on the
street.”[90]—(Torquemada, “Monarchia Indiana,” lib. x. cap. 29.)
He recognizes the similarity between this and the blind-man’s-buff games
of other countries.
A contributor to “Asiatic Researches” calls this powder of the Huli
festival a “purple powder,” and claims that the idea is to represent the
return of spring, which the Romans call “purple.”[91]
In some parts of North America the 1st of April is observed like Saint
Valentine’s Day, with this difference, that the boys are allowed
to chastise the girls, if they think fit, either with words or
blows.—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 141, article “April
Fool’s Day.”)
A FEW REMARKS UPON THE USE OF BLADDERS IN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.
Whether or not primitive man, excited by his insatiate, omnivorous
appetite for gods, under the impulses of which he deified winds, waters,
trees, and stones, and looked with a veneration not far removed from
devotion itself, upon the holy graals, chalices, and other paraphernalia
of his ritual, should have associated a mysterious power with the
bladders he employed to hold his urine and ordure is a question which no
one can to-day determine.
For our own cow-worshipping Aryan ancestry bladders were a natural means
of transporting liquids, exactly as they remain among the Apaches and
other Indian tribes of America.
Introduced of necessity into religious ceremonial, they would, with the
advance of years, and in spite of the improvement which might be brought
about in the domestic comfort of the people at large, gain a certain
“medicine” value, strictly parallel to that which we know has been gained
by the gourd-rattle, which, in not a few cases, has been consulted as an
oracle, and adored as a god.[92]
The author has observed a number of instances of the use by Sioux,
Apache, and other Indians, of bladders tied in the hair as an “ornament”
long after traders had placed within reach glass beads, feathers, and
other means of decoration. The Hottentots kept drinking-water in “the
intestines of animals.”—(Thurnberg, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 38, 73,
141.)
Of the Patagonians we are informed that “the only vessels they use for
carrying water are bladders.”—(“Adventure and Beagle,” vol. i. p. 93.)
We are informed that the Shamans of Alaska throw into the sea inflated
bladders and watch them sink, as a means of divination.—(“Our Arctic
Province,” Elliott, p. 393.)
In some parts of rural England there were kept up even to our own day
certain feasts or ceremonies, connected with the ploughing of the land.
These “fool-plough” days varied in different sections from early in
January to Shrove Tuesday. They partook of the nature of a frolic, the
plough being driven by a clown armed with a bladder, with which he urged
his team. There were certain peculiarities connected with this custom
indicative of a Pagan origin. The clown was attired as a woman, there
was music, the plough was drawn three times round a fire, the blacksmith
received “sharping corn” for sharpening the plough-irons, and the whole
ended with feasting, in which the cock figured as one of the articles
of food. All this suggested to the writer in Brand a relationship with
the “Compitalia” of the Romans and “the three sacred ploughings” of the
Athenians; also the sacred ceremonial ploughing of the Chinese.—(Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. pp. 505 _et seq._, article “Fool-Ploughs.”)
Bruce describes the commander-in-chief of the Abyssinian army on an
expedition against the Gallas while in the act of making his toilet. “A
man was then finishing his head-dress by plaiting it with some of the
long and small guts of an ox, which I did not perceive had ever been
cleaned.”—(Bruce, “Nile,” vol. iv. p. 212.)
The Gallas of Abyssinia, upon slaughtering an ox, “hang the entrails
round their necks, or interweave them with their hair.”—(Maltebrun, “Un.
Geography,” Boston, 1847, vol. ii. p. 47, article “Abyssinia.”)
Bruce describes a chief of the Gallas as having “his long hair plaited
and interwoven with the bowels of oxen, and so knotted and twisted
together as to render it impossible to distinguish the hair from the
bowels.... He had likewise a wreath of guts hung about his neck, and
several rounds of the same about his middle.”—(“Nile,” vol. iv. p. 560.)
“Their favorite ornament is composed of the entrails of their oxen,
which, without superfluous care in cleansing them, are plaited in
the hair and tied as girdles round the waist.”—(“Encyc. of Geog.,”
Philadelphia, 1855, vol. ii. p. 588, article “Abyssinia.”)
“A Norwegian witch has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a bag in
which she had shut up a wind. Ulysses received the winds in a leather bag
from Æolus, king of the winds.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p.
27.)
An examination of the examples just adduced, as well as of those
introduced under “Cures by Transplantation,” would seem to show that
bladders were used in preference to material just as available and
convenient, and that when a substitution was made it was always by a
horn or a glass, clear as the entrail which it no doubt was supposed to
resemble. The god Crepitus, as we have shown, was symbolized as a swollen
paunch. The clowns of the circuses of the present day are armed with
bladders; but why no antiquarian has yet arisen to explain to us.
Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 261 _et seq._, article “Fools”)
contains no information on this point.
The use of the bladder is to be noted in the festivals of the Inuits.
“Après un superbe vacarme, ils suspendent à des cordes une centaine
des vessies, prises à des animaux tous tués à coups de flèche.”—(“Les
Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 110, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)
The explanation given by Réclus is as follows: “Faut-il expliquer que
les vessies, échauffées par la flamme, symbolisent les souffles du
printemps?... Qu’elles symbolisent l’esprit de vie qui entre dans les
narines?”—(Idem.)
It may be enough to point out the care with which these bladders must be
selected; not every bladder will do,—only those from animals killed with
arrows.
XLIX.
THE WORSHIP OF COCKS AND HENS.
Only such matter has been admitted into this volume as could _prima
facie_ be considered as having the right of entry; the greatest care has
been taken to avoid distortion or mutilation of authorities, and much has
been excluded that might have been presented without running a risk of
being accused of unfairness.
For example, as old an authority as John de Laet calls attention to
the great prevalence of intoxication and debauchery among the Indians
of Vextipa, near Mexico, who on feast days had the ancient custom of
becoming drunk as beasts and committing enormous excesses.[93] And in
like manner the first missionaries in Canada complained of the brutal
orgies of the natives, in which, under cover of darkness and the cloak
of their superstitions, deeds were committed which the pen dared not
describe. Ample reference to these has been preserved in the Jesuit
relations, and in the exact and interesting American treatises dependent
so largely upon them.[94] It is more likely, however, that the Huron
and Algonkin saturnalia were, in general terms, scenes of promiscuous
licentiousness.
Only two authorities can be cited, Fathers Le Jeune and Sagard, who
instance the use of human urine or ordure under spiritual direction; all
others leave the inference that the bacchanalia of which they were the
reluctant and disgusted observers had no other peculiarity than that of
unrestrained sexual intercourse.
It would be hard to find a better example of the tenacity of superstition
than that which the subjoined extract from the “Evening Star,” of
Washington, D. C., shows as existing under our own noses.
“A CURIOUS HUNGARIAN SUPERSTITION.
“A correspondent of the ‘Philadelphia Press,’ at Pottsville,
Pa., tells of a curious scene he witnessed in the Hungarian
quarter. A number of children were running round barefooted,
beating tin pans and boxes. In the midst of the circle they
were describing was a live baby buried up to the neck in the
cold ground with a shawl wound round its throat for protection.
It was learned that the object of putting the baby in this
peculiar position was to cure it of a skin disease, the Huns
having the same faith in the curative properties of mother
earth that is characteristic of many savage tribes.
“While the child was thus experiencing the medicinal virtues of
the earth packed round its body, the boys beat upon the pans
in order to frighten away the evil spirit that had caused the
disease.”
A retrospective glance at the long list of excrementitious remedies
collected shows that both the disease to be treated and the remedy by
which the cure was to be effected were regarded as entirely beyond the
domain of human science. Even in these cases, where medicines, pure and
simple, as we should now recognize them, were to be administered, there
was a complication of mysterious mummery and ceremony, the first vestige
of the former power of the medicine-man. Thus felons could be treated by
tracing a circle round them with a dead man’s bone; but the circle, we
should remember, was pre-eminently the line of magic.[95]
Teeth were worn as amulets, or given as medicine in disease, but it was
essential that they should be drawn from the jaw before the burial of the
body; or that they should be the first shed by a child; that they should
be those of a man who had died a violent death; or that they should be
caught before they touched the ground.
If they were not to be used immediately, they were not to be carried
about, but were to be buried in the bark of a tree.
The skull of a man was a remedy for the diseases of men only; that of a
woman, for those of the female sex.
There were combinations of numbers; no medicine was to be administered
an even number of times; of color[96] based upon the doctrine of
signatures which taught among other things, that red medicines cured red
diseases, and saffron-tinted ones, those of the jaundice type. There
were iron-clad formulæ for gathering medicinal plants in which the hour
of the day, the season of the year, the age of the moon, the position of
the planets, the hand to be used in plucking, the silence to be observed,
were all sedulously inculcated and enjoined.
There were charms and counter-charms, such as the Dea-soil and the
Badershin of the Druids, in which the same magical incantation, used in
different manners, i. e. going with or against the sun, induced contrary
results.
Traces of all these superstitious ideas are to be looked for in[97]
close association with the administration of excrementitious remedial
agents, or the incantations in which such agents appear.
The method of curing incontinence of urine by micturating into a dog
kennel probably belongs to the class of the Druidic Badershin or
Widershin, to which also we might be able to refer, did we know more
about it, the very ancient and widely-disseminated charact or charm,
“Diabolus effodiat,” etc.
Thus, in making use of lion-dung, it was recommended that it should be
that of a lioness which had brought forth young; and, to continue the
subject, we find the dung of black cows, the dung of bulls and cows
“collected in the month of May,” “water of cow-dung collected in May and
June,” etc., specially enjoined in the compounding of prescriptions.
Questions of the deepest interest spring up like weeds as we re-examine
our text. Of these, it is impossible to enumerate all, or to elaborate
these remarks into a disquisition upon religio-medical botany; one or
two, however, will be named. Why was hyoscyamus (henbane) added to human
ordure and human urine for the frustration of witchcraft? Was it because
this plant was able to kill the chicken-god sacred to so many European
peoples, and still to be detected upon the spires of our churches? Was
the chicken-god, or to adopt modern language, was the god of whom the
chicken was the symbol, friendly to witches? Being one of the principal
deities of a supplanted cultus, he must necessarily have been the
power, or one of the powers, invoked by the witches who were the secret
adherents of the old order of things spiritual.
Again, we read that in treating the bewitched, their limbs were bathed
in their own urine; to which, Frommann says, some added assafœtida and
others garlic; but assafœtida was called “merde du Diable.” (“Bib. Scat.”
p. 128.) Was this fetid gum sacred to some god, and was this dung-god,
or were dung-gods in general, the powers to be invoked for rendering
nugatory the assaults of witches?
In our quotations we have shown that, in the opinion of old authors
nothing equalled human ordure for baffling witches, and Luther has been
cited as expressing the belief that Satan fled in dismay from human
flatulence.
This belief has been transplanted to American soil with the German
immigrants settled in the State of Pennsylvania.