vile-smelling herbs, which he was directed to burn in his house so as to
drive out the evil and remove the visitor” (i. e. the spirit which was
troubling the dupe).—(“Folk-Med. of the Penn’a Germans,” in Trans. Amer.
Phil. Soc. 1889.)
A marked peculiarity of the list of animals is the absence of those
belonging to the fauna of the New World; there is no reference to the
excrement of the turkey, a bird unknown to the nations migrating into
Europe; but there are to be found the names of nearly all the birds and
beasts known to Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic, or Teutonic races, with,
however, some notable exceptions; there is no mention of the excreta of
the bear, the swan, the wren, the parrot, and a few others; the complete
list contained in this work is repeated for convenience: Hare, camel,
goat, wild goat, bull, cow and calf, wolf, hen, chickens and cock, boar,
wild and tame, horse, ass, hippopotamus, lynx, badger, cuckoo, swallow,
cat, hawk, mouse, peacock, pigeon, domestic, wood-pigeon, turtle dove,
raven, sparrow, hedge-hog, dog, ring-dove, mule, weasel, stork, vulture,
crocodile, starling, eagle, owl, elephant, goose, lizard, rat, duck, kid,
chameleon, quail, kite, rabbit, deer, magpie, crow, ape, hyena, reindeer,
fox, lion, leopard.
A closer examination will discover that the ordure and urine so
prescribed were not to be taken indiscriminately from each and every
animal, but that each was assigned as a remedy appropriate for some
special physical disturbance.
Unfortunately, modern knowledge of the medical lore, of the botanical,
mineralogical, and chemical attainments and hagiology of the ancients
is not so thorough that we can venture, with the positiveness warranted
by the suspicion to which a close study of this subject gives rise, to
assert that the dung or urine of a given animal was most suitable to
palliate the pangs of the disease traceable to the offended dignity
of the deity of which the particular animal was the representative or
symbol; but it is a fact deserving of scrutiny that such an association
is unmistakably indicated in a number of cases.
Pliny says that goat-dung could be applied with benefit to ulcers upon
the generative organs. Was not the goat sacred to Pan (i. e., was not Pan
himself, in primitive days, the deified goat)? And was not Pan the god
to whose care the generative organs were, under certain circumstances,
confided?
When the feet of travellers became blistered, they were bathed with
the urine of asses. Was the ass, the burden-bearer, at any time, or in
any place under the domination of the Romans, regarded as the god of
travellers? Fosbroke says, “An ass carried the utensils and statues in
the sacrifices of Cybele and at the birth of Bacchus, the god newly
born, but he was only sacrificed to Mars or Priapus.”—(“Encyclopædia of
Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 1009.)
Pliny also prescribed asses’ dung for uterine troubles,—a clear
recognition of the animal’s priapic association.
Hippopotamus-dung was given as a remedy for fever and ague. This monster
pachyderm lives in swamps, which are the hotbeds of malaria. By a
mistaken analogy, the animal would have been credited with the origin of
the disease always to be dreaded by intruders upon its lair.
Without desiring to enter into unnecessary controversy upon the meaning
of terms, it would seem to be perfectly reasonable to assert that the
majority of the deities of paganism had been zoömorphic before man’s
increasing intellectuality anthropomorphized them, and relegated the
animal first to the subordinate position of being the head or limbs of
the god, and then to the still more ancillary one of being simply the
companion or symbol.
To consider an animal a god, the messenger, attendant, companion, or
representative of that god; to offer it up as the most delectable
sacrifice to that deity, and afterwards restrict the oblation to a part
only of the animal, such as its horns, hoofs, excreta,—are all links in
the same psycho-religious chain of reasoning.
Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen shrewdly observes, “There seems to be the best of
reason for believing that, to seek the origin of the popular delusion
concerning the curative properties of certain animal excreta, we must
study the mythology of our long-ago Aryan ancestors.” And again: “It has
often happened that substances, as well as ceremonies, which originally
had a religious signification, in later ages degenerated into fancied
cures for diseases; so it is more than probable that the employment of
animal excreta as remedies among the less intelligent classes of Europe,
in both earlier and later times, as well as in our own newest offshoot
from the Indo-European stem, is a survival of early Aryan religious
observance.”—(“Animal and Plant Lore,” in Popular Science Monthly, New
York, September, 1888.)
“Car, dans la conception vraiment orthodoxe du sacrifice, l’hostie,
qu’elle soit homme, femme ou vierge, agneau ou génisse, coq ou colombe,
représente la divinité elle-même.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 366.)
“Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of the
ancients has already been confessed.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol.
i. p. 363.)
“Frazer’s remarks make very interesting reading in support of the theory
of Zoötheistic pharmacy. He not only shows that the animals enumerated
in this chapter were the deities in charge of the corn, rye, and other
cereals, but that to them recourse was had for the cure of wounds, hurts,
and aches happening to the reapers during harvest. In one example the
cat which is introduced into the field is made to lick the laborer’s
wounds; in another, the goat—which is decked with ribbons, and afterwards
killed with much ceremony, and eaten at the end of the harvest—has its
skin converted into a cloak, which the farmer is required to put over his
shoulders during the coming harvest ... but if a reaper gets pains in his
back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 16.)
“Amongst the animals whose forms the corn-spirit is supposed to take,
are the wolf, dog, hare, cock, goose, cat, goat, cow (ox), bull, pig,
and horse.” (Idem, vol. ii. p. 1.) “Other animal forms assumed by the
corn-spirit are the stag, roe, sheep, bear, ass, fox, mouse, stork, swan,
and kite.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 33.)
Here we have pretty nearly all our list of animals, and the excrement of
every one here mentioned has been and is used in the prescriptions of
folk-medicine, excepting the excreta of the bear and swan.
“Remembering that in European folk-lore the pig is a common embodiment of
the corn-spirit, we may now ask, May not the pig, which was so closely
associated with Demeter, be nothing but the goddess herself in animal
form? The pig was sacred to her; in art she was represented carrying
or accompanied by a pig; and the pig was regularly sacrificed in her
mysteries, the reason assigned being that the pig injures the corn,
and is therefore an enemy of the goddess. But after an animal has been
conceived as a god, or a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as we
have seen, that the god sloughs off his animal form, and becomes purely
anthropomorphic; and that then the animal, which at first had been slain
in the character of the god, comes to be the victim offered to the god,
on the ground of its hostility to the deity; in short, that the god is
sacrificed to himself, on the ground that he is his own enemy.... As men
emerge from savagery, the tendency to anthropomorphize or humanize their
divinities gains strength.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 360.)
“A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the
god of another man, but the incarnation of his own particular god he
would consider it death to injure or eat. The god was supposed to avenge
the insult by taking up his abode in that person’s body, and causing
to generate there the very thing which he had eaten, until it produced
death.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, p. 17.)
“The ram was Ammon himself. On the monuments, it is true, Ammon appears
in semi-human form, with the body of a man, and the head of a ram.
But this only shows that he was in the usual chrysalis state through
which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-fledged
anthropomorphic gods.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 93.)
“Each god has his favorite animal, which is dedicated to him, and serves
him as messenger.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 68.)
To write what may be designated the hagiology of animal life, as known to
the ancients, would be impossible. Our knowledge is too fragmentary and
too confused, from the inextricable blending of the ideas of different
races and cults, due to the conquests by and the subversion of the Roman
empire, when victor and vanquished reciprocally exchanged gods, or added
to the attributes of the victorious deities those of the defeated.
Religion, in the last years of the Roman empire, was a kaleidoscopic
jumble of the tenets and rituals of many races, adopting without caring
to fully understand, whatever struck the fancy in the religion of their
neighbors.
Hence it is impossible to demonstrate, what at first sight seemed to
be an easy task, that the excreta of any particular animal was applied
in the treatment of the diseases over which the god to whom the animal
was assigned stood guard. We are not absolutely without light upon the
subject,—just enough to discover that no animal was insignificant enough
to be absolutely without adoration, but not sufficiently clear to define
exactly what functions each quadruped or bird god exercised.
“The representation of the devil in the shape of a he-goat goes back
to a remote antiquity. What can have given it such a vigorous growth
among heretics and witches? The witches all imagine their master as a
black he-goat, to whom, at festival-gatherings, they pay divine honors;
conversely, the white goat atoned for and defeated diabolic influence....
In oaths and curses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the he-goat
apes the true god.” (Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. iii. p. 395.)
“The devil, in retiring, is compelled unawares to let his foot be seen.”
(Idem, p. 994.) “A kobold (horse-sprite) is also horse-footed.... To the
water-sprite, the whole or half of a horse’s figure is attributed....
That is why horses are sacrificed to rivers.... A British demon, Grant,
... shewed himself as a foal.... Loki changed himself into a mare.... The
devil appears as a horse in the stories of Zeno and Brother Rausch....
In legends, black steeds fetch away the damned.... Next to the goat, ...
the boar is a devil’s animal.” (Idem, pp. 994-996.) “A soul-snatching
wolf, the devil was already to the fathers.” (Idem, p. 996.) “A canine
conformation of the devil is supported by many authorities.” (Idem, p.
996.) “Foremost among birds comes the raven, whose form the devil is fond
of assuming.” (Idem, p. 997.) “Within the last few centuries only I find
the vulture put for the devil.... Still more frequently the cuckoo.”
(Idem, p. 997.) “Another bird whose figure is assumed is the cock.”
(Idem, p. 997), “When stag-beetles and dung-beetles are taken as devils,
... it gives assurance of a heathen point of view.”—(p. 999.)
“In Norway, lambs and kids, mostly black ones, were offered to the
water-sprite.”—(Idem, p. 1009.)
“It is a natural and well-known fact, that the gods of one nation become
the devils of their conquerors or successors.”—(Black, “Folk-Medicine,”
p. 12.)
Gladiators wore camel’s dung as a charm; it is not at all unlikely that
to the Bedouin nomad the “ship of the desert” was the god of fortitude.
Fosbroke says that it was the “symbol of Arabia.”—(“Antiquities,” p.
1011.)
The sacredness of the domestic cattle in India and elsewhere is too well
known to require remark; so is that of the crocodile in parts of ancient
Egypt.
The hare was sacred in China, and is as sacred to-day to certain tribes
of American Indians as it was to the Britons when Boadicea drew one from
her bosom to consult as an omen before joining battle with the Roman
legions.
The rabbit and hare figured upon ancient Spanish coins.—(Fosbroke,
“Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1022.)
The dung of hawks, eagles, and vultures was administered to expel the
fœtus from the womb. This may have been on the principle of _similia
similibus_, because these rapacious birds tore the young of other birds
from their nests and devoured them. However, the eagle was worshipped
by the Romans, Persians, and Babylonians, upon whose standards it
perched.—(See Fosbroke, “Antiquities,” vol. ii. pp. 1024, 1025, article
“Eagle.”)
“It was the common symbol of Jupiter.”—(Idem.)
The cat was a moon-goddess symbol to the Egyptians, as well as to many
others.—(Idem, p. 1011.)
The dog was sacred to Mercury as being the protector of shepherds.—(Idem,
p. 1012.)
The dove, as well known, was one of the symbols of Venus.
The dove was also worshipped by the Assyrians.—(Idem, p. 1024.)
The stork “accompanies filial piety ... upon coins.”—(Idem, vol. i. p.
215.)
The swallow was the emblem of Isis.—(Idem, p. 216.)
The ancient Britons, the English down to modern days, the ancient Romans,
the Hungarians, the Scotch, and many other nations, drew omens from the
crossing of a man’s path by a hare. It is related of Queen Boadicea that
before joining battle with the Romans she drew from her bosom a hare,
which she released, and from its gambols the priests drew the augury that
success was to rest with her.—(See in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol.
iii. pp. 201 _et seq._, article “Hare, Wolf, or Sow.”)
Says Plinius: “There must be something in the general persuasion that
after seeing a hare a man is good-looking for nine days.”—(“Saxon
Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 14.)
“The sun was represented by the Persians under the form of a lion,
which they called Mithra; and his priests were called lions, and the
priestesses hyenas.”—(Fosbroke, “Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1020.)
The hyena, according to Pliny, was an especially “magic” animal.—(Lib.
xxviii.)
The ape was “worshipped in Egypt, and is now in India.”—(Fosbroke,
“Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1008.)
“The Greeks of Pythsecusa worshipped this animal” (monkey).—(Idem, p.
1020.)
The wolf. “The Hebrews venerated this animal.”—(Idem, p. 1023.)
The wolf was “consecrated to Apollo.”—(Idem.)
The ancient belief all over Europe was that it was lucky to have one’s
path crossed by a wolf. This corresponds to the idea of the Apache in
regard to the bear.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 202,
article “Hare, Wolf, or Sow.”)
The Irish veneration for the wolf is well known.
The lynx “accompanied Bacchus.”—(Fosbroke, “Antiquities,” vol. ii. p.
1020.)
The pig was “sacrificed in the Eleusinian mysteries.”—(Idem, p. 1021.)
The cow, among the Egyptians, “was the symbol of Venus.”—(Idem, p. 1011.)
The elephant was “peculiar to the cars of Bacchus.”—(Idem, p. 1014.)
The goat. “Maimonides says ... that the Zabii worshipped demons under the
figure of goats.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 1015.)
“Steeds were consecrated to the sun.”—(Idem, p. 1016.)
The crow, “anciently the symbol of Venus,” was “superseded by the
owl.”—(Idem, p. 1024.)
The cock was “the symbol of courage, ... consecrated to Mars; also to
Minerva, to Bellona, to Mercury, to Esculapius.”—(Idem, p. 1029.)
A flock of geese was kept on the Capitoline Hill in memory of the
story that they had saved Rome,—a story which it is safe to say had no
foundation in fact.
The raven “was the ensign of the Danes.”—(Idem, p. 1030.)
“So revered is he (the fox) that no place in a Mantchurian temple is too
high for him.”—(H. E. M. James, “The Long White Mountain,” London, 1888,
p. 190.)
“The serpent also is greatly feared and worshipped; so is the
hare.”—(Idem, p. 192.)
The peacock was sacred to Juno, whose car was drawn by those birds. Pliny
says that the peacock was reported to swallow its own excrement, as if
envying man the possession of a treasure so precious. When the dung of
the peacock was administered in epilepsy, vertigo, etc., the medicine was
to be taken from the new moon to the full. Juno was a lunar deity.
“It was an ancient and wide-spread custom in Europe to bestow names
of honor on these three” (bear, wolf, and fox).—(Grimm, “Teutonic
Mythology,” vol. ii. p. 667.)
“The Gypsies call the bear ‘vieux,’ or ‘grand-père.’”—(Idem, foot-note,
quoting Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris.”)
The blood of a hare was regarded as one of the finest remedies for
erysipelas and bloody flux, and this by a certain “sympathetic power.” A
towel dipped in hare’s blood and allowed to dry was kept to be touched to
an epileptic patient.—(See Von Helmont, “Orotrika,” English translation,
London, 1662, pp. 114, 475.)
The Ostaiks of Siberia “regardent comme sacré l’arbre où un aigle a fait
sa ponte plusieurs années de suite; et ils ont aussi beaucoup d’égards
pour cette aigle. On ne peut les offenser plus cruellement qu’en tuant
cette aigle ou en détruisant son nid.”—(“Voyages de Pallas,” vol. iv. pp.
81, 82.)
The very name of owl (_googue_) was considered unlucky by the Abyssinians
for use as the watchword, although we are told that it was so used.—(See
Bruce, “Nile,” vol. iv. p. 698.)
That a belief in the sinister character of the hooting of the owl
by night prevailed all over Europe, especially among the Romans, in
the period of their greatest civilization, and that this credulity
was transmitted down almost to our own times, see in Brand, “Popular
Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 206 _et seq._, article “Owl.” He quotes
from Suetonius, Pliny, Ovid, Lucan, Claudia, and from various old
English authors,—“The cryinge of the owle by night betokeneth deathe, as
divinours conjecte and deme,” and
“Then screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops
It’s certain then you of a corse shall hear.”
In Egypt, “it is said that in whatever house a cat died all the family
shaved the eyebrows.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 38, article “Sorcery.”)
“In the earliest period the horse seems to have been the favorite animal
for sacrifice.”—(“Teut. Mythol.,” Grimm, vol. i. p. 47.)
The crow was always a bird of bad omen among the Romans.—(See Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 213, article “The Crow.”)
Roman magicians asserted “that the heart of a horned owl applied to the
left breast of a woman, while asleep, will make her disclose all her
secret thoughts.... Persons who have it about them in battle will be sure
to display valor;” but “it was ominous to see the bird itself.”—(Pliny,
lib. xxix, c. 26.)
The crocodile seems to take in Borneo the place occupied so generally
elsewhere by the serpent; although we know that in Central America
the alligator was revered, and along the Nile in many districts the
crocodile.—(See Bock’s “Head-Hunters of Borneo,” London, 1881, passim.)
“The hare, which shares with the cat the reputation of being the familiar
of witches, has naturally some virtues attributed to it. Thus that the
right forefoot worn in the pocket will infallibly ward off rheumatism
is a common belief in Northamptonshire, and generally over England.”
(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 154.) The Chinese say that a hare sits at the
foot of the cassia-tree in the moon pounding out the drugs of which the
elixir of immortality is compounded. In a poem of Tu-fu, a bard of the
T’ang dynasty, the fame of this hare is sung,—
“The frog is not drowned in the river;
The medicine hare lives forever.”
“The devil’s mark was said to sometimes resemble the impression of
a hare’s foot.... Seeing a hare was thought in Ireland to produce
a hare-lip in the child to be born; and, as a charm, the woman who
unfortunately saw the hare was recommended to make a small rent
immediately in some part of her dress.”—(Idem, p. 155.)
“It is held extremely unlucky, says Grose, to kill a cricket, a
ladybug, a swallow, martin, robin red-breast, or wren,—perhaps from
the idea of its being a breach of hospitality, all these birds and
insects alike taking refuge in our houses.... Persons killing any of
the above-mentioned birds or insects, or destroying their nests, will
infallibly, within the course of the year, break a bone, or meet with
some other dreadful misfortune.... On the contrary, it was deemed lucky
to have martins or swallows build their nests in the eaves of a house or
in the chimneys.... Its being accounted unlucky to destroy swallows is
probably a pagan relic. We read in Ælian that these birds were sacred
to the penates or household gods of the ancients, and therefore were
preserved. They were honored anciently as the nuncios of the spring. The
Rhodians are said to have had a solemn anniversary song to welcome in the
swallow. Anacreon’s ode to that bird is well known.” Brand also alludes
to the still surviving omens attaching to the swallow,—such as “the
swallow falling down the chimney,” and others.—(“Popular Antiquities,”
vol. iii. p. 193.)
THE SPANISH-AMERICAN SPORT OF “CORRER EL GALLO” AND THE ENGLISH PASTIME
OF “THROWING AT ‘SHROVE-COCKS.’”
The Spaniards brought with them to the New World a cruel form of sport,
which consisted in burying a cock or hen in the earth up to its neck, and
then allowing the young men of the village to mount their horses, and
charging down at full speed upon the hapless bird, reach down from their
saddles and endeavor to seize it and wring its neck. This sport (as seen
by the author in the Indian Pueblo of Santo Domingo, New Mexico, in 1881,
and described by him in “The Snake Dance of the Moquis”) is evidently
a distorted form of the sacrifice of the chicken deity, which is to be
discovered in many parts of Europe, always under the guise of brutal
sport.
In England there was a modification. A goose was hung up by the feet, and
then the villagers ran and attempted to seize its head, which was finally
pulled off. There was still another of the same series in which a cat was
put in a barrel, and the barrel was then beaten to pieces.—(See Brand,
“Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 40, article “Sorcery.”)
There was another English pastime, “Throwing at Shrove-Cocks,” much of
the same nature.—(See idem, vol. i. p. 101, article “Ash-Wednesday,” and
p. 72, article “Shrove-Tuesday.”)
Grimm describes the “heathen custom of tying cocks to the tops of
holy-trees,” which prevailed very generally over Europe in Pagan times.
“The Wends erected cross-trees, but still secretly heathen at heart, they
contrived to fix at the very top of the poles a weather-cock.”—(Grimm,
“Teutonic Mythology,” London, vol. ii. p. 672.)
“In parts of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy, the reapers place
a live cock in the corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over
the field, or bury it up to the neck in the ground; afterwards they
strike off its neck with a sickle or a scythe.”—(“The Golden Bough,”
Frazer, vol. ii. p. 9. He gives still other examples from Westphalia,
Transylvania, etc.)
See also Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article
“Goose Riding,” in which it is stated that this game was practised “in
Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living.”
THE SCARABÆUS OF EGYPT.
The radical divergence of opinion among scholars as to the basis of the
veneration accorded by the inhabitants of the Nile delta to the scarabæus
has been an occasion of much perplexity; no two authors can be found to
agree upon the subject.
In the absence of anything which can be considered conclusive, it is not
worth while to more than allude to the fact that it was the dung-beetle
to which this adoration was manifested, and possibly because it
associated itself with material so intimately connected with the living
organism.
The dung-beetle “scarabæus ... worn as an amulet for the cure of
fever.”—(Pliny, lib. xxx. cap. 30.)
See also “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 16, in which the preceding
paragraph from Pliny is quoted.
“To the Egyptians the beetle (scarabæus) was sacred, being an emblem
of inmost life and mysterious self-generation. They believed that he
proceeded out of matter which he rolled into globules and buried in
manure.”—(Grimm, “Teut. Mythol.,” vol. ii. p. 692.)