In this last cited illustration, from Uarda, there would, at first
glance, seem to be the covenant proffered, rather than the covenant
entered into; the covenant all on one side, instead of the mutual
covenant. But this is, if it were possible, only a more unselfish
and a more trustful mode than the other, of covenanting by blood; of
pledging the life, by pledging the blood, to one who is already trusted
absolutely. And this mode of proffering the covenant of blood, or of
pledging one’s self in devotedness by the giving of one’s blood, is
still a custom in the East; as it has been in both the East and the
West, from time immemorial.
For example, in a series of illustrations of Oriental manners,
prepared under the direction of the French ambassador to Turkey, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, there appears a Turkish lover
gashing his arm in the presence of his lady-love, as a proof of his
loving attachment to her; and the accompanying statement is made,
that the relative flow of blood thus devoted indicates the measure of
affection--or of affectionate devotedness.[173]
A custom akin to this was found in Otaheite, when the South Sea Islands
were first visited by English missionaries. The measure of love, in
time of joy or in time of grief, was indicated by the measure of blood
drawn from the person of the loving one. Particularly was this the case
with the women; perhaps because they, in Otaheite as elsewhere, are
more loving in their nature, and readier to give of their very life in
love.
“When a woman takes a husband,” says a historian of the first
missionary work in Otaheite, “she immediately provides herself with
a shark’s tooth, which is fixed, with the bread-fruit gum, on an
instrument that leaves about a quarter of an inch of the tooth bare,
for the purpose of wounding the head, like a lancet. Some of these have
two or three teeth, and struck forcibly they bring blood in copious
streams; _according to the love they bear the party_, and the violence
of their grief, _the strokes are repeated on the head_; and this has
been known to bring on fever, and terminate in madness. If any accident
happen to the husband, [to] his relations, or friends, or their child,
the shark’s tooth goes to work; and even if the child only fall down
and hurt itself, the blood and tears mingle together.... They have a
very similar way of expressing their joy as well as sorrow; for whether
a relation dies, or a dear friend returns from a journey, the shark’s
tooth instrument ... is again employed, and the blood streams down....
When a person of eminence dies ... the relatives and friends ...
repeat before it [the corpse] some of the tender scenes which happened
during their life time, and wiping the blood which the shark’s teeth
has drawn, deposit the cloth on the tupapow as the proof of their
affection.”[174]
In illustration of this custom, the same writer says, in the course of
his narrative: “When we had got within a short mile of the Isthmus,
in passing a few houses, an aged woman, mother to the young man who
carried my linen, met us, and to express her joy at seeing her son,
struck herself several times on the head with a shark’s tooth, till
the blood flowed plentifully down her breast and shoulders, whilst the
son beheld it with entire insensibility [He saw in it only the common
proof of his mother’s devoted love].... The son seeing that I was not
pleased with what was done, observed coolly, that it was the custom of
Otaheite.”[175]
This custom is again referred to by Mr. Ellis, as observed by him in
the Georgian and the Society Islands, a generation later than the
authority above cited. He speaks of the shark’s tooth blood-letter, as
employed by men, as well as by women; although more commonly by the
latter. He adds another illustration of the truth, that it is _the
blood itself_, and not any suffering caused by its flowing, that is
counted the proof of affection; by its representing the outpoured
life, in pledge of covenant fidelity.
Describing the scenes of blood-giving grief, over the dead bodies
of the mourned loved ones, he says: “The females on these occasions
sometimes put on a kind of short apron, of a particular sort of cloth;
which they held up with one hand, while they cut themselves with the
other. In this apron they caught the blood that flowed from these
grief-inflicted wounds, until it [the apron] was almost saturated.
It was then dried in the sun, and given to the nearest surviving
relatives, as a proof of the affection of the donor, and was preserved
by the bereaved family as a token of the estimation in which the
departed had been held.”[176] There is even more of vividness in this
memorial, than in that suggested by the Psalmist, when he says:
“Put thou my tears into thy bottle.”[177]
There would seem to be a suggestion of this same idea in one of Grimm’s
folk-lore fairy tales of the North. A queen’s daughter is going away
from her home, attended by a single servant. Her loving mother would
fain watch and guard her in her absence. Accordingly, “as soon as the
hour of departure had arrived, the mother took her daughter into a
chamber, and there, with a knife, she cut her [own] finger with it, so
that it bled. Then, she held her napkin beneath, and let three drops
of blood fall into it; which she gave to her daughter, saying: ‘Dear
child, preserve this well, and it will help you out of trouble.’”[178]
That blood represented the mother’s very life. It was accustomed to
speak out in words of counsel and warning to the daughter. But by and
by the napkin which held it was lost, and then the power of the young
princess over her mother’s servant was gone, and the poor princess was
alone in the wide world, at the mercy of strangers.
Acting on the symbolism of this covenanting with another by the loving
proffer of one’s blood, men have reached out toward God, or toward the
gods, in desire for a covenant of union, and in expression of fidelity
of devotedness, by the giving of their blood God-ward. This, also, has
been in the East and in the West, in ancient days and until to-day.
There was a gleam of this, in the Canaanitish worship of Baal, in the
contest between his priests and the prophet Elijah, before King Ahab,
at Mount Carmel. First, those priests shed the blood of the substitute
bullock, at the altar of their god, and “called on the name of Baal
from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal hear us! But there was no
voice, nor any that answered.” Then they grew more earnest in their
supplications, and more demonstrative in their proofs of devotedness.
“They leaped [or, limped] about the altar which was made.... And they
cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and
lances, till the blood gushed out upon them.”[179] Similar methods of
showing love for God are in vogue among the natives of Armenia, to-day.
Describing a scene of worship by religious devotees in that region,
Dr. Van Lennep says: “One of them cuts his forehead with a sword, so
that ‘the blood gushes out.’ He wears a sheet in front, to protect his
clothes, and his face is covered with clots of blood.”[180] Clearly,
in this case, as in many others elsewhere, it is not as a means of
self-torture, but as a proof of self-devotedness, that the blood is
poured out--the life is proffered--by the devotee, toward God.
Among the primitive peoples of North and of South America, it was the
custom of priests and people, to draw blood from their own bodies, from
their tongues, their ears, their noses, their limbs and members, when
they went into their temples to worship, and to anoint with that blood
the images of their gods.[181] The thorns of the maguey--a species of
aloe--were, in many regions, kept ready at places of sacrifice, for
convenient use in this covenant blood-letting.[182] A careful student
of these early American customs has said of the obvious purpose of this
yielding of one’s blood in worship, that it “might be regarded as an
act of individual devotion, a gift made to the gods by the worshiper
himself, out of his own very substance [of his very life, as in the
blood-covenant].... The priests in particular owed it to their special
character [in their covenant relation to the divinities], to draw their
blood for the benefit of the gods [in renewed pledge to the gods]; and
nothing could be stranger than the refined methods they adopted to
accomplish this end. For instance, they would pass strings or splinters
through their lips or ears, and so draw a little blood. But then a
fresh string, or a fresh splinter, must be added every day, and so it
might go on indefinitely; for the more there were, the more meritorious
was the act;”[183] precisely as is the standard of love-showing by
blood-letting among Turkish lovers and Otaheitan wives and mothers, in
modern times.
A similar giving of blood, in proof of devotedness, and in outreaching
for inter-communion with the gods through blood, is reported in
India, in recent times. Bishop Caldwell, of Madras, referred to it,
a generation ago, in his description of the “Devil Dance” among
the Tinnevelly Shawars.[184] The devotee, in this dance, “cuts and
lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge
whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which
flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice;
putting the throat of a decapitated goat to his mouth.” Hereby he has
given of his own blood to the gods, or to the devils, and has drunk of
the substitute blood of the divinities--in the consecrated sacrifice;
as if in consummation of the blood-covenant with the supernal powers.
“Then as if he had acquired new life [through inter-union with the
object of his worship], he begins to brandish his staff of bells,
and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the
afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare or those frantic
leaps. He snorts, he swears, he gyrates. The demon has now taken
bodily possession of him. [The twain are one. The two natures are
intermingled].... The devil-dancer is now worshiped as a present deity,
and every bystander consults him respecting his diseases, his wants,
the welfare of his absent relations, the offerings to be made for
the accomplishments of his wishes, and in short everything for which
superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.” In this instance,
the _mutual_ covenant is represented; the devotee both giving and
receiving blood, as a means of union.
On this idea of giving one’s self to another, by giving of one’s blood,
it is, that the popular tradition was based, that witches and sorcerers
covenanted with Satan by signing a compact in their own blood.
And again it was in recognition of the idea that two natures were
inter-united in such a covenant, that the compact was sometimes said to
be signed in Satan’s blood.
Among the many women charged with witchcraft in England, by the famous
Matthew Hopkins, the “witch-finder” in the middle of the Seventeenth
century, was one, at Yarmouth, of whom it is reported, that her first
temptation came to her when she went home from her place of employment,
discouraged and exasperated by her trials. “That night when she was in
bed, she heard a knock at the door, and going to her window, she saw
(it being moonlight) a tall black man there: and asked what he would
have? He told her that she was discontented, because she could not get
work; and that he would put her into a way that she should never want
anything. On this she let him in, and asked him what he had to say to
her. He told her he must first see her hand; and taking out something
like a penknife, he gave it a little scratch, so that a little blood
followed; a scar being still visible when she told the story. Then he
took some of the blood in a pen, and pulling a book out of his pocket,
bid her write her name; and when she said she could not, he said he
would guide her hand. When this was done, he bid her now ask what she
would have.”[185] In signing with her own blood, she had pledged her
very life to the “tall black man.”
Cotton Mather, in his “Wonders of the Invisible World,” cites a Swedish
trial for witchcraft, where the possessed children, who were witnesses,
said that the witches, at the trysting-place where they were observed,
were compelled “to give themselves unto the devil, and vow that they
would serve him. Hereupon they cut their fingers, and with blood writ
their names in his book.” In some cases “the mark of the cut finger was
[still] to be found.” Moreover the devil gave meat and drink both to
the witches and to the children they brought with them. Again, Mather
cites the testimony of a witness who had been invited to covenant with
the Devil, by signing the Devil’s book. “Once, with the book, there
was a pen offered him, and an inkhorn with liquor in it that looked
like blood.”[186] Another New England writer on witchcraft says that
“the witch as a slave binds herself by vow, to believe in the Devil,
and to give him either body or soul, or both, under his handwriting, or
some part of _his_ blood.”[187]
It is, evidently, on this popular tradition, that Goethe’s Faust
covenants in blood with Mephistopheles.