RIVER WRAITHS.
The worst of all ill-omened streams in India is the dread _Vaitaranî_,
the river of death, which is localized in Orissa and which pours its
stream of ordure and blood on the confines of the realm of Yama.[43] Ill
fares the man who in that dread hour lacks the aid of a priest and the
holy cow to help him to the other shore. But the Indian water furies
are easily propitiated. Goats, or fish, or fowl, or even flowers and
cocoanuts are enough to appease them. Thus the Tapti and the Sutlej
receive goats, whereas the Jata Rohini, the Deo infesting the Karsa,
a river in Mirzapur, is pleased with a fish caught by the Buiga and
presented to him. Many of the continental water deities, however, must
needs have human sacrifices, just as the African river spirit Prah,
who must have every year in October two human sacrifices, one male and
one female. Thus in England the River Tees, the Skerne, and the Ribble
have each a sprite, who, in popular belief, demands human victims. The
Ribble’s sprite is known by the name of Peg O’Nell, and a spring in
the grounds of Waddow bears her name and is graced by a stone image,
now headless, which, according to Sir Laurence Gomme,[44] is said to
represent her. A tradition connects the Peg O’Nell with an ill-used
servant at Waddow Hall, who, in revenge for her mistress’s successful
malediction in causing her death, was inexorable in demanding every seven
years a life to be quenched in the waters of the Ribble. “Peg’s night”
was the closing night of the septenniate, and when it came round, unless
a bird, a cat, or a dog was drowned in the stream, some human being was
certain to fall a victim there.
The sprite of the Tees is called Peg Powler, a sort of Lorelei, says
Henderson in his _Folklore of Northern Counties_, with green tresses and
an insatiable desire for human life. Children were warned from playing on
the banks of this river by threats that Peg Powler would drag them into
the water.
A horrid Kelpie or water-horse is said to infest the Yore, near
Middleham. Every evening he rises from the stream and ramps along the
meadows searching for prey, and it is believed that the Kelpie claims at
least one human victim annually.
The River Spey must also have at least one victim yearly, while
Blood-thirsty Dee
Each year needs three.
Another curious belief concerning the Dee may also be noted. In his
_Itinerary through Wales_ Giraldus Cambrensis states that the inhabitants
of places near Chester assert that the waters of the river change their
fords every month and that as it inclines more towards England or Wales
they can with certainty prognosticate which nation will be successful or
unfortunate during the year.
The saying runs that “St. John the Baptist must have a runner, must have
a swimmer, must have a climber.” As if this were not enough, in Cologne
he requires no less than seven swimmers and seven climbers.
Even to this day some German rivers, such as the Saale and the Spree,
require their victims on Midsummer Day. During that parlous season
people are careful not to bathe in it. Again, where the beautiful Neckar
flows under the ruins of Heidleberg Castle, the spirit of the river
seeks to drown three persons, one on Midsummer Eve, one on Midsummer
Day, and one on the day after. On these nights if you hear a shriek,
as of a drowning man or woman from the water, beware of running to the
rescue; for it is only the water-fairy shrieking to lure you to your
doom. In Voigtland it was formerly the practice to set up a fine May
tree, adorned with all kinds of things, on _St. John’s Day_. The people
danced round it, and when the lads had fetched down the things with which
it was tricked out, the tree was thrown into the water. But before this
was done, they sought out somebody whom they treated in the same manner,
and the victim of this horseplay was called “the John.” The brawls and
disorders, which this custom provoked, led to a suppression of the whole
ceremony which was obviously only a modification of an older custom
of actually drowning a human being. At Rotenberg on the Neckar people
throw a loaf of bread into the water on St. John’s Day, otherwise the
river-god would grow angry and carry away a man. Elsewhere, however, the
water-sprite is content with flowers. In Bohemia people cast garlands
in the water on Midsummer Eve and if the water-sprite pulls one of them
down, it is a sign that the person who threw the garland in will die. In
the villages of Hesse the girl who first comes to a well early in the
morning of Midsummer Day places on the mouth of the well a gay garland of
many sorts of flowers culled by her from fields and meadows. Sometimes a
number of such garlands are twined together to form a crown with which
the well is decked. At Fluda, in addition to the floral decorations
of the wells, the neighbours choose a Lord of the Wells and announce
his election by sending him a great nosegay of flowers. His house is
decorated with green boughs and children walk in procession to it. He
goes from house to house collecting materials for a feast, of which the
neighbours partake on the following Sunday. What the other duties of the
Lord of Wells may be, we are not told. We may however conjecture, says
Sir James Frazer, that in old days he had to see to it that the spirits
of the water received their dues from men and maidens on that important
day.[45]
In those moments of the civilized man’s life when he casts off hard dull
science, and returns to childhood’s fancy, the world-old book of animated
nature is open to him anew. Then, says Tylor, the well-worn thoughts
come back fresh to him, of the stream’s life that is so like his own;
once more he can see the rill leap down the hillside like a child, to
wander playing among the flowers; or can follow it as, grown to a river,
it rushes through a mountain gorge, henceforth in sluggish strength to
carry heavy burdens across the plain. In all that water does, the poet’s
fancy can discern its personality of life. It gives fish to the fisher,
and crops to the husbandman; it swells in fury and lays waste the land;
it grips the bather with chill and cramp, and holds with inexorable grasp
its drowning victim:—
“Tweed said to Till,
‘What gars ye tin sae still?’
Till said to Tweed,
‘Though ye rin wi’ speed,
And I rin slaw,
Yet, where ye drown ae man,
I drown twa.’”
What ethnography has to teach of that great element of the religion
of mankind, the worship of well and lake, brook and river, is simply
this that what is poetry to us was philosophy to early man; that to his
mind water acted not by laws of force, but by life and will; that the
water-spirits of primeval mythology are as souls which cause the water’s
rush and rest, its kindness and its cruelty; that lastly man finds, in
the beings which with such power can work him weal and woe, deities with
a wider influence over his life, deities to be feared and loved, to be
prayed to and praised and propitiated with sacrificial gifts.[46]
“In Australia,” continues Tylor, “special water-demons infest pools and
watering places. In the native theory of disease and death, no personage
is more prominent than the water-spirit, which afflicts those who go into
unlawful pools or bathe at unlawful times, the creature which causes
women to pine and die, and whose very presence is death to the beholder,
save to the native doctors, who may visit the water-spirit’s subaqueous
abode and return with bleared eyes and wet clothes to tell the wonders
of their stay. It would seem that creatures with such attributes come
naturally into the category of spiritual beings, but in such stories as
that of the bunyip living in the lakes and rivers and seen floating as
big as a calf, which carries off native women to his retreat below the
waters, there appears that confusion between the spiritual water-demon
and the material water-monster, which runs on into the midst of European
mythology in such conceptions as that of the water-kelpie and the
sea-serpent.”
The same confusion of ideas is seen in the Macedonian ballad of the
Haunted Well. Here too the spirit or demon of the well is confounded with
the water-serpent. The ballad, as quoted in Mr. Abbott’s _Macedonian
Folklore_, runs as follows:—
THE HAUNTED WELL.
Four and five, nine brothers,
Eighteen cousins, lads of little luck:
A message came to them from the King, bidding them
To go forth and fight in the far-off land of the Franks:
“Thy blessing, mother, that we may go forth!”
“May ye go forth nine brothers and come back eight;
May John the youngest never return!”
They set forth, and as they crossed the vast plain,
They lived forty days without bread,
Forty-five more without water,
And then they found a dear little fount; but it was a spirit-haunted
well:
’Twas thirty fathoms in depth; in breadth twenty.
“Halt, dear brothers and let us cast lots,
He on whom the lot will fall, let him go in,”
The lot falls on John, the youngest.
They bind John and let him down:
“Draw, dear brothers, draw me out,
Here there is no water; but only a Spirit.”
“We are drawing, John, we are drawing; but thou stirrest not.”
“The serpent has wound itself round my body, the Spirit is holding me.
Come, set the Black One also to help you.”
When the Black One heard, he neighed loud.
He reared on his haunches to draw him out.
When he drew out his arms, the mountains gleamed,
He draws out his sword also, and the sea gleamed.
They drew out John together with the spirit,
They lifted their knives to cut it asunder,
But instead of cutting the Spirit they cut the rope,
And John falls in together with the Spirit:
“Leave me, brothers, leave me and go home,
Do not tell my dear mother that I am dead,
Tell her, brothers, that I am married,
That I have taken the tombstone for a mother-in-law, Black Earth
for a wife,
And the fine grass blades all for brothers and sisters-in-law.”
The maleficent deities are also responsible for floods. When therefore,
heavy floods threatened a village or a city in Gujarat, the king or
the headman used to go in procession to propitiate the river with
flowers, cocoanuts, and other offerings, so that the floods should
subside. Similarly, in the Punjab, when a village is in danger of being
flooded, the headman makes an offering of a cocoanut and a rupee to the
flood-demon. The cocoanut represents the head of a human being and is
believed to be acceptable to the water-demon in lieu of a human victim.
The headman stands in the water and holds the offering in his hand. When
the flood rises high enough to wash the offering from his hand, it is
understood that the waters will abate. Some people throw seven handfuls
of boiled wheat and sugar into the stream and distribute the remainder
among the persons present. Some take a male buffalo, a horse, or a ram,
and after boring the right ear of the victim, throw it into the water. If
the victim is a horse, it is saddled before it is offered.
In Bengal goats are sacrificed to propitiate the river-goddess in her
malignant form when she devastates the land with floods or engulfs the
swimmers. The goats are often thrown alive into the water and are taken
out by men of the boatman caste, who eat their flesh. Many ascetics
perform a special penance in her honour, which consists in spending
every night in the month of January, when the cold is intense, seated
on a small platform erected over the river and engaged in such prayer
and meditation as their sufferings from the cold will allow.[47] Crooke
says that when the town and temples at Hardwar were in imminent danger
during the Gohna flood, the Brahmans poured vessels of milk, rice and
flowers into the waters of Mother Ganges and prayed to her to spare them.
Similarly, a story is related in the Folklore Notes of Gujarat of the
occurrence of heavy floods in a village in the Jalalpur _taluka_, when
a certain lady placed an earthen vessel (ordinarily used for curdling
milk), containing _ghee_, afloat on the floods, whereupon the waters were
at once seen to recede.
A few years ago the river Musi overflowed and caused terrible
destruction. His Highness the Nizam thereupon went to the river, took
off his turban, and threw it into the water in the hope that such
submissiveness of a prince might appease the wrath of the river.[48]
[Illustration: Ocean-Worship.]
[Illustration: _Narali Purnima_ or Cocoanut Day.]
The calamity of floods should not, however, be exclusively attributed
to sheer demoniacal influence of malignant spirits. It may, in some
cases, be due to the offence given to patron saints of water. Curtiss
relates,[49] on the authority of Rev. J. Steward Crawford, an old
resident in Syria, a remarkable incident which occurred at Nebk. The
town derives its water-supply from a series of wells connected with one
another. Once, owing to heavy rains, there came a succession of three
floods which washed away the wells which had been repaired after each
catastrophe. This left no room for doubt that the _Vali_ of the wells had
been offended. They began to ascertain the reason and discovered that
the sacrifices which had been offered to the saint at an annual festival
had been intermitted, that people used to perform their ablutions in a
portion of the stream which was inside of the courtyard of the _mukam_
(shrine), thus defiling it, and that a dead body had been carried across
the stream. All this had angered the saint. Sacrifices were, therefore,
offered to propitiate him. A number of sheep were stationed over the
stream and their throats were cut so that the blood would run into the
water.
It is refreshing to turn from these river wraiths to the spirits of the
sea, who are more powerful but less exacting. A cocoanut is enough to
keep them in good humour, and a special day is named for this offering,
called _Narali Purnima_, or Cocoanut Holiday. On that day multitudes of
people flock to the sea-shore in Bombay to offer their _puja_ to the sea
to keep it quiet after the monsoon. The Brahmin first offers prayers,
then the votary throws into the sea the holy water which the Brahmin
pours into the hollow of his hands, then some red lead, then a few
flowers and some rice, and last of all the cocoanut. The safety of the
seas during the fair season is thus insured.