THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN SAGA AND SUPERSTITION.
{112}
Belief of a more or less serious character in the power of the
witch’s hair is one for which readers who have followed the arguments
and illustrations of previous chapters will not have been wholly
unprepared. If a belief not very often exhibited in sagas, it is yet,
as we might anticipate, not wholly absent. The Goodwife of Laggan, a
Highland witch, one day showed herself in the form of a shivering,
weather-beaten cat to a hunter, who was warming himself during a storm
in his hunting-hut, in the forest of Gaick in Badenoch. His hounds
were stretched by his side, his only company. As the cat entered they
bristled up and rose to attack her. There is no record that the hunter
was astonished when the terror-stricken cat addressed him with a human
voice and the rhetoric of a century ago: “Great hunter of the hills, I
claim your protection. I know your hatred to my craft, and perhaps it
is just. Still spare, oh spare a poor jaded wretch, who thus flies to
you for protection from the cruelty and oppression of her sisterhood!”
On the contrary, he pacified his dogs, and invited her to come forward
to the fire and warm herself. “Nay,” she replied, if we are to believe
the grandiloquent reporter of the interview, “in the first place you
will please bind with {113} this long hair those two furious hounds of
yours, for I am afraid they will tear my poor hams to pieces. I pray
you, therefore, my dear sir, that you would have the goodness to bind
them together by the necks with this long hair.” Here the hunter smelt
mischief; so, instead of binding his dogs, he threw the hair across a
beam of wood which connected the couple of the bothy. Supposing the
dogs bound, the cat then drew near to the fire and sat down to dry
herself. In a few minutes she began to grow. “A bad death to you, you
nasty beast,” exclaimed the hunter jocosely, “you are getting very
large.” “Ay, ay,” answered the cat, “as my hairs imbibe the heat they
naturally expand.” But she grew bigger and bigger, until in the
twinkling of an eye, she transformed herself into her proper likeness
of the Goodwife of Laggan, and thus addressed the man: “Hunter of the
hills, your hour of reckoning is arrived. Behold me before you, the
avowed champion of my devoted sisterhood, of whom Macgillichallum of
Razay and you were always the most relentless of enemies. But Razay is
no more. His last breath is fled. He lies a lifeless corpse on the
bottom of the main; and now, Hunter of the hills, it is your turn.”
With these words the witch made a terrific spring at the hunter; and
the dogs in their turn leaped up at her. A tremendous conflict ensued.
“Fasten, hair, fasten,” she cried repeatedly, thinking the dogs were
bound by it. The hair, obediently coiling round the beam, fastened so
effectually that at last it snapt the timber in twain. Finding herself
overmatched, she tried to flee. But the hounds had fixed themselves in
her breasts; nor did they loose their hold as she trailed them after
her, until she had all-to broken every tooth in their heads. Then
changing herself into a raven she flew {114} away over the mountains,
while the bleeding dogs crept back to their master’s feet to die. When
the hunter returned to his home, the Goodwife of Laggan was found sick
unto death. I spare my readers the edifying scene wherein she most
properly acknowledged her crimes in the presence of the hunter and all
her neighbours, before breathing her last. It is written by Mr.
Stewart in the purest Johnsonese he could command, together with the
further narrative of the apparition which announced that the Evil One
had finally seized her soul before it had time to reach the protection
of the sacred precincts of the churchyard of Dalarossie.[114.1]
The Eskimo have a tradition pertinent to our present point. Off the
southernmost part of Greenland was an island to which many of the
inhabitants of the mainland objected, because it cut them off from the
open sea. Two of them accordingly went in their kayaks and, fastening
a hair from the head of a little child to the far side of the island,
pulled away to the north, chanting a magic lay. Another old man,
however, desired to retain the island; and he from the main shore held
it by a thong of sealskin. The contest lasted for a while; but at
length the hair and the magical song prevailed. The island was floated
off and planted in front of Ilulissat, where it is now known as Disco
Island.[114.2] Similarly, the people of the Lewis aver that their
island once formed part of France. The Wickings having conquered a
province of that country determined to carry it to Norway. They,
therefore, made a cable of four strands, one of heather, one of hemp,
another of wool, and another of woman’s hair, and fixed it to the
cliffs. For a time their enterprise promised success. But a large
piece, {115} now called Ireland, broke off and sank. A storm came on;
and one portion after another broke away to form the Hebrides.
By-and-bye their cable itself snapped, and they were forced to leave
the Lewis and adjacent islands in the situation they at present
occupy. On the western side of the Butt of Lewis is a fine natural
arch, called the _Suil an Rodh_, “the eye of the butt.” This was the
hole drilled through the cliff in days of yore by the Wickings to hold
their cable; and it is the best proof of the truth of the
tradition.[115.1]
Allied to the enchanted hair of these tales is the fetter that binds
Fenri the wolf. It is spun from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a
woman’s beard, the roots of a stone, a bear’s sinews, a fish’s breath,
and a bird’s spittle; and it is as soft and smooth as a silken
string.[115.2] So likewise when Finn MacCumhail hunted in high
Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann,
bade his three daughters, that were full of sorcery, take vengeance
upon the hero. Accordingly the beldams went and sat in the entrance of
a cave. “Upon three crooked and wry sticks of holly they hung as many
heathenish bewitched hasps of yarn, which they began to reel off
lefthandwise in front of the cave.” The attention of Finn and his
companion, Conan Mael MacMorna, was attracted; they approached to view
the women, and passed through the hasps; “whereupon a deadly tremor
occupied them, and presently they lost their strength, so that by
those valiant hags they were fast bound indissolubly. Another pair of
the Fianna came, and with them the sons of Nemhuann: through the yarn
they passed to where Finn and Conan {116} were; they too lost their
power, and by the same hags were lashed down in rigid bonds. These
warriors then they carried away into the cave.” Oscar and MacLugach,
and in short “the children of Smól and the Fianna all” were drawn to
the spot, and when they saw the yarns their pith and valour departed:
“there was not in any one man of them all so much as a newly delivered
woman’s strength.” Both gentle and simple, they were bound, “so that
as helplessly pinioned and tightly tethered culprit-prisoners the hags
transported them into black, mysterious holes, into dark, perplexing
labyrinths.” When the witches could find no further straggler of the
Fianna, they were about to hew their prisoners to pieces. The
great-souled Goll MacMorna, however, was yet at large. He attacked and
destroyed two of the hags; the third he spared in consideration of her
setting the prisoners free. But when another sister appeared to avenge
those who were slain, he fought her also, and drove his sword through
her heart.[116.1]
The story of the Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran is perhaps dangerously
near the border line of sagas and _märchen_. But it is difficult to
say that the Irish had entirely abandoned their belief in the real
truth of the adventures attributed to the Fianna. Nations, especially
nations involved in a struggle for national existence, do not easily
part with a literal interpretation of traditions which are their
birthright. The Iroquois likewise held to the actual existence of the
supernatural personages of the following tale; but how far they
credited the adventures of the human beings may admit of a difference
of opinion. Ten brothers whose parents were dead resided with their
uncle. One by one the elder ones, going out to hunt, failed to {117}
return, until at last only the youngest was left. He and his uncle
found in the woods and befriended a strange man, who turned out to be
a brother of the Great Head, a creature consisting simply of a head,
made terrific with huge eyes and long hair. The Great Head had his
home upon a rock over which his hair streamed in shaggy fierceness;
and when the hurricane swept across the land it was his voice that was
heard howling through it. One day the Great Head came to the lodge.
Aided by his brother, the uncle and nephew succeeded in conciliating
him, and induced him to take the youth to the witch who had fordone
his elders, and revenge their deaths. They heard the witch crooning
her magical song. When she uttered the word _Schis-t-ki-añ_, the
objects of her spells turned to dry bones. The Great Head said to the
youth: “I will ask the question, ‘How long have you been here?’ and
the hair will fall from my head and you must replace it, and it will
grow fast; and then I will bite her flesh and pull it from her, and as
it comes off you must take it from my mouth and throw it off, saying,
‘Be a fox, a bird, or anything else,’ and it will then run off never
to return.” The young man obeyed these instructions; and the witch was
soon brought to sue for mercy. But the Great Head replied: “You had no
mercy; see the dry bones; you must die.” In this way they slew her;
her flesh was turned into beasts and birds and fish; her bones they
burnt to ashes. Then they sought for the bones of her victims, and
placed together in rows the bones of the nine elder brothers. The
Great Head flew over them on a tempest, and called out of the wind to
the nine brothers to awake. They heard his voice, and arose to life,
shouting for joy at seeing each other and their youngest brother
again.[117.1]
{118}
The instrument of enchantment in this Iroquoian tradition is not the
magical fetter, but the magical word; whereof we seem to find a
reminiscence (perhaps of the fetter also) in the sequel of Thorkill’s
second voyage as recounted in the veracious pages of Saxo. Gorm
Haraldson, king of Denmark, having grown old, was tormented with the
question that still troubles mankind of the immortality and fate of
the soul. Wherefore he sent Thorkill, who had in former days led him
and three hundred of his warriors through mysterious regions, for
certain information to Utgard-Loki, his god. On the hero’s return it
was prophesied to Gorm that he would suddenly die if he learnt the
tidings Thorkill had brought. Men were accordingly hired by the king’s
command to put the adventurer to death. But he foiled the design and
reproached his master for the ingratitude he displayed. The king,
then, overcome by curiosity, bade Thorkill relate in order what had
happened to him. Thorkill had such unfavourable revelations to make of
Utgard-Loki that Gorm Haraldson could not endure to hear them. “His
very life could not brook such words, and he yielded it up in the
midst of Thorkill’s narrative. Thus,” piously adds the chronicler,
“whilst he was so zealous in the worship of a false god, he came to
find where the true prison of sorrows really was. Moreover, the reek
of the hair, which Thorkill plucked from the locks of the giant,” and
brought back with him, “to testify to the greatness of his own deeds,
was exhaled upon the bystanders, so that many perished of it.”[118.1]
The truth is that in the lower stages of culture supernatural power is
ascribed, not merely to special words, but {119} to any curses.
Illustrations of this attitude of mind are needless; for in the horror
with which even the least superstitious of us listen when we are by
some accident compelled to hear an outburst of imprecation, we may
trace more than mere revulsion from the spirit of vulgar hatred and
anger dictating it: our revulsion bears at least a tinge of fear and
ghastly anticipation of doom upon him who dares to call down evil, if
not upon the object of his wrath. Properly performed, however, by the
priest on the first day of Lent, and uttered in merely general terms
“gathered out of the seven-and-twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy and
other places of Scripture,” we devoutly repeat Amen to every clause,
and make believe that we desire to escape “the dreadful judgment
hanging over our heads and always ready to fall upon us,” by thus
transferring the weight of condemnation to sinners worse than
ourselves. Originally special virtue was doubtless attached, as it
still is by savages, to the proper sequence of words and the suitable
accompaniment of rites. In a Chaldean conjuration the effect is thus
described:
“The malicious imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon,
the voice which curses has power over him;
the voice which curses has power over him;
the malicious imprecation is the spell [which produces] the disease of his head.
The malicious imprecation slaughters this man like a lamb;…
the voice which curses covers him and loads him like a veil.”[119.1]
Nor is it altogether improbable that certain of the Psalms which are
such a stumblingblock to Christians may have been held, when correctly
chanted, to have a direct influence over the objects of the psalmist’s
holy ire? When a {120} native of Borneo has planted fruit-trees, and
they are bearing, he places some round stones in cleft sticks near the
trees, and then proceeds to curse anybody who may venture to steal the
fruit, calling on the stones to witness the anathema. The curse is to
this effect: “May whoever steals my fruit suffer from stones in the
stomach as large as these stones, and, if necessary, become a figure
of stone!” And woe betide the man who in defiance of this curse dares
to pluck the fruit![120.1]
But neither the form of the malediction nor the accurate performance
of a ceremony is an invariable requirement. A few illustrations of the
petrifying potency of curses, oftentimes the more awful because
uttered in mere carelessness or wantonness, may be given from peoples
on different levels of civilisation. An Altaic tale relates that
Sartaktai was building a stone bridge over the Katunya; and in order
to complete it by the following day it was necessary that his son
should preserve continence. The young man, however, disregarded his
father’s taboo, and frustrated the work. Wherefore the old man cursed
his daughter-in-law, so that she stands, a white rock on one side of
the river, and cursed and spat upon his son, so that he remained on
the other side, the mountain called to-day Täldäkpän.[120.2] A
local legend concerning the fort of Jangada, in India, attributes its
erection to Râjâ Kesari, who built it of lac, or sealing-wax, in
order that missiles discharged against it should be held by its
natural tenacity. The secret was betrayed to a besieging army by an
old woman; and the walls began to melt under the power of the fire and
bellows she advised the soldiers to use. The râjâ, as he died in the
trench with sword in hand, cursed the traitress to be turned into
stone. {121} The curse was immediately fulfilled, as witness the satti
pillar outside the fort, regarded as her image to this day.[121.1] At
a certain farmhouse in Iceland it befell that several years
successively the inmates who were left to take care of the house while
their fellows went to church on Christmas Eve were found the next
morning either stark mad or dead. Naturally nobody cared to stay in
the place; but at last a young girl was found brave enough to do so.
During the night something came to the window, and began to praise her
hands. She was ready at once with a spirited retort. Her eyes and her
feet were then made the subject of eulogy by the mysterious visitor,
who got from the maiden each time a proper answer. By-and-bye the
creature mentioned the dawn standing ready to appear. “Stand thou,
too, and become stone, and hurt no one!” exclaimed the girl. And when
the people returned from church in the morning they were astounded to
see a big stone standing before the window; and there it remains ever
since.[121.2] There is a hill on the boundary of the manor of Bagdad
near Wirsitz, in the province of Posen, surmounted by a great stone of
a reddish colour, somewhat in the form of a gravestone. This was
formerly a girl who went out with her mother to gather wild
strawberries in the pine-wood which then covered the height. The
mother wandered off in another direction, and lost her daughter. Not
being able to find her, she angrily shouted: “As you are not coming,
turn to stone!” Her prayer was instantly answered, as in a similar
case at Strelno, in the same province, where a lazy slut going with
her pitcher to the spring, and being unconscionably long on the
errand, was cursed by a fellow-servant, {122} under whose orders she
was, and transformed into stone. The block is shown at the village of
Mlyny, near the town; and at a distance it is said to bear some
resemblance to a girl with a pitcher. Nor is this the only tale of the
kind current in Posen. A great stone, whose top was not unlike a roof,
lay several years ago on the boundary between Czempin and Piechanin,
and was held to be the roof of a castle, enchanted by a wizard who had
begged a night’s lodging there in vain. His curses buried the castle
in the earth, and turned its inhabitants and dependants into a number
of smaller stones which lay around the large one.[122.1] Near Gbel, in
Bohemia, is a stone called The Enchanted Huntsman. A luckless hunter,
we learn, pursued and shot at a roe, which thereupon changed into an
old hag, and cried out: “How dare you shoot at me? I am the witch
Nera! But you with your pack shall be turned into stone and guarded
for ever with invisible flames!” Since that hour none dares to go near
the stone at midnight, lest he be consumed by the flames.[122.2] A
witch is likewise the agent of evil in the Rollright legends. The
King-stone at Rollright was once a king indeed, who was bent on the
conquest of all England. He had got as far as the hill on which
Rollright stands when the witch appeared. From the crest of the hill
the village of Long Compton is visible in the combe below. The king
was approaching the top when the witch addressed him: “Seven long
strides shalt thou take, and--
If Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be.”
{123}
The king, now certain of success, exclaimed:
“Stick, stock, stone,
As King of England I shall be known!”
But as he took the seven strides forward there rose before him the
long mound of earth which crowns the hill, and prevented him from
seeing Long Compton. The witch then cried:
“As Long Compton thou canst not see,
King of England thou shalt not be.
Rise up, stick, and stand still, stone,
For king of England thou shalt be none;
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
And I myself an eldern-tree.”
Forthwith “the king and his army were turned into stones where they
stood, the king on the side of the mound and his army in a circle
behind him, while the witch herself became an elder-tree. But some
day, they do say, the spell will be broken. The stones will turn into
flesh and blood once more, and the king will start as an armed warrior
at the head of his army to overcome his enemies and rule over all the
land.”[123.1]
In the last tradition the witch’s words fell upon her own head, as
well as upon her foes. Incautious or wicked words often have this
effect in European folklore; and I strongly suspect they owe their
origin to Christian teaching. Tales of imprecations fulfilled upon the
perjurer pervade English history from the great, and probably
innocent, Earl Godwin downwards. Joan Flower, not more guilty,
mentioned in an earlier chapter, is another example. The case of
Dorothy Mately of Ashover, related with all circumstance {124} by the
master-pen of John Bunyan, is more famous. In fact, the tales are
endless; but I must limit my illustrations to two or three of such as
account for stones and rocks.
On the island of Sardinia, near the village of Tresnuraghes, in the
district of Oristano, are two stones, once a peasant and his ox. This
unhappy man was ploughing on the vigil of Saint Mark, and neglected to
doff his cap when the saint’s colossal statue was carried by in
procession. Being remonstrated with by one of the confraternity, he
answered that he did not worship a piece of wood. What could be
expected after such profanity, but that he and his ox should be turned
to stone? A similar judgment is recorded as the origin of a monolith
standing near the church of Saint Constantine, on the side of a hill
in the district of Sedilo, on the same island. It is the custom there
to perform a ceremony called _S’ardia_, or the Guard, which consists
in a cavalcade of about a hundred persons running at full speed thrice
around the church, and then flinging themselves down the valley upon a
sacred enclosure containing a cross. This enclosure they encompass in
the same manner. The spectacle, considered as a religious rite, is
doubtless grotesque enough; and a woman who once witnessed it was
profane enough to burst out laughing. She stands there still, never to
laugh again.[124.1] A bridal train on the Frisian island of Sylt once
met an old woman who recognised the bride as a witch, and called out
to warn the party. The leader replied: “If our bride be a witch, I
would that we might all sink down here and rise up again grey stones.”
No sooner said than done; and the identical stones were on view up to
the early years of {125} this century.[125.1] So it is related of an
unwilling bride from the village of Bonese, in Altmark, that when she
arrived with her cavalcade on the boundary of the district of Markau,
where she was to wed the son of a rich magistrate, she sprang from her
seat after an altercation with her kinsmen and exclaimed: “Rather will
I be turned to stone than overstep the boundary of Markau!” and she
alighted on the ground a stone. Round that stone at midnight, when the
full moon sheds her rays, the many-coloured bridal ribbons gleam even
yet.[125.2] Sometimes the catastrophe is occasioned by the mere breach
of a taboo. Such is the case in a story told by the Lapps concerning
the origin of the Aniov Islands. Three giants who were shamans
determined to cut a piece of land off Norway and bring it away with
all its reindeer and other wealth in order to increase their own
stores. They succeeded in doing so, and were conveying it round to its
destination, when their mother dreamed she saw them returning. She ran
out of the hut and, hearing a noise, cried: “See! my children are
coming, they bring goods, oxen, reindeer; they spoke truth.” But she
thus violated the rule of strict silence during the performance of
magical rites, and was punished by being turned, together with the
whole parish, into stone, while her sons and the reindeer they had
stolen were drowned, and the land they had cut off became two
islands.[125.3] Another woman underwent the like transformation in the
island of Coll, off the western coast of Scotland. She was gathering
shellfish when the tide rose, and “finding no other means of escape
made a last effort by climbing {126} the rocks. When at the top, and
almost out of danger, she said: ‘I am safe now, in spite of God and
men!’” Her blasphemy was immediately avenged by her conversion into a
stone, which now forms part of the rock whence the headland of
Cailleach Point (the Old Wife’s Headland) takes its name.[126.1]
Often, however, the Deity himself, or some holy man endowed with a
portion of divine power, by curses or prayers effects the
metamorphosis. Thus, it is believed in Bombay that the moon once
became enamoured of Ahalyá, the wife of the Rishi Gautama, and
visited her in her husband’s absence. Unluckily the Rishi returned and
found the guilty pair together. His wife was turned into stone as the
effect of his curses; and the moon bears, and will bear for ever, the
black mark of the blow he received from the Rishi’s well-aimed
shoe.[126.2] So, too, when Ino fleeing from Juno’s wrath flung herself
into the sea, and was made immortal by Neptune at the prayer of Venus,
her attendants, as Ovid tells us, reproaching the vengeful goddess,
were metamorphosed. Juno exclaimed: “I will make you terrible
monuments of my displeasure.” As she uttered the words, some of the
women, attempting to follow their mistress into the water, were
stiffened in the various attitudes of the moment into rocks on the
shore, while others were transformed into seabirds that now stretch
their wings over every wave of the Ionian sea.[126.3] The kind of
superstition here portrayed has of course survived into Christianity.
It is partly the superhuman might of the priest as such, and partly
the strength of his incantations, which nobody but he knows so well
how to perform that {127} gives effect to his words when, like the
Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims, and other priests before and
since, he calls for his candle, his bell, and his book. It was the
superhuman might of the shaman that was acknowledged by Balak in the
Hebrew saga, when he sent for Balaam to come and curse Israel; “for I
know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest
is cursed.” Balaam, indeed, performed his function with due solemnity
and order; yet the ceremonies, however valuable in themselves, would
hardly have been effectual if performed by a lesser man. This belief
has constantly tended, in all religions alike, to invest the lightest
word of a saint with efficacy graduated according to his sanctity.
Take the following Christian examples out of many. Saint Constant,
pursued by a party of heathen up a hill in the neighbourhood of
Deonero, in the Italian province of Cuneo, launched his maledictions
upon them with such effect that they were changed into stones, many of
which are still to be seen on the spot. His potency must have been
exhausted by the effort; for he had scarcely reached the top when
another band of persecutors seized and put him to death. But the night
fell murky and wet; and a labourer, going home after an evening’s
enjoyment, beheld the saint toiling up the steep laden with stones. In
the morning the Church of Villar San Costanzo stood on the place of
the martyrdom, built by the saint’s own hands out of some of the very
men whom he had conveniently petrified; and there it is to be seen at
the present day. Strangely enough, his holiness did not avail to
procure him mortar. Nor was it needful, for the stones, whether
naturally or supernaturally fitted together, stand perfectly well
without it. When his work was done, his body, which had been left by
his murderers {128} where it fell, disappeared. Some say that it was
transported by angels into heaven; and there can be no more difficulty
in crediting this than the rest of the story.[128.1] In the Isle of
Man Saint Patrick cursed a sea-monster, which was following to devour
him, and turned it into a solid rock at the foot of Peel Hill.[128.2]
According to Sardinian belief a greater than Saint Constant, or even
Saint Patrick, inflicted the same vengeance for a smaller crime. One
day Our Lord and Saint Peter presented themselves at a threshing-floor
near Mores, and prayed for alms, but were denied. Thereupon Jesus
Christ uttered an imprecation; and in a moment the corn became sand,
while the guilty farmer and his innocent workmen were alike
transformed into stones.[128.3] Judging doubtless by their own unhappy
experience, the greater the personage the more trifling is the
occasion to which the peasants ascribe his wrath. On the right-hand
side of the road from Flatow to Lobsens, in the province of Posen,
about half a German mile from the latter place, is a great stone,
formerly a landed proprietor, who, being out hunting, put his horse to
jump a ditch at that spot. The horse refused, perhaps for some similar
reason to that which animated Balaam’s talking donkey, since we are
told that the Lord flew into a passion and cried, “Become stone!”
Forthwith horse and rider were turned into a stone which is alive at
this day to testify to the truth of the story, though many have been
the attempts to destroy it.[128.4]
So far the power of words. Another magical power {129} which appears
in the _märchen_ is that of a blow. Nor is it absent from sagas told
to explain the origin of rocks whose form has appealed to the
imagination of uncultured peoples. The story of the discovery of
Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Galway, relates that two
fishermen lost in a fog landed on an unknown shore. When the fog
lifted they found themselves on what is now called the north Beach of
Inishbofin.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water;
and close at hand they beheld an old woman driving a white cow down to
the lake. She drove the cow right into the water, and struck her with
a stick, whereupon the cow was metamorphosed into a rock. One of the
fishermen got so angry at the sight that he struck the woman; and both
he and she were turned into stones. The rock and stones are still to
be seen. “The cow used to rise up out of the lake and walk about the
island when any great event was about to happen; but it is now more
than thirty years since she was last seen.” From this cow the island
takes its name (Inis-bo-finne, the Island of the White Cow).[129.1] In
the south-west of Ireland is a cliff called Fail Mahisht, once the
daughter of the king of the White Nation and wife of Finn MacCumhail,
whom she won by playing at chess with him for a wager. The condition
was that he was to be her husband until he had seven shovelfuls of
earth put on his head. After various adventures Diarmaid fulfilled the
condition, and with a blow of his fist sent the lady spinning through
the air until she fell at the water’s edge, where she now stands, and
from that day to this gives {130} food to the people of Erin from the
limpets and periwinkles that cluster upon her beyond any other cliff
in Ireland.[130.1] The heroic cycle of Ireland as now found in the
mouths of the people is full of tales of petrifaction from a
blow;[130.2] but how far they are now believed as records of fact must
be regarded as more than doubtful, whatever might have been the case
at the time the legend of the Enchanted Cave, already mentioned, was
written. No such uncertainty seems to rest on the Sardinian tale
concerning a stone on the side of the Montesanto of Mores. It is
called Saint Elisha’s Stone, and was once a man whom the saint threw
from the top of the mountain and, when he saw him fast below, called
out: “Dost thou stand well?” “Yes, sir,” replied the stone; and there
it remains immovable.[130.3]
The mixed population of Missouri tell a story, probably of Indian
origin, about a beautiful but mysterious witch, who seduced the young
braves, and with a touch from her right hand turned their hearts into
stone. The people, fearful of attacking her, waited long for vengeance
from on high to repay her iniquities. She used to feed on fish that
came out of the river in response to her call. One day she went down
to the water and summoned the fish in vain. At last, after she had
uttered in her rage and impatience words that would dismay devils,
there came up a little fish like silver. She essayed to swallow it;
but it swelled and {131} stuck in her throat, and at length stiffened
into stone. In her agony she clutched her throat and beat her breast
with the fatal hand. So now she stands upon, and part of, the rocky
bluff on the banks of the Missouri.[131.1]
At Jaunpur, in India, is the shrine of Kerárbír, where a great stone
is the object of worship. The stone in question is part of the body of
the giant-demon Kerar, slain by Rámchandra for his wickedness.[131.2]
Two rocks observed in descending the pass of Markundi into the valley
of the Son, in Mirzapur, are worshipped and connected with the flight
of two lovers from a barbarian king who ruled at the fort of Agori.
One of these rocks was cloven by a blow of the fugitives’ sword; the
other is the pursuer’s elephant, decapitated by the same means.[131.3]
Divine vengeance, without any visible or audible intervention, has
often been invoked in various parts of the world to account for the
existence of rocks and stones. Niobe, weeping for her children slain
by Apollo, was turned to stone, as anybody, says Pausanias, may
reasonably be persuaded. She stood, a rock, on Mount Sipylos in
Bœotia, and in summer-time was reported to weep.[131.4] Such, too,
was the fate which overtook Lot’s wife. Her legend doubtless grew up
to account for some prominent pile on the cliffs overlooking the Dead
Sea; and perhaps the archæologists who are now striving to
rehabilitate the writings of Moses will point out the crag and prove
the truth of the story. Of course they will be equally ready and
willing to prove a thousand other tales. Let me mention a few equally
authentic.
{132}
I pass over instances like those of the Stone-woman near the village
of Moras in the department of Isère, France, manifestly a mere
transplantation of the Biblical tradition.[132.1] There are cases,
however, in which the crime of looking back in disobedience to an
express taboo has been punished by petrifaction, and where the
connection with Lot’s wife is by no means so easily proved. Once upon
a time the Hindu saint, Sri Dharamnathji, was doing penance in the
jungle near Pattan. His disciple Gharibnáthji used to beg alms in the
city, but as the people were not charitable he was obliged to maintain
himself by carrying bundles of firewood and selling them in the town.
From the proceeds he purchased flour, which a shepherd’s wife baked
for him, adding a loaf from herself. The sage, “observing the bald
patch on his disciple’s head caused by the loads he carried, cursed
the city to be swallowed up. He had previously warned the shepherd’s
wife to leave the place and not look back. The city was swallowed up;
and the woman, disobeying the saint’s command, was turned into a
stone.”[132.2]
Here the destruction of the city was caused by niggardliness towards a
personage of supernatural power. Another Indian saga shows us this
crime punished by petrifaction. Near the village of Dudhi, in South
Mirzapur, are two stones, once a bride and bridegroom who were thus
transformed by an angry bhút, or malevolent spirit. His proper
offerings had been forgotten, and he wrought his vengeance in this
way.[132.3] Sometimes the fault is breach of tribal custom or social
convention. When a rajah’s daughter made a rash vow only to wed him
who could count the palm-trees {133} within view of her father’s
palace, and a low-born wizard fulfilled the condition, the earth
herself interfered and, rather than allow so shameful a marriage to be
accomplished, she turned the princess into a stone, which now lies
within the ruined fort of Rájá Sahay, protected from human touch by
a number of enormous snakes.[133.1] Among the Gonds of Central India,
the bride goes in procession to the bridegroom, instead of his coming
to her, as is usual among the Hindus. It is intended in this way to
prevent the repetition of the catastrophe which overtook a luckless
pair who were about to be married in the ordinary way. The youth,
borne on his uncle’s shoulders in the procession, came within sight of
his bride, and unable to restrain his impatience he leaped to the
ground and looked with all his might to the place where he expected to
see her. She felt no less eager, and their eyes met. In a moment not
only the young couple but also the bridegroom’s uncle were turned into
sandstone spires yet visible on the road in descending into the valley
of the Narbada over the Vindhyan range from Bhopál.[133.2] The same
cause may perhaps be understood in an Enganese tale accounting for a
block of coral and a rock bearing some resemblance to human form off
the coast of the island, near the anchorages of Baraháu and
Kai-Kokoh. The one represents a husband who was deserting his wife
because he found she had a disgusting malady, and the other the
deserted wife.[133.3] It is more obvious in the case of two stones in
the tanks near the temples at Arang, in the Ráepur district of India,
and at Deobáluda. The erection of the pinnacle of a temple is {134}
the act of completion; and it seems that it is necessary to be
performed naked. These two temples were built simultaneously. When
they were ready to receive their pinnacles the mason and his sister
agreed to put them on at the same auspicious moment. Stripping
themselves according to custom, they climbed to the top. As they
reached it, each could see the other, and each through shame jumped
down into the tank beneath and was changed into stone. Both stones are
visible in seasons of drought, when the water in the tanks is
low.[134.1]
Petrifaction in the traditions of Christian Europe, when directly
inflicted by divine intervention, is usually the punishment of a
serious infraction of the divine law, often amounting to
_lèse-majesté_. Various stone circles in Cornwall, such as the
Hurlers, the Nine Maids and the Merry Maidens, were once human beings
transformed for Sabbath-breaking by hurling or dancing.[134.2] Stories
of this kind are commonplace all over Europe. We will be satisfied
with the following samples taken from Germany and Bohemia. The legend
of the two stone Jews at Ottorowo on the crossroad to Krzeszkowice, in
the province of Posen, relates that these culprits suffered
metamorphosis for profaning a crucifix.[134.3] In the neighbourhood of
the town of Gabel in Bohemia stand three blocks of stone surmounted by
crosses. They were girls who went to work in the fields on Easter
Sunday. They carried their disregard of holy things so far as to mock
when the sanctus bell sounded at the completion of the sacred rite;
and each time it rang they threw up to heaven the sickles they were
using to cut the grass. The third time the sickles fell not down
again, {135} and the girls were turned into stone. Near Commotau, in
the same country, lie seven great stones, once girls who led an evil
life, and were therefore transformed.[135.1] In Styria the same
penalty fell on a maiden who would spin on Sundays. A violent storm
destroyed the hut wherein she dwelt and transported her to the top of
a neighbouring rock, where she stands for ever, a warning against
blasphemy and greed.[135.2] On some pasture lands not far from
Jevenstedt stands a stone circle with two larger stones in the midst.
These were a bridal party who danced on Sunday during divine
service.[135.3] Bridal parties in the West as in the East seem
specially obnoxious to the displeasure of the higher powers. In
Altmark, near Dahrendorf, not far from the Hanoverian border, is a
large piece of granite surrounded by smaller stones, formerly a bride,
named Lene, from the state of Hanover, who with her attendants was
changed, no one knows why, into stone. We have already met with
several other instances. A circle of stones near Wirchow, in Neumark,
was a party of persons who added to their scorn of Whitsunday the
shameless eccentricity of dancing naked, and are now called the Adam’s
Dance. It has ever been held by the folk a grave misdemeanour to treat
with wanton disrespect the necessaries of life; and singular judgments
have, both in this country and elsewhere in Europe, fallen on such as
have dealt improperly with bread and other common kinds of food. Seven
boys were thus turned into stone, and are still to be seen near the
little town of Morin in Neumark.[135.4] Let us hope that the children
of the district are duly impressed by their awful doom.
{136}
Similar to the fate of the Styrian maiden was that of a pair of lovers
in Sardinia, who in consequence of the opposition of their families to
their union entered, the one a monastery, and the other a nunnery. But
love triumphs over even the vows of celibacy. The young monk escaped
from his convent, carried off his sweetheart and lived with her in the
wilds. The infraction of their vows could not, however, be passed
over. God raised one day an impetuous wind, which transported the
lovers to the top of Monte Ruju, where they rest changed into
stone.[136.1]
On the western continent are to be found many legends accounting for
rocks of peculiar form as human victims of supernatural caprice. The
Zuñi tradition mentioned in a previous chapter is but one example of
many. Mrs. Stevenson, who reports this tale, also records the
tradition of an allied people, the Sia, concerning two brothers of
ancient days, the culture-heroes of their tribe, renowned for
giant-slaying and other feats. On two occasions they went disguised as
poor, dirty, beggar-boys to villages of the Oraibi and the Katsuna
where feasts were being held. They were refused food save by one
family at each place; and the people were in consequence turned into
stone.[136.2] {137} More frequently, perhaps, in aboriginal folklore
the metamorphosis is suffered by a fugitive. In such cases it seems a
little doubtful whether the pursuers are thus foiled or satiated of
their revenge. The story of the Peruvian goddess, Cavillaca, will be
remembered in this connection.[137.1] “There is a Winnebago tradition
that a woman carrying her child was running from her enemies, so she
jumped down a steep place and was turned into a rock. And now when
they [the Winnebagoes] pass that place they make offerings to
her.”[137.2] A similar saga of the Nasqually Indians of British
Columbia is told to account for an isolated rock on the coast.[137.3]
Many other instances are to be found.
Among savages, however, it hardly seems necessary for their
fore-elders to render themselves obnoxious to superior beings as a
cause of this transformation. The natives of North Australia have
tales of persons, some good and others bad, who were turned on death
into stones or trees.[137.4] A Chinese legend, descending doubtless
from a more barbarous period, explains the existence of three rocks in
the Yang-tsze river and the Poyang lake, through which it runs. A boat
containing a man, his wife and their two children was capsized on the
river during a storm. The man and woman perished at once; but the lads
were assisted by a compassionate frog, which took them on its back and
made for their home on the banks of the lake. The younger boy,
grieving at his parents’ death, threw himself off and was drowned,
reappearing shortly after in the {138} form of a bold limestone rock,
now known as the Little Orphan, situate in the middle of the river
about twenty miles below the egress of the lake. The surviving orphan
held on until the frog had entered the lake, when he fell
broken-hearted into the water and became the large rock, surmounted in
later ages by a Buddhist monastery and pagoda, and called the Great
Orphan. The frog, in the bitterness of grief at his unsuccessful
efforts, also yielded up his life, and in due course emerged from the
waves as the Frog Rock.[138.1] In Japan the peasants discern high up
on the weatherworn cliffs of Matsura, “the figure of a lady in long
trailing court-dress with face and figure eagerly bent over the
western waves.” It is Satyohimé, the wife of Saté-hiko, petrified
while gazing to catch the last glimpse of the sails that bore her
husband away to Corea, as one of the Mikado’s body-guard, sent to
assist the Japanese allies at Hiaksai, in the year 536 A.D. Her sad
fate has rendered her name the symbol in Japanese literature of
devoted love.[138.2]
I have left to the last the Gorgonian power of petrifying with a look.
The fatal head was regarded, we know, as the most powerful of Athene’s
weapons. As a single illustration we may take a curious case mentioned
by Pausanias. Describing the temple of Athene near Coronea, in
Bœotia, where the Panbœotian festival was held, he says that a
priestess named Iodamia coming into the temple once at night was
confronted by the goddess herself armed with Medusa’s head, and was
turned into stone. An altar called by the unfortunate priestess’ name
seems to have stood in the temple when Pausanias wrote; and a woman
daily put fire thereon, saying in the language of the country that
{139} Iodamia was living and demanded fire.[139.1] The memory of
Medusa yet lingers, as we have seen, in Seriphos, where her head on
the coinage of the island seems to have preserved it. If we may trust
mediæval writers like Walter Map, Gervase of Tilbury and Roger of
Hoveden, a more definite recollection, though still confused and
distorted, formerly remained in the Levant. Gervase tells us that
between Rhodes and Cyprus are the Syrtes, commonly called the Gulf of
Satalia, where the Gorgon’s head was said to have been thrown into the
sea. They are opposite the town of Satalia, claimed by the Sultan of
Iconium. The Gorgon was held to have been a prostitute whose beauty
drove men out of their wits, until Perseus threw her head into the
deep. This of course was a piece of euhemerism on the part of the
Marshal of Arles or his informants, whoever they may have been. He
goes on, however, to say that the natives report that a soldier fell
in love with a certain queen, and not being able to obtain her during
her life, he secretly violated her sepulchre. From his posthumous
embraces the corpse bore a monstrous head, which, the soldier was
warned by a voice in the air at the moment of his crime, would by its
mere look destroy all things that it beheld. Accordingly at the proper
time he opened the tomb and found the head, carefully averting himself
from its gaze. Whenever he exhibited it to his foes they and their
cities were destroyed. Afterwards he found another love; and one day,
while sailing the sea he was sleeping peacefully in her lap, when she
took the opportunity to steal the key and open the casket wherein the
head was kept. Her curiosity proved her bane. Her lover awoke and,
plunged in grief at the catastrophe, he took out the {140} fatal head,
stuck it up and perished with his ship from its glance. Every seven
years, it was believed, the head rose to the surface of the sea and
imperilled the safety of all who navigated those waters.[140.1] Map’s
account is that the hero was a cordwainer of exceeding great skill,
who flourished at Constantinople in the time of Gerbert, that is to
say, about a hundred and fifty years before his own time. Falling in
love with a noble maiden whose naked foot he had been called upon to
clothe in the course of business, he sold everything and took service
in the army, in order to rise in the world and become worthy of her.
She, however, died in his absence. The violation of her tomb follows.
The Gorgonian head is expressly declared to have _stiffened_ the
wretches upon whom its gaze was brought to bear. The soldier at length
weds the daughter and heiress of the Emperor. She gives him no peace
until he tells her the contents of his casket; and having learnt the
secret she tries the effect of the head upon her husband as he wakes
from sleep. Having thus fordone him by her wiles, she orders his body
and the instrument of his enormities to be cast together into the
Grecian Sea. A terrific storm arose when her command was fulfilled;
and on its subsiding a vast and destructive whirlpool remained ever
thereafter, called Satalia, or more commonly, the Gulf of Satalia,
from the maiden’s name.[140.2]
More nearly akin to the classical myth is a Danish tradition that in
former days a troll who dwelt in the Issefiord was accustomed to stop
every passing vessel and take a man by way of toll. At last it became
known that the troll’s power would endure until the head of Pope
Lucius, {141} who had suffered decapitation in Rome ages before,
should be shown him. Some monks were accordingly despatched to Rome
for the head. “When the ship returned and was about to run into the
fiord the troll made his appearance; but as soon as they held forth
the head and the troll got a sight of it, he with a horrid howl
transformed himself into a rock.” Representations in Roeskilde
Cathedral commemorate the event.[141.1] One of the commonest of
Scandinavian sagas is that which attributes the power of transforming
trolls and giants to the sun. The earliest mention of it is in the
Helgi poems, which are only known to us in a single manuscript, the
Codex Regius at Copenhagen, but which probably date from the tenth
century. In one of these poems, Rimegerd, the giantess, whose father
Helgi has slain, appears by night and calls on the hero to recompense
her for her father’s slaughter. Helgi and Atli his warder detain her
in a war of words until the sun rises, when Atli exclaims: “Look
eastward now, Rimegerd! Helgi hath stricken thee with the wand of
Death.… It is day, Rimegerd! Atli has lured thee to deadly delay. It
will be a laughter-moving harbour-mark, methinks, that thou wilt make
now thou art turned to stone!” The same catastrophe is implied in the
_Alvíssmal_, also found only in the Codex Regius, but at least as old
as the Helgi poems. Allwise the dwarf has come to fetch Freya, whom he
has entrapped the Anses into a promise to give him as wife. He comes
by night; and one of the Anses detains him with questions calculated
to bring out his extensive cosmological knowledge, until the day
breaks and the hall is full of sunshine. We are then to understand,
from the triumphant expressions of his interlocutor, that the power
{142} of the sun effects his petrifaction.[142.1] In a Norwegian
ballad of _Hermod the Young_ the hero rescues a beautiful maiden from
a giantess, riding off with her on Christmas Day. The giantess pursues
all night, and is on the point of catching the fugitives, when the sun
arises and she is changed to a stone.[142.2] Two tall isolated cliffs
lift themselves out of the sound between Eysturoy and Streymoy, two of
the Færoe Islands. They were a giant and his wife who had been sent
from Iceland to drag the Færoe Islands nearer to that island. It was
at night. The giant stood in the sea while the giantess took the other
end of the rope, and after an ineffectual attempt made it fast to the
top of one of the hills. She saw the glimmering of dawn and hastened
down; but too late. Before she and her husband could wade back to
Iceland with their charge the sun came up out of the sea and they were
instantly turned to stone, to stand there for ever looking northward
but unable to move from the spot.[142.3] These are sufficient as
samples of the Scandinavian belief in the transforming influence
exercised by the gaze of the sun upon the evil powers of darkness. The
incident has passed into a Lapp _märchen_ from Tanen, where a king’s
son, by the help of a friendly fox, has stolen a maiden called
Evening-glow, the sun’s sister, from some giants who held her captive.
The fox leads the pursuing giants astray until the dawn, when he
exclaims: “See, there comes the sun’s sister!” They raise their eyes
to the morning glow, and are forthwith changed into stone
pillars.[142.4] The incident here probably owes its origin to the
adjacent Norsemen; the Quiché {143} saga of the three tribal gods,
Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz is, however, quite independent.
Originally, we learn, there was neither sun, moon, nor star. When for
the first time the sun rose, it petrified these and other ferocious
deities, but without taking away from them the power of changing their
forms and resuming mobility when they pleased.[143.1] According to the
story of the inhabitants of Hispaniola, men came out of two caves. A
giant, Machakael, was set to guard these caves and prevent mankind
from looking upon the light of the sun. One night he wandered from his
post, and could not return before sunrise. The sun rose out of the sea
and looked with anger upon the giant, who was forthwith turned into a
rock called Kauta.[143.2]
The power of petrification is, however, usually regarded as equivalent
to that of striking dead with a glance. This is expressed, as we have
already seen,[143.3] in the case of Balor of Tory Island. A long list
of stories wherein a glance is credited with this terrible might could
be culled from every nation, beginning with that of Isis punishing at
Byblos an unlucky boy who disturbed her in her grief.[143.4] In some
cases, as in a variant of the tale of Balor, the baleful eye not only
slays but reduces its victim to ashes.[143.5] The elephant head of the
Hindu god, Ganesa, is a substitute for his original head burned to
cinders by the gaze of Sani. Nor is the murderous property confined to
supernatural beings. Witches, who of course partake of more than {144}
ordinary human qualities, are credited with it. Men of special
holiness have sometimes the fatal gift, like Rabbi Juda in rabbinical
tradition, who thus killed four-and-twenty of his scholars in a single
day;[144.1] or a Samoan high-priest of the heavenly gods, whose very
look was poison; “if he looked at a cocoa-nut tree it died, and if he
glanced at a bread-fruit tree it also withered away.”[144.2] Various
writers, classic and mediæval, have told us of the women of a certain
Scythian tribe, of the Sardinians, or of a remote island in the ocean,
whose glance is death.[144.3] To such writers we owe the fable of the
Catoblepas, or Downlooker, an animal “so wicked and so venomous that
no man may behold it right in the face, but he die anon without
remedy.” Some of the soldiers of Marius in his expedition against
Jugurtha, not knowing the creature and attacking it incautiously, were
slain by the eye of this terrible beast.[144.4] In various parts of
Asia and Africa serpents also have naturally been reputed to possess
the same horrible gift; while countries like Spain have not yet parted
with the belief in the basilisk.[144.5] Among American tribes the
superstition and the stories of the deadly glance are found in similar
terms to those of the Old World. I have already mentioned the Quiché
gods petrified by the sun. The Cegihas have a tale of a mysterious
being called Two Faces that slew every one {145} who looked at
it.[145.1] The Ts’ets’āut of British Columbia account for the
prohibition to a man to look at his adult sister by a legend of one of
their fore-elders who married his sister. Their brothers were ashamed,
tied them together by way of punishment, and deserted them. But the
man broke the ropes; and having killed a ram, an ewe and a kid of the
mountain-goats, he clad himself, his wife and their child in the
skins, and they assumed the shape of goats. “He had acquired the power
of killing everything by a glance of his eyes. One day his tribe came
up the river for the purpose of hunting, and he killed them. Then he
travelled all over the world, leaving signs of his presence
everywhere, such as remarkable rocks.”[145.2] Iroquois traditions tell
of an Onondaga chief, named Tododäho, whose head was covered with
tangled serpents, and whose angry look sufficed to strike the
beholders dead. He submitted, however, to be tamed, and to have the
serpents combed out of his locks.[145.3] But the saga which presents
the closest parallel to the incident of the Slaughter of the Gorgon
comes to us from Brazil, and comes with every mark of indigenous
growth. Some of the Brazilian tribes tell of a bird which kills with a
look. The story goes that a hunter succeeded in slaying one, and cut
off its head, without the dreadful eye being turned upon him. Like
Perseus, he killed his game thenceforward by turning the eye upon it.
“His wife, not dreaming of its destructive power, however, once turned
it toward her husband and {146} killed him, and then accidentally
turned it toward herself and died.”[146.1]
The truth is that we are here in presence of the worldwide belief in
the Evil Eye: one more demonstration of the inseparable connection
between tale, superstition, and custom. The awful weapon of the
mythical Brazilian bird was Medusa’s power, the same as is to-day the
terror of the Italian peasant, and is not yet regarded with
indifference even in lands, like our own, which boast of being in the
van of civilisation. From all parts of the world we read of the
superstition that certain persons wield, intentionally or
unintentionally--as often the latter as the former--the power of
blasting others by their look. This power was dreaded in Palestine
from time immemorial. The maxim, “Eat thou not the bread of him that
hath an Evil Eye” is found among the Hebrew proverbs; and Jesus Christ
alludes to the superstition, though only to warn the Pharisees against
“an Evil Eye” as a moral quality proceeding out of the heart.[146.2]
The superstition has left its traces in language. To the ancient Roman
“Envy, eldest born of Hell,” was really _Invidia_, the Evil Eye; and
the English rustic still speaks of being “overlooked.” Wizards and
witches are thus gifted, of course: the Evil Eye is amongst their
mightiest weapons. But it is by no means theirs alone. Innocent women,
according to many nations, are periodically cursed with it. In fact,
anybody may have an Evil Eye, even without knowing it; the most sacred
personages are not exempt. The Samoan high priest and the Rabbi Juda
are examples from the opposite ends of the {147} earth. Pius the
Ninth, infallible head of the church as he was, vicar of Christ and
what not, was afflicted with the Evil Eye. There was nothing so fatal
as his blessing; and the flock he tended cowered and quailed before
their shepherd’s sight.[147.1]
So much has been written of late on the Evil Eye that it is enough to
mention in these general terms a superstition at once much less
complex and much more fully known to anthropological students than
some of those investigated in other chapters of these volumes. Its
origin is doubtless to be sought in the evil passions of which the
human countenance is so admirable and so terrible an exponent,
striking inevitably with horror and awe even beholders who are not the
object of the resentment or the jealousy expressed--much more,
fascinating and paralysing with fear the unhappy victims, as a bird is
said to be fascinated by a snake.[147.2]