In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the
laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another
indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a
sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house,
and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is
built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until,
with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times
round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant
dedication of the house.[122]
Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the
owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the
blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom
all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among
his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the
threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its
owner, while coming into covenant with him.[123]
The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of
that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer
blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the
practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.[124]
Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.[125] Later they
were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been
that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his
house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his
household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to
proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who
crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or
defied deity.
There is, indeed, a suggestion of this idea in the curse pronounced by
Joshua, when he destroyed the doomed city of Jericho, against him who
should rebuild its walls, he not being in covenant with and obedient to
the Lord. “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and
buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay
the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he
set up the gates of it.”[126] A later record tells of the fulfilment of
this curse. It says of the reign of Ahab: “In his days did Hiel the
Bethel-ite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof with the loss
of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of
his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord, which he
spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.”[127]
Human sacrifices, in order to furnish blood at the foundations of a
house, or of a public structure, have been continued down to recent
times, or to the present, in some portions of the world; and there are
indications in popular tradition that they were frequent in a not remote
past.
It is said that at the building of Scutari, in Asia Minor, “the workmen
were engaged on its fortifications for three years, but the walls would
not stand. Then they protested that the only possible way to succeed was
to lay under or in them a living human being. They accordingly laid hold
of a young woman who brought them dinner, and immured her.”[128]
According to a story in China, when the bridge leading to the site of
St. John’s College, in Shanghai, was in process of building, an official
present took off his shoes, as indicating his rank, and threw them into
the stream, in order to stay the current, and enable the workmen to lay
the foundations. Finding this unavailing, he took off his garments and
threw them in. Finally he threw himself in, and as his life went out the
workmen were enabled to go on with their building. To this day the
belief is general that that structure stands fast because of this
sacrifice.[129]
“When the walls of Algiers were built of blocks of concrete [by
Muhammadans], in the sixteenth century, a Christian captive named
Geronimo was placed in one of the blocks and the rampart built over and
about him. Since the French occupation of Algiers a subsidence in the
wall led to an examination of the blocks, and one was found to have
given way. It was removed, and the cast of Geronimo was discovered in
the block. The body had gone to dust, and the superincumbent weight had
crushed in the stone sarcophagus.”[130]
A story told among the Danes is, that “many years ago, when the ramparts
were being raised round Copenhagen, the wall always sank, so that it was
not possible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little
innocent girl, placed her in a chair by a table, and gave her playthings
and sweetmeats. While she thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built
an arch over her, which, when completed, they covered with earth to the
sound of drums and trumpets. By this process the walls were made
solid.”[131]
“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast
and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and
walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story
goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I
see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother,
now I see thee no more.’”[132]
A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague
devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new
citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out
messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to
seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved
to be a child (_Dyetina_, archaic form of _Ditya_), who was buried alive
under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that
account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any
citadel.”[133]
It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the
Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found
imbedded in the foundations.”[134]
A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a
cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and
safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his
companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the
structure, having no trouble after that.[135]
And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the
ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.[136]
Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the
Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house
were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus
described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the
building is ... cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four
holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set.... A slave, either
man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of
such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost,
in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic
altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and,
at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the
respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to
death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves
are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at
a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club
ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the
present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies
are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented
by the United States authorities.”[137]
In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba,
Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this
foundation-laying in blood.[138] It would seem, indeed, to have been
wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.
Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various
lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building
of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it
was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it
would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations.
He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and
then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile,
whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands
fast.”[139]
“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with
the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the
architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar
superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de
Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian
poet Alexandri.”[140]
There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as
shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells
of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a
part.[141]
Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a
foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different
countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared
for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and
the workmen attend, together with the _pappas_ [the priest] in full
canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories.
A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is
sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you
have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of
the workmen, killed and decapitated, the _pappas_ standing by all the
while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the
foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there
must be blood in the foundation.’”[142]
The modern Greek term for this ceremony, _stoicheionein_, would seem to
indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation.
“The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a
thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is
then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man
whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade
himself.... Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the
foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some
other species of scapegoat.”[143]
Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new
house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for
which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family
who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom
of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters
the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the
Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on
which the first log or stone is laid.”[144]
The “upper corner” of a house, in Russia, is peculiarly sacred, having
even more honor than the doorway threshold in the ordinary home. Yet
this upper corner seems to be in a sense the real threshold, or
foundation corner, of the building. A cock is the ordinary victim
sacrificed “on the spot which a projected house is to cover.” The head
of this cock is buried “exactly where the ‘upper corner’ of the building
is to stand.” And this corner is thenceforward a sacred corner. Opposite
to it is the stove. It is called the “great” and the “beautiful” corner.
The family meal is eaten before it, and every one who enters the cottage
makes obeisance toward it. Formerly ancestral images are supposed to
have been in that corner, and now holy pictures are there.[145] It would
seem to be in accordance with this idea that the foundation-stone, or
threshold, of a new building, which in civilized lands is now laid with
imposing ceremonies, is known as the “corner-stone.” Yet the
“corner-stone” of a modern building is sometimes at the corner of the
central doorway.[146]
It is worthy of note that in ancient Egypt the one door of an ordinary
dwelling-house was placed at one side, or end, of the front wall, and
not in the center; so that the corner-stone of the building was
literally a portion of the threshold.[147] The same was true of many an
old-time New England house; the “front door” was at the left-hand side
(as one approached the house) of the gable end. Thus the threshold of
the door was often the corner-stone.
Ancient Romans were accustomed to place statues and images, instead of
living persons, under the foundations of their buildings, as has been
shown by recent researches in and about Rome.[148] In one instance,
where a fine statue of colossal size and in perfect preservation was
unearthed, at the foundations of a convent which was being enlarged, “by
order of the monks, it was buried again,” as if in deference to the
primitive belief that it was essential to the stability of the
structure.[149]
There is a Swedish tradition “that under the altar in the first
Christian churches a lamb was usually buried, which imparted security
and duration to the edifice.”[150] And, “according to Danish accounts, a
lamb was buried under every altar, and a living horse was laid in every
churchyard before a human corpse was laid in it. Both lamb and horse are
to be seen occasionally in the church- or grave-yard, and betoken death.
Under other houses pigs and hens were buried alive.”[151]
A new sacrificial stone, or altar of sacrifice, laid on the summit of a
Mexican temple, in 1512, was consecrated by Montezuma by the blood of
more than twelve thousand captives.[152]
When the new railroad was built between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a few years
ago, there were sacrifices of sheep at its beginning. And there were
similar sacrifices at the foundations of the Turkish building, at the
Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building,
in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed
an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity
of the place.