The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
By
James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool
Vol. IX. of XII.
Part VI: The Scapegoat.
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1913
CONTENTS
Preface.
Chapter I. The Transference of Evil.
§ 1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects.
§ 2. The Transference to Stones and Sticks.
§ 3. The Transference to Animals.
§ 4. The Transference to Men.
§ 5. The Transference of Evil in Europe.
§ 6. The Nailing of Evils.
Chapter II. The Omnipresence of Demons.
Chapter III. The Public Expulsion of Evils.
§ 1. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils.
§ 2. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils.
Chapter IV. Public Scapegoats.
§ 1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils.
§ 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle.
§ 3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle.
Chapter V. On Scapegoats in General.
Chapter VI. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity.
§ 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome.
§ 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece.
Chapter VII. Killing the God in Mexico.
Chapter VIII. The Saturnalia and Kindred Festivals.
§ 1. The Roman Saturnalia.
§ 2. The King of the Bean and the Festival of Fools.
§ 3. The Saturnalia and Lent.
§ 4. Saturnalia in Ancient Greece.
§ 5. Saturnalia in Western Asia.
§ 6. Conclusion.
Note. The Crucifixion Of Christ.
Index.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
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PREFACE.
With _The Scapegoat_ our general discussion of the theory and practice of
the Dying God is brought to a conclusion. The aspect of the subject with
which we are here chiefly concerned is the use of the Dying God as a
scapegoat to free his worshippers from the troubles of all sorts with
which life on earth is beset. I have sought to trace this curious usage to
its origin, to decompose the idea of the Divine Scapegoat into the
elements out of which it appears to be compounded. If I am right, the idea
resolves itself into a simple confusion between the material and the
immaterial, between the real possibility of transferring a physical load
to other shoulders and the supposed possibility of transferring our bodily
and mental ailments to another who will bear them for us. When we survey
the history of this pathetic fallacy from its crude inception in savagery
to its full development in the speculative theology of civilized nations,
we cannot but wonder at the singular power which the human mind possesses
of transmuting the leaden dross of superstition into a glittering
semblance of gold. Certainly in nothing is this alchemy of thought more
conspicuous than in the process which has refined the base and foolish
custom of the scapegoat into the sublime conception of a God who dies to
take away the sins of the world.
Along with the discussion of the Scapegoat I have included in this volume
an account of the remarkable religious ritual of the Aztecs, in which the
theory of the Dying God found its most systematic and most tragic
expression. There is nothing, so far as I am aware, to shew that the men
and women, who in Mexico died cruel deaths in the character of gods and
goddesses, were regarded as scapegoats by their worshippers and
executioners; the intention of slaying them seems rather to have been to
reinforce by a river of human blood the tide of life which might else grow
stagnant and stale in the veins of the deities. Hence the Aztec ritual,
which prescribed the slaughter, the roasting alive, and the flaying of men
and women in order that the gods might remain for ever young and strong,
conforms to the general theory of deicide which I have offered in this
work. On that theory death is a portal through which gods and men alike
must pass to escape the decrepitude of age and to attain the vigour of
eternal youth. The conception may be said to culminate in the Brahmanical
doctrine that in the daily sacrifice the body of the Creator is broken
anew for the salvation of the world.
J. G. Frazer.
CAMBRIDGE,
_21st June, 1913_.
CHAPTER I. THE TRANSFERENCE OF EVIL.
§ 1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects.
(M1) In the preceding parts of this work we have traced the practice of
killing a god among peoples in the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural
stages of society; and I have attempted to explain the motives which led
men to adopt so curious a custom. One aspect of the custom still remains
to be noticed. The accumulated misfortunes and sins of the whole people
are sometimes laid upon the dying god, who is supposed to bear them away
for ever, leaving the people innocent and happy. The notion that we can
transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will bear them
for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious
confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and
the immaterial. Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or
what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies
that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows
to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he acts, and
the result is an endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off
upon some one else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself.
In short, the principle of vicarious suffering is commonly understood and
practised by races who stand on a low level of social and intellectual
culture. In the following pages I shall illustrate the theory and the
practice as they are found among savages in all their naked simplicity,
undisguised by the refinements of metaphysics and the subtleties of
theology.
(M2) The devices to which the cunning and selfish savage resorts for the
sake of easing himself at the expense of his neighbour are manifold; only
a few typical examples out of a multitude can be cited. At the outset it
is to be observed that the evil of which a man seeks to rid himself need
not be transferred to a person; it may equally well be transferred to an
animal or a thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a
vehicle to convey the trouble to the first person who touches it. In some
of the East Indian islands they think that epilepsy can be cured by
striking the patient on the face with the leaves of certain trees and then
throwing them away. The disease is believed to have passed into the
leaves, and to have been thrown away with them.(1) In the Warramunga and
Tjingilli tribes of Central Australia men who suffered from headache have
often been seen wearing women’s head-rings. “This was connected with the
belief that the pain in the head would pass into the rings, and that then
it could be thrown away with them into the bush, and so got rid of
effectually. The natives have a very firm belief in the efficacy of this
treatment. In the same way when a man suffers from internal pain, usually
brought on by overeating, his wife’s head-rings are placed on his stomach;
the evil magic which is causing all the trouble passes into them, and they
are then thrown away into the bushes, where the magic is supposed to leave
them. After a time they are searched for by the woman, who brings them
back, and again wears them in the ordinary way.”(2) Among the Sihanaka of
Madagascar, when a man is very sick, his relatives are sometimes bidden by
the diviner to cast out the evil by means of a variety of things, such as
a stick of a particular sort of tree, a rag, a pinch of earth from an
ant’s nest, a little money, or what not. Whatever they may be, they are
brought to the patient’s house and held by a man near the door, while an
exorcist stands in the house and pronounces the formula necessary for
casting out the disease. When he has done, the things are thrown away in a
southward direction, and all the people in the house, including the sick
man, if he has strength enough, shake their loose robes and spit towards
the door in order to expedite the departure of the malady.(3) When an
Atkhan of the Aleutian Islands had committed a grave sin and desired to
unburden himself of his guilt, he proceeded as follows. Having chosen a
time when the sun was clear and unclouded, he picked up certain weeds and
carried them about his person. Then he laid them down, and calling the sun
to witness, cast his sins upon them, after which, having eased his heart
of all that weighed upon it, he threw the weeds into the fire, and fancied
that thus he cleansed himself of his guilt.(4) In Vedic times a younger
brother who married before his elder brother was thought to have sinned in
so doing, but there was a ceremony by which he could purge himself of his
sin. Fetters of reed-grass were laid on him in token of his guilt, and
when they had been washed and sprinkled they were flung into a foaming
torrent, which swept them away, while the evil was bidden to vanish with
the foam of the stream.(5) The Matse negroes of Togoland think that the
river Awo has power to carry away the sorrows of mankind. So when one of
their friends has died, and their hearts are heavy, they go to the river
with leaves of the raphia palm tied round their necks and drums in their
hands. Standing on the bank they beat the drums and cast the leaves into
the stream. As the leaves float away out of sight to the sound of the
rippling water and the roll of the drums, they fancy that their sorrow too
is lifted from them.(6) Similarly, the ancient Greeks imagined that the
pangs of love might be healed by bathing in the river Selemnus.(7) The
Indians of Peru sought to purify themselves from their sins by plunging
their heads in a river; they said that the river washed their sins
away.(8)
(M3) An Arab cure for melancholy or madness caused by love is to put a
dish of water on the sufferer’s head, drop melted lead into it, and then
bury the lead in an open field; thus the mischief that was in the man goes
away.(9) Amongst the Miotse of China, when the eldest son of the house
attains the age of seven years, a ceremony called “driving away the devil”
takes place. The father makes a kite of straw and lets it fly away in the
desert, bearing away all evil with it.(10) When an Indian of Santiago
Tepehuacan is ill, he will sometimes attempt to rid himself of the malady
by baking thrice seven cakes; of these he places seven in the top of the
highest pine-tree of the forest, seven he lays at the foot of the tree,
and seven he casts into a well, with the water of which he then washes
himself. By this means he transfers the sickness to the water of the well
and so is made whole.(11) The Baganda believed that plague was caused by
the god Kaumpuli, who resided in a deep hole in his temple. To prevent him
from escaping and devastating the country, they battened him down in the
hole by covering the top with plantain-stems and piling wild-cat-skins
over them; there was nothing like wild-cat-skins to keep him down, so
hundreds of wild cats were hunted and killed every year to supply the
necessary skins. However, sometimes in spite of these precautions the god
contrived to escape, and then the people died. When a garden or house was
plague-stricken, the priests purified it by transferring the disease to a
plantain-tree and then carrying away the tree to a piece of waste land.
The way in which they effected the transference of the disease was this.
They first made a number of little shields and spears out of plantain
fibre and reeds and placed them at intervals along the path leading from
the garden to the main road. A young plantain-tree, about to bear fruit,
was then cut down, the stem was laid in the path leading to one of the
plague-stricken huts, and it was speared with not less than twenty reed
spears, which were left sticking in it, while some of the plantain-fibre
shields were also fastened to it. This tree was then carried down the path
to the waste land and left there. It went by the name of the Scapegoat
(_kyonzire_). To make quite sure that the plague, after being thus
deposited in the wilderness, should not return by the way it went, the
priests raised an arch, covered with barkcloth, over the path at the point
where it diverged from the main road. This arch was thought to interpose
an insurmountable barrier to the return of the plague.(12)
(M4) Dyak priestesses expel ill-luck from a house by hewing and slashing
the air in every corner of it with wooden swords, which they afterwards
wash in the river, to let the ill-luck float away down stream. Sometimes
they sweep misfortune out of the house with brooms made of the leaves of
certain plants and sprinkled with rice-water and blood. Having swept it
clean out of every room and into a toy-house made of bamboo, they set the
little house with its load of bad luck adrift on the river. The current
carries it away out to sea, where it shifts its baleful cargo to a certain
kettle-shaped ship, which floats in mid-ocean and receives in its
capacious hold all the ills that flesh is heir to. Well would it be with
mankind if the evils remained for ever tossing far away on the billows;
but, alas, they are dispersed from the ship to the four winds, and settle
again, and yet again, on the weary Dyak world. On Dyak rivers you may see
many of the miniature houses, laden with manifold misfortunes, bobbing up
and down on the current, or sticking fast in the thickets that line the
banks.(13)
(M5) These examples illustrate the purely beneficent side of the
transference of evil; they shew how men seek to alleviate human sufferings
by diverting them to material objects, which are then thrown away or
otherwise disposed of so as to render them innocuous. Often, however, the
transference of evil to a material object is only a step towards foisting
it upon a living person. This is the maleficent side of such
transferences. It is exemplified in the following cases. To cure toothache
some of the Australian blacks apply a heated spear-thrower to the cheek.
The spear-thrower is then cast away, and the toothache goes with it in the
shape of a black stone called _karriitch_. Stones of this kind are found
in old mounds and sandhills. They are carefully collected and thrown in
the direction of enemies in order to give them toothache.(14) In Mirzapur
a mode of transferring disease is to fill a pot with flowers and rice and
bury it in a pathway covered up with a flat stone. Whoever touches this is
supposed to contract the disease. The practice is called _chalauwa_, or
“passing on” the malady. This sort of thing goes on daily in Upper India.
Often while walking of a morning in the bazaar you will see a little pile
of earth adorned with flowers in the middle of the road. Such a pile
usually contains some scabs or scales from the body of a smallpox patient,
which are placed there in the hope that some one may touch them, and by
catching the disease may relieve the sufferer.(15) The Bahima, a pastoral
people of the Uganda Protectorate, often suffer from deep-seated
abscesses: “their cure for this is to transfer the disease to some other
person by obtaining herbs from the medicine-man, rubbing them over the
place where the swelling is, and burying them in the road where people
continually pass; the first person who steps over these buried herbs
contracts the disease, and the original patient recovers.”(16) The
practice of the Wagogo of German East Africa is similar. When a man is
ill, the native doctor will take him to a cross-road, where he prepares
his medicines, uttering at the same time the incantations which are
necessary to give the drugs their medical virtue. Part of the dose is then
administered to the patient, and part is buried under a pot turned upside
down at the cross-road. It is hoped that somebody will step over the pot,
and catching the disease, which lurks in the pot, will thereby relieve the
original sufferer. A variation of this cure is to plaster some of the
medicine, or a little of the patient’s blood, on a wooden peg and to drive
the peg into a tree; any one who passes the tree and is so imprudent as to
draw out the peg, will carry away with it the disease.(17)
(M6) Sometimes in case of sickness the malady is transferred to an effigy
as a preliminary to passing it on to a human being. Thus among the Baganda
the medicine-man would sometimes make a model of his patient in clay; then
a relative of the sick man would rub the image over the sufferer’s body
and either bury it in the road or hide it in the grass by the wayside. The
first person who stepped over the image or passed by it would catch the
disease. Sometimes the effigy was made out of a plantain-flower tied up so
as to look like a person; it was used in the same way as the clay figure.
But the use of images for this maleficent purpose was a capital crime; any
person caught in the act of burying one of them in the public road would
surely have been put to death.(18) Among the Sena-speaking people to the
north of the Zambesi, when any one is ill, the doctor makes a little pig
of straw to which he transfers the sickness. The little pig is then set on
the ground where two paths meet, and any passer-by who chances to kick it
over is sure to absorb the illness and to draw it away from the
patient.(19) Among the Korkus, a forest tribe of the Central Provinces in
India, when a person wishes to transfer his sickness to another, he
contrives to obtain the loin-cloth of his intended victim and paints two
figures on it in lamp black, one upright and the other upside down. As
soon as the owner of the loin-cloth puts it on, he falls a victim to the
ailment which afflicted the artist who drew the figures.(20) Every nine
years a Mongol celebrates a memorial festival of his birth for the purpose
of ensuring the continuance of his life and welfare. At this solemn
ceremony two lambskins, one black and the other white, are spread on the
floor of the hut, which is further covered with a felt carpet, and on the
carpet are made nine little ridges of earth brought from nine mountains,
the bottom of a river, and a sepulchral mound. The owner of the hut, for
whose benefit the rite is performed, next seats himself on the black
lambskin, and opposite him is set an effigy of himself made of dough by a
lama. The priest then throws a black stone at the effigy, praying that the
black arrow of death may pierce it, after which he throws a white stone at
the master of the hut, praying that the bright beam of life may endow him
with wondrous strength. After that the Mongol gets up, steps over one of
the ridges of earth and says, “I have overcome a mishap, I have escaped a
death.” This ceremony he performs nine times, stepping over all the
ridges, one after the other. Then he sits down on the white lambskin, and
the lama takes the dough effigy, swings it thrice round the man whom it
represents, spits on it thrice, and hands it to attendants who carry it
away into the steppe. A little holy water sprinkled over the Mongol now
completes his protection against perils and dangers.(21) This last is a
case of the beneficent transference of evil; for in it no attempt seems to
be made to shift the burden of misfortune to anybody else.
§ 2. The Transference to Stones and Sticks.
(M7) In the western district of the island of Timor, when men or women are
making long and tiring journeys, they fan themselves with leafy branches,
which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their
forefathers did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus
supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use
stones instead of leaves.(22) Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired
people will strike themselves with stones, believing that they thus
transfer to the stones the weariness which they felt in their own bodies.
They then throw away the stones in places which are specially set apart
for the purpose.(23) A like belief and practice in many distant parts of
the world have given rise to those cairns or heaps of sticks and leaves
which travellers often observe beside the path, and to which every passing
native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone, or stick, or leaf.
Thus in the Solomon and Banks’ Islands the natives are wont to throw
sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent, or
where a difficult path begins, saying, “There goes my fatigue.” The act is
not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering
to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a
prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue,
which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone,
and so cast it from him.(24)
(M8) An early Spanish missionary to Nicaragua, observing that along the
paths there were heaps of stones on which the Indians as they passed threw
grass, asked them why they did so. “Because we think,” was the answer,
“that thereby we are kept from weariness and hunger, or at least that we
suffer less from them.”(25) When the Peruvian Indians were climbing steep
mountains and felt weary, they used to halt by the way at certain points
where there were heaps of stones, which they called _apachitas_. On these
heaps the weary men would place other stones, and they said that when they
did so, their weariness left them.(26) In the passes of the eastern Andes,
on the borders of Argentina and Bolivia, “large cairns are constantly
found, and every Puna Indian, on passing, adds a stone and a coca leaf, so
that neither he nor his beast of burden may tire on the way.”(27) In the
country of the Tarahumares and Tepehuanes in Mexico heaps of stones and
sticks may be observed on high points, where the track leads over a ridge
between two or more valleys. “Every Indian who passes such a pile adds a
stone or a stick to it in order to gain strength for his journey. Among
the Tarahumares only the old men observe this custom. Whenever the
Tepehuanes carry a corpse, they rest it for some fifteen minutes on such a
heap by the wayside that the deceased may not be fatigued but strong
enough to finish his long journey to the land of the dead. One of my
Huichol companions stopped on reaching this pile, pulled up some grass
from the ground and picked up a stone as big as his fist. Holding both
together he spat on the grass and on the stone and then rubbed them
quickly over his knees. He also made a couple of passes with them over his
chest and shoulders, exclaiming ‘_Kenestíquai!_’ (May I not get tired!)
and then put the grass on the heap and the stone on top of the grass.”(28)
In Guatemala also piles of stones may be seen at the partings of ways and
on the tops of cliffs and mountains. Every passing Indian used to gather a
handful of grass, rub his legs with it, spit on it, and deposit it with a
small stone on the pile, firmly persuaded that by so doing he would
restore their flagging vigour to his weary limbs.(29) Here the rubbing of
the limbs with the grass, like the Babar custom of striking the body with
a stone, was doubtless a mode of extracting the fatigue from them as a
preliminary to throwing it away.
(M9) Similarly on the plateau between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa the
native carriers, before they ascend a steep hill with their loads, will
pick up a stone, spit on it, rub the calves of their legs with it, and
then deposit it on one of those small piles of stones which are commonly
to be found at such spots in this part of Africa. A recent English
traveller, who noticed the custom, was informed that the carriers practise
it “to make their legs light,”(30) in other words, to extract the fatigue
from them. On the banks of the Kei river in Southern Africa another
English traveller noticed some heaps of stones. On enquiring what they
meant, he was told by his guides that when a Caffre felt weary he had but
to add a stone to the heap to regain fresh vigour.(31) In some parts of
South Africa, particularly on the Zambesi, piles of sticks take the place
of cairns. “Sometimes the natives will rub their leg with a stick, and
throw the stick on the heap, ‘to get rid of fatigue,’ they avow. Others
say that throwing a stone on the heap gives one fresh vigour for the
journey.”(32)
(M10) From other accounts of the Caffre custom we learn that these cairns
are generally on the sides or tops of mountains, and that before a native
deposits his stone on the pile he spits on it.(33) The practice of
spitting on the stone which the weary wayfarer lays on the pile is
probably a mode of transferring his fatigue the more effectually to the
material vehicle which is to rid him of it. We have seen that the practice
prevails among the Indians of Guatemala and the natives of the Tanganyika
plateau, and it appears to be observed also under similar circumstances in
Corea, where the cairns are to be found especially on the tops of
passes.(34) From the primitive point of view nothing can be more natural
than that the cairns or the heaps of sticks and leaves to which the tired
traveller adds his contribution should stand at the top of passes and, in
general, on the highest points of the road. The wayfarer who has toiled,
with aching limbs and throbbing temples, up a long and steep ascent, is
aware of a sudden alleviation as soon as he has reached the summit; he
feels as if a weight had been lifted from him, and to the savage, with his
concrete mode of thought, it seems natural and easy to cast the weight
from him in the shape of a stone or stick, or a bunch of leaves or of
grass. Hence it is that the piles which represent the accumulated
weariness of many foot-sore and heavy-laden travellers are to be seen
wherever the road runs highest in the lofty regions of Bolivia, Tibet,
Bhootan, and Burma,(35) in the passes of the Andes and the Himalayas, as
well as in Corea, Caffraria, Guatemala, and Melanesia.
(M11) While the mountaineer Indians of South America imagine that they can
rid themselves of their fatigue in the shape of a stick or a stone, other
or the same aborigines of that continent believe that they can let it out
with their blood. A French explorer, who had seen much of the South
American Indians, tells us that “they explain everything that they
experience by attributing it to sorcery, to the influence of maleficent
beings. Thus an Indian on the march, when he feels weary, never fails to
ascribe his weariness to the evil spirit; and if he has no diviner at
hand, he wounds himself in the knees, the shoulders, and on the arms in
order to let out the evil with the blood. That is why many Indians,
especially the Aucas [Araucanians], have always their arms covered with
scars. This custom, differently applied, is almost general in America; for
I found it up to the foot of the Andes, in Bolivia, among the Chiriguana
and Yuracares nations.”(36)
(M12) But it is not mere bodily fatigue which the savage fancies he can
rid himself of by the simple expedient of throwing a stick or a stone.
Unable clearly to distinguish the immaterial from the material, the
abstract from the concrete, he is assailed by vague terrors, he feels
himself exposed to some ill-defined danger on the scene of any great crime
or great misfortune. The place to him seems haunted ground. The thronging
memories that crowd upon his mind, if they are not mistaken by him for
goblins and phantoms, oppress his fancy with a leaden weight. His impulse
is to flee from the dreadful spot, to shake off the burden that seems to
cling to him like a nightmare. This, in his simple sensuous way, he thinks
he can do by casting something at the horrid place and hurrying by. For
will not the contagion of misfortune, the horror that clutched at his
heart-strings, be diverted from himself into the thing? will it not gather
up in itself all the evil influences that threatened him, and so leave him
to pursue his journey in safety and peace? Some such train of thought, if
these gropings and fumblings of a mind in darkness deserve the name of
thought, seems to explain the custom, observed by wayfarers in many lands,
of throwing sticks or stones on places where something horrible has
happened or evil deeds have been done. When Sir Francis Younghusband was
travelling across the great desert of Gobi his caravan descended, towards
dusk on a June evening, into a long depression between the hills, which
was notorious as a haunt of robbers. His guide, with a terror-stricken
face, told how not long before nine men out of a single caravan had been
murdered, and the rest left in a pitiable state to continue their journey
on foot across the awful desert. A horseman, too, had just been seen
riding towards the hills. “We had accordingly to keep a sharp look-out,
and when we reached the foot of the hills, halted, and, taking the loads
off the camels, wrapped ourselves up in our sheepskins and watched through
the long hours of the night. Day broke at last, and then we silently
advanced and entered the hills. Very weird and fantastic in their rugged
outline were they, and here and there a cairn of stones marked where some
caravan had been attacked, and as we passed these each man threw one more
stone on the heap.”(37) In the Norwegian district of Tellemarken a cairn
is piled up wherever anything fearful has happened, and every passer-by
must throw another stone on it, or some evil will befall him.(38) In
Sweden and the Esthonian island of Oesel the same custom is practised on
scenes of clandestine or illicit love, with the strange addition in Oesel
that when a man has lost his cattle he will go to such a spot, and, while
he flings a stick or stone on it, will say, “I bring thee wood. Let me
soon find my lost cattle.”(39) Far from these northern lands, the Dyaks of
Batang Lupar keep up an observance of the same sort in the forests of
Borneo. Beside their paths may be seen heaps of sticks or stones which are
called “lying heaps.” Each heap is in memory of some man who told a
stupendous lie or disgracefully failed in carrying out an engagement, and
everybody who passes adds a stick or stone to the pile, saying as he does
so, “For So-and-so’s lying heap.”(40) The Dyaks think it a sacred duty to
add to every such “liar’s mound” (_tugong bula_) which they pass; they
imagine that the omission of the duty would draw down on them a
supernatural punishment. Hence, however pressed a Dyak may be for time, he
will always stop to throw on the pile some branches or twigs.(41) The
person to start such a heap is one of the men who has suffered by a
malicious lie. He takes a stick, throws it down on some spot where people
are constantly passing, and says, “Let any one who does not add to this
liar’s heap suffer from pains in the head.” Others then do likewise, and
every passer-by throws a stick on the spot lest he should suffer pains. In
this way the heap often grows to a large size, and the liar by whose name
it is known is greatly ashamed.(42)
(M13) But it is on scenes of murder and sudden death that this rude method
of averting evil is most commonly practised. The custom that every
passer-by must cast a stone or stick on the spot where some one has come
to a violent end, whether by murder or otherwise, has been observed in
practically the same form in such many and diverse parts of the world as
Ireland, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Bohemia, Lesbos, Morocco,
Armenia, Palestine, Arabia, India, North America, Venezuela, Bolivia,
Celebes, and New Zealand.(43) In Fiji, for example, it was the practice
for every passer-by to throw a leaf on the spot where a man had been
clubbed to death; “this was considered as an offering of respect to him,
and, if not performed, they have a notion they will soon be killed
themselves.”(44) Sometimes the scene of the murder or death may also be
the grave of the victim, but it need not always be so, and in Europe,
where the dead are buried in consecrated ground, the two places would
seldom coincide. However, the custom of throwing stones or sticks on a
grave has undoubtedly been observed by passers-by in many parts of the
world, and that, too, even when the graves are not those of persons who
have come to a violent end. Thus we are told that the people of Unalashka,
one of the Aleutian Islands, bury their dead on the summits of hills and
raise a little hillock over the grave. “In a walk into the country, one of
the natives, who attended me, pointed out several of these receptacles of
the dead. There was one of them, by the side of the road leading from the
harbour to the village, over which was raised a heap of stones. It was
observed, that every one who passed it, added one to it.”(45) The
Roumanians of Transylvania think that a dying man should have a burning
candle in his hand, and that any one who dies without a light has no right
to the ordinary funeral ceremonies. The body of such an unfortunate is not
laid in holy ground, but is buried wherever it may be found. His grave is
marked only by a heap of dry branches, to which each passer-by is expected
to add a handful of twigs or a thorny bough.(46) The Hottentot god or hero
Heitsi-eibib died several times and came to life again. When the
Hottentots pass one of his numerous graves they throw a stone, a bush, or
a fresh branch on it for good luck.(47) Near the former mission-station of
Blydeuitzigt in Cape Colony there was a spot called Devil’s Neck where, in
the opinion of the Bushmen, the devil was interred. To hinder his
resurrection stones were piled in heaps about the place. When a Bushman,
travelling in the company of a missionary, came in sight of the spot he
seized a stone and hurled it at the grave, remarking that if he did not do
so his neck would be twisted round so that he would have to look backwards
for the term of his natural life.(48) Stones are cast by passers-by on the
graves of murderers in some parts of Senegambia.(49) In Syria deceased
robbers are not buried like honest folk, but left to rot where they lie;
and a pile of stones is raised over the mouldering corpse. Every one who
passes such a pile must fling a stone at it, on pain of incurring God’s
malison.(50) Between sixty and seventy years ago an Englishman was
travelling from Sidon to Tyre with a couple of Musalmans. When he drew
near Tyre his companions picked up some small stones, armed him in the
same fashion, and requested him to be so kind as to follow their example.
Soon afterwards they came in sight of a conical heap of pebbles and stones
standing in the road, at which the two Musalmans hurled stones and curses
with great vehemence and remarkable volubility. When they had discharged
this pious duty to their satisfaction, they explained that the missiles
and maledictions were directed at a celebrated robber and murderer, who
had been knocked on the head and buried there some half a century
before.(51)
(M14) In these latter cases it may perhaps be thought that the sticks and
stones serve no other purpose than to keep off the angry and dangerous
ghost who might be supposed to haunt either the place of death or the
grave. This interpretation seems certainly to apply to some cases of the
custom. For example, in Pomerania and West Prussia the ghosts of suicides
are much feared. Such persons are buried, not in the churchyard, but at
the place where they took their lives, and every passer-by must cast a
stone or a stick on the spot, or the ghost of the suicide will haunt him
by night and give him no rest. Hence the piles of sticks or stones
accumulated on the graves of these poor wretches sometimes attain a
considerable size.(52) Similarly the Baganda of Central Africa used to
stand in great fear of the ghosts of suicides and they took many
precautions to disarm or even destroy these dangerous spirits. For this
purpose the bodies of suicides were removed to waste land or cross-roads
and burned there, together with the wood of the house in which the deed
had been done or of the tree on which the person had hanged himself. By
these means they imagined that they destroyed the ghost so that he could
not come and lure others to follow his bad example. Lest, however, the
ghost should survive the destruction of his body by fire, the Baganda, in
passing any place where a suicide had been burnt, always threw grass or
sticks on the spot to prevent the ghost from catching them. And they did
the same, for the same reason, whenever they passed the places on waste
ground where persons accused of witchcraft and found guilty by the poison
ordeal had been burnt to death. Baganda women had a special reason for
dreading all graves which were believed to be haunted by dangerous ghosts;
for, imagining that they could conceive children without intercourse with
the other sex, they feared to be impregnated by the entrance into them of
the ghosts of suicides and other unfortunate or uncanny people, such as
persons with a light complexion, twins, and particularly all who had the
mishap to be born feet foremost. For that reason Baganda women were at
pains, whenever they passed the graves of any such persons, to throw
sticks or grass upon them; “for by so doing they thought that they could
prevent the ghost of the dead from entering into them, and being reborn.”
Hence the mounds which accumulated over these graves became in course of
time large enough to deflect the path and to attract the attention of
travellers. It was not merely matrons who thus took care not to become
mothers unaware; the same fears were entertained and the same precautions
were adopted by all women, whether old or young, whether married or
single; since they thought that there was no woman, whatever her age or
condition, who might not be impregnated by the entrance into her of a
spirit.(53) In these cases, therefore, the throwing of sticks or grass at
graves is a purely defensive measure; the missiles are intended to ward
off the assaults of dangerous ghosts. Similarly we are told that in
Madagascar solitary graves by the wayside have a sinister reputation, and
that passers-by, without looking back, will throw stones or clods at them
“to prevent the evil spirits from following them.”(54) The Maraves of
South Africa, like the Baganda, used to burn witches alive and to throw
stones on the places of execution whenever they passed them, so that in
time regular cairns gradually rose on these spots.(55) No doubt with these
Maraves, as with the Baganda, the motive for throwing missiles at such
places is to protect themselves against the ghosts. A protective motive is
also assigned for a similar custom observed in Chota Nagpur, a region of
India which is the home of many primitive tribes. There heaps of stones or
of leaves and branches may often be seen beside the path; they are
supposed to mark the places where people have been killed by wild beasts,
and the natives think that any passer-by who failed to add a stone or a
stick to the pile would himself be seized and devoured by a wild
animal.(56) Here, though the ghost is not explicitly mentioned, we may
perhaps suppose that out of spite he is instrumental in causing others to
perish by the same untimely death by which he was himself carried off. The
Kayans of Borneo imagine that they can put evil spirits to flight by
hurling sticks or stones at them; so on a journey they will let fly
volleys of such missiles at the rocks and dens where demons are known to
reside.(57) Hence, whenever the throwing of stones at a grave is regarded
as an insult to the dead, we may suppose that the missiles are intended to
hit and hurt the ghost. Thus Euripides represents the murderer Aegisthus
as leaping on the tomb of his victim Agamemnon and pelting it with
stones;(58) and Propertius invites all lovers to discharge stones and
curses at the dishonoured grave of an old bawd.(59)
(M15) But if this theory seems adequately to account for some cases of the
custom with which we are concerned, it apparently fails to explain others.
The view that the sticks and stones hurled at certain places are weapons
turned against dangerous or malignant spirits is plausible in cases where
such spirits are believed to be in the neighbourhood; but in cases where
no such spirits are thought to be lurking, we must, it would seem, cast
about for some other explanation. For example, we have seen that it has
been customary to throw sticks or stones on spots which have been defiled
by deeds of moral turpitude without any shedding of blood, and again on
spots where weary travellers stop to rest. It is difficult to suppose that
in these latter cases the evil deeds or the sensations of fatigue are
conceived in the concrete shape of demons whom it is necessary to repel by
missiles, though many South American Indians, as we saw, do attribute
fatigue to a demon. Still more difficult is it to apply the purely
defensive theory to cases where beneficent spirits are imagined to be
hovering somewhere near, and where the throwing of the stones or sticks is
apparently regarded by those who practise it as a token of respect rather
than of hostility. Thus amongst the Masai, when any one dies away from the
kraal, his body is left lying on the spot where he died, and all persons
present throw bunches of grass or leaves on the corpse. Afterwards every
passer-by casts a stone or a handful of grass on the place, and the more
the dead man was respected, the longer is the usage observed.(60) It is
especially the graves of Masai medicine-men that are honoured in this
way.(61) In the forest near Avestad, in Sweden, the traveller, Clarke,
observed “several heaps made with sticks and stones; upon which the
natives, as they pass, cast either a stone, or a little earth, or the
bough of a tree; deeming it an uncharitable act to omit this tribute, in
their journeys to and fro. As this custom appeared closely allied to the
pious practice in the Highlands of Scotland, of casting a stone upon the
cairn of a deceased person, we, of course, concluded these heaps were
places of sepulture.” They were said to be the graves of a band of
robbers, who had plundered merchants on their passage through the forest,
but had afterwards been killed and buried where they fell.(62) However, in
all these cases the practice of throwing stones on the grave, though
interpreted as a mark of respect and charity, may really be based on the
fear of the ghosts, so that the motive for observing the custom may be
merely that of self-defence against a dangerous spirit. Yet this
explanation can hardly apply to certain other cases. Thus in Syria it is a
common practice with pious Moslems, when they first come in sight of a
very sacred place, such as Hebron or the tomb of Moses, to make a little
heap of stones or to add a stone to a heap which has been already made.
Hence every here and there the traveller passes a whole series of such
heaps by the side of the track.(63) In Northern Africa the usage is
similar. Cairns are commonly erected on spots from which the devout
pilgrim first discerns the shrine of a saint afar off; hence they are
generally to be seen on the top of passes. For example, in Morocco, at the
point of the road from Casablanca to Azemmour, where you first come in
sight of the white city of the saint gleaming in the distance, there rises
an enormous cairn of stones shaped like a pyramid several hundreds of feet
high, and beyond it on both sides of the road there is a sort of avalanche
of stones, either standing singly or arranged in little pyramids. Every
pious Mohammedan whose eyes are gladdened by the blessed sight of the
sacred town adds his stone to one of the piles or builds a little pile for
himself.(64)
(M16) Such a custom can hardly be explained as a precaution adopted
against a dangerous influence supposed to emanate from the saint and to
communicate itself even to people at a distance. On the contrary, it
points rather to a desire of communion with the holy man than to a wish to
keep him at bay. The mode of communion adopted, however strange it may
seem to us, is apparently quite in harmony with the methods by which good
Mohammedans in Northern Africa attempt to appropriate to themselves the
blessed influence (_baraka_) which is supposed to radiate on all sides
from the person of a living saint. “It is impossible to imagine,” we are
told, “the extremity to which the belief in the blessed influence of
saints is carried in North Africa. To form an exact idea of it you must
see a great saint in the midst of the faithful. ‘The people fling
themselves down on his path to kiss the skirt of his robe, to kiss his
stirrup if he is on horseback, to kiss even his footprint if he is on
foot. Those who are too far from him to be able to touch his hand touch
him with their staff, or fling a stone at him which they have marked
previously so as to be able to find it afterwards and to embrace it
devoutly.’ ”(65) Thus through the channel of the stone or the stick, which
has been in bodily contact with the living saint, his blessed influence
flows to the devotee who has wielded the stick or hurled the stone. In
like manner we may perhaps suppose that the man who adds a stone to a
cairn in honour of a dead saint hopes to benefit by the saintly effluence
which distils in a mysterious fashion through the stone to him.(66)
(M17) When we survey the many different cases in which passing travellers
are accustomed to add stones or sticks to existing piles, it seems
difficult, if not impossible, to explain them all on one principle;
different and even opposite motives appear, at least at first sight, to
have operated in different cases to produce customs superficially alike.
Sometimes the motive for throwing the stone is to ward off a dangerous
spirit; sometimes it is to cast away an evil; sometimes it is to acquire a
good. Yet, perhaps, if we could trace them back to their origin in the
mind of primitive man, we might find that they all resolve themselves more
or less exactly into the principle of the transference of evil. For to rid
ourselves of an evil and to acquire a good are often merely opposite sides
of one and the same operation; for example, a convalescent regains health
in exactly the same proportion as he shakes off his malady. And though the
practice of throwing stones at dangerous spirits especially at mischievous
and malignant ghosts of the dead, appears to spring from a different
motive, yet it may be questioned whether the difference is really as great
to the savage as it seems to us. To primitive man the idea of spiritual
and ghostly powers is still more indefinite than it is to his civilized
brother: it fills him with a vague uneasiness and alarm; and this
sentiment of dread and horror he, in accordance with his habitual modes of
thought, conceives in a concrete form as something material which either
surrounds and oppresses him like a fog, or has entered into and taken
temporary possession of his body. In either case he imagines that he can
rid himself of the uncanny thing by stripping it from his skin or
wrenching it out of his body and transferring it to some material
substance, whether a stick, a stone, or what not, which he can cast from
him, and so, being eased of his burden, can hasten away from the dreadful
spot with a lighter heart. Thus the throwing of the sticks or stones would
be a form of ceremonial purification, which among primitive peoples is
commonly conceived as a sort of physical rather than moral purgation, a
mode of sweeping or scouring away the morbid matter by which the polluted
person is supposed to be infected. This notion perhaps explains the rite
of stone-throwing observed by pilgrims at Mecca; on the day of sacrifice
every pilgrim has to cast seven stones on a cairn, and the rite is
repeated thrice on the three following days. The traditional explanation
of the custom is that Mohammed here drove away the devil with a shower of
stones;(67) but the original idea may perhaps have been that the pilgrims
cleanse themselves by transferring their ceremonial impurity to the stones
which they fling on the heap.
(M18) The theory that the throwing of stones is practised in certain
circumstances as a mode of purification tallies very well with the
tradition as to the origin of those cairns which were to be seen by
wayside images of Hermes in ancient Greece, and to which every passer-by
added a stone. It was said that when Hermes was tried by the gods for the
murder of Argus all the gods flung stones at him as a means of freeing
themselves from the pollution contracted by bloodshed; the stones thus
thrown made a great heap, and the custom of rearing such heaps at wayside
images of Hermes continued ever afterwards.(68) Similarly Plato
recommended that if any man had murdered his father or mother, his brother
or sister, his son or daughter, he should be put to death, and that his
body should be cast forth naked at a cross-road outside of the city. There
the magistrates should assemble on behalf of the city, each carrying in
his hand a stone, which he was to cast at the head of the corpse by way of
purifying the city from the pollution it had contracted by the crime.
After that the corpse was to be carried away and flung outside the
boundaries.(69) In these cases it would seem that the pollution incurred
by the vicinity of a murderer is thought to be gathered up in the stones
as a material vehicle and to be thrown away with them. A sacrificial
custom of the Brahmans, prescribed in one of their sacred books, is
susceptible of a like interpretation. At a certain stage of the ritual the
sacrificer is directed to put a stone into a water-pot and to throw it
away in a south-westerly direction, because that is the region of Nirriti,
the goddess of Evil or Destruction. With the stone and the pitcher he is
supposed to cast away his pain and evil; and he can transfer the pain to
another by saying, as he throws away the stone and the pitcher, “Let thy
pain enter him whom we hate,” or “Let thy pain enter so-and-so,” naming
his enemy; but in order to ensure the transference of the pain to his
enemy he must take care that the stone or the pitcher is broken.(70)
(M19) This mode of interpreting the custom of throwing sticks and stones
on piles appears preferable to the one which has generally found favour
with European travellers and writers. Imperfectly acquainted for the most
part with the notions which underlie primitive magic, but very familiar
with the religious conception of a deity who requires sacrifice of his
worshippers, they are apt to interpret the missiles in question as cheap
and easy offerings presented by pious but frugal worshippers to ghosts or
spirits whose favour they desire to win.(71) Whether a likely mode of
conciliating a ghost or spirit is to throw sticks and stones at him is a
question about which opinions might perhaps differ. It is difficult to
speak with confidence about the tastes of spiritual beings, but as a rule
they bear a remarkable likeness to those of mere ordinary mortals, and it
may be said without fear of contradiction that few of the latter would be
gratified by being set up as a common target to be aimed at with sticks
and stones by everybody who passed within range.(72) Yet it is quite
possible that a ceremony, which at first was purely magical, may in time
have a religious gloss or interpretation put on it even by those who
practise it; and this seems in fact to have sometimes happened to the
particular custom under consideration. Certainly some people accompany the
throwing of the stone on the pile with the presentation of useful
articles, which can hardly serve any other purpose than that of
propitiating some local spirits. Thus travellers in Sikhim and Bhootan
offer flour and wine, as well as stones, at the cairns; and they also burn
incense and recite incantations or prayers,(73) or they tear strips from
their garments, tie them to twigs or stones, and then lay them on the
cairn, calling out to the spirit of the mountain, “Pray accept our
offering! The spirits are victorious! The devils are defeated!”(74)
Indians of Guatemala offered, according to their means, a little cotton,
salt, cacao, or chili.(75) They now burn copal and sometimes dance on the
tops of the passes where the cairns are to be seen, but perhaps these
devotions may be paid to the crosses which at the present day are
generally set up in such situations.(76) The Indian of Bolivia will squirt
out the juice of his coca-quid, or throw the quid itself on the cairn, to
which he adds a stone; occasionally he goes so far as to stick feathers or
a leathern sandal or two on the pile. In passing the cairns he will
sometimes pull a hair or two out of his eyebrows or eyelashes and puff
them away towards the sun.(77) Peruvian Indians used similarly to make
cheap offerings of chewed coca or maize, old shoes, and so forth, on the
cairns.(78) In Sweden and Corea a little money is sometimes thrown on a
cairn instead of a stick or stone.(79) The shrine of the Jungle Mother in
Northern India is usually a pile of stones and branches to which every
passer-by contributes. When she is displeased, she lets a tiger or leopard
kill her negligent votary. She is the great goddess of the herdsmen and
other dwellers in the forest, and they vow to her a cock and a goat, or a
young pig, if she saves them and their cattle from beasts of prey.(80) In
the jungles of Mirzapur the cairn which marks the spot where a man has
been killed by a tiger, and to which each passer-by contributes a stone,
is commonly in charge of a Baiga or aboriginal priest, who offers upon it
a cock, a pig, or some spirits, and occasionally lights a little lamp at
the shrine.(81) Amongst the Baganda members of the Bean clan worshipped
the spirit of the river Nakiza. “There was no temple, but they had two
large heaps of sticks and grass, one on either side of the river by the
ford; to these heaps the members went, when they wished to make an
offering to the spirit, or to seek his assistance. The offerings were
usually goats, beer, barkcloth, and fowls. When people crossed the river
they threw a little grass or some sticks on to the heap before crossing,
and again a little more on to the second heap after crossing; this was
their offering to the spirit for a safe crossing.”(82) There is a ford on
the Calabar river in West Africa which has an ill repute, for the stream
is broad, the current rapid, and there are crocodiles in the deep places.
Beside the ford is a large oval-shaped stone which the Ekoi regard as an
altar of Nimm, a powerful goddess, who dwells in the depth of the river
Kwa and manifests herself in the likeness now of a crocodile and now of a
snake. In order to ensure a safe passage through the river it is customary
to pluck a leaf, rub it on the forehead over the pineal gland, and throw
it on a heap of leaves in front of the stone. As he rubs the leaf on his
forehead, the person who is about to plunge into the river prays, “May I
be free from danger! May I go through the water to the other side! May I
see no evil!” And when he throws the leaf on the heap he prays again,
saying, “I am coming across the river, may the crocodile lay down his
head!”(83) Here the leaves appear to be a propitiatory offering presented
to the dread goddess in the hope that she will suffer her worshipper to
pass the ford unmolested. At another but smaller stream, called the River
of Good Fortune, the Ekoi similarly rub leaves on their foreheads, praying
for luck, and throw them on a heap before they pass through the water.
They think that he who complies with this custom will have good luck
throughout the year. Again, when the Ekoi kill a chameleon on the road,
they do not throw the body away in the forest, but lay it by the wayside,
and all who pass by pluck a few leaves and drop them on the dead animal,
saying, “Look! Here is your mat.” In this way heaps of leaves accumulate
over the carcases of chameleons. The custom is intended to appease the
shade of the chameleon, who, if he were not pacified, would go to the
Earth-god Obassi Nsi and pray for vengeance on the race of those who had
caused his death.(84) The Washamba of German East Africa believe that
certain stony and dangerous places in the paths are the abodes of spirits;
hence at any such spot a traveller who would have a prosperous journey
must dance a little and deposit a few small stones.(85) The dance and the
stones are presumably intended to soften the heart of the spirits and
induce them to look favourably on the dancer. In Papa Westray, one of the
Orkney Islands, there is a ruined chapel called St. Tredwels, “at the door
of which there is a heap of stones; which was the superstition of the
common people, who have such a veneration for this chapel above any other,
that they never fail, at their coming to it, to throw a stone as an
offering before the door: and this they reckon an indispensable duty
enjoined by their ancestors.”(86)
(M20) Prayers, too, as we have seen, are sometimes offered at these piles.
In Laos heaps of stones may be seen beside the path, on which the
passenger will deposit a pebble, a branch, or a leaf, while he beseeches
the Lord of the Diamond to bestow on him good luck and long life.(87) In
the Himalayan districts of the North-Western Provinces of India heaps of
stones and sticks are often to be seen on hills or at cross-roads. They
are formed by the contributions of passing travellers, each of whom in
adding his stone or stick to the pile prays, saying, “Thou goddess whose
home is on the ridge, eater of wood and stone, preserve me.”(88) Tibetan
travellers mutter a prayer at the cairns on the tops of passes to which
they add a few stones gathered by them on the ascent.(89) A native of
South-Eastern Africa who places a small stone on a cairn is wont to say as
he does so, “Cairn, grant me strength and prosperity.”(90) In the same
circumstances the Hottentot prays for plenty of cattle,(91) and the Caffre
that his journey may be prosperous, that he may have strength to
accomplish it, and that he may obtain an abundant supply of food by the
way.(92) It is said that sick Bushmen used to go on pilgrimage to the
cairn called the Devil’s Neck, and pray to the spirit of the place to heal
them, while they rubbed the sick part of their body and cried, “Woe! woe!”
On special occasions, too, they resorted thither and implored the spirit’s
help.(93) Such customs seem to indicate the gradual transformation of an
old magical ceremony into a religious rite with its characteristic
features of prayer and sacrifice. Yet behind these later accretions, as we
may perhaps regard them, it seems possible in many, if not in all, cases
to discern the nucleus to which they have attached themselves, the
original idea which they tend to conceal and in time to transmute. That
idea is the transference of evil from man to a material substance which he
can cast from him like an outworn garment.
§ 3. The Transference to Animals.
(M21) Animals are often employed as a vehicle for carrying away or
transferring the evil. A Guinea negro who happens to be unwell will
sometimes tie a live chicken round his neck, so that it lies on his
breast. When the bird flaps its wings or cheeps the man thinks it a good
sign, supposing the chicken to be afflicted with the very pain from which
he hopes soon to be released, or which he would otherwise have to
endure.(94) When a Moor has a headache he will sometimes take a lamb or a
goat and beat it till it falls down, believing that the headache will thus
be transferred to the animal.(95) In Morocco most wealthy Moors keep a
wild boar in their stables, in order that the jinn and evil spirits may be
diverted from the horses and enter into the boar.(96) In some parts of
Algeria people think that typhoid fever can be cured by taking a tortoise,
putting it on its back in the road, and covering it over with a pot. The
patient recovers, but whoever upsets the pot catches the fever. In Tlemcen
a pregnant woman is protected against jinn by means of a black fowl which
is kept in the house from the seventh month of her pregnancy till her
delivery. Finally, the oldest woman in the house releases the fowl in the
Jews’ quarter; the bird is supposed to carry the jinn away with it.(97)
Amongst the Caffres of South Africa, when other remedies have failed,
“natives sometimes adopt the custom of taking a goat into the presence of
a sick man, and confess the sins of the kraal over the animal. Sometimes a
few drops of blood from the sick man are allowed to fall on the head of
the goat, which is turned out into an uninhabited part of the veldt. The
sickness is supposed to be transferred to the animal, and to become lost
in the desert.”(98) After an illness a Bechuana king seated himself upon
an ox which lay stretched on the ground. The native doctor next poured
water on the king’s head till it ran down over his body. Then the head of
the ox was held in a vessel of water till the animal expired; whereupon
the doctor declared, and the people believed, that the ox died of the
king’s disease, which had been transferred from him to it.(99) The Baganda
of Central Africa also attempted to transfer illness from a person to an
animal. “The medicine-man would take the animal, pass some herbs over the
sick man, tie these to the animal, and then drive it away to some waste
land, where he would kill it, taking the meat as his perquisite. The sick
man would be expected to recover.”(100) The Akikuyu of East Africa think
that a man can transfer the guilt of incest by means of “an ignoble
ceremony” to a goat, which is then killed; this saves the life of the
culprit, who otherwise must die.(101) When disease breaks out among the
cattle of the Bahima, a pastoral people of Central Africa, the priest
“collects herbs and other remedies to attract the disease from the cattle.
An animal is chosen from the herd in the evening, which is to be the
scapegoat for the herd; the herbs, etc., are tied round its neck, with
certain fetiches to ensure the illness leaving the other animals; the cow
is driven round the outside of the kraal several times, and afterwards
placed inside with the herd for the night. Early the following morning the
animal is taken out and again driven round the kraal; the priest then
kills it in the gateway, and some of the blood is sprinkled over the
people belonging to the kraal, and also over the herd. The people next
file out, each one jumping over the carcase of the cow, and all the
animals are driven over it in the same way. The disease is thus
transferred to the scapegoat and the herd is saved. All the fetiches and
herbs, which were upon the scapegoat, are fastened upon the door-posts and
lintel of the kraal to prevent the disease from entering again.”(102)
(M22) When the cattle of the Huzuls, a pastoral people of the Carpathians,
are sick and the owner attributes the sickness to witchcraft, he throws
glowing coals into a vessel of water and then pours the water on a black
dog; thus the sickness passes into the dog and the cattle are made
whole.(103) In Arabia, when the plague is raging, the people will
sometimes lead a camel through all the quarters of the town in order that
the animal may take the pestilence on itself. Then they strangle it in a
sacred place and imagine that they have rid themselves of the camel and of
the plague at one blow.(104) In Annam, when sickness is caused by the
presence of a demon in the body of the sufferer, a skilful exorcist will
decoy the unwary devil into a fowl and then, quick as thought, decapitate
the bird and throw it out of the door. But lest the fiend should survive
this severe operation, cabalistic figures are posted on the outside of the
door, which preclude him from entering the premises and assaulting the
patient afresh.(105) It is said that when smallpox is raging the savages
of Formosa will drive the demon of disease into a sow, then cut off the
animal’s ears and burn them or it, believing that in this way they rid
themselves of the plague.(106) When a Kabyle child is pining for jealousy
of a younger brother or sister, the parents imagine that they can cure it
as follows. They take fifteen grains of wheat, wrap them up in a packet,
and leave the packet all night under the head of the jealous child. Then
in the morning they throw the grains into an ant-hill, saying, “Salutation
to you, oh beautiful beings clad in black; salutation to you who dig the
earth so well without the aid of any hoe by the help of God and the
angels! May each of you take his share of the jealousy attached to these
grains!”(107)
(M23) Amongst the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a
_faditra_. “The faditra is anything selected by the sikidy [divining
board] for the purpose of taking away any hurtful evils or diseases that
might prove injurious to an individual’s happiness, peace, or prosperity.
The faditra may be either ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or
anything else the sikidy may choose to direct. After the particular
article is appointed, the priest counts upon it all the evils that may
prove injurious to the person for whom it is made, and which he then
charges the faditra to take away for ever. If the faditra be ashes, it is
blown, to be carried away by the wind. If it be cut money, it is thrown to
the bottom of deep water, or where it can never be found. If it be a
sheep, it is carried away to a distance on the shoulders of a man, who
runs with all his might, mumbling as he goes, as if in the greatest rage
against the faditra, for the evils it is bearing away. If it be a pumpkin,
it is carried on the shoulders to a little distance, and there dashed upon
the ground with every appearance of fury and indignation.”(108) A Malagasy
was informed by a diviner that he was doomed to a bloody death, but that
possibly he might avert his fate by performing a certain rite. Carrying a
small vessel full of blood upon his head, he was to mount upon the back of
a bullock; while thus mounted, he was to spill the blood upon the
bullock’s head, and then send the animal away into the wilderness, whence
it might never return.(109)
(M24) Among the Toradjas of Central Celebes a chief’s daughter, who
suffered from kleptomania, was healed by a wise woman, who placed a bag
containing spiders and crabs on the patient’s hands. The physician
calculated that the prehensile claws of these creatures, so suggestive of
a thief’s hands in the act of closing on his prey, would lay hold of the
vicious propensity in the young woman’s mind and extract it as neatly as a
pair of forceps nips out a thorn from the flesh.(110) The Battas of
Sumatra have a ceremony which they call “making the curse to fly away.”
When a woman is childless, a sacrifice is offered to the gods of three
grasshoppers, representing a head of cattle, a buffalo, and a horse. Then
a swallow is set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall upon the bird
and fly away with it.(111) “The entrance into a house of an animal which
does not generally seek to share the abode of man is regarded by the
Malays as ominous of misfortune. If a wild bird flies into a house, it
must be carefully caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released
in the open air, a formula being recited in which it is bidden to fly away
with all the ill-luck and misfortunes (_sial jambalang_) of the
occupier.”(112) In antiquity Greek women seem to have done the same with
swallows which they caught in the house: they poured oil on them and let
them fly away, apparently for the purpose of removing ill-luck from the
household.(113) The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that they can
transfer freckles to the first swallow they see in spring by washing their
face in flowing water and saying, “Swallow, swallow, take my freckles, and
give me rosy cheeks.”(114) At the cleansing of a leper and of a house
suspected of being tainted with leprosy among the Hebrews the priest used
to let a living bird fly away into the open field,(115) no doubt in order
to carry away the leprosy with it. Similarly among the ancient Arabs a
widow was expected to live secluded in a small tent for a year after her
husband’s death; then a bird or a sheep was brought to her, she made the
creature touch her person, and let it go. It was believed that the bird or
the sheep would not live long thereafter; doubtless it was supposed to
suffer from the uncleanness or taint of death which the widow had
transferred to it.(116)