died of a contagious disease, such as cholera, the village priest walks in
front of the funeral procession with a chicken in his hands, which he lets
loose in the direction of some other village as a scapegoat to carry the
infection away. None but another very experienced priest would afterwards
dare to touch or eat such a chicken.(117) Among the Badagas of the
Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, when a death has taken place, the sins
of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo calf. For this purpose the people
gather round the corpse and carry it outside of the village. There an
elder of the tribe, standing at the head of the corpse, recites or chants
a long list of sins such as any Badaga may commit, and the people repeat
the last words of each line after him. The confession of sins is thrice
repeated. “By a conventional mode of expression, the sum total of sins a
man may do is said to be thirteen hundred. Admitting that the deceased has
committed them all, the performer cries aloud, ‘Stay not their flight to
God’s pure feet.’ As he closes, the whole assembly chants aloud ‘Stay not
their flight.’ Again the performer enters into details, and cries, ‘He
killed the crawling snake. It is a sin.’ In a moment the last word is
caught up, and all the people cry ‘It is a sin.’ As they shout, the
performer lays his hand upon the calf. The sin is transferred to the calf.
Thus the whole catalogue is gone through in this impressive way. But this
is not enough. As the last shout ‘Let all be well’ dies away, the
performer gives place to another, and again confession is made, and all
the people shout ‘It is a sin.’ A third time it is done. Then, still in
solemn silence, the calf is let loose. Like the Jewish scapegoat, it may
never be used for secular work.” At a Badaga funeral witnessed by the Rev.
A. C. Clayton the buffalo calf was led thrice round the bier, and the dead
man’s hand was laid on its head. “By this act, the calf was supposed to
receive all the sins of the deceased. It was then driven away to a great
distance, that it might contaminate no one, and it was said that it would
never be sold, but looked on as a dedicated sacred animal.”(118) “The idea
of this ceremony is, that the sins of the deceased enter the calf, or that
the task of his absolution is laid on it. They say that the calf very soon
disappears, and that it is never after heard of.”(119) Some of the Todas
of the Neilgherry Hills in like manner let loose a calf as a funeral
ceremony; the intention may be to transfer the sins of the deceased to the
animal. Perhaps the Todas have borrowed the ceremony from the
Badagas.(120) In Kumaon, a district of North-Western India, the custom of
letting loose a bullock as a scapegoat at a funeral is occasionally
observed. A bell is hung on the bullock’s neck, and bells are tied to its
feet, and the animal is told that it is to be let go in order to save the
spirit of the deceased from the torments of hell. Sometimes the bullock’s
right quarter is branded with a trident and the left with a discus.(121)
Perhaps the original intention of such customs was to banish the contagion
of death by means of the animal, which carried it away and so ensured the
life of the survivors. The idea of sin is not primitive.
§ 4. The Transference to Men.
(M26) Again, men sometimes play the part of scapegoat by diverting to
themselves the evils that threaten others. An ancient Hindoo ritual
describes how the pangs of thirst may be transferred from a sick man to
another. The operator seats the pair on branches, back to back, the
sufferer with his face to the east, and the whole man with his face to the
west. Then he stirs some gruel in a vessel placed on the patient’s head
and hands the stir-about to the other man to drink. In this way he
transfers the pangs of thirst from the thirsty soul to the other, who
obligingly receives them in his stead.(122) There is a painful Telugu
remedy for a fever: it is to embrace a bald-headed Brahman widow at the
earliest streak of dawn. By doing so you get rid of the fever, and no
doubt (though this is not expressly affirmed) you at the same time
transfer it to the bald-headed widow.(123) When a Cinghalese is
dangerously ill, and the physicians can do nothing, a devil-dancer is
called in, who by making offerings to the devils, and dancing in the masks
appropriate to them, conjures these demons of disease, one after the
other, out of the sick man’s body and into his own. Having thus
successfully extracted the cause of the malady, the artful dancer lies
down on a bier, and shamming death, is carried to an open place outside
the village. Here, being left to himself, he soon comes to life again, and
hastens back to claim his reward.(124) In 1590 a Scotch witch of the name
of Agnes Sampson was convicted of curing a certain Robert Kers of a
disease “laid upon him by a westland warlock when he was at Dumfries,
whilk sickness she took upon herself, and kept the same with great
groaning and torment till the morn, at whilk time there was a great din
heard in the house.” The noise was made by the witch in her efforts to
shift the disease, by means of clothes, from herself to a cat or dog.
Unfortunately the attempt partly miscarried. The disease missed the animal
and hit Alexander Douglas of Dalkeith, who dwined and died of it, while
the original patient, Robert Kers, was made whole.(125) The Dyaks believe
that certain men possess in themselves the power of neutralizing bad
omens. So, when evil omens have alarmed a farmer for the safety of his
crops, he takes a small portion of his farm produce to one of these wise
men, who eats it raw for a small consideration, “and thereby appropriates
to himself the evil omen, which in him becomes innocuous, and thus
delivers the other from the ban of the _pemali_ or taboo.”(126)
(M27) “In one part of New Zealand an expiation for sin was felt to be
necessary; a service was performed over an individual, by which all the
sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was
previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river, and
there unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins
with it.”(127) In great emergencies the sins of the Rajah of Manipur used
to be transferred to somebody else, usually to a criminal, who earned his
pardon by his vicarious sufferings. To effect the transference the Rajah
and his wife, clad in fine robes, bathed on a scaffold erected in the
bazaar, while the criminal crouched beneath it. With the water which
dripped from them on him their sins also were washed away and fell on the
human scapegoat. To complete the transference the Rajah and his wife made
over their fine robes to their substitute, while they themselves, clad in
new raiment, mixed with the people till evening. But at the close of the
day they entered into retreat and remained in seclusion for about a week,
during which they were esteemed sacred or tabooed.(128) Further, in
Manipur “they have a noteworthy system of keeping count of the years. Each
year is named after some man, who—for a consideration—undertakes to bear
the fortune good or bad of the year. If the year be good, if there be no
pestilence and a good harvest, he gets presents from all sorts of people,
and I remember hearing that in 1898, when the cholera was at its worst, a
deputation came to the Political Agent and asked him to punish the
name-giver, as it was obvious that he was responsible for the epidemic. In
former times he would have got into trouble.”(129) The nomination of the
eponym, or man who is to give his name to the year, takes place at a
festival called _Chirouba_, which falls about the middle of April. It is
the priests who nominate the eponym, after comparing his horoscope with
that of the Rajah and of the State generally. The retiring official, who
gave his name to the past year, addresses his successor as follows: “My
friend, I bore and took away all evil spirits and sins from the Rajah and
his people during the last year. Do thou likewise from to-morrow until the
next _Chirouba_.” Then the incoming official, who is to give his name to
the New Year, addresses the Rajah in these words: “O son of heaven, Ruler
of the Kings, great and ancient Lord, Incarnation of God, the great Lord
Pakhangba, Master of the bright Sun, Lord of the Plain and Despot of the
Hills, whose kingdom is from the hills on the east to the mountains on the
west, the old year perishes, the new cometh. New is the sun of the new
year, and bright as the new sun shalt thou be, and mild withal as the
moon. May thy beauty and thy strength grow with the growth of the new
year. From to-day will I bear on my head all thy sins, diseases,
misfortunes, shame, mischief, all that is aimed in battle against thee,
all that threatens thee, all that is bad and hurtful for thee and thy
kingdom.” For these important services the eponym or vicar receives from
the Rajah a number of gifts, including a basket of salt, and his grateful
country rewards his self-sacrificing devotion by bestowing many privileges
on him.(130) Elsewhere, perhaps, if we knew more about the matter, we
might find that eponymous magistrates who give their names to the year
have been similarly regarded as public scapegoats, who bore on their
devoted heads the misfortunes, the sins, and the sorrows of the whole
people.(131)
(M28) In the _Jataka_, or collection of Indian stories which narrate the
many transmigrations of the Buddha, there is an instructive tale, which
sets forth how sins and misfortunes can be transferred by means of spittle
to a holy ascetic. A lady of easy virtue, we are told, had lost the favour
of King Dandaki and bethought herself how she could recover it. As she
walked in the park revolving these things in her mind, she spied a devout
ascetic named Kisavaccha. A thought struck her. “Surely,” said she to
herself, “this must be Ill Luck. I will get rid of my sin on his person
and then go and bathe.” No sooner said than done. Chewing her toothpick,
she collected a large clot of spittle in her mouth with which she
beslavered the matted locks of the venerable man, and having hurled her
toothpick at his head into the bargain she departed with a mind at peace
and bathed. The stratagem was entirely successful; for the king took her
into his good graces again. Not long after it chanced that the king
deposed his domestic chaplain from his office. Naturally chagrined at this
loss of royal favour, the clergyman repaired to the king’s light o’ love
and enquired how she had contrived to recapture the monarch’s affection.
She told him frankly how she had got rid of her sin and emerged without a
stain on her character by simply spitting on the head of Ill Luck in the
royal park. The chaplain took the hint, and hastening to the park
bespattered in like manner the sacred locks of the holy man; and in
consequence he was soon reinstated in office. It would have been well if
the thing had stopped there, but unfortunately it did not. By and bye it
happened that there was a disturbance on the king’s frontier, and the king
put himself at the head of his army to go forth and fight. An unhappy idea
occurred to his domestic chaplain. Elated by the success of the expedient
which had restored him to royal favour, he asked the king, “Sire, do you
wish for victory or defeat?” “Why for victory, of course,” replied the
king. “Then you take my advice,” said the chaplain; “just go and spit on
the head of Ill Luck, who dwells in the royal park; you will thus transfer
all your sin to his person.” It seemed to the king a capital idea and he
improved on it by proposing that the whole army should accompany him and
get rid of their sins in like manner. They all did so, beginning with the
king, and the state of the holy man’s head when they had all done is
something frightful to contemplate. But even this was not the worst. For
after the king had gone, up came the commander-in-chief and seeing the sad
plight of the pious ascetic, he took pity on him and had his poor
bedabbled hair thoroughly washed. The fatal consequences of this
kindly-meant but most injudicious shampoo may easily be anticipated. The
sins which had been transferred with the saliva to the person of the
devotee were now restored to their respective owners; and to punish them
for their guilt fire fell from heaven and destroyed the whole kingdom for
sixty leagues round about.(132)
(M29) A less harmless way of relieving an army from guilt or misfortune
used in former times to be actually practised by the Baganda. When an army
had returned from war, and the gods warned the king by their oracles that
some evil had attached itself to the soldiers, it was customary to pick
out a woman slave from the captives, together with a cow, a goat, a fowl,
and a dog from the booty, and to send them back under a strong guard to
the borders of the country from which they had come. There their limbs
were broken and they were left to die; for they were too crippled to crawl
back to Uganda. In order to ensure the transference of the evil to these
substitutes, bunches of grass were rubbed over the people and cattle and
then tied to the victims. After that the army was pronounced clean and was
allowed to return to the capital. A similar mode of transferring evil to
human and animal victims was practised by the Baganda whenever the gods
warned the king that his hereditary foes the Banyoro were working magic
against him and his people.(133)
(M30) In Travancore, when a rajah is near his end, they seek out a holy
Brahman, who consents to take upon himself the sins of the dying man in
consideration of the sum of ten thousand rupees. Thus prepared to immolate
himself on the altar of duty as a vicarious sacrifice for sin, the saint
is introduced into the chamber of death, and closely embraces the dying
rajah, saying to him, “O King, I undertake to bear all your sins and
diseases. May your Highness live long and reign happily.” Having thus,
with a noble devotion, taken to himself the sins of the sufferer, and
likewise the rupees, he is sent away from the country and never more
allowed to return.(134) Closely akin to this is the old Welsh custom known
as “sin-eating.” According to Aubrey, “In the County of Hereford was an
old Custome at funeralls to hire poor people, who were to take upon them
all the sinnes of the party deceased. One of them I remember lived in a
cottage on Rosse-high way. (He was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor
raskal.) The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house
and layd on the Biere; a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to
the Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips
bowle) full of beer, which he was to drinke up, and sixpence in money, in
consideration whereof he took upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the
Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.... This
Custome (though rarely used in our dayes) yet by some people was observed
even in the strictest time of ye Presbyterian government: as at Dynder,
volens nolens the Parson of ye Parish, the kinred of a woman deceased
there had this ceremonie punctually performed according to her Will: and
also the like was donne at ye City of Hereford in these times, when a
woman kept many yeares before her death a Mazard-bowle for the
Sinne-eater; and the like in other places in this Countie; as also in
Brecon, _e.g._ at Llangors, where Mr. Gwin the minister about 1640 could
no hinder ye performing of this ancient custome. I believe this custom was
heretofore used over all Wales.... In North Wales the Sinne-eaters are
frequently made use of; but there, instead of a Bowle of Beere, they have
a bowle of Milke.”(135) According to a letter dated February 1, 1714-15,
“within the memory of our fathers, in Shropshire, in those villages
adjoyning to Wales, when a person dyed, there was notice given to an old
sire (for so they called him), who presently repaired to the place where
the deceased lay, and stood before the door of the house, when some of the
family came out and furnished him with a cricket, on which he sat down
facing the door. Then they gave him a groat, which he put in his pocket; a
crust of bread, which he eat; and a full bowle of ale, which he drank off
at a draught. After this he got up from the cricket and pronounced, with a
composed gesture, the ease and rest of the soul departed for which he
would pawn his own soul. This I had from the ingenious John Aubrey,
Esq.”(136) In modern times some doubt has been thrown on Aubrey’s account
of the custom.(137) The practice, however, is reported to have prevailed
in a valley not far from Llandebie to a recent period. An instance was
said to have occurred about sixty years ago.(138)
(M31) Aubrey’s statement is moreover supported by the analogy of similar
customs in India. When the Rajah of Tanjore died in 1801, some of his
bones and the bones of the two wives, who were burned with his corpse,
were ground to powder and eaten, mixed with boiled rice, by twelve
Brahmans. It was believed that the sins of the deceased passed into the
bodies of the Brahmans, who were paid for the service.(139) A Brahman,
resident in a village near Raipur, stated that he had eaten food (rice and
milk) out of the hand of the dead Rajah of Bilaspur, and that in
consequence he had been placed on the throne for the space of a year. At
the end of the year he had been given presents and then turned out of the
territory and forbidden apparently to return. He was an outcast among his
fellows for having eaten out of a dead man’s hand.(140) A similar custom
is believed to obtain in the hill states about Kangra, and to have given
rise to a caste of “outcaste” Brahmans. At the funeral of a Rani of Chamba
rice and ghee were eaten out of the hands of the corpse by a Brahman paid
for the purpose. Afterwards a stranger, who had been caught outside the
Chamba territory, was given the costly wrappings of the corpse, then told
to depart and never shew his face in the country again.(141) In Oude when
an infant was killed it used to be buried in the room where it had been
born. On the thirteenth day afterwards the priest had to cook and eat his
food in that room. By doing so he was supposed to take the whole sin upon
himself and to cleanse the family from it.(142) At Utch Kurgan in
Turkestan Mr. Schuyler saw an old man who was said to get his living by
taking on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting his life
to prayer for their souls.(143)
(M32) In Tahiti, where the bodies of chiefs and persons of rank were
embalmed and preserved above ground in special sheds or houses erected for
them, a priest was employed at the funeral rites who bore the title of the
“corpse-praying priest.” His office was singular. When the house for the
dead had been prepared, and the corpse placed on the platform or bier, the
priest ordered a hole to be made in the floor, near the foot of the
platform. Over this he prayed to the god by whom it was supposed that the
soul of the deceased had been called away. The purport of his prayer was
that all the dead man’s sins, especially the one for which his soul had
been required of him, might be deposited there, that they might not attach
in any degree to the survivors, and that the anger of the god might be
appeased. He next addressed the corpse, usually saying, “With you let the
guilt now remain.” The pillar or post of the corpse, as it was called, was
then planted in the hole, and the hole filled up. As soon as the ceremony
of depositing the sins in the hole was over, all who had touched the body
or the garments of the deceased, which were buried or destroyed, fled
precipitately into the sea, to cleanse themselves from the pollution which
they had contracted by touching the corpse. They also cast into the sea
the garments they had worn while they were performing the last offices to
the dead. Having finished their ablutions, they gathered a few pieces of
coral from the bottom of the sea, and returning with them to the house
addressed the corpse, saying, “With you may the pollution be.” So saying
they threw down the coral on the top of the hole which had been dug to
receive the sins and the defilement of the dead.(144) In this instance the
sins of the departed, as well as the pollution which the primitive mind
commonly associates with death, are not borne by a living person, but
buried in a hole. Yet the fundamental idea—that of the transference of
sins—is the same in the Tahitian as in the Welsh and Indian customs;
whether the vehicle or receptacle destined to catch and draw off the evil
be a person, an animal, or a thing, is for the purpose in hand a matter of
little moment.(145)
§ 5. The Transference of Evil in Europe.
(M33) The examples of the transference of evil hitherto adduced have been
mostly drawn from the customs of savage or barbarous peoples. But similar
attempts to shift the burden of disease, misfortune, and sin from one’s
self to another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common also
among the civilized nations of Europe, both in ancient and modern times. A
Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient’s nails, and stick the
parings with wax on a neighbour’s door before sunrise; the fever then
passed from the sick man to his neighbour.(146) Similar devices must have
been resorted to by the Greeks; for in laying down laws for his ideal
state, Plato thinks it too much to expect that men should not be alarmed
at finding certain wax figures adhering to their doors or to the
tombstones of their parents, or lying at cross-roads.(147) Among the ruins
of the great sanctuary of Aesculapius, which were excavated not very long
ago in an open valley among the mountains of Epidaurus, inscriptions have
been found recording the miraculous cures which the god of healing
performed for his faithful worshippers. One of them tells how a certain
Pandarus, a Thessalian, was freed from the letters which, as a former
slave or prisoner of war, he bore tattooed or branded on his brow. He
slept in the sanctuary with a fillet round his head, and in the morning he
discovered to his joy that the marks of shame—the blue or scarlet
letters—had been transferred from his brow to the fillet. By and by there
came to the sanctuary a wicked man, also with brands or tattoo marks on
his face, who had been charged by Pandarus to pay his debt of gratitude to
the god, and had received the cash for the purpose. But the cunning fellow
thought to cheat the god and keep the money all to himself. So when the
god appeared to him in a dream and asked anxiously after the money, he
boldly denied that he had it, and impudently prayed the god to remove the
ugly marks from his own brazen brow. He was told to tie the fillet of
Pandarus about his head, then to take it off, and look at his face in the
water of the sacred well. He did so, and sure enough he saw on his
forehead the marks of Pandarus in addition to his own.(148) In the fourth
century of our era Marcellus of Bordeaux prescribed a cure for warts,
which has still a great vogue among the superstitious in various parts of
Europe. Doubtless it was an old traditional remedy in the fourth, and will
long survive the expiry of the twentieth, century. You are to touch your
warts with as many little stones as you have warts; then wrap the stones
in an ivy leaf, and throw them away in a thoroughfare. Whoever picks them
up will get the warts, and you will be rid of them.(149) A similar cure
for warts, with such trifling variations as the substitution of peas or
barley for pebbles, and a rag or a piece of paper for an ivy leaf, has
been prescribed in modern times in Italy, France, Austria, England, and
Scotland.(150) Another favourite way of passing on your warts to somebody
else is to make as many knots in a string as you have warts; then throw
the string away or place it under a stone. Whoever treads on the stone or
picks up the thread will get the warts instead of you; sometimes to
complete the transference it is thought necessary that he should undo the
knots.(151) Or you need only place the knotted thread before sunrise in
the spout of a pump; the next person who works the pump will be sure to
get your warts.(152) Equally effective methods are to rub the troublesome
excrescences with down or fat, or to bleed them on a rag, and then throw
away the down, the fat, or the bloody rag. The person who picks up one or
other of these things will be sure to release you from your warts by
involuntarily transferring them to himself.(153) People in the Orkney
Islands will sometimes wash a sick man, and then throw the water down at a
gateway, in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be
transferred to the first person who passes through the gate.(154) A
Bavarian cure for fever is to write upon a piece of paper, “Fever, stay
away, I am not at home,” and to put the paper in somebody’s pocket. The
latter then catches the fever, and the patient is rid of it.(155) Or the
sufferer may cure himself by sticking a twig of the elder-tree in the
ground without speaking. The fever then adheres to the twig, and whoever
pulls up the twig will catch the disease.(156) A Bohemian prescription for
the same malady is this. Take an empty pot, go with it to a cross-road,
throw it down, and run away. The first person who kicks against the pot
will catch your fever, and you will be cured.(157) In Oldenburg they say
that when a person lies sweating with fever, he should take a piece of
money to himself in bed. The money is afterwards thrown away on the
street, and whoever picks it up will catch the fever, but the original
patient will be rid of it.(158)
(M34) Often in Europe, as among savages, an attempt is made to transfer a
pain or malady from a man to an animal. Grave writers of antiquity
recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an
ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the animal’s ear, “A scorpion
has stung me”; in either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred
from the man to the ass.(159) Many cures of this sort are recorded by
Marcellus. For example, he tells us that the following is a remedy for
toothache. Standing booted under the open sky on the ground, you catch a
frog by the head, spit into its mouth, ask it to carry away the ache, and
then let it go. But the ceremony must be performed on a lucky day and at a
lucky hour.(160) In Cheshire the ailment known as aphtha or thrush, which
affects the mouth or throat of infants, is not uncommonly treated in much
the same manner. A young frog is held for a few moments with its head
inside the mouth of the sufferer, whom it is supposed to relieve by taking
the malady to itself. “I assure you,” said an old woman who had often
superintended such a cure, “we used to hear the poor frog whooping and
coughing, mortal bad, for days after; it would have made your heart ache
to hear the poor creature coughing as it did about the garden.”(161) Again
Marcellus tells us that if the foam from a mule’s mouth, mixed with warm
water, be drunk by an asthmatic patient, he will at once recover, but the
mule will die.(162) An ancient cure for the gripes, recorded both by Pliny
and Marcellus, was to put a live duck to the belly of the sufferer; the
pains passed from the man into the bird, to which they proved fatal.(163)
According to the same writers a stomachic complaint of which the cause was
unknown might be cured by applying a blind puppy to the suffering part for
three days. The secret disorder thus passed into the puppy; it died, and a
post-mortem examination of its little body revealed the cause of the
disease from which the man had suffered and of which the dog had
died.(164) Once more, Marcellus advises that when a man was afflicted with
a disorder of the intestines the physician should catch a live hare, take
the huckle-bone from one of its feet and the down from the belly, then let
the hare go, pronouncing as he did so the words, “Run away, run away,
little hare, and take away with you the intestine pain.” Further, the
doctor was to fashion the down into thread, with which he was to tie the
huckle-bone to the patient’s body, taking great care that the thread
should not be touched by any woman.(165) A Northamptonshire, Devonshire,
and Welsh cure for a cough is to put a hair of the patient’s head between
two slices of buttered bread and give the sandwich to a dog. The animal
will thereupon catch the cough and the patient will lose it.(166)
Sometimes an ailment is transferred to an animal by sharing food with it.
Thus in Oldenburg, if you are sick of a fever you set a bowl of sweet milk
before a dog and say, “Good luck, you hound! may you be sick and I be
sound!” Then when the dog has lapped some of the milk, you take a swig at
the bowl; and then the dog must lap again, and then you must swig again;
and when you and the dog have done it the third time, he will have the
fever and you will be quit of it. A peasant woman in Abbehausen told her
pastor that she suffered from fever for a whole year and found no relief.
At last somebody advised her to give some of her food to a dog and a cat.
She did so and the fever passed from her into the animals. But when she
saw the poor sick beasts always before her, she wished it undone. Then the
fever left the cat and the dog and returned to her.(167)
(M35) A Bohemian cure for fever is to go out into the forest before the
sun is up and look for a snipe’s nest. When you have found it, take out
one of the young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back
into the wood and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once.
The snipe has taken it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent
consumption away with a blue jay. They said, “O consumption, fly away, fly
away with the blue jay! With the wild rush of the storm and the whirlwind,
oh, vanish away!”(168) In Oldenburg they sometimes hang up a goldfinch or
a turtle-dove in the room of a consumptive patient, hoping that the bird
may draw away the malady from the sufferer to itself.(169) A prescription
for a cough in Sunderland is to shave the patient’s head and hang the hair
on a bush. When the birds carry the hair to their nests, they will carry
the cough with it.(170) In the Mark of Brandenburg a cure for headache is
to tie a thread thrice round your head and then hang it in a loop from a
tree; if a bird flies through the loop, it will take your headache away
with it.(171) A Saxon remedy for rupture in a child is to take a snail,
thrust it at sunset into a hollow tree, and stop up the hole with clay.
Then as the snail perishes the child recovers. But this cure must be
accompanied by the recitation of a proper form of words; otherwise it has
no effect.(172) A Bohemian remedy for jaundice is as follows. Take a
living tench, tie it to your bare back and carry it about with you for a
whole day. The tench will turn quite yellow and die. Then throw it into
running water, and your jaundice will depart with it.(173) In the village
of Llandegla in Wales there is a church dedicated to the virgin martyr St.
Tecla, where the falling sickness is, or used to be, cured by being
transferred to a fowl. The patient first washed his limbs in a sacred well
hard by, dropped fourpence into it as an offering, walked thrice round the
well, and thrice repeated the Lord’s prayer. Then the fowl, which was a
cock or a hen according as the patient was a man or a woman, was put into
a basket and carried round first the well and afterwards the church. Next
the sufferer entered the church and lay down under the communion table
till break of day. After that he offered sixpence and departed, leaving
the fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to
have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who was now rid of the
disorder. As late as 1855 the old parish clerk of the village remembered
quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from the effects of the
fits which had been transferred to them.(174) In South Glamorgan and West
Pembrokeshire it is thought possible to get rid of warts by means of a
snail. You take a snail with a black shell, you rub it on each wart and
say,
“_Wart, wart, on the snail’s shell black,_
_Go away soon, and never come back._”
Then you put the snail on the branch of a tree or bramble and you nail it
down with as many thorns as you have warts. When the snail has rotted away
on the bough, your warts will have vanished. Another Welsh cure for warts
is to impale a frog on a stick and then to rub the warts on the creature.
The warts disappear as the frog expires.(175) In both these cases we may
assume that the warts are transferred from the human sufferer to the
suffering animal.
(M36) Often the sufferer seeks to shift his burden of sickness or ill-luck
to some inanimate object. In Athens there is a little chapel of St. John
the Baptist built against an ancient column. Fever patients resort
thither, and by attaching a waxed thread to the inner side of the column
believe that they transfer the fever from themselves to the pillar.(176)
In the Mark of Brandenburg they say that if you suffer from giddiness you
should strip yourself naked and run thrice round a flax-field after
sunset; in that way the flax will get the giddiness and you will be rid of
it.(177) Sometimes an attempt is made to transfer the mischief, whatever
it may be, to the moon. In Oldenburg a peasant related how he rid himself
of a bony excrescence by stroking it thrice crosswise in the name of the
Trinity, and then making a gesture as if he were seizing the deformity and
hurling it towards the moon. In the same part of Germany a cure for warts
is to stand in the light of a waxing moon so that you cannot see your own
shadow, then hold the disfigured hand towards the moon, and stroke it with
the other hand in the direction of the luminary. Some say that in doing
this you should pronounce these words, “Moon, free me from these
vermin.”(178)
(M37) But perhaps the thing most commonly employed in Europe as a
receptacle for sickness and trouble of all sorts is a tree or bush. The
modes of transferring the mischief to it are many. For example, the
Esthonians say that you ought not to go out of the house on a spring
morning before you have eaten or drunk; for if you do, you may chance to
hear one of “the sounds which are not heard in winter,” such as the song
of a bird, and that would be unlucky. They think that if you thus let
yourself be deceived or outwitted, as they call it, by a bird, you will be
visited by all sorts of ill-luck during the year; indeed it may very well
happen that you will fall sick and die before another spring comes round.
However, there is a way of averting the evil. You have merely to embrace a
tree or go thrice round it, biting into the bark each time or tearing away
a strip of the bark with your teeth. Thus the bad luck passes from you to
the tree, which accordingly withers away.(179) In Sicily it is believed
that all kinds of marvellous cures can be effected on the night which
precedes Ascension Day. For example, people who suffer from goitre bite
the bark of a peach-tree just at the moment when the clocks are striking
midnight. Thus the malady is transferred to the sap of the tree, and its
leaves wither away in exact proportion as the patient recovers. But in
order that the cure may be successful it is absolutely essential that the
bark should be bitten at midnight precisely; a bite before or after that
witching hour is labour thrown away.(180) On St. George’s Day, South
Slavonian lads and lasses climb thrice up and down a cornel-tree, saying,
“My laziness and sleepiness to you, cornel-tree, but health and booty (?)
to me.” Then as they wend homewards they turn once more towards the tree
and call out, “Cornel-tree! cornel-tree! I leave you my laziness and
sleepiness.”(181) The same people attempt to cure fever by transferring it
to a dwarf elder-bush. Having found such a bush with three shoots
springing from the root, the patient grasps the points of the three shoots
in his hand, bends them down to the ground, and fastens them there with a
stone. Under the arch thus formed he creeps thrice; then he cuts off or
digs up the three shoots, saying, “In three shoots I cut three sicknesses
out. When these three shoots grow young again, may the fever come
back.”(182) A Bulgarian cure for fever is to run thrice round a
willow-tree at sunrise, crying, “The fever shall shake thee, and the sun
shall warm me.”(183) In the Greek island of Karpathos the priest ties a
red thread round the neck of a sick person. Next morning the friends of
the patient remove the thread and go out to the hillside, where they tie
the thread to a tree, thinking that they thus transfer the sickness to the
tree.(184) Italians attempt to cure fever in like manner by fastening it
to a tree. The sufferer ties a thread round his left wrist at night, and
hangs the thread on a tree next morning. The fever is thus believed to be
tied up to the tree, and the patient to be rid of it; but he must be
careful not to pass by that tree again, otherwise the fever would break
loose from its bonds and attack him afresh.(185) An old French remedy for
fever was to bind the patient himself to a tree and leave him there for a
time; some said that the ceremony should be performed fasting and early in
the morning, that the cord or straw rope with which the person was bound
to the tree should be left there to rot, and that the sufferer should bite
the bark of the tree before returning home.(186) In Bohemia the friends of
a fever patient will sometimes carry him head foremost, by means of straw
ropes, to a bush, on which they dump him down. Then he must jump up and
run home. The friends who carried him also flee, leaving the straw ropes
and likewise the fever behind them on the bush.(187)
(M38) Sometimes the sickness is transferred to the tree by making a knot
in one of its boughs. Thus in Mecklenburg a remedy for fever is to go
before sunrise to a willow-tree and tie as many knots in one of its
branches as the fever has lasted days; but going and coming you must be
careful not to speak a word.(188) A Flemish cure for the ague is to go
early in the morning to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its
branches, say, “Good-morrow, Old One, I give thee the cold; good-morrow,
Old One,” then turn and run away without looking round.(189) In Rhenish
Bavaria the cure for gout is similar. The patient recites a spell or
prayer while he stands at a willow-bush holding one of its boughs. When
the mystic words have been spoken, he ties a knot in the bough and departs
cured. But all his life long he must never go near that willow-bush again,
or the gout will come back to him.(190) In Sonnenberg, if you would rid
yourself of gout you should go to a young fir-tree and tie a knot in one
of its twigs, saying, “God greet thee, noble fir. I bring thee my gout.
Here will I tie a knot and bind my gout into it. In the name,” etc.(191)
Not far from Marburg, at a place called Neuhof, there is a wood of
birches. Thither on a morning before sunrise, in the last quarter of the
moon, bands of gouty people may often be seen hobbling in silence. Each of
them takes his stand before a separate tree and pronounces these solemn
words: “Here stand I before the judgment bar of God and tie up all my
gout. All the disease in my body shall remain tied up in this birch-tree.”
Meanwhile the good physician ties a knot in a birch-twig, repeating
thrice, “In the name of the Father,” etc.(192)
(M39) Another way of transferring gout from a man to a tree is this. Pare
the nails of the sufferer’s fingers and clip some hairs from his legs.
Bore a hole in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the
hole again, and smear it with cow’s dung. If, for three months thereafter,
the patient is free of gout, you may be sure the oak has it in his
stead.(193) A German cure for toothache is to bore a hole in a tree and
cram some of the sufferer’s hair into it.(194) In these cases, though no
doubt the tree suffers the pangs of gout or toothache respectively, it
does so with a sort of stoical equanimity, giving no outward and visible
sign of the pains that rack it inwardly. It is not always so, however. The
tree cannot invariably suppress every symptom of its suffering. It may
hide its toothache, but it cannot so easily hide its warts. In Cheshire if
you would be rid of warts, you have only to rub them with a piece of
bacon, cut a slit in the bark of an ash-tree, and slip the bacon under the
bark. Soon the warts will disappear from your hand, only however to
reappear in the shape of rough excrescences or knobs on the bark of the
tree.(195) Again in Beauce and Perche, two provinces of France, fever may
be transferred to a young aspen by inserting the parings of the patient’s
nails in the tree and then plastering up the hole to prevent the fever
from getting out. But the operation must be performed by night.(196) How
subject an aspen is to fever must be obvious to the meanest capacity from
the trembling of its leaves in every breath of wind; nothing therefore can
be easier or more natural than to transfer the malady, with its fits of
shaking, to the tree. At Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, there used to be
certain oak-trees which were long celebrated for the cure of ague. The
transference of the malady to the tree was simple but painful. A lock of
the sufferer’s hair was pegged into an oak; then by a sudden wrench he
left his hair and his ague behind him in the tree.(197)
(M40) It seems clear that, though you may stow away your pain or sickness
in a tree, there is a considerable risk of its coming out again. To
obviate this danger common prudence suggests that you should plug or bung
up the hole as tight as you can. And this, as we should naturally expect,
is often done. A German cure for toothache or headache is to wrap some of
the sufferer’s cut hair and nails in paper, make a hole in the tree, stuff
the parcel into it, and stop up the hole with a plug made from a tree
which has been struck by lightning.(198) In Bohemia they say that, if you
feel the fever coming on, you should pull out some of your hair, tear off
a strip of a garment you are wearing, and bore a hole in a willow-tree.
Having done so, you put the hair and the rag in the hole and stop it up
with a wedge of hawthorn. Then go home without looking back, and if a
voice calls to you, be sure not to answer. When you have complied with
this prescription, the fever will cease.(199) In Oldenburg a common remedy
for fever is to bore a hole in a tree, breathe thrice into the hole, and
then plug it up. Once a man who had thus shut up his fever in a tree was
jeered at by a sceptical acquaintance for his credulity. So he went
secretly to the tree and drew the stopper, and out came that fever and
attacked the sceptic.(200) Sometimes they say that the tree into which you
thus breathe your fever or ague should be a hollow willow, and that in
going to the tree you should be careful not to utter a word, and not to
cross water.(201) Again, we read of a man who suffered acute pains in his
arm. So “they beat up red corals with oaken leaves, and having kept them
on the part affected till suppuration, they did in the morning put this
mixture into an hole bored with an auger in the root of an oak, respecting
the east, and stop up this hole with a peg made of the same tree; from
thenceforth the pain did altogether cease, and when they took out the
amulet immediately the torments returned sharper than before.”(202) These
facts seem to put it beyond the reach of reasonable doubt that the pain or
malady is actually in the tree and waiting to pop out, if only it gets the
chance.
§ 6. The Nailing of Evils.
(M41) Often the patient, without troubling to bore a hole in the tree,
merely knocks a wedge, a peg, or a nail into it, believing that he thus
pegs or nails the sickness or pain into the wood. Thus a Bohemian cure for
fever is to go to a tree and hammer a wedge into it with the words “There,
I knock you in, that you may come no more out to me.”(203) A German way of
getting rid of toothache is to go in silence before sunrise to a tree,
especially a willow-tree, make a slit in the bark on the north side of the
tree, or on the side that looks towards the sunrise, cut out a splinter
from the place thus laid bare, poke the splinter into the aching tooth
till blood comes, then put back the splinter in the tree, fold down the
bark over it, and tie a string round the trunk, that the splinter may grow
into the trunk as before. As it does so, your pain will vanish; but you
must be careful not to go near the tree afterwards, or you will get the
toothache again. And any one who pulls the splinter out will also get the
toothache. He has in fact uncorked the toothache which was safely bottled
up in the tree, and he must take the natural consequence of his rash
act.(204) A simpler plan, practised in Persia as well as in France and
Germany, is merely to scrape the aching tooth with a nail or a twig till
it bleeds, and then hammer the nail or the twig into a tree. In the
Vosges, in Voigtland, and probably elsewhere, it is believed that any
person who should draw out such a nail or twig would get the
toothache.(205) An old lime-tree at Evessen, in Brunswick, is studded with
nails of various shapes, including screw-nails, which have been driven
into it by persons who suffered from aching teeth.(206) In the Mark of
Brandenburg they say that the ceremony should be performed when the moon
is on the wane, and that the bloody nail should be knocked, without a word
being spoken, into the north side of an oak-tree, where the sun cannot
shine on it; after that the person will have no more toothache so long as
the tree remains standing.(207) Here it is plainly implied that the
toothache is bottled up in the tree. If further proof were needed that in
such cases the malady is actually transferred to the tree and stowed away
in its trunk, it would be afforded by the belief that if the tree is cut
down the toothache will return to the original sufferer.(208) Rupture as
well as toothache can be nailed to an oak. For that purpose all that need
be done is to take a coffin-nail and touch with it the injured part of the
patient; then set the sufferer barefoot before an oak-tree, and knock the
nail into the trunk above his head. That transfers the rupture to the
tree, and that is why you may often see the boles of ancient oaks studded
with nails.(209)
(M42) Such remedies are not confined to Europe. At Bilda in Algeria, there
is a sacred old olive-tree, in which pilgrims, especially women, knock
nails for the purpose of ridding themselves of their ailments and
troubles.(210) Again, the Majhwars, a Dravidian tribe in the hill country
of South Mirzapur, believe that all disease is due to ghosts, but that
ghosts, when they become troublesome, can be shut up in a certain tree,
which grows on a little islet in a very deep pool of the Sukandar, a
tributary of the Kanhar river. Accordingly, when the country is infested
by ghosts, in other words when disease is raging, a skilful wizard seeks
for a piece of deer-horn in the jungle. When he has found it, he hammers
it with a stone into the tree and thus shuts up the ghost. The tree is
covered with hundreds of such pieces of horn.(211) Again, when a new
settlement is being made in some parts of the North-Western Provinces of
India, it is deemed necessary to apprehend and lay by the heels the local
deities, who might otherwise do a deal of mischief to the intruders on
their domain. A sorcerer is called in to do the business. For days he
marches about the place mustering the gods to the tuck of drum. When they
are all assembled, two men known as the Earthman and the Leafman, who
represent the gods of the earth and of the trees respectively, become full
of the spirit, being taken possession of bodily by the local deities. In
this exalted state they shout and caper about in a fine frenzy, and their
seemingly disjointed ejaculations, which are really the divine voice
speaking through them, are interpreted by the sorcerer. When the critical
moment has come, the wizard rushes in between the two incarnations of
divinity, clutches at the spirits which are hovering about them in the
air, and pours grains of sesame through their hands into a perforated
piece of the wood of the sacred fig-tree. Then without a moment’s delay he
plasters up the hole with a mixture of clay and cow-dung, and carefully
buries the piece of wood on the spot which is to be the shrine of the
local deities. Needless to say that the gods themselves are bunged up in
the wood and are quite incapable of doing further mischief, provided
always that the usual offerings are made to them at the shrine where they
live in durance vile.(212) In this case the source of mischief is
imprisoned, not in a tree, but in a piece of one; but the principle is
clearly the same. Similarly in Corea an English lady observed at a
cross-road a small log with several holes like those of a mouse-trap, one
of which was plugged up doubly with bungs of wood. She was told that a
demon, whose ravages spread sickness in a family, had been inveigled by a
sorceress into that hole and securely bunged up. It was thought proper for
all passers-by to step over the incarcerated devil, whether to express
their scorn and abhorrence of him, or more probably as a means of keeping
him forcibly down.(213) In Cochinchina a troublesome ghost can be confined
to the grave by the simple process of knocking a nail or thrusting a bar
of iron into the earth at the point where the head of the corpse may be
presumed to repose.(214)
(M43) From knocking the mischief into a tree or a log it is only a step to
knocking it into a stone, a door-post, a wall, or such like. At the head
of Glen Mor, near Port Charlotte, in Islay, there may be seen a large
boulder, and it is said that whoever drives a nail into this stone will
thereafter be secure from attacks of toothache. A farmer in Islay told an
enquirer some years ago how a passing stranger once cured his grandmother
of toothache by driving a horse-nail into the lintel of the kitchen door,
warning her at the same time to keep the nail there, and if it should come
loose just to tap it with a hammer till it had a grip again. She had no
more toothache for the rest of her life.(215) In Brunswick it is open to
any one to nail his toothache either into a wall or into a tree, as he
thinks fit; the pain is cured quite as well in the one way as in the
other.(216) So in Beauce and Perche a healer has been known to place a new
nail on the aching tooth of a sufferer and then knock the nail into a
door, a beam, or a joist.(217) The procedure in North Africa is similar.
You write certain Arabic letters and numbers on the wall; then, while the
patient puts a finger on the aching tooth, you knock a nail, with a light
tap of a hammer, into the first letter on the wall, reciting a verse of
the Coran as you do so. Next you ask the sufferer whether the pain is now
abated, and if he says “Yes” you draw out the nail entirely. But if he
says “No,” you shift the nail to the next letter in the wall, and so on,
till the pain goes away, which it always does, sooner or later.(218) A
Bohemian who fears he is about to have an attack of fever will snatch up
the first thing that comes to hand and nail it to the wall. That keeps the
fever from him.(219)
(M44) As in Europe we nail toothache or fever to a wall, so in Morocco
they nail devils. A house in Mogador having been infested with devils, who
threw stones about it in a way that made life a burden to the inmates, a
holy man was called in to exorcise them, which he did effectually by
pronouncing an incantation and driving a nail into the wall; at every
stroke of the hammer a hissing sound announced that another devil had
received his quietus.(220) Among the modern Arabs the soul of a murdered
man must be nailed down. Thus if a man be murdered in Egypt, his ghost
will rise from the ground where his blood was shed: but it can be
prevented from doing so by driving a new nail, which has never been used,
into the earth at the spot where the murder was committed. In Tripoli the
practice is similar. Some years ago a native was murdered close to the
door of a little Italian inn. Immediately the Arabs of the neighbourhood
thronged thither and effectually laid the ghost with hammer and nail. When
the innkeeper rashly attempted to remove the nail, he was warned that to
do so would be to set the ghost free.(221) In modern Egypt numbers of
people afflicted with headache used to knock a nail into the great wooden
door of the old south gate of Cairo, for the purpose of charming away the
pain; others who suffered from toothache used to extract a tooth and
insert it in a crevice of the door, or fix it in some other way, in order
to be rid of toothache for the future. A holy and miraculous personage,
invisible to mortal eyes, was supposed to have one of his stations at this
gate.(222) In Mosul also a sheikh can cure headache by first laying his
hands on the sufferer’s head and then hammering a nail into a wall.(223)
Not far from Neuenkirchen, in Oldenburg, there is a farmhouse to which,
while the Thirty Years’ War was raging, the plague came lounging along
from the neighbouring town in the shape of a bluish vapour. Entering the
house it popped into a hole in the door-post of one of the rooms. The
farmer saw his chance, and quick as thought he seized a peg and hammered
it into the hole, so that the plague could not possibly get out. After a
time, however, thinking the danger was past, he drew out the peg. Alas!
with the peg came creeping and curling out of the hole the blue vapour
once more. The plague thus let loose seized on every member of the family
in that unhappy house and left not one of them alive.(224) Again, the
great plague which devastated the ancient world in the reign of Marcus
Antoninus is said to have originated in the curiosity and greed of some
Roman soldiers, who, pillaging the city of Seleucia, came upon a narrow
hole in a temple and incautiously enlarged the opening in the expectation
of discovering treasure. But that which came forth from the hole was not
treasure but the plague. It had been pent up in a secret chamber by the
magic art of the Chaldeans; but now, released from its prison by the rash
act of the spoilers, it stalked abroad and spread death and destruction
from the Euphrates to the Nile and the Atlantic.(225)
(M45) The simple ceremony, in which to this day the superstition of
European peasants sees a sovereign remedy for plague and fever and
toothache, has come down to us from a remote antiquity; for in days when
as yet Paris and London were not, when France still revered the Druids as
the masters of all knowledge, human and divine, and when our own country
was still covered with virgin forests, the home of savage beasts and
savage men, the same ceremony was solemnly performed from time to time by
the highest magistrate at Rome, to stay the ravages of pestilence or
retrieve disaster that threatened the foundations of the national life. In
the fourth century before our era the city of Rome was desolated by a
great plague which raged for three years, carrying off some of the highest
dignitaries and a great multitude of common folk. The historian who
records the calamity informs us that when a banquet had been offered to
the gods in vain, and neither human counsels nor divine help availed to
mitigate the violence of the disease, it was resolved for the first time
in Roman history to institute dramatical performances as an appropriate
means of appeasing the wrath of the celestial powers. Accordingly actors
were fetched from Etruria, who danced certain simple and decorous dances
to the music of a flute. But even this novel spectacle failed to amuse or
touch, to move to tears or laughter the sullen gods. The plague still
raged, and at the very moment when the actors were playing their best in
the circus beside the Tiber, the yellow river rose in angry flood and
drove players and spectators, wading and splashing through the
fast-deepening waters, away from the show. It was clear that the gods
spurned plays as well as prayers and banquets; and in the general
consternation it was felt that some more effectual measure should be taken
to put an end to the scourge. Old men remembered that a plague had once
been stayed by the knocking of a nail into a wall; and accordingly the
Senate resolved that now in their extremity, when all other means had
failed, a supreme magistrate should be appointed for the sole purpose of
performing this solemn ceremony. The appointment was made, the nail was
knocked, and the plague ceased, sooner or later.(226) What better proof
could be given of the saving virtue of a nail?
(M46) Twice more within the same century the Roman people had recourse to
the same venerable ceremony as a cure for public calamities with which the
ordinary remedies, civil and religious, seemed unable to cope. One of
these occasions was a pestilence;(227) the other was a strange mortality
among the leading men, which public opinion traced, rightly or wrongly, to
a series of nefarious crimes perpetrated by noble matrons, who took their
husbands off by poison. The crimes, real or imaginary, were set down to
frenzy, and nothing could be thought of so likely to minister to minds
diseased as the knocking of a nail into a wall. Search among the annals of
the city proved that in a season of civil discord, when the state had been
rent by party feud, the same time-honoured remedy, the same soothing balm,
had been applied with the happiest results to the jarring interests and
heated passions of the disputants. Accordingly the old nostrum was tried
once more, and again success appeared to justify the experiment.(228)
(M47) If the Romans in the fourth century before Christ thus deemed it
possible to rid themselves of pestilence, frenzy, and sedition by
hammering them into a wall, even as French and German peasants still rid
themselves of fever and toothache by knocking them into a tree, their
prudent ancestors appear to have determined that so salutary a measure
should not be restricted in its scope to meeting special and urgent
emergencies as they arose, but should regularly diffuse its benefits over
the community by anticipating and, as it were, nipping in the bud evils
which, left unchecked, might grow to dangerous proportions. This, we may
conjecture, was the original intention of an ancient Roman law which
ordained that the highest magistrate of the republic should knock in a
nail every year on the thirteenth day of September. The law might be seen,
couched in old-fashioned language, engraved on a tablet which was fastened
to a wall of the temple of Capitoline Jupiter; and although the place
where the nails were driven in is nowhere definitely stated by classical
writers, there are some grounds for thinking that it may have been the
same wall on which the law that sanctioned the custom was exhibited. Livy
tells us that the duty of affixing the nail, at one time discharged by the
consuls, was afterwards committed to dictators, whose higher rank
consorted better with the dignity and importance of the function. At a
later time the custom fell into abeyance, and the ancient ceremony was
revived only from time to time in seasons of grave peril or extraordinary
calamity, which seemed to attest the displeasure of the gods at modern
ways, and disposed men to bethink them of ancestral lore and to walk in
the old paths.(229)
(M48) In antiquity the annual practice of hammering a nail into a wall was
not confined to Rome. It was observed also at Vulsinii, in Etruria, where
the nails thus fixed in the temple of the goddess Nortia served as a
convenient means of recording and numbering the years.(230) To Roman
antiquaries of a later period it seemed, naturally enough, that such a
practice had indeed no other object than that of marking the flight of
time in ages when writing was but little used.(231) Yet a little
reflection will probably convince us that this, though it was doubtless a
useful consequence of the custom, can hardly have been its original
intention. For it will scarcely be disputed that the annual observance of
the custom cannot be wholly dissociated from its occasional observance in
seasons of great danger or calamity, and that whatever explanation we give
of the one ought to apply to the other also. Now it is plain that if we
start from the annual observance and regard it as no more than a
timekeeper or mode of recording the years, we shall never reach an
adequate explanation of the occasional observance. If the nails were
merely ready reckoners of the years, how could they come to be used as
supreme remedies for pestilence, frenzy, and sedition, resorted to by the
state in desperate emergencies when all the ordinary resources of policy
and religion had failed? On the other hand, if we start from the
occasional observance and view it, in accordance with modern analogies, as
a rude attempt to dispose of intangible evils as if they were things that
could be handled and put away out of sight, we can readily understand how
such an attempt, from being made occasionally, might come to be repeated
annually for the sake of wiping out all the old troubles and misfortunes
of the past year and enabling the community to start afresh, unencumbered
by a fardel of ills, at the beginning of a new year. Fortunately we can
shew that the analogy which is thus assumed to exist between the Roman
custom and modern superstition is not a merely fanciful one; in other
words, it can be proved that the Romans, like modern clowns, did believe
in the possibility of nailing down trouble, in a literal and physical
sense, into a material substance. Pliny tells us that an alleged cure for
epilepsy, or the falling sickness, was to drive an iron nail into the
ground on the spot which was first struck by the patient’s head as he
fell.(232) In the light of the modern instances which have come before us,
we can hardly doubt that the cure was supposed to consist in actually
nailing the disease into the earth in such a way that it could not get up
and attack the sufferer again. Precisely parallel is a Suffolk cure for
ague. You must go by night alone to a cross-road, and just as the clock
strikes the midnight hour you must turn yourself about thrice and drive a
tenpenny nail up to the head into the ground. Then walk away backwards
from the spot before the clock is done striking twelve, and you will miss
the ague; but the next person who passes over the nail will catch the
malady in your stead.(233) Here it is plainly assumed that the ague of
which the patient is relieved has been left by him nailed down into the
earth at the cross-road, and we may fairly suppose that a similar
assumption underlay the Roman cure for epilepsy. Further, we seem to be
now justified in holding that originally, when a Roman dictator sought to
stay a plague, to restore concord, or to terminate an epidemic of madness
by knocking a nail into a wall, he was doing for the commonwealth exactly
what any private man might do for an epileptic patient by knocking a nail
into the ground on the spot where his poor friend had collapsed. In other
words, he was hammering the plague, the discord, or the madness into a
hole from which it could not get out to afflict the community again.(234)
(M49) Different in principle from the foregoing customs appears to be the
Loango practice of sticking nails into wooden idols or fetishes. The
intention of knocking a nail into a worshipful image is said to be simply
to attract the notice of the deity in a forcible manner to the request of
his worshipper; it is like pinching a man or running a pin into his leg as
a hint that you desire to speak with him. Hence in order to be quite sure
of riveting the god’s attention the nails are sometimes made red-hot.(235)
Even the most absent-minded deity could hardly overlook a petition urged
in so importunate a fashion. The practice is resorted to in many
emergencies. For example, when a man has been robbed, he will go and get a
priest to knock a nail into an idol. The sharp pang naturally exasperates
the deity and he seeks to wreak his wrath on the thief, who is the real
occasion of his suffering. So when the thief hears of what has been done,
he brings back the stolen goods in fear and trembling. Similarly a nail
may be knocked into an idol for the purpose of making somebody fall ill;
and if a sick man fancies that his illness is due to an enemy who has
played him this trick, he will send to the priest of the idol and pay him
to remove the nail.(236) This mode of refreshing the memory and
stimulating the activity of a supernatural being is not confined to the
negroes of Loango; it is practised also by French Catholics, as we learn
from Sir John Rhys. “Some years ago,” he writes, “when I was on a visit at
the late Ernest Renan’s house at Rosmapamon, near Perros-Guirec on the
north coast of Brittany, our genial host took his friends one day to see
some of the sights of that neighbourhood. Among other things which he
showed us was a statue of St. Guirec standing at the head of an open
creek. It was of wood, and altogether a very rude work of art, if such it
might be called; but what attracted our attention most was the fact that
it had innumerable pins stuck into it. We asked M. Renan what the pins
meant, and his explanation was exceedingly quaint. He said that when any
young woman in the neighbourhood made up her mind that she should marry,
she came there and asked the saint to provide her with a husband, and to
do so without undue delay. She had every confidence in the willingness and
ability of the saint to oblige her, but she was haunted by the fear that
he might be otherwise engaged and forget her request. So she would stick
pins into him, and thus goad him, as she fancied, to exert himself on her
behalf. This is why the saint’s statue was full of pins.”(237) Similarly
in Japan sufferers from toothache sometimes stick needles into a
willow-tree, “believing that the pain caused to the tree-spirit will force
it to exercise its power to cure.”(238)
(M50) Thus it would seem that we must distinguish at least two uses of
nails or pins in their application to spirits and spiritual influences. In
one set of cases the nails act as corks or bungs to bottle up and imprison
a troublesome spirit; in the other set of cases they act as spurs or goads
to refresh his memory and stimulate his activity. But so far as the
evidence which I have cited allows us to judge, the use of nails as
spiritual bungs appears to be commoner than their use as mental
refreshers.