Ritual and belief
Date: 2023-07-21T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Religion; Magic; Rites and ceremonies; Ethnopsychology

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Title: Ritual and belief

Studies in the history of religion

Author: Edwin Sidney Hartland

Release date: July 21, 2023 [eBook #71238]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Williams and Norgate

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RITUAL AND BELIEF ***

RITUAL AND BELIEF

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF
RELIGION

BY
EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND, F.S.A.

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1914

PREFACE

Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of the evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it has revolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken to their very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilized America. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universe at large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed the enormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods through which the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization. Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but the evidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even its existence was denied. While theology, after first indignantly repudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces to accommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation were entered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M‘Lennan, and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. In a country like ours, where an established Church arrogated to itself all social and almost all intellectual influences, and where it was very generally supported by those who dissented from it on other points in its dogmatic opposition to the results of scientific enquiry, it was natural that attention should be directed to the bearing of those results on theology. Anthropology, as the new Science of Man came to be called, was materially assisted in the quarrel by Biblical criticism begun in Germany and popularized in England by Colenso and others. The authenticity of the books so long attributed to Moses was questioned and overthrown; they themselves were emptied of all historical authority, and put on a level in this respect with the books of heathen nations. Professor Robertson Smith’s fight for liberty of criticism in the Free Church of Scotland roused the enthusiasm even of men who did not agree with all his opinions; and when he was finally ejected from his chair at Aberdeen, he was provided with a home first at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, and the editorship of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Thus unmuzzled, he devoted himself to the study of Semitic religion and customs on the largest scale and in the most unbiassed spirit. Unfortunately, his health gave way; and two precious volumes are well-nigh all that has reached us of his labours. But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a younger fellow-countryman to whom we owe The Golden Bough, was of a most fruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be traced much—perhaps more than we suspect—of what anthropology has accomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twenty years.

Meanwhile revolt against false interpretation of known facts and inadequate methods of enquiry had spread elsewhere. Professor Max Müller, by his unsurpassed powers of exposition, his eloquence and his wide knowledge of the Aryan tongues, had become the champion in this country of the German explanation of myths as a disease of language, a teacher on whose lips learned and simple hung. Great as was his learning, however, it was circumscribed by the Indo-European languages and literature. He took little account of savage myths which could not be interpreted on his principles, and still less of the equally important rites and beliefs of European peasants and primitive peoples beyond the seas. In Germany, Mannhardt, originally a disciple of the same school, had turned to more reasonable and penetrating modes of interpretation. It is his glory to have been the first to combat the fancies of the philologists in a series of works steeped as deeply in classical learning as theirs, but with a much wider outlook and a keener sense of actuality. Yet he died without having made many converts; and in Germany still the sun-myth lingers, though hastening fast to its inevitable setting. In England his works were hardly known, when, in 1887, Andrew Lang, after a powerful article on “Mythology” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and other preliminary essays, published Myth, Ritual and Religion, in which he attacked with overwhelming acumen and wit the philological position. It is not too much to say that as far as English-speaking countries were concerned the blow was decisive, the philological position was carried, and the enemy’s flag planted triumphantly on the battlements.

The way was thus cleared for a really scientific enquiry into the beginnings of religion. No longer were we hampered with the story of Genesis and the primitive revelation. Our vision was not to be bounded by the Aryan and Semitic peoples. The guesswork of the philological school was at an end, and ritual was admitted to be at least as indispensable to the enquiry as story and belief. Professor Tylor had already done something more than pioneer work in the chapters on Mythology and Animism in Primitive Culture. In the chapters on Animism in particular he had exhibited the universal belief in the souls, not merely of human beings, but of other animate, and even of inanimate, creatures. He had boldly discussed the relation of this belief to the doctrine of spirits generally, and considered the transitional series of ideas through the cult of the dead, possession, fetishism, idol-worship, and the beliefs of the Christian Fathers. It became evident that a doctrine so complex and subtle, even in its simpler manifestations, could not bean original and innate belief of the human mind, but that it must have been evolved from something simpler, perhaps vaguer, certainly more comprehensive. “A theoretical conception of primitive philosophy, designed to account for phenomena now classed under Biology, especially Life and Death, Health and Disease, Sleep and Dreams, Trance and Visions” pre-supposes a long period of observation, comparison and discussion, during which the ideas slowly took shape and ranged themselves round a central theory.

The late Mr Andrew Lang was the first seriously to consider the questions involved. His answer, given in The Making of Religion (1898), was twofold. On the one hand, he suggested that “the savage theory of the soul may be based, at least in part, on experiences”—hypnotism, clairvoyance, hallucination, and so forth—“which cannot at present be made to fit into any purely materialistic system of the universe.” On the other hand, he contended that “the idea of God, in its earliest known shape, need not logically be derived from the idea of spirit, however that idea itself may have been attained or evolved.” In this he was aiming partly at Sir Edward Tylor’s theory of Animism, as developed in the last of his famous chapters on that subject, partly at the theory of the ancient sceptic Euhemerus, revived and championed within recent years by Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen, that gods had been developed out of the ghosts of dead men. He sought to draw a broad distinction between the two concepts, that of a god and that of a spirit of any sort. He claimed that the idea of God was earlier than that of a spirit, and that “a relatively Supreme God,” often expressly described as Creator, existing before death came into the world, and practically eternal, had everywhere preceded the propitiation of the dead. He did not commit himself to any definite opinion as to how this idea of a Supreme God was reached by the rude forefathers of the race. But when he oracularly observed, “The hypothesis of St Paul seems not the most unsatisfactory,” it is no wonder that orthodox readers understood by that expression a primitive revelation, whereas what he meant was the argument from Design as stated in Rom. i. 19, 20. Though Lang’s book, therefore, was hailed as a sign that anthropological science was after all coming round to the support of the old orthodoxy, he himself was too true a sceptic to fall satisfactorily into line. In fact, he solved nothing. The “High Gods” of the lowest savages must have had some origin, must have been evolved out of conceptions lower or more indefinite.

Professor Frazer has approached the problem from another side. In the first edition of The Golden Bough he attempted no definition of Religion; and the relation of Magic to Religion, therefore, was hardly clear. Critics did not fail to call his attention to this. In the second edition (1900) he accordingly proceeded to define his position. There, with Sir Alfred Lyall and Professor Jevons, he recognizes “a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion”; and in The Magic Art, he has more recently somewhat expanded his exposition of their relations. Magic, it appears, is a false science based on the assumption “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.” Religion is “a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.” Man began with magic. He knew of no beings superior to himself, and he believed that by certain ceremonies he could cause the results he desired. “Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to break these laws in the smallest particular is to incur failure, and may even expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost peril. If he claims a sovereignty over nature, it is a constitutional sovereignty, rigorously limited in its scope, and exercised in exact conformity with ancient usage.” After a while man found out his blunder. “The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to perceive that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the results they were designed to produce, and which the majority of their simpler fellows still believed that they did actually produce.… The discovery amounted to this, that men for the first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be completely within their control. It was a confession of human ignorance and weakness. Man saw that he had taken for causes what were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these imaginary causes had been vain.… Not that the effects which he had striven so hard to produce did not continue to manifest themselves. They were still produced, but not by him.” In this emergency he turned to “a new system of faith and practice, which seemed to offer a solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute, however precarious, for that sovereignty over nature which he had abdicated. If the great world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings, like himself, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course and brought about all the varied series of events which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own magic.… To these mighty beings, whose handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him with all good things.” Here, to be sure, was a revolution. The Age of Religion succeeded to the Age of Magic, though gradually, reluctantly, and, as regards at least the majority of mankind, incompletely even to the present day.

It is needless to dwell on the contrast between this hypothesis and Lang’s. The one traces religion back to the belief in a Supreme God, the other to a reaction against the belief in magic. They are alike in one respect: they both derive it from an exercise of man’s reasoning faculties. It seems a just criticism to say that neither of them takes sufficient account of man’s emotional nature. Yet it must have played an important part in the evolution of religion. It is, if I may say so, the merit of another enquirer, Dr R. R. Marett, that he was the first to point this out. In an article published in Folk-lore in the year 1900, he analyzed, with psychological knowledge and skill, the experiences that underlay Animism, and came to the conclusion that behind the logic was emotion, the recoil from the uncanny and the mysterious, “that basic feeling of awe, which drives a man, ere he can think or theorize upon it, into personal relations with the Supernatural.” Dr Marett’s views have been subsequently developed in a series of papers printed in different periodicals and collections, and republished in 1909 in a volume entitled The Threshold of Religion. This has been supplemented more recently by his inaugural lecture as Reader in Social Anthropology at Oxford, on The Birth of Humility (1910), in which he takes the opportunity of criticizing with vivacity and effect Professor Frazer’s exposition of the relations of magic and religion. His opinions have been reinforced by the independent enquiries of two learned Frenchmen, MM. Hubert and Mauss, who in 1904 published in L’Année Sociologique a remarkable “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la Magie,” reissued five years later among their collected essays entitled Mélanges d’Histoire des Religions. They approach the subject from the social side, insisting that religion is before everything a social matter, its judgements are social judgements, its rites social rites. They point out its intimate connection with magic, and by skilful analysis exhibit the parallelism between them.

More recently the psychological aspect of the problem has been considered by a group of American writers, notably by Professor James Leuba (A Psychological Study of Religion) and Dr Irving King (The Development of Religion, New York, 1910). The latter work is a most suggestive and judicious survey of the evidence afforded by savage rites and belief. The writer insists on the priority of rites to belief, and finds their origin in social activities, largely in what he calls play-activities, and in spontaneous reactions to the environment. The religious attitude may be coeval with these activities, but organized beliefs were developed gradually. The particular forms they took were the result of different social situations, these in turn depending on the physical and cultural environment. “In and so far as they have elements which are similar functionally, religion and magic,” he holds, “originally formed a part of a primitive, undifferentiated attitude, and separated from each other as experience became more complex and the requirements of action more varied.” Magic became the individualist and antisocial application of the impulses and organized methods of which religion was the social expression and application.

Lastly, Professor Durkheim, taking Totemism as the most primitive religion known to us, has in Les Formes Elémentaires de la vie Religieuse analyzed elementary conceptions, with the result that he derives religious ideas and practices entirely from a social origin. As I have considered his theory more fully on another page, it needs no further reference here.

Thus at the present moment the controversy stands—if it be legitimate to call it a controversy. Criticism, according to a pregnant saying of Andrew Lang’s, is a form of co-operation—of co-operation in the pursuit of truth. The following essays are intended in that spirit as a humble contribution to the discussion. Their primary intention is not controversial. They rather seek to express some of the results of a study of the phenomena, from the point of view of one who has been convinced that the emotions and the imagination—and not merely the individual, but the collective emotions and imagination—have had at least as much to do with the generation of religious practices and beliefs as the reason, and that for the form they may have assumed, physical, social, and cultural influences must be held accountable.

The essay on “The Relations of Religion and Magic” is an expansion of two presidential addresses, one delivered to the Anthropological Section of the British Association at York in 1906, the other to the section on the Religions of the Lower Culture at the International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford in 1908. The essay on “The Rite at the Temple of Mylitta” was contributed to the volume of Anthropological Essays presented to Sir Edward Tylor, in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1907. That on “The Voice of the Stone of Destiny” was published in Folk-lore, 1903. Both of these have undergone revision. The remaining essays are new. One of them deals as a preliminary with some of the difficulties that beset the enquirer into the religious ideas of the lower races, with wandering fires that mislead him, with barriers that seem impassable. The others seek to concentrate attention on particular instances of ritual or belief, to elucidate the ideas and emotions that underlie them, or further to illustrate their evolution. I am indebted to the publishers of such as have been already published for their courtesy in facilitating reproduction here.

E. SIDNEY HARTLAND

Highgarth, Gloucester,

January 1914.

CONTENTS

LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK”

THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION AND MAGIC:

I. THE COMMON ROOT

II. THEORIES AND DEFINITIONS

III. DEVELOPMENT

IV. DIVERGENCE

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

THE HAUNTED WIDOW

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING CLOTHES

THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE OF MYLITTA

THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF DESTINY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST

ENDNOTES

RITUAL AND BELIEF

LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK”

Sir Edward Tylor begins the chapters on Animism in that great work which laid the foundation of the modern study of the history of civilization, by a discussion of the evidence for the existence of tribes destitute of religion. In some half-dozen pages he easily shows that the existence of such tribes, “though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled to demand.” He convicts travellers and missionaries who have made the assertion, of contradicting themselves; and he renders probable that the denial of religion to peoples in the lower culture is begotten of a perverted judgement in theological matters, and “the use of wide words in narrow senses.”1.1

Other causes are equally prolific of error in regard to savage beliefs. Sir Edward Tylor refers to haste and imperfect acquaintance by the traveller with the people whose beliefs he is professing to repeat. These are obvious causes on which it is needless to dwell. Many peoples, too, are accustomed out of mere politeness to endeavour to divine what sort of answer to his remarks will please a guest, or what sort of answer an enquirer expects to his questions, and to make it accordingly, regardless whether it has any relation to the facts or not. This courtier-like etiquette of agreement applies to every subject, and is emphasized when the enquirer is an official or social superior from whom favour may be looked for or displeasure apprehended. The Malayans, a jungle tribe of southern India, invariably say “Yes” in reply to a question by a government officer or a member of a higher caste, “believing that a negative answer might displease him.”2.1 In such cases it is difficult to extract the truth on the most indifferent and trivial, to say nothing of weightier, matters.

Passing over these commonplaces, let us pause for a moment on another cause mentioned by Tylor, namely, the natural reluctance of savages to reveal “to the prying and contemptuous foreigner their worship of gods who seem to shrink, like their worshippers, before the white man and his mightier Deity.”2.2 Very instructive is the account given by Kolben of the Hottentots. Writing in the early years of the eighteenth century, he says it is “a difficult thing to get out of the Hottentots what are really their notions concerning God and religion, or whether they have any at all. They keep all their religious opinions and ceremonies, as they do every other matter established among them, as secret as they can from Europeans, and when they are questioned concerning such matters are very shy in their answers and hide the truth as much as they can.” They take refuge from questions in “a thousand fictions,” which they excuse, when taxed with them, by alleging that “the Europeans are a crafty, designing people. They never ask a question for the sake of the answer only, but have other ends to serve, perhaps against the peace and security of the Hottentots.” From this source, we are told, have sprung most of the contradictions to be found in authors upon the religion of the Hottentots.3.1 More than a hundred years after Kolben’s day a British traveller, exploring Great Namaqualand under the auspices of the British Government and of the Royal Geographical Society, assembled some of the old men among the Namaqua and put them through an examination. His thirst for information was doubtless praiseworthy; and he was at least successful in proving, albeit unconsciously, the truth of the older traveller’s words. For the proceeding he adopted affords a brilliant example of “how not to do it.” I quote some of his questions: “What laws have the Namaqua?” Answer—“They have none; they only listen to their chiefs.” “Do the people know anything of the stars?” Answer—“Nothing.” “Do the Namaqua believe in lucky and unlucky days?” Answer—“They don’t know anything of these things.” “Are there rainmakers in the land?” Answer—“None.” “What do the old Namaqua think becomes of people when they die?” Answer—“They know nothing of these things; all they see is that the people die and are buried, but what becomes of them they know not; and before the missionaries came to the Great River the people had never heard of another world.”3.2

Many European casuists justify one who is questioned concerning matters he desires to keep secret, and who meets the inquisitive person with a falsehood. It cannot therefore be surprising that these poor Hottentots thus took advantage of the only defence open to them when they found their most cherished beliefs and customs the subject of impertinent and bungling interrogations by an unsympathetic intruder into their country. Their Bantu neighbours do the same. The Kaffir, we are told, “dislikes to find Europeans investigating his customs, and he usually hides all he can from them and takes a sportive pleasure in baffling and misleading them.”4.1 When questioned by Andersson, the Ovambo denied that they had any belief, or abruptly stopped him with a “Hush!”4.2 Prying of this kind is rarely welcomed even among peoples on a much higher plane of civilization. Not to appeal to our own feelings, we may take as an illustration a people of the Far East. To question a native of Korea concerning custom or belief at once arouses his suspicions. Indeed, for a stranger to enquire the number of houses in a village, or what the land produces, needs much tact if bad feeling is to be avoided. A missionary who lived for many years in the country was of opinion that people are unconscious of their customs. At any rate a Korean asked suddenly about a certain custom will in all likelihood deny that such a thing exists; and yet he may be absolutely free from dishonesty in the matter: he is simply unconscious, he has never thought about it.4.3

To this point we will return directly: our present point is the conscious refusal of information. And here it should be noted that savages, as well as others, do not hide their beliefs only because they do not understand the motive of enquiry, or because they are afraid of ridicule or of the denunciations of the missionary, even where the Christian priest can call down the thunderbolt of the magistrate. These reasons operate, but not alone. From all quarters of the world comes the report that the native is uncommunicative. The Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco are quite aware that their “superstition is regarded with disfavour by the missionaries”; but they are naturally “very reticent in these matters,” and their reticence is only heightened—not caused—by this knowledge.5.1 An excellent illustration of the difficulty of discovering the beliefs and even the practices of savages is afforded by Mr Batchelor, a missionary who, having resided among the Ainu of Japan for more than twelve years, wrote an interesting book upon them. He naturally supposed that so long a residence and intimacy with them entitled him to think he knew practically all that could be told about them. Alas for the fallibility of even a careful observer! There was one chamber in the mind of every Ainu which he had not explored. When another twelve years had elapsed he wrote that “when writing that book I must frankly confess that I had no idea, nor had I for many years after, that ophiolatry was practised at all by this people.” And all the while the Ainu whom he knew so well were holding beliefs, relating myths, and practising rites of which he had not the least suspicion.5.2 Nor is there any reason to suggest that they were concealing those things from him out of fear of ridicule or clerical reproofs.

Deeper reasons exist. German missionaries have been labouring for a number of years among the tribes on the north-eastern coast of New Guinea. In view of the various difficulties attending the investigation of the beliefs of these tribes the latest scientific explorer of the country called in the aid of some of the more experienced of the missionaries. He thus sums up the position: “The heathen Papuan is a reticent fellow, and no power in the world can move him to disclose the secrets of his fathers. He has too much fear of the vengeance of the spirits and of the sorcerers, who would infallibly kill him if he betrayed the smallest thing. Long years of work accomplished with endless patience have been necessary to convince the Black that sorcery is powerless,—that it is all lies and deceit. Only if he is about to be baptized will he voluntarily deliver up to his teacher his knowledge of witchcraft and its methods. In plain terms, he feels the need on this point to lighten both his conscience and his pocket.”6.1 Reasons of this order have never been better put than by an eminent French anthropologist whose untimely death a few years ago was a serious blow to the cause of science. Reviewing the work of a lady for whom English colleagues yet mourn, he says: “The savage does not like to speak of his belief; he fears the contemptuous mockery of the Whites. Perhaps, too, he fears to give an advantage over himself, in allowing more to be known than is fitting of the rites by which he tries to conciliate the benevolence of the spirits, or to turn away their disfavour from his hut and his plantations. To make known his resources for the fight would be to half-disarm him; surrounded with supernatural dangers, he does not willingly indicate the supernatural means by which he guarantees himself against them.”6.2 One other reason may be added to these: a reason probably operative in many more cases than enquirers have been aware of. The things after which they ask are often revealed only to the initiate. An outsider, one who is not known to be, or at least treated as, an initiate, will seek in vain by means direct or indirect for information on these matters. A stony silence or repeated lies are all he will get. This has been the cause of much mystification and many contradictory statements about tribes in various parts of the world, not the least in Australia.7.1

It is not suggested, of course, that all contradictory statements emanate from the deliberate mystification of non-initiate enquirers. We have not by any means exhausted the causes of error in regard to savage beliefs. Contradictory statements are made in good faith because those who make them hold contradictory beliefs. On the subject, for example, of the future life the mutually destructive character of the beliefs often held by the same tribes, and even by the same individuals, is one of the truisms of anthropology. The Zulus and their neighbours hold that their dead are to be recognized in the form of various animals, notably snakes, that haunt the tomb or the abodes of the living, and yet that these very dead dwell in the bowels of the earth, presiding in patriarchal fashion over shadowy kraals, and rejoicing in the possession of herds of sky-blue kine with red and white spots. Moreover, notwithstanding this wealth of cattle, they are dependent, if not for their continued existence, at least for their comfort, on the sacrifices offered by their descendants. The truth is that “the whole spirit-world is one of haze and uncertainty.”7.2 This opinion, expressed by an experienced missionary, is true of all savage and barbarous nations. It is not merely the doctrine of souls that is difficult to understand fully and to state clearly: all the relations with the supernatural are shifting; and the supernatural itself melts away into mist and gloom and the undefined terrors of night.

Proof of the mental capacity of peoples in the lower culture, and their alertness within the narrow range of their appetites, their bodily needs, and the warfare they wage for existence against untoward environment of various kinds, is to be found in every record of exploration, in the reports of every missionary. Beyond that range there are differences between races, as between individuals, in reasoning power, in curiosity, and in general development. Some cause to us unknown may have turned the thoughts of one people into profounder and subtler channels than those of another. We are told of two neighbouring tribes in California that their differences are very striking, and are based on deep-lying racial factors. The mythology of the one is more dramatic, that of the other is more metaphysical, exhibiting “more of the power of abstract thought and intellectual conception.”8.1 We must beware of reading too extensive a meaning into what is after all merely a comparison of characteristics. It is adduced here for the sole purpose of illustrating the statement that such differences exist even between tribes that are subject to similar external influences. In spite of these differences the unanimous verdict, alike of missionaries and explorers, scientific enquirers and traders, given with tiresome iteration, is that of dormant faculties, want of interest, inability to follow a train of thought, and dislike of intellectual effort. These are qualities that we are sufficiently familiar with at home to render them fully credible in “the poor heathen.” Ask a man anywhere—ask a Zulu, ask an English peasant—why such and such a thing is done. He will tell you: “It is the custom,” and will look at you with wondering eyes that you can demand a reason or dream of any alternative as possible. Custom to him is more than a second nature. It is nature itself, the established order, the cosmos. To conceive of departure from it would entail a greater burden of thought than he has ever undertaken or would willingly bear. It may even be so much a part of his existence that, like the Korean referred to above, he is barely conscious of it.

In such a case the custom may be denied in perfect good faith. Sometimes, it is true, another cause may lead to the denial. This is well illustrated in a recent work on the Holy Land. The author, speaking of local variations of custom, says: “The small area in which peculiar customs occur, and the comparative isolation of these areas which still prevails, make it often extremely difficult to ascertain local customs and usages. Many of these can only be discovered accidentally or by long residence in the particular locality. The people of neighbouring villages may be quite unaware of the existence of a certain custom, while only a few miles away it may be very familiar. I have known intelligent, educated natives to be entirely ignorant of certain customs, and even to deny their existence, because they were not in vogue in their own particular district, whereas further enquiry or fuller acquaintance with other parts revealed the fact that they were perfectly familiar to others.”9.1 Here the expression “intelligent, educated natives” must be interpreted of course by reference to the standard of intelligence and education in the rural parts of a country so backward as Palestine. In such a case the ignorance by natives described as intelligent and educated of customs quite different from, and perhaps opposed to, their own may be due to the concentration of their faculties in the struggle for daily needs, or the absorption of their interests in the concerns of their own little community. Millions of men and women in our country, who may be fairly described, by reference to their class and occupation, as “intelligent, educated natives,” are quite ignorant—and supremely indifferent—about everything not pertaining to their material well-being, their habitual amusements, the affairs of their little town, their family or their church, or the latest scandal whispered in their tiny coterie. These fill up their life; they have neither leisure nor inclination to worry about anything beyond. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that where the facilities for communication are smaller and the general indigence greater, similar mental indolence may exist. Economic causes, the product themselves of the environment, are often responsible for internal conditions, and cannot be disentangled from them. Intelligent curiosity about things not immediately or apparently affecting ourselves is a rare virtue, and of late development. We ourselves often deem that we pay it abundant homage by witnessing the exhibition of a few lantern slides, or slumbering tranquilly through a lecture on Dante. But to it, if rightly and strenuously pursued, we owe how much of modern discovery and the amenities of civilization! Let us, however, return to our savages.

Of the Nootkas or Ahts of Vancouver Island we are told by Sproat in a passage that has often been quoted that he “had abundant proof in conversing with them about matters in which they took an interest, that their mental capacities are by no means small. It is true that the native mind, to an educated man, seems generally to be asleep; and if you suddenly ask a novel question, you have to repeat it while the mind of the savage is awaking, and to speak with emphasis until he has got your meaning. This may partly arise from the questioner’s imperfect knowledge of the language; still, I think, not entirely, as the savage may be observed occasionally to become forgetful when voluntarily communicating information. On his attention being fully aroused he often shows much quickness in reply and ingenuity in argument. But a short conversation wearies him, particularly if questions are asked that require efforts of thought or memory on his part. The mind of the savage then appears to rock to and fro out of mere weakness, and he tells lies and talks nonsense.”11.1 On this Professor Boas, the distinguished American anthropologist, comments thus: “I happen to know through personal contact the tribes mentioned by Sproat. The questions put by the traveller seem mostly trifling to the Indian; and he naturally soon tires of a conversation carried on in a foreign language, and one in which he finds nothing to interest him. As a matter of fact, the interest of those natives can easily be raised to a high pitch, and I have often been the one who was wearied out first. Neither does the management of their intricate system of exchange prove mental inertness in matters which concern the natives. Without mnemonic aids, they plan the systematic distribution of their property in such a manner as to increase their wealth and social position. These plans require great foresight and constant application.”11.2

So far as this comment is directed to depreciate the value of Sproat’s estimate of the mental powers of the Nootkas, I cannot think that Professor Boas has been quite fair to the writer. Sproat was no passing traveller, speaking to the natives in a foreign language, and jotting down superficial impressions derived from hasty observation. He had “lived among them and had a long acquaintanceship with them.” He was a settler, and for five years a colonial magistrate in constant contact with several of their tribes. His own account of his method of collecting information and the substance of his book are conclusive as to his painstaking researches; and Professor Boas himself elsewhere bears testimony to his trustworthiness.12.1 Moreover, a comparison of the quotations renders it clear that on the whole they confirm one another. Probably, however, Professor Boas’ criticism is intended to apply not so much to Sproat’s statements as to the use made of them by Herbert Spencer and other theorists. It comes to this, therefore, that the Nootka’s mental capacity is considerable, his mind is alert and active on subjects that interest him, but that he is not interested in many of those on which an anthropologist desires to learn, and hence he speedily becomes “bored” and answers at random.

The horizon of savage interests among the neighbouring Dene or Ten’a of the Yukon Valley is thus defined by an experienced missionary: “The activity of their minds is commonly confined within a narrow circle, as is evidenced by their favourite subjects of conversation. Food, hunting and fishing, with their attendant circumstances, family happenings, health and disease, devils and their actions, sexual propensities—such are the topics which practically sum up the encyclopædia of their conversation.” “The Ten’a mind,” he says in another place, “is anything but speculative, and its imaginative powers have not been turned to building theories of its belief, but rather to excogitate a variety of ways whereby this belief perseveringly asserts itself.” The native’s “dogmas are very nebulous and undefined, and he has never heard them explicitly formulated, nor even attempted to state them distinctly to himself.” Consequently, “whereas there is a certain uniformity in the practices, and an overabundance of them, there are very few points of belief common to several individuals, and these are of the vaguest kind.”13.1

If we turn to an entirely different race, the same features present themselves. The capacity of the Bantu peoples of the Lower Congo for the intellectual acts of perception, recognition, memory, and so forth, is well developed and appears early in childhood. “In this respect the natives are much on a par with the civilized races; but the limit is reached early in life, and but little mental progress is observable after adolescence is reached. The ideas are mostly of the simpler forms, seldom passing the concretes of actual experience, generalizations being as a rule beyond their power. Association of ideas, though good as implied by good memory, only takes place in the concrete form of contiguity in time and space as actually already perceived; analogies are confined to the crudest forms, and a very simple figure of speech is apt to be unintelligible.… The fundamental act of intelligence, the intuition of likeness and unlikeness, is very circumscribed; and high acts of intellect are thereby negatived.… An accompanying trait is the absence of rational surprise. On seeing something new a vacant wonder is all that is observable; and this is very transient, and the new experience is classified as ‘white man’s fashion.’ It almost follows as a matter of course that there is no curiosity, no wish to enquire into the cause of a novel experience; it never occurs to the native that there is a cause of the novelty or an explanation required. In like manner there is almost total absence of theorizing about natural phenomena.” In fact, the relation of cause and effect in all but the most patent and mechanical cases is said to be beyond his grasp.14.1 In general terms this description may stand for all the Bantu, due allowance being made, as pointed out above, for individual and tribal differences.

The natural result is vagueness on all religious and metaphysical subjects. This is a characteristic of savages all over the world. Nor is it limited by any means to them. Recent investigations have established the evolution of some at least of the majestic figures of the Olympian Pantheon from not merely rude but vague and nameless personalities; and to the very end of Hellenic religion, unknown gods and dim, indefinite heroes continued to be honoured not merely in every country place, but in Athens herself. The Arabs of Moab have professed for many generations the religion of the Prophet. Yet they have the feeblest apprehension of that great Allah in whom they are supposed to believe. When questioned on his nature, his abode, his occupation, they usually answer: “We do not know.” One of them told a missionary: “It is said that Allah is like an old man with a white beard, but I do not know where he dwells; it is asserted that he is above,” pointing to the sky. They also honour numerous beings called by the generic name of Wely (protector or friend), who are identified with rocks, trees, and other holy places. Even of these, however, their ideas are obscure. Like the local hero of the Greeks, the Wely is not as a rule individualized with a personal name. Who he is in most cases is unknown. His exact connection with the spot where he is honoured is equally unknown. Some Arabs say that it is he who gives vigour to the sacred tree; others declare that he dwells beneath it, or that he dwells in the branches and the leaves; but Allah knows.15.1 And the pious reference to Allah and his knowledge is sufficient for the Arab.

The fact is that on these subjects the majority of the human race, whether savage or civilized, think little. Their minds are seldom excited to the point of reasoning on their beliefs. They accept what they are told, and do not even know whether they believe it or not, because they have never reflected upon it. One has only to talk for a few minutes to a peasant at home to find out how narrow the border of his knowledge is, how misty and uncertain is everything beyond the routine of his daily life and the village gossip and amusements, unless where in the neighbourhood of a town the supreme interests of football open to him a prospect into another world. Gossip, amusements, his daily bread are subjects of importance; they fill his horizon; on them his views are perfectly definite. Nor does he differ in this respect from people who are looked upon as his social superiors. It would be making too strenuous a demand upon their intellectual life to expect them to rise above the markets, the newspaper, the latest novel, the county cricket-score, and the problems of golf and bridge. All the rest they are content to leave to their professional advisers, who in nine cases out of ten, if the truth must be told, have as little taste or capacity as themselves for metaphysical speculation, historical research or theological enquiry, and are bound as tightly in the cords of tradition as the far more imaginative Zulu medicine-man, or the Eskimo wizard. For the average man in civilization appraises the subjects of thought no otherwise than does his brother in savagery. Each alike is eminently practical. Something done, or to be done, by himself or others is what interests him. Some personal gain, some bodily pleasure—for this he will think and think hard; all other mental exertion must be easy and short. Nor could the human race exist on any other terms.

Still further difficulties beset the enquirer into the beliefs of the lower culture. On the threshold is that of language. To be sure that you have grasped the real meaning of your savage friend you must be able to talk his language as he talks it himself—and even then you may be mistaken. “When there is no certain medium of communication,” says Bishop Codrington, writing of the Melanesians, “when a native interpreter who speaks a little broken English is employed to ask questions and to return the answers, nothing can be depended on as certain which is received. To be able to use some European word, or word supposed to be English, to describe a native practice or to convey a native belief, is to have an easy means of giving information; and so among the islands ‘plenty devil’ is the description given of a sacred spot, and ‘tevoro’ (devil) in Fiji has become the common appellation of the native ghosts or spirits. Supposing, again, that the enquirer is able to communicate pretty freely on ordinary subjects in the language of any island, he will surely find himself baffled when any one of the elder people undertakes to give him information. The vocabulary of ordinary life is almost useless when the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.”16.1

The use of the word “devil,” universal in and around Melanesia when speaking in pigeon English of the native mysteries and the objects of the native cult or fear, illustrates one of the pitfalls in the path of the anthropologist. The native ideas do not coincide with ours. The history, the environment, the social and intellectual condition of peoples in the lower culture are as diverse from ours as their geographical situation. Consequently their speech contains no equivalent for many of our words, even of words that seem to us to convey ideas elementary and simple. No Australian language possesses a word which is the exact equivalent of our word “mother.” The word we roughly equate with “mother” includes a host of other women beside her who has given birth to the child. Some of these women we should designate as “aunt,” or as “stepmother”; but many of them stand in no relation of kinship according to our reckoning. Yet they are all addressed and spoken of by the same term as the veritable mother. Kinship, in fact, is counted in the lower culture along lines quite different from ours; and though it is probable that our degrees of kindred have evolved from a rudimentary condition similar to that which we find among savages, we have so far outgrown it that their reckoning is often unintelligible to us, and only a very few of the terms in use among European nations remain to point back to an earlier stage of development. If we have this difficulty in finding equivalents for terms expressive of the simplest relationships of our social life, how much greater must be our difficulty when we come to terms expressive of the mysterious and supersensual relations of man to the unknown and dimly conceived powers of the universe about him! We have no word to render the Fijian mana, the Siouan wakan, the Malagasy andria-manitra. Conversely, scarce a savage language can render our word “God.” Over and over again missionaries have sought, and sought in vain, for a native word for the purpose. When they have fixed upon one, as often as not they have had to confess a blunder; and many times in despair they have invented a word. The idea embodied in the acts by which the mysterious relations between man and the supernatural are emphasized and knit together is equally incapable of translation by any one vocable. A Roman Catholic missionary, speaking of the religious assembly of the Creeks of North America, says: “The mitewewin represents the highest expression of magic (maeghiw or maskikiy) among the nations of the Algonkian stock. The word, in fact, signifies at the same time labour, occupation, judgement, adoration, and sacrifice. It is a religious act addressed to the powakans, or animal fetishes, and a sort of Illinoian freemasonry requiring initiation and inviolable secrecy; it is a camp-meeting…; it is the grand council of an entire nation.”18.1 These sentences afford an excellent example of the difficulty of translating the native ideas into English words. They unite a brave and more or less successful attempt to convey the notion of mitewewin, with incidental but none the less certain failures in the cases of maeghiw or maskikiy and powakan. For none of them would a single English word, or even a phrase, be adequate.

The opportunity of blundering in the endeavour to understand and report the beliefs and usages of the lower races is obviously as great as could be desired. When to the various causes enumerated above is added not merely the conscious want of sympathy on the part of the observer, but his unconscious prejudice in favour of certain interpretations derived from the civilized and the specifically Christian notions in which he has been brought up from his youth, the wonder is not that so many mistakes have been made, but that we have on the whole succeeded in obtaining so large a mass of fairly trustworthy information. Even that of which we are the best assured, however, must be used with caution. It must be criticized, checked with other accounts of the same or neighbouring tribes; and allowance must be made for the personal equation of the observer. The use of a word like worship, spirit, or God, which connotes to us very different ideas from those connoted to the native mind by the native word thus translated, must put us at once on our guard. Fancied resemblances between the myths, heard perhaps at second-hand and only half-understood, and some story, Biblical or other, known to the reporter, and the expectation of finding in savage tradition some fragment of divine revelation have proved real Will-o’-the-wisps to the unwary. Nor must we forget that things actually seen are also liable to be misinterpreted. Captain John Smith, in writing of Virginia, describes as a human sacrifice—a sacrifice of children—what seems to have been no more than the ceremony of initiation into manhood.19.1 It is true that his account was written three hundred years ago, and that he was not allowed to witness the whole performance. But after all our subsequent experience and accumulation of records, nothing is harder even yet than to determine the meaning of ceremonies and institutions, often carefully examined and minutely described by skilled eyewitnesses and scientific explorers.

We may go further still. Where the observer puts aside his prejudices, where he is animated by true sympathy—not the false and mawkish sympathy that too often takes its place—where he is able to communicate with the natives in their own tongue, there is notwithstanding very often a difficulty in following their ideas. We have been told of the Andaman Islanders that “with these, as with other savages, it is vain to expect them to understand the logical conclusions to which their beliefs tend.”20.1 That may be because they have never thought them out. In the majority of cases it would probably be juster to say that their logic follows a different course, their ideas run in different channels, from ours. After conceding everything that has been said with perfect truth as to their vagueness, their indolence of mind on subjects not concerned with their daily life, and their dislike of intellectual effort, there remains the fact that they are human; they do reason, albeit after their own fashion. Language among the higher races has been trained and tortured during many centuries to express the highest thoughts of the highest thinkers; and how inadequate an instrument has it often been found! It must therefore not surprise us if the thought of races in the lower culture occasionally surpasses a language not yet exercised and adapted to the complicated processes of ideation and ratiocination. Thus not merely is it difficult or impossible to translate native words by English equivalents, as I have already pointed out: the native finds it not easy to translate his thoughts into his own tongue. When he has struggled with more or less success to effect this, his course of thought is so widely different from ours that we can hardly believe in its coherence.

The objects of thought, alike among savages and among ourselves, fall into categories. Many of these categories manifest themselves in the very fibre of language. A familiar illustration is the curious distinctions of grammatical gender, so different even in different languages sprung from a common stock, and those comparatively simple, as are the Aryan tongues of civilization. When we refer to the languages of the lower culture, with their minute distinctions of number and person, of action, tense, and all sorts of relations of time and place, we are overwhelmed by their complexity and puzzled by the oddness of their grouping. Categories of another kind become visible when we attempt to push our explorations further into savage thought. The counting of kinship and the difficulties attending the attempt to translate words expressive of religious ideas have already been mentioned. In the totemism of Australia the totems are classes of animals or other objects not merely united by some mystic bond to one or other class of tribesmen; they are related to other objects of human environment in such a way that the whole universe is shared among them. To us these relationships are strange and inexplicable; they form categories that we do not understand. To the native these categories are familiar by immemorial association; they have become part of the texture of his mind; and thereby they have acquired emotional values, from the bonds of which he can hardly deliver himself. So it seems that the West African Bantu comprise their entire social system, every activity of their mental and physical life, and every aspect of the external universe under a limited number of categories wholly alien to our modes of thought. Hints of them are perhaps to be found in the various classes of Bantu nouns that have not yet been fully explained by philologists. In any case the classification of these nouns is probably no arbitrary association of purely formal significance. It is based on some archaic experience, which has grouped together various objects often to us utterly dissimilar: the connecting links escape us.22.1 Among other peoples in parts of the earth remote from one another categories have been discovered associating and dissociating acts and modes of feeling, and apportioning their environment in unexpected ways. Such categories must react on mentality to an extent that we can hardly measure. They form part of the traditional presuppositions of thought. They are the framework in which ideas are grouped. We, who have gradually elaborated and established through generations of increasing discovery and invention a habit of regarding everything from a more or less scientific standpoint, have acquired a series of presuppositions of an entirely different character. To the educated classes of Europe and America they in their turn have become traditional. They are the axioms from which we argue. Every new experience must be fitted into the framework thus supplied, otherwise we cannot logically interpret it. At the best we may make for it what has been wittily called a watertight compartment. Men of the lower culture brought suddenly into contact with civilization and civilized ideas experience a corresponding difficulty. Missionaries are often in despair over their converts’ relapses. These relapses are occasioned not merely by the difference of moral atmosphere, but quite as much by the intellectual abyss between savagery and civilization. Christianity and heathenism—the new and the old—are jumbled together in the convert’s mind. His traditional modes of thought are as little changed as his outward environment, and the new ideas are incongruous with them. The result is chaos. So the civilized enquirer into savage belief is constantly brought up in what seems a blind alley. He cannot find the way out, not because there is not a logical issue, but because the landscape is unfamiliar. He attempts to adapt the thoughts of the savage, so far as he has seized them, to his own totally different mental framework; and they are refractory. Not until the effort is abandoned, and patient, unprejudiced search has discovered the true pattern of the puzzle, will it be solved.

For it needs a considerable apprenticeship to enable the observer, in Miss Kingsley’s phrase, to “think black,” to understand the logic of “black” thought, and accurately, or at least approximately, to reproduce its process and aims. When we are told, therefore, by a writer whom I cited a few pages back that the relation of cause and effect in all but the most patent and mechanical cases is beyond the grasp of the West African Bantu, that statement must be taken with some qualification. It should be explained that it is the relation of cause and effect according to our ideas and our reasoning that is beyond the native grasp, because our axioms are unknown to him; he reasons from quite another set of logical presuppositions. To change the figure, he is a child, but a child familiar only with what we deem a topsy-turvy world, though it is the same world from which we ourselves emerged long ago. If we would comprehend him we must painfully climb down into that world again, breathe its air, familiarize ourselves with its scenes of wonder and of terror, and make intimate companions of all its strange inhabitants. Thus and thus only can we recover the clue that will lead us safely through the shadowy forests and haunted valleys and over the primeval mountain-tops of native thought. Then we shall find that the savage is not so irrational as we have thought him, and that in his wildest divergence from our methods of reasoning he has a method of his own—a method followed once upon a time by our own ancestors, a method from which the peasantry of many a European country is not yet wholly emancipated.

This is to “think black.” It is not everybody who can do it: it requires more sympathy and insight than are given to all men. Above all, it requires patience, long and close contact with the native, and the persistent and self-abandoning endeavour to penetrate his thoughts. Some missionaries have achieved it, some travellers, some traders, some colonists, some government officials. Too many of them, alas! have only skimmed the surface of the native mind. Even the latter, however, though they have failed to read the underlying meaning of what they saw, have sometimes taught us what to look for. To that extent the modern school of anthropology is founded on their observations. The training now given in anthropology at the universities and elsewhere utilizes and criticizes the reports of all observers, as well as the conclusions drawn from them by anthropologists at home. That training is of material assistance in fitting new labourers out for fresh fields of enquiry, or for working over again those fields which have been hitherto imperfectly reaped by ill-equipped enquirers. In some measure it supplies the place of longer preliminary intercourse with the man of lower culture; and it has the advantage that it teaches the student what kind of phenomenon to expect—an advantage perhaps not unaccompanied by dangers of its own.

Be that as it may, the information of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, already at our service on the subject of the religions of the lower culture has been and is still being subjected to ruthless comparison and criticism. The result of this constant sifting is to put us in possession of a considerable body of material for a sane judgement in regard to some of the beliefs of tribes in various parts of the world and to help us forward on the track of others. We no longer summarily deny the possession of religion to tribes whose practices we do not understand. We no longer attempt to docket beliefs imperfectly apprehended under headings applicable only to the highly developed and literary theology of Europe. We lie under a more insidious temptation—that of the too rapid generalization of the beliefs of the lower culture, for which the groundwork may not as yet exist. But we are learning the lesson that only by unwearied investigation, diligent observation, sympathetic enquiry without prepossession, can we attain to a real grasp of the protean ideas and half-formulated speculations of savage minds.

THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION
AND MAGIC

I. The Common Root

Thus forewarned of the difficulties and dangers of our path, let us proceed to enquire whether there are any general ideas relating to religion disseminated among men in the lower stages of culture, that either are themselves primitive, or can have been derived from an earlier condition of thought discoverable by us.

The religious practices of savage and barbarous peoples are largely based upon ideas which anthropologists have agreed to group together under the comprehensive title of animism. Animism is, to quote Sir Edward Tylor, who was the first to investigate the subject and to use the word in this sense, “the groundwork of the philosophy of religion, from that of savages up to that of civilized man.”26.1 As he uses the word, it expresses the doctrine which attributes a living and often a separable soul—a soul in any case distinct from the body—alike to human beings, to the lower animals and plants, and even to inanimate objects. Let us note, however, that this soul is not necessarily immaterial. The refined conception of the soul, which we have received from the Greek philosophers, belongs not to the savage. To him, as to the average man of civilization, the notion of an absolutely immaterial being would seem to be unthinkable. At all events it has hardly occurred to him. The soul, to him, may be thin as a vapour, oftentimes invisible as the air; at other times it takes a visible and even tangible form. So far as it is connected with what we know as a living body, the ordinary, familiar form and substance, it is the principle of life. But it is capable of existing independently of the body, at least for a time. The body, on the other hand, is also capable of continuing to exist, and even to live, though not in full health and vigour, for a time without the soul; but a lengthened separation usually means death. This, without taking account of details varying from culture to culture and people to people, may be described as the outline of the savage doctrine of the soul, reduced as nearly as may be into the terms in which we think. Beyond this, and probably as a development of it, is the belief in spirits, beings frequently vague and shadowy, sometimes regarded as more substantial, sometimes inhabiting objects and persons known and definite, at other times unattached, but in all cases of more or less power, which may be exercised to the advantage or to the detriment of their human fellows, or perhaps subordinates. The distinction between spirits and gods is not very easy to formulate, and need not for our present purpose trouble us.

Animism thus conceived is, it is obvious, too complex and elaborate to be really primitive. It appears to be itself derived from a simpler and earlier conception, whereby man attributes to all the objects of external nature life and personality. In other words, the external world is first interpreted by the savage thinker in the terms of his own consciousness; animism, or the distinction of soul and body, is a development necessitated by subsequent observation and the train of reasoning which that observation awakens.

Primitive man is so far away from us, not merely in time but in thought, that we find it difficult to imagine his attempts to grapple with the interpretation of external phenomena. What waves of desire, of curiosity, of wonder, of awe, of terror, of hope, of bewilderment must have rolled through the sluggish dawn of his intellect! As he struggled in his little communities (tiny by comparison with ours) with the evolution of speech, how did those various and perhaps ill-defined emotions come to utterance? He was not naturally speculative. Savage man even now is not, as a rule, speculative, though, as we have seen in the preceding essay, observers who have had opportunities of comparison have noted differences in this respect between one people and another. Everything primitive man saw, everything he heard or felt must have struck his mind primarily in relation to himself—or rather to the community (the food-group, as it has been called), of which the individual formed a part, to its dangers and its needs. The personal element would dominate his thoughts, and must have found expression in his words. As a matter of fact, it forms everywhere the basis of language. Hence it was impossible for man to interpret external phenomena in any other than personal terms. This necessity may have been an inheritance from a pre-human stage, since there is reason to think that the lower animals project their own sensations to other animals, and even to objects without life. Yet to fix the objective personalities that primitive man thought he saw and felt about him must have taken time and observation. Not all objects claimed his attention in the same degree or with the same insistence. Some would stand out aggressively, would fill him with a sense of power manifested in ways that seemed analogous with his own. Others would long remain comparatively unregarded, until something happened which aroused his interest. His attitude was first of all and intensely practical, not contemplative. His fellow-men, the animals he hunted, the trees whose branches he saw waving in the breeze, the sun and moon overhead going their daily rounds—to all these he would early attach significance: they would easily yield the personal quality. But what of the pools, the hills, the rocks, and so forth? There must have been many things that long abode in the twilight of perception—many things upon which reflection was not yet concentrated. The North American Indian lays a tribute of tobacco at the foot of any strange rock whose form strikes him as he goes by, or strews his gift upon the waters of the lake or stream that bears his canoe. On the top of every pass in the Cordilleras of South America and of every pass in the mountains of China the native leaves a token still more trivial. It may be that his earliest forefather, who set the example of such an offering, did so without any definite conception of a personality behind the phenomenon, but, smitten by fear or awe, simply sought, by the means familiar to him in the case of known personal beings, to conciliate whatever power might lurk beneath an unwonted form. And although a comparatively definite conception of a personality might in time crystallize, to be transformed later by the evolution of animism into the idea of a spirit, yet there must always have remained, after all these crystallizations, the vague and formless Unknown, confronted in all its more prominent manifestations through the medium of an undefined dread of power which might at any time be revealed from it.

In this relation of the personal and the impersonal lies, as it seems to me, the secret of primitive philosophy, if philosophy it may be called, all un-selfconscious as it must have been. There is no written record of man’s earliest guesses at the meaning of the universe. Whatever they were, they were limited to his immediate surroundings and the relation of these surroundings to himself. We must judge of them as they are represented in the beliefs and actions of modern, or at all events much later, savages and in those of great historic nations. For all scientific enquirers are agreed that the history of the human mind has been that of a slow evolution from something lower than the lowest savagery known to-day, that it has not everywhere evolved in the same way or to the same degree, and that the course it has taken has left traces, discoverable by close inspection, upon every mental product and in every civilization throughout the world. The testimony on which we have to rely in the investigation is of the most various value, and often most difficult of interpretation. Its difficulties and defects have already been touched upon; nor do I propose further to consider them now. The minute examination and relentless criticism to which it has been subjected have revealed its weakness; they have also revealed its strength. They have left a solid body of evidence from which we may cautiously but confidently reason. What can we learn from it on the point under discussion?

The first thing to be noticed is the fluidity of the savage concept of personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and relatively unchangeable body. You may quite easily be transformed, like the hero of Apuleius’ tale, into an ass. Your next-door neighbour, for whom you have the profoundest respect as a prosperous man of business and a churchwarden of exemplary piety, may startle you some morning with a sudden change into a noisy little street-arab, not a tenth of his own portly dimensions, turning a wheel all down his garden path, or into a melancholy cow cropping a bare pittance of grass from his closely trimmed lawn. He and his magnificent wife may even become, like Philemon and Baucis, an oak and a lime-tree before your eyes, or a pair of standing stones upon the moor. None of these metamorphoses would be accounted impossible by peoples in the lower culture. To them the essential incident of the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would be mere commonplace. The personality which they have known running in one mould can, in their opinion, be directed into, and will run as freely in, another mould, and yet be the same. So hard do such archaic beliefs die, that in remote parts of our own country it is still firmly believed that a witch may assume the form of a hare, and if any bold sportsman succeed in wounding the animal, the injury will afterwards be found on the witch’s proper person, testifying beyond dispute to the preservation of her individuality under the temporary change of shape and species.

Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death and a new birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that in West Africa “the new babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent: the thing the child catches hold of identifies him. ‘Why, he’s Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe’; or ‘That’s Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash,’ and so on.”31.1 This belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of the world. Nor is it necessary that the deceased should be born again in human form, or even of the same sex. A group of tribes in Central Australia have elaborated the doctrine of re-birth to an unusual degree. Two of the tribes, the Warramunga and Urabunna, definitely hold, if we may trust our authorities, that the sex changes with each successive birth.32.1 A Mongolian tale relates that a certain Khotogait prince, having been beheaded for conspiracy against the Chinese Emperor, twice reappeared as a child of the Empress, and was identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both children were destroyed, and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is still preserved.32.2 In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any object indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of a woman, be born again and become human. As developed by animism, the doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions and more philosophies than one.32.3

Moreover, detached portions of the person, as locks of hair, parings of finger-nails, and so forth, are not dead inert matter. They are still endued with the life of their original owner. Nay, garments once worn, or other objects which have been in intimate contact with a human being, are penetrated by his personality, remain as it were united with him for good and ill. It would be no exaggeration to say of this belief that it is universal. Upon it rests much of the practice of witchcraft, as well as of the medicine of the lower culture. The cleft ash through which a child has been drawn for the cure of infantile hernia, bound up and allowed to grow together, continues to sympathize with him in health and sickness as though part of his own body. In ancient Greece maidens on their marriage offered their veils to Hera, the goddess who favoured marriage and aided childbirth;33.1 and Athenian women who became pregnant for the first time used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. These customs were not mere acts of homage; they had a practical intention.

Some votive offerings may perhaps be interpreted as surrogates of human sacrifice. Others, made when the votary is suffering from sickness, may be intended to transfer the disease. These explanations are in many cases very questionable; and a large number of offerings remain that do not easily submit to be thus explained. The Greek women just mentioned had no disease to be returned to the custody of the goddess, ready for another victim. In view of future contingencies they placed in her care objects identified with themselves; they brought into physical touch with her a portion of their own personality. Convergence of more than one rite, similar in outward form but distinct in origin, has doubtless occurred very often in human history. But the ambiguity which would follow is not always to be traced on a careful analysis. It is obvious, at all events, that if an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer and die, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. My shirt or stocking, or a shred from it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—a lock of my hair laid upon a sacred image—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone from my hand cast upon a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food thrown into a sacred waterfall or suspended from a sacred tree—a nail driven by my hand into the trunk of a tree—is thenceforth in immediate contact with divinity. It is a portion of my personality enveloped with the sanctity of the divine being; and so long as it remains there I am myself in contact with the same divine being, whoever he may be, and derive all the advantages incident to the contact.

Such beliefs as these are world-wide; they are a commonplace of anthropology; and it would be waste of time to multiply examples. They exhibit a concept of personality imperfectly crystallized. It is still fluid and vague, only to become entirely definite under the influence of trained reason and larger and more scientific knowledge. But, such as it is, there is behind and around it the still vaguer, the unlimited territory of the Impersonal, because the Unknown. Every object on which the attention has been fixed, every object, therefore, that may be said to be known, has its own personality—every object, whether living, or, according to our ideas, not-living. What remains is the stuff out of which personalities are formed as it is gradually reduced into relations with the savage observer. These personalities do not necessarily correspond even to anything objective. They may be creations of the excited imagination. It is sufficient for the savage that they seem to be, and to have a relation to himself which he cannot otherwise interpret. His emancipation from this state of mind is slow, though among some peoples in the lower culture it is more perceptible than among others. But it leaves its traces everywhere—there, most of all, where emotion is most acute and permanent, where hopes and fears are most overwhelming, in the sphere of religion.

Now every personality is endowed with qualities which enable it to persist, to influence others, and even to overcome, subjugate, and destroy them for its own ends. No more than ourselves could the primeval savage avoid being influenced and often overmatched by the charm and wiles of woman, the wisdom of the elders of his horde, the dauntless might of the warrior. The non-human personalities with which he came in contact possessed qualities not less remarkable than those of the human. The strength, the fierceness, the agility of the lion, the speed of the antelope, the cunning of the fox, the lofty forms and endurance of the forest trees, their response to every breath of wind, and the kindly shelter they yielded to birds and beasts and men, the fantastic forms and stern patience of the rocks, the smooth and smiling treachery of the lake, the gentle murmur and benign largess of the river, the splendour, the burning heat of the sun, the changeableness and movement of the clouds are a few of the more obvious qualities attached to the myriad personalities with which men found themselves environed. These personalities and their qualities would impress them all the more because of the mystery that perpetually masked them. Mystery magnified them. Hence every non-human personality was apt to be conceived in larger than human terms, and its qualities were larger than human.

I do not pause here to adduce illustrations of this attitude towards the objects surrounding mankind. In any event it would of course be impossible to illustrate it from prehistoric, not to say primeval, ages. It is characteristic of modern savages wherever an intimate acquaintance enables the civilized observer to penetrate into their arcana. Some of them have got no further; others have advanced to the full stage of animism. Reference may be made to any work in which the life and ideas of a savage tribe are depicted.

Not merely was every personality, human and other, endowed with qualities, but by virtue of those qualities it possessed a potentiality and an atmosphere of its own. The successful warrior and huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag, his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary. Nor would this atmosphere surround only important or successful men. Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would be richly endowed. None, human or non-human, would (in theory, at least) be wholly without it.

The Iroquoian tribes of North America possess a word which exactly expresses this potentiality, this atmosphere, which they believe inheres in and surrounds every personality. They call it orenda. A fine hunter is one whose orenda is fine, superior in quality. When he is successful he is said to baffle or thwart the orenda of the quarry; when unsuccessful, the game is said to have foiled or outmatched his orenda. A person who defeats another in a game of skill or chance is said to overcome his orenda. “At public games or contests of skill or endurance, or of swiftness of foot, where clan is pitted against clan, phratry against phratry, tribe against tribe, or nation against nation, the shamans—men reputed to possess powerful orenda—are employed for hire by the opposing parties respectively to exercise their orenda to thwart or overcome that of their antagonists,” and thus secure victory. So, when a storm is brewing, it (the storm-maker) is said to be preparing its orenda; when it is ready to burst, it has finished, has prepared its orenda. Similar expressions are used for a man or one of the lower animals when in a rage. A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts forth his orenda, and has thereby learned the secrets of the future. The orenda of shy birds and other animals which it is difficult to ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive—that is, in detecting the presence of the hunter, whether man or beast. Anything reputed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or accomplishing some end is said to possess orenda. Of one who, it is believed, has died from witchcraft it is said, “An evil orenda has struck him.”37.1

Among the Algonkian and Siouan tribes are found beliefs that seem to go behind this personal but mystic potentiality to its source in the Unknown, the Impersonal. The Algonkian word expressive of the idea is manitou. The early French missionaries, who were the first to make it known to us, interpreted it of a personal being—God or the Devil, they hardly knew which. They were reading into it their own more highly crystallized beliefs. As in the case of orenda, we are fortunate in having the term more accurately defined for us by a descendant of the native tribes, who may be presumed to have been better equipped by inheritance and early associations to understand Algonkian thought than the Jesuit Fathers were. “The Algonkin conception of the manitou,” he tells us, “is bound up with the manifold ideas that flow from an unconscious relation with the outside world.… The term manitou is a religious word; it carries with it the idea of solemnity; and whatever the association it always expresses a serious attitude, and kindles an emotional sense of mystery.… The essential character of Algonkin religion is a pure, naïve worship of nature. In one way or another associations cluster about an object and give it a certain potential value; and because of this supposed potentiality the object becomes the recipient of an adoration. The degree of the adoration depends in some measure upon the extent of confidence reposed in the object, and upon its supposed power of bringing pleasure or inflicting pain. The important thing with the individual is the emotional effect experienced while in the presence of the object, or with an interpreted manifestation of the object. The individual keeps watch for the effect, and it is the effect that fills the mind with a vague sense of something strange, something mysterious, something intangible. One feels it as the result of an active substance, and one’s attitude toward it is purely passive. To experience a thrill is authority enough of the existence of the substance. The sentiment of its reality is made known by the fact that something has happened. It is futile to ask an Algonkin for an articulate definition of the substance, partly because it would be something about which he does not concern himself, and partly because he is quite satisfied with only the sentiment of its existence. He feels that the property is everywhere, is omnipresent. The feeling that it is omnipresent leads naturally to the belief that it enters into everything in nature; and the notion that it is active causes the mind to look everywhere for its manifestations. These manifestations assume various forms; they vary with individuals and with reference to the same and different objects.

“Language affords means of approaching nearer to a definition of this religious sentiment. In the Algonkin dialects of the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo, a rigid distinction of gender is made between things with life and things without life.… Accordingly, when they refer to the manitou in the sense of a virtue, a property, an abstraction, they employ the form expressive of inanimate gender. When the manitou becomes associated with an object, then the gender becomes less definite.…

“When the property becomes the indwelling element of an object, then it is natural to identify the property with animate being. It is not necessary that the being shall be the tangible representative of a natural object.” This the writer illustrates from the account given by a Fox Indian of the sweat-lodge, in the course of which he observes: “The manitou comes from the place of his abode in the [heated] stone, … when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds entrance. It moves up and down and all over inside the body, driving out everything that inflicts pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having been in the sweat-lodge.” The writer’s comment on this is instructive. “The sentiment,” he says, “behind the words rests upon the consciousness of a belief in an objective presence; it rests on the sense of an existing reality with the quality of self-dependence; it rests on the perception of a definite, localized personality. Yet at the same time there is the feeling that the apprehended reality is without form and without feature. This is the dominant notion in regard to the virtue abiding in the stone of the sweat-lodge; it takes on the character of conscious personality with some attributes of immanence and design.”

But further, as the manitou—this mystic, all-pervasive property or substance—on investing an object acquires conscious personality, so also “it is natural to confuse the property”—the manitou—“with an object containing,” or invested with, “the property.” “It is no trouble for an Algonkin to invest an object with the mystic substance, and then call the object by the name of the substance. The process suggests a possible explanation of how an Algonkin comes to people his world with manitou forces different in kind and degree; it explains in some measure the supernatural performances of mythological beings, the beings that move in the form of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and other objects of nature. All these are a collection of agencies. Each possesses a virtue in common with all the rest, and in so far do they all have certain marks of agreement. Where one differs from another is in the nature of its function, and in the degree of the possession of the cosmic substance. But the investment of a common mystic virtue gives them all a common name, and that name is manitou.”

The conclusion is “that there is an unsystematic belief in a cosmic mysterious property which is believed to be existing everywhere in nature; that the conception of the property can be thought of as impersonal, but that it becomes obscure and confused when the property becomes identified with objects in nature; that it manifests itself in various forms; and that its emotional effect awakens a sense of mystery; that there is a lively appreciation of its miraculous efficacy; and that its interpretation is not according to any regular rule, but is based on one’s feelings rather than on one’s knowledge.”41.1

Whatever differences an exact analysis, in accordance with the clearly cut methods of scientific thought, may result in discovering between the concept of manitou as here displayed and the Iroquoian orenda, two resemblances stand out prominently. Orenda is, like manitou, a mystic, or magical—not a natural—quality or potentiality, which resides in some persons or objects in greater measure than others. And the fact that it is “held to be the property of all things, all bodies, and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his environment,”41.2 approximates the conception very closely to that of manitou.

When we turn to the Omaha, a Siouan tribe, we find a concept hardly distinguishable from that of the Algonkins. Here again we have the advantage of native help. Mr Francis La Flesche, the son of a former chief of the tribe, is jointly responsible for an exhaustive monograph on the Omaha with Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of this and neighbouring tribes is among investigators of European descent unrivalled. We may therefore rely upon their exposition with confidence equal to that we have given to those already cited on the Iroquois and the Algonkins. “An invisible and continuous life was believed,” they tell us, “to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move—all motion, all actions of mind or body are because of this invisible life; second, by causing permanency of structure and form, as in the rock, the physical features of the landscape, mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animals and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will-power of which man is conscious within himself—a power by which all things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything to its entirety. This invisible life and power was called Wakonda. While it was a vague entity, yet there was an anthropomorphic colouring to the conception, as is shown in the prayers offered and the manner in which appeals for compassion and help were made, also in the ethical quality attributed to certain natural phenomena—the regularity of night following day, of summer winter (these were recognized as emphasizing truthfulness as a dependable quality and set forth for man’s guidance),—and in the approval by Wakonda of certain ethical actions on the part of mankind.”42.1 “There is therefore,” the writers tell us in another place, “no propriety in speaking of Wakonda as ‘the Great Spirit.’ Equally improper would it be to regard the term as a synonym of nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of conceptions, which is not essential to the Omaha, and which, when attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning.” But while the concept appears to be vague and impersonal, inasmuch as human conditions were projected upon nature, “certain anthropomorphic attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind of personality.” Moreover, “there is a distinction in the Omaha mind between varying meanings of the word wakonda. The Wakonda addressed in the tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which pertain to the welfare of all the people is the Wakonda that is the permeating life of visible nature—an invisible life and power that reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on the one hand, the application of the word wakonda to anything mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or inanimate form can be transferred to man. The means by which this transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda, but is not Wakonda. So the media—the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the animal, the mythic monster—may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are not regarded as the Wakonda.”43.1

Like the Algonkian manitou, the Siouan wakonda is thus seen to hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoian orenda clings about persons and things. Yet it is applied in an adjectival form by various Siouan tribes to medicine-men, to the sacred pipe, to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by the medicine-men or jugglers, and apparently to anyone who displays unusual qualities or powers. Thus it is used for a man who is extraordinarily stingy, to a man who has a habit of loud and rapid speech, to one who is a hard, almost an unmerciful, rider, to a child who speaks or walks for the first time and has thus manifested a new and individual power to act. A woman during her menstrual period is wakan; to perform acts of worship is to make wakan; the secret society among the Dakotas which is the depository of their mysteries is wakanwacipi, the sacred dance. In these cases the word conveys the sense not only of mysterious, powerful, wonderful, but also of sacred, spiritual, taboo. And a Ponka medicine-man once told the late J. O. Dorsey, “I am a wakanda.”44.1

Equivalent ideas and expressions are used by other American tribes. Supernatural power impresses the Tlingit, for example, “as a vast immensity, one in kind and impersonal, inscrutable as to its nature, but whenever manifesting itself to men, taking a personal, and it might be said a human personal, form in whatever object it displays itself. Thus the sky-spirit is the ocean of supernatural energy as it manifests itself in the sky, the sea-spirit as it manifests itself in the sea, the bear-spirit as it manifests itself in the bear, the rock-spirit as it manifests itself in the rock, etc. It is not meant that the Tlingit consciously reasons this out thus, or formulates a unity in the supernatural, but such appears to be his unexpressed feeling. For this reason there is but one name, yēk, a name which is affixed to any specific personal manifestation of it.… This supernatural energy must be carefully differentiated from natural energy and never confused with it. It is true that the former is supposed to bring about results similar to the latter, but in the mind of the Tlingit the conceived difference between these two is as great as with us. A rock rolling downhill or an animal running is by no means a manifestation of supernatural energy, although if something peculiar be associated with these actions, something outside of the Indian’s usual experience of such phenomena, they may be thought of as such.” On the other hand, and here we approach the Iroquoian idea, “the number of spirits [yēk] with which this world was peopled was simply limitless.… There is said to have been a spirit in every trail on which one travelled, and one around every fire; one was connected with everything one did.” The writer whom I am quoting goes on to give a large number of instances showing that the heavenly bodies, the wind, the sea, mountains, lakes, trees, animals, in short, all things, were addressed, to conciliate them, to render them friendly, to acquire some gift or advantage, were treated with reverence or with magical intent. And of course the medicine-men or shamans were the special favourites of the spirits, and were endowed with power which they often matched against one another.45.1

Thus we have in these North American ideas two distinct conceptions—the possession of what I have called a potentiality or atmosphere of its own by the individual personality, whether human or non-human; and the impersonal, mysterious, undefined reservoir of power in the universe as conceived by the savage. These two conceptions are not mutually exclusive, for the impersonal power is often held to be the source of the personal power or potentiality. As among the American Indian tribes, so elsewhere they are differently emphasized by different peoples. The Bantu of the Lower Congo basin emphasize the impersonal conception. According to the Bafiote, the first ages of the world were ruled by Nzambi, though whether he made everything seems a matter of doubt. When he retired from active interference in the concerns of men, he left behind, or sent, or there remained in the earth, Something. Indeed, it seems to be believed that Nzambi himself, or his power, his vital and creative energy, is still in earth and water, in the air, in plants, animals and men. In any case, the Something remaining on earth since Nzambi’s outward and visible departure is or has Lunyēnsu. The concept of Lunyēnsu is that of natural force, vital energy, power of increase, in short, the All-ruling, the Highest, that penetrates every living thing. It is not life, but an activity bound up with life, its manifestation, its condition. A crippled limb does not possess it, and with death it ceases entirely, it is gone. The Something, however, which either is or has Lunyēnsu is even wider than this. It is represented by Bu-nssi (probably the older name) or Mkissi-nssi. The latter means the supernatural or magical power of the earth, and seems to be due to the later overgrowth of fetishism. The former conveys the idea of the force, the energy of earth. In any case it is not to be confounded with fetish-power, for it is revered as fetish-power is not, nor with the earth-spirit, for the Bafiote know no elemental spirits. It must be conceived as the terrestrial energy, the all-permeating creative force, the all-wielding, the fertility, the becoming. Hence there is a sacredness attaching to the earth; and connected as the earth is with the idea of fecundity and the operations of agriculture, and as it is an inseparable condition of life, these all form a foundation for the right to the soil, for hospitality and the relations of the sexes. The indefiniteness of Bu-nssi is shown by the fact that the natives themselves are not agreed whether it is one or many. In fact, in the use of its synonym, Mkissi, the plural form—and what is significant, the plural personal form—is often heard. Opinion wavers as the needs or the excitement of the moment may demand, or perhaps as tradition wavers with changing mental environment. But those who claim the older faith or the deeper insight adhere to the statement that there is but one Mkissi-nssi, even Bu-nssi.

Thus the conception of Bu-nssi roughly corresponds with that of the reservoir of power we have already found among the Omaha and other tribes. On the other hand, the Bafiote hold that everything in nature has its peculiar property, everything is pervaded by forces. All things influence one another by visible deeds of power or in secret-wise. Hence are evolved manifold relations, among which the most important for man are those that extend to his person. The effect of physical forces is obvious. But experience teaches that there are other forces that are efficacious, although the process is not always understood. Such forces as these act without immediate and perceptible contact. So at least the wise men believe, and they act accordingly. How it happens they do not bother their heads. It is so, and that is enough. If it were otherwise they could not explain the events that happen. Here is, in something more than germ, the Iroquoian orenda. But the more sensual Bafiote, whether from their own nature and social organization, or from the tropical environment in which they live, are preoccupied with the relations of the various forces thus permeating all things. These forces are misused. Prudence and activity, strength of limb and skill do not suffice; far too much evil occurs among them. The Bafiote are obsessed, like all the African peoples, with the idea of witchcraft. They must be protected against it. Power is therefore matched against power, spell against spell. If there were not thoroughly wicked men who sought openly or secretly to injure others, fetishes would hardly be needed. By the use of fetishes they seek to master the forces of which on every side they see indications, and to make them their own. Fetishes are not gods. There is nothing spiritual, nothing independent of men, about them. They are material objects, fabricated by art, so as to embody forces working by mysterious means for the aid or injury of men. The destruction of the fetish involves the annihilation of the forces it embodies, whereas the existence of a god is in nowise imperilled by the destruction of his image. In short, fetishes are magical instruments. Yet such is the inveterate anthropomorphism of mankind that they do acquire a quasi-personal character, and tend to be thought of as individual and conscious beings. But they are never worshipped; the Fiote has no gods. He has only fetishes, the incorporation of powers and energies he sees acting around him everywhere. By that incorporation these powers and energies are appropriated for his benefit, for his particular ends, or for the ends and benefit of the society of which he is a member.48.1

Similar ideas of mysterious force wavering between the personal and the impersonal and permeating all things appear to underlie the Chinese conceptions of the Tsing, or operative energy, which inspires, or manifests itself in, the Khi, breath or soul, to produce the living being.48.2 These ideas have been taken over by the Annamites, among whom the Tinh is “a fluid, a force which resides in all things, and without which no existence can manifest itself,” and is “the essential principle of all action.” Uniting with the Khi, breath or soul, it produces “the life, the movement, the beings and the things peopling the world.” It is their essential condition. The entire system of magic and religion rests on these ideas.48.3 Much the same may be said of the Japanese Kami, probably connected with Ainu Kamui.48.4 It is, however, unnecessary to discuss at length the conceptions involved. They have been elaborated through centuries of civilization and philosophical exposition, until it is now difficult to determine how much of their present form and content they owe to archaic savagery.

Let us turn to the Melanesian islands of the South Pacific. “The Melanesian mind,” says Dr Codrington, “is entirely possessed by the belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universally mana. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature; it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and to things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation. When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its force may break forth at some new point; the presence of it is ascertained by proof. A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like something, it is certainly not a common stone, there must be mana in it.… Having that power, it is a vehicle to convey mana to other stones.… But this power, though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person who directs it; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some men. If a stone is found to have a supernatural power, it is because a spirit has associated itself with it; a dead man’s bone has with it mana, because the ghost is with the bone; a man may have so close a connexion with a spirit or ghost that he has mana in himself also, and can so direct it as to effect what he desires; a charm is powerful because the name of a spirit or ghost expressed in the form of words brings into it the power which the ghost or spirit exercises through it. Thus all conspicuous success is a proof that a man has mana; his influence depends on the impression made on the people’s mind that he has it; he becomes a chief by virtue of it. Hence a man’s power, though political or social in its character, is his mana; the word is naturally used in accordance with the native conception of the character of all power and influence as supernatural. If a man has been successful in fighting, it has not been his natural strength of arm, quickness of eye or readiness of resource that has won success; he has certainly got the mana of a spirit or of some deceased warrior to empower him, conveyed in an amulet of a stone round his neck, or a tuft of leaves in his belt, in a tooth hung upon a finger of his bow-hand, or in the form of words with which he brings supernatural assistance to his side. If a man’s pigs multiply, and his gardens are productive, it is not because he is industrious and looks after his property, but because of the stones full of mana for pigs and yams that he possesses. Of course a yam naturally grows when planted; that is well known; but it will not be very large unless mana comes into play; a canoe will not be swift unless mana be brought to bear upon it, a net will not catch many fish nor an arrow inflict a mortal wound.” Such a power or influence as this is of course not physical, though it may show itself “in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.” Finally, “all Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this mana for one’s self, or getting it used for one’s benefit—all religion, that is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices.”50.1 (The very intention that animates the Fiote rites of fetishism.)

It is not easy to formulate a clear idea of the original source of mana. It is said to be impersonal, to be present in the atmosphere of life and communicable to persons and to things. To that extent it resembles the impersonal power or potentiality we have found elsewhere. But wherever it is manifested it is connected with some personal being who originates and directs it.51.1 It is not a quality inherent in men of more than ordinary power and skill. “If a man,” writes Bishop Codrington, “has been successful in fighting, … he has certainly got the mana of a spirit or of some deceased ancestor to empower him.” And again: “No man has this power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be mana himself, using the word to express a quality; he can be said to have mana, it may be said to be with him, the word being used as a substantive.”51.2 It would thus seem as if it were an essential characteristic not of personal beings—even of powerful personal beings—in general, but belonging to the world of spirits, including the spirits of the dead. Yet not to all spirits; for elsewhere we read: “It must not be supposed that every ghost becomes an object of worship,” as a source of mana. “A man in danger may call upon his father, his grandfather, or his uncle; his nearness of kin is sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be worshipped is the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had mana in him; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts, nobodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death with increased vigour and more ease of movement.”51.3 Thus we are found in something like what logicians call a vicious circle. Only those ghosts have mana, or are mana, after death who had mana in their lifetime. But if they had mana in their lifetime, it was because they derived it from ghosts or other spirits. In any case mana appears to be conceived of as transcending humanity, belonging to the mysterious region of the Unknown, embodied in its primitive denizens, flowing from them, by the channel of material objects (amulets), forms of words (charms) or names, to certain human beings, and taken back by the latter into the same great reservoir of power when they die, thence to be communicated afresh to favoured mortals, and so on for ever. Probably, however, no such definite concept finds a place in the Melanesian brain; the mode of savage thought hardly admits of such crystallization.

It is likely that mana (both the word and the meaning) was introduced into the Melanesian islands from Polynesia, where it is widely spread and the word has numerous derivatives. In seeking there its explanation we are at a disadvantage; because, with all their devotion and merits, no missionary and no scientific enquirer has given us such a study of Polynesian mentality as Dr Codrington has given of that of the Melanesians. We turn therefore, in the first place, to the more dangerous guidance of a dictionary. From that we learn that everywhere mana has the signification of power, and almost everywhere of supernatural power. It is also defined as influence, prestige, honour, authority; in Hawaiian it is used to express, besides supernatural power such as would be attributed to the gods, the simpler idea of power, and also spirit (in the sense of energy of character), glory, majesty, intelligence—all doubtless secondary meanings. We need not discuss in detail the derivatives in various Polynesian dialects. Their general trend is towards the expression of thought, opinion or belief, industry, vehement desire, love—all of them activities primarily of the mind or emotions. Manava or manawa is a word meaning the belly or internal organs of the body, then the heart as the seat of affection, the feelings or emotions, soul, conscience, and in one dialect at least, an apparition, a ghost or spirit. Mana, in short, seems to recall the idea of extraordinary qualities, especially power, and the emotional reactions caused by their exhibition. Power or energy, overwhelming, supernatural, is evidently the root-idea, vested in individual, personal beings. One phrase, to be sure, in a Maori myth suggests the independent possession of this power by an object we should not regard as personal: He taiaha whaimana, explained by the lexicographer as “A wooden sword which has done deeds so wonderful as to possess a sanctity and power of its own.” Literally it is “A sword in which mana is resident.” Whether this or the parallel Mangarevan e turuturu mana, a powerful or magical staff, really implies an inherent power independent of spiritual origin, must remain undecided.54.1 We are led to think of the weapons of Teutonic mythology and romance, having names as if they were personalities, and endowed with powers to render their bearers invincible—nay, when drawn, to inspire them with ungovernable fury. But in the form in which their stories reach us all such weapons owe their peculiar properties, like the curse upon the Nibelung hoard, to some more than earthly being, or at least to a mortal wizard.

Having furnished ourselves with this key, we may examine some of the incidents of Polynesian life and religion reported by competent observers. The inauguration ceremony of a Tahitian king, we are told by the missionary Ellis, consisted in girding him with the maro ura, or sacred girdle of red feathers. This girdle “was made with the beaten fibres of the aoa; with these a number of uru, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities, were interwoven with feathers of other colours. The maro thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that “it not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with” the gods.55.1 The same missionary elsewhere relates that “throughout Polynesia the ordinary medium of communicating or extending supernatural powers was the red feather of a small bird found in many of the islands and the beautiful long tail-feathers of the tropic or man-of-war bird. For these feathers the gods were supposed to have a strong predilection; they were the most valuable offerings that could be presented; to them the power or influence of the gods was imparted, and through them transferred to the objects to which they might be attached.” On certain ceremonial occasions those persons “who wished their emblems of deity to be impregnated with the essence of the gods, repaired to the ceremony with a number of red feathers, which they delivered to the officiating priest. The wooden idols being generally hollow, the feathers were deposited in the inside of the image, which was filled with them.” When the idols were solid, the feathers were attached on the outside. To anyone who brought fresh feathers, two or three of the same kind which had been thus “united to the god” at a former festival were given in return. “These feathers were thought to possess all the properties of the images to which they had been attached, and a supernatural influence was supposed to be infused into them. They were carefully wound round with very fine cord, the extremities alone remaining visible. When this was done, the new-made gods were placed before the larger images from which they had been taken; and lest their detachment should induce the god to withhold his power, the priest addressed a prayer to the principal deities, requesting them to abide in the red feathers before them. At the close of his ubu, or invocation, he declared that they were dwelt in or inhabited (by the gods), and delivered them to the parties who had brought the red feathers. The feathers, taken home, were deposited in small bamboo-canes, excepting when addressed in prayer. If prosperity attended their owner, it was attributed to their influence, and they were usually honoured with a too, or image, into which they were inwrought; and subsequently, perhaps, an altar and a rude temple were erected for them. In the event, however, of their being attached to an image, this must be taken to the large temple, that the supreme idols might sanction the transfer of their influence.”56.1

In the foregoing passages it will be perceived that the missionary is doing something more than describing rites he had no doubt often witnessed; he is labouring also to translate into English and incorporate with his account the explanations he had extracted from his Polynesian friends. He seems to exhaust his spiritual vocabulary in speaking of “powers,” “influence,” “the communication of attributes,” of “the essence of the gods.” But when he recalls the words of the priest, they are even stronger and at the same time simpler than any of these expressions: the god is prayed to “abide in” the feathers; he is declared to “inhabit” them. If these be an accurate translation of the words employed, it would seem that not merely the power but a portion of the personality of the god passed into the feathers, and that while his chief residence was still at the great temple where his principal image dwelt, he was also present whithersoever the bunches of feathers which had been consecrated by deposition within or upon it were carried. He himself inhabited them; and it was this fact that “identified” the king, as the wearer of such feathers, with the gods.

It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the concept of personality. But what we have already learned of mana may lead us to place another interpretation upon it. It was not merely the gods whose influence or personality was conveyed by contact. The king in his turn spread an awful influence in the same way, or even by the utterance of a word. In New Zealand “the garments of an ariki, or high chief, were tapu, as well as everything relating to him; they could not be worn by anyone else, lest they should kill him.” If a single drop of a high chief’s blood flowed on anything, it consecrated the object to him, or, as the natives phrased it, rendered it tapu. This consequence resulted to everything touched by him, to everything to which he chose to affix his name or the name of one of his ancestors. He could not eat with his wife, lest his sanctity should kill her, though she herself was by marriage consecrated to him. Nor was the sanctity by any means confined to the highest chiefs. It extended downwards to the lower ranks, but always in a decreasing measure. It mainly depended on rank and influence;57.1 it could be none other than the effect of mana.

Between mana, however, and personality the dividing line is very thin. We find it the same in other parts of the world. Father De Acosta relates that upon the even of his feast the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca was furnished with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken off “and kept with as much or more reverence than we doe our ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments of course are meant; and the writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and pretious feathers, which served to no other vse than to be there, and was [sic] worshipped as their god it selfe.”58.1 Here the ornaments would seem to all intents identified with the god, exactly as the red feathers of the Tahitian god are “inhabited” by him. The explanation of the one is the explanation of the other. The same ambiguity is discoverable in a much higher civilization than either the Polynesian or the Mexican. Down to the end of the eighteenth century Breton women, in order to secure a happy delivery, used to dip their girdles in certain sacred fountains; and even to-day the expectant mother who can wrap around her body a ribbon thus dipped is sure in due course to bring into the world a robust child, and that without danger to herself.58.2 This we may be inclined to think an example of an impersonal power analogous to that of the Siouan wakonda or the Algonkian manitou. But we can carry the matter a step further. The Ursuline nuns of Quintin keep a girls’ school of high reputation in Brittany. When one of their pupils has married and become pregnant, they sometimes send her as a special favour a ribbon which has touched a reliquary containing a fragment of the Virgin Mary’s zone; and it is worn by the recipient around her waist until her baby is born.58.3 It is not surely misinterpreting the rite to deem that the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, has acquired and retains a portion of the mana emanating from her person; the reliquary in turn is permeated by that mana, and communicates it to everything that touches it. The worthy nuns probably have no exact theory on the subject; but a little consideration of the practice will lead us to think that we have understated its meaning. It is the converse case to that of the deposit of clothing and other articles on the shrine or the image of the divine being, which we have already considered. In the latter case there could be no question of mana conveyed to the god from his votary. Moreover, the true interpretation of the practice must explain the cult of relics of the saints, whether Christian, Mohammedan, or Buddhist. Now, these relics consist not merely of garments and articles of use, like a staff, but also of the bodies or fragments of the bodies of the saints. In them a portion of their very personality inheres, and accounts for the beneficent potentiality residing in the relics, as it accounts also for the liability to injury by witchcraft upon similar fragments of the body or clothing of ordinary mortals. For ordinary mortals, whatever their potentiality, cannot measure it against that of saints and witches.

Yet human beings who are neither saints nor witches, and the lower animals also, have their potentialities, the benefit of which is capable of being transferred to others. This is one of the reasons for cannibalism. Among the Veddas of Ceylon, one of the lowest known peoples, it is said to have been the custom, when a man had been killed, for the slayer to open the body and take out a piece of the liver, which he would dry in the sun and keep in his pouch. Indeed a man was sometimes put to death for the purpose. Its object was to make its possessor strong and confident to avenge insults. He would bite off a piece of the dried liver and chew it, saying to himself: “I have killed this man; why should I not be strong and confident and kill this other one who has insulted me?”59.1 So the Turks, after the death of the Albanian hero Scanderbeg, dug up his body and from his bones constructed amulets to inspire courage into the wearer on the battlefield.60.1 This potentiality may be communicated, like the Melanesian mana, through other objects; and the possibility has led to certain funeral customs in Europe as well as elsewhere. After a death in the Highlands of Bavaria it was formerly the duty of the housewife to prepare corpse-cakes (Leichen-nudeln). Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay on a bier enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief attached that “they contained the virtues and advantages of the deceased,” and that his “living strength passed over into the kinsmen who consumed the cakes, and was thus retained within the kindred.”60.2 The eating of the flesh of animals remarkable for qualities such as ferocity, strength, fleetness, and so forth, with intent to acquire these qualities is well known. One illustration will be sufficient here. The Basuto, before going to war, make assurance doubly, trebly sure by a cruel rite. The foreleg of a living bull is cut off. The warriors eat it and are sprinkled with blood from the animal, which is then killed. They are lanced by the witch-doctor, and a powder made of the flesh of the bull is rubbed into the wounds. In this way, namely, by eating the flesh, by sprinkling the blood, and by inoculation, “the strength and courage of the animal” are imparted to them.60.3

It appears then that the concept of personality is inseparable from that of the potentiality with which a personality is endowed. Hence the ambiguity of the Tahitian rite. Whether the feathers which had been attached to an image retained and transmitted to the next wearer the mana, or a portion of the personality, of the god, the one effect was equivalent to the other: they are indistinguishable. But between mana and the potentiality that elsewhere invests a personality there is a difference. The latter may be, and frequently is, held to be drawn from the common source of power, the invisible and continuous life that permeates all things; whereas in Melanesia (and perhaps in Polynesia too) mana is definitely ascribed only to a personal origin, if Dr Codrington has rightly interpreted the belief. It is the special property of spirits—that is to say, of supernatural beings—and is communicated by them to whatsoever or whomsoever they will. An important step has thus been taken by the Melanesian mind towards separating the Personal from the Impersonal, and human from superhuman attributes and potentialities.

Thus we find in widely separated regions, among widely different races and in cultures the most diverse, the idea of mystic power or potentiality, often concentrated in individual persons or things, but in effect spread throughout the world. Some peoples have been more alive to the impersonal character of this power, and have ascribed to it, wherever manifested, a unity of origin akin to the scientific concept of force behind all phenomena. To others it has assumed a more individual character. It clings in any case to personality and tends to become inseparable from it; but the impersonal aspect is never wholly wanting.

The patient reader will have observed the difficulty experienced alike by scientific explorers and missionaries in expounding this idea in its varied forms and applications. The difficulty has not arisen wholly from its strangeness. It is due in large part to its want of clarity. The savage himself does not know; he has rarely had occasion, and still more rarely inclination, to reflect on his beliefs. He has had no schools of science or philosophy to think out his thoughts for him. Hence they are ill defined; like clouds in the sky, they take first one shape and then another. Yet those very clouds, by comparison with the formless vapour from whence they have been condensed, are continents of solidity and definiteness.

Although the idea of orenda, or mana, may not receive everywhere the same explicit recognition, it is implied in the customs and beliefs of mankind throughout the world. It underlies the practice of Taboo. We have had already occasion to notice this in reference to the mana of Maori chiefs. In the population of Madagascar there is a large, perhaps a predominant Polynesian element. When a Malagasy sticks up in his field a figure or scarecrow to keep off robbers, it is not that they may dread prosecution with all the rigour of the law, though that may be the result if they are caught. What is threatened is sickness, mysteriously induced by the power of the owner of the field, or by the power which he has caused to be conjured into the scarecrow.62.1 A Samoan in the same way suspends to a cocoa-nut palm a small figure of a shark made with a leaf of the tree; it is notice to the robber that he will be inevitably devoured by a white shark the next time he goes to fish.62.2 Similar practices prevail in the Melanesian islands.62.3 Taboo has obtained a very prominent position in the social order and government of Polynesian communities. It is from them that the word has been adopted into English parlance, and adapted to a sense near akin to that of another interesting word—to boycott. But it is not only in Polynesia and the neighbouring islands of Melanesia that the dread of a mysterious mana is found, or that it leads to prohibitions and abstinences often very burdensome. It is unnecessary to adduce examples of the taboos on women, practically universal in the lower culture at certain times. The Siberian Chukchi, whose fire has gone out on the cold and timberless tundra, cannot borrow fire from his neighbour, for “the fire of a strange family is regarded as infectious and as harbouring strange spirits. Fear of pollution extends also to all objects belonging to a strange hearth, to the skins of the tent and the sleeping room, and even to the keepers and worshippers of strange penates. The Chukchi from far inland, who travel but little, when they come to a strange territory fear to sleep in tents or to eat meat cooked on a strange fire, preferring to sleep in the open air and to subsist on their own scant food-supply. On the other hand, an unknown traveller, coming unexpectedly to a Chukchi camp, can hardly gain admittance to a tent,” a difficulty of which the writer I am quoting had personal experience.63.1 This reluctance to contact with strangers is not shyness; nor is it the dread of hostile intentions. Each individual, each family or body of men, has its own atmosphere; and this atmosphere conveys “pollution.” It is only throwing the idea a step backwards to imagine the cause of the pollution as “strange spirits.” Spirits are mana; and it is the mana that is feared—the mystic influence or potentiality that may strike the unwary stranger. This is what issues in practice as the taboo. The subject of Taboo has been treated so fully by Professor Frazer64.1 that it is needless to discuss it here. Moreover, to do so in any detail would require a volume. Suffice it to say that the universal avoidance of a dead body, the prohibitions observed by priests, by chiefs, by hunters and warriors, the prohibitions of temple and shrine, of times and seasons, of speech and act, may all be traced to the same root-idea. Our words sanctity, pollution, infection feebly and partially translate the intuitive dread of orenda which is embodied in a taboo.

The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief in orenda that has survived into civilized communities. Here the whole maleficent potentiality of a person is concentrated in a glance; and the amulets so often worn on the body or suspended on the wall or at the door of a house are directed to intercepting and so exhausting the influence. In many cases, either by means of them or by a word or gesture, a counter-orenda is exercised, intended to annihilate, or at least neutralize, the evil influence. An analogous superstition may be cited from the Upper Congo. The Boloki believe that an occult power is possessed and exercised by many individuals. They call it likundu. Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A person is accused of possessing likundu when he or she is extraordinarily successful in hunting, fishing, skilled labour or the accumulation of wealth. There is apparently,” says Rev. J. H. Weeks, “only a certain amount of skill extant, only a certain number of fish to be caught, only a certain amount of wealth to be gained; and for a person to excel all others is a proof that he is using evil means to his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he lays himself open to the charge of possessing likundu.” Consequently “a person who possesses this likundu may unconsciously cause the hunting skill of any hunter in his family to fail.” When the charge is seriously made “it causes much annoyance, and can only be disproved by either drinking the ordeal or refraining from doing that which has brought the charge,” of which Mr Weeks goes on to give an illustration that had come under his own observation.65.1

Finally, what foundation there may be for the modern psychological doctrine of Telepathy it is not my business to determine. But its resemblance to the Iroquoian doctrine of orenda may be pointed out here. Telepathic communication may result from conscious or unconscious exertion of will; it may occur at a supreme crisis of fate or at a casual moment. It is in either case the product of a potentiality which we call mystic for want of a better name, and which attaches to, or flows from, some personalities more strongly than others. We have all had the experience of occasionally meeting, or receiving a letter from, someone on whom our thoughts have been more or less insistently dwelling, and whom we did not expect immediately to see or hear from. Goethe is reported by his friend Eckermann as having told him: “I have often enough had the experience in my youthful years of a powerful longing for a beloved maiden taking possession of me during a lonely walk; and I thought about her and thought about her until she really came and met me.” We need, however, no such commonplace illustration to convince us of Goethe’s orenda.

Without multiplying illustrations which will spring to the mind of everyone, I venture to suggest that in man’s emotional response to his environment, in his interpretation in the terms of personality of the objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by him with potentiality, atmosphere, orenda, mana—call it by what name you will—we have the common root of magic and religion.

II. Theories and Definitions

At this point we are confronted with the difficult questions What is Religion? and What is Magic?

Religion is notoriously hard to define. Every man thinks he knows what it is; but when he comes to define it he never succeeds, clever as he may be, in framing a definition generally acceptable. The ordinary man, with a particular religion—the only one of which he has had any experience—in his eye, defines it to square with that religion: if others cannot be brought into the definition, so much the worse for them. The anthropologist, whatever his bias, fares no better than the ordinary man. He has his theories; and in expounding them he is frequently called upon to define religion. In practice his theories are hardly a safer guide than the other’s prejudices or ignorance. Hence a definition of religion usually begs the question.

We will confine our attention here to some of the recent attempts made by anthropologists to define religion.

To Professor Jevons the fundamental principle of religion is “belief in the wisdom and goodness of God”; “the revelation of God to man’s consciousness was immediate, direct, and carried conviction with it”; and the original religion was monotheism, albeit a low form of that faith.67.1 This may perchance fit the religion of the Hebrews as seen through theological spectacles; but it definitely excludes Buddhism, at all events in its primitive form. For though Buddhism arose out of an earlier religion, and in a comparatively high stage of civilization, and though its founder admitted (apparently) the existence of other intelligences than man, he would have nothing to do with them. Sir Edward Tylor surmounts this difficulty by his famous “minimum definition of religion—the belief in Spiritual Beings.”67.2 But it is only to land himself in another. For religion is nothing if not practical: the mere belief is not religion. As Lord Avebury points out: “A belief in ghosts is in itself no evidence of religion. A ghost is not a god, though it may become one.”67.3 Australian savages believe in ghosts—and tremble; but of very few of them is anything approaching to worship recorded. Conscious of this objection, Professor Frazer employs the word Religion to express “a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them.… Hence belief and practice or, in theological language, faith and works are equally essential to religion, which cannot exist without both of them.”68.1

This definition supplies the obvious deficiency in Tylor’s; but it does not touch the case of Buddhism. And there is one important respect in which all these definitions fail. None of them explicitly recognizes the social character of the religions of the lower culture. For aught that appears, religion might be the business of solitary men, founded on their speculations, hopes and fears, uncommunicated to and unshared by others, their own individual concern. But, in savage life at least, religion is pre-eminently social. Individual rites there may be; they are, however, parts of a whole, subordinate to the common observances and common beliefs on which they are founded. The individualist idea—the supreme necessity of saving one’s own soul—has no place in them. St Simeon Stylites and the Hindu fakir are equally the product of a much higher development.

A recent French writer, impressed with these objections to the foregoing and similar definitions, has attempted to formulate one more comprehensive and more subtle. Summing up a long discussion, he concludes that “a religion is a connected (solidaire) system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred—that is to say, separated, interdicted—things,—beliefs and practices that unite into one moral community, called Church, all who adhere to them.”68.2 This, however, is not Religion (with a capital letter). Religion, referring of course to the theoretical side or belief, he says elsewhere, “is before everything a system of notions by means of which individuals interpret the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations they sustain with it.” And he goes on to say of the practical side that the function of religious rites is to tighten the bonds that unite the individual to the society.69.1 In other words, Religion is Society realizing itself. Before considering this definition, let us turn to Magic.

Professor Frazer draws a sharp line between religion and magic. The latter is founded (unconsciously indeed, for the primitive magician “never analyses the mental processes on which his practice is based”) on the assumption “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.… The magician does not doubt that the same causes will always produce the same effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony, accompanied by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be attended by the desired results, unless indeed his incantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of another sorcerer.”69.2 The laws governing the practical application of this assumption are resolved into two: “first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely, the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homœopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic.”70.1 Magic therefore is the result of a mistaken association of ideas. It preceded religion. But when man began to find out “the inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic,” when “men for the first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be completely within their control,” they fell back on the theory that there were other beings like themselves who directed the course of nature and brought about the effects they had hitherto believed to be dependent on their own magic. To them they turned in their helplessness, and thus evolved religion.70.2 Accordingly, magic and religion have always been hostile. Magic has indeed in many ages and in many lands permeated religion, has often gone the length of fusing and amalgamating with it. But this fusion was not primitive: they are originally and fundamentally distinct.70.3

In a powerful criticism of this theory Messrs Hubert and Mauss, two French anthropologists, have pointed out that Professor Frazer has omitted one essential item. The effect of a magical rite is not attained merely by sympathy. All magic is not sympathetic magic, whether that sympathy be expressed by the Law of Similarity or the Law of Contact. Moreover, even in sympathetic magic the sympathetic formula is insufficient to account for the facts. Sympathy is only the means by which the magical force passes from the magician to the object at which it is aimed; it is not the magical force itself. That still remains to be explained. It cannot be wholly explained by the properties attributed to the materials used in the magical rite, and that for three reasons. In the first place, the notion of property is normally not the only one present. The employment of substances having magical properties is ritually conditioned. They must be collected according to rule, at certain times, in certain places, with certain means, and after certain ritual preparations. When collected, they must be employed according to certain rules and with the accompaniment of rites, often exceedingly elaborate, which permit the utilization of their qualities. In the second place, the magical property is not conceived as naturally, absolutely, and specifically inherent in the thing to which it is attached, but always as relatively extrinsic and conferred. Sometimes it is conferred by a rite. At other times it is explained by a myth; and in this case it is clearly regarded as accidental and acquired. It often resides in secondary characters, such as form, colour, rarity, and so forth. In the third place, the notion of magical property suffices so little that it is always confounded with a very generalized idea of force and nature. The idea of the effect to be produced may indeed be precise; but that of the special qualities of the substance used to produce it, and their immediate action, is always obscure. In fact, the idea of things having undefined virtues is always prominent in magic. Salt, blood, saliva, coral, iron, crystals, precious metals, the mountain ash, the birch, the sacred fig-tree, camphor, incense, tobacco are among the many objects which embody general magical powers, capable of all sorts of applications. Corresponding with this is the extreme vagueness of the designations applied to magical properties, such as divine, sacred, mysterious, lucky, unlucky, and equivalent expressions. The notion of property passes over easily into power and spirit. Property and power are inseparable terms; property and spirit are often confounded. The virtues or properties of a thing often belong to it as the abode of a spirit. Spirits are indeed often the agents of magic. It is hardly too much to say that there is no magical rite in which their presence is not in some degree possible, though not expressly mentioned. Magic works in a special atmosphere, if not in the world of demons, at least in conditions in which their presence is possible. Beyond doubt, one of the essential characteristics of magical causality is that it is spiritual. Yet the idea of spiritual personalities ill represents the general anonymous forces which constitute the power of magicians. It gives no account of the virtue of words or gestures, the power of a look or of the intention, the influence or the mode of action of a rite. It does not explain why the magical rite controls and directs spiritual existences, any more than the sympathetic formula explains why the rite acts directly on the object.72.1

I do not tarry now to give illustrations in detail of the various points in the argument I have here summarized. It is clear that Professor Frazer has overlooked something of importance, from one fact alone to which he alludes, but of which he fails to observe the vast implications. The commonest excuse made by the magician for the failure of his spells is that some other magician of greater power is thwarting him. There must therefore be degrees of power among magicians, however it be acquired, and whether temporary or permanent, inherent or due to the possession of greater knowledge or more powerful spells. But that is a factor that tumbles the whole edifice of the theory down. It introduces another element—the personal potentiality. The same causes do not always produce the same effects, apart from the personal element; the performance of the proper ceremony, accompanied by the appropriate spell, is not inevitably attended by the desired results; the magician has not reached the scientific conclusion “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably, without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.” Nay, the intervention of the magician himself is proof to the contrary.

Destructive criticism is comparatively easy; anyone can make objections. Not everyone can substitute a sounder theory in place of that destroyed. It is when Messrs Hubert and Mauss come to construct their own theory of magic that they find themselves in difficulty. For they have to admit that in magic the same collective forces operate as in religion. Faith is as necessary to magic as to religion; it is as necessary to the magician as to the priest. Trickery no doubt there is; that has not always been excluded from religion. But there is much more than trickery. The magician believes in his own powers; and he believes all the more strongly because his public believes. The faith of society and his own faith act and react upon one another. But this is precisely the case with the priest and his religion.

If we examine the magician’s methods we can hardly distinguish them from those employed in religion. The attempt to bewitch an enemy by means of his clothing or a fragment of his body is precisely the same in principle as the proceedings already described at the inauguration of a Polynesian king or the communication of the virtues of mediæval saints by means of their relics. It is true that in the one case the object of the ceremony is maleficent, in the other cases it is beneficent. If that were a real distinction, the processes would still remain analogous. It is not real, however; for the sanctity of Polynesian kings has its maleficent side, and the relics of the saints have been often employed to the injury of an enemy, as well as to the healing of a friend. Nor can it be said that magic is purely an art, a technique, while religion is dependent upon higher and independent wills. The aid of spirits is often invoked in magic; spell passes easily into prayer, and prayer into spell. The accounts that have reached us of the Witches’ Sabbath may be the product of hallucination, or confessions extorted from victims who said what they were expected to say. But at least they bear witness to the general belief of the times, which regarded magic rather as a counter-religion than as a mere technique. Professor Frazer’s reply to this is of course that such a belief, such practices, were the result of a later fusion of religion and magic. That the fusion was not primitive is, however, incapable of proof. As we shall see by and by, in the lowest societies of which we have evidence practices usually regarded as magical are indistinguishable from those regarded as religious. The mutual hostility of religion and magic, where it exists, is, in truth, the result of a later development.

Like religion, the chief factor in magic—that by which it accomplishes its ends—is the mystic force that is released and set at work by the rite or the spell. Behind the sympathetic formula, behind the notions of property and of spirits, there is another notion still more mysterious, the notion of power, vague, impersonal, always operating, irresistible, or depending for its efficaciousness on conditions not altogether at command. The investigations of the last chapter have disclosed to us what this power is. By its very vagueness and impersonality it enshrines possibilities illimitable. It may be materialized, localized, personalized; but it ceases not to be spiritual, to act at a distance, and that by direct connection, if not by contact, to be mobile and to move without movement, to be impersonal though clothed in personal forms, to be divisible yet continuous. It is this notion that accounts in the last resort for the phenomena of magic. Without it, magic is incomprehensible; like a sentence without the copula, the action, the affirmation is wanting.

All this is equally true of religion. The authors see therefore that magic is, like religion, a social phenomenon; it has parallel rites with those of religion; it has parallel postulates and beliefs. To distinguish it from religion they are driven to erect into a test the individualistic aims of its practitioners, or of those on whose behalf it is called in aid. Its true distinction is, according to this, that it tends to be isolated, to be furtive, to be put into motion on behalf of individuals and against the community; its methods become arbitrary; it ceases to be a common obligation. Individuals in magic have appropriated the ideas and the collective forces generated by religion, and turned them to their own ends. Religion, in short, is social in its aims, magic is antisocial. That is the only difference between them. In this distinction Professor Durkheim agrees. Everywhere, he says, religious life has for its substratum a definite group; even what are called private cults are celebrated by the family or the corporation or society to which they are restricted. On the other hand, though magical beliefs are widely diffused and practised by large classes of a population, their effect is not to bind together those who adhere to them and unite them into a group having one common life: there is no magical Church. Between the magician and those who consult him there is no durable bond. He has clients, not a church. His relations with them are accidental, not permanent; and they may have no relations with one another; they may even be ignorant of one another’s existence.76.1

But this very charge of being antisocial is brought by many dominant religions against their rivals. It was substantially the charge brought against the early Christians by the Pagans. It is to-day the charge formulated by fanatical Russian Christians against the Jews. Here in the west of Europe it is, in a somewhat vaguer form, the reproach of orthodox Christians against Agnostics and all shades of Rationalists. To apply it as a test to distinguish religion from magic is to qualify the same practices as religious or as magical, according as they have social or antisocial ends. And how shall we define these ends? The act which at one stage of civilization is antisocial, at another is often a social duty. To attempt a change in this respect may be antisocial as regards the existing society, though it may result in ultimate benefit; and the attempt may be made from purely individualist motives, for purely individualist ends. Nay, the same act may be in the same society social or antisocial, according to circumstances. In Central Australia the man who kills an enemy by means of arungquiltha, which may be rendered evil magic, commits an antisocial act; he does it in secret: it would be dangerous to let it become known. But if a woman run away from her husband and cannot be recovered, he may lawfully avenge himself with the aid of arungquiltha. He is performing an act of social justice, and will be joined in doing it by the men of his local group. In the same way vengeance may be taken for a murder, real or supposed, by a Kurdaitcha party, which performs what we should designate as a magical ceremony to cause the victim to sicken and die. This is held to be a social, not an antisocial act, for it is fulfilling the social duty of revenge. It is done with the sanction of the council of elders.77.1 In Melanesia, as we have seen, all religion consists in getting mana for oneself, not for the benefit of others; though doubtless the mana, when obtained, is often used for the advantage of the community.77.2 Often it is not. “A man will commonly have his keramo, a tindalo [a ghost that is worshipped] of killing, who will help him in fighting or in slaying his private enemy.” The tindalo, albeit the object of religious worship, has no prejudice against antisocial acts. His worshipper, before going out to commit what we should call murder, performs an elaborate ceremony, sacrificing to the ghost, and cursing his victim. If he succeed in killing him, the tindalo gets as his share of the spoil the ghost of the deceased, and is invoked to give mana in return.77.3

The man who, in Europe or elsewhere, makes use of spells to injure individuals, or even of the Evil Eye, is practising magic: he is doing an antisocial act. The man who defends himself with a gesture, with spells, or by loading his body with amulets, is not doing an antisocial act; he is simply protecting himself. But is he practising religion or magic? Be it remembered here that a man may have the Evil Eye without knowing it. Pius the Ninth, Vicar of Christ, was reputed to have the Evil Eye. Nothing was so fatal as his blessing; the faithful quailed at his glance and doubtless protected themselves with amulets. So the Boloki of the Congo hold that “one can have witchcraft without knowing it.”78.1 In these cases there can be no antisocial intention. Among the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa a common procedure is to point at one’s enemy with the index-finger. This is antisocial: it is witchcraft. Before they go to war a ceremony is performed by an old woman, naked and in a state of ritual purity, over the warriors, and an incantation is muttered, to enable them to kill their foes.78.2 This may not be antisocial; but is it anything else than magic? True, the men murmur prayers to their ancestral spirits for help; but then religion is penetrated with magic. Even Professor Durkheim admits that he cannot show a solution of continuity between them; the frontiers between their respective domains are often undefined, unfixed.78.3 At all events he cannot say where the one ends and the other begins.

Perhaps, however, not the intention but the tendency, whether social or antisocial, is the test. In that case it is hard to conceive anything more antisocial than the operations of the Holy Inquisition. They were, it is true, not performed by supernatural instrumentality, or for supernatural purposes. To that extent they are not directly parallel with the rites we have been considering. But they were carried on by persons consecrated to religion, as religious acts, surrounded by religious rites, by exorcisms, imprecations, conjurations, shielded by the Church with all her powers, and sanctioned, if not set in motion, by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. They desolated every society where the institution was introduced.79.1 Secrecy has been already noted as a characteristic of magic as opposed to religion. Naturally antisocial acts are performed in secret. The deeds of the Holy Office were done in the deepest dens of the building, and surrounded by impervious precautions against discovery, except the last dread act. In that consummation of cruelty, that supreme Act of Faith, as it was called, its officials nominally took no part; though it was well known that they insisted upon it relentlessly and with every terror, ghostly or secular, which they knew so well how to wield. On the other hand, the African sorcerer, conjuring the rain or the sunshine so necessary for the crops, performs an eminently social work, and does it very often in the open eye of day and before the assembled people. When a fisher-boat was launched in the north-east of Scotland a bottle of whisky used to be broken on the prow or stern with the words:

“Frae rocks an’ saands

An’ barren lands

An’ ill men’s hands

Keep’s free.

Weel oot, weel in,

Wi’ a gueede shot.”

“On the arrival of the boat at its new home the skipper’s wife, in some of the villages, took a lapful of corn or barley, and sowed it over the boat.”80.1 These are not antisocial acts; they have no antisocial tendency; and they are not performed in secret. Must we account them religious, and the operations of the Inquisition magical?

Thus antisocial character is no sufficient test of magic as opposed to religion. Professor Doutté, dealing with magic as developed in Islam, adheres generally to the views of Messrs Hubert and Mauss. He proposes, however, another definition. Quoting with approval the late M. Marillier’s observation that magic is “the action on the without by the within,”80.2 he remarks that the savage has not yet made a sufficient distinction between subject and object; he does not differentiate himself from the universe. And he concludes that magic, invented under the pressure of need, is only the objectivation of desire under the form of an extended force, singular, bound to gestures representative of the phenomenon desired and mechanically producing it. If the savage externalize this magical force so far that he ends by personifying it, we have the genesis of a god; the god, in fact, may be a personified mana. A god can only be anthropomorphic; he is the psycho-physical objectivation of man in phenomena.80.3 This brings Professor Doutté much nearer to Dr Frazer’s position, and might form the basis of an eirenicon between them. For though he is fully aware that much in magic is indistinguishable from religion, he holds it to be a subsequent development: magic has so far modelled itself on religion and borrowed its theistic methods of procedure. It presents itself as an anti-religion. Under Christianity it reaches its ultimate term with the Black Mass and the cult of the devil: Islam does not lend itself so well to hideous parody. Yet Professor Doutté, after flirting with Professor Frazer’s opinion, comes back to the orthodoxy of the French sociologists: the real distinction between religion and magic is that the one is social—it sustains the life of the society; the other applies its rites to strictly personal ends—it is antisocial. The one is magic lawful and even obligatory; the other is magic useless or injurious to society, and it is condemned and interdicted. Islam even recognizes white or religious magic; the Prophet himself recommended it. Ibn Khaldoûn, a great Mohammedan jurist, can find, indeed, no solid distinction between the miracle of the saint and the prodigy wrought by the sorcerer, save that of the morality of its aim. The test of morality is what is permitted by the Law. That which is permitted by the Law is moral; the rest is immoral. It comes to this, then, that a miracle is legitimate magic, and magic is a forbidden miracle.81.1

The same difficulty in severing magic from religion is experienced by one of the acutest writers who has considered the subject. “Magic and religion,” says Dr Marett, “according to the view I would support, belong to the same department of human experience.… Together they belong to the supernormal world, the x-region of experience, the region of mental twilight. Magic I take to include all bad ways, and religion all good ways, of dealing with the supernormal—bad and good, of course, not as we may happen to judge them, but as the society concerned judges them. Sometimes, indeed, the people themselves hardly know where to draw the line between the two; and in that case the anthropologist cannot well do it for them. But every society thinks witchcraft bad. Witchcraft consists in leaguing oneself with supernormal powers of evil in order to effect selfish and antisocial ends. Witchcraft then is genuine magic—black magic, of the devil’s colour.”82.1 Presumably white magic—magic performed for good and social ends—is not magic; it is a part of religion, notwithstanding that precisely the same means may be employed as in witchcraft—black magic. For Dr Marett adds: “Every primitive society also distinguishes certain salutary ways of dealing with supernormal powers. All these ways taken together constitute religion.”82.2 Coming more particularly to define religion, he says: “Savage life has few safeguards. Crisis is a frequent, if intermittent, element in it. Hunger, sickness and war are examples of crisis. Birth and death are crises. Marriage is usually regarded by humanity as a crisis. So is initiation—the turning-point in one’s career, when one steps out into the world of men. Now what in terms of mind does crisis mean? It means that one is at one’s wits’ end; that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected; that we are projected into the world of the unknown.… Psychologically regarded, then, the function of religion is to restore men’s confidence when it is shaken by crisis.… Religion is the facing of the unknown. It is the courage in it that brings comfort.” Sociologically, “a religion is the effort to face crisis, so far as that effort is organized by society in some particular way. A religion is congregational—that is to say, serves the ends of a number of persons simultaneously. It is traditional—that is to say, has served the ends of successive generations of persons. Therefore inevitably it has standardized a method. It involves a routine, a ritual. Also, it involves some sort of conventional doctrine, which is, as it were, the inner side of the ritual—its lining.”83.1

On this definition two observations may be made. The first is that it does not exclude any rites performed for social ends, or for individual ends, so far as they are not definitely antisocial. The Australian husband meets the crisis of desertion by his wife by means of arungquiltha. He performs an act organized by society to meet this very crisis—on the definition, therefore, a religious act. But if by precisely the same process he attempt to slay his enemy, he is guilty of magic. Or is the wife’s desertion not a crisis in the sense attached to the word by Dr Marett? Perhaps it is a relief, a solution of a domestic crisis.

The second observation is that the definition ignores the whole of life not occupied by crises. When the Californian Hupa awakes in the morning and sees the dawn, it cannot be said that he is at his wits’ end, that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected. What does he do? He greets the dawn with a silent prayer that he may see many dawns, for he regards it as a person who is benevolently inclined to him.84.1 This surely is religion. The point is met by the further statement that “the religion of a savage is part of his custom; nay, rather it is his whole custom so far as it appears sacred—so far as it coerces him by way of his imagination. Between him and the unknown stands nothing but his custom. It is his all-in-all, his stand-by, his faith and his hope. Being thus the sole source of his confidence, his custom, so far as his imagination plays about it, becomes his ‘luck.’ We may say that any and every custom, in so far as it is regarded as lucky, is a religious rite.”84.2 In that case religion is much more than the facing of the unknown, the organized effort to face crisis. It is custom coercing man by way of his imagination. A convenient custom coerces by way of their imagination weary women at Tlemcen in Algeria not to sweep out the house for three days at the New Year, so that they may not lose their luck.84.3 Can we legitimately call this religion? Or take another case. There are people in England who will not utter a boast, or tell a small social fib, without taking the precaution to touch wood. I have known educated women drag a chair across the room to a visitor who had just boasted of immunity from a trifling ailment, in order that she might touch wood. Despite their education, they were coerced by way of their imagination to this little ceremony. There must be thousands of things done merely for luck, and done habitually, by peoples alike in barbarism and in civilization. Some of them probably are relics of a once living belief. About others there is no such presumption; yet they exercise the same constraint. Does that make them religious rites? Does it make even those that once were portions of some living belief, but are so no longer, religious rites now? Of course it is all a matter of definition of terms. But a definition of religion which would include all these would be catholic indeed.

The criticisms in this chapter involve no reflection on the perspicacity of scientific writers who are trying to obtain a clear vision of religion and magic and of their specific differences. But they do aim at illustrating the futility of the attempt absolutely to define anything so fluid and elusive as religion.85.1 Both religion and magic owe their origin to society; they are born and nurtured in a social atmosphere. Both are concerned with forces mysterious, far-reaching, enveloping and constraining men and things. These forces are not always personal, though their evolution usually takes a personal direction. The means used by both are similar, because the forces are the same, or at least alike. Spell and prayer are very near akin; the one passes insensibly into the other. And the material means common to both are chosen arbitrarily or according to some fancied symbolism, and employed in closely parallel ways. There is, in short, no decided boundary between religion and magic.

The task remains, notwithstanding, of defining the words for the purposes of the following pages. It is hopeless to attempt to harmonize the definitions we have considered. Whatever definition we adopt, it is clear that we cannot so express it as to confine religion within its own bounds, or to outlaw magic from the territory occupied by its rival. Yet a working definition is needed. In framing it regard ought to be paid to the ordinary meaning of the words: the definition must not be arbitrary.

Now the word Magic, by the usage of centuries, is concerned not so much with aim or tendency as with method. It conveys the notion of power, by whatsoever means acquired, wielded by the magician as his own, and not as that of a higher being whose coöperation is only obtained by supplication and self-abasement. Supplication, self-abasement, flattery are the religious means of winning the help of divinities. Where higher beings, whether called gods or devils, or by the more ambiguous title of spirits, are invoked by spell, compliance with the call is not dependent on their goodwill; the command is irresistible; and the procedure is magical. Sacrifice is utilized in both procedures; but it has a very different value in the one and the other. In the one it operates as a communion with the divinity, as a gift to win favour which he is by no means bound to grant, or as an atonement for wrong. In the other it is a condition on the fulfilment of which the desire of him who offers it is accomplished, inevitably and by compulsion. In such a case he who offers the sacrifice is not a worshipper; he is a master of the beings to whom it is offered. True, they are sometimes gods. In the religion of the Hindus “prayers, penances, and sacrifices are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value, in no degree depending upon the disposition or motive of the person who performs them. They are drafts upon Heaven, for which the Gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has made them formidable to the Supreme Deities themselves.”87.1 Thus has Southey succinctly stated the belief on which his poem of The Curse of Kehama is built. Here by prayers are meant liturgical formulæ, which everywhere tend to degenerate into magical spells. Penances are in the nature of sacrifices. Or they are taboos that preserve and enhance the force and influence of the suppliant. Both alike are a magical process, in the sense in which the word Magic is generally employed. The constraining power of sacrifices was also a tenet of Egyptian religion, at all events in its last ages.87.2 Have analogous beliefs in the magical powers of a rite even yet disappeared from Christianity?

This then is the sense in which I venture to think the words Magic and Magical should be employed. It is based upon their general, if somewhat vague, usage; and it is therefore intelligible to the ordinary reader without recourse to a special definition. It is substantially that of Professor Frazer, save that it affirms nothing concerning the origin of the power active in magical practices: it simply takes them as they are—again an undeniable convenience. It follows that for our purpose Religion will be confined to cultual systems, whose objects, so far as they are personal, are endowed with free will, are to be approached with true worship, and may or may not grant the prayers of their suppliants. Here also we have common usage on our side, with all its advantages. In this use of the word Religion, where the object is impersonal, or is but vaguely personal, it is none the less treated with reverence and submission, as something transcending man; it is the object of an emotional attitude, actively directed towards it. The object thus, even where it is not personal, tends to become so. Buddhism, in its original form, and similar religions are the product of comparatively high civilizations. The puritan severity of their primitive thought and practice was speedily relaxed; they acquired personal gods, and thus liberated themselves from a rule of life based upon philosophical considerations and the effort to escape without the aid of the higher personalities, of which they despaired, from the evils by which they felt themselves oppressed. In the lower civilizations, as we have seen, no sooner is an impersonal power conceived as acting than it assumes personal characteristics. When once the attention is concentrated upon any manifestation of it, these characteristics, originally vague, are likely to be emphasized, and may grow into true personalities. In magic, on the other hand, the impersonal power does not so readily become thus transformed, because the attention fastens on the personal agent, the magician, rather than on the power by which he operates.

When all is said, however, religion is (ideally, at least) social—that is to say, moral—in its aims and tendencies, whereas magic lends itself to individualist aims. Religion binds the society together by raising the individual above himself, and teaching him to subordinate his desires and actions to the general good; magic has no compunction in assisting to carry out the wishes of the individual, though they may be contrary to the interests of the society as a whole. To that extent it is disruptive, antisocial, immoral; and when thus applied it may be described as Black, or Evil, or Hostile Magic. Here perhaps we find the origin of the opposition between them. So far from religion and magic having been originally hostile, the further we go back into savage life, and presumably, therefore, towards primitive humanity, the more we find them interwoven, indistinguishable. It is only in the advance of civilization, and the consequent evolution of religion and of magic that they become conscious of mutual hostility. When once the separation had begun it would tend to widen. Certain methods and means would be regarded as proper to the one, certain other methods and means as proper to the other, albeit neither of them, not even the highest known and recognized form of religion, has hitherto been able to shake itself entirely free from the methods of the other. This is not incompatible with increasing hostility. The loftier the claims of religion become, the closer its relations with the profoundest thought of mankind, the more awful the sanctions it invokes, the more inevitable, the more irreconcilable the hostility becomes. Family quarrels are ever the bitterest.

III. Development

The discussion has led to some anticipation of the argument. We turn back again to the personal potentiality.

He for whom the world is full of personal beings and hardly anything else—a universe of objects interpreted in the terms of conscious personality and projected on a background of the Unknown with all its possibilities—he for whom each of those objects, human and non-human, living and not-living, is invested in a greater or less degree with orenda, will naturally and instinctively on the one hand avail himself of his own orenda, and on the other hand will dread and endeavour to turn to account the orenda of others. But this very endeavour to turn others’ orenda to account is an exercise by prayer or compulsion of his own. I can see no satisfactory evidence that early man consciously entertained any great faith in the order and uniformity of nature. Automatically, no doubt, he assumed that night would follow day and day night, that the winter would follow the summer or the dry season the wet, that the trees would blossom in the spring or after the rains set in, as he had been accustomed to see them. But that was not the result of reflection; it was not an act of faith. So things had always been, and he could not conceive any different course. It was not part of his mental furniture; it was no acquisition of reasoning. It was the very framework of his mind. When he began to reflect he referred these phenomena to the same cause to which he referred his own acts, and the more uncertain and capricious acts of other living beings—to personal will and orenda. Even if he had risen to the large conception of the Siouan wakonda, that impersonal force must, as we have seen, clothe itself with personality in order to operate. Immediately and for practical purposes the personal will and orenda of himself or some other object were the fount of all causation. They impelled and directed all actions, all means, and were responsible for all effects. If he took aim at his enemy and flung his spear, or whatever primitive weapon served the same purpose; if it hit the man, and he fell; he might witness the result, but the mere mechanical causation, however inevitable in its action, would be the last thing he would think about. Conscious of his own will, of his own effort, of the words, perhaps, with which he had accompanied and directed the spear, he would attribute the result to such causes as these. His own orenda felt in his passion, his will, his effort, and displayed in his acts and words, the orenda of the spear, either inherent in itself, conceived as a personal being, or conferred by its maker, and manifested in the keenness of its point, the precision and the force with which it flies to its work and inflicts the deadly wound—these would be to him the true causes of his enemy’s fall. His orenda is mightier than his enemy’s and overcomes it. So, when the enemy is absent and he cannot visibly reach him, his orenda may yet suffice to accomplish the desired injury. By a psychological process which Dr Marett has subtly analysed,91.1 he is led to perform in pantomime all the acts of a murder in the absence of the victim, either silently, or to the accompaniment of a chant, or of spoken words. His foe, who is as convinced as himself of the power of such a performance, if it come to his knowledge, falls a victim to the terror it inspires, unless he can call in the aid of some other person, objective or imaginary, whose orenda is more powerful still. Nor would the belief lack vindication even in the case of the victim’s ignorance; for any chance misfortune or sickness would be put down to a hostile orenda; and if he did escape, it would be due to his own superior orenda.

Thus what we generally call magic or witchcraft is primarily an application of orenda. By his orenda a man bewitches his enemy (or, for a consideration, someone else’s enemy), causes rain or sunshine, raises and protects the crops, gains success in hunting, divines the cause of sickness and cures it, raises the dead, spells out the future. His incantations, his gestures, his apparatus—whether of plants, stones, animal products, magical drawings, or whatever else it may be—would be of no avail without this. In Central Australia the Arunta magician arms his “pointing bone” with arungquiltha. In Central Africa the Murundi impregnates his magical implements with evil influence by means of his imprecations, his incantations, and his evocation of spirits. That is, he puts into them his orenda or the mana of the spirits: until then they are absolutely powerless and indifferent.92.1 This influence, this orenda, mana, or arungquiltha, is the nexus—the copula, as it has been called—which links the subject, the magician, to the object, the result.

But man is not the only being who possesses orenda. The orenda of his quarry sometimes foils his own. The cicada chirping in the fields ripens the maize for the Iroquois; the orenda of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it must fall. The awful mountain, the treacherous sea, those mighty beings who command the winds, who send forth the storm, who rule in the darkness and mystery of the forest, possess an orenda surpassing man’s. It is useless to pit his orenda against theirs. Therefore he must adopt a different course. He must lay down his orenda and submit it to theirs. This is the literal meaning of the Iroquoian phrase which signifies in modern usage “He habitually prays.”92.2 He must take such a course as he would to obtain assistance from a human being (say, a powerful chief), or to conciliate an enemy. By gift, by abasement, by abstinence, by self-torture, by cajolery he must win this powerful orenda to his side. Of these efforts abstinence and abasement are negative forms of propitiation. They are perhaps the earliest forms. If our reports be complete (on which we may have our doubts), abstinence is the only form used among the Andaman Islanders, where belief is said to outrun active worship.93.1 In any case a taboo for propitiatory purposes is very early and very persistent. Not without insight does the poet tell us that Caliban

“Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month

One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape.”

And the modern European has still his Lent, and his Ember Days and Fridays throughout the year. Such abstinence is the laying down and submission of the orenda to those of mightier beings. On the other hand, gift, prayer, cajolery are, properly speaking, an active exercise of orenda. The relation of spell and incantation to prayer has already been alluded to. They are often indistinguishable: they shade into one another by the finest gradations. Gifts are not mere self-deprivation. They must be accompanied by rites more or less elaborate, to render them acceptable to the lofty beings for whom they are intended. Or they are part of a bargain; they are the performance on the suppliant’s side which demands a corresponding return on the side of the god. More than one comparatively civilized people has held that sacrifices properly performed not merely incline but compel the gods to grant what their worshipper desires. Gesture-language plays a large part in savage life. A ceremony such as those familiar to us in sympathetic magic—to take only one instance, the sticking of pins into a waxen figure—frequently is, to a large extent, gesture-language: it helps to suggest to the supernatural personages of whose orenda the magician desires to make use exactly what is wanted. It is more than this, of course. It is in part the make-believe which is a relief to overcharged feelings; in part it is the means by which the orenda is conveyed to the object intended to be affected. The concomitant words that form part of the ceremony emphasize the desire. They fill and strengthen the instrument with the orenda of the performer, or of the supernatural personage invoked or compelled to assist; they direct the instrument, considered as a personal being, in the service it is required to fulfil; or they allure, entreat, or command the object at which the rite is aimed.

If the view here taken be accurate, the essential opposition between magic and religion disappears. Nor am I greatly concerned to decide whether of the two developed the earlier. Their origin is the same; they grow from one root. Nay, I should hardly be wrong if I changed the metaphor and said: magic and religion are the two faces of one medal. From the lowest stage of culture to the highest we find them inseparable. Gods were not invented because man proved unequal to the strain of arranging the affairs of the universe by himself; nor has the age of religion been everywhere preceded by the age of magic. “By whatever name it is called,” says Dr Codrington, speaking of the Melanesian mana, “it is the belief in this supernatural power and in the efficacy of the various means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called religious: and it is from the same belief that everything which may be called magic and witchcraft draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise their art as a profession; they get their property and influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who knows how to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There may be one whose skill extends to all these branches; but generally one man knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handed down from father to son, from uncle to sister’s son [for in many of these islands descent is still reckoned exclusively through the mother], in the same way as is the knowledge of rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer; and very often the same man who knows the sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of charms for many purposes besides. But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of consideration knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult practices. Knowledge of either kind can be bought, if the possessor chooses to impart it to any other than the heirs of whatever he has besides.”95.1

Here we see, as yet undistinguished, the beginnings of the professional magician and the professional priest. Roughly and provisionally it may be said that the professional magician is he who in the course of the evolution of society, by birth, by purchase, or by study and practice in the conventional methods, has acquired the most powerful orenda. Similarly, the professional priest is he who in these ways, or by prayer and fasting, has obtained the favour of the imaginary personages believed to influence or control the affairs of men—who has, in a word, possessed himself of their orenda. The union of these two professions in one person is not adventitious; it is probably fundamental; it is at least so general that in describing the society of savages and peoples in low stages of culture observers are often at a loss whether to call their functionaries priests or wizards, exorcists or medicine-men. Consequently, many anthropological writers use the word shaman, borrowed from the Tunguz, a tribe of South-Eastern Siberia, and including all four meanings. For in that condition of society the functions of priest and sorcerer and medicine-man are, as Professor Frazer says, “not yet differentiated from each other.” That could not be until, in the course of evolution, religion became severed from magic. Yet it has never become so wholly severed that the primitive connection may not be traced. Priests have become organized into a separate order. Triumphant religions have proscribed the conquered faiths, and have repudiated their practices as magical. Magic has thus become a term of opprobrium. The conquered faiths under repression have carried on their religious worship mixed with magical rites and tending more and more to be degraded, yet never losing all religious elements. Even the magic of the Middle Ages and later, in Europe, if we may trust the confessions of the judicial victims themselves, was mingled with the worship of a being in whom they recognized the devil, perhaps the last avatar of a heathen god; and witchcraft was one of the commonest charges against heretics. On the other hand, not even the highest religions have been able to free themselves wholly from rites strictly parallel to those characterized as magical, by which their followers have striven to compass union with the objects of worship, to avail themselves of the orenda of these objects, to locate it in their own persons or in the images and implements of their cult, to intensify their own orenda, and to exercise it for the benefit, spiritual, corporal or pecuniary, of themselves and others.

It may be well to illustrate the foregoing speculation from the customs and superstitions of the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have been represented to be the lowest and least evolved of known humanity in their beliefs and institutions: they are, it is said, still in the stage of primitive absence of religion; magic alone is the object of their belief; magic alone they practise. Now none of the Australian tribes are, strictly speaking, in a primitive condition. The civilization of all of them has evolved to some extent. It has evolved, speaking in general terms, along similar lines; and these lines have been conditioned by the environment. It is admittedly significant that, in a land where so many archaic types of the lower animals have survived, we should find archaic types of human culture. Yet the most archaic types of Australian culture are far from being primitive. So far are they that the social organization is of the most complex character, the product of a succession of stages of development. The least archaic types exhibit the old social organization breaking down and new structures in course of formation. With the evolution of society an evolution of belief has also been going on. It has not been exactly concurrent. Culture rarely or never evolves equally in all directions. It is a mental process, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The collective mind of a given society, like the individual minds of which it is composed, is not exercised equally on all subjects at the same time. Hence while, for example, we find among the Euahlayi tribe, in the north of New South Wales, an advanced theology and a more developed worship than have been recorded elsewhere in Australia, the social organization is still on the basis of female descent; and though the clansmen eat without scruple their hereditary totems, in other respects the totemic system seems to be in full force. In the same way the Arunta and their neighbours certainly preserve relics of a very archaic condition of thought and social organization. Though for certain purposes a son inherits from his mother’s husband, it is doubtful whether descent is counted through the father for social purposes; the physical relation between father and child, indeed, is but imperfectly recognized. On the other hand, they have developed a very elaborate theory of reincarnation, and their totemic system seems to be in course of transformation into a number of societies bearing in some respects remarkable resemblance to those of the tribes of British Columbia.98.1 Magical practices (chiefly in connection with these societies or totemic groups) are more prominent than religious.

Yet a closer examination will lead us to the conclusion that something more than, on any definition of magic, we can call magical practices, something we must recognize as religion, albeit of a low type, is not wholly wanting to the natives of Central Australia. We may perhaps grant that Twanyirika, with whose name the women and uninitiate children are kept in awe, is a bugbear “to frighten babes withal,” and nothing more. The Kaitish and the Loritja, adjacent tribes sharing the general culture of the Arunta, at all events believe in the real existence of a superior being, who invented the initiation rites and is pleased when men perform them now.99.1 Indeed, if Herr Strehlow’s investigations are to be trusted, the Arunta themselves are not destitute of belief in such a being, though we learn little about him, and he has no influence on the destinies of mankind.99.2 Among the Warramunga, a tribe a little further to the north, the Wollunqua, a gigantic mythical snake, is the object of important rites, and one of the totem-clans is called by its name. It dwells in a certain water-hole in a lonely valley of the Murchison Range, “and there is always the fear that it may take it into its head to come out of its hiding-place and do some damage.” Hence propitiation is necessary. This is effected by building a mound of sandy earth and delineating on it a representation of the animal. “They say that when he sees the mound with his representation drawn upon it, he is gratified, and wriggles about underneath with pleasure.” On the evening of the day succeeding that on which the ceremonies in connection with this mound were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, “the old men who had made the mound said that they had heard the Wollunqua talking, and that he was pleased with what had been done and was sending rain; the explanation of which doubtless was that they, like ourselves, had heard thunder in the distance. No rain fell, but a few days later the distant rumble of thunder was again heard at night-time; and this, the old men now said, was the Wollunqua growling because the remains of the mound had been left uncovered. They also told the younger men that a heavy bank of clouds which lay on the western horizon had been placed there as a warning by the Wollunqua, and at once cut down boughs and hid the ruins of the mound from view, after which the Wollunqua ceased from growling, and all went on peacefully until the end of the series” of ceremonies.100.1 There are, of course, myths associated with the Wollunqua. The mound recalled one of them. During its building and the ceremonies about it chants were sung referring to the deeds of the Wollunqua, breaking out from time to time into refrains of words, now at least meaningless, and said to belong to the language of the mythical past. The name Wollunqua is avoided in common parlance. A circumlocution is employed instead, “because, so they told us, if they were to call it too often by its real name, they would lose their control over it and it would come out and eat them all up.”100.2 How does this differ from the familiar taboo of sacred names? When the explorers were taken to visit the Wollunqua’s dwelling-place (should we be wrong to call it his shrine?), the two chief men of the totemic group went down to the water’s edge and addressed him in whispers with bowed heads, praying him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his and had brought up two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them about him. “We could plainly see that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him.”100.3 In all these rites (the details of which were carried out with earnestness and frequently with excitement) it can hardly be denied that we have the elements of a true cult. The only one as to which any qualification could be admitted is “the savage attack,” described as being made on the mound when the ceremony relating to it was concluded. The result of it was that the figures delineated on the mound were destroyed, and all that remained was a rough heap of sandy earth. This is represented as an attempt to “coerce the mythic beast.” It is not quite certain that the interpretation is correct, for it does not rest on native statements, but is an inference of the explorers. The obliteration of sacred figures drawn on sand or earth for the purpose of a rite is not confined to the cult of the Wollunqua, nor even to Australia. It is equally found among the Pueblo tribes of North America and the Mongolian Buddhists of Central Asia.101.1 Its object is to hide the sacred symbols from the eyes of the profane. But if the interpretation were correct (and it is not inconsistent with some of the expressions and traditions reported), it is no more than we might expect. If a savage deals with the mythic figures of his imagination as he deals with his fellowman, we must not be surprised that he should pass from cajolery to coercion, from prayer to defiance. Peoples on a much higher religious horizon (as we shall see hereafter) do not hesitate to threaten, and even to offer violence to, the objects of their worship, when they are unable to obtain otherwise what they want.

Nor are the rites of the Wollunqua alone among these tribes in bearing evidence of something more than magical ceremonies, namely, of rudimentary worship. When at the close of the initiation rites among the Arunta someone with a bundle of churinga, sacred stones or sticks in the shape of a bull-roarer, comes up to the newly initiated youth, saying: “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have heard so much; they are churinga and will help to heal you quickly,”102.1 neither the neophyte nor his friend regards them as mere toys. The statement that they will help to heal the neophyte’s wounds is enough to show this. We must not be misled by the apparent anticlimax to forget that they are, throughout this group of tribes, mysterious objects, marked with the emblem of the totem, and in the closest association with it; to the Arunta and Loritja they are the outward and visible sign, if not the embodiment, of the ancestral souls or invisible portions, and as such are regarded with veneration.102.2 They are kept cunningly concealed from the eyes of the profane, hidden in stores which are sanctuaries, places of refuge from the pursuit of enemies, for men and even for wild animals. Herr Strehlow relates that when he was trying to find a native word to translate church, two baptized Blackfellows in all seriousness suggested to him the use of arknanaua, the name of these sacred storehouses in their tongue.102.3 The very word churinga means, as nearly as can be rendered in a European tongue, hidden away, secret, appropriated, sacred. It is used as an adjective to describe objects employed in the sacred ceremonies, and the secret name bestowed on a child at birth. In this connection it is important to remember that the sacred ceremonies, and in fact everything sacred, are among these tribes secret also from the uninitiate. Though individuals may, at least among the Arunta and Loritja, have special property in their churingas, the latter are, as a whole, the collective property of the totemic clan; they are under the control of the ceremonial headman; their loss is the most serious evil that can befall a group; and even to lend them to another group, as is occasionally done for special purposes, is undertaken with the greatest solemnity and caution. When returned, they are received with every mark of veneration, with weeping and a low, mournful chant; and both parties must be strictly fasting.103.1

The churinga are, moreover, endowed with power, with mana, which not merely heals wounds, but when they are brought ceremonially in contact with the body produces other physical, mental, and even moral effects. In the Kaitish tribe the performance of some ceremonies, in the course of which the churinga are handled, renders a man so full of this mana, or, as they call it, churinga, using the very word, that he becomes for the time taboo.103.2 In addition, the churinga have virtue to make the yams and the grass-seed grow; they frighten the game, or enable a man to secure it, and so forth. They are handled in a manner which it is no exaggeration to call devout. They are polished with red ochre to “soften” them, a term that, as Messrs Spencer and Gillen remark, “very evidently points to the fact that the [churinga] is regarded as something much more than a piece of wood or stone. It is intimately associated with the ancestor, and has ‘feelings,’ just as human beings have, which can be soothed by rubbing in the same way in which those of living men can be.” We gather that a man will sing to his churinga, that the subject of his song will be the mythical story of the ancestor (or the previous incarnation) to whom it belonged, and that as he sings and rubs it with his hand, “he gradually comes to feel that there is some special association between him and the sacred object—that a virtue of some kind passes from it to him, and also from him to it.” So from generation to generation it gathers more and more of what our authors describe as magical power—what would certainly be called in Melanesia mana—the mystic potentiality already discussed.104.1

Thus the churinga have to the Blackfellow a more or less definitely personal aspect. It may be said that the songs chanted over them are after all merely magical spells. But the spell implies some more or less defined personality in the objects to which it is addressed. In these tribes rites are performed, called in the Arunta tongue Intichiuma, for the purpose of causing a manifestation of the power of the totem, of multiplying the totem-animal or plant, and generally of increasing the prosperity of the totem. In the course of these rites there is much singing. The members of the group invite the witchetty grubs to come from all directions and lay their eggs, or the hakea-trees to flower and their blossoms to fill with honey; they beg the rain to come and bring fish; they direct the kangaroos to go from one place to another; and so on. Even when the songs and the actions performed in the ceremonies recall the events of the mythical past, they are not necessarily more magical than the words of sacred dramas, which everywhere in the lower culture inseparably interweave what we generally speak of as magic and religion. The mighty ancestors (as elsewhere the gods) whose deeds they chant are present in the rite. “The totem, the ancestor, and the descendant (that is to say, the performer) appear in these songs as one. Without keeping in view the indivisible unity of the totem, the mythic ancestor and the offspring (ratapa), many of the songs are quite incomprehensible.”105.1 Thus where invitation or command is not issued directly to the object, the mana of the ancestors seems to be evoked for the accomplishment of the end.

Again, so far from the Arunta medicine-men being practitioners of anything analogous to modern science, they are initiated by, and their power is derived from, the spirits. These spirits are believed to put the candidate to death, to carry him down into their abode, and there to take out his internal organs, replacing them with a new set, planting in his body a supply of magical crystals by which all his subsequent wonders will be performed, and then bringing him to life again. He remains, however, in a condition of insanity for some days. It is true that an imitation of this process can be performed by medicine-men of flesh and blood; but candidates thus initiated have a lower repute (save apparently among the Warramunga) than those initiated directly by the spirits. The crystals are in any case the home and symbol of the magician’s powers. They are in fact full of mana. If they be lost, the magician ceases to be a magician, and the crystals themselves return to the spirits. All over Australia, so far as we know, the same influence is attributed to them.105.2 On the eastern side of the continent, where something like a tribal All-Father is believed in, he is regarded, like Odin, as the mightiest of magicians, and the crystals are, as well as the bull-roarer, among his special attributes. Let me observe too in passing that it is not a little significant that, as in the witchcraft of Europe and Africa, portions of dead bodies are in great request in Australia for magical purposes. The “pointing bone,” to which I referred just now, is part of a dead man’s leg or arm. A portion of his personality inheres in it. Consequently, even before it is “sung,” it is endowed with his mana, which the singing only enhances and directs in its course.106.1 For the same reason human fat and a dead man’s hair are important parts of the Australian native’s magical apparatus.

The initiation of the medicine-man or magician by spirits, often the spirits of the dead, is practically the universal belief in Australia. In this respect the Australian medicine-man is in line with many of his professional brethren elsewhere. In the island of Saghalien the Gilyak shamans are chosen vessels, to whom their tutelary gods reveal their high calling in vision or in trance. From the moment that this is done the gods install themselves as the new shaman’s assistants and perform his commands. Yet shamanhood is not regarded as a gift, but as a burden. To become a shaman, either a man must find favour with one of these assistant tutelary gods, or such a god must be bestowed upon him by his father or uncle. Conversion into a shaman forms a break in the life of the chosen, accompanied by many complicated psychical phenomena. The process in his own case was described by a shaman to a Russian anthropologist. For more than two months he was sick and lay without movement or consciousness. As soon as he revived from one attack he fell under another. “I should have died,” he said, “if I had not become a shaman.” He began to dream at night that he sang shaman songs. Visions appeared to him, and he was told to make a drum and the proper apparatus of a shaman, and to sing. If he were a simple man, the vision told him, nothing would happen; “but if thou art a shaman, be a real shaman.” When he awoke he found that it was thought the spirits had killed him, and preparations for his funeral rites had been made. But he got a drum and began to sing. This produced a feeling which hovered between intoxication and death. Then for the first time he saw his tutelary gods, and received from them instruction in his business as a shaman.107.1 Among the Koryak on the adjacent continent, “nobody can become a shaman of his own free will. The spirits enter into any person they may choose and force him to become their servant.” Such persons are “usually nervous young men, subject to hysterical fits, by means of which the spirits express their demand” that the patient shall become a shaman. Fasting, paroxysms, exhaustion succeed one another. Finally, the spirits appear to the patient in visible form, endow him with power, inspire and instruct him.107.2 In other words, they fill him with their mana.

Here we have manifestly the wide-spread phenomena of Possession. In these tribes there are no professional priests. The magicians, though in a sense the intermediaries between men and the higher powers, are not charged with the duty of offering sacrifice and prayer. In South Africa, among the Bantu tribes, also, there are no professional priests. Ancestor-worship is the religion; and the only worship paid is paid to the manes of the dead. The proper person to offer sacrifices is the head of the family for the time being. But medicine-men or magicians form a regular profession, which is divided into a number of branches. For some of these branches initiation by the spirits of the dead is not necessary. For others it is indispensable. Frequently, however, the same man combines the practice of several branches of the art. All who practise openly are recognized as White Wizards, exercising their powers for the wellbeing of society, in defence of the established order. Yet these very men sometimes boast of being baloyi, a term by which evil wizards are generally known. They claim to be more powerful than ordinary wizards, able to discover and baffle their tricks, and to kill. Moreover, there are good baloyi, who use their power to bless. They are sometimes sent by ancestral spirits to increase the produce of the fields, and then they are said to have bewitched the fields to make them bring forth more fruit. Thus it is clear that a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the social and the antisocial magicians, at least among some of the Bantu tribes. One of the chief branches of the profession is that of exorcist. Now no man can set up as an exorcist without having been himself possessed by the spirits and exorcised. This is indeed the regular method of initiation, for a man is not merely restored to ordinary life by exorcism; he is also aggregated to the society of magicians; he enters a new life; he becomes a neophyte among the practitioners, and must undergo further probation which may result in his becoming more than an exorcist—he may become clairvoyant or a diviner, a prophet or a worker of marvels; he may cure diseases or cause the rain to fall. Many practitioners profess more than one of these accomplishments; the most distinguished profess several.109.1

How far the phenomena of possession are voluntary need not here be discussed. The Zulu or Xosa patient (if we may call him so) becomes sickly and abstinent; he distinguishes himself by dreams and visions, and begins to talk of his intercourse with spirits of the dead; he becomes “a house of dreams”; he is hysterical; he sings; he behaves as though he were out of his mind; he is possessed by an Itongo, an ancestral spirit. Then he is admitted to the society of the magicians and receives instruction from them. Finally, he is accounted a new creature, whose intercourse with spirits and share in their supernatural powers is recognized by everyone.109.2

Among the Ngombe in the Northern Congo basin, we are told, “the ghosts call [to the man] from the bowels of the earth. He goes into the grave, underground, and stays there four months. When the four months are finished he comes forth, rubs himself with camwood and dances, contorting his body.” This seems to be the neophyte’s only preparation for the office of nganga. After that, according to the same authority, “whenever a man is sick he is carried by others to the nganga. They accompany him to the man of ghosts. He looks at the body, then recites to the spirit. They lift up the man and go out. All the people dance, and he who is afflicted with sickness is brought to the doctor for medicine.”109.3

On the North American continent the medicine-man was not “possessed,” as among the Siberian tribes and the Bantu; but his mode of initiation was similar. The Ojibway sorcerer after prolonged fasting was initiated by the supernatural powers.110.1 Among many of the Californian tribes “a spirit, be it that of an animal, a place, the sun or other natural object, a deceased relative or an entirely unembodied spirit, visits the future medicine-man in his dreams, and the connection thus established between them is the source and basis of the latter’s power. This spirit becomes his guardian spirit or ‘personal.’ From it he receives the song or rite or knowledge of the charm, and the understanding which enable him to cause or remove disease, and to do and endure what other men cannot.”110.2 The Skidi Pawnee is allured to the abode of the mysterious animal-powers, and there taught their knowledge and gifted with their powers; or he is visited by a supernatural being in dreams for the same purpose.110.3

Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo “there are two descriptions of manangs [shamans], the regular and the irregular. The regular are those who have been called to that vocation by dreams, and to whom the spirits have revealed themselves. The irregular are self-created and without a familiar spirit.” It is not enough for the manang simply to say “that he feels himself called; he must prove to his friends that he is able to commune with the spirits; and in proof of this he will occasionally abstain from food and indulge in trances, from which he will awake with all the tokens of one possessed by a devil, foaming at the mouth and talking incoherently.”110.4 One of the ways to “get magic” among the Malays is to meet the ghost of a murdered man. In order to do this a ceremony must be performed at the grave on a Tuesday at full moon. The aspirant calls upon the deceased for help, and states his request. Ultimately an aged man appears, to whom the request is repeated; and it would seem that the suppliant gets what he wants.111.1

In Europe the dominant religion has proscribed witchcraft with terrors spiritual and physical, which have emphasized its separation and intensified its spiritual aspect. The judicial records are full of stories of initiation to the Black Art that begin by the formal renunciation of Christian worship and baptism. The novice tramples upon symbols of the Christian faith, or otherwise treats them with indignity. He utters incantations with appropriate rites to call up the devil. That gentleman then appears to receive his formal profession of allegiance, admit him ceremonially into his band of worshippers, and tutor him in the methods of his art. That the confessions of this procedure were not wholly imaginary, and dictated by the orthodox functionaries who examined the tortured victim, is rendered probable from the fact that down to the present day, in many continental countries, if not in the British Islands, the peasant witch enters upon her trade by a rite recalling its main features.

It would be easy to expand the list. Enough has, however, been said to show that over a wide area of the world and in the most various stages of civilization what we call supernatural beings are concerned with the preparation of the magician’s career, and that the Arunta beliefs do not differ in this respect from those current among many other peoples. In none of the foregoing cases does the shaman or magician as such exercise the functions of priest. He offers no sacrifices, he addresses no prayers on behalf of the community to the divinities. He performs wonders by the aid of the spirits; but the spirits who first invade and then help him are by no means everywhere those who are the object of worship. It is not my intention to discuss the psychological and physiological aspects of the phenomena. They recall the phenomena of “conversion” among ourselves. Occurring, as they usually do, at or shortly after the commencement of adult life, they display the effervescence of puberty, accentuated by the neurotic peculiarities of the individual, acted upon, directed and controlled by the social environment. As in the case of “conversion,” too, they are liable to become epidemic, particularly at times of social and political crisis, where feeling in the tribe is more than commonly excited.

Before passing away from the subject we may turn to a different type of shaman. Among the Veddas the shaman is in effect the priest. The spirits to whom offerings are made are those of the dead. It is the shaman who makes the offering, and performs the invocation; and he is in return possessed by them. But here the novice is chosen and trained by one who already exercises the profession. He does not become possessed in his capacity as novice. Possession only takes place at the public ceremonies; it is temporary; and it may affect others besides the shaman. The position of shaman is practically hereditary, for the novice trained is usually the shaman’s son, or his sister’s son, that is to say, his actual or potential son-in-law. The Veddas are on a level of civilization as low as the Arunta. Though they do not practise rites of such senseless and revolting cruelty, in their natural condition and apart from external influence they live entirely by hunting and the collection of honey; they build no huts, but take advantage of caves and rock-shelters; their pottery is of the roughest description; and the iron arrowheads, axes and other implements which they possess are obtained by barter from the Sinhalese, for they do not exercise the art of smithying. The lowest and wildest of them, however, know nothing of hostile magic. Even protective magic is hardly practised; and the charms they make use of appear to be derived from the neighbouring Sinhalese. It is true they have traditions that it used to be customary to seek strength and confidence to avenge insults by chewing a small dried piece of the liver of a man who had been killed for the purpose. This is an application of a well-known magical principle.113.1 But, so far as our information goes, it is a solitary case. If therefore the Vedda shaman is not initiated by the spirits, it is not because the Veddas have not yet passed out of the age of magic. If there be an age of magic in which religion is unknown, for aught that appears they have not yet passed into it. At all events they cannot be said to confirm the generalization that magic precedes religion; for magical practices once adopted persist with remarkable tenacity into the highest planes of culture.

There is, finally, an example of a functionary occupying an ambiguous position as priest or magician, at which we may glance for a moment. The Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, before the arrival of strangers in modern times, were, like the Arunta, living in the Stone Age. They had no agriculture; their food was supplied by the chase, or the search for insects, roots, and honey. They had indeed learned to build huts; and they had the use of fire, but they were ignorant how to produce it. They are divided into local tribes, ruled by elected chiefs with very limited power. The chiefs acquire such authority as they have by their skill in hunting and fishing and their reputation for generosity and hospitality; and it is on these qualifications that social status mainly depends. Social and political organization is therefore, as well as religion, in a somewhat rudimentary stage. Nor is magic more advanced than religion. The only persons who exercise any magical or religious functions are called by the title of oko-paiad, or Dreamer. Such a man obtains his position by relating an extraordinary dream foreshadowing some future event, which afterwards happens. Since these practitioners are credited with the power of communicating in dreams with the spirits, it may be presumed that the initial dream is in the nature of a “call” by them. The oko-paiad does not seem to be subject to possession by the spirits; but he is believed to have powers of second sight and a mysterious influence over the fortunes and lives of his neighbours. He is therefore the constant recipient of presents, which are in effect bribes for his favour. Our information concerning his proceedings is of the scantiest description. It does not extend to any active attempt at magical interference with the fate or the actions of others. Perhaps we may conclude that any interference he may be held to exercise is confined to his intercourse in dreams with the spirits. However this may be, his only recorded overt acts are on the occurrence of an epidemic, when “he brandishes a burning log, and bids the evil spirit keep at a distance.” Sometimes as a further precaution he plants stakes in front of each hut, and smears them in stripes with black beeswax, the smell of which, being peculiarly offensive to the demon, ensures his speedy departure.114.1 If any inference can be drawn from this account it hardly seems to favour the priority of the evolution of magic over religion; for the oko-paiad, if not initiated by the spirits, is essentially one who is in communication with them, and who exercises his powers not merely against individuals (of which there is no direct evidence), but in favour of them and of the community.

The conclusion is that there is no solid and convincing proof of the development of magic prior to religion. If the Mincopies, the Veddas, and the tribes of Central Australia fail us, whither shall we turn for evidence?

Yet there is a consideration generally applicable to savage life that must not be overlooked here. Vague, uncertain, and contradictory as the savage may be in his beliefs, sluggish as his mind may be in regard to matters of speculation,—in matters of practical importance, the provision of food and shelter, the protection of his women and children, and the defence of his little community against aggression by human foes or the wild beasts, he is bound to be on the alert and to act. His wits are therefore sharpened for action. Action is natural to him; thought which has no immediate objective in action is strange. The energies remaining when the body is satisfied with food, when shelter is assured, and hostilities against his fellow-man or the lower animals are for the moment forgotten, must be expended in other kinds of action. Bodily recreation—play—satisfies this craving for movement and excitement, while at the same time it fulfils the useful purpose (albeit unconsciously to him) of keeping his faculties, bodily and mental, ready and supple, and of training them still further for more directly practical ends. This form of activity, organized into dances and games, easily begets ritual. The Hottentots danced all night at full moon with extravagant gestures, saluting the moon and invoking her for cattle-fodder and milk.115.1 The Wichita of North America played every year in the spring a game of shinny, which represented, there can be little doubt, the contest of winter and spring.116.1 In such cases as these, and they are legion, a recreation has been indulged in at a period appropriate for it—the dance in the clear, cool night, the game under the mild returning warmth and stimulating influences of the early spring. Because it thus naturally recurs at definite times it comes to be regarded as proper, even necessary: it develops into a rite. To a similar game played by the Omaha was attached, in the phrase of the writers who describe it, “a cosmic significance.”116.2 The impulse to movement, to exertion, liberates emotion; the emotion is in turn intensified by its collective expression; and this intensification would lead to the conviction that the expression has somehow or other in itself an influence on external nature, just as it would have in human relations. The exact mechanism by which it acted probably would not trouble the savage at an early stage. Later, it would be fitted into the framework of his ideas. The Hottentot rite came to be addressed to the moon. The Wichita rite seems to have been thought to assist directly in conquest of the evil power of winter and the renewal of life.

But we may go further back still. I have referred to the make-believe that is a relief to overcharged feelings. Emotional stress is felt at times by everybody, be he savage or civilized. It causes a reaction, more or less powerful in proportion to the magnitude of the cause or the excitability of the person who undergoes it. It is expressed in acts sometimes of the wildest extravagance, sometimes rhythmic and partially controlled. These acts are spontaneous, automatic. Recurrence of the emotional stress would tend to be accompanied by repetition of the acts in which the reaction had been previously expressed. If the recurrence were sufficiently frequent, the form of the reaction would become a habit to be repeated on similar occasions, even where the stress was less vivid or almost absent. It can hardly be doubted that many rites owe their existence to such reactions. The Pawnees, like the Wichita, a tribe belonging to the Caddoan stock of North America, summoned with song and dance and other elaborate rites the buffaloes which were the mainstay of their existence. Everything depended—sustenance, provision of clothing and tents and all other necessaries, hence the very continuance of the tribal life—on the buffaloes. Their movements about the great central plains of the continent were mysterious. The true causes were unknown; the course was not predicable with certainty. Accordingly, the period of expectation while the people were awaiting the advent of the herd was one of great emotional tension. It was relieved by a series of acts, originally automatic, or quasi-automatic, which would gradually assume more and more definitely the calling and enticement of the expected herd. This form of reaction to the particular stress would become habitual. It would end as a solemn rite, which was believed to have a powerful influence in bringing the animals and effecting a satisfactory capture. The orenda of the performers, expressed in the manner consecrated by tradition, would then be held to exercise a compelling power.117.1

To such an origin must be ascribed the rehearsal of a battle that takes place in many savage tribes before the warriors go forth on a raid, and the dances and other ceremonies accomplished by women left at home when their husbands are absent fighting or hunting. More obviously must it be held responsible for a variety of other performances, of which the common spell in this country and on the continent of Europe, to recover an article stolen or the waning affections of a lover, is a type. The love-lorn maiden takes some object, frequently a shoulder-bone of lamb, and sticks a knife or a pin into it, saying:

“’Tis not this bone I mean to stick,

But my lover’s heart I mean to prick,

Wishing him neither rest nor sleep

Till he comes with me to speak.”

Of spells like this the preparation of an effigy, and the assaults upon it representing acts done to the person for whom the effigy stands, are an elaboration. The overcharged emotion first of all finds a vent in an attack upon any convenient object. Then from various causes a special object is singled out as the appropriate vehicle of the performer’s wrath, hatred or jealousy, the act gradually becomes more solemn and deliberate, and a formal rite is evolved.

It should hardly be necessary to say that it is not claimed that the foregoing paragraphs explain the genesis of all rites. But that many do thus originate accords with all we know of human nature. In any case a rite was not instituted because men were previously convinced of its efficacy. The primitive savage may have been a man of preternatural stupidity; but even he would not have been equal to putting the cart before the horse in that fashion. The rite must have been an established habit before a conscious meaning filtered into it. Interpretation would be a gradual process. If the rite were shared by the social group, and by expansion or accretion attained sufficient importance, the interpretation might take the form of a myth. The myth in turn would contribute to the stability of the rite, by means of the sacred character it would affix to it, or the reminiscence of an ancient experience it would be supposed to embody.

Thus ritual, religious or magical, is evolved long before belief has become definite and cogent. It may emerge from what I may style the mere surface of human nature, from necessities mainly physical, from direct nervous reaction. It may, on the other hand, have roots in the social relations of mankind. The savage naturally, habitually—I might almost say instinctively—applies the forms of social life to his relations with his non-human surroundings. Presumably, as we have seen, primitive man in his rough way did likewise.

But this affords no argument for holding that magic preceded religion. Rites are not necessarily magical because they are not addressed to defined personalities. They may be yet inchoate. Not until reflection has begun to clarify in some degree man’s relation to his environment (a slow and tedious process, slowest and most tedious of all in the early stages) can we reckon them satisfactorily under the one head or the other. If I am right in contending that magic and religion flow from a common source, rites may remain for generations in an indecisive condition which is neither, but may crystallize in either shape according to the specific occasion, the environment, or the dominant mental and institutional tendency of the social group. Such a transformation will be gradual and piecemeal, and in large part, if not entirely, unconscious. Many things done “for luck,” even in the higher civilizations, are still in this indeterminate state. The intellectual atmosphere is unfavourable; their development is arrested, probably for ever. I suspect that an accurate appreciation of the Intichiuma rites practised by the Arunta and their neighbours would show that they too are not finally to be assigned to either category.

The part played by society in the generation of religion demands some further observations. From whatever type of anthropoid ape man has been evolved, it is safe to believe that he has from the first lived in communities. But for this he could have made no progress, if even he could have existed as man. The condition of the solitary apes is incapable of improvement. It is incredible that if rudimentary human beings had lived like them in a group consisting at the utmost of a male, female, and still dependent young, they would ever have emerged into humanity, or that if they had emerged they would have been able to hold their own against the foes that surrounded them. The lowest human beings are never found solitary. If they wander on the food-quest, or are driven away from higher and more powerful societies, they do not fail to come together at certain times to enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to exchange experiences, to plan hunts or raids, to perform rites in common and partake of common pleasures. This implies organization. In fact, such communities, when they meet and live the communal life, are not found to be a mere incoherent congeries of individuals. They are true societies, organized, some more, some less closely, on a definite plan, in which every individual has his place. The Australian natives have evolved social institutions of proverbial complexity. The Bushmen of South Africa, persecuted and broken by intrusive races, have left us on the walls of the caverns they haunted representations marvellous in their skill of ceremonies apparently totemic. And if this interpretation of the drawings be doubtful, such remains as have been preserved of their traditions afford evidence of an organization by no means contemptible. The Seri of the Californian Gulf, perhaps on a still lower plane of civilization, and certainly leading their life in more miserable surroundings, are divided into clans and furnished with a social hierarchy built up on a reverence for women almost chivalrous in its type.121.1

The existence everywhere of organized societies implies the paramount influence of the community over the individual. Nor is that influence only a matter of implication. Abundant evidence is found of the control wielded by society over the actions and the very thoughts of its members. The individual is nothing: the group is everything. As Professor Durkheim remarks, every society exercises power over its members, power physical and above all moral. It keeps them in a sensation of perpetual dependence. It is distinct from the individuals who compose it, and consequently its interests are distinct from theirs. But as it cannot attain its ends except through and by means of the individual, it makes an imperious claim on his assistance, exacting it even to the sacrifice of his inclinations and interests. Thus at every moment we are obliged to submit to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor wished to make, and which may even be contrary to our most fundamental instincts.121.2

In these days and among civilized societies, when individualism is so strongly developed in thought and action, we are apt to forget to what an extent religion is an expression of the social organization. An eminent Oxford professor, not long ago deceased, used to say that religion was a social secretion. That may be an excellent way to phrase the relations between society and religion in modern Europe. It is a very incomplete account of them as they exist on the Australian steppe or in the forests of Brazil. In the lower culture religion is much more than a social secretion: it is one aspect of the social organization, inseparable from the rest. The organization cannot be understood without it—nay, it cannot exist apart from it. In these societies every member has his position and takes his share in religious rites. Whatever his place in the social scale, he is on the same level of knowledge, he shares in the same beliefs, with his fellows. The mental atmosphere of each is charged with the same electric fluid, which communicates itself to all alike. Especially on the occasions of reunion its action is intensified, frequently resulting in excitement, in vehement exaltation, translated into the wildest and most extravagant actions. But these reunions are not merely social, they are religious festivals. For religion pervades every thought and deed both of the individual and of the community. It binds the members together as no other force could do. The power of society over the individual is the power of religion. For religion is not as yet distinguished from politics, from law, from medicine, or from other forms of social activity that in our stage of culture have long vindicated their freedom.

Religion has therefore grown up with society. Its form has changed with the changing forms of society. It cannot be said to be generated by society, inasmuch as it is coeval with it. The very mould in which a society in the lower stages of culture is cast is religious. Church and State are of necessity coterminous, equivalent, one. But this evolution must of necessity have taken time. The inchoate society of half-human beings would have had a correspondingly vague and inchoate religion. As intelligence grew, the bonds of the horde would gather strength, what we may call public opinion would become more and more definite with the gradual acquisition of speech, until at last man emerged in something like a regularly ordered community. It is difficult for us to imagine the steps of this long process, by which, with society, what we call religion was evolved. I have tried in an earlier chapter to sketch the external conditions that would have impressed humanity in its dawn. These external conditions would have driven the individual more and more in upon the group, and thus would have materially contributed to the conscious formation of common interests founded upon the common need of material help, of sympathy, and of relief from anxiety and terror, whether of actual or imagined danger. The formation of common interests must have been accompanied by the increasing subordination of the individual to the group. In the extension of the authority of the group over the individual it is that M. Durkheim finds the origin of the idea of the impersonal force which the Omaha call wakonda. The idea, as I have shown, lies at the root of the religious conceptions of peoples in more than one vast cultural area. That such authority of the group, necessarily impersonal as it is, would operate to strengthen the concept of a general impersonal force, when once that concept had been formed, there can be no question. To ascribe to it the origin of the concept, however, seems to me an unwarranted inference. It is more probable that the conflict of the Personal and the Impersonal should arise in the awakening mind as the result of its outlook upon the world. The whole environment does not present a personal aspect at once. As personalities grow into relative definiteness one after another, there remains behind them the Unknown, full of vague possibilities, impersonal, but the source of personalities, which are for ever looming forth as the attention is concentrated on successive objects. Since it is the source of personalities, it is the source of power, mysterious and far-reaching, everywhere enveloping the beholder. It is true this power, in order to become effectual, must clothe itself with personal attributes. That, however, is not because it is formed on experience of the authority of the group acting by individuals, but because personalization is the inevitable tendency of the mind.

Professor Durkheim’s theory of religion is exhibited in detail only in one type. He speaks of “the aptitude of society to erect itself into a god or to create gods”;124.1 but he illustrates his thesis only in the case of totemism, which he takes as an example of the religion of the least advanced people hitherto thoroughly examined. He is careful to say that the question whether totemism has been more or less widespread is of secondary importance; it is at all events the most primitive and the simplest religion it is possible to reach.124.2 But his whole argument, if it prove anything, goes to show the universality of totemism. For the idea of the soul, according to the data of ethnography, appears to him to have been coeval with humanity, and that not merely in germ but in all its essential characters; and the soul is nothing else than the totemic principle incarnated in each individual, a portion of the collective soul of the group, that is to say of the totem, individualized.124.3 Now totemism is certainly a very archaic form of religion. That it was universal is, however, very far from being demonstrated. It may well be that many branches of the human race have outgrown it, and that its traces have been obliterated. But among peoples very low down in culture there are many where it is unknown, or at least unrecognizable. It is more than possible, could we ascertain the facts, that Bushman society was organized on the basis of totemism. But there are other tribes no higher than Bushmen and Australian Blackfellows where we fail to discern it. The Veddas of Ceylon are indeed divided into clans with female descent. Yet no totem has emerged after the most careful enquiries. Their religion is essentially a cult of the dead, based on fear. The dead man is addressed as “Lord! New Driver-away of Vaeddas!” Sacrifices are offered and eaten as an act of communion with the deceased. In addition to the dead of the local group, “certain long-dead Veddas who may be regarded as legendary heroes” are invoked, of whom the most important are Kande Yaka, an ancient hunter whose assistance is implored for good hunting, and his brother Bilindi Yaka, a sort of pale double of himself. But they are not known among all the Vedda communities, though Kande is regarded by some as Lord or leader of the dead. There are also other spirits, who appear to be of foreign origin and superimposed upon the original cult of the dead, and are perhaps on their way to become nature-spirits.125.1 The religion of the Andaman Islanders “consists of fear of the evil spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them.” There is besides an anthropomorphic being, Puluga, who is said to be “the cause of all things.” He receives no active worship, though acts thought to be displeasing to him are avoided “for fear of damage to the products of the jungle.” There is some evidence that he is the north-east wind; and Sir R. C. Temple is of opinion that he is “fundamentally, with some definiteness, identifiable with the storm, mixed up with ancestral chiefs.” He acts by his daughters, the Morowin, who are his messengers; but he seems to content himself with pointing out to the evil spirits offenders against himself, without actually taking steps against them.126.1 Totemism is nowhere hinted at by the enquirers who have busied themselves with this childlike, and on the whole harmless, but somewhat capricious people.

Still very low in the scale of civilization, though somewhat higher than these, are the tribes of the interior forests of Brazil. They people their environment with imaginary beings more or less hostile. The object of their ceremonies appears to be to conciliate the favour of these gentry, or to hold them at arm’s length. When once the death-rites are completed little account is taken of the departed. So much we may gather from the reports of two German expeditions, written by distinguished scientific men who led the expeditions. Although they penetrated different parts of the country, there was a general resemblance between the civilization of the Indians met with by both explorers. A French anthropologist has remarked that English and German observers do not interest themselves to the same degree, or in the same way, in the social life of peoples in the lower culture; for whereas the German explorers by preference describe, and that with praiseworthy minuteness, the nature of the country and the material civilization of the people, the English, on the other hand, interest themselves more in the intellectual products, the traditions and beliefs. In other words, he said, the German is more of an ethnographer, the Englishman more of a student of folklore and psychologist. There is perhaps a measure of truth in this remark. It may go far to explain why more distinct and definite accounts have not been given either by Professor Karl von den Steinen or Dr Theodor Koch-Grünberg of the religions of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil. In any case, we miss much that we should have expected to find in their reports on the religious beliefs and ceremonies of these tribes. Among the omissions is that of any mention of totemism—an institution which concerns organization and government as much as religion. What renders the omission significant in the case of Professor von den Steinen, and not merely the result of want of interest in the subject, is that he has taken pains to ascertain and record the attitude of the natives towards the lower animals. He makes it clear that they draw no strict line of demarcation between man and brute. Nay, he goes the length of saying that we must think the boundary completely away. Human beings are indebted to the lower animals for the most important elements of their culture, many of which they have acquired from them by force or guile. More than that, the Bororó claim to be actually araras (a kind of bird with brilliant red plumage); their neighbours the Trumai are believed to be water-animals; a certain cannibal tribe is descended from the jaguar; and so forth. These beliefs are not totemic, for they concern not clans but whole tribes.127.1 Apparently, therefore, there is no totemism among the wild forest-tribes investigated.

If the concept of the soul (which, it is needless to say, all these peoples possess) were coeval with humanity, and if it were only the totemic principle individualized, then totemism must have been coeval with humanity, and it must have been universal. If so, it is at least curious that the Veddas, the Andaman Islanders, and the forest-tribes of Brazil—all of them on the horizon of civilization on which totemism is found—should display no traces of it. If the concept of impersonal force, the substratum of religious and magical beliefs, be derived from the authority of society over the individual, and not merely strengthened and developed by it, it is odd that religious and magical beliefs should, so low down in culture, have issued in such widely divergent forms. The worship of the dead, the conciliation of hostile nature-spirits, the fear of an anthropomorphic being of enormous power, are all explicable as the result of the action of external conditions on human mentality and emotions. They are not explicable as the direct product of the authority of the group over the individual. And if totemism had originally held sway over the Veddas, the Mincopies and the Brazilian tribes, it is not easy to conceive how it could have evolved in directions so diverse,—and that without leaving any authentic witness to its past. It is quite another thing if the action of the group had been rather to combine and consolidate, to intensify and to organize the sensations and emotions awakened in its members by external nature, to give them a measure of definiteness in the process, and to habituate the individual to certain modes of reaction to the sensations, and to certain forms of expression of the beliefs engendered by the emotions thus awakened.

IV. Divergence

In the foregoing pages I have attempted to trace Magic and Religion to a common root. We have found them inextricably intertwined very low down in culture; we have seen the difficulty of distinguishing them by way of scientific definition, and have been forced back upon ordinary usage. Both alike are concerned with the supernatural and the uncanny; but the one deals with it by compulsion, by the direct exertion of human orenda upon the objects sought to be constrained, the other by the indirect method of appeal to mightier powers than human to exercise their orenda upon those objects, in order to obtain the result desired. And I have contended that the opposition of Magic and Religion, on which writers of authority like Professor Frazer and the late Sir Alfred Lyall have so much insisted, is so far from being essential that it is a result of their concurrent development and of the general advance of civilization, and is even yet imperfectly accomplished. The argument seems to require some further illustrations.

First, let me observe that the definition of magic here adopted does by no means coincide with that of Professor Frazer, though, like his, it rests upon the method of compulsion as the distinguishing characteristic. That, however, is not because of any faith by primeval man in the invariable order of nature or in the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. The compulsion of magic, as I understand it, is wielded by, and dependent upon, the personal orenda of the magician, either directly or through the medium of the powerful and uncanny beings whom he succeeds in bringing into play.

The idea of a god in our minds is associated with a reverential attitude that is very far from being universally adopted. In a later essay we shall see that threats of bodily injury, even (in the legends) actual hand-to-hand combats, and (in fact) chastisement of the material representatives of divinity, are often regarded as quite appropriate measures to be taken in dealing with beings who are ordinarily the objects of worship. I have already referred to the constraining power attributed to sacrifice and other rites in some of the more advanced religions. Where ritual has undergone a long term of development, where it has been subjected for many ages to continuous thought, and to elaboration in order to provide for new needs or against unforeseen contingencies, there it is apt to acquire a proportionate value of its own, independent of the merits of the performer. The sacrifice which is a gift to the gods imperiously demands its looked-for repayment, and will not be denied. The penance, whether it be in the nature of a sacrifice or a spell, carries with it, like the Hindu rite of dharna, an implied curse if not responded to. In either case the deity to whom it is directed has no choice but to comply.

The constraining influence may take a variety of forms, and is by no means confined to one plane of civilization, or to one cultural area. Sometimes it is expressed in knots to which is widely attributed what we call magical power. In Morocco, where civilization has rather deteriorated than progressed for many ages, the cult of the dead is largely prevalent. Professor Westermarck records that a Berber servant of his told him that once when in prison he invoked a certain great female saint whose tomb was in a neighbouring district, and tied his turban, saying: “I am tying thee, Lälla Rah’ma Yusf, and I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me.” And a person in distress will sometimes go to her grave and knot the leaves of some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words: “I tied thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou releasest me from the toils in which I am at present.”130.1

This perhaps also is, as Professor Westermarck suggests, a conditional curse. Now a curse, like other magical proceedings before referred to, is primarily a relief of overcharged feelings. Uttered with all the strength of those feelings by an aggrieved or baffled adversary, it evokes even in our breasts to-day shuddering and horror. Much more then in days when the man’s orenda was deemed to go out in speech with immediate result upon the object to which he directed it. When gods came to be adopted and worshipped, strength was added to the curse by invocation of the god. The god’s name added to the curse was an addition of the god himself. For the name is a part, and an important part, of the god, and cannot be used without effect. The god is bound to respond to it, and to act in accordance with the votary’s demand. For this reason the real names of gods were kept secret. Mystery thus attached to the name of the God of the Hebrews: hence the express prohibition to “take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Almost all over the world this belief in efficacy of the uttered name as a means of compulsion is responsible not merely for taboos on the names of gods, and of men living or dead, but also for the form and potency of magical formulæ. If you know the name of a spirit and utter it, or sometimes even threaten to utter it, you compel the owner’s attention to your wants. Or you may pretend to be some great personage, such as (wherever the Mohammedan tradition has penetrated) King Solomon or the angel Gabriel; and in that name you may issue your commands. Or, as among Christians, you call for the obedience of a spirit in the great name of God or the Lord Jesus Christ. In India to repeat the divine name aloud, or even by way of meditation, “is the most usual way of acquiring religious merit.… So much importance is given to this mode of meditation that Tulsidas in his Ramayan lays down that the name of Rama is greater than Rama himself.” In other words, its utterance compels him. “It is said of a certain Hindu who had notoriously lived a life of impiety that he obtained salvation by calling on his deathbed for his son by his name, which happened to be Nârâyan.”132.1 The name Nârâyan is sacred. It was originally a title of Brahmâ, but is now usually applied to Vishnu, and is that under which he was first worshipped.132.2

The curse, if curse it were, involved in the rite practised by Professor Westermarck’s servant was not of the kind dependent on the utterance of a name. It was rather of that in which the curse is conveyed by a sign or figure deriving its power from the orenda of the magician himself. I have already referred to one species of such curses intended for the protection of property by marking it as taboo to the owner.132.3 In this form they are chiefly used by the Malayo-Polynesian and Melanesian peoples and on the eastern side of Central Africa, though they have their analogues elsewhere.132.4 The leaden tablets of defixiones employed by the ancient Greeks, of which numerous examples are known, show a similar practice founded on similar ideas. The tablet is inscribed with the name of the person intended to be injured, and it is then “defixed,” or bound, with a nail. The ceremony was doubtless accompanied by some words expressive of the intention. Indeed the expression of the intention was in course of time recorded on the tablet. A further stage in development was reached when the gods were invoked, beginning with Hermes and Ge, and going on to other chthonic divinities. Later, apparently towards the end of the third century B.C., the custom began of devoting to various gods lost property and the thief who had stolen it. Such tablets affixed to the walls of temples doubtless served the purpose of our advertisements for the recovery of lost or stolen property. The difference is that, whereas we offer material rewards, the Greeks invoked the help of the gods and threatened the thief or receiver with supernatural vengeance.133.1 The use of defixiones spread into Italy, and has lasted into quite modern times, or, it may be truer to say, was revived under the influence of learned men who at the close of the Middle Ages became imbued with the astrology and magic of earlier days. One of these learned men, Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, who attained high judicial office under the Emperor Charles the Fifth, but afterwards got into trouble for his occult studies, wrote a book on Occult Philosophy, which was translated into English in the middle of the seventeenth century. At that time the study of magic was falling into disrepute. Agrippa’s book was left to charlatans who preyed upon the ignorant. Some of the results have been found up and down the country in the form of leaden tablets inscribed with curses, mystical numbers and signs, names of the spirits invoked to make the curses effectual and of the victims against whom the curses were intended to operate.133.2 In these modern cases the powers appealed to are no longer beings recognized by the dominant religion. They are relics of religions passed away, or figments of the pedantic imagination. Magic, in short, has for purposes of private vengeance been ousted from religion and has set up for itself.

At any rate the Moroccan rite involves a threat; and a threat is near akin to a curse. Much may be done with gods, as with men, by means of a little judicious bluff. A certain Malay robber kept six tame spirits, to whom he made an offering from time to time. When he did so he called them by name, bidding them: “Come here! Eat my offering! Take you care that my body is not affected, that the flow of my blood is not stayed! Likewise with the bodies of my wife and children. (If not) I’ll turn the earth and the sky the wrong way round!” He was fully convinced of the power of these spirits and apparently of the value of his terrible threat, though, as Mr Annandale, who reports the case, points out, the spirits had been unable to save him from being convicted and imprisoned for his crimes.134.1

In ancient Egypt magic was practised in connection with religion from prehistoric times. Magic and religion “were two products of one and the same Weltanschauung, not disparate either in their methods or in their psychological basis. Nor were they differently estimated from the ethical point of view: magic was deemed permissible, so long as it was turned to no evil purpose. It follows that the classification of Egyptian superstitious practices as (a) religious, (b) magical, must be a purely external mode of classification: the distinction between religion and magic in Egypt has not, and cannot be made to have, any deeper significance.”135.1 The scholar from whom I quote these words, so far from exaggerating the close relationship between magic and religion, may be said to understate it. Magic was an integral part of religion. The priests of the gods were magicians. Magic was employed in the ritual of worship. It enabled the great god Ra to overcome the serpent Apep.135.2 Magical ceremonies performed by the priests over the mummy, or over a statuette representing the deceased, were the means by which his success in passing the necessary tests and his lasting happiness after death were secured. The means employed were those universally known to magic: amulets, waxen and other figures, pictures, spells and words of power, the knowledge of names, rites imitating the results desired, and so forth. Concerning the dead we are told: “Few were those who remained for ever with the Sun, and they were not necessarily the great ones of the earth, nor yet the very good, but those who possessed the most minute information as to the next world, and who were best versed in magic. Thus the whole doctrine is based on a belief in the power of magic.”135.3 “In the next world a correct knowledge of magic words and formulas was absolutely essential. There no door would open to him who knew not its name; no demon would allow the passage of the dead who did not call upon him correctly, nor would any god come to his help unless invoked by the right name; no food could be had so long as the exactly prescribed prayers were not uttered with the true intonations. But the dead who knew these formulas, and who knew how to speak them correctly at the proper moment, who was maâ kherû (right-speaking), might rest assured of immortality and of eternal blessedness.”136.1 This led of course to the multiplication of spells, to the elaboration of ritual, during the long ages of Egyptian history, until at last they must have become extremely burdensome.

Moreover, sorcery was not only expended by man in the service of the gods and of the dead: it was used by the gods themselves. “Only by means of conjurations could Ra himself pass through” the divisions between the twelve hourly spaces of the night.136.2 By the power of his name Neb-er-tcher or Khepera, often identified with certain aspects of Ra, the Sun, evolved himself and created the world.136.3 The secret name of Ra was a word of might. Isis set herself with all her arts to learn it, that she might possess the world in heaven and upon earth as Ra did (that is, become a goddess); and when she had extorted it from the august divinity, she turned the weapon without hesitation upon himself.136.4 By examples like these men were authorized to have recourse to magic in their own secular concerns, their loves and hates, their sickness, their social and business relations, their private enterprizes, their competitions and resentments. Kings consulted the soothsayers on public affairs; they employed magical processes to vanquish their enemies; with the aid of soothsayers and magicians they governed their realm. It was only when sorcery was directed against the king’s life, when it aimed at the overthrow of his power, or the injury or death of others, that it was reckoned a crime, or even reprehended on moral grounds.

Nor did the magician hesitate to compel even the gods to perform his wishes, and to threaten them, like the Malay robber, with dire disaster to themselves and the universe as a punishment of their obstinacy. In one papyrus preserved to us, for example, a woman in labour declares herself to be Isis and summons the gods to her help. If they refuse to come, “Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be, offerings shall no longer be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis. The firmament of the south shall fail, and disaster shall break forth from the sky of the north. Lamentations shall resound from the graves, the midday sun shall no longer shine, the Nile shall not bestow its waters of inundation at the appointed time.”137.1 Such bombastic menaces as these continued to be part of the practitioner’s stock-in-trade in the Roman Empire to the downfall of paganism.

Among the ancient Greeks in Plato’s time there were soothsayers and medicine-men who professed to have power over the gods, so that they could compel them to do their bidding, even though it were to injure another person.137.2 I am not aware whether any of their spells have been preserved.137.3

Cases like these display the religion of the community applied to the private advantage of the individual. More interesting is the authority which Mr Hodson attributes to the khullakpa, or village priest, of the Naga tribes of Manipur. The khullakpa is to be distinguished from the maiba, or medicine-man, who is doctor and magician in one. The maiba is called in to deal with individual cases; the khullakpa plays the leading part when a village genna is held. It is he who offers the sacrifices and performs the rites. The term genna means forbidden. A genna extending to the whole village excludes strangers from entering, and prohibits the inhabitants from going out and from doing any work while the genna lasts; it may also prescribe fasting, continence, and other observances. In short, “the ordinary routine of life is profoundly modified, if not broken off altogether.” A genna may be either periodical, as for the sake of the crops or the hunting; or it may be occasional, as at a death, or against epidemic sickness, or at an earthquake or eclipse. A sacrifice is invariably a part of the ritual. The khullakpa “acts,” says Mr Hodson, “whenever a rite is performed which requires the whole force of the community behind it, and this force finds its operation through him. These village gennas seem in many cases to be inspired by the belief that man, the man, the khullakpa, when fortified by the whole strength and will of the village, is able to control and constrain forces which are beyond his control if unaided.”139.1 If this inference, made by an acute observer, be correct, it is a remarkable example of the corporate strength of the society applied by means of religious rites to the coercion of the gods and other supernatural beings.

Not a little significant of the intimate relations of religion and magic is the fact that many peoples have expressly ascribed the authorship and practice of magic to their gods. In New South Wales the figure of Baiame, the idealized headman just developing into a god, is modelled upon that of a magician. He is described by one of the tribes in so many words as “mightiest and most famous of Wirreenun,” or magicians.139.2 The Arawâk of British Guiana tell of a similar personage in a semi-deified position, named Arawânili or Orowâma, to whom the mysteries of sorcery were revealed by an orehu. The orehu is a sort of mermaid who is an important figure in the mythology of these Indians. She haunts the rivers, a capricious, mischievous, not always malicious and cruel, but sometimes benevolent figure. In one of her kindlier moments she met Arawânili brooding over the condition to which men were reduced by the evil doings of the yauhahu, downright malignant beings, the authors of sickness and death. To combat their depredations she gave him the sorcerer’s rattle and instructed him how to use it. “He followed her directions and thus became the founder of that system which has since prevailed among all the Indian tribes.” According to Arawâk belief Arawânili did not die like other men, but “went up,” that is to say, disappeared or departed in the manner of other American culture-heroes. We have no evidence, however, that he is actually worshipped.140.1

The coast-dwellers of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Pomerania, whose effective belief is in spirits, both manes and spirits non-human in origin, presuppose in their witchcraft the existence of these spirits. Sickness and other ills are caused by evil-disposed spirits, and are combated by magic. But this magic is due to the superior might of well-disposed spirits. It is they who reveal the spells by which human ailments may be vanquished and human desires gratified. Among these spirits are especially to be named the Inal, a spirit with wings like a bird’s and face like an owl’s, inhabiting a great giao-tree (Ficus prolixa), and the Kaya, a gigantic python with human face, worshipped by certain of the natives as ancestor. From the ascription to spirits of all spells made use of by the sorcerers, Father Meier, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the native beliefs, infers that the belief in spirits preceded witchcraft.140.2 Whether the inference be right or wrong, there can be no doubt of the fact that this belief and witchcraft are now inseparable.

Among the Lushai-Kuki of Assam, Pathian the creator, a quasi-supreme and benevolent being, was acquainted with, but is not definitely stated to have been the author of, witchcraft. It was taught by his daughter, as a ransom for her life, to Vahrika, who had caught her stealing water from his private supply. Vahrika is described as “something like” Pathian—a purely mythological figure. He in turn taught it all to others.140.3 In Japan, Jimmu Tennō, the deified legendary founder of the empire, is said to have first taught the use of magical formulæ; while the gods Ohonamochi and Sukunabikona are credited with the invention of medicine and magic.141.1 The ancient Egyptians held Thoth, the god of writing and guardian of law, “to have written the most sacred books and formulas with his own hand, and therein to have set down his knowledge of magic, in which art Isis was his only rival. His pre-eminence in magic naturally led to his becoming the god of medicine, for magic was fully as important to the medical practitioners of the Nile Valley as knowledge of remedies.”141.2 In other words, medicine was not yet separated from magic, the physician was a sorcerer, who may have been versed in simples, but whose practice was essentially mysterious and derived its effect rather from what we call supernatural than natural modes of action. Hence to recognize Thoth as god of medicine was equivalent to recognizing him as god of magic, a character peculiarly suitable to a god of letters.

Finally, not to lengthen the list, if we may trust the Ynglinga-saga, Odin was the author of those crafts which men have long since plied, and among them of magic. He “was wise in that craft wherewith went most might, which is called spell-craft; and this he himself followed. Wherefore he had might to know the fate of men and things not yet come to pass; yea, or how to work for men bane or illhap or ill-heal, and to take wit or strength from men and give them unto others.” He was a notorious shape-shifter. “He knew how by words alone to slake the fire or still the sea, and how to turn the wind to whichso way he would.” He could “wake up dead men from the earth.” He “knew of all buried treasures where they were hidden; and he knew lays whereby the earth opened before him, and mountains and rocks and mounds, and how to bind with words alone whoso might be found dwelling therein; and he would go in and take thence what he would. From all this craft he became exceeding famed, and his foes dreaded him, but his friends put their trust in him, and had faith in his craft and himself; but he taught the more part of his cunning to the temple-priests, and they were next to him in all wisdom and cunning: albeit many others got to them much knowledge thereof, and thence sorcery spread far and wide and endured long.”142.1 Although the opening chapters of the Ynglinga-saga, from which I have extracted these particulars, are a late and euhemerized version of the Scandinavian mythology, the account of Odin’s magical powers contains little that does not appear in the early poems, or cannot be inferred from them. Whatever may have been the primitive form of this renowned god, there can be no doubt that he was before the close of the pagan age regarded as a god of magic and sorcery. His reputation as god of poetry, and probably as war-god, is bound up with this. The magical value attached to verse is very common among peoples in an archaic stage of culture; and it was shared to the full by the ancient Norsemen. Many of them—at least in Viking days, and it is by no means unlikely much earlier—combined in their own persons the warrior with the poet and the sorcerer. Nor shall we go far astray if we conclude that these various strands had been long interwoven to form the character of the Lord of the Anses. The intimate relation existing among the Norse between religion and magic is further indicated by the superior magical knowledge and powers ascribed to them and stated to be originally derived from Odin.

Thus, on the one hand, we find constraint of the higher powers for public or private ends; on the other hand, the invention of spells and practice of magic are attributed to the gods themselves. We may think that constraint of the gods is inconsistent with worship. This is not the notion of peoples among which magic and religion are thus interwoven. The object of religion is to acquire benefits for the individual or the community. With this end men deem themselves justified in applying any means likely to secure it; and they treat their gods as they would powerful fellow-men, seeking favours where favours are to be had for the asking or in return for favours, enforcing compliance with their wishes where prayers will not avail, or cheating them where they get the chance. The repetition of a divine name may be either a favour to the god, or may be compulsion. The votary cares not to distinguish. In either case it brings about the gratification of his wishes. The village genna practised by the Nagas is compulsion. It is none the less worship. Many of the magical texts of ancient Egypt are directed to assisting the gods to overcome their enemies, thus rendering them a favour which they were bound to return. The ritual of the Scapegoat, familiar to us in its Hebrew form,143.1 but in fact found in many other quarters of the globe, presents another form of these magical practices. The sins of which men have been guilty, the evils from which they have been suffering are laden on the head of the unfortunate victim, who is forthwith put to death or driven away forever from society. Whether in the earliest form of the rite the victim was regarded as divine may be doubted: it is certain that it has been taken up into the cult of the gods in many religions, and has been deemed a pious act, a work of obligation, for the wellbeing of the joint community of gods and men.

Divine beings may even be made accomplices in Black or antisocial Magic without any compulsion. The white-headed carrion-hawk (Haliaster intermedius) is the most important bird of omen observed by the Kenyahs of Borneo. Under the name of Bali Flaki he is looked upon as messenger and intermediary between themselves and Bali Penyalong, the Supreme Being. Apparently every individual hawk is such a messenger, but his sacred character appears in his title Bali: a word probably derived from the Sanskrit and sometimes translated holy, but having the force of “an adjectival equivalent of the mana of the Melanesians, or of the wakanda or orenda of North American tribes, words which seem to connote all power other than purely mechanical.”144.1 Bali Flaki is appealed to publicly on behalf of the community on various occasions, as on sowing or harvesting the rice-crop, making war or peace, or in fact before any undertaking or decision. His aid may also “be sought privately by any man who wishes to injure another. For this purpose a man makes a rough wooden image in human form, and retires to some quiet spot on the river-bank, where he sets up a tegulun, a horizontal pole supported about a yard above the ground by a pair of vertical poles. He lights a small fire beside the tegulun, and taking a fowl in one hand, he sits on the ground behind it, so as to see through it a square patch of sky, and so waits until a hawk becomes visible upon the patch. As soon as a hawk appears he kills the fowl, and with a frayed stick smears its blood on the wooden image, saying: ‘Put fat in his mouth.’” This appears to be addressed to the hawk. In the description of what is in effect the same rite as practised among some of the Klemantans of the same island, we are definitely told it is so addressed. The expression means, “Let his head be taken”; for the people are head-hunters, and fat is put in the mouth of every head taken. Messrs Hose and M‘Dougall, whom I am quoting, proceed: “And he puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the image. Then he strikes at the breast of the image with a wooden spear, and throws it into a pool of water reddened with red earth, and then takes it out and buries it in the ground,” in the manner in which only persons dying by violence or some much feared disease are buried. “While the hawk is visible he waves it towards the left; for he knows that if it flies to the left he will prevail over his enemy, but that if it goes to the right his enemy is too strong for him.” In the Klemantan rite, as described for us, he also shouts to the hawk to go to the left. When it has gone in the desired direction he addresses a prayer beginning “O Bali Flaki, go your way, let this man (naming him) die; go and put him in the lake of blood, O Bali Flaki; stab him in the chest, Bali Flaki,” and so on, invoking all sorts of evil deaths upon him.145.1 Now here we have a well-known rite of antisocial magic. But to make it effectual the coöperation of the divine power is requisite. That power is called upon. There is no attempt to coerce Bali Flaki, who, if not himself a god, is at least a messenger and intermediary of the great god Bali Penyalong. Yet there is confidence that he can perform the request, and that he shows by his flight that he will do so.

So on the mainland of India, in the Nilgiri Hills, the Toda sorcerer, having procured some human hair—not that of the person to be injured, for it would be impossible to get it—ties together by its means five small stones, and with a piece of cloth makes a bundle of them. Over them thus tied up he utters his incantation. It begins by calling on his gods; and whether the opening clauses be precisely rendered or not in the following free translation, it is clear that the gods are invoked. Indeed, Dr Rivers, after careful enquiry, expresses the opinion that “in the formulæ used in Toda sorcery appeal to the gods is even more definite than in the prayers of the dairy ritual,” the most important of the religious ceremonies. “In them,” he says, “the names of four most important gods are mentioned, and it seems quite clear that the sorcerer believes he is effecting his purpose through the power of the gods.” The spell runs something like this: “For the sake of Pithioteu, Ön, Teikirzi and Tirshti; by the power of the gods, if there be power; by the gods’ country, if there be a country; may his calves perish; as birds fly away, may his buffaloes go when the calves come to suck; as I drink water, may he have nothing but water to drink; as I am thirsty, may he also be thirsty; as I am hungry, may he also be hungry; as my children cry, so may his children cry; as my wife wears only a ragged cloth, so may his wife wear only a ragged cloth.” The bundle thus enchanted he hides in the thatch of the victim’s hut.146.1

Another example of the complicity in hostile magic of a supernatural being, who perhaps can hardly be pronounced a god in the strict sense of the term, though powerful for good and ill, may be cited, this time from the continent of Africa. The religion of the Boloki (Bangala) on the Upper Congo, we are told, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole or appease, cheat, or conquer and kill those spirits that trouble them—hence their nganga [medicine-man], their rites, their ceremonies and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to be circumvented, there would be no need of their medicine-men and their charms.” Among these various spirits is one called Ejo, the spirit of wealth. “A man who wants to become rich pays a large fee to nganga ya bwaka [the most feared and respected of all the classes of medicine-men], who then uses his influence with Ejo on behalf of his client, who must in all future gains set apart a portion for Ejo, and should he fail to do so, Ejo has the power to punish him.… When a person has received the mono mwa ejo (ejo medicine or charm), and has become wealthy by his luck-giving power, he takes the nail-parings and hair-cuttings of a woman and makes medicine with them; and the woman soon dies and her spirit goes to Ejo as an offering for its help. He is said to lekia nkali (to pass her on as a gift or sacrifice to Ejo).”147.1 It is difficult to distinguish a transaction like this from the ordinary relations of a man to his god. The votary pays tithe of his gains obtained by favour of the spirit; and over and above the tithe, he is under the necessity of providing a human sacrifice from time to time for the spirit. But the means by which the sacrifice is provided are the exercise of witchcraft, and that with the full knowledge and assistance of the supernatural being who is to be kept in good humour thereby.

An example of the intermingling of religion and magic in a different way may also be taken from the same people. “Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place about the time that a person dies, or is being buried, are regarded as caused by the deceased person; hence when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and, giving him a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: ‘Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.’ The son, after this rite, must not drink water (he may drink sugar-cane wine), nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe this custom, the rain will at once fall.”148.1 The boy’s father, having died, has become a mongoli, that is to say, an ancestral spirit of indefinite powers, who watches over the perpetuation of his family, haunts the forest or the river, inspires mediums to deliver oracles, and visits the village at times in the material form of a crocodile or a hippopotamus to receive offerings of sugar-cane wine and food. His favourite son has influence with him to change his purposes, and exercises that influence by prayer. But to make the prayer effectual in staying the storm, he must use a widely diffused charm against rain—the waving of a brand and abstinence from water.

It is probable, as we have seen, that the early stages of ritual were vague and inchoate. It was adaptable to interpretation as culture progressed, as new beliefs were evolved or imported. Such an example of adaptability has been pointed out by Miss Werner in a rite practised by the Anyanja of British Central Africa when rain is wanted. It is complete in itself, but is now prefaced by an appeal to Mpambe, a quasi-supreme being. “The principal part was taken by a woman—the chief’s sister. She began by dropping ufa [maize-flour] on the ground, slowly and carefully, till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched voice, ‘Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula’ (Hear thou, O God, and send rain!), and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning—they always intone their prayers—‘Imva Mpambe.’ The beer was then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a form of salutation to superiors), and finally danced round the chief where he sat on the ground.” Then followed the rite in question. “The dance ceased; a large jar of water was brought and placed before the chief. First Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms and face; then water was poured over her by another woman; then all the women rushed forward with calabashes in their hands, and, dipping them into the jar, threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild gesticulations.” This is obviously a rain-charm, but, as Miss Werner says, it “might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is wanted.” She adds: “Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to show that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and wash themselves in the rivers and streams.”149.1 The women’s action and cries may be interpreted as addressed to someone or something, though possibly originating merely in excessive emotion and now become traditional. It would be only necessary for the cries to become articulate and the name of Mpambe, or some other name, to be pronounced, to form a genuine invocation, as has happened in the Boloki rite just described. Actually the invocation forms the preliminary of the rite: that may be what, for want of better knowledge, we should call an accident. That it is comparatively recent is shown by the employment of maize-flour. The evolution might easily have taken another course.

Turning to another continent, we may find an example of adaptability of a more elaborate ceremony. The Navaho are in the main an Athapascan people who have wandered down to the sterile plains of New Mexico and Arizona. There, ages ago, they came into contact with the more settled Pueblo tribes. The researches of American anthropologists show the practical identity of certain of their religious rituals with those of their Pueblo neighbours. It would seem that these rituals have been taken over from the latter. This is only natural, seeing that the Navaho came down from the north with an undeveloped culture and organization into a country where new needs were experienced and a higher civilization was met with. But in taking over the rituals they have applied them to purposes different from those of their original performers. The chief aim of the ceremonies as used among the Pueblo tribes is to obtain fertility, and the condition of fertility is rain. This is clear from the use made of corn-meal and corn-pollen. “Pollen is the symbol of fertility, and the rite at bottom is for rain. The Navaho took over the use of the corn and the pollen together with the other features; but the corn no longer served its previous purpose as a prayer for rain and the ripening of the crops: it was used for the cure of disease.”151.1 The Dene or Athapascans, of which stem the Navaho are a branch, are a people of migratory hunters. Agriculture would be foreign to them. Their principal ceremonies are concerned with the conjuration of evil spirits and the cure of diseases, which are usually ascribed to the spirits. It was natural that when they borrowed the ceremonies of a settled agricultural community they should imbue them with their own ideas. In their hands the cure of disease “became the fundamental feature of the borrowed rites. A ceremony intended for rain-making would naturally need some alteration in order to serve as a cure of disease.”151.2 And it has received it. The fact that they have been able so to adapt the rites probably points to some want of definiteness in the form of the rites at the time they were borrowed.

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism—at least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved—a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory’s famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.

The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.

If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. But this unity, as civilization progresses, becomes more and more unstable. Where, as is said to be the case in Morocco, civilization has recoiled, magic comes more and more to the front. Though it does so not without protests on the part of those who retain any consciousness of the higher development of religion, still on the whole it is successful in overlaying religion and pushing it into the background. Another people whose religion is in process of degeneration, if Dr Rivers’ opinion be correct, is the Todas. There the magic of the dairy ritual has thrust aside the worship of the gods. In this case, however, the opposition is not open and avowed. The history of the Todas is a blank. We cannot put our finger on one period and say: Here the gods were worshipped and the dairy magic was unknown. We have no records. We can only conclude from an examination of the internal evidence that the gods once played a more prominent part in the life of the community than they do now, but that Toda culture had not so far progressed that magic was not an inseparable part of religion, and that any growth of magic at the expense of religion would have been viewed without misgiving or even consciousness. Even religions where the opposition is most pronounced are themselves by no means pure from magic. All the subtlety, all the rhetoric of theologians may well be needed to rebut the charge of magic against the seven sacraments of the Church. I at least have no intention to risk the curse levelled by the Council of Trent at him who denies their efficacy ex opere operato, and whether or not the minister may be in a state of mortal sin.

In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live”154.1 is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: “When thou art come into the land which Yahwè thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahwè; and because of these abominations Yahwè thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”154.2 This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding.154.3 Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahwè; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahwè, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets—one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar (massebah), and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”155.1 The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahwè, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.

Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahwè at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.

Similar considerations inspired mediæval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.

But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one’s neighbours by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.

It is, in fact, the tendency to individualism rather than magic itself that has awakened hostility everywhere. But this tendency is inherent in magic. In the lower stages of civilization magic is undistinguished not only from religion but from medicine, from astronomy, from engineering, from literary learning, from the practice of industries other than the simplest and of art. Consequently everyone who possesses a little more skill than ordinary, or is credited with a knowledge surpassing that of the vulgar, faces the inevitable risk of being reputed a magician, and the suspicion of using his advantages to the detriment of others. Nor is the suspicion unfounded. Human nature being what it is, power, of whatever kind, is utilized for the benefit of its possessor, frequently without regard to the claims of others or the public good. The shaman or the wizard who is called in to the aid of the sick is often the depositary of knowledge of healing herbs and of poisons. The powers that are at the disposal of beneficence are equally applied to baleful ends. The healing of disease, whether it be effected by suggestion or by physical remedies, may be a social good: primarily and directly it is an individual benefit. To put the public foe under a spell excites the approval of the community. To lay a private enemy low is a very different matter. But the same expert by the exercise of the same skill performs both. Moreover, he subserves the ends of private gain and private revenge with equal indifference, and, it is believed, by the same mysterious means. In all these instances the professor of magic places his skill, knowledge, experience, and the terror of his name and incantations—in one word, his orenda—at the service of his clients without distinction. As civilization advances, and religion and religious ministers begin to be differentiated from the wizard or medicine-man, the latter is probably called on less and less to perform rites on behalf of the public, and more and more on behalf of individuals. The portions of magic that can be disposed for the purposes of the community are taken up into religion. What remains when this is done becomes specifically the method and practice of the magician. Small wonder then that the only magic recognized as such is antisocial magic.

On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. Everyone observes it, because upon it depends the weal of all alike. Everyone’s eye too is upon his neighbour; and a departure from custom is sure to be noticed, and equally sure to be resented as something sinister. At the least it is viewed with suspicion and concern. Done innocently, it will bring misfortune on the doer and all connected with him. Done with a purpose, it is abhorred and punished as evil magic. Happily the fear of witchcraft is not everywhere an obsession. Where it is, as almost all over Africa, it has become the most powerful cause of the stagnation of culture. Mr Weeks, a missionary of long experience, and an admirable observer, speaking of the Bangala on the Upper Congo, says the native “has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native, to save his life and live in peace, has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him.”159.1

This deplorable result is attributable to the suspicion of antisocial ends. It is this kind of magic which alone is reprobated in the lower culture. Death is very generally regarded as unnatural. If not caused by open violence, it must be due to spirits or to magic. Magic indeed is often deemed responsible for deaths by violence, or deaths credited to the immediate action of the spirits. Magic sets both causes in motion. Hence at a death, however occasioned, an inquest is commonly held to ascertain who is responsible; the accused is required to undergo an ordeal, and is punished if found guilty—as he usually is. But it is not the practice of magic that is condemned; it is the application of magic to the injury of the community. The chieftain of a tribe of Bantu “smells out” and puts to death the witch who has slain his father. The same chieftain will habitually practise magic on another chief before fighting with him. He will make rain, or employ a wizard for the purpose. His sacrifices and acts of worship are inextricably mingled with magic. Even when the schism between magic and religion has attained much wider dimensions than anywhere among the Bantu, it is rather magic in its antisocial aspect than in itself that is reprobated and punished. The departure from established custom and established belief involves a severance from the community and an imputation of antisocial ends. The pursuit of individual desires and hatreds at odds with the general interest is what arouses the anger of society. Practices essentially magical may be incorporated in religious rites and exercised for what is believed to be the public good; and they will continue to be exercised with general assent, even in the highest forms of religion.

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

Ælian, writing of the boldness of the Celts, relates that many of them await the overflowing sea, some throwing themselves armed into the waves and receiving their onset with drawn swords and threatening spears, just as if they could scare back or wound them.161.1 This report seems to have come to him in the shape of gossip; nor does he assign it to any tribe or definite locality. That there was some ground for it, however, is to be inferred from the existence in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century, of a short tradition, obviously of much earlier date, concerning Tuirbhe Trághmar, the father of Gobán Saer, who owned Tráigh Tuirbhi. “’Tis from that heritage he, standing on Telach Bela (the Hill of the Axe), would hurl a cast of his axe in the face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over the axe.”161.2

The rhetorician perhaps regarded this Celtic practice as a useless piece of bravado, and only cited it by way of climax to his illustrations of Celtic daring and recklessness. There is little doubt that to the Celts themselves it was quite different. The sea and the waves were looked upon as personal beings with whom it was possible literally to fight, and who might even be overcome. Such a view is common to many seaboard peoples. A curiously parallel tradition is found among the Malays at Jugra on the Selangor coast concerning the bore of the Langat River. This bore was conceived to be caused by the passage of a gigantic animal, probably a dragon. When it came up the river the Malays used to go out in small canoes or dug-outs to “sport amongst the breakers,” frequently getting upset for their pains. Eventually however, as Mr Skeat was told, the bore was killed by a Malay, who struck it upon the head with a stick. Whether from this cause or from the diversion of the stream into a new channel to the sea, there is no longer a bore in the river.162.1 We may conclude that the Malays who went out to sport among the breakers really went to assail the bore in force, and that when the bore ceased to flow the belief arose that one of them had attacked it successfully and killed it.

European folk-tales have been found recording a similar belief. Among the Basques we are told that a witch once determined to sink a certain fishing-boat and drown its crew. Her plan was to overwhelm it with three immense waves, the first of milk, the second of tears, and the third of blood. The boat might ride in safety over the first two; but the third wave would be herself in person, and the only way to escape would be to launch a harpoon into the midst of it: the weapon would pierce her heart, and the boat with its crew would be saved. With the want of caution which, fortunately for the heroes of folk-tales, is so remarkable a characteristic of cunning and malevolent beings, the plot was laid in the hearing of the cabin-boy. At the critical moment he nerved his arm to fling the harpoon, and struck the wave in the midst. It divided and dashed upon the shore, covering all the strand with a bloody foam. The bark was saved; but on his return the master found his wife dying of her wound, for she was the witch who had planned the destruction of her husband and his craft.163.1 This Basque story, though only recorded in a literary version, appears to be a genuine folk-tale, since it is also found substantially the same among the traditions of the Frisian Islands and Norway.163.2

Other waters than the sea have likewise been endowed with personality. Rivers and streams have everywhere been regarded as conscious beings, or (in a later stage of animism) as the haunt of such beings. Usually they have been reckoned as endowed with a might too mystical and too tremendous to be attacked by man; but occasionally men of heroic mould have been supposed to fight and overcome them. Professor Frazer has argued with probability that the angel who wrestled with Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok was in the original tale the river-god himself, the awful spirit of the Jabbok.163.3 He has not adduced any direct parallel in support of the conjecture, though the examples of offerings to streams for leave to cross them, of which he has collected a number from various parts of the world, do show that these waters are inhabited by supernatural beings, who must be treated with respect and whose goodwill must be obtained. Where he has failed to find parallels it is not likely that another can succeed. Yet it is curious that he should have overlooked the traditions of the water-kelpie current in his native Scotland. Take one story told by Dr Gregor concerning a water-kelpie who used to come out of the stream and visit the sheeling where a certain blacksmith’s family and cow spent the summer. His visits, as was natural, caused terror and annoyance. At last the wife told the husband, who resolved to kill the creature. The wife took fright at the proposal and tried to dissuade him, under the fear that the kelpie would carry him off to his pool. He was deaf to her appeals. Preparing two long, sharp-pointed spits of iron, he repaired to the sheeling. He made a large fire on the hearth, and laid the two spits in it. In a short time the kelpie made his appearance as usual. The smith waited his opportunity, and with all his might drove the red-hot spits into the creature’s sides. It fell on the ground like a heap of starch.164.1

In this case the kelpie was killed. More numerous are the tales in which he approaches a traveller in the shape of a horse and induces him to mount; then he rushes to the pool, carrying the unwary man to his death. Often, however, he can be caught and made to work, by throwing over his head a bridle on which had been made the sign of the cross. When this was done, the creature became quiet and might be employed in labour needing strength and endurance, like that of carrying stones to build a mill or a farm-steading. When set free again, he took his leave, repeating the words:

“Sehr back an’ sehr behns,

Cairrit a’ ——s’ stanes.”164.2

In Sweden the corresponding water-spirit—if that may be called a spirit which, as in all these cases, is regarded as essentially corporeal—is called the Neck, a word connected with Hnikarr, the Old Norse appellation of Odin regarded as a water-god, and with the Nicors, or water-monsters referred to in Beowulf. The Neck is said to appear in various forms. Sometimes he is a grown man, and then “particularly dangerous to haughty and pert damsels”; sometimes he is a comely youth with his lower extremities like those of a horse; sometimes he is an old man with a long beard; occasionally a handsome youth with yellow locks flowing over his shoulders and a red cap, sitting in a summer evening on the surface of the water with a golden harp in his hand. In return for a black lamb he is not unwilling to communicate his skill in music; and if the offering be accompanied by the expression of a hope of his salvation, he is rendered especially gracious. For above all things he longs for eternal happiness; nor can deeper distress be inflicted upon him than by denying this possibility. A Neck who takes up his abode under a bridge, or in a stream, is commonly called a Strömkarl. He usually plays not on the harp but on the viol. Near Hornborgabro in West Gothland a Strömkarl was once heard singing to a pleasant melody these words thrice repeated: “I know—and I know—and I know—that my Redeemer liveth.” He is acquainted with a measure which, if played, will cause even inanimate things, as trees and stones, to dance; so powerful is his music.

But he appears in other forms. A favourite is that of a horse, sometimes described as with hoofs reversed. At Bohuus in West Gothland he was caught by means of a cunningly contrived halter, from which he could not break loose. His captor kept him all the spring and made him plough his fields. Only when once the halter accidentally slipped off was the Neck able to escape this slavery. He sprang like lightning into the water, dragging the harrow after him. The Neck also causes disease. His appearance forbodes tempest. He haunts wells and must be propitiated with offerings, or measures must be taken to render him innocuous.166.1

Without pausing to analyse the complex character assigned to the Neck, it will be abundantly clear that he belongs to the same category as the foregoing, and may be subdued by similar means. To fetch parallels to the spirit of the Jabbok from Scotland and Sweden may be thought going far afield. It is going no farther than Dr Frazer himself goes for examples of the custom of propitiating river-spirits. The protest often uttered by cautious anthropologists against those who would cast the net so widely has its reason. When we are dealing with customs it is well to remember that customs superficially alike may spring from quite different social organizations, and their real intentions may be divergent or even opposite: in short, they may have nothing in common but external resemblance. They cannot be understood without taking into account the sequences of which they are often part, and the social organization and cultural condition from which they spring. It is otherwise when those great products of human imagination that animate the world about us are concerned. The personalities believed to haunt mountain and stream, air and water, heaven and earth, are elemental conceptions, the inevitable offspring of the human mind in its intercourse with nature. Analogies discovered between them are real analogies; they are the proofs of the essential oneness of mankind in the snow-hut of an arctic winter and the tree-shelter of a tropical forest. And when we find the relations believed to exist between such personalities and human beings, the need of their conciliation or coercion in order to obtain benefits for their human worshipper or antagonist, and the means taken for this purpose, the same, with only such variations as may be accounted for by differences of environment, then we may with confidence appeal to them as mutually illustrative.

For these reasons it would appear that we must regard such tales as those of the kelpie and the water-bull of Scotland and the Isle of Man, or the Neck of Sweden, as illuminating the legend of Jacob’s struggle at the ford of the Jabbok. Professor Frazer rightly adduces as in some degree analogous the story of Menelaus catching the shy sea-god Proteus sleeping on the sands, and compelling him to say his sooth, as Jacob compels the angel to pronounce a blessing, and that of Peleus catching and conquering the sea-goddess Thetis to be his bride. Here we are reminded of a cycle of traditions found all over the world, and known as the Swan-maiden cycle. The heroine of the tale is a supernatural being, usually in the form of a bird which casts its feathers like a robe and becomes human. The hero, possessing himself of the robe, acquires power over her and makes her his wife, only to lose her again when she recovers it. As told in Scotland and the adjacent isles, in the Faeroe Islands and Iceland, the lady is a seal.167.1 It may be doubtful whether Thetis was ever so represented; but it is certainly most suggestive that Proteus was discovered sleeping among the seals. For it is not only for matrimonial purposes that these supernatural beings are caught in modern märchen. In a Tamil tale the hero steals the dress of one of a band of divine maidens, and thereby compels her to bring him a certain divine parijata, or flower of the coral tree, which was demanded by another lady as the price of her hand.168.1 In the Spanish tale of The Marquis of the Sun, the Marquis is a great gamester. A man who played with him lost all he had, and then staked his soul and lost it. To get it back he was advised to watch on the banks of a river. Three princesses would come in the guise of doves, cast their feathers and bathe. He was to take the dress of the smallest and thus compel her to show him the road to the Marquis her father’s castle.168.2 It is true that both these adventures do result in the hero’s union with the bird-maiden. Such union is, however, incidental. In a Samoyed Swan-maiden story the heroine, captured in the usual way, flings the hearts of herself and her husband, as well as of other members of his family, into the air; and their owners in consequence remain neither living nor dead. The husband’s father’s sister goes in search of the hearts to the lake where the bride was captured, and finds her six sisters there swimming as before. She takes possession of the clothes of one of them, and thus compels her to restore the hearts of her relatives.168.3 So the hero of a tale told by a tribe on Vancouver Island is sent in search of his daughter, who has eloped with a wolf. He sees a number of young wolves playing at ball, having laid aside their mantles. He sets himself down beside the mantles, and in this way putting their owners to shame at being found naked, compels them to bring him to his son-in-law’s abode.168.4 The mantles are obviously the wolf-skins, laid aside to enable their owners to appear in human form.

Wolves are of course not water-spirits, like swans or seals; but they obey the same law as that imagined for the latter. The man who seizes something which is at once the symbol of their supernatural character and the source of their power, renders them helpless and compels them to his will. The contest is in these cases one of trickery and determination, rather than of strength. The captures of Proteus and of Thetis, however, seem to have been effected by main force and a wrestler’s skill. This is often the case with the capture of mermaids in the west of Europe. Hugh Miller long ago translated into literature a local legend of Cromarty which told how John Reid captured on the shores of the Firth a mermaid, from whom he extracted as a ransom the grant of three wishes, including prosperity and union with the maiden of his choice.169.1 Mermaid-stories thus agree with kelpie-stories and with those of Proteus and the spirit of the Jabbok in assigning victory to the strength and skill of the human wrestler.

Water-spirits are not the only supernatural beings with whom men are represented in story as matching themselves. The Lushei clans of Assam believe in various demons that inhabit hills, streams and trees. They are called Huai, those inhabiting the water being known as Tui-huai, and those residing on the land as Rām-huai. A certain sacrifice, generally of a big sow, is offered to the Rām-huai. It is called Sakhua. One night, towards morning, it is related, a Rām-huai appeared to a man who had unwittingly neglected his Sakhua sacrifice. It came into the straw where he was sleeping and wrestled with him until daylight. Even then it followed him and wrestled with him again; nor does the man seem to have been loth. At last he conquered the Rām-huai, who then told him that his Sakhua sacrifice was over-due; and he performed it at once. Sometimes the Rām-huai appears as a tiger and sometimes as a man. On this occasion he seems to have been in human form.170.1

Yet even in such a contest the skill displayed may be much more than a trick of jiu-jitsu. An example or two will suffice. In the Wild Huntsman of Teutonic lands anthropologists agree in recognizing traditions of the god Woden. He is well known to the German rustic as Wod. A tale from Mecklenburg represents a peasant as encountering him one dark night in the form of a tall man on a white horse. The peasant accepts the stranger’s challenge to pull against him, and grasps one end of a heavy chain, while the stranger ascends into the clouds with the other end. The peasant knows that, if he lose, he is himself lost. He quickly twists the end around a stalwart oak, and the Huntsman tugs in vain. A second and a third time the contest is renewed, after he has persuaded the stranger that he is holding the chain, and it is only his own strength that is being put forth. The oak-tree creaks and crackles to its roots, but finally holds its ground. Wod owns himself vanquished, and rewards his courageous antagonist with a share of his game—a haunch of venison, which turns to a rich booty of gold and silver ere he reaches home.170.2 We are indebted to Ovid for another example. He tells us how Numa by the advice of Egeria entrapped Picus and Faunus, two ancient rustic deities who were wont to drink of a certain stream. The king tempted them by means of wine placed beside the fountain; and when they had fallen into the slumber of intoxication he issued from his ambush and put them in chains. As the price of freedom he compelled them to bring down Jupiter from the sky, to give him the famous formula for averting the thunderbolt.171.1 Innocents like these are of course easily caught with strong drink. In Greek tradition Silenus, who as the son of a nymph was described as of condition inferior to the gods, but superior to mortals and to death, was not superior to some mortal weaknesses. Indeed, he was notoriously convivial. Hence he fell victim to a similar wile on the part of Midas, the Phrygian king. Nor was he released before he had revealed some astounding geographical and ethnological information, that staggered the sceptical Ælian when he found it placed on record in the now lost pages of Theopompus.171.2

Such legends of contest are not confined to merely second-rate personages like these subordinate or superseded divinities. When in the Iliad Diomed attacks and wounds Aphrodite, she goes crying to her mother. Dione by way of consolation recounts a list of Olympian gods who have grievously suffered in fight with headstrong and violent men. It includes Ares, Hera, and Hades, all of them potent figures in Greek mythology. Ares was bound by Otus and Ephialtes, the sons of Aloeus, and kept in durance vile for thirteen moons, until Hermes came to his rescue. Even he, it seems, was obliged to have recourse to secret means to steal him away. The arrows of Herakles inflicted grievous wounds on Hera and Pluto. And though naturally Dione denounces untimely death as the penalty for such presumption, the injuries received in the conflict are not all on one side.171.3 Odin himself fights more than once in the Scandinavian lays and sagas against human antagonists. Nay, if M. A. J. Reinach’s interpretation be accepted, Jacob’s opponent at the ford of the Jabbok was no other than “Elohim in person.” The growth of religious feeling, on this theory, found this coarse representation abhorrent; and while the incident, being part of the sacred legends, could not be ignored or repudiated, it was so altered as to obscure its real significance.172.1

However this may be, tales like these are echoes of belief in the possibility of a successful corporeal struggle with the mysterious powers. They are blurred memories of the practice of threatening and even attacking what we call supernatural beings under their material manifestations. Those beings were conceived, if not always in human form, at least as human in their wills and passions, hence in their motives and modes of action. The only way in which they differed from humanity was in their vaster and undefined powers. They were, to adopt Matthew Arnold’s phrase, magnified, non-natural—that is to say, mysterious—men.172.2 Thus conceived, they were accessible to every sort of influence that affected mankind, including coercion. But it took a bold man to coerce them, though the task might be attempted upon occasion, even by ordinary mortals—not always with success. Sometimes the contest is of a more distinctly intellectual character. The trial of musical skill between Apollo and Marsyas will occur to everyone. The Egyptian king called by Herodotus Rhampsinitus is said to have penetrated to Hades and there played at dice with Demeter. Varying fortune attended him; but he was so far successful that he returned with a golden handkerchief, the gift of the goddess. And the Egyptians still in the historian’s time celebrated a feast in memory of the adventure.173.1

If we turn from legend to fact, we find the belief translated into action, into the attempt to control the supernatural by force. Thus did Xerxes when he lashed the Hellespont and let down fetters into it, for destroying the bridge he had endeavoured to build.173.2 Thus did the ancient priestesses of the Canary Islands when rain was too long in coming: they beat the sea with rods to punish the spirit of the waters for withholding the boon they needed.173.3 In the same way (the tale is probably at least founded on fact), when the Nile had risen to the height of eighteen cubits—higher than it had ever risen before—Pheros, the son and successor of Sesostris, is declared to have taken a spear and driven it into the midst of the whirling waters. It is added—and here we have a testimony to the recognition by the ancient Egyptians of the awful divinity whom the king had thus challenged—that he was thereupon struck with a disease of the eyes and made blind.173.4 The vengeance mentioned by Dr Frazer as taken by the Kakhyeen of Upper Burmah points distinctly to the same intention. “If some friend or relative has been drowned in crossing a river, the avenger repairs once a year to the banks, and, filling a bamboo vessel with the water, hews it through with his dah [sword] as if he were despatching a living enemy.”174.1 The Korwas of Chota Nagpur on a similar occasion shoot arrows into the river.174.2

After comparing these cases there can be little doubt that the Celtic practice of fighting the waves reported by Ælian was not undertaken as a foolhardy piece of presumption, but literally as a combat with a foe susceptible to such attacks, or (as the Irish text suggests) a necessary proceeding in self-defence, lest otherwise the sea should encroach upon the land. The orenda of the land-dwellers was pitted against that of the waters.

The conclusion will be confirmed by considering a few examples of the treatment of divinities other than those of sea or river. The tribe of the Getai, the bravest of the Thracians, were in the habit, during thunderstorms, of shooting arrows up to the sky and threatening their god. It is indeed not clear what god they threatened. Usually it is understood to be the god Zalmoxis, pre-eminently the god of the Getai. But he seems to have been a chthonic divinity; and as the text of Herodotus stands they recognized no other god. The historian’s account of him is rationalized; and there is reason to think that he failed to grasp all the essentials of the Getic religion: his own doubts on the subject are more than hinted at. In shooting upwards, however, and uttering threats, the Getai must have menaced some being conceived more or less in personal terms. This is sufficient for our present purpose.174.3 The Atarantes, who dwelt ten days’ journey from Mount Atlas, in like manner cursed the sun when he was at his height and reviled him with all manner of foul terms, because he oppressed both themselves and their land by his burning heat.175.1 Among the Bayaka of the Kasai district in the Congo State it is common to hear people running about at night and shouting insults to Moloki, a malignant spirit who has made them ill, or caused the death of a relation.175.2 The Bechuana, on the great central plain of South Africa, ascribe changes of weather to the influence of the manes of deceased members of the tribe. They are called by the generic term Barimo, of which the singular form, Morimo, was adopted by the early missionaries to translate God; and it is now frequently used with that meaning. When hail damaged the crops, or rain fell unseasonably, Moffat tells us, Morimo would be cursed in the vilest language. “Would that I could catch it, I would transfix it with my spear!” exclaimed in the missionary’s hearing a chief whose judgement on other subjects would command attention.175.3 On the occasion of an earthquake a traveller saw the Bakwena women in an instant rushing out of their huts, with clubs and hoes in their hands, holding them up at the sky, and cursing God with most awful imprecations and demoniac yells.175.4 The proceedings of the Zulus, neighbours of the Bakwena, during a thunderstorm were thus described by a native to Bishop Callaway: “When it thunders the doctors go out and scold it; they take a stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven. They say they can overcome the lightning. They shout and take shields and sticks; they strike on their shields and shout. And when it clears away again they say, ‘We have conquered it.’ They say they can overcome the heaven.”176.1 The Hottentots curse the thunder and shoot their poisoned arrows at the lightning, telling him to be off. Some of them, however, adopt a milder course, assembling to dance and sing an incantation. Two specimens of these incantations have been preserved. The thunder is thus addressed:

“Son of the Thunder-cloud,

Thou brave loud-speaking Guru!

Talk softly, please,

For I have no guilt!

Leave me alone (Forgive me)!

For I have become quite weak (= I am quite stunned, perplexed).

Thou, O Guru,

Son of the Thunder-cloud!”

The other incantation is addressed to the lightning. It is a dramatic performance, the lightning being played by one person, the chorus representing the appeal of the inhabitants of the kraal.

Chorus.

“Thou, Thunder-cloud’s daughter, daughter-in-law of the Fire!

Thou who hast killed my brother!

Therefore thou liest now so nicely in a hole!

Solo.

(Yes) indeed, I have killed thy brother so well!

Chorus.

(Well) therefore thou liest (now) in a hole.

Thou who hast painted thy body red, like Goro!

Thou who dost not drop the menses,

Thou wife of the Copper-bodied man (the mythical ancestor of the Hottentots)!”176.2

Perhaps the sex of the lightning here may render it more amenable to the softer arts of persuasion. The Bushmen used to look steadily at the quarter whence the lightning came. They believed its object was to kill them by stealth, and that if they looked towards it they would cause the thunderbolts to turn back. It appears, they said, “to fear our eye, when it feels that we quickly look towards it.… Therefore it goes over us; it goes to sit on the ground yonder, while it does not kill us.”177.1 In other words, they believed themselves so powerful that the lightning quailed before them and did not dare to strike. Among the Nandi, a Nilotic tribe of East Africa, it is the duty of the Toiyoi, or Thunder-clan, when a heavy thunderstorm occurs, to seize an axe and, having rubbed it in the ashes of the fire, to throw it outside the hut, crying out: “Thunder, be silent in our village!”177.2 Among their neighbours (but not kinsfolk), the Wawanga, an old man was recently found by a government official to have stuck a curious-looking spear in an ant-hill in his village to drive off the hail.177.3

Similar practices are found in the less advanced cultures of the New World. The Hurons of Canada were in the habit of sticking their javelins into the ground point upwards. The explanation they gave, as reported by the Jesuit Father, was that the thunder had intelligence, and it would, on seeing these naked javelins, turn aside and be careful not to come near their cabins.177.4 The Salinans of California possess an amulet which will stop the thunder, if it be held in the hand and pushed out towards a thunder-cloud.177.5 The Guaycurus of Paraguay, great and small, on the occasion of a great storm of wind and rain, issued from their huts armed with clubs and sticks, and uttering terrible cries, to fight with the hurricane, persuaded that it was an attack on them by evil spirits, and that they must defend themselves without showing cowardice.178.1 According to legends current at the time of the conquest, “the hapiñuñu, or bosom-clutching spirits, who were believed to have been the original occupants of the Peruvian valleys, were forcibly expelled by the early human inhabitants, immigrants from the country of the Guaycurus. When the ancestors of the Incas arrived in the sierra ‘from beyond Potosi’—that is, from the Gran Chaco—these spirits, according to a fragment of an ancient song which has been preserved by an Indian writer, disappeared with terrible cries, saying:

‘We are conquered! We are conquered!

Alas, for I lose my lands!’”178.2

The tribes of the Uaupes River in Brazil, after a funeral, shoot into the air to chase away, and if possible kill, the evil-disposed spirit which has caused the death.178.3

In tropical surroundings, separated from the Hurons by nearly half the globe, by the whole breadth of the Pacific Ocean and nearly the whole breadth of the continent of North America, the Kai-folk of the Kai, or forest hinterland of the south-eastern coast of German New Guinea, adopt the very same measure as they for protection against the storms. Like their surroundings, their culture is widely different from that of the Hurons. They dwell in frail cabins raised upon posts, in order to secure them from the intrusion of their half-domesticated swine and the attacks of the wilder animals. These huts cluster on the mountain-side in tiny villages of from two to six. Their framework is of wood, bound together with tough lengths of a climbing plant. The walls consist of long pandanus leaves; and they are thatched with leaves of the sago-palm, or with grass. It is obvious that such feeble structures can offer little resistance to high winds. Happily wind-storms are of rare occurrence; but when they do come they wield terrific force, splitting or uprooting powerful trees. Against the onslaught of such foes, which, it need not be said, are regarded as personal beings, the Kai-folk have more than one means of defence. They take one of the jawbones of wild beasts which hang in the hut as trophies of the chase, put it in the fire and pray the storm-spirit to accept the soul of the deceased animal and spare the house. But they do not rely on the chance of placating the spirit; they oppose him with threats and with weapons. They fasten a pointed stake or spear before the windward side of the house, its point turned to the wind, so that it will “prick him in the belly,” and thus compel him to leave the hut in peace. Or they reply to each gust by striking the threshold with a club or stone-axe, crying out: “If you tread here on my house, I will smash your feet!”179.1

Almost all nations in the lower culture hold an eclipse to be the attempt on the part of some evil-disposed being to eat up or destroy the sun or moon. The custom of terrifying and driving him away is too well known to need illustration.

In these cases, though the supernatural being may be out of reach, that does not hinder men and women from pitting their orenda against his; and as soon as the storm or the eclipse comes to an end they naturally vaunt their success. In the form of wind indeed he may be held to descend to actual blows with his human opponents. Professor Frazer has collected a number of examples of fighting the storm and the whirlwind.180.1 Nor are those examples confined to such as already recounted. Even in Europe eddies and gusts of wind are attacked without hesitation by peasants, whether Scottish, Breton, German, Slav, or Esthonian. A small whirlwind of the kind with which we are all familiar is believed to be caused by a witch, who is carried along unseen at its centre, and may be revealed and rendered harmless by launching some object, preferably a knife, into it. In the Tirol a knife of special form is used for the purpose, on the blade of which are engraved nine St Andrew’s crosses and nine crescent moons. It wounds the witch as surely as the harpoon in the Basque tale cited at the beginning of this essay.180.2

Here and in many of the other instances the supernatural being is regarded as actually hostile. At certain stages of evolution there is, however, as little hesitation in turning upon a god with whom one is usually on terms of friendship and submission. We have had some examples of this. A god may provoke a worshipper, and human nature will not always put up with the provocation. When he is found in tangible shape as an idol his aggrieved client may even resort to corporal chastisement. Dr Farnell refers in this connection to the passage in the seventh idyll of Theocritus, where the poet mentions the whipping of the image of Pan with squills when food was scarce, and to a Breton smith “who threatened the saint’s image with red-hot pincers to compel him to heal his son.”181.1 The two practices thus put together are not strictly parallel. Originally at least they were widely different in purpose, though they have some outward resemblance. To beat the image of Pan with squills was not to punish the god for neglect of duty, but to bring him into touch with the powers of growth, to drive out the barrenness that possessed him and to recreate his fructifying forces. It was a magical means of restoring his life-giving properties. It may have been to some extent, like punishment, a relief to the feelings of the beater; but the chief object is unmistakably shown by the ritual requirement to beat with squills.181.2 It would seem, however, as if this had been forgotten by the time of Theocritus; for in the following lines (not cited by Dr Farnell) the poet goes on to threaten stinging with nettles in case of the god’s recalcitrance, as if this were the same sort of petty torment.

On the other hand, means are often taken, like those of the Breton smith, to compel a god to grant his suppliant’s wishes, and in default to inflict indignity and injury. Pietro della Valle tells in his Voyages of an image of Saint Anthony which was thus treated by Portuguese sailors. First of all, prayers were addressed to the image for a favourable wind. The wind not being forthcoming, the image was taken from its shrine and lashed to the mast, in the beginning with comparatively slack cords. The bonds were progressively tightened as the saint delayed to accede to his worshippers’ demands. They were not in a mood to stand any nonsense. The image before which they had knelt in prayer only a few hours earlier was now the object of curses and derision; and every day the wind was delayed a new cord was added to bind the sacred victim more tightly. At last, however, the wind changed and blew from the quarter desired; the saint was loosed from his uncomfortable position and replaced respectfully in his niche; the sailors thanked him, but mingled with their thanks reproaches for the obstinacy which had forced them to take severe measures with him.182.1 Saint Anthony indeed suffers much from his votaries. The Spanish population of New Mexico do not hesitate to hang his image head downwards to urge him to his duty of performing miracles. Other obstinate saints they simply put away or imprison.182.2 The modern Aztecs give their sacred images a whipping when their prayers are not attended to. The Tarascos of Mexico make San Mateo responsible for the weather and the crops. When it freezes his image is taken from the church in the early morning and dumped into cold water as a punishment. On the other hand, he is rewarded for good crops by a procession, a big feast, and abundance of brandy and tamales.182.3

In France, near the village of la Selle, on the highway from Autun to Château Chinon, is a granite rock, on the top of which rustic piety has erected a Calvary. Just below it is a little grotto that serves as a niche to shelter the statue of the good Saint Merri, the patron of the parish. Saint Merri has a reputation extending far and wide. Formerly on the stone at his feet might be seen offerings of eggs and small change; and even yet pilgrimages are made to his shrine in pursuance of vows or for the cure of certain diseases. Among these, it would seem, as the offering of eggs may indicate, he was expected to cure sterility. It is related that a pious woman of a neighbouring village was in the habit of coming to implore the saint for her daughter, who had been married for some years, but had had no children. She had another daughter, who was not married; and the saint made a mistake: it was her unmarried daughter to whom a child was granted. The good woman, enraged at a blunder so inexcusable, returned to the saint. Bitterly reproaching him with his mockery of her prayers, she took a stick and inflicted on him a sound castigation, breaking his arm and rolling him over on the ground, where he long remained, a witness to his own unseemly jest and her righteous indignation. The inhabitants at last made a collection to buy a new saint, which is now placed on a pedestal in the foreground of the grotto, while the old and guilty saint is relegated shamefully to a corner, and still bears the scornful title of the Weeper.183.1

Corporal punishment of saints, otherwise than by way of penance during their mortal life, has never enjoyed official favour in any form of Christianity, however gratifying it may be to the feelings of disappointed worshippers. So far as it is employed as a serious means of compelling attention to the needs and prayers of their clients it is by no means confined to Christianity. Savage and barbaric peoples do not hesitate to punish their idols in this manner. The practice is reported from the Southern Pacific to the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean in both hemispheres. Two or three examples will suffice. The Eskimo who wander along the inhospitable coasts of Ungava to the north of Hudson’s Bay are attended each by a guardian spirit, often in the form of a doll carried somewhere about the person. These spirits are not naturally benevolent. They must be abundantly propitiated with offerings of food, water and clothing, to induce them to confer success and prosperity upon the man who may with equal propriety be termed their master or their worshipper. If the spirit prove obdurate and, like Saint Anthony, reluctant to grant the needful assistance, its owner sometimes becomes angry with it and inflicts a condign chastisement, deprives it of food, strips it of its garments, or even palms it off secretly on some unsuspecting friend, to his discomfort or injury.184.1 When a chief dies in the district of Ibouzo, on the Niger, without leaving a son, his Ikengua, or domestic wooden idol of the god of riches, is cut in two and flung away into the bush, because it has procured no male descendant for its worshipper.184.2 A Brahman boy in India attended a mission-school, and was selected to compete in a tennis tournament. He and his two younger brothers had each an image of Ganesa, which was kept in a shrine for worship. Previous to the tournament the images were taken out and solemnly threatened by the three brothers with something very disagreeable if the eldest brother lost the match. He lost it. The brothers returned home, and carried out their threat by pitching the three images into the well at the back of the house. The next day they sallied out and bought three new images of the god to replace the old ones.185.1 The Paraiyans of Southern India on the occasion of a drought invoke the dēvata called Kodumpāvi (wicked one). “The ceremony consists in making a huge figure of Kodumpāvi in clay, which is placed on a cart and dragged through the streets for seven to ten days. On the last day the final death ceremonies of the figure are celebrated.” It is mutilated, and funeral rites are performed by the grave-diggers. “This procedure is believed to put Kodumpāvi to shame,” and to get her to induce her paramour Sukra, who has neglected his duty, to stay the drought.185.2 If this be so, it is evident that the figure is not identified with the dēvata, and the punishment operates by the mental rather than the corporeal annoyance inflicted upon her. Japan affords an example of righteous indignation expressing itself in castigation which is passing, or has already passed, into a spell. When the owner of a tea-house is dissatisfied with the number of his customers, the wooden pestle of the tub in which various kinds of meal and salt are mixed for the preparation of a certain dish is taken out and struck through the uppermost paper panel of the door or window, so that it falls on the floor with a crash. Out come the people of the house armed with sticks, brooms, and so forth; and they scold and thrash the pestle, making him responsible for the fewness of their guests. He is bound and thrown into a chest. If shortly afterwards the guests increase, the pestle is taken out of his prison, his forgiveness is asked, and he is drenched with saki. It is hardly necessary to observe that the pestle is a phallic representative, and that the business of a tea-house often extends to the entertainment of a guest in more ways than one.186.1

The practice, however, is so well known that it would be waste of time to multiply illustrations. I will only add that in the valley of the Nile, in the days when the worship of animals, whatever its exact origin or meaning, prevailed, the sacred beasts were carefully tended and trained, and all their wants were provided for. In return they were expected to grant their worshippers’ wishes. If they “could not or would not help in emergency they were beaten; and if this measure failed to prove efficacious, then the creatures were punished by death;… and it was the priests themselves who condemned and executed the sacred animal. Afterwards indeed they sought to secure its immortality by the embalmment of the body, thereby hoping to appease the wrath of the god, lest he should avenge the killing of the creature in which he had been incarnate.”186.2 There is such a thing as carrying punishment too far, especially when you cannot carry it far enough to put an end to a being of indefinite but superhuman power, who will bottle up his anger until he can catch you off your guard. This inconvenience is incident to the theory evolved by Egyptian syncretism that the sacred animals were incarnations of the divinities.

Another method of dealing with a god or any supernatural being is to bind and imprison him, if you can catch him. This needs but a cursory mention here. It has been dealt with at some length by Mr William Crooke, who has ingeniously suggested that the Homeric story, already referred to, of the binding and imprisonment of Ares by Otus and Ephialtes owes its origin to this practice.187.1 In any case it is a common expedient for the laying of a ghost. I was privileged to live for some years in a house concerning which one of these ghost-laying traditions was told; and so far as my experience goes the expedient was entirely successful. It is still in use by medicine-men for delivering their clients from the persecution of troublesome spirits. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo “sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.”187.2

Obviously the adage “First catch your hare” applies here. The supernatural being cannot always be caught. But he may be driven away. Dr Frazer has illustrated very fully the widespread practice of expelling evils considered as personal beings either periodically or occasionally by ceremonies of violence or of enticement, persuasion and magical spells.187.3 The ancient Scandinavians seem to have instituted solemn legal proceedings against troublesome ghosts. There is a remarkable story in the Eyrbyggia Saga of a number of malignant ghosts who haunted the settlement at Frodiswater with disastrous effects to men and stores. The Christian priest sang the hours there, manufactured holy water and shrived all folk. This was not enough to disperse the ghosts, who had audaciously come and sat by the fires, to the horror of the survivors, and devastated the place with sickness and misfortune. It was but the preparation for the stringent measures to follow. The bed-gear of Thorgunna, the deceased stranger-woman who had started the mischief, was burned. The ghosts were summoned to a door-doom; “and it was done in all matters even as at a doom of the Thing: verdicts were delivered, cases summed up and doom given.” The ghosts attended in obedience to the summons. As each was found guilty he was sentenced to depart. “But as soon as the sentence on Thorir Wooden-leg was given out, he rose and said: ‘Here have I sat while sit I might’”; and thereafter he stumped out by the door opposite to that before which the court was holding its session. Thus they were banished one after another; “and each arose as the sentence fell on him, and all said somewhat at their going forth; but ever it seemed by the words of each that they were all loth to depart.” Last of all judgement was given upon Thorod, the recently deceased goodman of the house, “and when he heard it he stood up and said: ‘Meseems little peace is here; so get us all gone otherwhere’; and therewith he went out. Then in walked Kiartan [the heir] and his folk, and the priest bare hallowed water and the holy things throughout the house; and on the next day they sang all the hours and mass with great solemnity; and so there was an end thereafter to all walkings and hauntings at Frodiswater.”188.1

What is important to observe here is the entire respect paid by the criminal revenants to the formal and deliberate decision of the society against which they had sinned. They obeyed it as they would have obeyed it in their lifetime. In heathen times, out of which Iceland had scarcely emerged, the Thing was the lawful assembly of the whole community. Its doom outlawed those members who were convicted of antisocial conduct, and such was undoubtedly the conduct of the dead who returned to harm the living. Though dead they were still members of the society and subject to its laws. By those laws it was their duty to abide in the howe, or grave-mound, and thence watch over the well-being of the family, receiving in return a cult. The authority of the Thing extended to all matters interesting the community, religious as well as political, juridical and administrative. Under Christianity, and the advancing civilization of which it was a part, the religious authority was beginning to be separated from its control, of which perhaps we may see a hint in the narrative. But the religious officials were acting in unison with the rest, though hardly now as part of them. On the other hand, the cult of the dead was no longer officially recognized. It is improbable that it had ceased; and assuredly the defunct were still charged with the negative duty of remaining quietly in the howe and abstaining from all molestation of those whom they had left behind. There may be some doubt as to the technical status of the assembly which dealt with the case. If not a local and subordinate Thing, it seems at least to have been a properly constituted tribunal, proceeding in a perfectly regular manner, and carrying in its decisions the force of law. It had probably not yet become entirely divested of spiritual jurisdiction, or at least of spiritual prestige, which may indeed be taken to be sanctioned and supported by the countenance and assistance of the priest of the new religion. The ghostly transgressors recognized its authority, the propriety of its procedure, the justice and the binding character of its sentence; and however much they grudged it, they submitted.

It need not be said that more summary measures were often taken with those who “walked” after death to the inconvenience of the survivors. They consisted in digging out and destroying the corpse, or dealing with it in a way similar to that used with vampires, which are indeed one species of these troublesome visitors. Examples are not uncommon in the Norse sagas, and are plentiful in the folklore of the Scandinavian and other countries.

An alternative to driving away the supernatural being is to threaten and insult him. Of this I have in previous pages given some examples. The ancient Greeks had a technical term for formulæ of this kind. They called them θεῶν ἀνάγκαι, compulsions of the gods. It will be sufficient to refer to a few cases of insult employed by different peoples in all seriousness, and often in the sacred ritual. When a sacrifice is offered to the ancestral manes by the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa on the occasion of sickness in the family, they are told: “You are useless, you gods; you only give us trouble! For although we give you offerings, you do not listen to us! We are deprived of everything! You [naming the ancestral spirit who is addressed as the cause of the evil] are full of hatred! You do not enrich us! All those who succeed do so by the help of their gods!” We are informed that when some great misfortune is the occasion for a special sacrifice, the request presented in the prayer is preceded or followed by a ritual insulting of the gods (manes). “There are two words used to designate this curious part of the prayer: holobela, to scold the gods, or rukatela, the real word for to insult.”190.1 Here it must not be forgotten that the personages addressed are members of the family. It is true that they have been divinized by death, but their family relationship has not been dissolved. They have still their duties to perform, as well as the survivors; and if they neglect them a family quarrel may reasonably be the consequence, as it might in their lifetime.

This method of bullying divinities is well known in India. A pair of examples from the extremities of the peninsula will suffice. Parakutty is a debased form of Vishnu (or perhaps it may be more correct to say an aboriginal demon identified with Vishnu), worshipped by some of the low castes in Cochin. The Nayadis are a jungle tribe reputed to be skilful hunters. Parakutty is supposed to aid them in hunting. When they fail to get the expected game they abuse him for his ingratitude, and for betraying the trust they have reposed in him. He is also the favourite deity of the Parayans. A Paraya magician is frequently called in to assist in recovering stolen property. He invokes Parakutty for the purpose. If the property be not recovered the magician prays again, this time in a more indignant and abusive form, and he thinks that then his object is sure to be gained.191.1 In The Legends of the Panjab, Sir R. C. Temple gives a long poem in which a woman in trouble expresses her intention of cursing her patron saint Gorakh Nâth for the misfortunes that have befallen her.191.2 In the same spirit Charlemagne, in the romances, is made to threaten God to throw down his altars and make the churches with all their priests cease from the land of the Franks.191.3

Great and awful as gods may be, they are after all but human. The most mysterious of them are conceived in quasi-human terms. On the other hand, human beings are often looked upon as gods and treated accordingly. But then their treatment is simply that of powerful men, men possessed of and filled with a greater or less degree of mana, who therefore require to be handled gingerly, like an unexploded bomb. Such a man-god, if a native ruler or fellow-tribesman, can seldom be driven away; but he may, especially if his mana be suspected of departing from him, be attacked and slain. To expound this practice and the belief on which it is founded, or with which it is bound up, Dr Frazer’s great work, The Golden Bough, has been written. The white man, like the gods, is to peoples in the lower culture mysterious, powerful, endowed with mana. To that extent he is the object of wonder and fear, he is a god. Yet he may be fought and overpowered, killed or driven away. Of the Bangala in the Upper Congo basin we are told that before the unknown and mysterious the native “is timid, fearful, and very superstitious. He will regard you as a god, and yet try to fight you; he will superstitiously believe that you have wonderful occult powers that can stop the rain, cause pestilence and plagues; and yet he will not attempt to conciliate you, but he will savagely tell you to clear out of his town and take your witchcraft elsewhere.”192.1

So and not otherwise the savage treats his gods. Where milder means avail not, and he can get his way by rough treatment of the idols or other tangible forms in which they are presented, he does not hesitate to use physical force. As little will he hesitate to use guile to eke out his inferior strength. It is but another manifestation of his orenda. Hence the tales of audacious heroes who have measured their strength or their cunning against more tremendous personages. Hence the threats and insults addressed to powers beyond immediate reach by peoples all over the world. Hence the punishment inflicted on the images of gods and saints. Hence the boldness of the Celts.

THE HAUNTED WIDOW

According to the legend of Osiris as preserved for us by Plutarch, the slain divinity accompanied with Isis, his sister-wife, after his death, with the result that she had by him a child whose name is given in Greek form as Harpocrates.194.1 Doubt has been thrown by some Egyptologists upon the accuracy of Plutarch’s report; but it is probably correct. At all events the incident is fairly widespread both in tale and superstition, as I shall proceed to show.

Among the Chinese the dead of both sexes have always been held capable of sexual intercourse with the living. A favourite topic of Chinese tales is that of a belated wanderer entertained by a liberal host or hostess and passing the time in agreeable conversation, eating, drinking, sleeping and sexual intercourse, and then suddenly awaking to find himself or herself, as the case may be, in or on a tomb, with no trace of human dwelling near. Visits are paid by the dead to the living for various purposes, from which the enjoyment of the pleasures of married life are not excluded. One famous story concerns a man of the Ma clan, who died childless, leaving a wife who refused to marry again. In her sorrow she caused to be made a clay image of the deceased and offered something to it whenever she took a meal, as she had done to her husband in his lifetime. One night the image became animated, and telling her that he was her husband permitted to return and solace her fidelity and chastity, he passed the night with her, rising at cockcrow and going away. The visit was repeated every night, with the result that before the end of a month she had conceived and in due time bore a son. Information was laid before the magistrate and the woman was arrested. On hearing her story the magistrate said: “I have heard that the children of ghosts are shadowless, and that those that have shadows are not genuine.” He took the child into the sunshine, and lo, its shadow was as faint as a light smoke. He further tested it by pricking its finger and putting the blood on the clay image of the woman’s husband, into which it soaked without leaving a trace, whereas smeared on another image it was wiped off at once. These experiments convinced the magistrate that the woman’s tale was true; and all traces of suspicion subsequently vanished when, as the boy grew up, he was found closely to resemble the deceased in face, gesture and speech.195.1

Gansám, a divinity worshipped by the Muásís and Gonds of Bengal, is said to have been a Gond chief who was devoured by a tiger just after his marriage at an early age. “Cut off at such a moment, it was unreasonable to suppose that his spirit would rest. One year after his death he visited his wife, and she conceived by him; and the descendants of the ghostly embrace are, it is said, living to this day at Amodah in the Central Provinces.” As a result of other apparitions to many of his old friends he persuaded them to inaugurate a regular worship of him, and two festivals in the year were established in his honour.196.1 Not in all cases, however, do the deceased husband’s visits to his widow result in the birth of a child. The legend of Záhir Pir, the saint of a Mohammedanized caste of scavengers about Benares, relates that he was involved in strife with his mother’s sister’s sons, who disputed his succession to his father’s kingdom, and slew them. For this he was cursed by his mother never to see her face again. In his anguish he called upon Mother Earth to receive him into her bosom. On her refusal, because, being a Hindu, he was not burnt, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and accepted Islam. Afterwards renewing his petition, the earth opened and disclosed a chapel as for a hermit. Záhir Pir entered on his charger, and the earth closed above him and his devotions. Siryal, his widow, reduced with his mother to poverty, mourned him and cried: “Mother Earth, give me back my husband!” By God’s command the earth yielded him up to visit her nightly; but every morning at daybreak he flew away on his winged charger. Siryal had discarded her jewels as became a widow when she lost her husband. Now that she received these secret visits she resumed them as a matron. When her mother-in-law upbraided her, saying: “What means this wanton finery?” she returned: “To thee thy son is dead: to me my husband is alive.” In explanation of the riddle she placed her beneath the bedstead at night that she might see her son. But when Záhir Pir came at midnight his aged mother had fallen into a deep sleep, which was undisturbed by the caresses above her; nor was it until he had quitted the bed and vaulted into the saddle that Siryal could rouse her. She started up and clutched his bridle. Even then her curse prevented her from seeing her son’s face. “I do but obey thy bidding,” he groaned, turning his face away. “Look back! thy house is burning.”197.1 So among the Calmucks we hear of a khan who, being married to a wife whom he did not love, resorted to a girl living a little distance away. His visits resulted in her pregnancy; but before the birth of her child he died. Death does not prevent him from carrying her off to his funeral rites, nor from afterwards paying her marital visits on the fifteenth of every month, and spending the night with her, disappearing in the morning. When she urges him to stay, so that his mother may see him and be convinced of her truth, he gives her directions to go to the place of the dead and fetch his heart. This she accomplishes, and thus recovers him as her husband permanently.197.2 The islanders of the East Indian Archipelago are profoundly convinced that various kinds of spirits can have similar intercourse with human beings. The spirits of the dead are not excepted from this belief; and albinos are held to be their offspring by a living mother. A famous priest-king of the Toba-bataks, called Singa Mangaraja, owed his birth to this cause.197.3

A story is told by the Dene (Athapascans) of the northern provinces of Canada concerning a man who one night suddenly disappeared from his wife’s side, and in the morning, in the ashes of the hearth, were found the cloven footprints of a reindeer: he had been transformed. His wife was an adept in magic. By its aid she became an expert hunter, and after the loss of her husband supplied the family, consisting of her mother and little son, with food. As her son grew up, he in turn hunted and successfully snared reindeer. One day he caught a reindeer with human hair between its horns. He brought its carcase to his mother, who had constantly mourned her husband. She at once recognized the dead reindeer as her husband. Lying down along with it, the animal revived and once more became man. Thus she recovered the husband whom she had loved, and for whom she had so long sorrowed. The story is ætiological, told to explain why so many reindeer are caught with snares made of magical bonds of pine-root, and why certain parts of the reindeer are not eaten.198.1

Plutarch mentions that Harpocrates was born lame, that is to say, with his lower limbs feebly developed, and interprets this as a parable of the new corn with its tender and imperfect shoots. We find, however, that the offspring born of the unnatural connection with a dead man is represented as being as remarkable as the manner of his generation, and not infrequently monstrous. We have seen that the Toba-bataks thus account for the birth of an albino. A story told by the Transylvanian Gypsies concerns a girl named Mariutza of the Chale tribe, the daughter of a wealthy chief. She loved a youth named Jarko, to whom her father refused to give her. Her brothers caught her in his arms one night, and slew him. They killed one of their father’s horses and buried it with him in a grave on the edge of the forest, spreading the report abroad that he had fled and would never return to the tribe. She was not a witness of his death, and did not know what had become of him. One night, unable to sleep, she went out of the tent, sat down beside a brook and wept bitterly, crying aloud: “Oh that I could once more see him, dead or alive!” Hardly had she uttered the words when she heard the ring of a horse’s hoofs, and her lover galloped up on a white steed, his clothing covered with blood and his hair with icicles. He took her up; and the steed made off to the grave, where he lay down with her in his arms. She rested thus in her lover’s arms until day began to break, when he sent her back to her tent, charging her to cease from disturbing his rest any further with her tears. As she hurried away the grave closed. After nine months she bore a great stone that flew from tent to tent until it met her brothers, and, striking them on the head, hurled them both dead to the ground. Then it disappeared; and when folk came to look for Mariutza, she too lay dead on her bed.199.1 In a modern Icelandic tale a youth and maiden love one another, but are prevented from marrying. The youth dies, but after death visits his beloved by night. An old woman in whom she confides compels the dead man to confess. He tells her that the girl is pregnant, and will bear a son who will surpass all men in beauty and intellect, and will become a priest; but unless someone be found bold enough to stab him in the breast during his first mass, the church will sink into the earth with all the people in it. It was done; and the young priest disappeared, leaving behind on the floor of the church nothing but three drops of blood.199.2

In Brittany a story is told with much circumstance of place and name, relating how a peasant-farmer of the village of Keranniou died, leaving a wife much younger than himself and seven children. After death he reappeared as ghost, and played a variety of tricks. At length his widow found herself pregnant, and, seeking the priest, confessed with tears that the deceased had lain with her several times, insisting that he had been sent back by God because he had not had his full tale of children. The duty of bringing into the world one’s allotted number of children, it may be observed, is a motive in many of the grimmer Breton stories. As her condition became visible the neighbours taunted the unfortunate widow; but the priest took her part openly in the church. A child was born, but without eyes. The ghost appeared again, and took far more interest in it than in any of the children born during his lifetime. The child was extremely precocious, but lived only for seven months. When it died the dead man’s ghost was seen to accompany the funeral procession. From that hour he was never beheld again; and the villagers said he had been waiting for the babe to lead him by the hand to Paradise.200.1 A similar incident is found as far away as among the Bella Coola of the British Columbian fiords. There a husband and wife who were devoted to one another made vows of mutual fidelity, even after the death of either of them. The husband died; and his body was placed, as was usual, in a little dead-hut. The widow wept bitterly, entered the dead-hut and lay down to sleep beside the corpse. In her dreams she saw him once more alive. He begot upon her a child, which was born after the lapse of a fortnight. It was not like other children, for it consisted only of a head without a body. The widow was unwilling to exhibit such a monster; but her mother did not rest until she was allowed to take it in her arms. When she saw what it was she let it fall in terror. The head sank into the earth and disappeared from view.201.1

Cases like these suggest that Plutarch’s view of the crippled condition in which Harpocrates was born is not to be accepted. It does not necessarily follow that the interpretation of Osiris as a deity of vegetation, adumbrated by the philosopher and adopted by Professor Frazer, is wholly incorrect. We are in error if we suppose the myth of Osiris to be one and self-consistent. The myths of Osiris were innumerable. The realm of Egypt was formed by the union of a number of small independent states or communities. Each of these communities had its own customs, institutions, beliefs, märchen. Many stories told, whether for serious credence or by way of pastime, in every district were doubtless common to all Egypt. But probably even they had their local variants; and these variants must often have been irreconcilable. The phenomenon is familiar. It is abundantly exemplified in the tales of the Greek and Scandinavian mythologies. In Egypt, however, the formation of a strong central authority, and the consequent growth and maintenance during many ages of a powerful and educated priesthood, were among the influences that led to a persistent attempt to unify and explain the principal divine myths, to attach them to the various local and periodical solemnities already observed from time immemorial, and to educe from the jumble something like a system, a philosophy. Whether in this process an originally independent myth had become united with a series of agricultural rites, or whether a myth previously annexed to such rites had acquired an independent existence by virtue of a higher inspiration, matters not to us. The story of Osiris is found on the Egyptian monuments in a number of frequently disconnected texts, of which there is no authoritative canon. Among those texts the exact status and meaning of the Harpocratian episode is probably a subject on which the Egyptians themselves would have been unable to agree. We can hardly be wrong in indulging our scepticism at the expense of Plutarch’s interpretation, though he may simply have reported it as it was given to him. The parallel tales, whether of Europe or America, at least are purely human. They yield no trace of vegetable symbolism. They are founded upon impulses and beliefs that have all over the world influenced the conduct of men towards the supernatural.

It was a common belief in antiquity, and thence through the Middle Ages and right down, among the uneducated classes, to modern times, that dead men and other supernatural beings might have intercourse with living women. Upon this belief and the innumerable tales connected therewith was founded Bürger’s famous ballad of Lenore.202.1 The story told by Herodotus of the paternity of Demaratus, King of Sparta, is an early example. Demaratus, being accused of not being the son of his predecessor, Ariston, adjured his mother in a solemn ceremony to tell him the truth. Her account was that, on the third night after her marriage to Ariston, an apparition in his likeness and wearing garlands came to her, and, having embraced her in conjugal wise, transferred to her the garlands it wore and departed. Ariston, coming in afterwards, saw the garlands and asked who had given them to her. She told him he had done so himself; and when he denied it she confirmed it with an oath. Ariston then began to suspect divine interference. On making enquiry it was found that the garlands were from the adjacent temple of the hero Astrabakus; and the diviners identified the apparition with the hero himself. In that night Demaratus’ mother became pregnant of him.203.1 Satyrs and Fauns, under the name of incubi, were generally held to be guilty of criminal assaults upon women when opportunity offered. Among the Gauls, we are told by Saint Augustine, this kind of evil spirit was known as Dusii; and their constant exploits, as well as those of the Silvans and Fauns, were so well attested that to the great ecclesiastic it seemed it would be impudent to deny them.203.2

Incubi were identified by later theologians with devils; and their embraces were almost always an item in the accusation against witches before a legal tribunal. When offspring resulted, it was naturally a monster. The romance of Merlin, born of such a connection, born grisly to sight and rough and not as other children, was cited as a fact by the credulous writers of those days on witchcraft and demonology.203.3

According to Bulgarian belief a ghost against which proper precautions are not taken may cause, especially in the winter, much annoyance. Such ghosts may even have sexual intercourse with women. As lately as the year 1888, at the village of Orzoja, the death of a certain girl was attributed by the people to this cause.204.1 A Ruthenian story represents a dead husband as haunting his wife every night for a whole year. Whether he actually came to conjugal intercourse does not appear. However that might have been, he gave her no rest from his bodily attacks. Worn out, she sought for help against him, and was advised to take poppy-seed to bed with her, to fasten upon her head a large bowl, and to light a taper. When the dead man came as usual she threw the poppy-seed in his face, as she had been prescribed. He asked in a tone of surprise who had given her this advice. By way of answer she threw more. In a fury the dead man flung himself upon her, by main force tore the bowl from her and took to flight, apparently convinced that he had torn off her head. The door banged after him so violently as to split from top to bottom; and in the morning the bowl was found some distance away, smashed to pieces. But the woman was delivered from her tormentor from that hour.204.2

Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Pirate, was based on the deeds and capture of one John Gow. This man was taken prisoner in the Orkney Islands and afterwards tried before the High Court of Admiralty in London, condemned for piracy and executed. Before his capture he had become affianced to an Orcadian girl. “It is said,” writes Sir Walter in the advertisement prefixed to the book, “that the lady whose affections Gow had engaged went up to London to see him before his death, and that, arriving too late, she had the courage to request a sight of his dead body; and then, touching the hand of the corpse, she formally resumed the troth-plight which she had bestowed. Without going through this ceremony she could not, according to the superstition of the country, have escaped a visit from the ghost of her departed lover, in the event of her bestowing upon any living suitor the faith which she had plighted to the dead.”205.1 In the Orkney Islands these superstitions were then vivid. If we may judge by a phrase in the record of a witch-trial at Kirkwall, it was the belief in the early part of the seventeenth century that a man slain at the going down of the sun remained neither living nor dead, but was capable of sexual intercourse with any woman who would yield herself to him; in return for which he gave “a guidly fe,” in the shape of second sight and power of divining the future.205.2 A circumstantial and horrible account of a series of occurrences of the same period in Iceland is given by contemporary authorities. A man of position named Ivar Eyjulfsson was wedded to Herdis, daughter of Sera Magnus Jonsson of Ottrardal. They lived at Reykjarfjörd on affectionate terms; and the husband often prayed his wife in case of his death not to marry again, or something untoward would happen. In the year 1604, despite foreboding dreams during the whole of the previous winter, he went to sea with four companions. On taking leave of his wife and father-in-law as if he never expected to see them again, he reiterated his injunctions to her to remain single. A quarrel arose at sea between Ivar and one of his companions named Jon; the boat foundered, and Ivar, Jon, and another of the crew were drowned. The bodies came to shore at Langardal, and were buried in the churchyard there. On digging the grave an older grave, lying in heathen fashion north and south, was found; and just where the breast of the corpse lay was a great stone, and beside it an iron arrowhead. This incident seems to have been regarded as having some connection with the spooks which were subsequently manifested. Whatever that connection may have been, it speedily began to be noised abroad that Ivar and Jon “walked,” and that their quarrel was far from being ended with their death. After a year or two of widowhood Herdis was courted by an honourable man, one Sturla Gottskalksson, and on her father’s advice consented to marry him. Already, however, she had been suffering from an ulcer on the foot; and after she had given her consent to Sturla it became worse. Nor was this all. One night her first husband came to her bed and had intercourse with her. Another night she struggled with him, seizing the coverlet with her teeth to protect herself from him. One disaster followed another. A black blister on her tongue burst and sloughed away half of that member. In spite of all, the formal betrothal took place; but it was followed by such an exhibition of ghostly fury that even Sturla wished to withdraw, and only Sera Magnus’ firmness in insisting on the wedding prevented the engagement from being broken off. When the wedding was solemnized, no sooner had the vows been spoken in the church than Herdis uttered a piercing cry, and those of the company who, being Sunday-born children, had the gift of seeing spirits beheld Ivar’s ghost approach her. Such was the horror and confusion that the ceremony had to be cut short, and the newly wedded pair left the church without the customary prayer and blessing. The persecution was repeated every time that Sturla attempted to consummate the marriage, until even ordinary folk who were not ghost-seers saw how the ghost waylaid the unfortunate Herdis. Recourse was had to a renowned practitioner of supernatural arts, who by his incantations succeeded in making things somewhat quieter in the house; but after awhile matters were as bad as ever, and his spells ceased to be effective. Sometimes Ivar appeared alone, sometimes with Jon, and then both were usually in fierce contest. If the word of God were read they slunk out of the house; as soon as the reading was over they returned. Herdis was again subjected to the dead man’s assaults; and the magician could only protect her by setting on her lap a woman holding upright a naked blade of steel. At length the ghost attacked the magician himself, and, blowing in his mouth, caused him a frightful ulcer in the neck; so that he was compelled to leave the place, declaring that he could not cope with all the devils that followed Ivar’s ghost. Herdis sought refuge in a chapel, but in vain. She returned home, therefore; and shortly after, on a Sunday morning, a loud crash was heard; her bed had broken down, and two of its timbers had fallen to the ground. That was the culmination of the ghostly persecution. The unhappy woman breathed her last. The magician said, when he heard of it, that the ghost had strangled her. Then he did what, by all the rules of the ghostlayer’s art, he ought to have done before. Venturing back to Sturla’s house, he ordered Ivar’s grave to be opened. Ivar’s body and that of Jon were found undecayed, but right evil to look upon. They were disinterred and burnt, and with that all manifestations came to an end.208.1

This narrative is not an ordinary saga, located indeed at a specified place, but the events of which are told of an indefinite past, or are clustered in a manner known to all students of folklore round a celebrated name. It is quite distinguishable in character from the Icelandic tale I have mentioned on a previous page. It was soberly reported in the year 1606 by persons of credit, if also of credulity, according to our standard, while most of the actors and a number of persons who had more or less acquaintance with the facts were yet living; it was related as something which had occurred not within their recollections at some distant date, but quite recently. The ghostlayer whose services were called in survived until the year 1647, and was well known in the island. The account therefore discloses the kind of horrors that in that age, as in earlier ages, witness the Heimskringla and various sagas, enlivened the long gloom of an arctic winter. Foremost among those horrors may be reckoned the belief that dead men still, in some circumstances at any rate, retained their sexual instincts, and attempted, not in vain, to gratify those instincts upon living women.

Indeed, communities boasting themselves of the culture and progress of the twentieth century have not entirely discarded the terrors born of some such belief. I do not refer to solitary cases of mania,208.2 such as are probably to be found in all communities from time to time, but to cases in which the belief has been adopted by society at large and stamped with the collective approval, or at least acceptance. This may be said to be done when a court of law, in the course of a judicial investigation, admits evidence of haunting and solemnly gives judgement based upon such evidence.

On the 16th February 1912, at Macon, Georgia, in the United States of America, the second husband of a lady was actually granted a decree of divorce on the ground that the ghost of her first husband haunted both his wife and himself, and the difficulty was so great that it was utterly impossible for them to live together. It was not of course given in evidence that the ghost committed assaults, such as those we have just been considering. The advance of civilization since the seventeenth century has softened the manners even of ghosts. But it was stated that the wife had promised her former husband that she would not marry again; she violated the promise; and it was solemnly testified in court that the first husband’s spirit appeared nightly with groans and reproachful glances, and only ceased to do so when the lady left her new husband.209.1 In our country a luckless husband would find that the posthumous jealousy of his predecessor in the ménage is no ground for divorce. Since the days of the witch-trials our courts have remained unmoved by ghostly perturbations. They have even been known to refuse assistance to the tenant of a haunted house. But Europe is effete.

In the lower culture it is otherwise. The Ewhe of Togoland believe in the possibility of conjugal intercourse and other communion between a dead and a living spouse; but when it takes place it results in death to the survivor. Stringent measures are therefore adopted to prevent it. These measures are all the more necessary, since the survivor must during the period of mourning—in which all the danger seems to be concentrated—lay aside all clothing and ornaments and go entirely naked. A widow for the first six weeks has nothing to fear so much as her deceased husband. She must remain all that time in the hut beneath which her husband is buried, only leaving it for short intervals to bathe and for other necessary purposes. In token of mourning she goes with bowed head and eyes bent down, crossing her arms over her breast so that the left hand rests on the right shoulder, in order that “no mischief befall her from the dead man.” She also carries a club to drive him away in case he wish to approach her, otherwise there would immediately be an end of her.210.1 She sleeps, moreover, on the club, because, if she did not, he would take it away from her unperceived. Ashes must be mingled with her food and drink to prevent her husband from partaking of it—a sign probably of the renewal of conjugal life—in which case she would die. She must not answer any call, must eat neither beans, nor flesh nor fish, drink neither palm-wine nor rum; for any infringement of these prohibitions would cost her life. Smoking is the only solace permitted to her. During the night a charcoal fire is kept up in the hut; and upon this fire she strews a powder, consisting of peppermint-leaves dried and rubbed down, and red pepper, so as to cause an evil-smelling smoke, which makes the dead man—it would make any living man—averse to entering.210.2 After the death of his wife a man, in some districts at all events, must remain for three days in his hut and abstain from intercourse with his other wives. At the expiration of this period the women of the town assemble and wash him with medicine prepared by the witch-doctor. Without this precaution none of his other wives would dare to come near him, lest they too should die.211.1

Before passing to another cultural area we may note two other significant customs in Togoland. Weddings there, as elsewhere, are occasions of festivity; and the firing of guns is doubtless an expression of joy and triumph, for the Negro delights in noise. Even when, among the Akposso, in the administrative district of Atakpame, a man succeeds in seducing a married woman away from her husband into his own house, he fires a gun, for he says: “I have now a new wife!” With that the marriage is concluded, and he gives a great feast and defies the former husband, who sometimes attempts to recover her by force. But if the former husband be dead he fires no gun on marrying the widow.211.2 On the other hand, when a man’s wife dies in her house the husband fears to enter it again, and it is usually destroyed. Even where it is not destroyed, it is never again entered by the widower or any of his relations or dependants. Only a stranger not belonging to his family may dare to dwell there. If the widower take a new wife, he builds her a new house.212.1 To build a new house for a new wife is usual; what is important to observe here is that the old house in which the deceased wife dwelt may be safely inhabited by a stranger, and only by a stranger.

Precautions like those of the Togo are taken by widows in Loango. All the openings in a widow’s hut are closed, and a spell is laid on every place where the ghost might harbour. But that is not enough. What she fears is that her deceased husband, or some other disembodied spirit greedy of her society, will visit her by night. That would result either in her death, or in her bringing some fearful monster into the world. So the medicine-men prepare for her, according to the rules of their art, a piece of wood wherewith to fasten the door by way of bar or bolt; or they give her a fringed cord to stretch behind, and another to stretch round, her bed, both of them of course enchanted. More than this, the door of the hut is changed to another side, further to mystify the unwelcome revenant. If she be very nervous they lead her in the darkness by a roundabout way to another hut, carefully erasing her footsteps, unless they carry her or make her wear shoes that will render the traces unrecognizable. Besides that, they furnish her with a magical staff to embrace when she goes to sleep. Sometimes at least it is carried in daylight also. One would think such precautions would daunt the most evil-designing ghost. If any ghost, however, were so obdurate, or so conceited of his power to break down these defences, as to persist, he would find they were mere outworks, and that there were stronger and more effectual lines behind. The witch-doctors are not easily beaten—provided they have a client who is willing and able to pay the enhanced cost of their services. Without going into all the details of what is in effect a war to the bitter end against the intrusive ghost, it may be said generally that they will give him no rest; they will beat the dwelling inside and outside with their conjuring implements; they will sweep the courtyard clear; they will leave no corner where the poor wretch can skulk; they will lay spells; they will hunt him through the village with beating, with sweeping, with fire, with the discharge of guns; they will rouse the whole population to their assistance; they will lay bombs laden with magical virtue; they will stretch magical cords across every path leading to the village. If, in spite of all these boisterous proceedings, the ghost be so hardy or so clever as to continue haunting the place, there will be nothing for it but to remove the village, or to catch the supernatural enemy and to shoot him dead beyond resurrection. But this is obviously an extreme measure, to which it is seldom necessary to resort, and which can only be undertaken by a specialist of the first rank and at a corresponding cost. The ghosts of deceased men are, in Loango, scarcely more to be dreaded than those of women dead in childbed, or of marriageable girls. The former are especially dreaded by pregnant women and married men, for their vengeful malice. The latter attack married men in their sleep, or seduce them under varied forms; and to yield means impotence or death.213.1

A little further to the south, beyond the Congo, it was the custom in Matiambo for widows to sacrifice themselves, together with the slaves of the deceased, who were sent to accompany their master into the other world. Widows who neglected to do so, and who escaped victorious from the ordeal for witchcraft, felt the soul of the departed spouse oppressing their breasts; and the witch-doctor was required to purify them before they ventured to contract a new marriage.214.1 The process of purification is not described, but is probably like that reported by a missionary who has spent many years on the Congo. The widow must go to a running stream, taking her husband’s bed and one or two of the articles he has commonly used. These are all placed in the middle of the stream; and after she has well washed she sits on the bed. The witch-doctor dips her three times in the water and then dresses her; the bed and other articles are broken and thrown down the stream to float away. She is led out of the stream; a raw egg is broken, and she swallows it; a toad is killed, and some of the blood rubbed on her lips; lastly, a fowl is killed and hung by the roadside—presumably a sacrifice to the deceased. She returns to her town. On arriving there, she sits on the ground, stretching out her legs before her, and her deceased husband’s brother steps over them. She is then free to marry again; but inasmuch as widows are not allowed to marry for a year or two after the husband’s death, the rite is most likely not performed until the end of that period. It is only necessary after the death of a first husband. Corresponding ceremonies are necessary for a man after his first wife’s death. He may not leave his house, except at night, for six days, and he must sleep only on a basket made by plaiting together two palm-fronds. He then undergoes a similar purification to that just described, with some additional precautions. On returning home his deceased wife’s sister steps over his legs. No woman would dare to marry him until these rites are performed.215.1 Although they do not seem to be confined to cases in which oppression by the ghost is endured, it is fairly certain that their object is to get rid, not merely of the death-pollution, but of the ghost. We shall see directly what is the meaning of the ceremonial stepping over the survivor’s legs.

Meanwhile let us cross the continent to Delagoa Bay. The neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay, together with a large extent of country to the north in Portuguese and across the border in British territory, is occupied by various branches of a Bantu people frequently known as Shangaans, but which it is convenient to call the Thonga, a name proposed by M. Henri Junod, a Swiss Protestant missionary. The tribe more immediately around the Bay is called the Baronga. The rites of purification practised by the Thonga on different occasions—among others, notably after a death—are very remarkable, and indicate a considerable preoccupation with sexual matters. These rites have been carefully described by M. Junod, but they have not yet been sufficiently studied to enable us to pronounce on the meaning of them all. I shall therefore only refer to one or two.

The death-pollution affects not merely all who come into contact with the corpse; it affects the entire kin, and indeed the whole of the village in which the deceased resided, whether related to him or not. But it affects especially his wives, and among these his principal or “great” wife. Like the grave-diggers who have been handling the corpse, she is required to take a sweat-bath. She is required, moreover, to fumigate herself over a fire of dry grass from the roof of the hut, mingled with cock’s dung (not hen’s). A reed or a strip of palm-leaf with a few other leaves suspended to it is then put round her waist. She enters the hut, which has been already unroofed, wailing to her deceased husband, and crawls out again by the hole at the back made to remove the corpse, as if she were herself a corpse. She cannot remain there. A new hut is therefore built for her; and there she must afterwards sleep, until the days of her purification are accomplished and she passes into the possession of her husband’s kinsman to whom she is assigned. Even for the subordinate wives (who have their own rites of purification to observe) it would be dangerous to sleep on the very ground where they have been accustomed to meet the deceased: hence their huts must also be removed. It is difficult to understand what danger they are exposed to, unless it be assaults from the ghost. The huts they occupy do not seem to be polluted, at least beyond the general pollution of the village, or they could not continue to occupy them. But the sites must be changed; and this can hardly be for any other purpose than to mystify the ghost.216.1

Turning now to two other widely separated cultural regions, we will first of all notice a significant article of dress worn by a widow in the eastern islands of Torres Straits. The ordinary dress of a woman comprised invariably a petticoat (sometimes more than one) of ample size, extending from the waist to the knee or thereabouts, and made of split leaves or bark-fibre. But a widow, and she alone, “twisted up a petticoat of banana leaves, and, passing it between her legs, fixed it at her waistband. This was the first sign of widowhood,” and had a special name. It was put on as soon as the preliminary ceremonies had finished, and prior to the removal of the body for the purpose of mummification. The widow continued to wear it after she had discarded every other sign of mourning, and until she married again.217.1 In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, inhabited by a population consisting, so far as has been ascertained, of a fusion of Melanesians and Papuans, the lot of a widower is not a happy one. So closely is he haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife that he becomes a social outcast, shunned by everyone, and loses all civil rights, such is the horror he inspires. Excluded thus from communion with his fellow-men, he skulks alone in the long grass and the bushes; for he must not be seen. He invariably carries, like the Ewhe widow, a tomahawk to defend himself against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who, we are told, would do him an ill turn if she could. This may, to be sure, as the missionary to whom we are indebted for the report presents it, be no more than the natural malignancy of the dead, whose chief delight is to harm the living.218.1 The missionary, however, may not have penetrated the true inwardness of the superstition. At all events, elsewhere there is no room for doubt.

Among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia both widows and widowers took elaborate precautions against the persecution of their deceased spouses. Directly death occurred the survivor went out and passed four times through a patch of rose-bushes, doubtless to ensure that the spirit should not cling to him or her. Probably for the same end ablutions in the creeks morning and evening for a year were prescribed. Rigid abstention from certain kinds of food was part of the discipline; and, contrary to the practice of the Ewhe, tobacco was also forbidden. During a whole year the survivor was required to sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread at the head and foot, while in the middle were not only rose-bush sticks, but also branches of bearberry, mountain-ash, juniper, sage, and so forth. A widow could neither lie or sit where her children slept, nor let them lie down on her bed. Finally, a widow often wore a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, that the ghost of her husband should not have conjugal intercourse with her.219.1 The aborigines of Hispaniola also believed that the dead walked in the night and entered into converse with living people, even in their beds; but if we may trust Peter Martyr, though in human shape they thus approached women, seeking sexual intercourse, “when the matter cometh to actual deede,” suddenly they vanished away.219.2 Our information concerning this unfortunate people, speedily destroyed by the Spaniards, is extremely meagre; and we do not know whether any precautions were taken against these ghostly visits. Among the Tarahumares of Mexico three great feasts are given at intervals after a death. Until the last of them is held the deceased hangs about the neighbourhood. Their object therefore is to get rid of the ghost. To that end he is presented with gifts and adjured to depart with them, and not to come and disturb the survivors. At the second, and especially at the third feast, ceremonial races are performed, in order to chase him away. Hikuli, the sacred plant of the Tarahumares, plays a prominent part in these festivities, for it “is thought to be very powerful in running off the dead, chasing them to the end of the world, where they join the other dead.” The third feast, the most elaborate of all, is deemed to be at last effectual. Not until it is over “will a widower or a widow marry again, being more afraid of the dead than are the other relatives.”219.3 It is not expressly stated what their fear is; but in the light of other examples it is perhaps not unreasonable to suspect that it arises from jealousy on the part of the deceased.

At all events I have shown that among the Negroes on the northern shore of the Gulf of Guinea, among the Bantu about the Lower Congo, and among the Indians of the Thompson River in British Columbia, the fear is seriously entertained that the deceased will seek a renewal of conjugal intercourse, and the utmost precautions are taken to prevent it. The precautions taken by the Baronga (also a Bantu tribe) in South-East Africa, and by some Melanesian peoples of the Torres Straits Islands and the mainland of New Guinea, strongly suggest the same fear. The ancient inhabitants of Hispaniola attributed sexual desires to the dead, though they do not seem to have believed in the possibility of their accomplishment; and the Tarahumare husband or wife is afraid to marry again until the deceased spouse has been finally driven away from the society of the living to herd with the other dead at the end of the world. It is very striking that the populations of areas so widely different in race and culture, as well as so far apart in space, as some of these, should display the identical terror exhibited in the tales and superstitions cited from ancient and modern Europe and from China. The story of the generation of Harpocrates, though related of a god, points to similar ideas in ancient Egypt; and it has its analogues in India and the East Indian Archipelago.

Practices exist, moreover, in other countries that seem to bear witness to the same terror, though the terror itself is not recorded. In such cases they may be indirect evidence of its existence. The practices I refer to are such as that among the Kikuyu and Anyanja in East-Central Africa. The former are a tribe Bantu in speech and mainly Bantu in blood and custom, though mingled with other elements. On the third day after the burial of a husband the elders assemble at the village to kill a ram. This ceremony has the effect of cleansing the village at large “from the stain of death”; but something more is needed by the widow. Accordingly “the elders bring with them one of their number who is very poor, and of the same clan as the deceased, and he has to sleep in the hut of the senior widow of the deceased,” and to have sexual relations with her. His poverty, and the rule that “he generally lives on in the village and is looked upon as a stepfather to the children,” point to the service he thus performs being considered attended with some danger, and therefore not to be undertaken except in hope of an adequate reward.221.1 The Anyanja, likewise a Bantu tribe, settled at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, hold a beer-drinking accompanied by dance and song a month after the burial, which takes place two or three days after the death. Up to that time conjugal relations are forbidden throughout the village of the deceased. The widow or widower and then each relative in turn is shaved, and cohabitation by all except the widow is resumed. She must wait until the second beer-drinking, six months or a year later. At this second ceremony dancing takes place on the first night, and beer is drunk the next day. Before sunset on the first day the widow is again shaven, and the mother of the deceased informs her that she is now free to marry again. That night “she has to sleep with a man paid by her relations.” He is not her permanent husband; his services are merely required as a preliminary to her marriage. According to the account from which I am quoting it would appear that she may marry after mourning two or three months, but not without the same previous ritual coition, else “her second husband would die, should she have committed adultery.” A widower, on the other hand, “mourns five or six months and is then given medicine, after which he may marry again, and without which, should he marry, his new wife would die.”222.1 There are some difficulties here. It seems clear that until the mourning is over the widows cannot marry again, and the length of mourning is decided by the relatives of the deceased; it is closed with the beer-drinking. When it is over, the widows select their husbands from among the kindred of the deceased; he who marries the chief wife is the heir. A widow cannot marry outside this limited circle, unless she, or her new husband, be prepared to repay her bride-price, and often more. Customs doubtless differ, but this is the usual course. It is curious too that the second husband of a widow should die, if he married her without the previous coition by another man, only if she had committed adultery, whereas the woman marrying a widower will die in any case if he have not had medicine. It is probable that there has been some misunderstanding of the informants and that the second husband runs the risk of death in any case by wedding a widow who has not undergone the regular preliminary.222.2 The probability is confirmed by the practice of the Yaos, a neighbouring tribe, among whom the second husband pays a man to pass a night with the widow before he takes her.223.1 A further example may be given from a wholly different cultural area. Among the Kamtchadals no one would be willing to marry a widow “unless her sins have been previously taken away by the highest degree of familiarity granted to anyone who wishes to render her this service.” The writer to whom we are indebted for the information reported in the eighteenth century that the natives imagined that this expiation might cause the expiator to die like the defunct husband, so that the poor women would remain widows but for the assistance of the Russian soldiers, who were not afraid of exposing themselves to a danger so equivocal.223.2

The Kikuyu, Anyanja and Kamtchadal customs are evidently the same. The penalty for non-observance, though not expressed in our account of the Kikuyu custom, is, it will hardly be questioned, the same as in the other two; it is the death of the second husband. What I venture to suggest, in view of the other Bantu customs already laid before the reader, is that the risk actually run by marrying or cohabiting with the widow is that of death from the posthumous jealousy of the deceased. The fact that the deceased is still supposed to desire a continuance of conjugal relations renders it natural to think that, even where the extreme terrors that torture the widow in some places are not shown, the belief may linger in his jealousy of other men, who do what he perhaps is no longer conceived capable of. The suggestion derives support from the rites performed about the Lower Congo. There, it will be remembered, the terror of a dead husband is excessive. The elaborate purification of the widow, every incident of which points to the desire to rid her of his attentions, culminates in his brother stepping over her outstretched legs.

Now the act of stepping over another is everywhere regarded as one of great rudeness, if not insult. More than this, it is regarded as likely to communicate some mysterious injury or to take away some luck, good quality or advantage from the person who is thus treated. Hence it is often hotly resented. Without going beyond the Congo region, it is enough to note that in Loango to step over a child is to interfere with his development—in other words, to stop his growth; to step over an adult is to transfer to him every evil from which one may be suffering. It is not good even to reach, or to throw anything, across him; and if such a thing be done, the action must be repeated in the contrary direction, in order, it would seem, to reverse the spell.224.1 But in the ceremony of purification an act in ordinary circumstances so injurious is ritually performed for some beneficial effect. This may be simply to take away some evil; it may be to dispossess finally and for ever the tenacious ghost, in case all the previous efforts have proved unavailing. But the difference of the performer’s sex means surely more than this. When a widow is purified, her husband’s brother performs the final rite; when it is a widower, his wife’s sister. Now it will be observed these persons belong to the precise class from which the next spouse is to be taken. When the husband dies the widow becomes the wife of one of his brothers; when the wife dies the husband demands another wife from her family.224.2 The act of stepping over the widow or widower, therefore, seems to symbolize the taking of possession by one of the persons entitled to do so.

Let us turn to the Baganda, a Bantu people on the highest pitch of civilization to which any branch of the race had attained prior to the coming of the white man. There we find that jumping over a woman, or stepping over her legs, is regarded as “equivalent to, or instead of, having sexual connection with her.” “For a woman to sit with her legs straight in front of her, or apart, was looked upon as unbecoming; and for any man to step over her legs was equivalent to having intercourse with her. The mere fact of stepping over a wife, or over some of her clothing, was a method frequently followed to end a taboo which necessitated intercourse” (scil., to end it).225.1 The act is performed on a variety of ceremonial occasions when coition would be inconvenient. To mention only one, the king had an officer of the court, a relative of his own, called the Kauzumu, whose duty it was to fulfil certain rites and taboos for him, and thus to save him from inconvenience. Among others, it was said that in former times it was his duty to take the women who were to become the king’s wives for one night to his bed. To the latest period of national independence, when one of the king’s wives died and her clan sent another in her place, the Kauzumu jumped over her before presenting her to the king.225.2 By this act the taboo was removed, the danger, whatever it was, was diverted from the king to the Kauzumu. We may safely infer that the act of stepping over the legs of the surviving spouse in the Congo region is a symbolic coition. It is performed by one who belongs to the class of prospective spouses, though probably after the performance of such a ceremony not the one who would actually wed the survivor; for its object, if I am right, is to take on the shoulders of the performer the consequences which would otherwise light on the new consort.226.1

Though not by any means so conclusively as the practices just discussed, the delay between the ending of a first marriage by the death of one of the parties and the second marriage of the other party seems to indicate the same dread of the deceased. The mourning ceremonies must usually all be accomplished before the survivor, at all events if a woman, can be married again. With the completion of the mourning ceremonies it is a common belief, of which we have had more than one instance, that the deceased is finally despatched to the society of the dead; in any case, he is at rest, and is very often speedily forgotten. Among the Namib-Bushmen of South-West Africa, a mongrel people, the result of the intermingling of probably many broken tribes with an original stock of Hottentots, marriage is monogamous. That does not mean that death only can separate the married pair. If separation between two living spouses take place, either can marry again forthwith. But if the separation be caused by death, something like half a year (that is to say, either a rainy or a dry season) must elapse before re-marriage; for, we are told, the belief prevails that, for example, the woman whom a widower marries without waiting will soon herself die. And when the widower does venture on a new marriage, it must be to a sister of his deceased wife if there be one at liberty.227.1 So in the Togo district of Atakpame, a woman who is left by her husband, even if only for a time, may be taken by another man; and this, it seems, under German rule renders it difficult to get men to work at the making of roads, for his absence will cost the labourer his wife. But when a man dies his widow must wait for three farm-years (a farm-year equals ten months) before she marries again. The delay seems not to be popular. In the western portion of the district, among the Akposso, the time has been shortened to two years, while in the eastern portion, where the people are less purely Akposso, the widow marries after eleven months. The modern Akposso widow holds it silly to wait longer: she has not murdered her first husband, and therefore she ought, she thinks, to be able to marry sooner. But she must wait these eleven months, else she would die. If, however, her husband has been hanged for murder or some other reason, she may marry at the end of two or three months. The ground alleged for this shortening of the period of delay is economic. There seems to be no rule requiring the widow to be taken by a surviving member of the husband’s family, though the children resulting from a second marriage belong to it. If she cannot find another husband, therefore, she must go back to her own family and she may become a burden upon it. On marrying she must work in her husband’s fields, for the benefit of himself and his family. But she is entitled to a small field for herself, out of which she may make her own profit; and there is now plenty of money in the country, and a general desire to earn as much of it and as soon as possible.228.1 All this may be very true; but seeing that the widow who marries prematurely must die, she will not be likely to run so serious a risk for the chance of making a little money. If we are right in supposing that the death-penalty is one exacted by the deceased, the conjecture will not be deemed unreasonable that hanging is believed to inflict such injuries on the ghost that its interference is not to be dreaded. The mode of death and the mutilations (if any) inflicted on the corpse are widely held to affect the departed in the future life.

Jealousy is a passion by no means confined to the male sex. In the lower culture it is believed to continue to inspire women as well as men, even after death. If not so prominent a superstition as the belief in masculine jealousy, this is perhaps to be accounted for partly by the generally dominant position in the household and in society of the man, partly to the widespread habit of polygamy, and partly to the physiological rule that the decay of sexual impulse makes its appearance earlier in women than in men. We have already found examples of customs pointing to posthumous feminine jealousy among various races in both hemispheres. One or two other examples may be given.

Among the Bantu tribes of North-Eastern Rhodesia, when a married woman dies her husband sends to her father for another wife in her stead. A sister or some such relative of the deceased is the proper person to take her place. If there be none unmarried and therefore available, a married sister of the deceased must spend one or two nights with the widower “to take the death from off his body.”228.2 This is so much in harmony with the Bantu practices previously considered, that we can only suppose the deceased would acquiesce in her sister’s succession to her rights, but would feel jealous and angry at the intrusion of another woman. The women of these tribes are high-spirited and jealous, those of the Awemba being proverbially fierce. Among most of the tribes it is imperative for the bridegroom to move into the bride’s parents’ village, where he will always be under the eye of his mother-in-law, and where, no doubt, in case of the wife’s death, a sister or other relation would be conveniently handy to step into her shoes. Indeed, among the Awemba the wife often relinquishes her position voluntarily to another member of the family. When she “has presented her husband with two or three children she considers that she has fulfilled her marriage obligations towards him. With his consent, which as a rule is not difficult to obtain, she hands over her niece as a substitute. The niece inherits her aunt’s position, and cares for her children, while the aunt retires to the peace of a single life, or very often finds a new partner.”229.1 Thus it may be presumed that a dead wife, if she returned and found a relative of her own in her husband’s arms, would submit to a relationship between them such as she herself might in a year or two have voluntarily initiated, satisfied that her children, if any, would be looked after. How long that relationship would last (and divorce is quite an everyday occurrence) would be no concern of hers, and she would not trouble herself further in the matter. The next woman whom her husband married would therefore be rendered safe: the “death” would have been taken off his body.

In India the widows of the higher castes are not allowed to marry again. Among the aboriginal tribes widows who do so often marry “under cover of darkness, and with the aid of certain ceremonies commonly relied upon as a protection against spirits.” If in spite of these precautions the woman should be troubled by her departed husband, he is placated, as among the Kolīs of Ahmadnagar, by a tiny image of himself worn in a copper case round her neck, or set among the household gods, and by the expenditure of money in charity.230.1 But the spirit of a dead wife is more troublesome. Her character for jealousy and malice is perhaps partly due to confusion with a woman dead in childbirth or pregnancy, or who has never had a child. A ghost of this kind is greatly dreaded.230.2 The ghosts of ordinary married women are, however, not to be despised. They perform all sorts of unpleasant tricks on the survivors, not the least of which are the attacks they make on their successors in their husbands’ affections. Happily these attacks can be warded off by a judicious homage to the departed or a pretended identification of the deceased with her successor. Thus among the Gaddis, a Hindu sect in the Panjab, when the first wife dies the second wears a silver plate called saukan mora, or crown of the rival wife. This plate represents the deceased, and is propitiated to avert her hostility.230.3 Indeed, the practice is not confined to one sect: it is common to several of the castes. The widower hangs a miniature portrait of his former wife, or even her name engraved on a silver or gold plate, about the new bride’s neck. The object, it has been suggested, is to humour the spirit of the first wife by identifying her with the second, thus proving the husband’s fidelity. In the Central Panjab, on the other hand, the bride is dressed as a milkmaid, or a flower-seller, and given a servile nickname, apparently to convince the spirit of the deceased that the girl being married is not a real wife, but a slave-girl. When the death of the second wife shows that the device has been unsuccessful, a mock-marriage of the bridegroom to a tree or a sheep, adorned like a bride, is resorted to before his marriage with a woman. “It is interesting to watch the bedecked sheep sitting on the khárás (reversed baskets) with a bridegroom and being led by him round the sacrificial fire, while the real bride sits by.” Here it is doubtless intended to fix the attention of the deceased upon the tree or the sheep, and so leave the real wife free from her jealousy. After the death of the third wife the evil influence of the first is deemed to be exhausted.231.1 The Lets of Bengal, who are also Hindus in religion, permit their widows to marry again, though not by the rite for a virgin-bride. The second husband is usually a widower; and he places the iron bangle of his former wife on his new wife’s arm.231.2 So in Baroda a widower who marries again has to present to his new wife a neck-ornament with marks to represent the feet of his first wife. She will wear this to prevent the ghost of the latter from troubling her.231.3

It need hardly be said that the rites and tales here discussed involve something more than the belief in the survival of death by a bare human personality. They could not have come into existence without the belief that what remained after the catastrophe was still in some degree a sentient and powerful being. It is difficult for mankind to acquiesce in the reality of death. The imagination refuses to harbour the thought of the cessation of conscious existence. The dead, although they appear to respond no longer to the physical and social stimuli hitherto effective, must still be. Vanished from our ordinary ken, they must be living somewhere, somehow; they cannot have been annihilated. If they still live, they must live under conditions analogous to those we know, and with affections, desires, appetites, aversions, similar to those they had in this life, though the objects may conceivably be changed. Hence every sort of activity known to man is ascribed to them. In dreams, in trances, and in the phenomena of possession they are observed to carry on these activities. But because they are observed to carry them on only under such mysterious conditions they repel the survivors and fill them with an undefinable horror and awe. Among the affections and appetites of mankind those connected with the sexual life are almost the strongest. It is natural therefore to imagine that the dead will still endeavour, by social and even by fleshly intercourse with the survivors, to gratify them. For if the belief in their activity in other directions be conceded, this cannot be denied; and perhaps the very horror that would be inspired by the ultimate stages of such a possibility serves to attract the thoughts, and therefore the belief, of peoples on the lower planes of civilization.

Ill weeds grow rank in such a soil. Not only are sexual appetites and affections almost the strongest; but, as is now well recognized, in the complex attitude of mankind to the invisible world they have no inconsiderable share. Marriage is a status hemmed about by many taboos and easily lending itself to mystical presentation. It is natural that the demise of one of the parties should cause a shock to the survivor corresponding to the change of condition involved, and should powerfully affect the sexual impulses. Even apart from marriage they are an object on which the thought of mankind, whether savage or civilized, broods with a persistent endeavour to solve the mystery surrounding them. Hints are seen in them for the solution of many a problem other than that of the propagation of the species. The ideas suggested by their contemplation are utilized alike for practical and economical purposes (for example, in agricultural magic), and for speculation on the transcendent themes of life and death and the constitution of the universe. The tales and superstitions I have brought together exhibit these impulses emphasizing the terror of the dead. Many of the phenomena of dreams, and the phenomena of hysteria and various forms of delusion are due to the sexual impulses. The sexual impulses in turn are in many, if not all, of the cases referred to above greatly aided by the conditions imposed on the patient. No less than luxury and over-feeding, fasting and abstinence from the ordinary and reasonable gratification of animal appetites, and from social intercourse, are the parents of nightmare and delusion. Both extremes lead through physical disturbances to disorders of the imagination and the reason. Hermits and celibates have probably suffered even more than rakes and gluttons and drunkards. The annals of monasticism with tiresome and pitiful iteration record the disastrous effects of asceticism upon body and mind. Among savage and barbarous peoples these effects are as a rule less noxious, because the conditions inducing and accelerating them are less continuous. But it is precisely at the time when sexual relations are put out of normal gear, and the sexual impulses are left without their normal gratification, that exclusion from society and abstinence, sometimes from sleep, always from food usual in quality and amount, are imposed. The imagination, already stimulated by the shock of the death (rarely attributed to natural causes), the possibility of an accusation of witchcraft hanging over the widow’s head, the certainty in many cases (as among the tribes of British Columbia) of a long period of hardship and even torture, all combine with the exclusion and enforced abstinence to produce a state of unnatural excitement, amounting at times to terror and delusion—in any case liable powerfully to affect the dreams, and to produce hysteria.

It must be remembered that the entire community shares to the full the underlying beliefs, and participates in varying degrees in the fears of the bereaved spouse. We are familiar even in Europe with the effect upon a crowd—nay, upon an entire nation—of emotions felt in common. They are intensified. The atmosphere becomes electrical, and a spark suffices to produce a conflagration. When the object of the emotion is strange, imperfectly apprehended, mysterious, the effect is heightened; it becomes a species of insanity. Things are imagined which do not exist; eyewitnesses attest what a dispassionate observer knows to be impossibilities. The most appalling of the tales and the most vivid of the rites we have been considering are thus easily accounted for. The marvel is that they are not more widely distributed over the world than our present information enables us to affirm.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING
CLOTHES

It is a commonplace among anthropologists that certain events in a community cause a state of taboo, which affects the members of the community in a greater or less degree, according to their nearness of place or blood to the person principally concerned, or according to the magnitude of the event. Among these events a death is not the least important. In the lower culture the whole village or settlement is often attainted by the occurrence of a death. But it is more particularly the near relatives, and those who have been brought into contact with the corpse, who are affected by the death-taboo (or, as it is often called, the death-pollution), most of all the widow or widower. We call the period of the death-taboo—mourning. The duration of the taboo, as well as its intensity, varies among different peoples, and not only according to the relationship of the mourners to the deceased, but also to his rank, from a few days to many months, and even to years. It is very rare that there is no mourning on a death; but if our reports may be trusted, there are a few cases, which, however, need not detain us.

Mourning garb is an essential part of the observances. Its object has been much debated by anthropologists. There seems little doubt that its first object is to distinguish those who are under the taboo from other persons: it is the sign of the plague. Professor Frazer many years ago laid it down “that mourning costume is usually the reverse of that in ordinary life.” He cited (among others) the practice at Rome for the sons of the deceased to walk at the funeral with their heads covered, the daughters with their heads uncovered, and that in Greece for men and women during the period of mourning to invert their usual habits of wearing the hair, the ordinary practice of men being to cut it short and that of women to wear it long.236.1 The accuracy of the generalization might be illustrated from examples all over the world. The Arapaho, who wear their hair long and braided, when in mourning unbraid it and wear it unbound. Sometimes they cut it. They wear old clothing, and do not paint themselves as they are accustomed to do.236.2 Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo men sometimes wear women’s dresses instead of their own, and shave half the hair of the head, or shave it in patches, and they rub clay on their bodies. Widows dress in only a few leaves or go stark naked, but with dirt or clay rubbed on the body. For three months after the funeral and a period of retirement in the bush they wear long, untidy-looking grass cloths.236.3 When following a corpse to the grave Ainu mourners wear their coats inside out and upside down. An Ainu’s hair is never cut, except on the death of husband or wife; and then cutting is obligatory.236.4 Among the Iban of Sarawak a widow’s mourning lasts until the final ceremonies, sometimes two years after the death. During that time she may not wear any ornament, her dress must be plain and old; and she is not allowed to pull out her eyelashes and eyebrows, nor to use soap for washing. Whatever acquaintance she may have in ordinary life with soap, the prohibition to pull out her eyelashes and eyebrows is a prohibition of the last and most seductive touches of her toilet: no Iban woman would think of wearing eyelashes and eyebrows if she were not a widow in mourning.237.1 By reversing the usual costume the mourner is distinguished from others, notice is given to the world of the taboo that binds him.

For this reason many of the aborigines of British Guiana lay their trinkets aside and go entirely naked; and among the Jiraras or Ayricas the wife, brothers and sisters of the deceased paint themselves all over with the juice of a fruit that renders them as black as Negroes, while relatives less near paint only their feet, legs, arms and part of the face: they are not so deeply compromised.237.2 So on the Ivory Coast the Ngoulango or Pakhalla mourners put off their ornaments, put on the head a worn-out loin-cloth and wear brown clothing, marking different parts of the body with red earth. If anything more were necessary to exhibit their state of taboo, it would be the practice of widows when they went out of doors to carry a piece of “fetish” wood, endowed with the power of causing death to anyone who approached them and touched it.237.3 In Australia the relatives, especially the women, cover their heads with clay, or in some parts of West Australia with red mud.237.4 The Warramunga women in the Northern Territory cover themselves from head to foot with pipeclay.237.5 Among the Uriyas of India, whose women are particularly fond of gay colours, a widow wears a plain white borderless sari, or cloth, as the sign of her bereavement.238.1 The Man Cao Lan of Tonkin wear white garments not hemmed; and those of their women who have adopted the Annamite trousers recur to the native petticoat.238.2

The colours of the mourning garb vary widely. Dr Frazer has collected a considerable list, to which it is needless to add. Let it suffice to say that though emblematic colours are often used, the main principle, especially in the lower culture, is that just discussed of reversing, or wearing something quite distinctive from, the ordinary costume.

The condition of taboo occasioned by a death, it should be noted, is by no means limited to the death of a human being. Among the ancient Egyptians the Mendesians observed a great mourning on the death of a goat; and more generally when a cat died by a natural death everyone in the house shaved his eyebrows, while on the death of a dog the whole head and body were shaved. Both these and other animals were also accorded honours of burial in sacred tombs.238.3 The native tribes of Manipur lay a genna, or taboo, upon the inmates of a house in which an animal dies or has young, especially a cow; and when a cat dies it is wrapped up in a cloth and buried amid lamentations in a grave dug for it by the old women.238.4 To the Ibo-speaking peoples of Nigeria the leopard is a quasi-sacred animal. At Aguku the hunter who has killed it puts eagle-feathers in his hair and does no work for twenty-eight days: that is to say, he is under a taboo for a whole moon. At Ugwoba he may not go to the Aǰana (the shrine of the earth) for a year; he must sit down without working for twenty-eight days, and may eat only such food as has been put in a pot and hung over the fire; he sleeps in a good house, and people watch lest other leopards come and kill him. On the twenty-eighth day, on taking the skin to market, sacrifices are offered to a certain tree, which is regarded as ekwensu, defined as the spirit of a man who has been killed with a rope or a knife, or of a woman who has died in pregnancy.239.1 Such a death would be an evil death, and the ghost would be naturally inclined to make others suffer in the same way; but the sacrifices would perhaps conciliate him and induce him to turn his attention to an effectual protection of the sacrificer against the leopards’ vengeance.

Among the Herero of German South-West Africa to shed the blood of a lion is the same as to shed that of a human being; and he who kills a lion can only wash away the sin by the shedding of his own blood. This is done by scoring his breast and arm with a flint and dropping some of the blood upon the earth.239.2 The Hidatsa of the North American prairies, after hunting eagles, build a sweat-lodge and purify themselves, singing a mystery-song or incantation.239.3 The practice, in fact, is widespread. In some instances it may be explained by totemism or analogous beliefs. In any case there can be no doubt it is dictated by similar motives to those that lead to the taboo and mourning after the death of a human being.

The suggestion has been made that the change of garb is intended as a disguise to deceive the spirit of the deceased, and so to shelter the mourner from its attacks. On the one hand, many tribes unquestionably adopt the same costume after killing an enemy as on the death of a friend. Among the Abarambos of Welle in the French Soudan, when a native kills another he blackens his face, girds himself with a grass cord and eats only raw bananas, to hinder the ghost from coming to kill him in his turn. The same rites are observed on the death of a husband or wife, with the addition that the survivor disappears for a time into the woods.240.1

But this is by no means the universal rule. Among the Nandi of East Africa the killing of an enemy entails quite a different garb from the death of a friend. “When a married man dies, his widows and unmarried daughters lay aside all their ornaments, and the eldest son wears his garment inside out”; and more or less shaving, according to their nearness in blood, is done by all the relatives. “On the death of a married woman her youngest daughter wears her garment inside out, whilst her other relations put rope on their ornaments [to hide them, a common practice where they cannot easily be taken off] and shave their heads. In the case of unmarried people the female relations cover their ornaments with rope, and the male relations shave their heads.” The killing of a Nandi, so far as appears, does not entail a change of costume, at least if the homicide belong to a different clan from his victim. It is merely the subject of vengeance, unless bought off by blood-money. Curiously enough, it does not even seem to render the guilty man “unclean,” as the killing of a member of his own clan does. The latter indeed renders him “unclean for the rest of his life, unless he can succeed in killing two other Nandi of a different clan, and can pay the fine himself.” In the meantime, for aught that appears in Mr Hollis’ careful account of the Nandi, no change of costume is necessary beyond what other members of the clan must undergo on the death of a relation. The killing of a person belonging to another tribe—a person who is not a Nandi,—however, entails a stringent condition of taboo, yet it is a subject, not of blame like the killing of a Nandi, but of praise. The slayer “paints one side of his body, spear and sword red, and the other side white. For four days after the murder he is considered unclean, and may not go home. He has to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he must not associate with his wife or sweetheart, and he may only eat porridge, beef, and goat’s flesh. At the end of the fourth day he must purify himself by drinking a strong purge made from the bark of the segetet-tree, and by drinking goat’s milk mixed with bullock’s blood.”241.1

Other tribes in the east of Africa paint the man-killer. Masai warriors (from whom possibly the Nandi have taken over the custom), after returning victorious, paint the body in the manner just described.241.2 Among the Borâna Galla, the conquerors who have slain an enemy, on returning, are washed by the women with a mixture of fat and milk, and their faces are painted red and white. After dirges over those who have fallen, the praises of the surviving heroes are sung, and the young warriors’ trophies are publicly buried outside the village. These trophies are portions of the bodies of the slaughtered foes which cannot be conveniently preserved.242.1 The washing is obviously a ceremonial purification. Apart from this the entire proceeding is one of triumph, and there is no indication of an attempt at concealment. In the Congo basin the Yaka warrior who kills a man in battle incurs the danger of reprisals on the part of the ghost. He can, however, escape by wearing the red tail-feathers of the parrot in his hair and painting his forehead red. Upon this it is to be observed that, as elsewhere, red is a favourite colour among the Bayaka. It is used for body-painting of both living and dead. The corpse is painted before burial; the dandy paints himself to increase his beauty; the widow is painted in mourning. The painting of the forehead can therefore hardly be a disguise. The tail-feathers of the parrot are probably an amulet.242.2

The Lillooet or the Ntlakapamux warrior of British Columbia who has slain a foe paints not merely his forehead but his entire face black. If he did not do so, it was believed that he would become blind; and in the case of the latter tribe we are told that “the spirit of the victim would cause him to become blind.” Blindness for some reason is dreaded by these tribes after other deaths. Among the Lillooet a widower cuts his hair very short above his eyes and ears; “for if his hair touched the eyes he would become blind.” The cutting of the hair is, of course, a very common rite either in or at the conclusion of mourning. Among the Ntlakapamux, widows and widowers “rubbed four times across their eyes a small smooth stone taken from beneath running water, and then threw it away, praying that they might not become blind.”243.1 Since widows and widowers are specially subject to the persecution of the deceased spouse, we may perhaps infer that the blindness in such cases would be attributable to the departed. A parity of reasoning would lead to the same conclusion in regard to the warrior’s victim. But how the painting of the face black would prevent such a catastrophe we are in the dark. For aught we know, it may have been (for instance) an expression of contrition designed to mollify the injured ghost. Mortuary ceremonies are almost everywhere so complicated that it is difficult to disentangle their motives. In the related tribe of the Skqomic all who follow the corpse in the burial procession must paint the breasts of their garments with red paint, else “a scarcity of fish would be the result at the next salmon run”; and the widow in addition is painted with red streaks on the crown of her head.243.2 The fact is that painting oneself is a preparation for the footlights by no means confined to over-civilized peoples. It is so usual in the most varied stages of culture, from the lowest upwards, that we cannot safely pronounce it an attempt at disguise.

A somewhat stronger case might perhaps be made for the garb of a company of Dyak head-hunters, if we could be sure that the ceremonies as described a few years ago by an eyewitness at the settlement of Tandjoeng-Karang, on the river Kapoeas, were intact. But when a rite is in decay, as head-hunting is, all sorts of variations are possible. The British and Dutch governments, now supreme in Borneo, with little regard for the most sacred feelings of their heathen subjects, positively forbid a custom intended to procure blessings for the community by the conversion of ancient foes into guardian spirits. Hence it is often necessary, instead of taking fresh heads, to put up with old ones and to make believe that they are new. For this purpose an expedition is sent forth on a mock-raid, carrying skulls of former victims with them, and bringing them back as if they were just acquired. When the expedition returns, it is received as if it were a successful war-party, and the ceremonies on the arrival of genuine head-hunters are performed. At Tandjoeng-Karang, on the occasion in question, these included dances in which both men and women took part. The men (who had been fasting, and were still under taboo) were clad in war-apparel. Skins of animals hung from their shoulders; feathers adorned their caps; and all wore on their wrists, arms and legs ornaments of withered palm-leaves, such as are distinctive of successful raiders. In addition, some had also shaved the front of the head and decked it with similar wreaths, so that the leaves hung down like fringes over the face. If this were intended as a disguise, it is curious that not all the raiders were thus shaven. Whether there was any reason why all did not share in this treatment of the head, or indeed what the palm-leaf ornament signified, it was not possible to ascertain. The observer was assured, however, that the shaving was necessary in order to bring the fast to an end, and that in former days the shorn hair was thrown into the water with invocations to the spirits. Now it lay neglected where it fell. The day was concluded with feasting and further dances; but the men were not yet entirely relieved from their taboo. This was accomplished early the next morning with a bath in the river; and the slaughter of hogs and another feast brought the solemnity to a close.245.1

On the other hand, all supernatural beings are deceived and tricked with what are to us very transparent devices. The standard of intellect in the other world would seem to be much lower than in this. Even the spirits of Shakespeare and Milton, when conjured up in a spiritualistic séance, are found stripped of all their supreme qualities, and hardly the equals of the silly persons who have flocked to their manifestations. In Borneo it is recorded that “some Madang [a sub-tribe of the Kenyahs], who had crossed over from the Baram to the Rejang on a visit, appeared each with a cross marked in charcoal on his forehead. They supposed that by this means they were disguised beyond all recognition by evil spirits.” And Tama Bulan, a Kenyah chief, when on a visit to Kuching, discarded for the same reason the leopard’s teeth which he habitually wore at home through the upper part of his ears.245.2 In the same island also the Kayans protect a child from an evil-disposed Toh, or inferior spirit, by a sooty mark on the forehead, consisting of a vertical median line and a horizontal band above the eyebrows, which is thought to render it difficult for the Toh to recognize his victim.245.3

This facility of deception, it may be observed, extends to other senses than that of sight. It is accountable for the taboo of words and the use of euphemisms in hunting and on other occasions. The poor silly spirits will not be able to penetrate the disguise. In the north-east of Scotland the fishermen when at sea never pronounced the words minister, kirk, swine, salmon, trout, dog, and so on, but used other words or phrases instead, such as “bell-hoose” for kirk, or “the man wi’ the black quyte” for minister.246.1 The people of Mulera-Ruanda in German East Africa have a definite theory to account for such a practice. They hold that the spirits have indeed ears and can hear what is said, but they have no eyes. Consequently when a householder proposes on some solemn occasion, as a betrothal, to sacrifice an animal, he directs the slave to go to the hill and fetch the thickest sweet potato for a feast, meaning a fat goat from the herd. This goat he then offers to his ancestors, calling it an ox; for the spirits will not be able to detect the cheat.246.2 Like Isaac in the Hebrew story, they are blind, and “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve at,” as our English proverb has it: they can be thus deceived into giving their blessing in return for a trifling gratification.

Yet it may be doubted whether the cases alleged by Professor Frazer in the important paper to which reference has been made, as favouring the opinion that mourning clothes are a disguise, are not susceptible of a different interpretation. So inconclusive did he himself think the evidence that he refrained from definitely committing himself to the opinion in question, though others have since done so. The custom of painting the face and body in mourning is so common that it is at least remarkable that the tribes of Borneo, who disguise themselves, as we have seen, from hostile spirits with charcoal, do not seem to attempt this defence against the peevish ghost of a newly deceased person. They content themselves with wearing bark-cloth or clothes stained yellow with clay, with allowing the hair to grow where it is usually shaved, or shaving it where it usually grows, and with laying aside personal ornaments or substituting for the metal earrings commonly worn by the women a wooden makeshift.247.1 In this way they may be said to conform to the rule already discussed of reversing the ordinary costume.

A Bohemian custom required the mourners to put on masks and to practise strange behaviour on their return from the funeral. It may be conjectured that this was a dance or devil-drive, intended to expel, not to deceive. Such dances are not uncommon, both at periodical purification ceremonies247.2 and on the occasion of a death. The use of masks at funeral dances of this kind has been reported, for example, in recent years among the Bantu-speaking peoples of the prairie-land in the interior of the Kamerun. At these dances wooden masks in the likeness of lower animals as well as of human beings are worn; and two of the latter, hideous enough to horrify any respectable ghost, are figured by the German explorer who discovered them.247.3 More recently another German explorer has found, on the Upper Aiary in the interior of Brazil, mourning-dances of a similar character, in which masks were used representing various animals and demons, and has given figures from photographs of the dancers, as well as a lively description of one of the dances which he witnessed. This dance began with an attack on the Maloka, or community-house, by a troop of evil spirits, who eventually succeeded in storming it. The mother and widow of the dead man wailed. The attacking party, having forced an entrance, sang. The women were terrified, but the scene ended in weeping and laughter. It was followed by dances and songs by the various animals; and the performance was concluded by a phallic dance—a pantomime of the process of reproduction. The meaning of the masque, the explorer declares, was clear. It was a magic ritual intended to propitiate the angry ghost of the deceased, that he might not return and carry off any of the survivors. The evil demons, to whose charge perhaps the death was laid, and from whose spite mankind is never safe, would by the performance be hindered from further mischief. Mákukö (the forest-demon) and the jaguar, foes of the hunter, the spoilers of the crops (worms, larvæ, and other vermin), and likewise the game itself were meant, by the mimicry of their various proceedings, to be magically influenced and rendered favourable to men, so that rich booty, large harvests, and every sort of fertility and blessing would result.248.1

If it be objected that a mask is by its very nature intended to deceive, we must not forget that that is very often not its primary object. A nurse in play with a child will sometimes put on a mask for an instant. She does so not to deceive the child as to her identity, but to cause a momentary terror. So the horrible distortions of the human countenance, the wild, the grotesque, the impossible mingling of human and bestial features characteristic of many of the masks used in these dances, are often intended rather to terrify than to deceive the supernatural beings against whom the performance is directed. A warrior going to battle decks himself out with paint and feathers, with helmet and grinning crest, in order to strike fear into the heart of his foe. Spirits are as easily frightened as human beings. Indeed, happily for the comfort of mankind, they are possessed of uncommonly weak nerves which fail them, with all their malevolence, at every turn. All that is necessary is for the man who knows how to deal with them to put on a bold front, and they will flee before him.

Professor de Groot, writing of the war against spectres in China, says: “A courageous man while boldly fighting, or trying to terrify by aggressive gestures, easily gets his hair disordered. Therefore flowing hair intimates intrepidity, and cannot fail to inspire the spectral world with fear.… This idea has not only formed the text of old traditions, but as early as the Han dynasty had created the custom of setting up long-haired heads, in order to drive away spectres. No wonder that to this day long-haired exorcists assuming this terrifying aspect, and enhancing it by weapons brandished with vigour, are everyday appearances also in spectre-expelling processions. Accoutrements,” he goes on to say, “have been worn with the same object since early times. Before the Christian era, the fang-siang, while purifying grave-pits, houses, and streets, were dressed with bearskins and masked with grotesque caps; and under the Han dynasty persons masked as animals, feathered, haired and horned, accompanied them in exorcising processions, jumping about and screaming. Probably such exorcists have appeared in all ages at funerals. Even to this day… fang-siang are seen therein in the shape of effigies.”249.1

But masked personages in many mourning-dances represent the ghosts themselves. In the islands of Torres Straits, for example, such representations are an indispensable part of the funeral ceremonies, and the identity of the ghost is “indicated by a pantomimic representation of characteristic traits of the deceased. The idea,” says Dr Haddon, “evidently was to convey to the mourners the assurance that the ghost was alive and that in the person of the dancer he visited his friends; the assurance of his life after death comforted the bereaved ones.”250.1 The identification of the performer with the deceased is among some peoples complete. Thirty days after the death of an adult Musquakie Indian the dead man is personated by a friend, who in this character attends a farewell feast preparatory to the final departure of the ghost for the Happy Hunting Grounds. He is called the ghost-carrier. When the sun goes down he departs toward the west, convoyed by a number of the friends of the deceased, all of whom, like himself, are painted but not masked. After nightfall they return and are welcomed as from a long journey. The ghost-carrier is by everyone addressed by the name of the deceased. In a few days he visits the parents of the deceased, if they survive, announcing himself as their dead son, who would care for them in their old age. He is henceforth looked upon as their son, called by that son’s name, and pledged to a son’s duty to them, though his own parents do not necessarily give him up and still call him by his own name. Similar ceremonies are performed for women by women.250.2 In fact the performer who represents a supernatural being in a religious dance of any kind is quite commonly regarded not as a representative, but as the supernatural personage himself, so long as he wears the mask and bears his attributes. So an author already quoted, writing of the Indians of North-Western Brazil, says: “The demon is involved in the mask, is incorporated in it; the mask is for the Indian the demon himself.… The demon of the mask passes over into the masquer for the time being.”251.1 The masked dances of these Indians are performed especially in honour of the dead. The masks therefore are intended to deceive nobody, not even the recently deceased, who as a new arrival in the other world may be “a babe in these things.” The masquers are the demons in propriis personis without any deceit.

A different case is that of a Myoro woman cited by Dr Frazer from Captain Speke’s Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. Her child had died. She smeared herself with butter and ashes and ran frantically about, “while the men abused her in foul language for the express purpose of frightening away the demons” who had carried off her child. And Dr Frazer asks: “If curses are meant to frighten, are not the ashes meant to deceive the demon?”251.2 From the description of the scene, however, it seems probable that the demon was conceived as actually in possession of the woman, and that it was intended to drive him out of her. In that event again there would be no deception of the demon—it was open war; while the ashes may be referable to quite another cause, as will be suggested below.

A third possible example is the custom in Calabria, whereby the women cease wailing at night and put off the black veils they donned at the moment of death.251.3 Here it may be, as Professor Frazer suggests, a sufficient explanation that disguise is superfluous in the dark. The custom of wearing veils or hoods to conceal the face in mourning is not confined to Europe, though widely spread there. The “weepers” and other crape trappings still in use in France, but for the most part abandoned in this country, are probably relics of it. It is found among nations sundered as far as the Eskimo on the shores of the frozen ocean from the tribes of the Eastern Archipelago and Melanesia. The veil is sometimes worn without intermission. Among the Minuanes of South America the widow carefully covers her face with her hair, notwithstanding she remains for several days in the hut.252.1 About Bering Strait the housemates of a deceased Eskimo must remain in their accustomed places in the house during the four days following the death, while the ghost is believed to be still about. During this time all of them must keep their fur hoods drawn over their heads, not to deceive the dead man, but “to prevent the influence of the shade from entering their heads and killing them.”252.2 Where the mourners are confined more or less to the house, however, the custom of veiling is often, perhaps usually, more stringent on going out of doors than when they are inside in the dark. In the lower culture the women at least are frequently confined to the house, and only go out in case of necessity at night, or at early morning and evening to weep at the grave. But the Calabrian women would more naturally go out of doors, if at all, by day; hence they would be more closely veiled by day; and at night, when they would not go out, they might wear their ordinary head-dress of a white handkerchief. It is at least curious that they themselves assume that they would be recognized at night through the disguise by “il demonio,” who has doubtless succeeded to the pre-Christian terrors of the other world; and they declare it is lest he should rejoice over their sorrow—to deceive him as to that, and not as to their identity—that they doff the discomfort of the veil. For the same reason they take the opportunity to suspend their wailing, which to be sure is not as a rule anywhere absolutely continuous: human nature could not endure it.

Taboo is the most contagious of diseases. Mourning garb is its outward and visible sign, and a warning to all who would otherwise come into contact with the mourner. The veil in particular may be compared with the head-coverings and seclusion required of girls arriving at maturity. At that period they also are under taboo. Among the Eskimo, the tribes of British Columbia, many of the South American tribes and the Bantu tribes of Africa, and over a considerable area in the south of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Melanesia, adolescent girls are confined for a longer or shorter time where they cannot be seen, or kept covered if they go out of doors. They are very sensitive to the influence of the sun.253.1 But it is not merely that the sun would affect them; their very glance is deleterious. A Thlinkit girl wears a hat with long flaps, that her glance may not pollute the sky. Among the Tsetsaut it is believed that if she were to expose her face to the sun or the sky, rain would fall.253.2 So the Hupa grave-digger in California is under a taboo. He has come into contact with death, and is required after the funeral to carry a bough of Douglas spruce over his head, “that he may not by any chance glance at the sky or at any human being, thereby contaminating them.”253.3 On the island of Mabuiag, if a maturing girl’s own father see her, he will have bad luck in fishing, and probably smash his canoe the next time he goes in it.254.1 So far as I am aware, there is no intention in veiling a girl at puberty to disguise her so as to delude any spiritual foe. It is true that both she and the mourners at a death (including all who take part in the death-rites) are exposed to special dangers. That is because they are alike in a state of taboo. They are thus also dangerous to others. They must be secluded; or if they venture abroad they must be either covered or so garbed as to keep other persons at a distance.

That the same reasons apply, at all events among some tribes, to the veiling of the faces of widows and widowers appears from the customs of the Lkungen of Vancouver Island. After a burial “the whole tribe go down to the sea, wash their heads, bathe, and cut their hair. The nearer related a person is to the deceased, the shorter he cuts his hair. Those who do not belong to the deceased’s family merely clip the ends of their hair.… Widow and widower, after the death of wife or husband, are forbidden to cut their hair, as they would gain too great power over the souls and the welfare of others. They must remain alone at their fire for a long time, and are forbidden to mingle with other people. When they eat, nobody must see them. They must keep their faces covered for ten days. They fast for two days after burial and are not allowed to speak. After two days they may speak a little; but before addressing anyone they must go into the woods and clean themselves in ponds and with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they call his name when taking their first meal after the fast, and bite very hard in eating. It is believed that this will kill him. They must not go near the water, or eat fresh salmon, as the latter might be driven away. They must not eat warm food, else their teeth would fall out.”255.1 This account shows that the widow or widower is dangerous to other people, and consequently in a state of taboo. It further shows that the fast and privation of society and comfort that such a mourner undergoes materially increase his orenda, giving him power to kill his enemy by sympathetic magic, or even rendering him a peril to his own community if he add to the severity of his penance by cutting his hair, as a mourner who is not so nearly related to the deceased does. All this is in accord with the principles underlying the taboo and fast of girls and boys at puberty. There can be very little doubt that it is dictated by similar motives. If so, the covering of the face is, here at least, not intended to disguise the mourner and conceal him from the ghost. It is an integral portion of his taboo. It helps to safeguard the well-being of the surviving members of his community, and to make his own orenda more powerful.

It is no part of my case to deny that mourning garb is ever intended to deceive the ghost. Customs differ so much in different cultural areas that it is quite possible there may be some instances in which the intention is to disguise the mourner by way of precaution against the deceased. Professor Frazer has brought forward two cases, and only two, so far as I am aware, in which this object is avowed. The first is found in the western districts of the island of Timor. When a man dies and before his body is put into a coffin, his wives stand weeping over it with their village gossips, “all with loosened hair, in order to make themselves unrecognizable by the nitu (spirit) of the dead.”255.2 I have not seen the authority he cites; therefore I do not know whether we are given any information how a widow in these districts habitually wears her hair. For aught that appears here, the hair is loosened only for this ceremony, which comes to an end with the enclosure of the corpse in the coffin, and may not last for more than an hour or two. If so, whatever be the reason for hindering the ghost from identifying the participants, the loosening of the hair may not be, strictly speaking, part of the mourning garb.

The other case is a practice occasionally in use among the Herero. When a dying man intimates to one of his relatives and friends, who crowd around him at such a time, that he has “decided upon taking him away after his death,” that is to say, that he will kill him (fetch him to the other world), the person so threatened has recourse to an onganga, or witch-doctor. This functionary strips him, washes and greases him afresh, and dresses him in other clothes. “He is now quite at his ease about the threatening of death caused by the deceased; for, says he: ‘Now, our father does not know me.’” The survivors, however, may fulfil the threat.256.1 This certainly does appear to be a case of disguise, or at least a change of clothes in order to deceive the deceased; but the substituted clothes do not appear to be mourning garb, and the problem of mourning garb is what we are endeavouring to solve.

That protection is needed against the ghost of the recently dead is clear. All over the world there is fear of ghosts. Protection, however, is not commonly sought in disguise, even in extreme cases. It is frequently sought, as against other supernatural foes, in fire. The custom is so well known that it need not now detain us.256.2 The Ewhe widow provides herself with a club, burns pungent powders and takes other precautions from assault, or even approach, by the deceased. A widower does the same. In both cases the event to be dreaded is the attempt by the deceased to renew conjugal relations. This danger assumes recognition by the ghost. So far from seeking to elude it, she goes entirely naked. The lot, whether of widow or widower, is not happy, though here, as elsewhere, the woman gets the worst of it: she must be defended for six weeks, while seven or eight days suffice for him.257.1 The Charrua mourner in South America went forth into the wilderness armed with a stick.257.2 The Eskimo of Bering Strait indeed wear fur hoods, but, as we have seen, they are a direct defence against the penetrative influence of the ghost, not a disguise. The Koryak, the Timorlaut islanders, the Ngoulango of the Ivory Coast seek refuge in a talisman or amulet.257.3

The amulet preserved by the son of the deceased Timorlaut islander is a piece of his father’s nail. According to the rules of sympathetic magic he preserves in this way his corporal union with the deceased, and thereby ensures his protection. The widow or widower does not take a portion of the body, but wears a piece of the clothing. This obviously is intended to have the same effect. The practice is not unknown elsewhere. In Syria when a man dies his wife puts on one of his garments and sings funeral songs.257.4 Dr Junker relates that he witnessed the ceremonies on the death of the ruler of Kabajendi, who had lived almost all his life among the A-sande and was mourned according to their rites. His wives, after wailing beside the coffin, marched through the zeriba and pretended to search in every hole and corner, crying out to him, creeping in and out on hands and knees under the overhanging thatch of the roofs, then gathering and starting again on further explorations, all the while howling, shrieking, and lamenting. The next morning those of them who could manage to possess themselves of any article of his clothing put it on, marching round the village thus attired in a continual procession or dance, while others carried sword, lances, clubs, climbing plants, maize-cobs, and so forth, their heads strewn with ashes. This performance lasted for a fortnight, despite the tropical rain.258.1

Some light on this fantastic promenade may be thrown by the proceedings of the Bangala women. In the Boloki district, “when a man of any position died his wives would throw off their dresses and wear old rags (sometimes they would go absolutely naked), pick up anything belonging to him—his chair, spear, pipe, mug, knife, shield or blanket—anything that came first to hand; and having covered their bodies with a coating of clay, they would parade the town in ones, or twos, or threes, crying bitterly and calling upon him to return to them. They would stop at times in their crying and say: ‘He is gone to So-and-so; we will go and find him’; and away they would start off in a business-like fashion in their pretended search for him. This parading they would keep up for a day or two, and then women of the town would bedeck themselves with climbing plants, vines, leaves, and bunches of twigs; and, forming themselves into a procession, they would march through the town chanting the praises of the deceased. Men would paint and arm themselves as for a fight, and would imitate the daring acts of the departed as a warrior; and if he had been remarkable for fighting on the river, they would arrange a sham canoe-fight in his honour.… It was an amusing and interesting sight, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed both by actors and spectators alike. They called this praising or honouring the dead.”259.1

It has been suggested that the wearing of a portion of the clothing of the dead is intended to delude him into the belief that those who do so are themselves dead, and so to turn aside his attack.259.2 No proof, so far as I am aware, has been offered for the suggestion. Whatever the exact intention of the A-sande rite (and its equivalence with the Boloki rite is obvious), it can hardly be tortured into this. The ghost must be stupid indeed who cannot distinguish his own clothing and personal chattels when carried about by his wives. To wear the clothing of the deceased identifies the mourner with him, sometimes for the purpose of protection by means of sympathetic magic, sometimes for the presentation of the dead man in funeral ceremonies like those of the Torres Straits islanders or the Musquakie Indians.259.3 Where this is not the object, to put on his coat and to carry his mug or his spear in procession may be due, as it seems to be here, to some vague idea of honouring him, or perhaps of inducing him to return. The supposition that it is intended to deceive the ghost may be safely discarded.

In more general terms it has been conjectured that mourning rites are intended to express union with the departed by obligatory, if partial, participation of his state, that by virtue of the contagion of death the mourners have become really changed and are for a time as if they were dead, hence they must eat, clothe, and conduct themselves as far as possible like the dead.260.1 Lastly, it has been pointed out that many of the observances imposed on mourners are a return to more primitive and savage conditions—such as sitting on the bare earth, going naked or wearing only the roughest and coarsest stuffs, and abstaining from good food in favour of wild berries and roots;—and the question has been put whether this may not be the essence of mourning.260.2 There is probably some measure of truth in both these suggestions; but they must not be pressed too far. Many of the rites and usages are intended beyond question to express sympathy for the deceased, and a temporary segregation with him from ordinary life.

But they go further: in all the greater degrees of mourning at least they indicate grief at his loss that is calculated to call down the pity and compassion of every beholder, and to deprecate the wrath or ill-humour of the deceased. It is very striking that while coarse and scanty garments (sackcloth or bark-cloths among peoples who usually wear cotton or wool, and mere loin-cloths or nothing at all among peoples usually clad) are worn in place of more luxurious stuffs, a frequently recurring prescription is old worn-out clothes. In the Tonga Islands the mourners (who are always women) are “habited in large old ragged mats—the more ragged, the more fit for the occasion, as being more emblematical of a spirit broken down, or, as it were, torn to pieces by grief.”261.1 In the hinterland of the Sherbro in West Africa, on the mourning for a chief’s death, the people most closely connected with him “presented an unkempt and slovenly appearance, their bodies draped in the oldest and dirtiest of their cloths.”261.2 Among the Baganda on the other side of the continent the mourning garb for an ordinary man is “old bark-cloths and a girdle of dry plantain leaves: the hair is unkempt, the nails are allowed to grow long like birds’ claws, and on the chest is a white patch, a mixture of water and ashes.”261.3 The custom of strewing ashes on the person is very widely practised: more than one example has been incidentally given. Among the Hebrews its use was not confined to mourning for the dead; repentance in dust and ashes is a familiar figure in English speech, and is derived from the Bible. The general air of neglect and misery produced by these practices might be paralleled in the mourning customs of most countries. Even in our own island little more than a hundred years ago it was noted that the chief mourner at a funeral in the parish of Llanvetherine, Monmouthshire, and elsewhere wore a dirty cloth about his head.261.4 And of many peoples the description by a French writer of the mourning garb among the Agni of Sanwi on the Ivory Coast would hold literally true: “Old black loin-cloths, unwashed for a long time. On ne se peigne pas—on ne fait pas de toilette—on reste modeste.”261.5

This is not all. Mourners fast, abstaining altogether from food or indulging only in restricted diet, and that of an inferior kind. On the island of Aurora all who are in mourning refrain from certain food. The immediate relatives may not eat any cultivated food. They are limited to gigantic caladium, bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, mallow, and other things which must be sought in the bush where they grow.262.1 The ancient Hurons were forbidden, even in cold weather, to eat warm food.262.2 Among the Charruas of South America the adult sons of a dead man remain for two days entirely naked in their huts and almost without food.262.3 In Togoland the Ewhe widow is forbidden beans, flesh, fish, palm-wine and rum; any infringement of these prohibitions would cost her life.262.4

Many nations add to their other rites that of laceration or even mutilation of the body. In Central Australia the Warramunga women fight with one another and cut one another’s scalps, and all who stand in any near relation to the deceased, reckoned according to the classificatory system—which greatly widens the area of relationship—also cut their own scalps open with yam-sticks, the actual widows even searing the wound with red-hot fire-sticks.262.5 It was forbidden to the ancient Hebrews, by what was evidently a reform of a pre-existing custom, to make a baldness between the eyes for the dead—in other words, to cut themselves on the brow.262.6 Among the Arawaks a drinking-feast is held, at which all the men of the village assemble and scourge one another with whips made of a climbing plant, until the blood runs in streams and strips of skin and muscle hang down. Those who participate in the rite often die of their wounds.262.7 As if mere wounding were not enough, finger-joints are frequently cut off. In the Fiji Islands the amputation of a finger-joint is a common sign of mourning. In one case in Tonga when a king died orders were issued that one hundred fingers should be cut off.263.1 In Montana, one of the north-western states of America, on the execution of four aborigines for murder in December 1890, they were mourned by two squaws, who scalped their children. One of them gashed her own face, while the other cut off two of her fingers and threw them into the grave.263.2 When a Charrua dies his widow and his married daughters and sisters amputate each of them a finger-joint, besides inflicting other wounds on themselves.263.3

The illustration of practices like these might be multiplied indefinitely. The same reason holds good for them all. In the lower culture grief at a death is often intensified by fear—on the one hand, of an accusation of witchcraft—on the other hand, of the ill-will of the deceased himself, who is naturally disgusted to find himself dead. Against the latter danger at any rate the forlorn condition of the survivors, stiff with wounds, thrust like him from the company of their friends and fellow-tribesmen, made to wear a distinctive garb, often in rags or dirt, wailing, watching, fasting, would constitute an appeal that even the ghost of a savage would feel hard to resist. That this is actually the effect intended, in some instances at least, is certain. A widow among the Salivas of South America cuts her hair, and is not allowed to anoint herself as usual, nor to wear any ornament, in order, we are expressly told, not to irritate the departed, but to humble herself before him.263.4 Nor must it be overlooked that wailing and lamenting, so usually part of the rites practised especially by the chief mourners, such as widows and near relations, would not favour concealment. On the contrary, they would draw attention to the grief, and help even the simplest and most easily deluded of ghosts to identify the mourner, which they would seem indeed to be meant to do. But they would powerfully deprecate his malice or revenge. In this connection the belief of the Bañarwanda on the east of Lake Kivu, in German East Africa, is interesting. To them the bazimu (plural of muzimu) or souls of the departed are by no means always kindly disposed, even the best of them. They must be continually propitiated with offerings, or they will cause calamities, either of themselves directly, or indirectly by setting in motion the imandwa, semi-apotheosized heroes. But the muzimu does not begin his mischievous activities until the mourning ceremonies are at an end. So long as they last the survivors are quite safe from him, for he will not during that period attack the living.264.1

Many customs, sometimes born of widely differing motives, converge in a similarity of expression. Hence it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge dogmatically to assert a single origin for practices of a like character extending over so wide an area as those we have just passed in review. They are the expression of the psychological reaction caused by the shock of death and the consequent breach of the circle of kinship or other social bonds. The taboo results from the bewilderment and terror caused by the entry of death into the circle. The conduct and garb of the mourners are the outcome of grief and sympathy, but also of fear. That fear has for its object survivors who have it in their power to involve the mourners in even a more terrible doom by an accusation of witchcraft. Even more, it has regard to death itself, and to the inimical designs of him whose earthly life has been severed, and who has thereby been converted into an envious, and if not a malicious, at least a peevish and easily angered, being, armed by his death with greater, because more mysterious, powers. Mourning garb is often a device to secure his compassion; it is often a defence against his overt attacks; but on the whole tangible proof is lacking that it is a disguise to deceive him.

THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE
OF MYLITTA

Among the religious rites of antiquity there was none more alien to modern feeling than the sacrifice of chastity by every Babylonian woman at the temple of Mylitta. It is described first and in most detail by Herodotus, whose denunciation of it shows that to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C. it was as abhorrent as it is to us. According to this account, every woman once in her life was required to sit down in the precincts of the temple of Mylitta wearing a wreath of cord about her head, and there to wait until a stranger should throw a silver coin into her lap and summon her with ritual words in the name of the goddess to follow him. She was not allowed to refuse, but was compelled to follow the first man who threw, and to have sexual intercourse with him outside the temple. She might then depart to her home, her duty to the goddess being fulfilled.266.1 The historian lets fall the observation that there was a similar custom in some places in Cyprus. This has been supposed to be referred to by Justin, who wrote probably after the establishment of Christianity, but whose work consists of selections from Trogus Pompeius, a lost writer of the Augustan age. He reports that it was the Cypriote custom to send maidens before their marriage on certain days to seek their dowry by prostitution on the seashore, and to pay the offerings to Venus for their future chastity. Dido on her way to Carthage touched at the island at the very time, and took on board her fleet eighty of these damsels, to be wives to her followers and assist in peopling the city she was going to found.267.1 We shall further consider Justin’s statement hereafter. For the moment we pass on to Heliopolis (Baalbec), where, the ecclesiastical historian Socrates affirms, virgins were offered in prostitution to strangers.267.2 He does not, any more than Justin, connect this with a temple or a divinity; but from Sozomen we gather that it was a religious observance, inasmuch as the prostitution of virgins prior to their marriage is stated to have been abolished by Constantine when he destroyed the temple of Aphrodite.267.3 A similar custom, according to Ælian, was followed by the Lydians. And he expressly says that when once the rite had been performed the woman remained ever afterwards chaste, nor would a repetition be forgiven her on any plea.267.4 Herodotus, however, states that the daughters of the common people in Lydia earned their dowries by a life of prostitution.267.5 The two writers are obviously referring to two different customs. A third custom distinct from either is mentioned by Strabo as practised by the Armenians, among whom even the highest families of the nation consecrated their virgin daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis, to remain as prostitutes at her temple before their marriage.267.6

What is the relation of these three customs? They have usually been considered as closely connected. It may be, as Dr Frazer suspects, that the real motive for the custom described as that of earning dowries by prostitution was religious, rather than economical, although my own suspicions point in another direction. But putting that custom aside for further examination, both the others are certainly portrayed as religious. As practised by the nations of Western Asia for a thousand years prior to the fall of paganism they were annexed to the cult of certain divinities. There is, however, a broad distinction to be drawn between a custom requiring every woman once in her lifetime to submit to the embraces of a stranger, and one which consecrated a life of prostitution. Such a life was one of devotion to the goddess as a more or less permanent servant. The other custom demanded a single act which freed the worshipper for the rest of her days. It may be freely conceded that the goddess at whose temple, or on whose feast-day, the act was performed was endowed with similar characteristics to those of the goddess in whose service the life of prostitution was lived. It may even have been that sometimes the same goddess had bands of harlots attached to her shrine, and also required the sacrifice of the virginity of all other women in the manner described. This perhaps, as we shall see, was the case in Lydia. We should still need to investigate separately the two customs. One of the most fertile sources of error in the interpretation of custom is the fatal tendency of rites distinct, or even altogether different in origin and intention, but similar in expression, to converge. This convergence is accelerated by a variety of causes. The natural vagueness of tradition, the forgetfulness of the exact original meaning, the gradual predominance of one idea over another owing to circumstances which, for want of knowledge, we call accidental, the tendency to repeat by way of precaution in one rite acts which essentially belong to another, are all causes of the kind referred to. Moreover, we have so often found in the similarity of rite the real key to a common interpretation, that where convergence does not in fact occur there is a temptation to read identity of meaning into two rites having a superficial likeness. It behoves us, therefore, to be on our guard, and to scrutinize with some scepticism all cases where the identity both of act and intention is not demonstrably complete.

The practices I have enumerated have all been interpreted as expiations for marriage. Marriage, it is said,—the appropriation of one or more women to one man—is an evolution from the primeval condition of promiscuity. Religious prostitution, the jus primæ noctis and other customs are expiations exacted by society from women who are thus appropriated. They witness to the primeval common rights of the male sex, thus asserted for the last time by one or more on behalf of all on abandoning the woman to the exclusive possession of one of their number.

Now, if the interpretation in question be suitable for any of these customs, it is more suitable for the single rite such as that at the temple of Mylitta than for the exercise of prostitution over an extended period; and it is to this rite that I desire more particularly to call attention. I need hardly observe that the explanation of the rite as an expiation for marriage does not by any means follow of necessity from the theory of primitive promiscuity. On the contrary it overlooks one of the peculiar features of the rite. Alike at Babylon, at Heliopolis, and apparently at Cyprus (if Cyprus be a case in point) the act has to be accomplished with a stranger. If it were a forfeit rendered to the general body of men, who might have had a claim to temporary union but for the institution of marriage, or if it were a formal witness of that claim, it would seem, prima facie, more natural that it should be accomplished with some one or more of the claimants, that is to say, with a member or members of the same community. A similar rite of intercourse with a stranger was practised, as Lucian relates, at Byblus. There it was the custom at the mourning for Adonis to perform the well-known mourning rite of cutting off the hair. Any woman who refused to do this was required to exhibit herself on one day of the festival and undergo prostitution to one of the strangers who resorted thither, handing over the price to the goddess called by Lucian the Byblian Aphrodite.270.1 The rite as there practised therefore was, at all events in the second century A.D., an alternative to the dedication of hair: it was a redemption for the tresses that should have been sacrificed. Thus the woman would repeat the expiation once a year, whether married or single, so long as she was unwilling to shear her locks, or preferred the alternative sacrifice of her chastity. There is no evidence that it ever had anything to do with marriage; it certainly had not when Lucian wrote.

The rite at Byblus must, however, be distinguished from those we are considering. They were performed by every woman without alternative, but they were performed only once. If they were an expiation for marriage we should expect to find them described as part of the marriage rites. The Balearic islanders, the Nasamonians and the Auziles in antiquity had, as well as many modern savages, such rites, whether or not they can be properly explained as an expiation for marriage. But at the most the rites with which we are now concerned were a preliminary to marriage—a necessary preliminary, perhaps, but one that might have been accomplished at any period before it. Indeed, so far as appears from Herodotus, the victim, if we may call her so, of the Babylonian rite was not necessarily unmarried. But comparison of the accounts of the practice at Heliopolis, in Lydia and in Cyprus renders it fairly certain that it was only unmarried women who were subjected to it, and that it was essentially a sacrifice of maidenhood. A passing reference by Eusebius has been interpreted to imply that at Heliopolis both married women and girls were prostituted in the service of the goddess.271.1 But Eusebius says nothing about the goddess. His reference must be construed in the light of Socrates’ statement that women were by the law of the country required to be common, and hence the offspring was doubtful, for there was no distinction between fathers and children.271.2 Whatever else those phrases may mean, they entirely negative the theory of expiation for marriage. But they do not refer to the custom of prostituting virgins to strangers, which the historian expressly distinguishes.

It may be objected to this reading of Herodotus that while he uses the generic term women (γυναῖκες) in speaking of the victims, on the other hand, in a previous chapter referring to the Babylonian marriage customs, he reports that once a year in every village the marriageable maidens (παρθένοι) were all put up to auction, the respective purchasers being required to give security that they would marry them; and it was unlawful to give them in marriage in any other way. The objection is of little weight. It is needless to consider whether we are to understand the specific term παρθένοι literally. Even if so, there would doubtless be ample time for the performance of the rite at the temple of Mylitta between the auction and the marriage. It does not appear that marriage followed the auction immediately. Had that been contemplated, security would hardly have been necessary. When the anniversary came round all the maidens who had during the preceding year attained puberty and thus become ripe for marriage (γάμων ὡραῖαι) were probably put up. Those who had not previously undergone the rite would, if my interpretation be correct, be required to submit to it before marriage.

It is superfluous to discuss other and obvious objections to the theory of expiation for marriage. But the appearance of prostitution which the rite presents demands further consideration. At Babylon, although a piece of money passed, the payment seems to have been merely pro forma. It mattered not how small the coin was, it could not be refused. Whatever it was, Strabo tells us it was considered as consecrated to the goddess. Lastly, the rite once performed, no gift, were it ever so great, would be accepted to repeat it. The details of the rite at Heliopolis and among the Lydians have not been preserved to us; but we may with probability infer that they were similar. In Lydia, indeed, if we are to trust both Ælian and Herodotus, two distinct customs are traceable, namely, the sacrifice of virginity and the life of prostitution to earn a dowry. A Greek inscription of the second century A.D., found at Tralles and referred to by Dr Frazer, discloses also the existence of religious prostitution by girls expressly chosen by the god and set apart for that end.273.1 This is a similar custom to that of the Armenian girls already mentioned, and is not to be confounded with the prostitution mentioned by the Father of History as practised by all the daughters of the common people. Whatever may have been the origin of the latter, the other two in the time of Ælian were connected with religion. On the island of Cyprus we seem to find much the same state of things. If we may believe Justin, the maidens earned their dowry by prostitution. From other sources we learn that there were mysteries of the Cypriote Aphrodite, which were said to have been instituted by Cinyras, king of Paphos and father of Adonis. Into these mysteries there was a regular initiation. Sexual matters no doubt formed their staple teaching; and what classical and especially apologetic writers would call prostitution would be practised. The legend ran that the daughters of Cinyras, through the wrath of Aphrodite, united themselves with strangers.273.2 Probably it was believed to be in imitation of them that the maidens of Cyprus sought prostitution on the seashore. In any case the story indicates, as Dr Frazer has pointed out, “that the princesses of Paphos had to conform to the custom as well as the women of humble birth.” But if this be so, the object of the harlotry alleged by Justin falls to the ground, since it would be unnecessary for princesses to earn their dowry. It may be suspected, therefore, that Justin or his authority has confounded two disparate customs, that of earning the dowry by prostitution, and that of a religious sacrifice of virginity in connection with the mysteries of Aphrodite, in which the other party to the rite was a stranger. Only thus can we satisfactorily explain the limitation of the practice to stated days, probably festivals of Aphrodite, and the phrase about paying the offerings to her for future chastity.

The money payment, whether large or small, was in the Byblian rite, as in the Babylonian and (if I interpret correctly) in the Cypriote rites, consecrated to the goddess. We may infer that the same was the case wherever else the rite was performed. At Byblus it was the alternative to the consecration of the woman’s hair. Prostitution—that is, sexual intercourse for hire—is not a primitive practice. The appearance of prostitution in connection with religion may be accounted for by the influence upon the religious practice of the general practice of harlots. Analogy would suggest that intercourse other than conjugal or the satisfaction of the genuine passion of love demanded a monetary consideration. But when that intercourse was the performance of a religious duty the money was not kept as gain by the woman. It was not earned for herself, but devoted to the goddess. Where bands of “harlots” were attached to a temple their earnings probably went to swell the temple funds out of which they were supported.274.1 It may accordingly be suggested that the hire was not an essential part of the rite, but merely an aftergrowth in the process of adapting an older custom to the changing manners and religious ideas of a growing civilization.274.2

Assuming, therefore, that the rite was a sacrifice of virginity to which every woman was subjected, it would probably be performed either on the attainment of puberty or as a preliminary to the marriage ceremonies. But we gather from the historian’s account of the sale of the village maidens around Babylon that the auction followed almost immediately after the attainment of puberty, or within (say) a year at the furthest. The practice of most ancient nations, as of nearly all barbarous and savage peoples, and indeed of many in a high stage of civilization, would lead us to expect that marriage would be entered into within a very short time of the bride’s puberty. Sometimes marriage even precedes puberty. Where, as more usual, it follows that epoch of life, the rites incident to puberty must first be completed. Among such rites defloration is not infrequently found. In this respect the Australian tribes are notorious. In the Boulia district of Northern Queensland the girl is compelled to intercourse with a number of men.275.1 Among the Dieri of South Australia a ceremony called Wilpadrina is performed on the young women when they come to maturity, in which the elder men claim and exercise a right to them, and that in the presence of the other women.275.2 The Arunta and Ilpirra tribes in the centre of the continent perform a ceremony on every girl when she arrives at a marriageable age, but before she has been taken over by the husband to whom she has been allotted. As part of that ceremony a number of men have access to her in ritual order; and the intercourse is often repeated the following day.276.1 Analogous proceedings are known in other parts of the world. The central tribes of New Ireland have a women’s house in every village. When a girl attains puberty she withdraws into a small house, called mbak, built inside it. There it is said she has to remain for ten months, only going outside at night. During this period she is waited upon by the old women, and through their intervention every man who chooses has access to her. On leaving the mbak she belongs only to the husband to whom she has probably been betrothed since infancy.276.2 In the west of the island of Serang between Celebes and New Guinea, a girl after ceremonial bathing goes round clothed with a sarong woven of the fibre of the Pandanus repens, at the service of every man until her family have collected the necessary materials for a feast. In certain districts, however, before actual puberty the teeth are filed. When this operation is completed, a feast is prepared of which the novice must taste everything. Further, an earthen pot filled with spring-water is covered with a fresh pisang-leaf. One of the old women then taking the index-finger of the girl’s right hand thrusts it through the leaf as “a symbol of the rupture of the hymen, or to show that the possession of virginity means nothing for her.” The leaf is then displayed on the ridge of the roof. This done, the women fall to eating and drinking. When they have finished they begin singing to the accompaniment of drums. The men are then admitted to the house. In some villages the old men have free access that evening to the room of the girl in whose honour the feast is given, while the other guests amuse themselves with singing outside. After this celebration the girl is entitled to free intercourse with men, even before puberty.277.1 In East-Central Africa the Azimba maiden is artificially deflowered during a period of retirement and instruction in the forest. When the retirement is over she celebrates her attainment of puberty by a dance in which only women take part. That night a man, hired by her father for the purpose, sleeps with her, and once this is done she is supposed to have no further intercourse with him. Often, however, she is already married before puberty, and consequently no longer a maiden. None the less is she taken from her husband that the puberty customs may be performed. When she is brought back he himself sleeps with her apparently as a ritual act, without the necessity of hiring a man for the purpose.277.2 Among the Wanyasa, or Mang’anja, at the southern end of Lake Nyasa, ceremonies are performed similar to those of the Intonjane (girls’ puberty ceremonies) of South Africa, and every girl on her return after the initiation must find some man “to be with her,” otherwise she will die.277.3 The Intonjane among the Kaffirs is well known to be an occasion of sexual indulgence. It may be surmised that the ceremonies of the Suahili on the east coast were originally similar to those just mentioned. But the Suahili have become partially Arabized, though their Mohammedanism is little more than a veneer over their heathen customs and belief. Among them now a girl returns from her seclusion in silence and gives her hand to every man she meets, receiving from him in return a few small coins.277.4 It is said that the girls of the Wamegi, also a tribe near the coast, are artificially deflowered at puberty by certain old women.278.1 Artificial defloration at puberty is also practised by the Sawu Islanders. The Sakalava girls in Madagascar perform it on themselves in case their parents have not previously taken the trouble.278.2 Other examples could be cited, but the subject need not be pursued.

I would venture to suggest then that the Babylonian rite was a puberty rite, and that a maiden was not admitted to the status and privileges of adult life until she had thus been ceremonially deflowered. Among those privileges, and the chief of them, was the gratification of the sexual instinct. It was, therefore, a prerequisite to marriage. Ceremonial defloration of the bride by others than her husband has prevailed in many places. When marriage follows closely after puberty it is difficult to determine whether the custom really belongs to the puberty rites, or to those of marriage. I am not concerned here to deny that among many peoples who practise it as part of the marriage rites it may have been such ab initio. The determination of this question would involve an examination of marriage customs extending far beyond the space at my disposal. But it will be admitted that as puberty rites gradually became simplified or altogether obsolete such a custom could only maintain existence as part of the marriage rites. It is then usually (but, as we shall see, not always) performed by one or more of the bridegroom’s friends or by an appointed official, and ultimately degenerates into the jus primæ noctis vested in some powerful personage, as a lord or priest. Nothing of the sort appears in the accounts which have come down to us of the ancient rite in Western Asia. In all of them (save among the Lydians) emphasis is laid on the performance by a stranger. At Babylon our information does not connect the rite with marriage at all. Elsewhere it is referred to not as part of the marriage rites, but as a preliminary to marriage.

That such a rite should be found annexed to the temple and worship of a luxurious goddess causes no surprise; on the contrary, it is what might have been anticipated. Every reader will call to mind numerous examples of archaic rites which have become attached to Christian festivals, and of Christian shrines which are simply shrines of an earlier religion adapted and consecrated afresh under Christian names. The difficulty of uprooting old customs, and their consequent incorporation and adaptation by advancing culture or a new religion, are phenomena too well known to be insisted on here. Probably the Cypriote mysteries were adapted to the worship of Aphrodite from a ruder stage in which no divinity was invoked. And if this could happen once in Western Asia, it might have happened also at Babylon, at Heliopolis and elsewhere. It is possible that other practices, such as the prostitution of the Armenian girls at the temple of Anaitis, or that of the Lydian and Paphian girls to earn their dowries, are no more than the adaptation of a custom common enough in the lower barbarism, by which unmarried girls have unfettered liberty in their sexual relations. The Armenian maidens, at all events, though spoken of as harlots by Strabo, do not seem to have exercised their calling for money, nor to have admitted indiscriminately to their favours all who offered. They reserved themselves for their equals in rank, and entertained them in their dwellings with more hospitality than in a spinsters’ house in the Pacific Islands. The surmise may be indulged that it was in fact originally, if not in later times, their way of choosing husbands. The Lydian girls are expressly said to have bestowed themselves in marriage.

Mannhardt contended (and his opinion is so far endorsed by Dr Frazer) that the maidens who surrendered their virginity in connection with the cult of a goddess like Aphrodite did so in imitation of their divinity, as her representatives, the human players of her part.280.1 This may have been the mode by which the ancient custom was adapted to the newer order of things. But it is submitted that it is a very insufficient account of it. The custom must have been older than any definite belief in the goddess’s habits or any story of her various intrigues. Are we then to suppose that it was a magical rite designed to promote the fertility of animal and vegetable life? Such rites are known in both hemispheres. The great goddess worshipped under different names throughout Western Asia personified, we may concede, the reproductive energies of Nature. Many of the rites employed in her cult are in the last analysis magical, and had for their purpose to assist those energies. By a well-known mental process magical efficacy is often ascribed to acts and usages not essentially of a magical, nor indeed of a ritual, character. Thus the general prostitution of young girls to earn their dowries, and that of widows—customs which are probably of quite a different origin—are among certain tribes of Morocco held to be not without their effect on the abundance of the crops.281.1 Such a belief may have consecrated lives of habitual harlotry in Armenia, in Lydia, and in Cyprus. It by no means follows that every rite performed in the name of the goddess acquired that meaning, still less that that was its primitive meaning. Many such rites would be wholly personal. They would be intended to secure personal blessings to the worshipper, and nothing more, though everyone might have been required to perform them. It is needless to suppose without express evidence that the rite described by Herodotus as taking place at the temple of Mylitta had more than a personal reference. The most obvious personal blessing to be secured from such a goddess would be fertility. It is possible that this was the intention here. Puberty customs are doubtless performed for the good of the individual, and of the tribe or nationality through the individual. We must not infer, however, that the personal blessing of fertility was held to be the natural and direct outcome of the sacrifice of virginity. That was not the way in which it would be envisaged, however logical such an outcome may seem to us. The savage would not expect the natural result, but one that we call magical. At the stage represented by the Babylonian custom the blessing was invoked from the goddess, and was her gift. In other words, it was not that specific ritual act of coition, but future acts rendered licit and consecrated by it which were expected to bear fruit. This interpretation is perhaps strengthened by a rite said to have been regularly performed in the Troad. “Every maiden on the approach of her marriage was required to go and bathe in the Skamandros, and standing in the water to pronounce the sacred formula: ‘Skamandros, take my maidenhood as a gift.’” Dr Farnell, citing the fictitious letter of Aischines on which the evidence for the custom rests, observes: “The letter narrates how a mortal assumed the human form of the god and took a treacherous advantage; but originally, we may suppose, the rite of consecration was not associated with any anthropomorphic divinity, but was performed in the hope that the spirit of the river might enter into the maiden, and that the child she might afterwards bear to her wedded husband might thus be mystically akin to the guardian of the land. The many early myths concerning heroines and princesses being made pregnant by river-gods suggest that the ritual just described was once prevalent in primitive Greece; for such myths could arise naturally from such a custom.”282.1 But the ritual itself suggests that it is a relic of a still older rite parallel with the rite at the temple of Mylitta.

The last of the problems connected with the rite is to explain why it must be accomplished with a stranger. If, as has been alleged, the act of defloration of a maiden were held to be in itself dangerous, it is not easy to say why anyone, even a stranger, should undertake it, unless he were strangely ignorant of the risk or strangely careless. In some places, indeed, a maiden who had come to submit to the rite may have been outwardly indistinguishable from one of the hierai; and hence the man may have been unconscious of his risk, or may have been willing to undertake a risk thus diminished. But at Babylon the women who came thus to offer themselves wore a distinctive head-dress of cords, the emblem, perhaps, of their condition of virginity. Moreover, they seem to have been penned in enclosures divided from each other by ropes, which were broken to let them out for the accomplishment of the rite. There was therefore no mistake as to their status or object.283.1 On the other hand, if the defloration simply involved ritual impurity such as could be removed by the proper ceremonies, it must be asked why the task was left to a stranger. None of our ancient authorities have condescended to define a stranger. We are probably to understand by that term one who was not an inhabitant of the town or who was not a member of the community. The analogy of certain Australian rites already referred to, and of rites of marriage in some other parts of the world, would lead us to suppose that what was really intended in the first instance was one who was not eligible for sexual relations with the woman in the ordinary course. Thus in Peru and New Granada “the nearest relations of the bride and her most intimate friends” are said to have performed the corresponding rite283.2; and even her father is credited with the labour among the Orang-Sakai of the Malay Peninsula, the Battas of Sumatra, the Alfoers of Celebes, and on the Island of Ceylon and the eastern Moluccas.284.1 From this the more developed morality of the Babylonians would recoil. Mr Crawley, commenting on the Australian rite, surmises that in it “initiation” and marriage are one, and that “initiation” ceremonies (that is to say, puberty ceremonies) “of this kind are marriages to the other sex in abstract.”284.2 The surmise follows from his theory of the danger of human contact, and especially of marriage, and the importance of ceremonies to avert the peril. The theory itself—at all events pushed to the length to which Mr Crawley pushes it—is very questionable. But defloration at puberty, whether natural or artificial, is undoubtedly (whatever else it may be) a formal introduction to sexual life. Such introduction might be the more authoritative and emphatic if given by one (or more) with whom sexual relations would not in future be sustained. It is a ritual act. Ritual acts are acts out of the ordinary course—often clean contrary to the ordinary course. Therein consists their essence, their virtue. But in the growth of civilization, with the emergence of a new religion or different customs, the real meaning of a traditional rite is obscured, the rite itself becomes decadent, and a new meaning is assigned to it. Hence a puberty rite might easily become part of the cult of a goddess like Mylitta.

Moreover, at the stage of decay which the rite had reached at Babylon and elsewhere in Western Asia, the proviso that the person with whom the act was performed must be a stranger might be intended to prevent an assignation. When the act had to be performed as a sacrifice in honour of the goddess it might be regarded as a profanation to perform it as an act of inclination with a favoured lover. The best way to prevent this would be to require that it should be performed with a chance stranger, who might further be looked upon, if Mannhardt’s interpretation be correct, as a representative sent by the goddess to play Adonis to the maiden’s Aphrodite. The rite at Byblus lends countenance to this conjecture. It is supported also by the artificial defloration enacted only in symbol by Roman brides, but in grim earnest at the temples of Siva by brides in Southern India.

But we are able to carry the conjecture a step beyond this. Here I am glad to avail myself of the criticism of Professor Westermarck, who has pointed out that a semi-supernatural character is very generally ascribed to strangers, and that intercourse with a stranger would thus be productive of blessings—especially the blessing of fertility—to the woman.285.1 From the large collections on the subject of relations with strangers brought together by Professor Frazer and Professor Westermarck himself it results that a stranger is regarded as uncanny. He is a being possessed of unknown powers for good or ill. His orenda, as we have seen, is incalculable.285.2 He must therefore be either repulsed at once as a foe or received and treated with extraordinary respect. The former course is not usually adopted unless the strangers come in force or there are other circumstances that suggest hostile intent. The latter course has given birth to laws of hospitality recognized all over the world, however the exact procedure may differ among different peoples. But even in this case the stranger is looked upon with suspicion until he has undergone what M. van Gennep calls rites of aggregation to the group or society to which he has come. These rites may be of the most simple character, such as spitting upon his host or drinking a cup of water or coffee from his host’s hand; or they may involve a trial of strength, an exchange of gifts, the offering of sacrifices or entry into a blood-covenant.286.1

The uncanny character thus attributed to a stranger includes not merely the possession of magical powers. In a society where everyone, or at least a large and unknown number of persons, is believed to be endowed more or less with magical powers, this is a matter of course. But a halo of still more mysterious possibility encircles a stranger: he may be a superhuman Power, a dead man, or even a god. Hence arise the numerous stories, many of which have been collected by Mr Gerould in his monograph on The Grateful Dead, published by the Folk-Lore Society in 1908. These stories usually represent the stranger as a dead man to whom the hero has rendered some service, such as that of burying his corpse. But perhaps the best known, and among the most ancient is that found in the book of Tobit, where the stranger is the angel Raphael. A tale even older and more widespread is preserved among the Hebrew traditions as that of Lot and the two angels who visited him in Sodom. Probably it was part of the common Semitic stock, and as such would have been known at Babylon. Substantially the same story is that of Baucis and Philemon reported by Ovid; and the tale of Demeter’s wanderings and many another in Greek legend rest on a common basis of belief. Continental folklore down to modern days identifies the unknown beggar as Jesus Christ Himself or, if a woman, his Mother. The Bantu of South-West Africa tell of the great goddess Nzambi who begs in disguise for a little palm-wine to slake the thirst of her child. Refusal is followed in the night by punishment; the smiling valley, like that of Sodom, is covered by the waters of a lake; and the only person saved is he who had taken compassion and granted the poor old mendicant’s request.287.1 Lest this be thought a tale imported from Europe, let me add that in Annam a similar tale is told to account for three lakes in the province of Thay Nguyen. There a beggar-woman is repulsed by all save an old widow and her son, who give of their poverty food and a night’s lodging to the miserable and unattractive creature. She turns out to be a supernatural personage. She has come down to test the hearts of the devotees who have flocked to a great religious festival periodically held in the place. The hypocrites who repulsed her are all overwhelmed in a deluge of waters; only the widow and her son are saved.287.2

To labour the proof is unnecessary. It is abundantly clear that a stranger may be far more than mortal, and that this possibility has deeply affected the evolution of hospitality. The stranger must be conciliated. He must be bound by sacred ties to the host—ties which he cannot break so long as he remains under the host’s protection. Among the rites of aggregation—the rites effecting this union—M. van Gennep reckons the use of the women frequently accorded to visitors in the lower culture; and he suggests that the rite at the temple of Mylitta was such a rite of aggregation. It may have been so. It may have been expected of all masculine strangers at Babylon to unite themselves with the natives by means of this homage to the goddess. All that can be said is that Herodotus gives no hint of it. According to him it was only on the women that the duty lay—and that no more than once in their lives—of submitting to the rite. The mystery attaching to a stranger and involving the expectation of divine blessing is a sufficient reason for the performance of the rite with one who might be a god in person, and in any event must have been held to be divinely sent; for chance is the servant of the gods. Thence it is but a step (and the step was taken elsewhere, if not at Babylon) to the substitution of the priest for the stranger or the god; and the way is opened to the abuses of the jus primæ noctis.288.1

Before dismissing the subject reference may be made to Professor Cumont’s note on the subject of religious prostitution in Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain (Paris, 1907), pp. 143, 286, as showing the facility with which a learned and highly distinguished scholar may fail to appreciate the complexity of the problem. He makes no distinction between the three customs of sacrifice of virginity, prostitution to earn a dowry, and a life of religious prostitution in the service of the goddess. He refers them all to the primitive constitution of the Semitic tribe, and explains them as a modified form, become utilitarian, of an ancient exogamy. Mating with a virgin, he holds, resulted in defilement; therefore she was given first to a stranger; only after that could she be married to a man of her own race. I pass by the confusion between the three customs in question, to all of which his explanation will not equally apply. But if the explanation be correct for any of them, either the ancient exogamy of the Semites must have been quite different from exogamy as generally understood, or it must have been not merely modified but transformed. Exogamy, as generally understood, has nothing to do with race or nationality. It is simply the savage rule corresponding to our table of prohibited degrees.289.1 A man may not marry or have sexual relations with one who is akin to him; every member of his clan (not of his tribe or his race) is akin to him; therefore, he cannot marry or have sexual relations with any member of his clan. The origin of this rule is still disputed by anthropologists, and we need not here discuss it. But since exogamy bars a man from sexual relations with every member of his kin, it is obvious that it cannot be merely a preliminary to marriage within the kin. Where exogamy is the law, the bar is absolute; it is the law for the whole of life; it is not intended to provide for a temporary union outside the kin in order to prepare the way for a permanent union within the kin. Exogamy, therefore, I submit, cannot explain these customs.

THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF
DESTINY

In the following pages I propose to consider some of the auguries which have been deemed necessary to the choice of a king. Kingship is not found in the most archaic forms of society known to us. But where the community is organized on the basis of monarchy the king tends to be regarded as something more than ordinary humanity. He has powers and privileges denied to other mortals. These very powers and privileges and the sanctity of which they are the appanage entail, however, taboos and penalties of the most burdensome description. Professor Frazer has abundantly illustrated this side of royalty, and has also fully discussed some of the means whereby pretensions to the throne are enforced. But there remain others witnessing not less than those he has described to the extraordinary position of a king. Some of these and their echoes in folk-tale and romance will repay a little attention.

The famous Coronation Stone has an authentic history of six hundred years. At the time of the conquest of Scotland by Edward I., it was the stone on which the kings of the Scots were, according to immemorial custom, installed. Regarded by the Scots as sacred, it was therefore removed by Edward’s order from Scone, where it stood, to Westminster, and was enclosed in what is now, and has been ever since, the Coronation Chair. Its earlier history, as distinguished from conjecture and legend, goes no further back than the middle of the thirteenth century, or something less than half a century before its removal to Westminster, when it is recorded by Fordun that Alexander III. was solemnly placed upon it and hallowed to king by the Bishop of St. Andrews (1249). But what is wanting in authentic history has been abundantly made up in legend. The tale, of which there are two versions, is the creation of a literary age. The Irish version brings it, with the Tuatha Dé Danann, from Lochlann, or Scandinavia, to Ireland. The Scottish version traces it on the other hand from Egypt, whence it was carried by the Milesians. This was improved upon, to the extent of identifying the stone with that used by Jacob as a pillow on his journey from Beersheba to Haran. The attempt was thus made, by connecting the ruling race in Scotland with the legends of the Hebrew patriarchs, to confer upon the stone the united sanctity of religion, of antiquity, and of patriotism.

In the course of its wanderings the stone is said to have reached Tara; and it is declared to be the famous Lia Fáil, or Stone of Destiny, one of the two wonders of Tara celebrated in Irish sagas. We are indebted to the Book of Lismore, a fifteenth-century manuscript, for an enumeration of the wonderful properties of the Lia Fáil. The Colloquy with the Ancients, which is comprised in this precious manuscript, records a number of Irish traditions, some of which would else in all probability have perished beyond recovery. There we learn—the account is put into the mouth of no less a personage than Ossian himself—that “Anyone of all Ireland on whom an ex parte imputation rested was set upon that stone: then if the truth were in him he would turn pink and white; but if otherwise, it was a black spot that in some conspicuous place would appear on him. Further, when Ireland’s monarch stepped on to it the stone would cry out under him, and her three arch-waves would boom in answer: as the wave of Cleena, the wave of Ballintoy, and the wave of Loch Rury; when a provincial king went on it the flag would rumble under him; when a barren woman trod it, it was a dew of dusky blood that broke out on it; when one that would bear children tried it, it was a ‘nursing drop’”—that is, says Mr Standish O’Grady, from whose translation I quote, semblance of milk—“that it sweated.”292.1 The Colloquy is imperfect, the legible portion of the manuscript ceasing a line or two further on, just as we are about to be told how it was that the stone left Ireland.292.2 Its subsequent adventures are related by Keating, who says that it was sent to Feargus the Great, “to sit upon, for the purpose of being proclaimed king of Scotland.” However, it is not to the adventures of the stone, but to its properties that I wish now to direct attention. With regard to the former, all that I need add is that the legend has been subjected by Skene, and more recently by Mr P. J. O’Reilly, to an exhaustive analysis, which renders it clear that there is no trustworthy evidence that the stone of Tara is the Coronation Stone. The antecedent improbability is great; and even if it were indisputable that the stone in question was no longer at Tara in the eleventh century, the chasm between that period and Fergus, whose very existence only rested on legend, would still have to be bridged, and the variants of the story would need to be reconciled.293.1

The properties of the stone of Tara were oracular; and the stone itself was one of a large class of stones endowed in popular opinion with divining powers, and actually resorted to for the purpose of enquiry. When the reputation of an oracle is once established, it is consulted for many purposes. Not only political, but juridical and domestic purposes are enumerated by the author of the Colloquy in regard to the Lia Fáil. Among these functions is the recognition of the monarch. The phrase used in the Colloquy is ambiguous. It is not stated why, or on what occasion, the stone was expected to make its voice heard. In practice the only object of obtaining such a recognition would be that of determining the succession to the throne. Keating supplies the missing explanation. “It was a stone,” he says, “on which were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person who had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland at the time of the men of Ireland being in assembly at Tara to choose a king over them.”293.2 Whether as a matter of fact the stone ever was consulted with this object is another question. It is enough at present to know that Irish tradition asserted this use of the oracle. In a semi-civilized community a disputed succession is of frequent occurrence. To prevent a dispute, and to settle it when it arises, various means are adopted. The usual Irish plan seems to have been the custom of Tanistry. “During the lifetime of a chief,” Sullivan tells us, “his successor was elected under the name of Tanaiste; and on the death of the former the latter succeeded him. The Tanaiste was not necessarily the son of the chief: he might be his brother or nephew; but he should belong to his Fine,” or family.294.1

That this mode of election was not always successful we may easily believe. That it was the gradual outcome of the experience of a long series of generations is probable. Where for one cause or another it failed, how would the succession be determined? The most obvious means would be either conflict or divination. According to the legends, divination was sometimes actually used to determine the appointment of king. On one occasion in the days of Conchobar, the famous King of Ulster, the monarchy of Ireland had been vacant for seven years. This state of things being found intolerable, a general assembly was held at Tara to choose a king. The royal houses of Connaught, South Munster, North Munster, and Leinster were there, but the Ulstermen were absent; for there was bitter feud between Ulster and the rest of Ireland, and they would not hold kingly counsel together. The mode of election adopted was divination by means of a dream induced by certain ceremonies. The ceremonies began with a bull-feast. A bull was killed, and a man was gorged with its flesh and broth. We are told “he slept under that meal.” It is not incredible. Then “a true oration,” which I understand to mean an incantation, was pronounced over him by four Druids. He dreamed, and screamed out of his sleep, and related to the assembled kings that he had seen in his dream “a soft youth, noble, and powerfully made, with two red stripes on his skin around his body, and he standing at the pillow of a man who was lying in a decline at Emain Macha,” the royal palace of Ulster. Messengers were accordingly sent thither, and the description was found to correspond with that of Lugaidh Reo-derg, the pupil of Cuchulainn, who was then lying ill. Lugaidh was brought to Tara, recognized as the subject of the vision, and proclaimed as monarch of Ireland.295.1

This is not the only instance in Irish legend of election to the throne by incubatio, or divination by means of a dream. Conaire, whose tale is filled with incidents explicable only by the comparative studies of ethnologists, was thus elected. Though really begotten by a supernatural bird-man, he was regarded as the son of his predecessor, Eterscéle. But this does not seem to have given him any title to succeed. A bull-feast was accordingly given; and the bull-feaster in his sleep at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing along the road of Tara with a stone in his sling. Warned and counselled by his bird-relatives, Conaire fulfilled these requirements. He found three kings (doubtless of the under-kings of Ireland) awaiting him, with royal raiment to clothe his nakedness, and a chariot to convey him to Tara. It was a disappointment to the folk of Tara to find that their bull-feast and their spell of truth chanted over the feaster had resulted in the selection of a beardless lad. But he convinced them that he was the true successor, and was admitted to the kingship.296.1

A traditional story is not a record of fact. It is a record only of what is believed. Probably both Lugaidh Reo-derg and Conaire are mythical personages, but their stories certainly embody what was thought to be possible. The description of the election by divination is substantially the same in both. It may therefore be taken, if not as approximately correct, at least as showing that election by divination was regarded among the ancient Irish as in the last resort a reasonable and proper manner of ascertaining and appointing a king. In this the Irish were by no means singular. The traditions of other nations point to the same result, and the customs in various parts of the world confirm it. The incident of election by divination is so picturesque and so suitable for the purposes of a story-teller that it is to be expected far more often in a tale than in real life. But that the story-incident is based on actual practice, I think there is sufficient ground for believing.

We will first shortly review a few stories of election by divination. The Saxons of Transylvania tell of a peasant who had three sons, of whom the youngest was despised by the others because he was weak and small while they were tall and strong. In that kingdom God Himself chose the king from time to time. The mode of ascertaining the divine will was to call a general assembly of the people on the king’s meadow in the largest commune of the country, and there to lay the crown at a certain hour on a hillock or mound. All the bells in the town pealed forth together; and the crown slowly raised itself in the air, floated round over the heads of the assembly, and finally alighted on that of the destined sovereign. The two elder brothers made ready to attend the ceremony, but bade the youngest remain at home in the ashes, where his place was. However, he slipped out after them, and, for fear they would see him, crept into a pigsty that stood at the end of the town abutting on the meadow. The crown, passing over all the people present, sank down upon the pigsty. Surprised and curious to know what this strange proceeding meant, the people ran to the pigsty, there found the trembling boy, and drawing him forth bowed the knee and saluted him as the new king, called by God to occupy the throne.297.1

In this Transylvanian märchen the crown is the instrument of divination. Going next to the dim and distant East we find other emblems of royalty thus represented. In the Jātaka, the great book of Buddhist Birth-stories, the supposititious child of a merchant’s wife of Maghada is the hero of a similar adventure. He is, however, no ordinary child but the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha in an earlier birth. He was called Banyan, from having been found under a banyan tree, where his own mother had forsaken him at his birth. Travelling with two faithful companions who had been born on the same day as himself, he came to Benares, and entering the royal park lay down upon a slab of stone with his two companions beside it. The previous night they had slept in the city under a tree at a temple. One of the youths had awakened at dawn and heard some cocks quarrelling in the branches. He listened, and learnt that whoever killed a certain one of these birds and ate of his fat would become king that very day, he who ate the middle flesh would become commander-in-chief, and he who ate the flesh about the bones would become treasurer. He killed the bird, gave the fat to Banyan, the middle flesh to his other friend, and gnawed the bones himself. Now the king of Benares was dead, and that day the festal car was going forth with the five symbols of royalty, the sword, the parasol, the diadem, the slippers, and the fan, within it, to choose the king’s successor. As the three youths lay in the royal park, the ceremonial chariot rolled up and stopped before them. The chaplain (presumably a Brahman) followed. Removing the cloth from Banyan’s feet he examined the marks upon them. “Why!” he exclaimed, “he is destined to be king of all India, let alone Benares!” and he ordered the gongs and the cymbals to strike up. This awoke Banyan, who sat up. The chaplain fell down before him, saying: “Divine being, the kingdom is thine.” “So be it,” quietly answered the youth; the chaplain placed him upon the heap of precious jewels and sprinkled him to be king.298.1

In a Calmuck tale the instrument of divination is not one of the royal insignia, but a sacrificial cake. An assembly of the people is held to choose a new khan; and it is decided to appeal to the judgement of heaven by throwing a sacrificial cake, called Baling, apparently a figure of dough, into the air, at the time of the sacrifice (Streuopfer). On whosesoever head the cake fell, he should be khan.298.2

A tale of the Teleut Tartars tells of a father who was enraged with his son because he interpreted the cry of some birds, declaring that they foretold that he himself would become emperor, and his father would drink his urine. The father, in his anger, struck off his son’s head. He then killed his horse, skinned it, rolled his son’s body in the hide and flung it into the sea. The waves carried the package to a village, where an old woman found it. She opened the leather, and the youth came out alive. The prince of that land had died, leaving no son. His subjects took two golden posts, and fastened on their tops two tapers. They then set up the posts in the middle of the village. Everyone was required to jump through them, and the tapers would fall on him who was to be the prince. But they obstinately remained standing until the destined youth came, when they both fell on his neck and burst into flame. If he had not become an emperor, at least he was now a prince: and with that variation, the whole of the bird’s prophecy was in due course fulfilled.299.1 But we need not follow it further. The hero of a Balochi tale likewise falls under his father’s displeasure. His father was a king, and the son took advantage of his royalty to break the crockery of his father’s subjects. When the people complained, his father drove him away. In the course of his wanderings, he came to a town where the king had just died. The palace door was shut, and upon it was written: “He whose hand shall open this door, shall be king of this city.” The wandering prince, reading this, said: “Bismillah.” He pushed the door: it opened. He entered, seated himself on the throne, and became king.299.2

The Kah-gyur, a sacred work of Tibetan Buddhism dating back to the eleventh century or thereabouts, contains a story of king Ánanda. The name Ánanda is famous in the literature of Buddhism as that of a favourite disciple of the master; but it is here used in the indiscriminate way in which the mediæval friars used the names of Pompey, Titus, Pliny, and other famous Romans, in the Gesta Romanorum. This king had five sons, of whom the youngest was endowed with qualities better suited to a ruler than the others, and to whom accordingly he desired to leave the kingdom. But he feared that if he invested his youngest son with sovereign power, his kinsmen would reproach him for having passed over his elder sons. As a way of escape from the difficulty he decreed that after his death his sons should be tested, and that he should be made king whom the jewel-shoes should fit, under whom the throne should remain steadfast, and on whose head the diadem should rest unshaken, whom the women should recognize, and who should guess six objects to be divined by insight.300.1 There is a triple test here—divination by the royal insignia, the choice of the harem, and the solution of a riddle. I shall return to the two former tests. But before passing to another type of story I may note that in the Bakhtyár-Náma, a Persian romance translated by Sir William Ouseley, who brought it from the East in the early part of the last century, there is a story in which the succession to the throne is made to depend upon the solution of three riddles. The king having died without issue, it was resolved to go to the prison and propound three questions to the criminals confined there. He who answered best was recognized as king.300.2 Riddles are regarded in certain stages of civilization as a test of more than ordinary wisdom. Their position in the evolution of thought and custom is well worth investigation. It is too large a subject for discussion here.

Occasionally the instrument of divination is wholly wanting, and the first man met with is taken for king. Among a tribe in Morocco is told a tale of which the hero is made king, because he is the first man found outside the city-gate when it is opened in the morning.301.1 Another of these stories is that of Ali Shar and Zumurrud in the Arabian Nights. Ali Shar was a prodigal, and Zumurrud was his favourite female slave. By a series of diverting adventures which do not concern us, they are separated. After much suffering, Zumurrud contrives to possess herself of a man’s clothes, horse and sword. In the course of her wanderings she draws nigh to a city-gate, where she finds the emirs and nobles with the troops drawn up and waiting, as Conaire found the three kings waiting on the way to Tara. The soldiery, on seeing her, dash forward. They dismount and prostrate themselves before her, saluting her as lord and sultan. On enquiry she learns that the sultan of the city is dead; and on such occasions it is the custom that the troops sally forth to the suburbs, there to sojourn for three days. Whoever comes during that time from the quarter whence she has come is made king. Being a lady of resource, she accepts the position, administers the kingdom with efficiency, and ultimately finds means to avenge herself on her enemies and to be reunited with her master, Ali Shar.301.2 An Indian folk-tale relates that in a certain city “it was the custom that when the rája died the nobles of the kingdom used to take their seats at the gate of the city, and the first man who appeared before them they made their rája.”301.3

The same tale is told by the Taranchi Tartars, an agricultural people who are now settled in the valley of the Ili, a large river flowing into Lake Balkash, in Central Asia. But it is told with this difference. When the hero draws nigh to the gate of the city, all the people cry out “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” On enquiring why they do this, they reply: “Our ruler has been dead for three days. He had a magical bird, which has been let fly, and on whosesoever head the bird settles, him we raise to be our prince.” Here the augury is drawn from a bird.302.1

In another Tartar märchen, this time from the west of Siberia, the ruler of the town has grown old, and is desirous of retiring. He has a bird which is let fly and chooses a woman. She is immediately accepted as prince and installed in the place of the old man.302.2 In a Kurdish märchen a special bird called “the bird of dominion” is fetched, it is not said whence, for the purpose of the divination.302.3

An animal of some kind is, in fact, the agent in most of these tales. A Buddhist tale from Cambodia tells us that, the royal family having become extinct, it was the custom to ask the royal family of another kingdom to furnish a king. The council of mandarins determined to take this course. Under the advice of an old astrologer horses were harnessed to the carriage—we must understand, no doubt, the royal carriage—and then allowed to go in any direction they pleased, without a driver. This is described as consulting the horses. The first day the horses re-entered the palace. The next day they drew the carriage in the direction of a neighbouring kingdom. Twice, thrice the carriage was turned back; but the horses persisted in drawing it again in the same direction. It was accordingly decided to demand a prince from that kingdom.303.1

In the East, however, as might be expected, it is usually the royal animal, the elephant, which thus confers the kingdom. I have already cited one great collection of Indian tales. There is another, only second to the Jātaka in extent, the Kathá Sarit Ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story, translated a few years ago by Dr Tawney. It contains a märchen, perhaps derived from that older and more famous collection, the Panchatantra, of a man who retired with his wife to the forest, to practise austerities. While there he rescued from the river a wretch whose hands and feet had been cut off, and who had been thrown by his enemies into the stream to die. His wife, probably sick of austerities, falls in love with the cripple thus rescued, and plots her husband’s death. She succeeds in precipitating him into the river; but instead of being drowned he is thrown on the bank near a city. “Now it happened that at that time the king of that city had just died, and in that country there was an immemorial custom, that an auspicious elephant was driven about by the citizens, and any man that he took up with his trunk and placed on his back, was anointed king.” The hero of the story, who is “an incarnation of a portion of a Bodhisattva,” is of course chosen; and when he gets the chance he inflicts condign punishment on his wife.303.2 The elephant is here described as “an auspicious elephant.” Sometimes he is called the “crown-elephant,” the special property and symbol of royalty. So in a Tamil story we learn that the king of a certain city dying childless, on his death-bed called his ministers together and directed them “to send his crown-elephant with a flower-wreath in his trunk, and to choose him on whom the elephant throws the garland, as his successor.”304.1 In a folk-tale from the far north of India it is “the sacred elephant” before whom all the inhabitants are required to pass in file, and the animal is expected to elect one of them to the vacant throne “by kneeling down and saluting the favoured individual as he passed by, for in this manner kings were elected in that country.”304.2 In a story which appears to come from Gujerat, the king dies without an heir, and the astrologers prophesy that his heir would be the first who entered the gates of the city on the morrow of the king’s decease, and around whose neck the sacred elephant would throw a garland of flowers.304.3

At other times the elephant alone does not make the choice. With him is conjoined some other animal or symbol of royalty. A tale from Kashmir speaks of a land where, when the king died, his elephant “was driven all over the country and his hawk was made to fly here, there and everywhere in search of a successor; and it came to pass that before whomsoever the elephant bowed and on whosesoever hand the hawk alighted, he was supposed to be the divinely chosen one.”304.4 In the Kathákoça, a collection of stories illustrating the tenets and practice of Jainism, five ordeals, as they are expressly called, are invoked. “The mighty elephant came into the garden outside the city. There the elephant sprinkled Prince Amaradatta [we have already heard of sprinkling as a means of hallowing to kingship], and put him on its back. Then the horse neighed. The two chowries fanned the prince. An umbrella was held over his head. A divine voice was heard in the air: ‘Long live King Amaradatta.’”305.1

In most of these cases the decision is clearly regarded as the judgement of Heaven; and in every case the judgement of Heaven may at least be inferred. The incident is hardly less a favourite in the West than in the East. In the West, too, it is an appeal to the judgement of Heaven. All the European stories, however, in which it occurs have been recorded within the last century; consequently the incident in question appears only in a very late form. Now an appeal to the judgement of Heaven in the selection of a ruler is familiar to the peasant mind of the continent in one solitary instance—that of the choice of a pope. Accordingly this is the favourite, if not the only form of the story as it is told in France, Italy, and Switzerland. The charming collection by the late M. Luzel of religious and quasi-religious tales of Lower Brittany contains one entitled “Pope Innocent.” The hero is a son of the King of France cast off by his parents, who attempt to put him to death. He sets out for Rome to be present at the election of a new pope. On the way he falls in with two Capuchin monks. The elder of them is gentle to him, the other suspicious and hostile. The youth is a bit of a prig. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, seeing that he is endowed with supernatural knowledge and power. These qualities make his conduct throughout the journey enigmatical to the point of excusing, if not justifying, the attitude of his unfriendly companion. Everyone takes him for a sorcerer; and the younger monk says in so many words to the other, that they will be lucky if he do not bring them to the gallows or the stake before reaching Rome. As they draw near the holy city, the boy hears some birds in a hedge foretell that one of the three will be made pope, just as the cocks were overheard in the story I have cited from the Jātaka. Thereupon he enquires of each of his companions what office he will give him if he (the monk) attain this dignity. The elder monk promises to make him his first cardinal, the younger contemptuously says he will make him beadle in his cathedral. Arrived at Rome, they find that the choice of a pope proceeds in this way: There are to be three days’ processions. Every pilgrim has to carry a candle, not lighted, in his hand; and he whose candle lights of itself is the person designated by God to the office of pope. The youth, however, has no money to buy candles. So he carries merely a white wand which he has cut in the hedge where the birds sang; and people, seeing him, shrug their shoulders and exclaim: “Look at that poor innocent!” It is, however, not the candle of an archbishop, or bishop, or of any great dignitary of the church; it is not that of an abbot, or a monk, or even of a simple priest, which lights; it is the boy Innocent’s white wand. The omen is refused on the first day; nor is it accepted until it has been repeated on the second and third days of the ceremony. At last the premier cardinal kneels before him, acknowledges him as pope and asks for his benediction. Thus Innocent becomes pope at Rome, by the will of God.306.1

The story of Pope Innocent belongs to the cycle of the Outcast Child, a well-known group of folk-tales, of which the examples most familiar to us are the story of King Lear and that of Joseph and his brethren. The hero (or heroine) of these tales is cast off by his relatives for reasons at the least excusable. Sometimes, as in the Teleut tale already mentioned, his life is attempted. But in the end he attains a place and dignity which enable him to compel recognition of his wrongs, and, after the infliction of retributive humiliation, to pardon the offenders. In these märchen the pope is not always chosen by the burning of a taper. In the Italian variants the favourite method is by a dove which alights on the hero’s head. In a Swiss story from the Upper Valais two snow-white doves settle on his shoulders. In a Basque story, as the travellers approach Rome the bells begin to ring of themselves. In a story from Upper Brittany the will of Heaven is declared by a bell, which rings of itself when the destined pope passes beneath it. In a story from Normandy the new pope is indicated by “a portion of Heaven stooping upon him whom Jesus would choose to govern His Church.” The collector, while faithfully recording this singular phrase, is puzzled by it, and suggests that it must mean a cloud resting on him.307.1 In all cases it is quite clear that the falling of the lot, however it may be accomplished, is regarded as a direct expression of the divine will. The sacred character of the Papacy, and the names of historical popes, as Innocent and Gregory, given to the heroes, raise the suspicion that these tales are something more than märchen, and lead directly to the enquiry, not whether such prodigies have in fact been the means of determining the succession to the popedom, but whether they have been believed to have occurred.

Now it happens that this very event was reported in connection with the election of the great Pope Innocent III., in the year 1198. Three doves, it was said, flew about the church during the proceedings, and at last one of them, a white one, came and perched on his right side, which was held to be a favourable omen.308.1 In the atmosphere of the Middle Ages an occurrence of the kind, if it happened, could not fail to make a great impression on the popular mind. The dove would be regarded as no less than the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. Long before Innocent’s day—indeed before the Middle Ages began—something like this would seem to have happened. It is recorded by Eusebius that in the reign of the Emperor Gordian, who ruled from A.D. 238 to 244, when all the brethren were assembled in the church for the purpose of electing a successor to Anteros, Bishop of Rome, suddenly a dove flew down from on high and sat on the head of Fabian. Thereupon the assembly with one voice acclaimed him bishop and seated him on the episcopal throne.308.2

Nor were popes alone thus honoured. Dr Conyers Middleton, in his once famous Letter from Rome, records that “in the cathedral church of Ravenna I saw, in mosaic work, the pictures of those archbishops of the place who, as all their historians affirm, were chosen for several ages successively by the special designation of the Holy Ghost, who in a full assembly of the clergy and people, used to descend visibly on the person elect in the shape of a dove.”308.3 Among the apocryphal stories in The Book of Sir John Maundeville we are told that in the convent on Mount Sinai are many lamps burning. The author, whoever he may have been, writes rather a muddled account of the election of “prelate of the abbey.” I gather from it that each monk has a lamp, and that when a prelate is chosen his lamp will light of itself, if he be a good man and worthy of the office; if otherwise, the lamp, though lighted, will go out. An inconsistent tradition ran that the priest who sang mass for the deceased dignitary found written upon the altar the name of him who was to be chosen in his place. But though the miracle-monger who writes under the name of Sir John Maundeville professes to have been at the monastery and questioned the monks, he admits that he could not induce them to tell him the facts.309.1

The marvels reported of the election of Christian bishops are told with little variation of the election of other rulers. Paulus Diaconus relates that when Liutprand, king of the Lombards, a contemporary of Charles Martel, was thought to be dying, his subjects met outside the walls of his capital, Pavia, at the church of St Mary ad Perticas,309.2 to choose a successor. Their choice fell on the king’s nephew, Hildeprand, in whose hand they formally placed the royal spear. Immediately a cuckoo flew down and settled on the point of the spear, as it will be remembered a cuckoo in the Tartar story settled on the kalender’s head. This, however, was reckoned by Lombard wiseacres as an evil omen. Their augury was so far justified, that King Liutprand did not die after all, but recovered from his sickness and was not well pleased that his subjects had been in such a hurry to find a successor. Yet he did not refuse to recognize his nephew as co-ruler; and when he at last died, Hildeprand succeeded him.310.1 Of another king of the Lombards, Desiderius, a contemporary of Charles the Great, the story is told that the Lombard nobles were meeting to choose a king at Pavia, and Desiderius, a pious man of noble lineage who dwelt at Brescia, journeyed thither to be present, accompanied by a serving man. At Leno, between Brescia and Cremona, being weary, he lay down under a tree to sleep. As he slept his servant beheld a snake crawl forth and wind itself round his head like a crown. The servant was afraid to move, lest the snake might injure his master; but after a while it uncoiled and crept away. Desiderius meanwhile had dreamt that the crown of the Lombards was placed on his head. When he reached Pavia, the dream was fulfilled.310.2

It is said that in Senjero, a petty kingdom in the south of Abyssinia, when the king dies the nobles assemble outside the city in the open plain, and wait until a vulture or an insect settles on one of them, who is then saluted as king.310.3 Everyone is familiar with the story told by Herodotus concerning the election of a successor to Smerdis the Magian, usurper of the throne of Persia, how it was agreed that the successful conspirators should meet at sunrise, and that he whose horse first neighed should be king. According to Herodotus, Darius won by a trick of his groom. That may or may not have been. What interests us in the story is that it was believed that the succession on this occasion to the throne of Persia was determined by an augury drawn from horses, and that the neighing of Darius’ horse was instantly followed by the further manifestation of the will of Heaven in thunder and lightning from a clear sky.311.1 The elephant, the horse and the divine voice of Indian märchen here find their counterpart, if not in actual fact, at least in the serious belief of the venerable historian, and the people whose tradition he reports. In this connection it must not be forgotten that among many peoples, horses were sacred animals. They were sacrificed to the gods; they were looked upon as in the counsels of the gods; their neighing was a favourable omen. It is therefore not at all improbable that Herodotus is here recording the mode of choice actually adopted.311.2

Similarly in the annals of Kedda, a portion of the Malay Peninsula, there is a story of the rajah who was dethroned and fled. His nobles and queen sent to the King of Siam for a new ruler. He, having consulted his astrologers, was advised that the true heir to the throne could only be discovered by a supernaturally intelligent elephant, named Kamala Jauhari, which was wandering about on the confines of Kedda and Patani. When the envoys brought back the message to the Kedda chiefs, they decked the palace for a fête. “Then all the people held a fast for seven days and nights.… On the night of the seventh day the dupa and incense were burned, and all sorts of perfumes were diffused around, and at the same time the name of the super-intelligent elephant was invoked to attend upon the four mantris [ministers]. Immediately almost there was a sound, like the rushing of a coming tempest, from the East, with earthquakes, agitations and terrific sounds. In the midst of all this uproar the terrified spectators were delighted to see Kamala Jauhari standing at the hall, and thrusting up her trunk into it. The four mantris instantly rubbed her with cosmetics and bathed her with lime-juice, while others applied cosmetics and sweet-smelling oils, rubbing these over its whole body. Then a meal was served up to it, and put into its mouth. The state howdah was now placed on its back, along with all its appurtenances, curtains and hangings. Then one of the mantris read the King of Siam’s letter close to the ear of Kamala Jauhari, acquainting her that she was expected to assist in finding out a rajah for Kedda by all means. When Jauhari heard all this, she bowed her head and played her trunk, and then set forth in the direction of the East, followed and attended by from three to four hundred men, having banners and flags streaming in the wind, and being supplied with all necessaries, and armed with various kinds of spears, held in hand.” It is needless to say that the expedition thus pompously described was successful in discovering the boy. The elephant caught him up in her trunk, and, placing him on her back in the howdah, carried him off in triumph to the palace, where he was forthwith clad in royal robes and crowned.312.1

In Indian belief it is not only super-intelligent elephants which can discover the future occupant of a throne. The elephant is the possession and symbol of royalty. But in the stories, other royal properties are also instruments of divination for that purpose. That these stories were founded on current superstitions is shown by the fact that among the ornaments of the throne of the famous Tippoo, conquered by the British at the end of the eighteenth century, was a bird of paradise made of gold and covered with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and represented in the act of fluttering. Of this bird it was believed that every head it overshadowed would, in time, wear a crown. When Tippoo was defeated and slain, the Marquis Wellesley, at that time governor-general, sent it home to the Court of Directors of the East India Company.313.1 It is now at Windsor.

Coming back to Europe, we find the succession to the throne of one of the Scythian tribes determined by the possession of a certain stone. The author of the work on the names of rivers and mountains attributed to Plutarch relates that in the river Tanais a stone like a crystal grows. It resembles in shape a man wearing a crown. When the king dies, whosoever finds it, and can produce it in the assembly held on the banks of the river to elect a new sovereign, is recognized as the rightful successor.313.2 For this statement Ctesiphon on Plants and Aristobulus on Stones are cited, authors whose works are lost and who are unknown by any other citations. It is, therefore, impossible for us to judge how far they are likely to have known, or with what accuracy they may have presented, the practice of the barbarous tribe referred to. There can, however, be no doubt that election by divination has been resorted to by peoples in many parts of the world. The succession of Grand Lamas of Lhasa supplies examples of both story and custom. The custom used to be to write on slips of paper the names of all likely male children born under miraculous portents (of which anon) just after the death of the preceding Lama, to put these slips into a golden urn and thus ballot for his successor (or, as it is believed, his new incarnation) amid constant prayer. But the Chinese court, which has a considerable stake in the decision, was thought to influence the selection. The state-oracle has therefore predicted disaster by the appearance of a monster as the Dalai or Grand Lama, if the ancient practice were continued; and on a recent vacancy, in 1876, he foretold the discovery, by a pious monk, of the future Grand Lama, announcing that his discovery would be accompanied by horse-neighings. He sent this monk to Chukorgye, where he dreamed that he was to look in a certain lake for the future Dalai. There, pictured in the bosom of the lake, the monk saw the child with his parents in the house where he was born, and at the same instant his horse neighed. In due course the child himself was found, and successfully encountered the usual test, by recognizing the articles which had belonged to him in his previous life. Every child who is a candidate has to pass this test. He is confronted with a duplicate collection of various sacred objects, and he is required to point out among them the genuine possessions of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is not the only Grand Lama. The head of every lamasery, or convent of lamas, bears this title. When the Grand Lama of such a lamasery dies, his successor, or new incarnation, is sought first of all by divination. A diviner is called in, who, after consulting his books, directs the lamas where to look for the boy. When they have found him, he has to pass a similar test to that just described. In addition he has to submit to cross-examination on the name and situation of the lamasery, and how many lamas reside there, and on the habits of the deceased Grand Lama, and the manner of his death.

The portents at the birth of a Dalai Lama are magnificent. It is not irrelevant to mention them here, as they may be regarded as part of the auguries which decide the succession. An official report from the Chinese Commissioner to the Emperor, on such an occasion in the year 1839, declares, among other things, that it was ascertained that on the night before the boy was born, a brilliant radiance of many colours was manifested in the air, and the water in the well of the temple courtyard changed to a milk-white colour. Seven days later a flame appeared on the rock behind the post-station. When the rock was examined, no trace of fire remained, but a sacred image and characters were found, together with the print of footsteps. Moreover, on the night when the child was born, the sound of music was heard, and milk dropped upon the pillars of the house.315.1

The Buddhists are not the only sect in the Chinese Empire which has a supreme head appointed by religious divination. The arch-abbot of Taouism dwells in a princely residence on the Dragon and Tiger Mountains, in the province of Kiang-si. “The power of this dignitary,” we are told, “is immense, and is acknowledged by all the priests of his sect throughout the empire.” The office has been confined for centuries to one family or clan. When the arch-abbot dies, all the male members of his clan are cited to appear at the official residence. The name of each one is engraved on a separate piece of lead, and deposited in a large earthenware vase filled with water. Standing round this vase are priests who invoke the three persons of the Taouist Trinity to cause the piece of lead bearing the name of the person on whom the choice of the gods has fallen, to come to the surface of the water.316.1

The Taouist dignitary seems to possess only spiritual power, except probably in his own monastery. The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, retains some portion of civil rule. In both cases the person of the ruler is looked upon as sacred. Among savage and barbarous nations the office of priest or medicine-man is often not clearly distinguished from that of temporal ruler. The instances in which the chief or king is looked upon as divine, in which he is responsible for the weather, in which he causes the crops to grow, and performs other superhuman functions, are too numerous, and too well-known to be mentioned here. Since the publication of The Golden Bough they have been among the commonplaces of folklore. I need only remind you that “the divinity that doth hedge a king” is not confined to savagery and barbarism. It has lasted far into civilization, and been sedulously cultivated for political purposes by royalty in every age. A Roman Emperor was Divus Augustus. When the dignity of king becomes hereditary, the monarch is held to be at least descended from the gods. The Mikado traces his descent from the Sun-goddess. King George V. traces his from Woden, the war-god of the Anglo-Saxon tribes which colonized Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. It is true that this genealogy, at one time seriously credited, is now treated as fable; but even yet the coronation ceremonies of “His Sacred Majesty,” though not directly of pagan origin, witness to the mysterious sanctity that surrounds him.

A view of kingship thus exalted renders it easy to understand why, when circumstances compelled the choice of a king, the divine will must have been most anxiously consulted. It was not merely that the qualities of a leader in battle, a wise judge and administrator, and a prudent politician were needed. Luck and the favour of the gods were more than these, to say nothing of the marks of godhead, which in many cases it was necessary to discover in his person, conduct or knowledge. Hence the choice of the people, or rather the recognition by the people, would depend upon the auguries, or upon more direct indications of the decision of Heaven. When Dagara, the King of Karagwe, on the western shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, died, he left behind him three sons, any of whom was eligible to the throne. The officers of state put before them a small mystic drum. It was of trifling weight, but, being loaded with charms, no one could lift it, save he to whom the ancestral spirits were inclined as the successor. Nor was this enough. The victor in this contest was required to undergo a further trial of his right. He was made to sit, as he himself informed Captain Speke, on the ground at a certain spot where the land would gradually rise up under him, like a telescope, until it reached the skies. The aspirant who was approved by the spirits was then gradually lowered in safety; whereas, if not approved, the elastic hill would suddenly collapse, and he would be dashed to pieces. It is needless to add, that Rumanika, Captain Speke’s informant, claimed to have gone through the ordeal with success.317.1

Light is perhaps thrown on the matter by the final test actually imposed on the successor elected to the throne of Ukerewe, an island in the lake, and therefore adjacent to the kingdom of Karagwe. He is taken to Kitale, the burial-place of the kings, about two kilometres from the capital. There lies an immense stone rising like a donkey’s back from the soil, beginning a few centimetres only above the earth, and gently swelling until it attains the height of a little more than a metre. It is called the ruswa. The provisionally proclaimed king, with both hands laden with lances, bows and arrows, and wearing gigantic native sandals, is required to climb it slowly and with short steps to the top. If he be so unfortunate as to slip and fall on the way, he is unworthy of the drum (the symbol of sovereignty), and is driven away without pity. If, on the other hand, he successfully reach the platform, or highest point of the rock, he is acclaimed in a frenzy of excitement, the men breaking forth into a sham fight, the women joyfully shouting “Yu, yu!” The test is over; he is definitely king.318.1 It is not impossible that, reduced to its final terms, some such ordeal as this was what the candidate for the throne of Karagwe actually underwent.

These are barbarous auguries. But all auguries and oracles are barbarous. We do not know how Melchizedek was appointed King of Salem. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to him as “without father, without mother, without genealogy,” as if there were something peculiar in the omission of his pedigree, though in this respect he did not differ from the other kings mentioned in the narrative. However, the discovery at Tel-el-Amarna of letters from Ebed-tob, King of Salem in the fifteenth century B.C., to his suzerain the King of Egypt, has rendered it possible to suppose that Melchizedek did not come to the throne by inheritance, and consequently that his parentage was unimportant. Ebed-tob, protesting his loyalty as an ally and a tributary of the King of Egypt, says: “Neither my father, nor my mother, (but) the oracle of the mighty king, established (me) in the house of (my) father.” In other words, he states, as Professor Sayce interprets the expression, “that his authority was not based on the right of inheritance; he had been called to exercise it by a divine voice.”319.1 We must beware of drawing too large an inference from a single phrase. Assuming that “the mighty king” is the god ’Shalim, and not the suzerain whom he is addressing, there remains the question what is meant by “the house of his father.” Evidently it is the royal office; but is it not the royal office previously filled by his ancestors? The correct view, I would suggest, is that the kingship was, like that of Karagwe, descendible to any scion of the royal house, subject to the decision of the oracle. The pedigree then would be important, but not all-important. The god would decide among the candidates. Some such arrangement would seem to have been recognized in the heroic age of Greece, if we may trust the somewhat obscure expressions of the Odyssey. There are examples in the Homeric poems of kings who have succeeded to the inheritance of their sires. Agamemnon is one. On the other hand, the position of Ulysses is enigmatical. It is enigmatical in regard to Laertes, his father, who was still alive; while, if Ulysses were dead, it would seem that Telemachus, his son, would only have the first, but by no means an indefeasible, claim. As Mr Crooke has pointed out, it results from the interview between Telemachus and the wooers in the first book of the Odyssey, that some kind of divine nomination should appoint the king, and that the choice might fall, not on Telemachus, but on another of the Achæans in sea-girt Ithaca.320.1 It is dangerous to read into the poem what is not expressed. The poet is describing an age already mythical, though no doubt he has embodied considerable fragments of actual custom in the representation. He does not detail the process of appointment of king. Consequently, all we can safely say (and that on the assumption that here we have one of the fragments of actual custom) is that the manners and whole atmosphere of the poem correspond with a stage of culture in which the will of the gods would be ascertained by augury. In this connection it may not be irrelevant to refer to the early traditions of Rome. The quarrel between Romulus and Remus concerned not merely the site of the city, but also the founder after whose name it should be called—in other words, the royal dignity. It was settled by an augury taken from the flight of vultures. Numa, the successor of Romulus, though elected, took care to assure himself by auguries that the gods approved of the choice. It must be remembered that the legends, as we have them, took shape under the republic when the ordinary human process of election had been long established. The habit thus formed probably affected them; and I think we are warranted in suspecting that if we could recover them at a prior stage, we should find the appointment of king resting on the will of the gods and ascertained by divination.

No argument is needed to show that the form of tradition is affected, even where the substance remains, by external changes. Customs referred to in a legend may become obsolete and consequently unintelligible; and the reference to them must of necessity be modified into something which is understood, or it will be dropped into oblivion. The tradition of the Lia Fáil, with which I started, is an example. To step on the stone was to put one’s claim to sovereignty to proof. As Keating relates, doubtless from some older author, on it “were enchantments, for it used to roar under the person who had the best right to obtain the sovereignty of Ireland.” But this is the latest form of the tradition. We can, however, reconstruct the earlier form by comparison with custom and tradition elsewhere. They render it clear that the stone was once held to declare the divine will as to the succession. Further back still, it may have been regarded as itself endowed with power of choice.321.1 Strictly speaking, this is not augury, for augury is the ascertainment and declaration of a higher will. But some such animistic belief may have been the seed-plot out of which augury grew as gods properly so-called were evolved. At the stage at which the tradition reaches us the Lia Fáil no longer either chooses on its own account or makes known the choice of Heaven. At this stage, not only is it enchanted, consequently diabolic rather than divine in the source of its power, but also it merely points out him who has “the best right.” The principle of heredity is now firmly established; its application alone is uncertain. When the principle is established and the application certain, it is not necessary to consult an oracle.

The changes I thus venture to postulate are steps in the disintegration of the myth. A Welsh tale now to be cited has taken a further step in that it simply credits the instrument of divination with the diagnosis of blood royal, the practical purpose of determining the succession to the kingdom having disappeared. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, it happened that in the time of Henry I. Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Tudor, who, although he only held of the king one commote, namely, a fourth part of the cantref of Caio, yet was reputed as lord in Deheubarth, was returning from court by way of Llangorse Lake, in Brecknockshire, with Milo, Earl of Hereford and Lord of Brecknock, and Payn FitzJohn, who then held Ewyas, two of the king’s secretaries and privy councillors. It was winter, and the lake was covered with water-fowl of various kinds. Seeing them, Milo, partly in joke, said to Gruffydd: “It is an old saying in Wales that if the natural prince of Wales, coming to this lake, command the birds upon it to sing, they will all immediately sing.” Gruffydd replied: “Do you, therefore, who now bear sway in this country, command them first.” Both Milo and Payn having made the attempt in vain, Gruffydd dismounted from his horse, fell on his knees with his face to the East, and after devout prayers to God, stood up, and making the sign of the cross on his forehead and face, cried aloud: “Almighty and all-knowing God, Lord Jesus Christ, show forth here to-day Thy power! If Thou hast made me lineally to descend from the natural princes of Wales, I command these birds in Thy name to declare it.” Forthwith all the birds, according to their kind, beating the water with outstretched wings, began altogether to sing and proclaim it. No wonder that all who were present were amazed and confounded, and that Milo and Payn reported it to the king, who is said to have taken it philosophically enough. “By the death of Christ!” (his customary oath), he replied, “it is not so much to be wondered at. For although by our great power we may impose injustice and violence upon those people, yet they are none the less known to have the hereditary right to the country.”323.1

In the same manner, in India snakes are supposed to be specially gifted with the faculty of distinguishing persons of royal race or born to rule.323.2 One example will be enough. The Gandharbs of Benares, a caste of singers and prostitutes, ascribe their origin to Doman Deo, the second Raghubansi Râjput king of Chandrâvati. He had a groom named Shîru, who one day went into the jungle to cut grass, and fell asleep. While he slept, a cobra raised its hood over his head, and a wagtail kept flying above him. In that condition his master saw him, and afterwards asked him what he would do for him if he became king. Shîru promised to make him his prime minister. Going subsequently to Delhi, the throne of which was vacant, Shîru was chosen emperor, in the manner with which we are already acquainted, by an elephant laying a garland on his neck; and he redeemed his word by making Doman Deo his wazîr.323.3 In Further India a saga of the Chams relates that Klong Garay, who plays a great part in their legendary history, was found by a companion of his wanderings, after a temporary absence, sleeping and watched by two dragons, which were licking his body. Then he knew, we are told, that Klong Garay was of royal race.324.1 The child of a king of Siam by a Naga, or divine snake, being exposed, was found and adopted by a hunter. The king’s subjects were compelled by law to work in turn for the king. The hunter, when summoned, took with him his adopted child and laid it in the shadow of the palace, to protect it from the rays of the sun while he performed his task. But the spire of the palace inclined before the child, and the shadow appeared to fly. This prodigy put the king upon enquiry, and he identified his son by means of the ring and mantle which he had given to the lady, and which had been found with the child.324.2 In the old English metrical romance of Havelok the Dane, the hero is identified by means of a royal mark, “a croiz ful gent,” shining brighter than gold on his right shoulder.

“It sparkede, and ful brith shon,

So doth the gode charbucle ston,

That men mouthe se by the lith

A peni chesen, so was it brith.”324.3

The romance in which the incident is found is a literary version of the local tradition of Grimsby, still commemorated in the seal of the corporation. The poem dates from the end of the thirteenth century. There are two French versions which I have not seen. Professor Skeat has epitomized the longer in the preface to his edition of the English romance. In it a flame issues from Havelok’s mouth when he sleeps. This is a personal peculiarity, also found in the English lay. His heirship to the throne of Denmark is determined by his ability to blow a horn which none but the true heir could sound. Thus we are brought back to the succession by divination from which we started, and of which the simple diagnosis of royal descent is a corruption and a weakening. It is preserved here, we know not by what cause, after its true meaning had been forgotten. Adopted first of all into tradition from living custom, when the custom was superseded by other means of determining the succession it survived as a tradition until, its true intent being gradually lost, while the hereditary principle was strengthened and fenced about with sanctity, the incident faded into a merely picturesque presentation, in some places of prophecy, in other places of the claims of birth.

The study of folk-tales is often despised as mere trifling. But traditional narratives must always occupy an important place in the study of the past. Rightly used they have much to tell us of human history, of human thought and the evolution of human institutions. It may safely be said that of all the incidents that compose them there is none which is not a concrete presentation either of human institutions or of human belief. They are all thus in a sense the outcome of actual human experiences. The stories of election by augury are not wilder than the authentic facts. The telescopic mountain of Karagwe, which Rumanika averred himself to have experienced, is at least as wonderful as the groaning of the Lia Fáil, or the lighting of a dry twig. Even if we may be allowed to rationalize it in the manner suggested by the ordeal required of the chosen candidate for the throne of the neighbouring Bakerewe, it remains evidence of the belief imposed by the power of imagination in a moment of excitement. Analogous performances are averred by the votaries of what is called spiritualism to have been exhibited in our own day by mediums, and were solemnly recorded long ago in the witch-trials of various European countries. In one of the stories I have cited we found the dying monarch laying down among the conditions to be fulfilled by his successor, that the women of the royal household should recognize him. Secret intrigues of the harem are believed to determine the devolution of many an Eastern crown. But that the formal and ceremonial choice of the heir should be made by the wives of the deceased ruler seems too grotesque to be known outside a fairy tale. Yet this was the law a hundred years ago in the kingdom of Quiteve, on the south-eastern coast of Africa. When a king died the queens (that is to say, his legitimate wives) named the person who was to accompany his body to the burial-place, and the person thus named became the successor.326.1 In an adjoining kingdom a similar law prevailed. It was forbidden to any prince to enter the palace where the women were, or to take possession of the kingdom without their consent, and whoever entered by violence and took possession against their will, lost his right of succession. The Portuguese friar, to whom we are indebted for the information, records a case which happened while he was in Sofala, and in which the claimant would have entered and formally seated himself in the royal hall with the royal widows. They, however, were unwilling to acknowledge him as their king and husband. Accordingly they secretly summoned another member of the royal family, seated him with them in the public place, and sent officers through the town to proclaim the new sovereign and call his subjects to do homage. The pretender fled. This instance is the more remarkable because the unsuccessful claimant had in his favour the nomination of the previous monarch. Though this constituted not an indefeasible title, it afforded at least a strong presumption in his favour. Yet it was defeated, in accordance with established and publicly acknowledged custom, by the choice of the harem.

Nor was the rule requiring the choice, or at any rate the recognition, by the harem so redolent of the comic opera as it may seem, since the women all became the wives of the new king.327.1 This is usual in Africa, and not in Africa only, but in other regions where a similar type of polygamous monarchical society exists. It is most familiar to us among the ancient Hebrews. Absalom, by taking possession of his father’s harem, made a final and unqualified assertion of his succession to the throne. Solomon evidently regarded Adonijah’s request for Abishag the Shunammite as a pretension inconsistent with his own sovereignty; for she had been part of King David’s harem, though in fact no more than his nurse.327.2 In these cases the women had probably little to say in the matter. But by the customs of the South-Eastern Bantu a man’s widows, though they are bound to the family of the deceased, are allowed some latitude in the choice of the individual man with whom they will mate. Among the Thonga, for example, at the final distribution of the estate, any of the widows who refuses to take the husband to whom she has been provisionally allotted will be permitted to exercise her own preference.328.1 The power accorded to the widowed queens of Quiteve to choose their new husband was hardly an extension of this liberty. That it drew with it incidentally the right to the kingdom was a consequence which did not affect the principle.

[The End]

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Werner, A., The Natives of British Central Africa. London, 1906.

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Wiedemann, Alfred, Ph.D., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. London, 1897.

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ENDNOTES

1.1 Prim. Cul., i. 378 sqq.

2.1 Anantha Krishna, i. 29.

2.2 Tylor, Prim. Cul., i. 382.

3.1 Kolben, 91.

3.2 Alexander, i. 170 sqq. Similar answers were more recently given to a missionary by one of the neighbouring Bergdamara, a people mainly of Bantu blood (Globus, xcvi. 173).

4.1 Kidd, 65. Amusing illustrations of the Kaffir’s cleverness at the game are given.

4.2 Andersson, 200. Cf. Pogge on the Bashilange, Mittheil. d. Afrik. Gesellsch., iv. 254.

4.3 Rev. J. S. Gale, F. L., xi. 325.

5.1 S. H. C. Hawtry, J. A. I., xxxi. 290. Cf. Grubb, 114. Similar statements are made concerning other South American tribes (J. A. I., xiii. 209, 253).

5.2 Batchelor, 357.

6.1 Neuhauss, iii. 448 note. Cf. Introduction and pp. 154, 507.

6.2 Marillier, reviewing Miss Kingsley’s Travels; Rev. Hist. Rel., xxxix. 137.

7.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., 139 note.

7.2 Rev. J. Macdonald, J. A. I., xx. 120. Cf. Junod, S. A. Tribe, ii. 278. Dr Theal says that it is only since European ideas have been disseminated among these peoples that the question of the place of the dead has arisen; and he points to the similarity in mental condition between them and the peasantry of Europe (Yellow and Dark-skinned People, 185).

8.1 Journ. Am. F. L., xxi. 233, 236.

9.1 Wilson, Peasant Life, 6.

11.1 Sproat, 120.

11.2 Boas, Mind, 111.

12.1 Boas, Sixth Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada, Rep. Brit. Ass., 1890, 582.

13.1 Rev. Father J. Jetté, S.J., Anthropos, vi. 242, 95.

14.1 R. C. Phillips, J. A. I., xvii. 220.

15.1 Jaussen, 287, 294, 332, 334. Cf. Hanauer, 234.

16.1 J. A. I., x. 262.

18.1 Bull. Soc. Neuch. Géog., ix. 96.

19.1 J. Smith, 77, 373.

20.1 J. A. I., xii. 163 note.

22.1 Similar classifications of nouns have now been discovered among the Negroes, see R. E. S., iii. 241.

26.1 Tylor, Prim. Cul., i. 385.

31.1 Kingsley, Trav., 493.

32.1 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 175, 358 n., 530.

32.2 F. L. Journ., iv. 30.

32.3 I have collected the evidence in The Legend of Perseus, vol. i., and in some directions more fully in Primitive Paternity, vol. i.

33.1 Farnell, Cults, i. 195.

37.1 J. N. B. Hewitt, Amer. Anthr., N.S., iv. 38.

41.1 W. Jones, Journ. Am. F. L., xviii. 183 sqq. As used by Dr Jones here, the word Algonkin only includes the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo tribes.

41.2 Amer. Anthr., N.S., iv. 36; cf. 33.

42.1 R. B. E., xxvii. 134. Wakonda in its various forms is pronounced with an n somewhat like the French nasal.

43.1 R. B. E., xxvii. 597 sqq.

44.1 Fletcher, Am. Anthr., xiv. 106; J. O. Dorsey, R. B. E., xi. 366; Riggs, Contrib. N. Am. Ethnol., vii. 507 sqq.

45.1 Swanson, R. B. E., xxvi. 451 n., 452 sqq.

48.1 The analysis of the philosophy (if it may be so called) of the Bafiote which I have tried to summarize above is by Dr Pechuël-Loesche, the most acute and profound of enquirers into the civilization and mentality of the peoples of Loango, and will be found in his Volksk., chaps. iii. and iv.

48.2 De Groot, Rel. Syst., iv. chap. i.

48.3 Giran, 21 sqq.

48.4 Batchelor, Encyc. Rel., i. 239, 240 (cf. Id., Ainu F. L., 580); Aston, Shinto, 7 sqq.

50.1 Codrington, 118 sqq.

51.1 Is this really the original belief? Dr Marett cites Dr Seligmann’s (verbal?) authority for the statement that in New Guinea (among the tribes of Melanesian culture and descent?) “a yam-stone would be held capable of making the yams grow miraculously, quite apart from the agency of spirits” (Arch. Rel., xii. 190).

51.2 Codrington, 120, 191.

51.3 Codrington, 124-5. Father Joseph Meier denies that the Melanesian population of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain possesses the concept of mana in the sense of a universal impersonal, magical power. Yet he goes on to say: “The sorcerer (Zauberer) himself derives the inherent power of his spells (Zauber-mitteln) from two different sources of energy. First, he relies on the might of the spirits to whom he is indebted for his spells, or on the might of his forefathers who have practised magic before him, and have handed down to him their spells. In his incantation therefore the magician (Hexenmeister) will always name a spirit, or the name of a deceased sorcerer, or at least silently presume his assistance. A second source of energy for the sorcerer is his own soul. By associating this with natural objects he enhances their powers. Everything the sorcerer does he conceives under the aspect of these two sources of energy. The originator of an enchantment (Zauberei)—be it an unembodied spirit, or the ghost of a deceased person, or a spirit residing in a living being (for example, a bird)—operates in his spell and makes it always and everywhere effective. Or else only the sorcerer’s own soul is considered for magical purposes. Beyond this there is no other power” (Anthropos, viii. 8, 9). This seems to resemble the concept of mana, as set forth by Dr Codrington. Later Father Meier remarks: “The enquiry into the witchcraft (Zauberwesen) of the coast-dwellers of the Gazelle Peninsula is not yet closed. So far we only know a small fragment of all their enchantments” (ibid., 11). Our knowledge of the social elements and cultural history of Melanesia as a whole, and of New Britain in particular, is still very imperfect.

54.1 E. Tregear, The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, Wellington, N.Z., 1891, 203-6, s.vv. Cf. Marett, Trans. Oxford Cong., i. 48 sqq. It is perhaps worth while to note “that the Samoan New Testament was translated from the Greek and uses mana as the equivalent of the Greek δύναμις, whilst pule is used for the Greek ἐξουσία” (Haddon, Torres Str. Rep., v. 329, quoting communication from S. H. Ray).

55.1 Ellis, Polyn. Res., iii. 108. A specimen of the girdle was sent by John Williams, the missionary afterwards killed at Eramanga, to England, probably to the London Missionary Society. See his Miss. Enterprises, 144.

56.1 Ellis, op. cit., i. 338.

57.1 Taylor, 164 sqq.

58.1 De Acosta, 378.

58.2 Sébillot, F. L. France, ii. 235.

58.3 Ploss, Weib, i. 504, quoting Bonnemère, but as usual without the exact reference.

59.1 Seligmann, Veddas, 207.

60.1 Tozer, i. 216.

60.2 Dr M. Hoefler, Am Urquell, ii. 101.

60.3 Rev. H. E. Mabille, Journ. Afr. Soc., v. 352.

62.1 Van Gennep, Tabou, 184.

62.2 Turner, Samoa, 186. Compare a number of similar taboos on the previous and subsequent pages.

62.3 Codrington, 215.

63.1 W. Bogoras, Amer. Anthr., N.S., iii. 97.

64.1 See Golden Bough^3, passim, especially the volume on Taboo. It is needless to say that Professor Frazer does not write from the point of view here adopted, and that his interpretations frequently diverge from those which I should be inclined to.

65.1 F. L., xii. 186. Elsewhere Mr Weeks says: “No stigma attaches to the man who is proved guilty [of witchcraft] by the ordeal, for ‘one can have witchcraft without knowing it’” (Cannibals, 189). Presumably likundu is here included under the general term of witchcraft. In another place he says: “The general belief is that only one in the family can bewitch a member of the family” (ibid., 311). Hence the evil influence of the possessor of likundu extends no further.

67.1 Jevons, Introd., 178, 7, 390 sqq.

67.2 Tylor, Prim. Cul., i. 383.

67.3 Avebury, Marriage, 142. I cannot find that he commits himself to a definition of religion, though his view may perhaps be inferred from the above quotation (cf. his Origin of Civilization, 205 sqq.).

68.1 Frazer, Magic Art, i. 222, 223.

68.2 Durkheim, Formes Élémentaires, 65. M. Salomon Reinach in a recent brilliant work on the history of religions proposes as a definition: “An assemblage (ensemble) of scruples which stand in the way of the free exercise of our faculties.” This reduces religion to a system of taboos. But he subsequently qualifies it by saying: “Animism on one side, taboos on the other, these are the essential factors of religions” (Orpheus, 4, 10). Thus qualified, however, it excludes Buddhism; and with or without the qualification it does not express the social side of religion. M. Reinach is quite conscious of these omissions. They are an illustration of the extreme difficulty found by the most able and learned enquirers in formulating an adequate definition of religion, a definition at once all-embracing and exact.

69.1 Durkheim, 323.

69.2 Frazer, Magic Art, i. 220.

70.1 Frazer, op. cit., 52.

70.2 Ibid., 221, 237 sqq.

70.3 Ibid., 233. Frazer has worked out the theory more completely than anyone else; but it has been more or less anticipated, or shared, by others, such as Sir Edward Tylor, Sir Alfred Lyall, and Professor Jevons.

72.1 The above is a brief summary (partly borrowed from my review in F. L., xv. 359) of a portion of the argument elaborated by MM. Hubert and Mauss in their “Esquisse d’une Théorie Générale de la Magie,” L’Année Soc., vii. 1-146.

76.1 Durkheim, op. cit., 61.

77.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., 549, 476.

77.2 Ante, p. 50.

77.3 Codrington, 133. Another example is cited subsequently, p. 144, from Borneo.

78.1 Weeks, 189; see ante, p. 65 note.

78.2 Junod, S. A. Tribe, ii. 467; i. 441.

78.3 Durkheim, op. cit., 63 note.

79.1 All this indictment holds good in a lesser degree of the witch-hunts of Europe and New England.

80.1 Gregor, 197.

80.2 This, however, is not exactly what Marillier says. “A ‘natural’ act (and that is its sole difference from a magical act) only reaches bodies, or at least it only reaches the soul through the object it animates. A magical practice, which may, however, be a purely material act, acts in some way from within outwards (agit en quelque sorte du dedans au dehors); it only kills or fecundates the man, animal, or plant to which it is applied, by exercising first of all its beneficent or calamitous action on the soul, which, like that of the sorcerer, is the principle of his life” (Rev. Hist. Rel., xxxvi. 343).

80.3 Doutté, 328, 330.

81.1 Doutté, 340, 334, 343, 338. Compare what the schoolboy called their “conjuring tricks,” performed before Pharaoh by Moses and Aaron, and by the magicians (Ex. vii. 8 sqq.).

82.1 Marett, Anthrop., 209. Dr Marett might have omitted the words “of evil” after “supernormal powers.” They do not strengthen his argument. In savage communities a hard and fast line is not usually drawn between supernormal powers of evil and supernormal powers of good.

82.2 Ibid., 210.

83.1 Marett, Anthrop., 211.

84.1 P. E. Goddard, Univ. Cal. Pub., i. 87.

84.2 Marett, Anthrop., 213.

84.3 Westermarck, Ceremonies, 67 note, quoting Destaing.

85.1 Reference may be made here to Mr Ernest Crawley, who writes like Professor Jevons from a distinctly theological standpoint. I can find no formal definition of religion in his book on the subject. He says: “The vital instinct, the feeling of life, the will to live, the instinct to preserve it, is the source of, or rather is identical with, the religious impulse, and is the origin of religion” (Tree of Life, 214). But, as Professor Leuba has rightly observed, “the love and lust of life is the source of all human conduct and not of religion alone” (Psychol. Study, 48). Elsewhere Mr Crawley observes that religion is not a department, like law or science, having a special subject-matter; it is “a tone or spirit.” It “chiefly concerns itself with elemental interests—life and death, birth and marriage are typical cases” (op. cit., 204 sq.). Nor can I find any definition of magic, though he maintains in opposition to Professor Frazer that “it seems impossible to separate magic and religion in their early forms.” “Indeed,” he adds, “the practical meaning of magic, when worked in connection with religion, is control of the supernatural, which is thus not superior to man” (186). What is magic when not “worked in connection with religion”? He identifies mana with the force “which underlies magical processes generally,” but apparently not religious processes. A religious process he defines as “that of making a thing sacred” (231 sq.). He opposes magic to sacredness. “Sacredness is a result of the application of religious impulse and of nothing else” (208 sq.). Compare Professor Durkheim’s definition of religion (supra, p. 68). Mr Crawley takes insufficient account of the social aspect of religion.

87.1 Southey, The Curse of Kehama, preface.

87.2 Augustine, Civ. Dei, x. 11, citing Porphyry.

91.1 Marett, Threshold, 44 sqq.

92.1 J. M. M. van der Burgt, 55.

92.2 Hewitt, Am. Anthr., N.S., iv., 40.

93.1 E. H. Man, J. A. I., xii. 161, 163, 353, etc.

95.1 Codrington, 192.

98.1 The primary authority on the Arunta and neighbouring tribes is Messrs Spencer and Gillen, C. T. and N. T., and Rep. Horn Exped., but Strehlow’s researches (Aranda- und Loritja-stämme) are important. The results of the latter are divergent to some extent from those of the former, but in most respects are not irreconcilable. See, e.g., Professor Durkheim’s valuable discussion of the different versions of reincarnation, op. cit., 357 sqq. I have stated above in a summary manner what seems to be the result of the criticism of both authorities.

99.1 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 498; Strehlow, ii. 1. Cf. Rep. Horn Exped., iv. 183.

99.2 Strehlow, i. 1.

100.1 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 227, 232, 238.

100.2 Ibid., 227.

100.3 Ibid., 252.

101.1 For the Mongolian practice see Amer. Anthr., N.S., xv. 370. The Pueblo Indian practice has been recorded by every scientific enquirer among the tribes.

102.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., 249. Note also the threat which follows.

102.2 M. Durkheim contends, and I think with justice, that the association of the churinga with individual ancestors, and therefore with their descendants, or rather reincarnations, is secondary (op. cit., 173). But cf. Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 281.

102.3 Strehlow, ii. 78. He resisted the temptation and avoided the mistake made so often by missionaries of translating by native words Christian terms of fundamentally different content.

103.1 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 259 sqq.

103.2 Ibid., 293.

104.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., chaps. v. and vi. passim; N. T., chap. viii. passim; Strehlow, ii. 75 sqq.

105.1 Strehlow, iii. 6.

105.2 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., chap. xvi.; N. T., chap. xv.; Rep. Horn Exped., 180.

106.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., 534, 553. Cf. 480, 538.

107.1 Arch. Rel., viii. 463, 467. Compare the account of the initiation by the Devil of a Lapp wizard quoted from Tornæus, Scheffer, 136.

107.2 Jesup. Exped., vi. 47.

109.1 Junod, S. A. Tribe, ii. 450, 471, 473. M. Junod’s work is concerned with the Thonga, but it is true in general terms of other tribes.

109.2 Merensky, 135; Shooter, 191; Callaway, Rel. Syst., 259 sqq.

109.3 Johnston, Grenfell, ii. 659 note, quoting Rev. W. H. Stapleton. He is obviously reporting a statement by a native.

110.1 Jones, Ojebway, 269.

110.2 A. L. Kroeber, Univ. Cal. Pub., iv. 328.

110.3 G. A. Dorsey, Trad. Skidi Pawnee, 185, 189, 194, 199, 206, 210, 219, 221, 231.

110.4 Roth, Sarawak, i. 266.

111.1 Skeat, Magic, 60.

113.1 Seligmann, Veddas, 128 sqq., 190 sqq., 207. See supra, p. 59.

114.1 E. H. Man, J. A. I., xii. 96.

115.1 Kolben, 97.

116.1 Dorsey, Wichita, 99.

116.2 R. B. E., xxvii. 197.

117.1 There appears to be no detailed account of the Buffalo Dance of the Pawnees. See Dorsey, Skidi Pawnees, xxi. 46; Grinnell, 369. The latest stage, perhaps contaminated with European notions, is in part described, Id., 270.

121.1 W. J. M‘Gee, R. B. E., xvii. 168* sqq.

121.2 Durkheim, 295.

124.1 Durkheim, 305.

124.2 Ibid., 134, 135.

124.3 Ibid., 343, 355, 378.

125.1 Seligmann, 30, 126, 130, 170 sqq., 149.

126.1 Cens. Ind. Rep., 1901, iii. 62. Cf. the papers by E. H. Man, J. A. I., xii.

127.1 Koch-Grünberg, passim; von den Steinen, passim, especially 350 sqq.

130.1 Westermarck, Moral Ideas, ii. 585.

132.1 Marten, Ind. Cens. Rep., 1911, x. 80.

132.2 Laws of Manu, Sac. Bks., xxv. 5. I am indebted for this reference and the further explanation above to my friend Mr William Crooke.

132.3 Supra, p. 62.

132.4 Dr Frazer, Psyche’s Task, 25 sqq., has made a collection of these rites and signs. See also Westermarck, Moral Ideas, ii. 63 sqq.

133.1 F. B. Jevons, Oxford Cong. Rep., ii. 131; Id., Græco-Italian Magic, Anthrop. Class., 106. See also Rouse, Greek V. O., 337.

133.2 I described one such leaden tablet, found at Dymock, Gloucestershire, in Reliquary, N.S., iii. 140. Another was subsequently found at Lincoln’s Inn, and reported on by Mr W. Paley Baildon to the Society of Antiquaries (Proc. Soc. Anti., 2nd ser., xviii. 141). Others have also been found elsewhere, among them two on Gatherley Moor in Yorkshire. If the identification of the persons against whom the tablets on Gatherley Moor and at Lincoln’s Inn were directed be conclusively established, they antedate by more than half a century the translation above referred to of Agrippa’s book. This of course is by no means impossible, or indeed improbable, for the practitioners of occult science in the reign of Queen Elizabeth were frequently men of learning.

134.1 Fasc. Malay, ii. 41.

135.1 Alan H. Gardiner, Oxford Cong. Rep., i. 210.

135.2 Budge, Archæologia, lii. 421 sqq., transliterating, translating, and commenting on a papyrus in the British Museum, which belonged to a priest of Ra about the year B.C. 305, and contains the ritual for the purpose.

135.3 Wiedemann, 94.

136.1 Wiedemann, 279.

136.2 Ibid., 99.

136.3 Budge, Archæologia, lii. 425, 440, 539 sqq. The Egyptian gods merged into one another like the dissolving pictures of a lantern. This was probably in part the result of the union in one kingdom of a number of petty states, which were centres of worship of disparate though cognate divinities, and the consequent effort to synthesize these divinities and their worship, and in part the issue of philosophical speculation, itself doubtless influenced by political events.

136.4 Wiedemann, 54; Budge, Egypt. Magic, 137. Dr Frazer’s version, Taboo, 387, is formed on a comparison of these and other texts.

137.1 Wiedemann, 273. More personal threats are often employed. See, for examples, Arch. Rel., xvi. 85.

137.2 Plato, Rep., ii. 364.

137.3 There are of course plenty of magical Greek texts, but they are much later. The papyri unearthed in such numbers during recent years contain many; and they often imply that the deity invoked is compelled to perform his votary’s wishes. He is addressed in terms of command, adjured by names of power and bidden to be quick about his work. Such spells, however, are not purely Greek. They are produced under foreign influence, and the gods or demons invoked bear alien names. The texts are frequently defixiones. Simaitha’s incantation in the second idyll of Theocritus, so far as it is addressed to the Moon, to Hecate or Artemis, is not couched in terms of command. The goddesses, if they grant the damsel’s desires, are accomplices who cannot plead vis major. Yet threats and insults to the gods were, it seems, sometimes made use of, probably in the hope of driving them by taunts to do what was wanted (see below, p. 190). The dividing line here is very thin.

139.1 Hodson, Naga, 139, 141; cf. 102, 164.

139.2 Parker, Tales, i. 97.

140.1 Brett, Ind. Tribes, 401.

140.2 Anthropos, viii. 3. For the belief in and cult of the Kaya, see ibid., iii. 1005; and of the Inal, ibid., v. 95.

140.3 Shakespear, Lushai, 109 (cf. 61).

141.1 W. G. Aston, F. L., xxiii. 187 sq.

141.2 Wiedemann, 227. On Thoth as magician and the words of power which he uttered and wrote down compare Budge, Egypt. Magic, 128 sqq.

142.1 Morris, Heimskringla, i. 18, 19.

143.1 Levit. xvi. 8. On the Scapegoat in general see Dr Frazer’s volume bearing that title.

144.1 Hose, ii. 29 note.

145.1 Hose, 56, 117.

146.1 Rivers, Todas, 257, 450. For an alternative translation of the third clause of the spell, see pp. 195, 271. For another form of the spell, see p. 259.

147.1 J. H. Weeks, J. A. I., xl. 377, 378.

148.1 J. H. Weeks, J. A. I., xl. 383. Surely in the face of these examples Mr Weeks’ statement—“Nor did we find any form of prayer among them, no worship and no sacrifices” (ibid., 376)—needs some qualification. As to the mongoli, see ibid., 368.

149.1 Werner, 56, 76.

151.1 A. M. Tozzer, Putnam Vol., 304. Cf. Matthews, Navaho Leg., 40.

151.2 Tozzer, op. cit., 303. On the rites and beliefs of the Dene, see Father Jetté, J. A. I., xxxvii. 157 sqq.

154.1 Exod. xxii. 18.

154.2 Deut. xviii. 9 sqq.

154.3 Num. v. 11 sqq.

155.1 Hos. iii. 4, 5. Cf. T. W. Davies, Magic, 36; and Encyc. Bibl., s.v.

159.1 Weeks 177.

161.1 Ælian, Var. Hist., xii. 23. Philo (Dreams, ii. 17) attributes the same practice to the Germans.

161.2 O’Grady, ii. 518. Professor Whitley Stokes also gives it, F. L., iv. 488, from an Edinburgh MS. I quote his translation, which is to the same effect as Mr O’Grady’s.

162.1 Skeat, Magic, 10.

163.1 Vinson, 20. According to this story there were two cabin-boys, one of whom overheard the plot and the other struck the blow, but this appears to be a literary embellishment.

163.2 Strackerjan, i. 324, 325; Hansen, 38. The Norse tale (by Asbjoernsen) is referred to, Mélusine, ii. 201. I have not seen it. Analogous tale in Ireland, Ant., xlv. 371.

163.3 Tylor Essays, 138. Roscher (Ephialtes, 38) thinks it was “a quite obvious nightmare.”

164.1 Gregor, 66.

164.2 Gregor, loc. cit.

166.1 Thorpe, N. Myth., ii. 78.

167.1 Hibbert, A Description of the Shetland Islands (Edinburgh, 1822), 569; Zeits. des Ver., ii. 15, 17; Rogers, 218; Lehmann-Filhés, ii. 16; Maurer, 173.

168.1 Natesa Sastri, 148.

168.2 Bibl. Trad. Pop. Espan., i. 187

168.3 Castrén, 172.

168.4 Boas, Ind. Sagen, 86.

169.1 Miller, Scenes and Leg., 287.

170.1 Shakespear, Lushei, 66.

170.2 Grimm, Teut. Myth., iii. 924.

171.1 Ovid, Fasti, iii. 285.

171.2 Pausanias, i. 4, 5; Ovid, Metam., xi. 90; Herod., viii. 138; Ælian, Var. Hist., iii. 18.

171.3 Iliad, v. 370 sqq.

172.1 R. E. E. S., i. 338.

172.2 As an example the Nattu Malayans of Cochin in the south of India may be cited. “When questioned as to their ideas of gods, they say that they are like men themselves, but invisible, yet all-powerful” (Anantha Krishna, i. 34).

173.1 Herod., ii. 122. Gods, like men, were addicted to gambling. According to Plutarch (De Iside), Hermes in Egyptian legend played with the moon and won the seventieth part of each of her light periods, wherewith he made the last five days of the year and added them to the calendar.

173.2 Herod., vii. 35.

173.3 Bérenger-Feraud, Superst., i. 473. The author has collected in the chapter from which this is cited numerous other instances of the punishment of the recalcitrant god.

173.4 Herod., ii. 111.

174.1 Williams, Burmah, 91.

174.2 Ind. Cens. Rep., 1911, x. 61.

174.3 Herod., iv. 94. Rohde (Psyche, ii. 28 note) suggests that the personage against whom the arrows and threats were aimed was not strictly a god, but an evil spirit or a magician. This, however, does not follow. Philo (l.c.) states that Xerxes, when his bridge across the Hellespont was destroyed, aimed his arrows at the sun, and regards the action with pious horror as a symptom of insanity.

175.1 Herod., iv. 184.

175.2 J. A. I., xxxvi. 51.

175.3 Moffat, 261, 265.

175.4 Chapman, i. 213. The word translated by Chapman as “God” is doubtless Morimo. Cf. ibid., 46, “All Bechuanas believe in God (Morimo), whom they laud or execrate as good or bad luck attends them.”

176.1 Callaway, Rel. Syst., 404.

176.2 Hahn, 46, 51, 59, 94. Cf. 99, where the practice of the Urjangkut, a tribe of Black Tartars, to scold the thunder and lightning is cited from Bastian.

177.1 Lloyd, 397. According to another account, “when it thunders the Bushmen are very angry and curse bitterly, thinking that the storm is occasioned by some evil being” (Thunberg, ii., 163).

177.2 Hollis, Nandi, 9, 99.

177.3 J. A. I., xliii. 49.

177.4 Jes. Rel., xii. 25.

177.5 J. A. Mason, Univ. Cal. Pub., x. 185.

178.1 Lozano, Desc. Chorographica del Gran Chaco (1733), 71, quoted Payne, i. 391 note.

178.2 Payne, l.c.

178.3 Int. Arch., Suppl., xiii. 88.

179.1 Neuhauss, iii. 157. I may refer also to the account of a young Kayan brave in Borneo taking his arms and sallying forth to fight the Thunder-god (Int. Arch., xxi. 139). But further examples are unnecessary.

180.1 Frazer, Magic Art, i. 327 sqq.

180.2 Von Alpenburg, 262, 365. Many such knives are to be found in peasants’ houses in the Lower Inn valley. In the Netherlands these whirlwinds are held to be “the Travailing Mother,” who seems to be a woman dead in childbirth unconfessed of mortal sin. She cannot be received into heaven. She is equally denied a place in hell, since her sufferings and death have already provided a sufficient penance. Hence she wanders about, seeking an abiding-place (Wolf, Niederl. Sag., 616). Women who die in childbirth are commonly considered very dangerous ghosts. See below, p. 213.

181.1 Farnell, Evol., 43. Cf. Miss Harrison, Prolegomena, 101.

181.2 I have discussed similar practices, Prim. Pat., i. 102. See also Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch., 113 sqq.; Frazer, Scapegoat, 255. These contain a large collection of examples, which put the magical and purificatory purpose beyond doubt.

182.1 Mélusine, ii. 187, quoting the passage.

182.2 Journ. Am. F. L., xxiii. 416, 418.

182.3 Lumholtz, ii. 342, 422.

183.1 Rev. Trad. Pop., xi. 663. Vâlmiki, the Indian epic poet, author of the Rámáyana, is said to have owed his birth to a similar blunder by a saint who was the object of prayers by two sisters-in-law, and mistook the maiden for the married woman (Harikishan Kaul, Ind. Cens. Rep., 1911, xiv. 131, citing Vaman Shiva Ram Apte’s Sanskrit Dictionary).

184.1 Turner, R. B. E., xi. 194.

184.2 M. Friedrich, Anthropos, ii. 101.

185.1 Anthropos, vii. 74.

185.2 Thurston, Castes, vi. 85.

186.1 Dr H. ten Kate, Anthropos, vii. 396. Cf. Aston, Shinto, 189.

186.2 Wiedemann, op. cit., 178. Bérenger-Feraud, Superst., i. 451 sqq., gives a long list of examples of punishments inflicted on the obdurate divinity. See also Frazer, Magic Art, i. 296; Tylor, Prim. Cul., ii. 155-7, and the numerous authorities there referred to; Grimm, Teut. Myth., ii. 767 note.

187.1 F. L., viii. 349.

187.2 Weeks, 271.

187.3 Frazer, Scapegoat, passim.

188.1 Morris, Ere, 151.

190.1 Junod, S. A. Tribe, ii. 368, 384. If Lactantius and the other writers of antiquity who have mentioned the sacrifice to Hercules referred to by Dr Frazer (Magic Art, i. 281) had given us the exact words and occasion of the rite, we might perhaps find a similar explanation for it. Both that and the rite addressed at Cranganore in Southern India (ibid., 280) to the goddess Bhagavati are at present very obscure.

191.1 Anantha Krishna, i. 53, 76.

191.2 Temple, Leg. Panj., ii. 425. Cf. F. L., x. 406.

191.3 Grimm, Teut. Myth., i. 20, where other instances are also cited.

192.1 Rev. J. H. Weeks, J. A. I., xxxix. 134, reproduced in the same author’s Congo Cannibals, 176.

194.1 Plutarch, De Iside. Wiedemann (213) suggests that the Greeks misunderstood the myth. But the text of the hymn which he quotes appears to prove the accuracy of Plutarch’s interpretation. This is in effect the view taken by Dr Wallis Budge (Gods, i. 487). Harpocrates (Heru-p-khart) is Horus the younger.

195.1 De Groot, Rel. Syst., iv. 429, 421, 342; Giles, ii. 276.

196.1 Dalton, 232.

197.1 N. Ind. N. and Q., iii. 97, par. 205.

197.2 Jülg, 96 (Story No. 9). Compare children’s tales from various parts of India, where the hero or heroine’s life is dependent on a necklace which is stolen. The owner of the necklace dies when it is worn by the thief, and revives when it is taken off. The birth of a child follows visits by the other spouse. By the child’s help the necklace is recovered, and permanent life is thus restored to the half-dead, half-living hero or heroine (Frere, 230 (Story No. 20); Day, 1 (Story No. 1); Steel and Temple, 85).

197.3 Kruijt, 398, 509; cf. 230.

198.1 Petitot, 262.

199.1 Von Wlislocki, Volksdicht., 283.

199.2 Maurer, 300 (cf. 192). A Protestant version is given, Lehmann-Filhés, i. 132.

200.1 Le Braz, 321, Story No. 60.

201.1 Boas, Ind. Sag., 267. Compare a curious Tlingit story of a girl who married a dead man (ghost), who in consequence came to life again (Swanton, Tlingit Myths, 247).

202.1 The ghostly visitant might be of either sex, though the masculine was perhaps more common. The visit was generally attended in either case with fatal effects. See below as to Lamiæ.

203.1 Herodotus, vi. 68, 69.

203.2 Augustine, Civ. Dei, xv. 23.

203.3 Malleolus, De Credul. Dæmon. adhibenda, Malleus Maleficarum (Frankfurt, 1582), 428. See also Bodin, De Magorum Dæmonomania (Frankfurt, 1603), ii. 7. By this time, however, there began to be sceptics. Cf. Wierus, De Præstigiis Dæmonum (Basel, 1577), 358; Ulr. Molitor, De Pythonicis Mulieribus, Malleus Mal., 83. The extensive information possessed for many centuries by these learned men was not limited to the incubus. There were also corresponding female demons commonly known as Succubi, or Lamiæ, whose ravages were almost equally great. Awful tales were related by way of warning against their temptation. Compare the putiana of the Moluccas, cited below. See also Lecky, Rationalism, i. 26 note. Among the ancient Assyrians and the modern Arabs the possibility of cohabitation by a man with a spirit or non-human supernatural being, who may even bear him children, was and is believed. But they are very jealous (Encyc. Rel., iv. 571; F. L., xi. 388).

204.1 Strausz, 454.

204.2 Bartels, quoting Wladimir Bugiel, Zeit. des Vereins, x. 121. Apparently the throwing of the poppy-seed imposed on the ghostly visitant the necessity of counting the grains before proceeding to his attack. See Andree, i. 81; Wilken, iii. 226 note, citing Mannhardt.

205.1 Scott goes on to refer to the old Scottish ballad of Sweet William’s Ghost, founded, like that of Bürger’s poem, on the same superstition. It is reprinted, with an account of the literature on the subject, in Child, Ballads, ii. 199 sqq., 226 sqq.; v. 293, 294.

205.2 Black, 113.

208.1 Maurer, 111.

208.2 For example, the notable case of the foundress of a new and popular religion, who was said to be haunted after the manner of Herdis, to her great annoyance and terror. But even her deluded followers felt bound to draw the line somewhere, and they seem to have drawn it at this obsession.

209.1 Daily Chronicle, 17th February 1912.

210.1 Among the Ngoulango or Pakhalla of the Ivory Coast a widow carries a piece of fetish wood which has the power to cause death to anyone who, attempting to approach her, is touched with it (Clozel, 363). It is probably effectual also against the ghost.

210.2 Globus, lxxii. 22; lxxxi. 190. Compare a custom of the Minas of the Slave Coast, Frazer, J. A. I., xv. 85 note. The Kagoro of Northern Nigeria are also reported to believe in the possibility of sexual connection by ghosts with women (J. A. I., xlii. 159). Major Tremearne marks this belief as doubtful; but it accords with that of other peoples. The pungent smoke of red pepper is used in exorcisms by the Tigre of Abyssinia (Littmann, 310, 311).

211.1 Zeits. v. Rechtsw., xxvii. 85. A widow remains four months in her hut, subject to a corresponding taboo. Among the Negroes of Surinam, before a widow or widower marries again, an offering of food and drink must be made to the ghost in order to obtain permission for the new marriage. The new spouse will be considered as belonging, even if not actually so belonging, to the family of the deceased. The widow or widower may not leave the house for three months, nor do any work (ibid., 395, 394).

211.2 Ibid., xxv. 99 sqq.

212.1 Zeits. v. Rechtsw., xxv. 107. The Fõ Negresses in Togoland also fear to be haunted by their deceased husbands, who may kill them, or at least drive them mad. But this is said to be only when they have neglected them during life (Anthropos, vii. 307).

213.1 Pechuël-Loesche, 308 sqq. The ghosts of women who have died in childbed are frequently the objects of dread in areas far apart. The belief is common in the East Indian Archipelago (see Wilken, iii. 224 sqq.). Such a ghost is called by the inhabitants of the Island of Serang, in the Moluccas, Putiana. She appears after death as a great white bird, or else as a beautiful woman with fragrant clothing, who attacks pregnant women, or seduces and then with her long nails emasculates men. The most elaborate precautions are taken against her (Riedel, 112). Among the Shans of the Upper Chindwin Valley, Burma, the husband feigns madness, and undergoes a special purification (F. L., xxiii. 470).

214.1 Bastian, San Salvador, 100. Among the Fans, further to the north, as Frazer notes (Balder, ii. 18, quoting W. L. Priklonsky in Bastian’s Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde), at the end of the mourning ceremonies the widows are purified by passing over a lighted brazier and sitting down with leaves still burning under their feet. Their heads are then shaved, and they are shared between the heirs of the deceased.

215.1 Rev. J. H. Weeks, Folk-Lore, xix. 430; xxi. 463.

216.1 Junod, R. E. S., i. 162; id., The Fate of the Widows amongst the Ba-Ronga, reprinted from the report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, 1908 (Grahamstown, Cape Colony, 1909), 5. It is fair to say that another and somewhat more popular account by M. Junod states: “The night [after the burial] has come. All the widows sleep in the open, their huts, which belonged to the deceased, being taboo. If it rains, they sleep in other huts of the village” (S. A. Tribe, i. 145). I do not know how to reconcile these two statements. I have adopted that which M. Junod has twice affirmed, the articles in the R. E. S. being particularly detailed and precise. Among the northern clans of the Thonga, he tells us (S. A. Tribe, i. 150) that the first night of mourning “everyone [scil. in the village] sleeps in the open.”

217.1 C. S. Myers and A. C. Haddon, Torres Str. Rep., vi. 153, 158, 160; Haddon, ibid. (1912), iv. 60. In the Murray Islands “the ghost of a recently deceased person is particularly feared; it haunts the neighbourhood for two or three months.” But whether it specially attacks the widow the members of the expedition do not seem to have learned (ibid., vi. 253). The peculiarity of the dress, however, speaks for itself.

218.1 Frazer, Taboo, 144, citing Father Guis, Les Missions Catholiques (1902), xxxiv, 208. Among the Abarambo of the Congo basin, north of the Wele, the husband or wife disappears in the bush for a time, the latter until she finds a new husband. The widow or widower blackens the face, binds a cord round the waist, wears nothing but an old garment and only eats raw food (Johnston, Grenfell, ii. 650).

219.1 Teit, Jes. Exped., i. 332. Compare the Bella Coola tale cited above (p. 200).

219.2 Peter Martyr, The Decades of the New World, in Arber, 100.

219.3 Lumholtz, Unk. Mexico, i. 384 sqq. Four feasts are given for a woman. “She cannot run so fast, and it is therefore harder to chase her off.”

221.1 Hobley, J. A. I., xli. 418. Among the neighbouring Atharaka and Akamba the duty of sleeping with the widow on the fifth night after the death is performed by a brother of the deceased (Champion, ibid., xlii. 84).

222.1 Stannus, J. A. I., xl. 315.

222.2 Compare the accounts of Anyanja funerals in Rattray, 92 (this account is by a native), and Werner, 165. In neither of these is the custom in question referred to.

223.1 Rattray, 187.

223.2 Georgi, iii. 89. The information is perhaps derived from the old travellers, Steller and Krasheninnikoff, both of whom mention the custom. See Jesup. Exped., vi. 752.

224.1 Pechuël-Loesche, 330. Cf. Weeks, 300.

224.2 F. L., xix. 413.

225.1 Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), 357 n., 48. Of the King of Nri in Nigeria we are told: “No man is allowed to step over his wives’ legs, nor may anyone commit adultery with them” (Thomas, Ibo, i. 53). This collocation of prohibitions is hardly accidental.

225.2 Roscoe, 205.

226.1 I suspect that the requirement mentioned by Professor Frazer (Dying God, 183), of some of the Kaffir tribes, not specified, that the first child born after the second marriage of a widow of a man killed in battle, whether by her first or her second husband, must be put to death, is to be referred to the same cycle of ideas. But I have no access to the authority he cites, which is partly unpublished.

227.1 Lieut. Hans Kaufmann, Mitteil. aus den Deutschen Schutzgeb. (Berlin, 1910), xxiii. 168.

228.1 Zeits. v. Rechtsw., xxv. 101, 97, 105.

228.2 Gouldsbury and Sheane, 171.

229.1 Gouldsbury and Sheane, 168 sqq.

230.1 Cens. Ind. Rep., 1901, ix. 208; W. Crooke, Encyc. Rel., iv. 603.

230.2 W. Crooke, l.c. See supra, p. 213 note. Cf. also Cens. Ind. Rep., 1901, xvii. 120.

230.3 Cens. Ind. Rep., 1901, xvii. 121.

231.1 Cens. Ind. Rep., 1911, xiv. 283.

231.2 Ibid., 1901, vi. 421.

231.3 Ibid., 1911, xvi. 176.

236.1 J. A. I., xv. 73, 98.

236.2 A. L. Kroeber, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. History, xviii. 17.

236.3 Weeks, 320, 321; J. A. I., xxxix. 453.

236.4 Batchelor, 106, 167.

237.1 Anthropos, i. 172.

237.2 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl., 77.

237.3 Clozel, 363.

237.4 Brough Smyth, ii. 297; F. L., xiv. 325, 338.

237.5 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 521.

238.1 Rice, 56, 57.

238.2 Lunet de Lajonquière, 282.

238.3 Herod., ii. 46, 66, 67. They were all no doubt sacred animals.

238.4 T. C. Hodson, J. A. I., xxxi. 306.

239.1 Thomas, Ibo, i. 45, 39.

239.2 Meyer, 83.

239.3 Pepper and Wilson, Mem. Am. Anthrop. Assoc., ii. 313.

240.1 Bull. de Folklore, iii. 74.

241.1 Hollis, Nandi, 71, 73, 74.

241.2 Id., Masai, 353.

242.1 Paulitschke, i. 258. Cf. the customs of the Kavirondo and Ja-Luo, where no painting is recorded (Johnston, Uganda, ii. 743, 794).

242.2 Torday and Joyce, J. A. I., xxxvi. 50 (cf. 41). Professor Frazer has mentioned (Taboo, 186 n.) some other African cases in which the custom of painting the man-slayer may be intended as a disguise. None of them seem to be stronger than the above. He goes on to mention the Yabim of German New Guinea, among whom the relations of a murdered man, on accepting a bloodwit instead of avenging his death, must allow the family of the murderer to mark them with chalk on the brow. “If this is not done, the ghost of their murdered kinsman may come and trouble them; for example, he may drive away their swine or loosen their teeth.” I have no access to the German authority he cites; but I may suggest for what it may be worth that the chalk-mark is a certificate to the ghost that his relatives have done their duty by exacting a fine for his death, and that he has no cause to feel aggrieved with them—in fact, that he may feel well satisfied. Dr Frazer himself indeed once took this view, or something like it (Tylor Essays, 107).

243.1 Teit, Jesup Exped., ii. 271, 235; i. 357, 332.

243.2 Hill-Tout, Notes on the Skqomic, Brit. Ass. Reb., 1900, 478 sq.

245.1 Bijdragen, xxxix. 37. Cf. Furness, 91.

245.2 J. A. I., xxxvi. 83 note; Hose, i. 271 note.

245.3 Hose, ii. 24.

246.1 Gregor, 199.

246.2 Anthropos, iv. 859, 860.

247.1 Hose, ii. 37.

247.2 Frazer, J. A. I., xv. 73; Id., Scapegoat, chaps. i. iii. iv. vi.

247.3 Hutter, 442.

248.1 Koch-Grünberg, i. 130-140.

249.1 De Groot, Rel. Syst., vi. 1151.

250.1 Torres Str. Exped., v. 256; cf. vi. 140 sqq.

250.2 Owen, Musquakie, 81. Cf. Arch. Rel., xiv. 257.

251.1 Koch-Grünberg, ii. 173.

251.2 Frazer, J. A. I., xv. 99, citing Speke, Journal, 542.

251.3 Dorsa, 91.

252.1 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl., 76.

252.2 Rep. B. E., xviii. 315.

253.1 Frazer, Balder, i. 22 sqq.; Hartland, Prim. Pat., i. 89 sqq.

253.2 Frazer, l.c., 45, 46.

253.3 Goddard, Univ. Cal. Pub., i. 72.

254.1 Frazer, Balder, i. 36.

255.1 Boaz, Brit. Ass. Rep., 1890, 575.

255.2 Tylor Essays, 110, citing Riedel, Deutsche Geographische Blätter, x. 286.

256.1 S. Afr. F. L. Journ., i. 51.

256.2 See for example the cases collected by Dr Frazer, J. A. I., xv. 84, 85

257.1 Supra, p. 209.

257.2 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl. 72.

257.3 Jesup. Exped., vi. 113; Riedel, 307; Clozel, 363.

257.4 Journ. Am. F. L., xvi. 137.

258.1 Frobenius, Heiden-Neger, 408. Compare the widows’ dance among the Wawanga in the Elgon District, British East Africa (J. A. I., xliii. 36). Among the Ibo-speaking people of Nigeria, at Aguku, the women of the quarter in which a death has occurred march round at midnight and sing (Thomas, Ibo, i. 80).

259.1 Weeks, 104, 321.

259.2 Kruijt, 272.

259.3 Striking examples will be found in von den Steinen, 506; and Smirnov, i. 143, 366.

260.1 Rev. Hist. Rel., lx. 358.

260.2 Prof. E. Monseur, ibid., liii. 290 sqq.

261.1 Mariner, i. 311.

261.2 Alldridge, 119.

261.3 J. A. I., xxxii. 47.

261.4 Brand and Ellis, ii. 187 note.

261.5 Clozel, 179.

262.1 Codrington, 281.

262.2 Rep. B. E., v. 111, translating Jesuit Relations.

262.3 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl. 72.

262.4 Globus, lxxii. 22.

262.5 Spencer and Gillen, N. T., 521.

262.6 Deut. xiv. 1.

262.7 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl. 71. Sir Everard im Thurn throws doubt upon this as a funeral rite (F. L., xii. 141).

263.1 Williams, Fiji, 169.

263.2 Dix-neuvième Siècle, 26th December 1890.

263.3 Int. Arch., xiii., Suppl. 72.

263.4 Ibid., 77.

264.1 Father Alex. Arnoux, Anthropos, vii. 288.

266.1 Herod., i. 199; Strabo, xvi. 1, 20. Further details are supplied by the Epistle of Jeremy appended to the apocryphal Book of Baruch.

267.1 Justin, xviii. 5.

267.2 Socrates, Hist. Eccl., i. 18.

267.3 Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., v. 10.

267.4 Ælian, Var. Hist., iv. 1. Dr Farnell (Greece and Bab., 271 note, 273 sqq.) considers that the Lydian practice was identical with that of the Armenians, referred to just below. This is possible. The lady who commemorated at Tralles her dedication for this purpose (see below, p. 273) seems to have been a Lydian. In either case it was a religious practice, though Ælian does not explicitly say so. His account in fact is vague.

267.5 Herod., i. 93.

267.6 Strabo, xi. 14, 16.

270.1 Lucian, De Dea Syria, 6.

271.1 Eusebius, Vita Const., iii. 58; Frazer, Adonis, 1906, 22 note 2. I am uncertain how far Professor Frazer adheres to this interpretation (see Adonis^3, 33 note). Eusebius, it is true, was a contemporary; but he was a bitter partizan, and wrote in a rhetorical style, exaggerating everything that could bring glory to his hero Constantine. Socrates, on the other hand, was a lawyer, a man of wider and more liberal views, and of fairer judgement. Sozomen too was a lawyer. They wrote a century later; but they wrote at Constantinople, and probably had access to official documents. To my mind, if their statements be irreconcilable, these qualifications entitle them to greater credit than the not-too-scrupulous ecclesiastic.

271.2 Socrates, loc. cit.

273.1 Ramsay, i. 94, 115; Frazer, Adonis, 34. Such religious prostitutes were, of course, common in Western Asia. Cf. Strabo, xii. 3, 36.

273.2 Clement of Alexandria, Protrept., ii; Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, v. 19; Firmicus Maternus, De Errore Prof. Rel., x; Apollodorus, Bibl., iii. 14, 3.

274.1 The service of the hierai is discussed by Ramsay, op. cit., 135-7. See also below, p. 279.

274.2 On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that at a marriage among the Auziles and the Nasamonians the guests who enjoyed the bride’s favours were expected to reward her with a gift. Similarly, in modern Europe, a gift is also found as the return for a kiss or a dance with the bride. I have collected several cases, Leg. Perseus, ii. 361, 355-8, and many more might be added. Compare the Suahili custom mentioned below, p. 277.

275.1 Roth, Ethnol. Studies, 174.

275.2 Howitt, 664; J. A. I., xx. 87. See also Ploss, i. 308.

276.1 Spencer and Gillen, C. T., 92.

276.2 Globus, xci. 313.

277.1 Riedel, 138, 137.

277.2 H. Crawford Angus in Zeits. f. Ethnol., xxx., Verhandl., 479.

277.3 Duff Macdonald, i. 126; Jas. Macdonald, in J. A. I., xxii. 101.

277.4 H. Zache, in Zeits. f. Ethnol., xxxi. 76. More than thirty years ago a French writer cited by Hertz (Giftmädchen, 41) reported that among the Bafiote of the Loango Coast the girls were led round the village and their virginity put up to auction. This looks like a puberty rite of a similar character. I have not seen the book, however, and think it not impossible that the writer may have misunderstood the ceremony usual on emerging from the “paint-house.”

278.1 J. A. I., xxxi. 121.

278.2 Ploss, i. 307, 308. Puberty ceremonies to which girls are subjected are by no means confined to “initiation-mysteries”—that is to say, collective rites performed on a number of candidates at the same time. Several of the above-cited ceremonies are performed on individual girls as they reach puberty; and examples might very easily be multiplied. In Cyprus, on the other hand, there seem to have been collective rites, with the sacrifice of virginity.

280.1 Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, ii. 284; Frazer, Adonis, 32 note.

281.1 Rev. Hist. Rel., xli. 315.

282.1 Farnell, Cults, v. 423.

283.1 We are reminded of the risk incurred in relieving Kamtchadal widows of their “sins” (supra, p. 223). There, however, the Russian soldiers who assisted them belonged to a totally different mental and social environment. They contemned the native superstition. It is improbable that any strangers at Babylon or Heliopolis could have been on a plane of civilization so far removed from that of the natives that they were either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the native ideas. Rather, they are likely to have shared them. Among the Baronga, when a similar service is required to be rendered, the man must be inveigled by a trick: he would not knowingly incur the risk (Junod, R. E. S., i. 163).

283.2 Garcilasso, i. 59.

284.1 Ploss, i. 406; Hertz, loc. cit., citing authorities.

284.2 Crawley, Mystic Rose (1902), 348.

285.1 Westermarck, Moral Ideas, ii. 445.

285.2 Above, p. 63.

286.1 Van Gennep, Rites, 39 sqq. As to trials of strength, see Jesup Exped., vii. 582.

287.1 Dennett, 121.

287.2 Dumoutier, 182.

288.1 Since this essay was published in its original form the whole position of women in the temple-ritual of Western Asia has been carefully discussed by Dr Farnell (Greece and Bab., 268 sqq.), to whose criticisms I have been greatly indebted during the process of revision.

289.1 Among many savages additional prohibited degrees exist side by side with exogamy strictly so called. In my view these, where they exist, are supplementary rules of subsequent growth. In any case exogamy operates in the same way as our prohibited degrees.

292.1 O’Grady, ii. 264.

292.2 There are other manuscripts of the Colloquy, but none of them contain the sequel of the adventures of the Lia Fáil. See the preface to Stokes’ edition, Irische Texte, 4th ser. (Leipzig, 1900).

293.1 Skene’s paper is in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, viii. 68; Mr O’Reilly’s in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, xxxii. 77. The stone now called the Lia Fáil at Tara is clearly not the stone of tradition.

293.2 Keating, i. 101. See also 207, 209. On the latter page “a poem from a certain book of invasion” is quoted at length. It contains an enumeration of the four jewels of the Tuatha Dé Danann, among them the Lia Fáil, “which used to roar under the king of Ireland.” In the Baile an Scail (The Champion’s Ecstasy) Conna of the Hundred Fights steps on the stone accidentally, and is told by the Druid who accompanies him, “Fál has screamed under thy feet. The number of its screams is the number of kings that shall come of thy seed for ever; but I may not name them.” In this passage the stone is said to have come from the Island of Foal to abide for ever in the land of Tailtin (Nutt, i. 187, summarizing O’Curry’s translation).

294.1 O’Curry, On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (three vols., London, 1873), vol. i. (Sullivan’s Introduction), p. clxxxiii. Spencer, View of the State of Ireland, says that the Tanist is “the eldest of the kinne.” Ancient Irish Histories (Dublin, Hibernia Press, 1809), i. 12.

295.1 O’Curry, ii. 199. From a reference in an Irish text translated by Professor Windisch from the Lebor na hUidre, it seems that the bull was required to be white. Irische Texte, ser. i. 200.

296.1 Revue Celtique, xxii. 22, in the story of the Sack of Dá Derga’s Hostel translated by Whitley Stokes.

297.1 Haltrich, 195.

298.1 Jātaka, iv. 23, Story No. 445.

298.2 Jülg, 60, Story No. 2.

299.1 Radloff, i. 208.

299.2 Folk-Lore, iv. 202.

300.1 Ralston, Tibetan Tales, p. 29.

300.2 Bakhtyár Náma, 51.

301.1 Stumme, 123, Story No. 15.

301.2 Burton, Nights, iv. 210.

301.3 N. Ind. N. and Q., iv. 66. Similarly in a story from Mirzapur, the first man met in the forest is made king. Ibid., ii. 81. In another story from Mirzapur a trained elephant is let loose to choose the king’s bride. Ibid., iii. 103.

302.1 Radloff, vi. 157.

302.2 Ibid., iv. 143.

302.3 Prym und Socin, Kurdische Sammlungen, Erste Abteil. (St Petersburg, 1887); übersetz., 32.

303.1 Leclère, 16. “Tous ceux qui étaient presents à ce conseil… decidèrent qu’on consulterait immédiatement les chevaux.”

303.2 Kathá, ii. 102.

304.1 Natesa Sastri, 126.

304.2 Steel and Temple, 140. In other stories from Kashmir, it is “an elephant” (Knowles, 169, 309).

304.3 Rev. Trad. Pop., iv. 442.

304.4 Knowles, 158. Other stories, Ibid., 17, 309; Bakhtyár Náma, 169 (notes by the Editor); Day, 99, Story No. 5.

305.1 Kathákoça, 155.

306.1 Luzel, Lég. Chrét., i. 282 (pt. iii., Story No. 11); a variant, Mélusine, i. 300.

307.1 F.-L. Journ., iv. 338 sqq., including the references at foot of 348.

308.1 Friedrich von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit (Leipzig, 1824), iii. 74.

308.2 Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., vi. 29.

308.3 Middleton, Works (2nd ed. London, 1755), vol. v., p. 153, citing “Hist. Raven., etc. Aring [hus], Rom[a] Subt[erranea], l. vi., c. 48.”

309.1 Early Trav., 158. The casting of lots is divination—an appeal to supernatural powers to decide the event. Such divination (frequently glossed as the ballot) took place at the election of Matthias to succeed Judas Iscariot in the apostolate (Acts i. 23). It seems to have been a not uncommon practice in the Middle Ages for the election of ecclesiastical dignitaries. It is expressly reprehended in a tract De decem præceptis, published in the year 1439, by Thomas Ebendorfer of Haselbach, Court Chaplain and Privy Councillor of the Emperor Frederick III (Zeit. des Vereins, xii. 11).

309.2 The church derived its name from having been erected in a Lombard burial-ground. Poles were set up on the graves, and on each pole the wooden figure of a dove. It is suggestive that the scene of the story is placed in such surroundings.

310.1 Paulus Diaconus, Gesta Longobard., vi. 55. See also Soldan, 145, 148. Hildeprand did not reign long. He was deprived of the throne a few months later by Ratchis, who reigned for five years, 744-749.

310.2 Soldan, 150.

310.3 Post, Afr. Juris., i. 138, citing Harris, The Highlands of Ethiopia. Post notes that Krapf contests the accuracy of this account and states the succession was hereditary. The two statements are perhaps not irreconcilable. The succession to the throne of Businza, south of Lake Victoria Nyanza, was hereditary, but among the candidates an animal omen was decisive. Father van Thiel, who says this, however, omits to tell us exactly how (Anthropos, vi. 502). See also, as to other tribes, below, pp. 317 sqq.

311.1 Herod., iii. 84 sqq.

311.2 Grimm has collected instances, Teut. Myth., i. 47; ii. 658; iv. 1301, 1481. Also von Negelein, Zeits. des Ver., xi. 406 sqq.

312.1 Journ. Ind. Archip., iii. 316.

313.1 Forbes, ii. 465.

313.2 Plutarch, De Fluv., xiv.

315.1 Huc, ii. 343; i. 278; Waddell, 245 sqq.

316.1 Gray, i. 103.

317.1 Speke, Journ., 221. A less astonishing species of augury, and one reminding us of English Hallowe’en practices, is that adopted by the Shilluk on the Upper Nile. On choosing a king a small stone for everyone of the royal princes is thrown into the fire. The stones of the rejected candidates fly out again; he whose stone remains in the fire becomes king (Anthropos, v. 333).

318.1 Anthropos, vi. 70.

319.1 Records of the Past, 2nd series [1891] v. 68, 62.

320.1 Folk-Lore, ix. 114. Mr Crooke does not refer to the speech of Eurymachus immediately following that of Telemachus, which confirms what has been said on this subject by Antinous and Telemachus.

321.1 I am indebted to Miss Burne for suggesting that something like this is the true interpretation of the use alike of the Lia Fáil and of the various regal paraphernalia employed in the stories. As she puts it, they would know their rightful owner. This, however, is to assume the principle of heredity as already established. The animistic belief involved in the interpretation suggested was perhaps applied even before then.

323.1 Girald. Cambr., Itinerarium Kambriæ, l. i., c. 2.

323.2 Crooke, Pop. Rel., ii. 142.

323.3 Crooke, Tribes and Castes, ii. 380. Cf. the Legend of Dhatu Sena, King of Ceylon (Tennent, Ceylon, i. 389).

324.1 A. Landes, Contes Tjames, 104.

324.2 Journal of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 571.

324.3 Havelok, ll. 602 sqq., 2139 sqq.

326.1 Owen, Narrative, ii. 418, translating a MS., of Sr. Ferão, a Portuguese governor of the coast. This translation is reprinted by Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. 371 sqq.

327.1 Theal, Records, vii. 191 sqq.

327.2 2 Sam., ch. 16; 1 Kings, ch. 2. There is some reason to think that the same custom obtained among the ancient Teutonic peoples, and even in England. Both this and succession by marrying a daughter are frequent incidents in historical traditions as well as in märchen (see Frazer, Magic Art, ii., ch. xviii., and Scapegoat, 368).

328.1 Junod, S. A. Tribe, i. 199, 206.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page numbers are given in in {curly} brackets. Endnote markers are given in [square] brackets in the plain text version.

Alterations to the text:

Convert footnotes to endnotes. Relabel note markers: append the original note number to the page number.

Omit the Index.

[Preface]

“published Myth Ritual and Religion, in which he attacked” add comma after Myth.

[The relations of religion and magic]

(“If a man,” writes Bishop Codrington, has been successful…) add quotation mark before has.

Change “It is substantially that of Professer Frazer” to Professor.

[The boldness of the Celts]

“There is a remarkable story in the Eyrbyggja Saga” to Eyrbyggia.

[Endnotes]

Two punctuation corrections (missing periods).

[End of text]

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Table of Contents

- RITUAL AND BELIEF
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS

- RITUAL AND BELIEF

- LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK”

- THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION AND MAGIC

- I. The Common Root
- II. Theories and Definitions
- III. Development
- IV. Divergence

- THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS
- THE HAUNTED WIDOW
- THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING CLOTHES
- THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE OF MYLITTA
- THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF DESTINY

- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST
- ENDNOTES
- TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE