‘Who knoweth one? I (saith Israel) know One:One is God, who is over heaven and earth.Who knoweth two? I (saith Israel) know two:Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.’
‘Who knoweth one? I (saith Israel) know One:One is God, who is over heaven and earth.Who knoweth two? I (saith Israel) know two:Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.’
‘Who knoweth one? I (saith Israel) know One:One is God, who is over heaven and earth.Who knoweth two? I (saith Israel) know two:Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.’
‘Who knoweth one? I (saith Israel) know One:
One is God, who is over heaven and earth.
Who knoweth two? I (saith Israel) know two:
Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.’
(And so forth, accumulating up to the last verse, which is—)
‘Who knoweth thirteen? I (saith Israel) know thirteen: Thirteen divine attributes, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ten commandments, nine months preceding childbirth, eight days preceding circumcision, seven days of the week, six books of the Mishnah, five books of the Law, four matrons, three patriarchs, two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.’
This is one of a family of counting-poems, apparently held in much favour in mediæval Christian times, for they are not yet quite forgotten in country places. An old Latin version runs:‘Unus est Deus,’&c., and one of the still-surviving English forms begins, ‘One’s One all alone, and evermore shall be so,’ thence reckoning on as far as ‘Twelve the twelve apostles.’ Here both the Jewish and Christian forms are or have been serious, so it is possible that the Jew may have imitated the Christian, but the nobler form of the Hebrew poem here again gives it a claim to be thought the earlier.[92]
The old proverbs brought down by long inheritance into our modern talk are far from being insignificant in themselves, for their wit is often as fresh, and their wisdom aspertinent, as it ever was. Beyond these practical qualities, proverbs are instructive for the place in ethnography which they occupy. Their range in civilization is limited; they seem scarcely to belong to the lowest tribes, but appear first in a settled form among some of the higher savages. The Fijians, who were found a few years since living in what archæologists might call the upper Stone Age, have some well-marked proverbs. They laugh at want of forethought by the saying that ‘The Nakondo people cut the mast first’ (i.e. before they had built the canoe); and when a poor man looks wistfully at what he cannot buy, they say, ‘Becalmed, and looking at the fish.’[93]Among the list of the New Zealanders’ ‘whakatauki,’ or proverbs, one describes a lazy glutton: ‘Deep throat, but shallow sinews;’ another says that the lazy often profit by the work of the industrious: ‘The large chips made by Hardwood fall to the share of Sit-still;’ a third moralizes that ‘A crooked part of a stem of toetoe can be seen; but a crooked part in the heart cannot be seen.’[94]Among the Basutos of South Africa, ‘Water never gets tired of running’ is a reproach to chatterers; ‘Lions growl while they are eating,’ means that there are people who never will enjoy anything; ‘The sowing-month is the headache-month,’ describes those lazy folks who make excuses when work is to be done; ‘The thief eats thunderbolts,’ means that he will bring down vengeance from heaven on himself.[95]West African nations are especially strong in proverbial philosophy; so much so that Captain Burton amused himself through the rainy season at Fernando Po in compiling a volume of native proverbs,[96]among which there are hundreds at about as high an intellectual level as those of Europe. ‘He fled from the sword and hid in the scabbard,’ is as good as our‘Out of the frying-pan into the fire;’ and ‘He who has only his eyebrow for a cross-bow can never kill an animal,’ is more picturesque, if less terse than our ‘Hard words break no bones.’ The old Buddhist aphorism, that ‘He who indulges in enmity is like one who throws ashes to windward, which come back to the same place and cover him all over,’ is put with less prose and as much point in the negro saying, ‘Ashes fly back in the face of him who throws them.’ When someone tries to settle an affair in the absence of the people concerned, the negroes will object that ‘You can’t shave a man’s head when he is not there,’ while, to explain that the master is not to be judged by the folly of his servant, they say, ‘The rider is not a fool because the horse is.’ Ingratitude is alluded to in ‘The sword knows not the head of the smith’ (who made it), and yet more forcibly elsewhere, ‘When the calabash had saved them (in the famine), they said, let us cut it for a drinking-cup.’ The popular contempt for poor men’s wisdom is put very neatly in the maxim, ‘When a poor man makes a proverb it does not spread,’ while the very mention of making a proverb as something likely to happen, shows a land where proverb-making is still a living art. Transplanted to the West Indies, the African keeps up this art, as witness these sayings: ‘Behind dog it is dog, but before dog it is Mr. Dog;’ and ‘Toute cabinette tini maringouin’—‘Every cabin has its mosquito.’
The proverb has not changed its character in the course of history; but has retained from first to last a precisely definite type. The proverbial sayings recorded among the higher nations of the world are to be reckoned by tens of thousands, and have a large and well-known literature of their own. But though the range of existence of proverbs extends into the highest levels of civilization, this is scarcely true of their development. At the level of European culture in the middle ages, they have indeed a vast importance in popular education, but their period of actual growth seems already at an end. Cervantes raised the proverb-monger’scraft to a pitch it never surpassed; but it must not be forgotten that the incomparable Sancho’s wares were mostly heirlooms; for proverbs were even then sinking to remnants of an earlier condition of society. As such, they survive among ourselves, who go on using much the same relics of ancestral wisdom as came out of the squire’s inexhaustible budget, old saws not to be lightly altered or made anew in our changed modern times. We can collect and use the old proverbs, but making new ones has become a feeble, spiritless imitation, like our attempts to invent new myths or new nursery rhymes.
Riddles start near proverbs in the history of civilization, and they travel on long together, though at last towards different ends. By riddles are here meant the old-fashioned problems with a real answer intended to be discovered, such as the typical enigma of the Sphinx, but not the modern verbal conundrums set in the traditional form of question and answer, as a way of bringing in a jest à propos of nothing. The original kind, which may be defined as ‘sense-riddles,’ are found at home among the upper savages, and range on into the lower and middle civilization; and while their growth stops at this level, many ancient specimens have lasted on in the modern nursery and by the cottage fireside. There is a plain reason why riddles should belong only to the higher grades of savagery; their making requires a fair power of ideal comparison, and knowledge must have made considerable advance before this process could become so familiar as to fall from earnest into sport. At last, in a far higher state of culture, riddles begin to be looked on as trifling, their growth ceases, and they only survive in remnants for children’s play. Some examples chosen among various races, from savagery upwards, will show more exactly the place in mental history which the riddle occupies.
The following are specimens from a collection of Zulu riddles, recorded with quaintly simple native comments on the philosophy of the matter:—Q.‘Guess ye some menwho are many and form a row; they dance the wedding-dance, adorned in white hip-dresses?’A.‘The teeth; we call them men who form a row, for the teeth stand like men who are made ready for a wedding-dance, that they may dance well. When we say, they are “adorned with white hip-dresses,” we put that in, that people may not at once think of teeth, but be drawn away from them by thinking, “It is men who put on white hip-dresses,” and continually have their thoughts fixed on men,’ &c.Q.‘Guess ye a man who does not lie down at night: he lies down in the morning until the sun sets; he then awakes, and works all night; he does not work by day; he is not seen when he works?’A.‘The closing-poles of the cattle-pen.’Q.‘Guess ye a man whom men do not like to laugh, for it is known that his laughter is a very great evil, and is followed by lamentation, and an end of rejoicing. Men weep, and trees, and grass; and everything is heard weeping in the tribe where he laughs; and they say the man has laughed who does not usually laugh?’A.‘Fire. It is called a man that what is said may not be at once evident, it being concealed by the word “man.” Men say many things, searching out the meaning in rivalry, and missing the mark. A riddle is good when it is not discernible at once,’ &c.[97]Among the Basutos, riddles are a recognized part of education, and are set like exercises to a whole company of puzzled children.Q.‘Do you know what throws itself from the mountain top without being broken?’A.‘A waterfall.’Q.‘There is a thing that travels fast without legs or wings, and no cliff, nor river, nor wall can stop it?’A.‘The voice.’Q.‘Name the ten trees with ten flat stones on the top of them.’A.‘The fingers.’Q.‘Who is the little immovable dumb boy who is dressed up warm in the day and left naked at night?’A.‘The bed-clothes’ peg.’[98]From East Africa, this Swahili riddle is anexample:Q.‘My hen has laid among thorns?’A.‘A pineapple.’[99]From West Africa, this Yoruba one: ‘A long slender trading woman who never gets to market?’A.‘A canoe (it stops at the landing-place).’[100]In Polynesia, the Samoan Islanders are given to riddles.Q.‘There are four brothers, who are always bearing about their father?’A.‘The Samoan pillow,’ which is a yard of three-inch bamboo resting on four legs.Q.‘A white-headed man stands above the fence, and reaches to the heavens?’A.‘The smoke of the oven.’Q.‘A man who stands between two ravenous fish?’A.‘The tongue.’[101](There is a Zulu riddle like this, which compares the tongue to a man living in the midst of enemies fighting.) The following are old Mexican enigmas:Q.‘What are the ten stones one has at his sides?’A.‘The finger-nails.’Q.‘What is it we get into by three parts and out of by one?’A.‘A shirt.’Q.‘What goes through a valley and drags its entrails after it?’A.‘A needle.’[102]
These riddles found among the lower races do not differ at all in nature from those that have come down, sometimes modernized in the setting, into the nursery lore of Europe. Thus Spanish children still ask, ‘What is the dish of nuts that is gathered by day, and scattered by night?’ (the stars.) Our English riddle of the pair of tongs: ‘Long legs, crooked thighs, little head, and no eyes,’ is primitive enough to have been made by a South Sea Islander. The following is on the same theme as one of the Zulu riddles: ‘A flock of white sheep, On a red hill; Here they go, there they go; Now they stand still?’ Another is the very analogue of one of the Aztec specimens: ‘Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye, And a long tail which she let fly;And every time she went over a gap, She left a bit of her tail in a trap?’
So thoroughly does riddle-making belong to the mythologic stage of thought, that any poet’s simile, if not too far-fetched, needs only inversion to be made at once into an enigma. The Hindu calls the Sun Saptâsva, i.e. ‘seven-horsed,’ while, with the same thought, the old German riddle asks, ‘What is the chariot drawn by the seven white and seven black horses?’ (the year, drawn by the seven days and nights of the week.[103]) Such, too, is the Greek riddle of the two sisters, Day and Night, who gave birth each to the other to be born of her again:
Εἰσὶ κασίγνηται διτταί, ὧν ἡ μία τίκτειΤὴν ἑτέραν, αὐτὴ δὲ τεκοῦσ ὑπὸ τῆσδε τεκνοῦται;
Εἰσὶ κασίγνηται διτταί, ὧν ἡ μία τίκτειΤὴν ἑτέραν, αὐτὴ δὲ τεκοῦσ ὑπὸ τῆσδε τεκνοῦται;
Εἰσὶ κασίγνηται διτταί, ὧν ἡ μία τίκτειΤὴν ἑτέραν, αὐτὴ δὲ τεκοῦσ ὑπὸ τῆσδε τεκνοῦται;
Εἰσὶ κασίγνηται διτταί, ὧν ἡ μία τίκτει
Τὴν ἑτέραν, αὐτὴ δὲ τεκοῦσ ὑπὸ τῆσδε τεκνοῦται;
and the enigma of Kleoboulos, with its other like fragments of rudimentary mythology:
Εἷς ὀ πατήρ, παῖδες δὲ δυώδεκα· τῶν δέ γ’ ἑκάστῳΠαῖδες ἔασι τριήκοντ’ ἄνδιχα εἷδος ἔχουσαι·Ηι μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, ᾖ δ’ αὗτε μέλαιναι·Ἀθάνατοι δέ τ’ ἐοῦσαι ἀποφθίνουσιν ἄπασαι.
Εἷς ὀ πατήρ, παῖδες δὲ δυώδεκα· τῶν δέ γ’ ἑκάστῳΠαῖδες ἔασι τριήκοντ’ ἄνδιχα εἷδος ἔχουσαι·Ηι μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, ᾖ δ’ αὗτε μέλαιναι·Ἀθάνατοι δέ τ’ ἐοῦσαι ἀποφθίνουσιν ἄπασαι.
Εἷς ὀ πατήρ, παῖδες δὲ δυώδεκα· τῶν δέ γ’ ἑκάστῳΠαῖδες ἔασι τριήκοντ’ ἄνδιχα εἷδος ἔχουσαι·Ηι μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, ᾖ δ’ αὗτε μέλαιναι·Ἀθάνατοι δέ τ’ ἐοῦσαι ἀποφθίνουσιν ἄπασαι.
Εἷς ὀ πατήρ, παῖδες δὲ δυώδεκα· τῶν δέ γ’ ἑκάστῳ
Παῖδες ἔασι τριήκοντ’ ἄνδιχα εἷδος ἔχουσαι·
Ηι μὲν λευκαὶ ἔασιν ἰδεῖν, ᾖ δ’ αὗτε μέλαιναι·
Ἀθάνατοι δέ τ’ ἐοῦσαι ἀποφθίνουσιν ἄπασαι.
‘One is the father, and twelve the children, and, born unto each one,Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asunder,White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and perish.’[104]
‘One is the father, and twelve the children, and, born unto each one,Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asunder,White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and perish.’[104]
‘One is the father, and twelve the children, and, born unto each one,Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asunder,White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and perish.’[104]
‘One is the father, and twelve the children, and, born unto each one,
Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asunder,
White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,
All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and perish.’[104]
Such questions as these may be fairly guessed now as in old times, and must be distinguished from that scarcer class which require the divination of some unlikely event to solve them. Of such the typical example is Samson’s riddle, and there is an old Scandinavian one like it. The story is that Gestr found a duck sitting on her nest in an ox’s horned skull, and thereupon propounded a riddle, describing with characteristic Northman’s metaphor the ox with its horns fancied as already made into drinking-horns. The following translation does not exaggerate the quaintness ofthe original:—‘Joying in children the bill-goose grew, And her building-timbers together drew; The biting grass-shearer screened her bed, With the maddening drink-stream overhead.’[105]Many of the old oracular responses are puzzles of precisely this kind. Such is the story of the Delphic oracle, which ordered Temenos to find a man with three eyes to guide the army, which injunction he fulfilled by meeting a one-eyed man on horseback.[106]It is curious to find this idea again in Scandinavia, where Odin sets King Heidrek a riddle, ‘Who are they two that fare to the Thing with three eyes, ten feet, and one tail?’ the answer being, the one-eyed Odin himself on his eight-footed horse Sleipnir.[107]
The close bearing of the doctrine of survival on the study of manners and customs is constantly coming into view in ethnographic research. It seems scarcely too much to assert, once for all, that meaningless customs must be survivals, that they had a practical, or at least ceremonial, intention when and where they first arose, but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on into a new state of society, where their original sense has been discarded. Of course, new customs introduced in particular ages may be ridiculous or wicked, but as a rule they have discernible motives. Explanations of this kind, by recourse to some forgotten meaning, seem on the whole to account best for obscure customs which some have set down to mere outbreaks of spontaneous folly. A certain Zimmermann, who published a heavy ‘Geographical History of Mankind’ in the18thcentury, remarks as follows on the prevalence of similar nonsensical and stupid customs in distantcountries:—‘For if two clever heads may, each for himself, hit upon a clever invention or discovery, then it is far likelier, considering the much larger total of fools and blockheads, that like fooleries should be given to two far-distant lands. If, then, the inventive fool be likewise a man of importance and influence, as is, indeed, an extremely frequent case, then both nations adopt a similar folly, and then, centuries after, some historian goes through it to extract his evidence for the derivation of these two nations one from the other.’[108]
Strong views as to the folly of mankind seem to have been in the air about the time of the French Revolution, Lord Chesterfield was no doubt an extremely different person from our German philosopher, but they were quite at one as to the absurdity of customs. Advising his son as to the etiquette of courts, the Earl writes thus to him:—‘For example, it is respectful to bow to the King of England, it is disrespectful to bow to the King of France; it is the rule to courtesy to the Emperor; and the prostration of the whole body is required by Eastern Monarchs. These are established ceremonies, and must be complied with; but why they were established, I defy sense and reason to tell us. It is the same among all ranks, where certain customs are received, and must necessarily be complied with, though by no means the result of sense and reason. As for instance, the very absurd, though almost universal custom of drinking people’s healths. Can there be anything in the world less relative to any other man’s health, than my drinking a glass of wine? Common sense, certainly, never pointed it out, but yet common sense tells me I must conform to it.’[109]Now, though it might be difficult enough to make sense of the minor details of court etiquette, Lord Chesterfield’s example from it ofthe irrationality of mankind is a singularly unlucky one. Indeed, if any one were told to set forth in few words the relations of the people to their rulers in different states of society, he might answer that men grovel on their faces before the King of Siam, kneel on one knee or uncover before a European monarch, and shake the hand of the President of the United States as though it were a pump-handle. These are ceremonies at once intelligible and significant. Lord Chesterfield is more fortunate in his second instance, for the custom of drinking healths is really of obscure origin. Yet it is closely connected with an ancient rite, practically absurd indeed, but done with a conscious and serious intention which lands it quite outside the region of nonsense. This is the custom of pouring out libations and drinking at ceremonial banquets to gods and the dead. Thus the old Northmen drank the ‘minni’ of Thor, Odin, and Freya, and of kings likewise at their funerals. The custom did not die out with the conversion of the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations. Such formulas as ‘God’s minne!’ ‘a bowl to God in heaven!’ are on record, while in like manner Christ, Mary, and the Saints were drunk to in place of heathen gods and heroes, and the habit of drinking to the dead and the living at the same feast and in similar terms goes far to prove here a common origin for both ceremonies. The ‘minne’ was at once love, memory, and the thought of the absent, and it long survived in England in the ‘minnying’ or ‘mynde’ days, on which the memory of the dead was celebrated by services or banquets. Such evidence as this fairly justifies the writers, older and newer, who have treated these ceremonial drinking usages as in their nature sacrificial.[110]As for the practice of simply drinking the health of living men, its ancient history reaches us from several districts inhabited by Aryan nations. The Greeksin symposium drank to one another, and the Romans adopted the habit (προπίνειν,propinare, Græco more bibere). The Goths cried ‘hails!’ as they pledged each other, as we have it in the curious first line of the verses ‘De conviviis barbaris’ in the Latin Anthology, which sets down the shouts of a Gothic drinking-bout of the fifth century or so, in words which still partly keep their sense to an English ear.
‘IntereilsGoticumscapiamatziaia drincanNon audet quisquam dignos educere versus.’
‘IntereilsGoticumscapiamatziaia drincanNon audet quisquam dignos educere versus.’
‘IntereilsGoticumscapiamatziaia drincanNon audet quisquam dignos educere versus.’
‘IntereilsGoticumscapiamatziaia drincan
Non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.’
As for ourselves, though the old drinking salutation of ‘wæs hæl?’ is no longer vulgar English, the formula remains with us, stiffened into a noun. On the whole, there is presumptive though not conclusive evidence that the custom of drinking healths to the living is historically related to the religious rite of drinking to the gods and the dead.
Let us now put the theory of survival to a somewhat severe test, by seeking from it some explanation of the existence, in practice or memory, within the limits of modern civilized society, of three remarkable groups of customs which civilized ideas totally fail to account for. Though we may not succeed in giving clear and absolute explanations of their motives, at any rate it is a step in advance to be able to refer their origins to savage or barbaric antiquity. Looking at these customs from the modern practical point of view, one is ridiculous, the others are atrocious, and all are senseless. The first is the practice of salutation on sneezing, the second the rite of laying the foundations of a building on a human victim, the third the prejudice against saving a drowning man.
In interpreting the customs connected with sneezing, it is needful to recognize a prevalent doctrine of the lower races, of which a full account will be given in another chapter. As a man’s soul is considered to go in and out of his body, so it is with other spirits, particularly such asenter into patients and possess them or afflict them with disease. Among the less cultured races, the connexion of this idea with sneezing is best shown among the Zulus, a people firmly persuaded that kindly or angry spirits of the dead hover about them, do them good or harm, stand visibly before them in dreams, enter into them, and cause diseases in them. The following particulars are abridged from the native statements taken down by Dr. Callaway:—When a Zulu sneezes, he will say, ‘I am now blessed. The Idhlozi (ancestral spirit) is with me; it has come to me. Let me hasten and praise it, for it is it which causes me to sneeze!’ So he praises the manes of his family, asking for cattle, and wives, and blessings. Sneezing is a sign that a sick person will be restored to health; he returns thanks after sneezing, saying, ‘Ye people of ours, I have gained that prosperity which I wanted. Continue to look on me with favour!’ Sneezing reminds a man that he should name the Itongo (ancestral spirit) of his people without delay, because it is the Itongo which causes him to sneeze, that he may perceive by sneezing that the Itongo is with him. If a man is ill and does not sneeze, those who come to him ask whether he has sneezed or not; if he has not sneezed, they murmur, saying, ‘The disease is great!’ If a child sneezes, they say to it, ‘Grow!’ it is a sign of health. So then, it is said, sneezing among black men gives a man strength to remember that the Itongo has entered into him and abides with him. The Zulu diviners or sorcerers are very apt to sneeze, which they regard as an indication of the presence of the spirits, whom they adore by saying, ‘Makosi!’ (i.e. lords or masters). It is a suggestive example of the transition of such customs as these from one religion to another, that the Amakosa, who used to call on their divine ancestor Utixo when they sneezed, since their conversion to Christianity say, ‘Preserver, look upon me!’ or, ‘Creator of heaven and earth!’[111]Elsewhere in Africa, similar ideasare mentioned. Sir Thomas Browne, in his ‘Vulgar Errors,’ made well known the story that when the King of Monomotapa sneezed, acclamations of blessing passed from mouth to mouth through the city; but he should have mentioned that Godigno, from whom the original account is taken, said that this took place when the king drank, or coughed, or sneezed.[112]A later account from the other side of the continent is more to the purpose. In Guinea, in the last century, when a principal personage sneezed, all present fell on their knees, kissed the earth, clapped their hands, and wished him all happiness and prosperity.[113]With a different idea, the negroes of Old Calabar, when a child sneezes, will sometimes exclaim, ‘Far from you!’ with an appropriate gesture as if throwing off some evil.[114]Polynesia is another region where the sneezing salutation is well marked. In New Zealand, a charm was said to prevent evil when a child sneezed;[115]if a Samoan sneezed, the bystanders said, ‘Life to you!’[116]while in the Tongan group a sneeze on the starting of an expedition was a most evil presage.[117]A curious American instance dates from Hernando de Soto’s famous expedition into Florida, when Guachoya, a native chief, came to pay him a visit. ‘While this was going on, the cacique Guachoya gave a great sneeze; the gentlemen who had come with him and were lining the walls of the hall among the Spaniards there all at once bowing their heads, opening their arms, and closing them again, and making other gestures of great veneration and respect, saluted him with different words, all directed to one end, saying, “The Sun guard thee, be with thee, enlighten thee, magnify thee, protect thee, favour thee, defend thee, prosper thee, save thee,” and other like phrases, as the words came, and for agood space there lingered the murmur of these words among them, whereat the governor wondering said to the gentlemen and captains with him, “Do you not see that all the world is one?” This matter was well noted among the Spaniards, that among so barbarous a people should be used the same ceremonies, or greater, than among those who hold themselves to be very civilized. Whence it may be believed that this manner of salutation is natural among all nations, and not caused by a pestilence, as is vulgarly said,’ &c.[118]
In Asia and Europe the sneezing superstition extends through a wide range of race, age, and country.[119]Among the passages relating to it in the classic ages of Greece and Rome, the following are some of the most characteristic,—the lucky sneeze of Telemachos in the Odyssey;[120]the soldier’s sneeze and the shout of adoration to the god which rose along the ranks, and which Xenophon appealed to as a favourable omen;[121]Aristotle’s remark that people consider a sneeze as divine (τὸν ηὲν πταρμὸν θεὸν ἡγούμεθα εἶναι), but not a cough,[122]&c.; the Greek epigram on the man with the long nose, who did not sayΖεῦ σῶσονwhen he sneezed, for the noise was too far off for him to hear;[123]Petronius Arbiter’s mention of the custom of saying‘Salve!’to one who sneezed;[124]and Pliny’s question,‘Cur sternutamentis salutamus?’apropos of which he remarks that even Tiberius Cæsar, that saddest of men, exacted this observance.[125]Similar rites of sneezing have long been observed in Eastern Asia.[126]When a Hindu sneezes, bystanders say, ‘Live!’ and the sneezer replies, ‘With you!’ It is an ill omen, to which among others the Thugs paid great regard on starting on an expedition, and which even compelled them to let the travellers with them escape.[127]
The Jewish sneezing formula is,‘Tobim chayim!’i.e. ‘Good life!’[128]The Moslem says, ‘Praise to Allah!’ when he sneezes, and his friends compliment him with proper formulas, a custom which seems to be conveyed from race to race wherever Islam extends.[129]Lastly, the custom ranges through mediæval into modern Europe. To cite old German examples,‘Die Heiden nicht endorften niesen, dâ man doch sprichet “Nu helfiu Got?”’ ‘Wir sprechen, swer niuset, Got helfe dir.’[130]For a Norman French instance in England, the following lines (A.D.1100) may serve, which show our old formula ‘waes hæl!’ (‘may you be well!’—‘wassail!’) used also to avert being taken ill after a sneeze:—
‘E pur une feyze esternuerTantot quident mal trouer,Siuesbeilne diez aprez.’[131]
‘E pur une feyze esternuerTantot quident mal trouer,Siuesbeilne diez aprez.’[131]
‘E pur une feyze esternuerTantot quident mal trouer,Siuesbeilne diez aprez.’[131]
‘E pur une feyze esternuer
Tantot quident mal trouer,
Siuesbeilne diez aprez.’[131]
In the ‘Rules of Civility’ (A.D.1685, translated from the French) we read:—‘If his lordship chances to sneeze, you are not to bawl out, “God bless you, sir,” but, pulling off your hat, bow to him handsomely, and make that obsecration to yourself.’[132]It is noticed that Anabaptists andQuakers rejected these with other salutations, but they remained in the code of English good manners among high and low till half a century or so ago, and are so little forgotten now, that most people still see the point of the story of the fiddler and his wife, where his sneeze and her hearty ‘God bless you!’ brought about the removal of the fiddle case.‘Got hilf!’may still be heard in Germany, and‘Felicità!’in Italy.
It is not strange that the existence of these absurd customs should have been for ages a puzzle to curious enquirers. Especially the legend-mongers took the matter in hand, and their attempts to devise historical explanations are on record in a group of philosophic myths,—Greek, Jewish, Christian. Prometheus prays for the preservation of his artificial man, when it gives the first sign of life by a sneeze; Jacob prays that man’s soul may not, as heretofore, depart from his body when he sneezes; Pope Gregory prays to avert the pestilence, in those days when the air was so deadly that he who sneezed died of it; and from these imaginary events legend declares that the use of the sneezing formulas was handed down. It is more to our purpose to notice the existence of a corresponding set of ideas and customs connected with gaping. Among the Zulus, repeated yawning and sneezing are classed together as signs of approaching spiritual possession.[133]The Hindu, when he gapes, must snap his thumb and finger, and repeat the name of some God, as Rama: to neglect this is a sin as great as the murder of a Brahman.[134]The Persians ascribe yawning, sneezing, &c., to demoniacal possession. Among the modern Moslems generally, when a man yawns, he puts the back of his left hand to his mouth, saying, ‘I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the accursed!’ but the act of yawning is to be avoided, for the Devil is in the habit of leaping into a gaping mouth.[135]This may very likely be the meaning ofthe Jewish proverb, ‘Open not thy mouth to Satan!’ The other half of this idea shows itself clearly in Josephus’ story of his having seen a certain Jew, named Eleazar, cure demoniacs in Vespasian’s time, by drawing the demons out through their nostrils, by means of a ring containing a root of mystic virtue mentioned by Solomon.[136]The account of the sect of the Messalians, who used to spit and blow their noses to expel the demons they might have drawn in with their breath,[137]the records of the mediæval exorcists driving out devils through the patients’ nostrils,[138]and the custom, still kept up in the Tyrol, of crossing oneself when one yawns, lest something evil should come into one’s mouth,[139]involve similar ideas. In comparing the modern Kafir ideas with those of other districts of the world, we find a distinct notion of a sneeze being due to a spiritual presence. This, which seems indeed the key to the whole matter, has been well brought into view by Mr. Haliburton, as displayed in Keltic folk-lore, in a group of stories turning on the superstition that any one who sneezes is liable to be carried off by the fairies, unless their power be counteracted by an invocation, as ‘God bless you!’[140]The corresponding idea as to yawning is to be found in an Iceland folk-lore legend, where the troll, who has transformed herself into the shape of the beautiful queen, says, ‘When I yawn a little yawn, I am a neat and tiny maiden; when I yawn a half-yawn, then I am as a half-troll; when I yawn a whole yawn, then am I as a whole troll.’[141]On the whole, though the sneezing superstition makes no approach to universality among mankind, its wide distribution is highly remarkable, and it would be an interesting problem to decide how far this wide distribution is due to independent growth in several regions,how far to conveyance from race to race, and how far to ancestral inheritance. Here it has only to be maintained that it was not originally an arbitrary and meaningless custom, but the working out of a principle.[142]The plain statement by the modern Zulus fits with the hints to be gained from the superstition and folk-lore of other races, to connect the notions and practices as to sneezing with the ancient and savage doctrine of pervading and invading spirits, considered as good or evil, and treated accordingly. The lingering survivals of the quaint old formulas in modern Europe seem an unconscious record of the time when the explanation of sneezing had not yet been given over to physiology, but was still in the ‘theological stage.’
There is current in Scotland the belief that the Picts, to whom local legend attributes buildings of prehistoric antiquity, bathed their foundation-stones with human blood; and legend even tells thatSt.Columba found it necessary to burySt.Oran alive beneath the foundation of his monastery, in order to propitiate the spirits of the soil who demolished by night what was built during the day. So late as 1843, in Germany, when a new bridge was built at Halle, a notion was abroad among the people that a child was wanted to be built into the foundation. These ideas of church or wall or bridge wanting human blood or an immured victim to make the foundation steadfast, are not only widespread in European folk-lore, but local chronicle or tradition asserts them as matter of historical fact in district after district. Thus, when the broken dam of the Nogat had to be repaired in 1463, the peasants, on the advice to throw in a living man, are said to have made a beggar drunk and buried him there. Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother and walled in. Itwas eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried out, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and, as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’ The wall of Copenhagen, legend says, sank as fast as it was built; so they took an innocent little girl, set her on a chair at a table of toys and eatables, and, as she played and ate, twelve master-masons closed a vault over her; then, with clanging music, the wall was raised, and stood firm ever after. Thus Italian legend tells of the bridge of Arta, that fell in and fell in till they walled in the master-builder’s wife, and she spoke her dying curse that the bridge should tremble like a flower-stalk henceforth. The Slavonic chiefs founding Detinez, according to old heathen custom, sent out men to take the first boy they met and bury him in the foundation. Servian legend tells how three brothers combined to build the fortress of Skadra (Scutari); but, year after year, the demon (vila) razed by night what the three hundred masons built by day. The fiend must be appeased by a human sacrifice, the first of the three wives who should come bringing food to the workmen. All three brothers swore to keep the dreadful secret from their wives; but the two eldest gave traitorous warning to theirs, and it was the youngest brother’s wife who came unsuspecting, and they built her in. But she entreated that an opening should be left for her to suckle her baby through, and for a twelve-month it was brought. To this day, Servian wives visit the tomb of the good mother, still marked by a stream of water which trickles, milky with lime, down the fortress wall. Lastly, there is our own legend of Vortigern, who could not finish his tower till the foundation-stone was wetted with the blood of a child born of a mother without a father. As is usual in the history of sacrifice, we hear of substitutes for such victims; empty coffins walled up in Germany, a lamb walled in under the altar in Denmark to make the church stand fast, and the churchyard in like manner handselled by burying a live horse first. In modern Greece an evidentrelic of the idea survives in the superstition that the first passer-by after a foundation-stone is laid will die within the year, wherefore the masons will compromise the debt by killing a lamb or a black cock on the stone. With much the same idea German legend tells of the bridge-building fiend cheated of his promised fee, a soul, by the device of making a cock run first across; and thus German folk-lore says it is well, before entering a new house, to let a cat or dog run in.[143]From all this it seems that, with due allowance for the idea having passed into an often-repeated and varied mythic theme, yet written and unwritten tradition do preserve the memory of a bloodthirsty barbaric rite, which not only really existed in ancient times, but lingered long in European history. If now we look to less cultured countries, we shall find the rite carried on in our own day with a distinctly religious purpose, either to propitiate the earth-spirits with a victim, or to convert the soul of the victim himself into a protecting demon.
In Africa, in Galam, a boy and girl used to be buried alive before the great gate of the city to make it impregnable, a practice once executed on a large scale by a Bambarra tyrant; while in Great Bassam and Yarriba such sacrifices were usual at the foundation of a house or village.[144]In Polynesia, Ellis heard of the custom, instanced by the fact that the central pillar of one of the temples at Maeva was planted upon the body of a human victim.[145]In Borneo,among the Milanau Dayaks, at the erection of the largest house a deep hole was dug to receive the first post, which was then suspended over it; a slave girl was placed in the excavation; at a signal the lashings were cut, and the enormous timber descended, crushing the girl to death, a sacrifice to the spirits.St.John saw a milder form of the rite performed, when the chief of the Quop Dayaks set up a flagstaff near his house, a chicken being thrown in to be crushed by the descending pole.[146]More cultured nations of Southern Asia have carried on into modern ages the rite of the foundation-sacrifice. A17thcentury account of Japan mentions the belief there that a wall laid on the body of a willing human victim would be secure from accident; accordingly, when a great wall was to be built, some wretched slave would offer himself as foundation, lying down in the trench to be crushed by the heavy stones lowered upon him.[147]When the gates of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, were built about 1780, as Mason relates on the evidence of an eye-witness, a criminal was put in each post-hole to become a protecting demon. Thus it appears that such stories as that of the human victims buried for spirit watchers under the gates of Mandalay, of the queen who was drowned in a Burmese reservoir to make the dyke safe, of the hero whose divided body was buried under the fortress of Thatung to make it impregnable, are the records, whether in historical or mythical form, of the actual customs of theland.[148]Within our own dominion, when Rajah Sala Byne was building the fort of Sialkot in the Punjab, the foundation of the south-east bastion gave way so repeatedly that he had recourse to a soothsayer, who assured him that it would never stand until the blood of an only son was shed there, wherefore the only son of a widow was sacrificed.[149]It is thus plain that hideous rites, of which Europe has scarcely kept up more than the dim memory, have held fast their ancient practice and meaning in Africa, Polynesia, and Asia, among races who represent in grade, if not in chronology, earlier stages of civilization.
When Sir Walter Scott, in the ‘Pirate,’ tells of Bryce the pedlar refusing to help Mordaunt to save the shipwrecked sailor from drowning, and even remonstrating with him on the rashness of such a deed, he states an old superstition of the Shetlanders. ‘Are you mad?’ says the pedlar; ‘you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?’ Were this inhuman thought noticed in this one district alone, it might be fancied to have had its rise in some local idea now no longer to be explained. But when mentions of similar superstitions are collected among theSt.Kilda islanders and the boatmen of the Danube, among French and English sailors, and even out of Europe and among less civilized races, we cease to think of local fancies, but look for some widely accepted belief of the lower culture to account for such a state of things. The Hindu does not save a man from drowning in the sacred Ganges, and the islanders of the Malay archipelago share the cruel notion.[150]Of all people the rude Kamchadals have the prohibition in the most remarkable form. They hold it a great fault, says Kracheninnikow, to save a drowningman; he who delivers him will be drowned himself.[151]Steller’s account is more extraordinary, and probably applies only to cases where the victim is actually drowning: he says that if a man fell by chance into the water, it was a great sin for him to get out, for as he had been destined to drown he did wrong in not drowning, wherefore no one would let him into his dwelling, nor speak to him, nor give him food or a wife, but he was reckoned for dead; and even when a man fell into the water while others were standing by, far from helping him out, they would drown him by force. Now these barbarians, it appears, avoided volcanoes because of the spirits who live there and cook their food; for a like reason, they held it a sin to bathe in hot springs; and they believed with fear in a fish-like spirit of the sea, whom they called Mitgk.[152]This spiritualistic belief among the Kamchadals is, no doubt, the key to their superstition as to rescuing drowning men. There is even to be found in modern European superstition, not only the practice, but with it a lingering survival of its ancient spiritualistic significance. In Bohemia, a recent account (1864) says that the fishermen do not venture to snatch a drowning man from the waters. They fear that the ‘Waterman’ (i.e. water-demon) would take away their luck in fishing, and drown themselves at the first opportunity.[153]This explanation of the prejudice against saving the water-spirit’s victim may be confirmed by a mass of evidence from various districts of the world. Thus, in discussing the doctrine of sacrifice, it will appear that the usual manner of making an offering to a well, river, lake, or sea, is simply to cast property, cattle, or men into the water, which personally or by its indwelling spirit takes possession of them.[154]That the accidental drowning of a man is held to be such a seizure, savage and civilized folk-lore show by many examples. Among the Sioux Indians,it is Unk-tahe the water-monster that drowns his victims in flood or rapid;[155]in New Zealand huge supernatural reptile-monsters, called Taniwha, live in river-bends, and those who are drowned are said to be pulled under by them;[156]the Siamese fears the Pnük or water-spirit that seizes bathers and drags them under to his dwelling;[157]in Slavonic lands it is Topielec (the ducker) by whom men are always drowned;[158]when some one is drowned in Germany, people recollect the religion of their ancestors, and say, ‘The river-spirit claims his yearly sacrifice,’ or, more simply, ‘The nix has taken him:’[159]—