More difficult of interpretation is a horrible usage of the Hurons of North America. Unless they are belied, while torturing a prisoner to death, they would sometimes open the aorta and mingle the blood that gushed from it with some of their own, in the hope of being at all times apprised of an enemy’s approach, and so assuring safety against a sudden attack.245.2Let us compare it, however, with a few cases of cannibalism. The Botocudos devoured their fallen enemies, in the belief that they would thus be protected from the revenge of the dead and would be rendered invulnerable by the arrows of the hostile tribe.245.3The inhabitants of New Britain, notorious cannibals, eat their enemies, and fix the arm- and leg-bones of the men at the butt-end of their spears, thinking thus not only to acquire the strength of the deceased owner of the bone, but also to become invulnerable by his relatives.245.4When the Tchuktchis murder a man they eat a piece of his heart or liver, in order to make his kindred sick.245.5The Eskimo of Greenland do the like, because then the relations of the murdered man will lack the courage to revenge his death.245.6Even in the south of Italy it is still believed that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste, or beslubber himself with, his victim’s blood:245.7a superstitionwhich, in these days, has sometimes the contrary effect of leading to his discovery. By means of these examples we may perhaps conjecture the origin of the widely prevalent custom of eating the dead body of an enemy. Little doubt can at all events remain that the savage Hurons intended so to unite themselves with their captive that they would be secured from the blood-revenge of his kindred, and that it was against the kindred and them only that the precaution was adopted. And if this result could be attained by commingling the blood in a manner similar to that of the blood-covenant, it could also be achieved by eating a portion of the foe. Closely connected with cannibalism of the kind I am referring to is the custom ofalumbipractised by several tribes in Equatorial West Africa. It consists in serving in food to a guest powder scraped from the skull of a deceased ancestor. “The idea is, that by consuming the scrapings of the skull, the blood of their ancestors enters into your body, and thus, becoming of one blood, you are naturally led to love them and grant them what they wish.”246.1In other words, a blood-covenant is entered into unwittingly by the guest with his host; and it need hardly be said that the trick is only played on those guests whose hearts a greedy host considers it is worth his while to soften.
Naturally superstition extended the blood-covenant by analogy to the lower animals, both in their relations with one another and with man, and utilised it for human profit. Servian Gipsy thieves draw blood from the left shoulder of a stolen beast, dry it to powder and mix the powder with the fodder of other beasts which they intend to steal, so as to be able to capture them without hindrance.246.2AnIcelandic story is told of a fairy who used to send her kine to graze with those of a peasant-farmer. One day the farmer found a fairy cow in his stable. He cut its ear until it bled, and so appropriated the animal, to the fairy’s great annoyance.247.1The story is incomplete in not telling us what was done with the blood. It is clear, however, that a bond of blood was created which, in the stage of civilisation wherein the story arose, meant, as between man and one of the lower animals, ownership. From the Arctic circle to the southern Sporades may seem a far cry; yet it is from the island of Calymnos that we are able to supply the missing detail. One day in the spring of last year (1894) Mr. W. R. Paton saw a little girl, the daughter of a shepherd, with her face besmeared with blood. Her mother told him, by way of explanation, that the father had been marking the kids in his daughter’s name. Further inquiry showed that it was the custom to mark these animals by cutting their ears, every shepherd having his own distinctive mark, that they were marked in the name of one or other child of the family, and that some of the blood was smeared on the face of the child in whose name they were marked.247.2A better illustration could hardly be found of the manner in which the customs of one country will throw light upon the customs and traditions of another. Distance in space counts for naught where we are dealing with similar conditions of culture.
This sketch of totemism, including the means of union and communion between the clan and its totem on the one hand, and between the individual members of the clan on the other hand, is hasty and imperfect. Yet I hope it mayprove sufficient for our purpose, the more so as the writings of Professor Robertson Smith and Mr. Frazer, who have studied the subject with great detail, are happily easy of access. Without, therefore, dwelling longer upon it we may turn to glance at some of the modifications undergone by the ceremony of the blood-covenant. A rite so barbarous would not maintain itself unimpaired as culture advanced. Other rites are softened in course of time; a part is taken for the whole, or a sham for the real thing; and this is no exception. I have referred to some of the forms it has assumed, but only to such as bear to the most casual observer the mark and witness of the original whence they are derived. There remain to be briefly considered some of the remoter variations.
The sacramental essence of the rite has escaped many modern travellers. Yet it might have been thought obvious enough. It is, perhaps, most clearly brought out where the blood is mingled with the food of the participants. It has been well insisted on, and its connection with the totem-sacrifice exhibited at length, by Professor Robertson Smith. Nor, after what has been said about it in the foregoing pages, and after the analogous superstitions discussed in preceding chapters, is it necessary to dwell on the point here. But it can excite no surprise that the rite should have degenerated into a solemn meal eaten together by the persons entering into the new bond. In early times no one would have a right to eat together save the brethren of a clan; and on the other hand, all who ate together would, presumably at least, be members of the same clan. Hospitality—the relation of host and guest—would form the only exception; and hospitality, as practised in savage and barbarous communities, may be described as a temporary reception into the kin or family.But none save brethren habitually shared the common meal. To eat together, therefore, would of itself be a sign, though not an infallible sign, of kinship. Eating together is—not merely on solemn occasions, as the sacrifice of the totem-beast, but in a lesser degree at other times—an act of communion. The sharing of a common substance as food unites those who partake of it in a common life: it makes them parts of one another: they incorporate one another’s substance. This is the significance of eating “things sacrificed to idols,” and of “sitting at meat in an idol’s temple.” The idol is supposed to have partaken of the meat; and those who afterwards eat of it share by that act the idol’s life; they partake of his substance. This is the significance of the offering of first-fruits; the bulk is holy and fit for the worshippers’ food, because a portion, and through that portion the whole, is first united with the god. What is true of special feasts, and of communion with the god, holds good of everyday meals, and of communion by the clansmen with one another. To admit a stranger into the clan, then, it will be enough that he be allowed to partake of the common meal. If the admission be simply for a temporary purpose as a guest, it will take place without any extraordinary formalities. If a permanent union be contemplated, then ceremonies must be performed indicative of the intention, and uniting the parties in the unmistakable bond of a common life.
One or two examples will suffice. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal have now in many instances undergone a transformation, under the influence of the dominant Aryan religion and organisation, from tribal organisation and status into that of castes. The Mahilis, “a Dravidian caste of labourers, palanquin-bearers and workers in bamboo,found in Chota Nagpur and Western Bengal,” readily admit “men of any caste ranking higher than their own.” The person seeking admission “has merely to pay a small sum to the headman of the caste and to give a feast to the Mahilis of the neighbourhood. This feast he must attend himself and signify his entrance into the brotherhood by tasting a portion of the food left by each of the guests on the leaf which on these occasions serves as a plate.”250.1The Máls of Western and Central Bengal, another tribe which has become converted into a caste, while still retaining many distinctly tribal practices, also admit outsiders. The fashion among them is for the neophyte to give a feast to the Máls of the neighbourhood, and to drink water wherein the headman of the village has dipped his toes.250.2The Mysteries of Greece and Western Asia were celebrated with the sacrifice and consumption of the divine animal; and the persons who joined in the ceremony entered into a brotherhood which, though in the latter times of classic heathendom regarded as spiritual rather than literal, must have derived its significance from a more archaic state of society, when to partake of the totem-animal was to consummate the most sacred rite of kinship. Among the Battas of Sumatra alliances are concluded by the slaughter of a hog or cow. As soon as its throat is cut the heart is torn out and divided into as many pieces as there are chiefs present. The share of each is put on a pointed stick and roasted by holding it over the fire. In turn the chiefs then hold up their respective morsels, saying: “If I should ever violate my oath, I am willing to be slaughtered like the bleeding animal which lies before me, and to bedevoured like the piece of heart I am about to eat.”251.1This oath, which is reported to be more than a mere form, points back to an earlier period before the cow or the hog was substituted for a man. In classical antiquity a blood-rite of this kind is many times mentioned which not improbably may represent an early form of the blood-covenant. In the oath said to have been administered by Catiline to his fellow-conspirators, a slave was put to death, and every one drank out of the same cup his blood mingled with wine. The oath they swore was deemed irrevocable: it united them like the brethren of one blood to support one another in life and avenge one another’s death. The same is doubtless the meaning of the act recorded by Herodotus of the Greek and Carian allies of Psammenitus, when one of their number, Phanes of Halicarnassus, deserted to Cambyses, the Persian invader of Egypt. They put to death his sons in Phanes’ sight, drained their blood into a vase, which they filled up with wine and water, and, having drunk it together, they rushed madly but vainly on the foe.251.2And Diodorus Siculus relates of Apollodorus, who aspired in the third century before Christ to the government of the city of Cassandrea in Macedonia, that he slew a youth to the gods, gave his fellow-conspirators the entrails to eat and the blood mingled with wine to drink.251.3A relic of some such ceremony is found in India. Among the Saráogi Baniyás, who are reckoned of the Súdra caste, on the occasion of a marriage the relatives only of the parties meet in a private apartment around the figure of a Brahman, made in dough and filled with honey. The bridegroom’s father, “armed with a miniature bow and arrows, topples over the effigy,which is then disembowelled, so to speak, of its honey, into which all present dip a finger and suck it.”252.1In the New World the bloodthirsty Aztecs ate their human sacrifices. The Yncas, a little more human, offered and ate animals, called by De Molina sheep. Their sacrament consisted of a pudding of coarsely-ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim, before distributing it to the people.252.2A curious rite is reported as taking place among the Isubus, in the west of Africa, when entering into a covenant to do some murderous or warlike deed. A pot is placed upon the fire, and in the pot a stone, supposed to become by cooking as soft as a plantain. It is then cut with a knife, and each of the covenanting parties must swallow a piece, binding himself thereby to do or abet the deed proposed.252.3A Danubian Gipsy saga relates the mode of admission into a tribe. The chief eats with the candidate a piece of salted bread, and gives him brandy in a glass. When the brandy is drunk the glass is smashed.252.4Drinking, indeed, often becomes the substitute for eating. Among the aborigines of Formosa the manner of taking an oath of friendship is by putting their arms round one another’s necks and drinking simultaneously from the same cup of wine.252.5Among the Slavs the blood-covenant is still practised; and the Church has taken it under her own protection. In her hands it has become transformed into the ritual drinking of wine together. Thus in Crnagora the comrades who areabout to enter into the bond of brotherhood attend the church, where the priest awaits them. He hands them the chalice, out of which they thrice drink wine together. They kiss the cross, the gospels and the sacred images, and finally kiss one another thrice upon the cheek. Afterwards the one on whose suggestion the league is formed, gives a dinner to the brother of his choice and adds to it some more valuable gift.253.1
But we have seen that an entirely different modification of the rite early took place. The actual drinking of the blood was dropped in favour of mixing it by inoculation,253.2or outwardly upon the bleeding flesh. Among the Norsemen in later times the blood was drawn from each party and simply allowed to flow together in their footprints.253.3Herodotus describes the covenant among the Arabs on the borders of Egypt. Blood was drawn with a sharp stone from the thumb of either party. With a shred of each person’s robe it was then smeared upon seven sacred stones, with an invocation to the divinities Orotal and Alilat, whom the historian identifies with Dionysos and Urania.253.4Professor Robertson Smith commenting on the passage observes that the smearing on the stones “makes the gods parties to the covenant, but evidently thesymbolical act is not complete unless at the same time the human parties taste each other’s blood.” And he surmises that “this was actually done, though Herodotus does not say so. But,” he admits, “it is also possible that in the course of time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred stone.”254.1I cannot help thinking that what we have learnt in the course of our previous inquiries may help us to the solution of the difficulty. When Abruzzian girls hide their hairs in some secret place of the sanctuary on vowing eternal friendship, they seem at first sight to be performing an act parallel to that recorded of the Arabs; and if so we need not suspect that Herodotus has omitted any feature of the rite. Probably, however, the true explanation does not lie here. We may suppose that the shreds torn by the master of the ceremonies from either garment were roughly tied or twisted together into a wisp, which was then dipped into the flowing blood of both persons, and the blood thus mingled after the fashion of many tribes before it was painted on the stones; or, in the alternative, that the shred from the garment of the one person was dipped in the blood of the other. We have had abundant evidence that a man’s clothes are deemed a part of himself, and that what is done to them is done to him. To dip a portion of my clothes in my friend’s blood, therefore, is to unite me to him, to make him my blood-brother, without the necessity of tasting his blood, or even of literally mixing our blood together. In either way the act would be complete, and the historian’s accuracy justified. Even less than this is necessary among othernations. A man is deemed a blood-brother if the blood of another touch him only by accident and without any outpouring of his own blood. So Dr. Livingstone involuntarily contracted blood-relationship with a Balonda woman in opening a tumour in her arm, by the spurting of some of her blood in his eye.255.1Similarly in the Irish saga ofThe Wooing of Emerwe find Cuchulainn becoming the blood-brother of Devorgoil by sucking from her wound the stone that had struck her from his sling.255.2An Abruzzian prescription for epilepsy is for some one on the first attack of the disease to strike the patient on the ear with something of iron, so that the blood flows. The operator becomes the “gossip” (compare o comare) of the person thus cured. Here it seems to suffice if the blood simply touch the instrument used: a much degraded form of the rite, comparable with that in the Icelandic story of the fairy cow, and with the practice of scoring a witch. In a variant remedy, however, a person unacquainted with the patient bites the ear until the blood flows.255.3
A further modification of the rite appears in ancient Arabic literature, whereby the blood shed is not that of one of the contracting parties but of another human victim slain at the sanctuary, and the hands of all who shared in the compact were simply dipped into the gore. At first it would seem likely that the victim was already a member of one of the clans entering into the alliance. This was the case in the province of Zacatecas in Central America. The victim chosen was first mercifully intoxicated to deaden his pain. It does not appear that he was put to death;but his ears were pierced in turn by each member of the contracting clans, who rubbed the spurting blood over his own body.256.1After a while, however, the human victim would be dispensed with, or perhaps among many nations the victim may always have been a sacred animal, originally of course a totem-animal. So, among the Dyaks for the purpose of reconciling two foes, or of welcoming a stranger, a fowl is killed and its blood sprinkled over the parties and the dwelling.256.2In the Chittagong Hills the Kumi and the Shendoos kill a goat or a heifer and smear with its blood the feet and foreheads of the contracting parties. Before doing so, however, the presiding chief takes a mouthful of liquor from a cup and blows it over one party, blows another mouthful over the other party and a third over the victim. Some other ceremonies follow, including the imprecation frequently occurring on any one who violates the compact.256.3
The ritual of other peoples deviates yet more from the type. The cannibal Bondjos of Africa merely put red ochre on the arms and rub them together.256.4Two men of the Limbu, a Bengali tribe of Mongolian descent, contract brotherhood by a ceremony at which a Brahman, or, when the parties are Buddhists, a Lama, presides and reads mantras or mystic formulæ, while the two friends thrice exchange rupees, handkerchiefs or scarves, and daub each other between the eyebrows with a paste made of rice and curds. And the description of the performance holds good of the Muriari and other tribes of the same province.256.5In other parts of the world the rite further degenerates into the mere rubbing of noses, or the striking of one another’s breasts with an exchange of names.257.1Our hand-shaking is a pledge of goodwill and fidelity which, we can hardly doubt, points to the same course of ceremonial decay. The exchange of names, practised so frequently among savage peoples by intimate friends, has no different effect. For the name being part of the person, to confer it upon another and to take that other’s name in exchange is to effect union as close as the mixture of one another’s blood. Among the Abruzzians in Italy, as I mentioned just now, the blood-rite is not yet extinct. It is practised in a milder form by two girls who wish to swear eternal friendship after the manner of maidens. Taking each other by the hand and repeating certain prescribed rhymes, in which they pray with emphasis that the one who breaks the bond may go straight to hell, each of them pulls a hair from her own head and puts it on the other’s. Thenceforth they salute one another as “Gossip,” and may safely make one another the recipient of the most sacred confidences.257.2
It will readily be understood that the ceremony of the blood-covenant cannot be thus truncated and altered in a variety of ways without a corresponding change in the rights and liabilities, the privileges and disabilities, entailed where the clan system is in the plenitude of its sway. When a Dyak welcomes a stranger by sprinkling the blood of a domesticated bird, or when two Italian girls exchange hairs, one party to the performance is not admitted to thekin of the other. No legal tie of blood results from the ceremony. For all that, a tie is formed. The tie of hospitality, or the tie of gossipry, is, in the contemplation of the Italian peasant, or the Dyak, a tie involving rights and duties similar within its limits to those of blood. So when two Slavs enter into adoptive brotherhood, the evolution of society, which has mollified the rude rite, has also shorn it of many of the resulting consequences; and kinsmen of this kind often betroth their children together while yet in the cradle, in order, we are expressly told, to strengthen the bond between them258.1—a betrothal usually impossible in archaic society, because as a rule marriage within the kin is forbidden. But it does not come within my design to do more than point out that these differences arise in the consequences, as well as in the forms, of the rite, and in both cases from the same cause—the growth of civilisation.
There is an analogous group of practices the material of which is not the blood but the saliva. In an able and interesting paper, published in theTransactionsof the International Folklore Congress of 1891, Mr. J. E. Crombie has investigated the superstitions connected with the use of saliva. His contention is that it is sometimes believed to contain the element of life, that to spit upon another person is to add to the latter’s store of life some of one’s own, and that for two persons to spit upon one another is to effect an interchange of life. And he refers in support of his argument to various customs, among which may be mentioned the following. At the reception held by an Osmanli mother after childbirth, every visitor who looks at the babe is expected to spit on it and toconceal her admiration under such disparaging remarks as “Nasty, ugly little thing!” to show that she does not envy or ill-wish it. Among the Masai spitting on another expresses the greatest goodwill and best wishes. Pliny records the classical habit of spitting on a lame man or an epileptic, the reason given being to avoid fascination or repel contagion. For diseases of different kinds fasting spittle is a remedy. To cite Pliny again, he speaks of ophthalmia and crick in the neck being thus cured. Growing pains in children are treated in the same manner. Among the Samoans, when a man was ill his relatives used to assemble, and, after confessing whether he had wished the sick man any evil, each of them was required to take some water in his mouth and spurt it out towards him. In making a bargain or contract of any kind the saliva is employed. In Masailand the sale of a bullock is concluded by the seller spitting on the animal’s head and the purchaser on the article he is going to give in exchange. At Newcastle in old days when the colliers combined for the purpose of raising their wages they were said to spit together on a stone by way of cementing their confederacy. So the Anses and the Wanes in making a covenant of peace let fall into a vase each of them some of his saliva, out of which a being was made endowed with the wisdom of them all. And Mr. Henderson relates that in his school-days the highest pledge of faith two boys could give to one another was to spit.259.1
The exigencies of a Congress-paper no doubt compelled Mr. Crombie to shorten his list of examples. His conclusion is in harmony with the opinions advocated in the present volume. But if those opinions be correct we may go further than Mr. Crombie has ventured. The transfer of saliva is more than a gift of a portion of the spitter’s life. It is a gift of a portion of himself, which is thus put into the power of the recipient as a pledge of goodwill. Nay, it is a bodily union with the recipient, such as can be effected by a blood-covenant. Possibly as Mr. Crombie suggests, it is, where an interchange of saliva occurs, a form of blood-covenant consequent upon milder manners, like some of the modifications we have already glanced at. Rather it seems to be a more evanescent and less solemn, though still emphatic, form, intended only for temporary purposes. I hope the examples I propose to adduce will bear out this contention.
Let us first recall the uses to which we have, in previous chapters, found saliva put. Equally with the other issues of the body, it is a means of witchcraft whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps done to death. In the same way it is available as a means of compelling the love of one of the opposite sex. It is dangerous to spit into the fire. To spit the half of a piece of bread which the patient has been chewing, and has thereforemixed with his saliva, into a tree is in Transylvania a specific against toothache. And to spit in certain prescribed places is a remedy for various diseases. The natives of South America spit their coca-quids upon the cairns in the Cordilleras; and every Basuto traveller spits upon the pebble he is about to add to the heap outside the village he is approaching. It is hard to put any meaning into these superstitions, unless it be one that ignores the separation of the saliva from the body of which it once formed a part. Themärchencited in Chapter IX., by causing the heroine’s spittle to answer for her, as if she were present, after she has in fact fled from the ogre’s thraldom, exaggerate the identification of the saliva with its owner to the height of endowing it with a large measure of her consciousness and personality. The same exaggeration is to be observed in a practice among children in New England, doubtless derived from the old country, of divining by means of saliva where a bird’s nest, or something else for which they are searching, is. A boy will spit into the palm of his hand and striking the spittle with the forefinger of the other hand will say:
“Spit, spat, spot,Tell me where that bird’s nest is,”
“Spit, spat, spot,
Tell me where that bird’s nest is,”
(or as the case may be); and the direction in which the spittle flies will be that in which the search must be pursued.261.1
Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the first century of theChristian era, describes with great scorn a grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle finger.262.1Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative from spells.262.2And over the whole of Europe it is the most ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise, to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it. Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.262.3A visitor to Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.262.4The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the same thing) of fairies appears, however,to be only a specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his child.263.1Some such custom would seem to have been known in Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.263.2When Mohammed’s elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him Hasan.263.3Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits thrice in its face.263.4In Ashanti the father varies the performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and calling it by a name.263.5And in the Roman Catholic rite of baptism—a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common with these heathenish practices—the person operated on, whether babe or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.
Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his tongue.”263.6This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the kissing of the pope’s toe, to expressmere subservience; but other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of his saliva.264.1At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in one another’s hands.264.2On the other side of the continent, a stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of naturalisation.264.3Contact with the saliva thus effects union for the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a similar meaningto the Somali rule which requires chance passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.265.1If they thus unite themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful over his fetishes or his amulets.265.2And the Basuto diviners believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose their power and become like other mortals.265.3In these cases the spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling a drop or two of drink as a libation.
These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish, and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of water.265.4In Central America, whenever the native traveller came to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and, spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the altar.265.5And in the last chapter I had occasion torefer to the customs of Basuto travellers, which also present the attempt at union with the god in a form analogous to those just mentioned of the Kafirs and Bissagos islanders.
So the custom of spitting on one’s money for luck appears to be an emphatic way of identifying oneself with it. It is usual in England for country people attending a market to sell, to spit on the first money received and put it into a pocket apart; and the object is rightly suggested in an old dictionary “to render it tenacious that it may remain with them, and not vanish away like a fairy gift.”266.1A Walloon receiving money from one suspected of sorcery bites it, otherwise it would return to the sorcerer, together with all the pieces in contact with it in the pocket.266.2The biting is evidently a method of touching the coin with the saliva. So an Eskimo licks anything which is given him; while in some parts of England it is believed that to spit on a gift, such as a piece of money, is to ensure more.266.3For the same reason, as noted in a previous chapter, the Danubian Gipsy who desires to assure a maiden’s love will obtain some of her hairs, spit on them, and then hide them in the coffin of a dead man. A Transylvanian Saxon in a business matter, before he pays the first money, spits on it, that it may bring him more.266.4An Esthonian, if he be required to empty his purse, will spit into it.266.5A Spaniard, in buying a lottery ticket, spits on the money before handing it over, in the hope of thus securing the winningnumber. Others spit on the ground, put the foot on the spittle, and only take it off on receiving the ticket.267.1The Persian gamester, who always attributes losses to the Evil Eye, blows on the cards or the dice, and feigns to spit on his money before staking it on the game.267.2In France a player spits on his chair.267.3The Cherokee fisherman, before baiting his hook, chews a small piece of Venus’ Flytrap, and spits it upon the bait and the hook, at the same time repeating an incantation addressed to the fish. “Our spittle,” he says, “shall be in agreement,” implying, as Mr. Mooney tells us, “that there shall be such close sympathy between the fisher and the fish that their spittle shall be as the spittle of one individual.”267.4A Girondin fisherman, having baited his hook, spits on the worm to make the fish bite better.267.5In Norway the fisherman also spits upon the bait for luck; the tradesman and the working-man spit on the first money they take. In the Lofoden Islands the fisherman’s wife accompanies him to the boat, and always spits in it to bestow luck upon him.267.6In Upper Ogowe, in Africa, a fetish-horn is shaken around a man to bring him luck, a certain herb is chewed and the quid is spit out upon him; and in the same way chewed herbs are spit upon a new-born child to preserve it from spells. Among the Okandas of the same region, in order to assure to a pirogue a prosperous voyage, the women come with a bouquet of leaves. Striking the forepart of the vessel with the leaves, they make a noise as of driving away something, and finally spit upon it.267.7Olenda, the king of the Ashira inEquatorial Africa, when he gave his parting blessing to his sons and Du Chaillu, whom they were to accompany on a journey, took a sugar-cane, and biting off a piece of the pith spat a little of the juice in the hand of each of the party, at the same time blowing on the hand.268.1In his book on the Highlands of Æthiopia Major Cornwallis Harris describes a search for a lost camel. The man who was sent on the search was given the rope wherewith the animal had been fettered; but before it was put into his hands, spells were muttered over it; and we are told that “the devil was dislodged by the process of spitting upon the cord at the termination of each spell.”268.2So in the old Roman Catholic liturgy, when the priest puts his spittle on the ears and nose of the person he is baptizing he says: “Effeta, quod est adaperire, in odorem suavitatis; tu autem effugare, diabole, adpropinquavit enim judicium Dei!”268.3This conjuring formula perhaps derives its value from the blessed wordEffeta, transliterated in our Bibles asEphphatha, used by Christ, and having nothing to do with the dislodgment of the devil to which the latter part of the spell, like those muttered over the camel-fetter, refers. Moreover, the dislodgement of the devil is an incomplete explanation in both cases, as we shall see directly.
There is a remarkable method practised among some savages for quelling a refractory wild animal when caught alive; and here, as in some other instances, we find Western Africa in curious agreement with North America.Mr. Kane went out with a Cree Indian to hunt the buffalo, and killed a cow which was followed by her calf. “Wishing,” he says, “to take the calf alive, so that it might carry itself to the camp, I pursued and caught it, and, tying my sash round its neck, endeavoured to drag it along; but it plunged and tried so violently to escape that I was about to kill it, when the Indian took hold of its head, and turning up its muzzle, spat two or three times into it, when, much to my astonishment, the animal became perfectly docile, and followed us quietly to the camp, where it was immediately cooked for supper.”269.1There is no ground for doubting the facts related by the traveller, however we may account for them. The same procedure was adopted by a turtle-fisher with whom Mr. Winwood Reade went sporting on one occasion in Western Africa. A turtle was caught, and on being hauled into the canoe the man “welcomed him by patting him on the head and spitting down his mouth.” The turtles, however, are not always so submissive as Mr. Kane’s buffalo-calf; for the fisherman showed Mr. Reade a scar on his arm, which a turtle had once inflicted in retribution.269.2Exactly the same prescription is adopted by the Icelandic parson to lay a ghost. He spits down his throat, or in his face; and the performance is said to be effective.269.3
In some of the foregoing illustrations protection against the Evil Eye, or the driving away of evil spirits, has appeared as the reason for spitting. The habit is one almost universal as a counter-charm to witchcraft. If we look at it a little more closely we shall see that it is ultimatelyreferable to the same idea as other spitting customs, namely, that of effecting union between the person spitting and the object on which his saliva falls. This may be done by spitting upon one’s clothes, money, or other property, so as to guard them against attack, as in the case of the gamester’s money or his chair. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, Dr. Brinton records that boys always used to spit on a pair of new boots; and it was important to prevent others from doing the same: hence frequent struggles and teasing at school.270.1The superstition is derived from Europe, where Reginald Scot prescribed, centuries ago, and Pliny centuries before him, spitting into the right shoe before putting it on: a similar practice to that said to be still in use in some parts of Scandinavia of spitting into one’s bed before lying down, spitting upon the floor before rising, upon the grass before sitting down, or into a spring before drinking from it.270.2Captain Binger’s host in one of the villages on the tributaries of the upper Niger never put on his trousers without spitting into them, and never sat down without spitting on the seat.270.3A Clal-lum of North America on meeting an enemy will spit into his own blanket if he happen to be wearing one at the time.270.4In the same way a maiden in Theocritus, on repelling a lover who attempted to kiss her, spat thrice in the breast of her gown.270.5Pliny describes the Roman practice of spitting into the lap as a method of asking pardon of the gods, when indulging in some extravagant hope. It ismore probably to be assigned to the kind of superstitions we are now dealing with. In the same chapter he mentions the practice of spitting into one’s urine as a counter-charm.271.1Parallel with the latter practice is that alluded to by Delrio of spitting thrice on one’s hair-combings before throwing them away.271.2In various parts of Italy, if a stone become lodged in a horse’s hoof, it is usual to take the precaution of spitting on it before throwing it away.271.3In addition to the Scandinavian customs just mentioned we also find those of spitting on throwing water out of doors, of spitting on the straw worn in the shoe before throwing it away, into the bath-water of a new-born child, into the water in which another has washed before washing in it oneself (a practice not unknown in England) and others all referable to the same purpose.271.4The Transylvanian Saxons used to spit on the four corners of a new house, saying a prayer at each corner and kissing it; and to protect their belongings from envy they spit and repeat a certain spell every morning on stepping out over the threshold of the house.271.5In Silesia it is proper to spit into the fodder given to a horse, so as to protect it from witchcraft.271.6In Lesbos it is customary to spit on beholding a handsome person (man or woman), a sleek, well-fed horse, cow or sheep, a good milch-goat, or a fruitful tree,in order to preserve the object in question from the Evil Eye.272.1In America a Negro, on turning back in a path, makes a cross with his foot and spits in it, lest misfortune overtake him the next time he passes that way.272.2
Another course is to spit on the witch. For this cause the Romans used to spit on meeting not only a lame man, but apparently also an epileptic; for although Pliny speaks of the latter habit as intended to repel contagion, it is more likely a modification of an earlier habit of spitting on the unfortunate person. In Sicily still it is the custom to spit behind a hunchback or a sorcerer. A mother will spit at any one who admires her child, the moment he has turned his back. And when a woman is in the pains of childbirth, one of her attendant friends will go to the window and spit thrice, looking sternly all about, as if she hoped to find and reach with her saliva the witch who is retarding delivery. The Roman nurses used to spit on the ground when a stranger entered, or when any one looked at their sleeping charges.272.3A Russian nurse, with less civilised manners, is said to spit straight in the face of anybody who praises the babe without adding: “God save the bargain!”272.4In Corsica a bewitched child is made to spit in the witch’s mouth.272.5It is a Norse custom to spit on meeting a witch. In the Gironde people sometimes spit thrice in passing a witch’s dwelling. In Germany there seems to be a similar practice when passing any haunted water by night. The Romans spat when passing a place where they had incurred any danger. The intention here is by spitting on the evil thing so to bring it on your side as to prevent its doing youany ill; and the same may be conjectured of the incident said to occur in a Russian tale where the Devil is made to flee by spitting upwards, and of the rite of exorcism on the Gaboon, where the practitioner spits to right and left of the possessed person. The Conibos of South America spit on the ground when they meet evil spirits or persons whom they suppose capable of injuring them.273.1
A third course is to get the witch to spit on her victim. This is considered effective in the Aran Islands, where the possessor of an evil eye is required to spit on any one whom he may have affected, and to say: “God bless you!”273.2Captain Bourke mentions a Mexican case where a horse was suffering from the Evil Eye. “The man accused of casting the spell admitted his guilt, but said that he would cure the animal at once. He filled his mouth with water, spat upon the horse’s neck, and rubbed and patted the place until it was dry.” The horse recovered in due course.273.3For the same reason in Italy the dust of the witch’s footprint is flung over the person or cattle bewitched, and the Persians scrape the mud from the sorcerer’s shoes and rub the part affected.273.4The principle is that of taking “a hair of the dog that bit you,” to which I have already sufficiently referred.
The saliva of sacred personages, as we might expect, is of much importance. In this connection the performances of Christian as well as heathen priests in exorcism andother rites will be remembered. The Tunguz shaman, called in to cure a sick man, “takes the patient’s head between his hands, sucks his brow, spits in his face, and fixedly looks at the affected part.”274.1A Tcheremiss conjuror pronounces his spells over a vessel of water, beer, milk or salt and bread, blows or spits upon the contents, and then gives them to the invalid to drink or eat, as the case may be.274.2In Central Australia the old men are the performers of all important tribal ceremonies. They are credited with shamanistic powers; and their treatment of disease is by spurting a mouthful of water over the stricken member and then sucking it.274.3On the Paraguay River, the Guaná medicine-man, when called to attend a patient, spits in the course of his ceremonies strenuously on the suffering spot.274.4Spitting, in fact, when performed by properly qualified practitioners, is a powerful remedy. Vespasian is said to have restored his sight to an inhabitant of Alexandria by spitting on his eyes.274.5The old thaumaturgists of the Church were not wont to be outdone by any one—not even by their Lord, still less by a heathen Pontifex Maximus. Accordingly, we find Hilarion (the saint, it will be recollected, who had so excellent a nose) repeating Vespasian’s miracle on a woman, also in Egypt.274.6More purely spiritual are some other uses of spitting. At Foochow, in China, when a family removes to a house previously occupiedby another family, a priest first of all cleanses the dwelling by spirting water from his mouth, or scattering it direct from the bowl he carries; and on returning from a funeral the priest stands at the house-door and spirts from his mouth water over the members of the bereaved family to purify them, repeating as he does so a short formula.275.1Among the Khonds the Meriah, previous to his sacrifice, was paraded through the village, when hairs were plucked from his head by the people, while some begged for a drop of his saliva, with which they anointed their own heads.275.2Dr. Wolf, when in Abyssinia, being mistaken for the new Abuna, or bishop, was compelled to spit upon the people, and to have his feet washed that the devotees might drink the water of ablution.275.3Cases like these are ambiguous: a different and simpler interpretation may be put upon them. In view, however, of other customs relating to saliva, we shall probably not be straining the analogy by describing the fundamental idea rather as the desire for union with the divinity, than the ascription of an inherent power to his emanations.
Having now sketched the results arrived at by Professor Robertson Smith and other distinguished anthropologists in reference to the blood-covenant, and briefly discussed several forms of the rite, I have endeavoured to put beforethe reader a series of parallel usages with saliva. This has led us to other superstitions more closely related to those of sorcery, medicine and worship earlier passed in review. In all these alike we have found the same ideas—the ideas, namely, which form the core of the incident of the Life-token and the practices it embodies. Armed with the conclusions drawn from the consideration of the blood-covenant, we will go on to examine some other social institutions and ceremonies on various planes of civilisation.
IfI have made clear the corporate character of the clan, orgens, as conceived by savage thought, the reader will have understood how completely the clan is regarded as an unity, literally and not metaphorically one body, the individual members of which are as truly portions as the fingers or the legs are portions of the external, visible body of each of them. We saw in previous chapters that a severed limb, a lock of hair or a nail-clipping, was still regarded as in some invisible but real union with the body whereof it once, in outward appearance also, formed part; and any injury inflicted on the severed portion was inflicted on the bulk. The individual member of a clan was in exactly the same position as a lock of hair cut from the head, or an amputated limb. He had no separate significance, no value apart from his kin. More than that: as we shall see hereafter, injury inflicted on him was inflicted on, and was felt by, the whole kin, just as an injury inflicted on the severed lock or limb was felt by the bulk. This unity of the clan is constantly renewed by the common meal, where the same food is partaken of, and becomes incorporated into the essence of all who share it. In strictness commensal rights belongonly to the kin. To eat together means to be of the same flesh and blood, for none others could do so. Such a rule of course came to be modified as soon as hospitality was recognised as a duty or a privilege. But the stranger admitted as a guest to the meal became by that act a temporary member of the kin. The rights conceded to him so long as he remained a guest were the rights of kinship, and entailed corresponding liabilities. He could not, however, share the common meal in its most solemn form, namely, the totem sacrifice, without becoming a blood-brother, and thus entering the kin as a permanent member. In mingling his blood with the blood of the clan, and feeding with them on the totem-animal, he became one with them as much as if he had been already united with them in a common descent. Abandoning his former country and kin and worship, he identified himself with a new organism having a different domicile with different rights and interests and a different cult.
The common meal was thus the pledge and witness of the unity of the kin, because it was the chief means, if not of making, at least of repairing and renewing it. And its importance is emphasised everywhere by its repetition upon every solemn occasion, and by its forming the centre of the entire ritual. This may be taken for granted of many such occasions; but it may seem strange to assign it a position so prominent in some. It is not obvious, for instance, how it can be the most important act of a funeral. The funeral feast, however, is probably universal; and in savage communities it is difficult to overrate its significance. The most archaic form, if barbarity be a test of archaism, in which it is known to us, is where the meat is nothing less than the corpse of the departed kinsman. Cannibalism inany form excites so much horror in civilised mankind that we hesitate to believe it is a stage through which we have all passed. But it is certainly a custom very widely spread and characteristic of a low plane of culture. We cannot, and we need not, now discuss cannibalism in general. Of all the forms it has ever assumed, the most horrible is that of the eating of the bodies of our nearest and dearest; and that is the form we have to consider.
In considering it, and recalling, as we must, some of the repulsive details of the rite, we cannot do better than begin by reminding ourselves of the anecdote related by Herodotus of the Persian king, Darius, to illustrate the power of custom. He tells us that the monarch once called into his presence some Greeks, who were in the habit of burning their dead, and asked them for what reward they would be willing to devour the bodies of their parents. They replied, of course, that nothing would induce them to do such a thing. Then summoning certain Kalatiai, an Indian people who used to eat their dead, in the presence of the Greeks (who were informed by an interpreter of what was being said) he put the converse question to them, for how much they would burn their deceased parents. They, on the other hand, broke out into exclamations, begging him to desist from such ill-omened language. Leaving the moral of this story to be digested as we proceed, we may review some of the other accounts by ancient and modern travellers of the practice under consideration. The Father of History ascribes it not only to the Kalatiai. Among Indian peoples he mentions the Padaioi, concerning whom he furnishes us with a little more detail. The Padaioi were a race of nomads alleged to feed on raw flesh. When any of the tribesmen fell sick they weremercilessly put to death by their most intimate associates, by which expression is perhaps meant their fellow-clansmen. The men were killed by the men, and the women by the women. They sacrificed all who arrived at old age, and feasted upon them. But these were not numerous, because they slaughtered every one attacked by disease. That even the latter were intended to be eaten is clear from the reason for putting them to death, namely, that otherwise as they were wasted by sickness their flesh would be utterly spoilt.280.1In this respect they differed for the worse from the Massagetai, the Scythian nation whose fierce and masculine queen overcame the mighty Cyrus. They only ate the aged. Those who died of disease they stowed away in the earth, accounting it a misfortune that they had not come to be sacrificed. The kindred of an old man would assemble and immolate him, as well as other animals at the same time; and then boiling the flesh all together they would feast upon it. The Issedones, also Scythians, seem to have been somewhat less savage, for we gather that they waited until a natural death removed the aged. When once a man’s father was dead, the rite, however, was not different from that of the Massagetai, save that we are told they preserved the skull, set it in gold, and used it at their solemn yearly festivals.280.2Herodotus is not the only writer of antiquity who attributes this kind ofcannibalism to savage tribes. The geographer Strabo likewise records of the Derbikes in the Caucasus that the men of seventy and upwards were put to death and eaten by their nearest kinsmen, but the women were buried; for they never used for food the flesh of any female animal. And the ancient Irish, more savage, he tells us, than the Britons, considered it praiseworthy to devour their dead fathers, though he admits very fairly that his authority for the statement is not decisive.281.1In the Middle Ages Marco Polo found a tribe in Tartary, whose capital he calls Chandul, who used to cook and eat men condemned to death. Those who died by natural means, on the other hand, they did not eat.281.2It is doubtful whether he refers to criminals as thus eaten; and he is silent as to who joined in the feast. No such ambiguity attaches to the usage reported by the Venetian adventurer as existing in the kingdom of Deragola on the island of Sumatra. The savages of this kingdom, when any kinsman fell sick, used to send for their shamans, who made incantations to ascertain whether he would recover. If the answer were favourable, nature was left to do her best; if unfavourable, they sent for the professional slaughterman, by whom he was suffocated and cooked. The next of kin then assembled and devoured him, afterwards enclosing his bones in a coffin, which was put away in a mountain cavern.281.3Less authentic are the accounts preserved by the author of Sir John Maundeville’s travels concerning the East Indian islands. He attributes a similar practice to the inhabitants of islands he calls Caffolos and Dondun. Of that of Rybothe he relates that a dead body is givento the birds of prey, but that the son of the deceased makes a feast, and serves the flesh of the head to his particular friends, making a drinking cup of the skull, which he uses for the rest of his life.282.1Other mediæval writers ascribe the same species of cannibalism to Tibetan tribes.282.2
These statements have received confirmation in modern times from the reports of travellers among tribes in the lower savagery almost everywhere. As in the older writers, there is some ambiguity on the question who was expected or entitled to partake of the horrible food. A comparison, however, of the accounts clearly shows that it was originally confined to the clan, though possibly the melancholy satisfaction of uniting oneself with the departed in this manner may, in different places, have been extended by special favour to intimate friends not belonging to the kin, or, by a modification of tribal customs, to the entire local organisation. Not to weary the reader I have selected in a note at the foot of the page a number of references to cases where the rite is reported to exist in full force;282.3and I now proposeto examine some changes and adaptations of its form down to its latest survivals in the folklore of civilised Europe.
But first of all we may take note of some observances among the American aborigines, which, though not connected with funerals, afford us a glimpse of the sacramentalcharacter of a feast upon a kinsman’s body. The Totonacas, a tribe of the Mexican Chichimecs, used to slay periodically three of their children and mix the blood with certain herbs from the temple-garden, and the sap of theCassidea elastica, into the consistency of dough, which was calledtoyoliayt la quatl(Food of our Life). Every six months all adults of the tribe were required to partake of it as a kind of Eucharist. And the compiler, from whom I take the account, sarcastically adds: “They thus partook of human blood without previous miraculous transformation.” The Cacivos of Peru are also said to sacrifice and eat a voluntary victim every year.284.1The Aztecs and the peoples allied to them are infamous for the hideous barbarity of their human sacrifices; and indeed it is incalculable what benefits were conferred on these unhappy nations in the softening of manners and the refinement of character, not to mention the salvation of immortal souls, when the sanguinary rites of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli were swept away, to make room for the Unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass and the hecatombs of the Holy Inquisition. Among the Aztecs a prisoner of war was esteemed his captor’s son. He was generally sacrificed at the feast of Xipetotec, deity of the goldsmiths, and Huitzilopochtli. The body was returned to the captor, who cut it up and divided it betweenhis superiors, relations and friends, not tasting it himself, because “he counted it as the flesh of his own body.” He gave the skin to be worn for twenty days by another, who went about during that time collecting gifts for the captor. At another festival of Huitzilopochtli a dough statue of the god was made with certain seeds and the blood of children. It was formally “killed” at the conclusion of the ceremonies, by means of a flint-tipped dart, and then cut up and eaten by the male part of the population. This was called the killing and eating of the god.285.1Nor can we doubt that we have in these rites vestiges of totemistic feasts at which the totem-victim was not improbably represented by a kinsman.
We return to funeral feasts. The Fans of Equatorial West Africa have repeatedly been charged with this kind of cannibalism, but, while asserting it of their neighbours, have always denied it of themselves. The solution seems to lie in the fact that they sell their dead to the Osebas, who are recognised as a kindred race, and buy in return Oseba bodies for the purpose of consumption.285.2In short, repugnance to eat their own relatives has sprung up, without entire abandonment of anthropophagy. A curious compromise between burial in the earth and in the bodies of living members of the tribe appears in an account of the ceremonies on the death of a recent king of the Bangala. He was cut in two lengthwise, and another man slain for the purpose was treated in like manner. One half of the one, and a half of the other, were then put together, so as toform an entire man, and buried. The remaining halves were stewed with manioc and bananas and eaten with other sacrifices.286.1In some cases the flesh of the dead is only eaten in the delirium of grief, or as a mark of particular affection. The latter is related to have frequently happened on the demise of a Hawaiian chief.286.2For the same reason mothers, among the Botocudos of South America, ate their dead children.286.3While in California the Gallinomero burnt the body immediately life became extinct; and the frenzy of survivors reached such a pitch that one of them has been seen to rush up to the pyre, snatch a handful of blazing flesh, and devour it on the spot.286.4A method of consuming the corpse adopted by the savage tribes inhabiting the valley of the Uaupes, a tributary of the Amazons, is described by Dr. Wallace. Their houses are generally built to accommodate the entire community; and the dead are buried beneath the floor. About a month after the funeral, Dr. Wallace tells us, the survivors “disinter the corpse, which is then much decomposed, and put it in a great pan, or oven, over the fire, till all the volatile parts are driven off with a most horrible odour, leaving only a black carbonaceous mass, which is pounded into a fine powder, and mixed in several largecouchés(vats made of hollowed trees) of a fermented drink calledcaxirí; this is drunk by the assembled company till all is finished; they believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers.” Similar customs are reported ofother South American peoples.287.1Among the Koniagas, an Eskimo tribe of Alaska and the adjacent islands, when a whaler dies, one method of disposing of his body is to place it in a cave. There his fellow-craftsmen congregate, before setting out upon a chase. They take the body out, immerse it in a stream and then drink of the water.287.2