A cake, an apple or a sweetmeat impregnated with the sweat of the giver is a powerful philtre throughout the greater part of northern and central Europe from Cairn Gorm to the Carpathians. Sugar in the same condition is sometimes given in drink.123.2Nor can I suggest any better reason for the Hungarian recommendation to a lass to steal meal and honey at Christmas, bake a cake thereout and take it to bed with her for one night, afterwards giving it to the lad of her choice to eat.123.3When a spell has been cast upon a Finnish woman to wean her affections from her husband, they may be recalled by drinking of a running stream out of his shoe and throwing the shoe upside down over her shoulder.123.4Here too the chief motive seems the same. Among the Pennsylvanian Germans an instance was known by Dr. Hoffmann of a widow who sent a cake, one of the ingredients whereof was a small quantity of cuticle scraped from her knee, to a man whose love she desired.123.5The bread mentioned by Burchard of Worms, as made by women and given to their husbands to inflame their conjugal passion, appears to have owed its efficacy to the absorption of their perspiration or particles of skin; and the interpretation is confirmed by the confessors’ manuals formerly, if not still, in use in the Greek Church, wherewomen are accused of the practice of rubbing dough on their bodies, and giving to eat to men in whom they wished to arouse satanic love.124.1It is a Negro-Indian, as well as a Belgian, superstition that if you give a dog some bread soaked in your sweat, he will have to follow you to the ends of the earth: he is yours.124.2He has eaten and absorbed into his own substance a part of you, and has thus become united with you.
One’s blood is of course a powerful potion. In Denmark the prescription is three drops introduced into an apple or dropped into a cup of coffee, and so consumed by the person intended.124.3In Transylvania a girl puts a drop from her left hand in a cake to be eaten by the lad on New Year’s Eve.124.4An old recipe in the Netherlands—and one current, with variations, in other parts of Europe—is to take a wafer not yet consecrated, write some words on it with blood from the ring-finger, and let the priest say five masses over it. Then divide it into two equal parts and give one to the person whose love is to be won, retaining the other half oneself. Many a chaste maiden has been fordone by this means.124.5Blood, as well as hair and sweat, is an approved philtre among the Danubian Gipsies both for inward and outward application. A bride and bridegroom of the northern stock, before setting out for their wedding, smear the soles of their left feet with one another’s blood. And a bride of the southern stock, or a bride of the SerbianGipsies, will seek on her wedding night to smear unobserved a drop of blood from her left hand in her husband’s hair, in order that he may be true to her. Gipsies also give their blood to their cattle and dogs to prevent them from being stolen, or perhaps from straying.125.1Among the Magyars, if a girl can smear the warm blood of the little finger of her left hand in a lad’s hair, he must always be thinking of her; and a man who can induce his wife unwittingly to eat his name written in his blood can thus assure her fidelity.125.2A maiden who can get some of a youth’s blood unknown to him and rub it on the soles of a corpse binds him to her for ever.125.3But, alike in Esthonia, in Denmark, in Germany and in Italy, in Scotland, in the valley of the Danube, and, if we may trust the confessors’ manuals just cited, in the Balkan peninsula, a woman regards her menstruous blood as the most effective: an opinion rife, too, among the mixed population of central Brazil.125.4Conversely, the other sex has its peculiar product, which is equally esteemed;125.5while the impurer issues of the bodycommon to both sexes are also made use of.126.1Students are referred to the authorities below-cited for details.
Saliva is also a favourite fluid. I have already mentioned some applications of it. In Hungary it often supplies the place of blood.126.2Gipsy girls in the valley of the Danube steal some of the hair of their beloved, boil it down to a pap with quince-kernels and a few drops of their own blood taken from the little finger of the left hand. They chew this pap, repeating a charm, and then smear it on the raiment of the youth, in order that he may find no rest, unless with the maid who has thus bespelled him.126.3Or a blade of grass gathered on Saint George’s Day before sunrise is held in the mouth while a spell is muttered; and it is then placed in the food of the person whose affection is sought.126.4In the early part of this century rustic lovers in France were said to seal their troth by spitting into one another’s mouths.126.5Signor Gigli reports a curious customat Taranto, the origin and significance whereof are not clear to him, but perhaps may be explained by the practices we are now considering. A young man announces his love by prowling about under the windows of the fair one. She easily understands what he means, and, if averse to the match, withdraws inside the house. On the other hand, if desirous of encouraging her suitor, she leans out and spits on his happy head.127.1Among the Cherokees a young and jealous bridegroom watches his bride until she sleeps, when he begins to chant:
“Listen! O now you have drawn near to hearken—Your spittle I take it, I eat it.”
“Listen! O now you have drawn near to hearken—
Your spittle I take it, I eat it.”
Repeating this four times (four is a sacred number among the American aborigines), he moistens his fingers with saliva and rubs it on her breast. The ceremony is reiterated, with variations in the song, the three following nights, and is wound up on each occasion with a prayer addressed to the “Ancient One;” after which no husband need have any fears about his wife.127.2In Silesia and in certain parts of Italy bread whereon one has spit is given to a dog to attach him to the giver.127.3In other parts of Italy, in Corsica and in the Gironde the direction is to spit into his mouth.127.4About Chemnitz a goose is passed between the legs thrice and given three mouthfuls of chewed bread; and she will always come home.127.5
Many of the philtres I have mentioned are put into food.Food-philtres are not always equally objectionable in character. It is a Scandinavian saying that if a girl and boy eat of one morsel, they grow fond of each other.128.1In many parts of the East Indies the custom of chewing betel-nut is universal, and the quid has become a symbol of love. It is employed as a love charm; it is given as a pledge of love; and the chewing by both parties of one quid is an essential—indeed,theessential—part of the wedding ceremony.128.2The idea embodied in food-philtres underlies also other usages. A familiar example is that of drinking at the Fountain of Trevi by visitors to Rome before they leave, as a charm to draw them back.
Many of the philtres, too, as we have seen, are deemed sufficient if brought into contact with the beloved object by being placed upon, or fastened into, his or her clothes. A few examples may be added. Magyar peasants make a sort of fetish which bears the name ofczolonk. It is fashioned at Christmas of aspen-wood, is an efficient protection not only against witches and devils, but also against bullets and swords, and accordingly is worn next to the skin in all perilous enterprises. Every year the old one is burnt, and the ashes mixed with milk are scattered in the cattle-stalls. But a love-spell may be framed by sprinkling theczolonkwith one’s own blood before burning it, and strewing the ashes on the garments of the person to be love-witched.128.3A Gipsy girl will drop warm blood from her left foot secretly in the shoes or stockings of her beloved, so to bind his footsteps night and day to herself.128.4In Hesse it seems to be evenenough to steal a shoe or boot from the object of desire, carry it about for eight days, and then restore it.129.1Lucian, writing in the second century, makes mention of a different mode of dealing with a man’s belongings. The witch takes some portion of his clothing, or a few hairs, or something else of his, and hanging them on a nail she fumigates them with incense, and sprinkling salt in the fire she pronounces the name of the woman, with it coupling the man’s name. Further spells are muttered to the twirling of a spindle; and the charm is complete. If we may believe one of the interlocutors in the Dialogue, the spell is most effective, for she had herself tested its power.129.2It can hardly be more effective than the boiling of a sock on Saint Thomas’ night, said to be practised in the Land beyond the Forest, which has given rise to the proverbial expression, for one who is restless, that some one has boiled his stockings.129.3Theocritus, in his second idyll, presents Simaetha casting into the magical flame some fringe from the cloak of Delphis, whom she loves, as part of a similar charm to that mentioned by Lucian. Any youth on whose raiment a maiden of the Seven Cities has bound a thread spun by herself on Saint Andrew’s Day (30th November) will be inflamed with love for her.129.4Albanian wives (as provident as the wives in Brazil) are in the habit of sewing in their husbands’ gearwhen the latter are going from home little objects which they themselves have worn as talismans, to bring them safely back.130.1In Eastern Africa no Taveta woman will part with her loin-cloth to a man for any consideration after she has once worn it, for “she would be under some sexual subjection to him”; he could bewitch her by means of it, and take her away from her husband and friends.130.2
The speaker in the Dialogue I have cited from Lucian goes on to tell her friend of an easy and efficient method of destroying a rival’s influence over the beloved. It is to watch the unhappy rival as she walks and to efface her footprint, immediately it is made, with her own, taking care to put her right foot in her rival’s left footmark, andvice versâ, and repeating the while: “Now I am over thee, and thou art under me.” This is not exactly a philtre: it rather belongs to the practices dealt with in the last chapter. Among the Danubian peoples, however, love-charms are made from footprints. A Gipsy girl, for instance, digs up the youth’s footprint made upon Saint George’s Day, and buries it under a willow (willows are favourite trees in Gipsy sorcery), saying:
“Earth pairs with the Earth;He too whom I love shall become mine!Grow, willow, grow,Take away my heart’s woe!He the axe and I the haft,I the hen and he the cock—That is my aim.”130.3
“Earth pairs with the Earth;
He too whom I love shall become mine!
Grow, willow, grow,
Take away my heart’s woe!
He the axe and I the haft,
I the hen and he the cock—
That is my aim.”130.3
In Transylvania a Saxon maid will dig up her lover’s footmark, made on St. John’s Day, and burn it, to secure his fidelity; or she may obtain equally good results any other day by burying his footmark in the churchyard.131.1A Magyar lass on Christmas night will dig up her own footprint and fling it unseen into the courtyard of the lad’s dwelling: he can never leave her after.131.2Among the Southern Slavs the lady fills a flowerpot with the earth of her swain’s footstep, and plants in it a common marigold. This flower is said not to wither; and in German lands it is planted upon graves and called the flower of the dead. As it grows and blooms and does not fade away, so will the youth’s love grow and blossom and never fade.131.3
The sacramental character of all these philtres is obvious. We saw in the last chapter that injuries inflicted on detached portions of a man’s body are felt by the bulk. In the same way, when the detached portions become incorporated into another body, or are simply brought into contact with it, by means of the philtres we have been discussing, the two bodies are united; and their union manifests itself in sympathy and sexual desire. The greater number of the foregoing examples have been drawn from the backward classes of the more civilised peoples, concerning which our information is in many cases remarkably full. When, however, we come to consider nuptial rites we shall find the sacramental conception entering into the idea of sexual union over a much wider area. Meanwhile we proceed to examine some of its manifestations in other beliefs and practices.
We will begin by dealing with some of the dangers, apart from witchcraft, that beset the body by carelessness over its severed parts.
A belief not uncommon is that great care must be taken in the disposal of an amputated limb, lest evil consequences to the trunk ensue. Quite recently in New England a serious consultation was held by the friends of a man who had had his foot amputated as the result of crushing it in a railway accident; and it was decided to burn it, “in order that the stump should not always continue to be painful, and the man troubled by disagreeable sensations, as would surely follow if the foot were put into the ground.”132.1Similar dangers threaten the man who clips his hair or cuts his nails. In Sussex the peasantry allow no portion of their hair to be carelessly thrown away, lest a bird find it and carry it off to work into its nest; for, until it had finished, the true owner of the hair would suffer from headache. Or if a toad get hold of a maiden’s long back hairs, she will have a cold in her head for so long as the animal keeps the hair in its mouth.132.2In Germany also the action of birds is dreaded—especially theft by a starling, for then cataract will ensue. Hair is therefore burnt, or thrown into running water.132.3Headache is the result of throwing away hairs in the Tirol. Wherefore they are burnt, or in the Unterinnthal, if thrown away, are first spit upon.132.4In Norway the consequences are even worse: there the owner of a hairobtained by a toad will lose his reason.133.1In the Atlantic States of North America the combings of the hair must not be thrown away, but burned, for the same reason as in Sussex, or because the birds might carry them to Hell, and so render it necessary for the owner to go thither to recover them.133.2Among the Danubian Gipsies, hair which has fallen, or been cut off, is a source of anxiety. Headache will be caused by the birds working it into their nests, and can only be relieved by a complicated counter-charm. If a snake be guilty of carrying hair into its hole, the man from whose head it has come will continue to lose more, until that in the snake’s hole has decayed away.133.3The Undups of Borneo will not burn their refuse hair, nor throw it into the water, for fear of headache. But it may be flung to the winds, or cast on the ground: it is better still to bury it. On the other hand, the tribes about Lake Nyassa burn their hair; but they bury the parings of their nails.133.4At the other side of the African continent, among the Bodo, the nails are buried;133.5while the Wayova of the Upper Congo, when they become old or sick, tie the clippings of their hair and nails with amulets in a string which they wear wrapped around them.133.6In Mashonaland the hair is not cut until it is long and tangled, and too full of life to be endured any longer. It is then shaved entirely off and hung to a tree.133.7The practices of the Western worldare similar. The natives of the Youkon river in Alaska hang what they cut from their hair and nails in packages on the trees.134.1The Gauchos of the Pampas of South America deem it of the utmost imprudence to throw away their hairs, wherefore they roll them up in a ball and hide them in the walls of the house.134.2In the Cuyabá valley of central Brazil it is believed that to tread on hair-clippings is to render insane the man from whose head they came.134.3The Maoris attached great importance to the cutting of the hair. It was always performed with much ceremony and many spells. In one place the most sacred day of the year was appointed for it: the people assembled from all the neighbourhood, often more than a thousand in number. Some of the hair was cast into the fire. Elsewhere the hair was laid upon the altar in the sacred grove, and there left.134.4Algerian Jews and Arabs and Orthodox Polish Jews carefully bury or burn their nail-parings.134.5A Galician Jew will not throw away the cuttings of his hair, lest he suffer from headache.134.6It seems, indeed, a general opinion among Jews, if we may trust an American Jew, that “he who trims his nails and buries the parings is a pious man; he who burns them is a righteous man; but he who throws them away is a wicked man, for mischance might follow should a female step over them.”134.7Contact with menstrualblood, and consequent ceremonial defilement, is evidently what is dreaded, just as if the blood had touched the man himself. For some such reason, perhaps, the Flamen Dialis was required, among the Romans, when he cut his hair or his nails, to bury the severed portions beneath a lucky tree.135.1Ahura Mazda is gravely represented in theVendîdâdas telling Zoroaster that when a man drops his refuse hair or nails in a hole or crack, and observes not the lawful rites, lice are produced, which destroy the corn in the field and the clothes in the wardrobe. The prophet is commanded, therefore, to take these portions of the body, whenever they are detached, ten paces from the faithful, twenty from the fire, thirty from the water and fifty from the consecrated bundles of baresma, and there to dig a hole, drawing three, six or nine furrows around it with a metal knife, and chanting theAhuna-Vairyaa corresponding number of times. In the hole he is to bury the hair or nails, saying aloud the fiend-smiting (though slightly irrelevant) words, in the case of hair: “Out of him by his piety Mazda made the plants grow up”; or in the case of nails: “The words that are heard from the pious in holiness and good thought”; and the nails are to be dedicated to the Ashô-zusta bird, which is believed to be the owl, as weapons for him against the Daêvas.135.2This elaborate ritual and the belief it embodies are, of course, comparatively late in civilisation; but they are an adaptation to Zoroaster’s lofty religion of pre-existing superstitions. In theGrihya-Sûtra, one of the ancient books of the Hindus, it is enjoined as a religious rite to gather the hair and nails which have been cut off, mix them with bull’s dung(the bull was a sacred animal) and bury the whole in a cow-stable, or near an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. And when a boy received the tonsure, in the third year of his age, the barber threw the locks upon the same savoury substance, which was then buried in the forest. The hair left on the head was arranged according to the custom of hisgotraand of his family.136.1The ritual first shaving now takes place in India at the shrine of some goddess; and the locks are safely deposited in a place where they are not liable to be trodden on.136.2In Japan, when a boy, at or after the age of fifteen, receives his permanent name, and is admitted to the privileges of manhood, his forelock is ceremonially cut. It is taken by the sponsor to the youth’s guardians, who wrap it in paper and offer it at the shrine of the family gods; or else it is kept with care in the house until its owner dies, and then put into the coffin with him.136.3Throughout the East Indian islands much importance is attached to the first hair-cutting. On Timor it takes place three months after birth, at new moon. The child’s eldest uncle cuts a lock from four places on the head with a bamboo knife, and wrapping each of the locks in a flake of cotton he blows it away from the palm of his hand into the air. More usually it is carefully preserved. In North Celebes the rite is performed by a priest. The clippings are put into a young cocoa-nut and hung up under the thatch of the house. Another tribeof the same island puts the hair, moistened with sweet-scented oil, into a young kalapa-fruit, and hangs it before the house above the ladder until it fall in course of time. The Ambonese bury the clippings under a sago-palm, or lay them in a silver box with an amulet against sickness and hang it about the child’s neck. The Aru Islanders hide them in a pisang- or banana-tree. The inhabitants of Roti lay them first with water in a cocoa-nut-shell; afterwards the father stuffs them into a little bag of plaited leaves, which he fastens in the top of a loutar-palm.137.1The Bambaras, a tribe of the Upper Niger, celebrate the birth of a child by the sacrifice of a bull or sheep at the door of the mother’s hut. The infant’s head is then shaved, and the hair is placed in a calabash containing dega, a composition of millet and milk prepared for the occasion. The friends invited to the feast then place each one his right hand on the calabash, while the griot, or medicine-man, pronounces blessings on the babe. The hairs are afterwards given to the mother, who carefully preserves them.137.2Among the Ictasandagensof the Omahas of North America, when a child had reached four years his hair had to be cut in the customary shape. The proper person to cut the first lock was the keeper of the sacred pipes. It was done with certain ceremonies; and the lock was put with those of other children cut at the same time into a sacred buffalo hide.137.3There may have been more reasons than one forplacing hair ceremonially cut on occasions like these in a sacred receptacle. This is a subject to which I shall return. But it is clear that one object at all events was safe custody. The locks thus shorn from the head must be guarded with care, lest any evil come to them, and through them to the person of whose body they once formed part.
For many of the practices we are considering no reason is assigned by the travellers and others who report them. Sometimes fantastic reasons are given, even by the people who practise them. It is for fear of ancestral spirits, we are told, that the natives of the lake regions of Nyassa and Tanganyika bury their hair and nails. The Esthonians are said to take care of their nails, else the devil will make of them a visor to his head-gear; and their national poem, theKalevipoeg, mentions a wishing-hat of the same materials. The dread of the Samogitians is that the devil will make a hat of their nail-parings.138.1A Basque tale attributes to the same personage the equally remarkable feat of making a chalice for himself out of the nails cut by Christians on Sundays.138.2Among the ancient Scandinavians it was a point of religion to die with pared nails, for of the unpared nails would be constructed the ship Naglfari, to float, steered by the giant Hrym, over the waters to the combat with the Anses on the Day of Doom. A modern Icelandic superstition accounts for the custom of cutting each nail-paring into three pieces, by explaining that it is to render it useless to the devil, who would else use it in building the ship of the dead.138.3Reasons like these, though genuine, are only secondary. They are mythological reasons, more or less remote from the direct interest of the individual,invented when the original reasons have passed out of memory, or been dropped from some other cause, as in the case of the practices adopted into the Zoroastrian religion.
Similar superstitions apply to milk. In Transylvania it is reckoned dangerous to a woman who has recently been delivered for another suckling woman even to visit her, lest she take her milk away. To prevent this the visitor must let a drop or two of her own milk fall upon the bed where her friend lies.139.1At Friuli a woman was accused before the Holy Inquisition of drying up another by merely entering her house and kissing her child in the cradle.139.2Among the causes enumerated in Italy for a woman’s milk diminishing or drying up are—that the placenta has been eaten by some female animal; that another suckling woman has drunk out of her cup; that the remains of her food have been thrown to a suckling cat, sow, or bitch. If either of these contingencies happen, the milk will be transferred to the other woman or animal. No less disastrous is it to the supply if any drops fall by chance on the ground and be sucked up by ants.139.3A woman who is suckling must beware of letting a drop of her milk fall into the fire, for then her breasts would dry up.139.4Contrariwise, if a Magyar mother desire a rich, nourishing milk, she is advised to drop a little of it at waxing moon upon the blazing hearth. If she drop some into cow’s milk, the cow will dry up: apparently the cow’s milk will be thus transferredto the woman.140.1In Warwickshire the burning of cow’s milk will cause the cow to run dry; and a like belief attaches among various tribes of Africa, even to the boiling of milk, as well as to its consumption by “any one who ate the flesh of pigs, fish, fowls, or the bean called maharagué.”140.2In Switzerland it is held that a knife or needle dipped in the milk reaches the beast which has yielded it, and causes pain as if wounded in the udder.140.3It seems to have been currently believed in the seventeenth century in France, that if milk curdled too rapidly, a little of it thrown upon a hawthorn would retard the process.140.4About Chemnitz to mix the milk of two men’s cows, is to cause the cows of one to dry up.140.5In Altmark some milk of a badly milking cow is poured into the well of a neighbour who has a good milker, and thereupon the condition of both is changed.140.6
So of saliva. We have seen that, equally with other issues of the body, saliva is a means of witchcraft, whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps done to death. Wherefore all over the world, from Africa to the Sandwich Islands, from Europe to New Zealand, the spittle is hidden or erased as soon as it is ejected, so that it can no longer be discovered or rendered available by sorcerers. By parity of reasoning, in Sweden and Germany, as well as among the Galician Jews, one is forbidden to spit in the fire, lest bladders be produced on the tongue, or othersores in the mouth;141.1and in various parts of France, lest pulmonary consumption result. To spit on glowing iron, in the department of Aube, is almost as bad; and in the Gironde it is believed that a cold will be increased by spitting in the fire.141.2
So too of other portions of the body. The Poles say that a girl who drops tears on a corpse will become consumptive. At Zwickau in the Erzgebirge any who does so is in danger of an early death.141.3A fine appreciation of the antiseptic properties of tobacco is reputed to be shown by some French smokers, who preserve in their tobacco-pouches the teeth lost from their heads, believing by this means to prevent toothache.141.4It used to be the custom in Derbyshire to preserve all one’s shed teeth in a jar until death, and then to have them buried in the coffin with their owner; for, it was said, on reaching heaven the man would be obliged to account for all the teeth he had upon earth: an obvious afterthought, and not the real reason.141.5I have already mentioned the English superstition that a child’s cast tooth must not be thrown away, but burnt. The practice on the Riviera is the same.141.6In Piceno the infant is made to hide the tooth in a crack of thehearth, in the hope of finding a gift the next morning. In the Abruzzi it is enough to put it into any hole.142.1While among the southern Slavs the child is instructed to throw it into a dark corner, crying: “Mouse, mouse! There is a bony tooth; give me an iron tooth instead.” He is then to spit; and this is done that no more teeth may fall out. Sometimes his cast tooth is plugged into an old willow, that he may never suffer from toothache.142.2In the Erzgebirge, to attain the same end the father is told to swallow a daughter’s tooth, and the mother a son’s.142.3The origin of the superstition, widely spread in Europe, that the mother should bite and not cut a baby’s nails, may possibly be found in some analogous reason.
The liability to injury in consequence of an accident happening to, or wilful act inflicted on, a detached portion of the body or its issues, implies the opposite possibility. Good may be received, health may be restored by the same means. Hence has arisen a great body of folk-medicine and surgery. Incidentally we have already noticed some examples of this; but the most familiar is undoubtedly to be found in the cure of warts. To rub the warts with a piece of flesh-meat (various kinds are prescribed—in this country beef or bacon seems the favourite) usually raw, andthen to bury it in the ground, or throw it where it will speedily rot and disappear; to rub them with an apple, an onion, a potato, a turnip, a willow-twig whereon a corresponding number of notches has been cut, peas, beans, knots of barley-straw, a branch of tamarisk, or some other vegetable substance easily obtained, and afterwards bury, burn it or throw it away; to tie knots in string, touch every wart with a knot, and then treat the string like the meat; to stroke the warts with a corpse’s hand; to wash them in flowing water, especially at a time when bells are tolling for the dead, or over which the corpse is carried, or in water found in a hollow stump or other unexpected place; to rub them with a snail, and then impale the creature on a thorn or (in Germany) nail it to the doorpost with a wooden hammer; are remedies known all over Europe and the United States; and they date back to classical antiquity. The beef, the apple, the string, the dead hand decay; the water flows far out of sight, or dries up; and in like manner the warts they have touched also disappear.
The principle has many other applications. A remedy for fever in use in the sixteenth century in the Mark of Brandenburg was to cut the patient’s nails, bind them on the back of a crawfish, and throw the crustacean back into flowing water.143.1In France, and, it seems, in England also, the remedy recorded a century later for the quartan ague was to wrap the nail-parings in a portion of a shroud, and fasten the package around the neck of an eel, which was thenreturned to the water.144.1In these cases it can hardly be doubted that the sufferer was to benefit by the cooling influence of the water. In the north-east of Scotland it was usual to put the nail-parings of a consumptive patient into a rag from his clothes, the rag was waved thrice round his head, the operator crying “Deas Soil,” and then buried in a secret place.144.2For ligature, or impotence, believed to be caused by witchcraft, the cuttings of the hair and nails are, in Germany, wrapped in a cloth, stuffed into a hole made in an elder-tree, and the hole closed with a plug of hawthorn.144.3For infantine rupture, in Switzerland, some of the child’s nails and hair, with a piece of paper inscribed with his name, are put into a hole bored in a young oak, and the hole is then stopped with wax.144.4Among the Transylvanian Saxons at Kronstadt the hair and nails of an anæmic patient are buried under a waxing moon beneath a rose-bush.144.5Here the rose is evidently expected to diffuse its colour in the sick man’s veins. The collection just cited of old remedies in use in the Mark of Brandenburg directs that when hairs grow in an ulcer they should be plucked out and nailed up in an elder or oak-tree towards the east.144.6The ancient English leech-book attributed to one Sextus Placitus prescribes, for a woman suffering from flux, to comb her hair under a mulberry tree, and hang the combings on an upstanding twig of the tree. When she is healed she must gather them again and preserve them. If on the contrary shedesireut menstrua fluant, the combings must be placed upon a twig hanging downwards.145.1The mulberry appears to be chosen because of the form and colour of its fruit, in accordance with the old doctrine of Signatures whereby the remedy for a disease was pointed out by some fancied resemblance of form or colour to the diseased member. To restore falling hair, Etmuller, writing in the seventeenth century, advises burying some of the hair in an oak, or, to cure the gout, some of the toe-nails. Bronchitis in growing children is cured, among the Pennsylvanian Germans, by making a gimlet-hole in the door-frame at the exact height of the child’s head. A tuft of his hair is inserted, and the hole pegged up. As the child grows above the peg he will outgrow the disease. The door-frame appears to be a mere substitute for a tree.145.2
Specimens of this kind of remedy might be multiplied indefinitely. They are usually regarded as cases of transplantation. By the process described the disease is supposed to be transferred, or transplanted, into the tree, or very often into another human being or one of the lower animals. This idea is present in a recipe for fever given by Beckherius, whose medical work was published in London in 1660. He advises the tying of the patient’s nail-clippings in a rag to the door of a neighbour’shouse:146.1a remedy equally known to the Romans.146.2Rupture in a young person is to be cured in Thuringia by cutting three tufts of hair from the top of the head, binding them in a clean cloth, carrying the parcel into another parish, and so burying it in a young willow that the hole may close up and grow together.146.3We can hardly understand apart from transplantation the direction to carry the parcel into another parish and there plant it in a tree, or to fasten the rag of nail-clippings to a neighbour’s door. At other times the hair and nails are given in food to various animals, or are thrown in the highway to be picked up by any passer-by, who is supposed to contract the disease and thereby free the original patient. Many of the cases, however, which have been classed as transplantation are not really so; for it will be noted that it is a very common direction (as in the prescription just cited) to carefully close up the hole made in the tree, and as it heals the patient’s health will improve. But if the disease were to be transferred to the tree, the latter could scarcely be expected to heal; and if it did, there would be ground for suspecting that the rite had not been properly performed. Formerly it was a very common remedy for rupture and other infantile complaints to split a tree and pass the child through it three or seven times. The tree was then bound up and often plastered with clay, so as to ensure its recovery; and it was believed that the more rapidly it healed, the more rapidly the child would be restored to health. In fact, as we have seen, it thenceforth stood in relation to the child as his External Soul or Life-token. The earliest mention of this prescriptionis by Marcellus of Bordeaux, physician of the Emperor Theodosius I., not later than the beginning of the fifth century of our era; and it has continued in use, even in England, down to the present day. From first to last the importance of the tree’s recovery and preservation has been a cardinal point.147.1It is perfectly clear, therefore, that whatever the intention of the rite may have been, it was not transplantation. Transplantation, in fact, seems to be a foreign graft on many of the old prescriptions. It may be questioned, for example, whether it is the primitive idea of either Beckherius’ prescription or the Thuringian; and I cannot help thinking that the doctrine of Transplantation is a modern interpretation of an older rite, an interpretation which has in many cases wrought such changes in its substance that the true and profounder significance of the rite is now hardly to be recognised. This may not hold good in every instance. The question, however, is immaterial to my present contention, and cannot be argued at length here. It is enough for my purpose to prove that a large class of remedies cannot be explained as Transplantation, although the theory of Transplantation may have a tendency to appropriate and modify them. The remarks which follow will, I hope, make the position clear.
Magyar folk-medicine prescribes a curious remedy forlunacy. The head of a corpse is wetted with the patient’s blood and saliva, so that “he may obtain as much intellect as the dead man had”: in other words, the crazy man is brought into such union with the dead as will result, not in the transfer to the latter of his lunacy, but the transfer to the lunatic of the intellect of the dead. Similarly, the toothache is cured by spitting on a grave-mound, or rubbing the aching tooth with the tooth of a corpse, which perhaps is sound, or at all events can no longer suffer.148.1If it be desired to render a woman unfruitful, the organs of a dead man, whose potency is at an end, must be rubbed with her menses. It is even deemed sufficient for her to make water on a corpse. For the green-sickness, a few drops of the sick man’s blood mingled with the excrement of one who is recently dead, and flung into the open grave just before the body is put in, will prove a cure.148.2To stay bleeding, the Saxons of the Seven Cities write with the blood the letters INRI on a piece of wood and throw it into a spring, saying: “Three women of the spring (Brunnenfrauen, spirits of the spring) wish to behold blood. They say: Blood, stand still, that is God’s will! Out of this wood the cross whereon Jesus hung, was made. Amen!” A syphilitic patient is directed, on three several Sundays while the bells are ringing for divine service, to write his name in his own blood on his drawers, and, hanging them on a tree, there to leave them permanently.148.3The Gipsies of the same neighbourhood cure pimples by dropping before sunrise some blood from the ring-finger into flowing water, that it may be swallowed by a Nivashi, or water-spirit; and they cure dropsy by letting nine drops of blood from the index-finger fall, by a waning moon, into flowing water, that the Nivashi may draw the water from the patient’s body.149.1A prescription recorded by Reginald Scot for a bloody flux runs as follows: “Take a cup of cold water, and let fall thereinto three drops of the same blood, and betweene each drop saie a Paternoster and an Ave, then drinke to the patient, and saie; who shall helpe you? The patient must answer S. Marie. Then saie you; S. Marie stop the issue of blood.”149.2It will be observed here that the blood is drunk by the operator; and it could not have been intended to transfer the disease to him. The invocations as given are certainly not part of the original rite. What that rite was, of course we do not know. We may conjecture that the primitive operator was a sort of shaman in special communion with his god. The patient’s blood, entering him, would be brought into contact with the god; and the god through it would be united with the patient for his healing.
In the light of examples like these we must interpret many prescriptions which have been hastily put down as cases of transplantation, or have been turned by the folk themselves into transplantation formulæ. For instance, a Gipsy remedy for fever bids the sufferer go before sunrise to a little tree, scratch his left little finger, and smear the blood on the tree, saying: “Go away, fever; go away, pain;go away into the tree, whence thou hast come; thither go thou, fever!”150.1No specific tree is indicated; and there can be little doubt that the original words of this ban have been forgotten, and meaningless rhymes substituted—so far at least as the words “Go away into the tree whence thou hast come,” which rhyme in the original with the two previous lines. So also, in Dr. Colerus’ collection of remedies from the Mark of Brandenburg, we find that, to cure the toothache, a splinter must be taken from a willow, and the teeth pricked with it until they bleed; the blood must be allowed to drip upon the splinter, which must be then cunningly put back into the tree, covered with the bark and plastered with mud, that it may grow together again. This prescription is still current in various parts of Germany and among some of the non-German populations of Eastern Prussia. In Pomerania it appears with the addition that the performance must be in silence, and the variation that the tree must be one struck by lightning.150.2If it were simply intended to transplant the toothache into the tree, there would be no need to be careful about the healing of the wound. But here, as in the cases of children passed through split trees, it is of importance to the recovery and after-life of the patient that the tree recover and be allowed to flourish. Moreover, a lightning-struck tree would, in heathen times, have been sacred; and the requirement of silence confirms its sacred character. The object of the ceremony, therefore, is not a transplantation of the disease, but a healing union of the diseased toothwith the tree. In the province of Liège it is sufficient to touch the tooth with the splinter.151.1The rite there appears to be in decay, for the real intention to incorporate in the tree blood from the tooth and surrounding gums is manifest from a variation current at least as early as the seventeenth century, when it is mentioned in England by John Aubrey. It consists in scarifying the gum with an iron nail, and burying the nail in the tree.151.2And Sir Kenelm Digby gravely prescribes it, directing the nail to be driven up to the head into a wooden beam, which of course is a makeshift for a tree.151.3Kuhn, reporting the same practice from the Mark, says expressly that the tooth must be bored with the nail until the blood comes, the nail must then be driven into the north side of an oak where the sun does not shine, and then so long as the tree stands the patient will have no more toothache.151.4About Liège the nail is, according to one prescription, to be drawn from a coffin. According to another it must be a new nail and must be driven into the first tree you come to.151.5At Pforzheim, when a tooth is drawn, it is to be nailed into a young tree, and the bark drawn over it; if the tree be cut down the toothache will return.151.6At Agnethlen, in Transylvania,the sufferer bores a hole in a tree, chews with the aching tooth a piece of bread, swallows half and spits the rest into the tree, saying: “Tree, I give thee half of what I have; take away all my pain, and convey it down into the earth!”152.1The consumption of half the bread by the patient is conclusive against transplantation. And with this we may compare a recipe against the rickets in use in Schleswig-Holstein. The sick child is rubbed over with a handful of oats, and the oats are then sown in a secret place; as they grow the rickets disappear.152.2
In view of the cases I have cited it may be doubted whether the intention (at all events, the original intention) of many of the prescriptions of hair, saliva, food and other things belonging to the patient, to be given to the lower animals was transplantation, and not rather union with another and a healthy body. Thus, in Kerry and Leitrim a cure for the whooping-cough is to pour some milk into a saucer, let a ferret drink some of it, and give the rest to the sufferer. In Antrim the child is passed thrice under a jackass, to which is afterwards given a bit of oaten bread, and the child is made to eat what the animal leaves.152.3Transplantation in both these examples is out of the question, because the child does not feed until the other creature has finished. So in the Panjab stammering is cured by hanging in a tree a cup, which is kept filled for forty days with water for the birds. The last few drops they leave every day are drunk by the patient. And a remedy in the north of India for boils is to move over thepart affected some treacle and parched wheat, and afterwards distribute these things among some Brahman boys.153.1The food, it will be noted, does not actually touch the diseased part: the symbol is reckoned sufficient. But the destination of the food for persons of the sacred caste renders it impossible that transfer of the disease is intended. A ceremony in use among the Southern Slavs as a cure for a fretful child directs the drawing of water in a vessel of greenwood. The mother then, with the child on her arm, dips firebrands thrice into the water, saying: “The Vila weds her son and invites my Marko to the wedding. I am sending not my Marko, but his weeping.” The child is made to drink as much as it can of the water thus brought into contact with the drying, or perhaps the hallowing, power of the fire, the rest is poured over the dog or cat of the household, the vessel is thrown to the ground and left there all night.153.2The entire meaning of this curious ceremony is not very clear; but it can hardly be intended to transfer the constant weeping of the infant to the dog, or the cat. In Buffalo Valley, Pennsylvania, certain diseases are cured by allowing a black cat to eat some of the soup given to the patient—a remedy probably brought from Germany.153.3Here again transference is improbable, seeing that a black cat is a magical animal: we should rather apply the reasoning in reference to Reginald Scot’s remedy for the flux. It is more doubtful whether the same can be said of a Jewish leechcraft, quoted by Dr. Strack from Tholedoth Adam, which bids a woman suffering from undue menstruationbake some of her blood in bread and give it to a pig to devour.154.1But in Tuscany, when one spits blood, ants are to be caught, put into the blood and left there all night. Mr. Leland, in recording this, observes that Marcellus quotes a conjuring verse where ants are said to have no blood.154.2If we may look upon the saying as embodying a general belief, we may suppose that their bloodlessness would be held to react upon the sufferer.
Marcellus mentions a number of prescriptions which cannot be cases of transplantation, but rather intended to unite a diseased body with a sound one for the benefit of the former. Take his remedy for a gathering in the ear by injecting the warm urine of a boy under the age of puberty. Or where incontinence of urine is to be cured by making water in a dog’s sleeping-place, saying the while: “Let me not make water in my own bed, like a dog.” Or the recommendation to apply the cut hairs of a boy under puberty to the suffering foot of a gouty patient. A prescription extolled aset praesens et maximumfor consumptives, even when apparently beyond hope, consists in administering the saliva or foam of a horse in warm water for three days: the horse will die, and the sick man recover.154.3Even here, in spite of the horse’s death, we have no warrant for supposing that the disease is transferred to him. The operation upon him is clearly to be attributed to the magical principle so fully discussed in this andthe previous chapter. The process is the converse of transplantation. Nothing that has touched the patient is brought back to the unfortunate horse. His death is caused by union through his own saliva with a sick body which absorbs his qualities of health and strength.
An old French remedy for a cough, and probably also for toothache, is traceable back to Marcellus. It was to spit in a frog’s mouth—a method of cure still in vogue in Shropshire and perhaps elsewhere in England.155.1No doubt it was a traditional remedy long before the Emperor’s physician gravely recorded it, and added that the patient must stand shod upon the bare earth under the bare heaven, on a Tuesday or Thursday at waning moon, and repeat seven times:Argidam, margidam, sturgidam. Moreover the patient is solemnly to ask the frog to take the toothache with her; “and then shalt thou let her go alive; and this shalt thou do on a fortunate day and at a fortunate hour.” O learned physician! This does appear, at least as Marcellus understood it, a case of transplantation; and it is no part of my business to combat every instance. I only desire to point out that Transplantation is a theory inadequate to account for many remedies which it has been dragged in to explain; and to express the doubt whether it be not after all a comparatively recent development in folk-medicine.
Saliva prescriptions, numerous as they are, need not detain us longer. Nor will I pause upon those of the fouler excrements. They are made, as we might expect, to subserve the purposes of healing, as well as those of witchcraft,and in the same general manner. I shall, therefore, only add a few references at the foot of the page for the use of students.156.1
For various diseases the patient’s bath-water and fomentations, wherein are often mingled simples of different sorts, are in Germany, Hungary and Transylvania poured out upon a tree, into flowing water, into the churchyard, or upon dead human bones.156.2The Magyars, as a depilatory for children born with much hair on their bodies, put ashes on the four corners of the bath-tub, and throw into the water three potatoes, which they fling, after the bath, behind the oven. As the potatoes dry up, the hair is expected to disappear.156.3
Not only the bath-water and fomentations but also cloths and articles of clothing which have been in contact withthe patient, and especially with the diseased member, are subject to treatment for the purpose of healing, of causing, or of preventing disease. At Rauen, near Fürstenwald, in Northern Germany, the remedy for a violent headache is to bind a cloth round the head at night, and take it on the following morning to a wise man, who will charm not the head, but the cloth.157.1Among the Transylvanian Gipsies a certain kind of sore is cured by covering it with a red rag and pegging the rag by night in a hole in a tree. The words used on the occasion are: “Stay thou here, until the rag become a beast, the beast a tree, the tree a man, to strike thee dead!” So far as they have a meaning they point to transplantation, though not conclusively. Dr. von Wlislocki, who reports them, suggests they contain a reminiscence of a Gipsy Creation-myth. If so, they are probably archaic; but this is doubtful.157.2An old physician relates of a patient who had a violent pain in the arm that it was healed by a plaster of red coral beaten up with oak-leaves, which was kept on the part until suppuration and then in the morning put into an auger-hole in the root of an oak, looking towards the east, and the hole stopped with a peg of the same tree. The pain ceased, but returned more sharply than before when the peg was taken out.157.3In Middle Silesia plasters and bandages from wounds must only be thrown into flowing water—certainly never into the fire, lest the hurt be made incurable.157.4The Masurs in East Prussia, after suffering from an attack of fever, and not until it is over, take off the patient’s shirt and carry it, after sunset or before sunrise, if possible on aThursday, to a cross-road and suspend it on the sign-post.158.1It is a French prescription for hastening a slow delivery to bind the woman’s girdle about the church-bell and sound the bell thrice.158.2In 1630 the wife of Francesco Noverta of Pordenone was brought before the Inquisition in Italy for taking her husband’s shirt to a wise man to be “signed,” in order to cure him of some disease. The man signed it with a crown, repeating sacred words and invoking the saints. He did more. He gave her an oil to anoint the patient’s back and stomach, a piece of bread for him to eat, and certain herbs to be put under his bolster, together with a powder. But when she got home, so she told the holy inquisitors, she threw all these things on the fire, and kept only the shirt: she had more confidence in the charm than the simples.158.3These cases, in which there is no transplantation, may perhaps be allowed to interpret the ambiguity of some of the following. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure the swelling of the glands of the neck by stealing a piece of bacon over night and binding it round the throat with a rag, and the next morning hanging the bandage on a tree, or throwing it in the fire. In the former case, the spell to be uttered, while removing the bandage, is: “Tree, thou hast many knots; take away my knots also.” In the latter, it is: “The knotman has seven sons; the knotwife has seven daughters; they married, lived together and did not agree; they parted and disappeared like the bacon in the fire. So, in God’s name, let the knots disappear in N. N.’s neck, that he may enjoy pure the Holy Supper of the Bodyand Blood of Our Lord. Amen.”159.1Galician Jews cure infantine convulsions by throwing articles of the child’s clothing into a stream where it divides into two branches, and crying thrice: “Here hast thou thine; give me mine.” This is, of course, a prayer for the child’s health. They are also careful not to hang swaddling clothes out of doors to dry, nor to drop them on the ground, else the child whose they are will lose its rest.159.2The garb of Italian babies must likewise be tenderly treated in washing, else the infants will be afflicted with various pains. Abruzzian babe-clothes must not be washed in the water whence horses have drunk, lest the babe’s tender skin be heated. A Tuscan baby is cured of a certain disorder by putting its clothes in boiling water with a nail, some laurel and garden-flowers, like rose or jasmine, and afterwards rinsing them in flowing water.159.3Against a menstruation too copious a Galician Jewess washes her own shift together with her husband’s night-dress.159.4The intention here seems to be not to attempt the absurdity of transferring the menstruation to the husband, but by uniting the patient to a healthy man through the contact of their clothing, to obtain for her that quality of his whereof she stands especially in need. Conversely, one of the remedies of Italian women for suppressed menstruation is to send the sufferer’s shift to the wash with the linen of a woman who has just been delivered; and they firmly believe that a washerwoman may cause them painful menstruation by beating their linen too hard, or by using burning coals with the ashes inmaking the lye.160.1Nor must we forget here the Bosnian rite for procuring conception, referred to in a previous chapter. The barren woman’s wedding-garment is not worn by the quick woman wound about her body for the purpose of transferring the barrenness to herself. On the contrary, she wears it that her prolific influence may thus be communicated to her friend; and she continues to wear it until that effect is produced.
Other things that have been brought into contact with the body may also be efficaciously treated. In Donegal the piece of turf whereon a sick cow first treads on getting up is cut out and hung against the wall; and the cow is expected to recover.160.2Formerly in France a limping cow was healed by cutting out the turf whereon the lame foot had trodden and putting it to dry on a hedge. To cure quartan fever a certain herb was plucked secretly and in silence, and thrown to the winds.160.3In the seventeenth century a prescription for epilepsy was three nails made on Midsummer Eve driven over their heads into the place where the patient had fallen, his name being uttered the while.160.4For spasms at the heart it is recommended in Transylvania to lie on the back on the turf. The length and breadth of the patient’s body is then marked, and the turf to the thickness of a finger cut out, if possible in one piece, and thrown into a brook with the words: “Spring-wife, spring-wife, take the water from my heart; I give thee what lay under my heart.”160.5In Thuringia, to heal soreson the body three crosses are made with a bit of comfrey on the sores before sunrise, and the comfrey is then buried in a place where it will quickly rot, and whither the patient is not likely soon to come.161.1A like remedy is given in theGrihya-sutraof Âpastamba. If a wife be affected with consumption, or be otherwise sick, one who has to observe chastity is to rub her limbs with young lotus-leaves, still unrolled, and with lotus-roots and certain formulæ; the leaves and roots are afterwards thrown away towards the west.161.2For whooping-cough, a mother in Norfolk looks for a dark spider in the house, and having found it holds it over the child’s head, repeating thrice:
“Spider, as you waste away,Whooping-cough no longer stay.”
“Spider, as you waste away,
Whooping-cough no longer stay.”
She then hangs the spider in a bag over the mantelpiece—formerly no doubt it was hung in the chimney—and when it dries up the cough will be gone.161.3A feverish patient, among the Jews of Galicia, wraps a hair taken from his body about a louse, and throws the creature away. While, against epilepsy, a black hen is rent in pieces over the sick man; or a cock is slaughtered and buried, its head being first cut off on the threshold of a barn: with the decay of its flesh the epileptic recovers health.161.4The old French superstitions recorded by Thiers prescribe for various diseases a branch of a plum-tree hung to dry in the chimney, a cabbage stolen from a neighbour’s garden and hung up to dry, nine grains of barley put into a bottle ofclear water, a hard-cooked egg put into an anthill, certain drugs wrapped in a piece of new cloth and thrown into the fire. They do not in every case mention that these articles must be first applied to the patient; but it is tolerably clear that this is meant.162.1And it must also be inferred that the cock in the Galician prescription was formerly brought into similar contact, though perhaps in this case, as in many others throughout Europe, the touching has fallen into disuse. The black hen, it is obvious, could not be torn in pieces without its blood falling on the patient and so bringing it into union with the disease. Remedies of the kind under consideration are naturally most in vogue for external diseases, such as warts, boils and sties. But enough: examples of their application to all kinds of disease are endless.