CHAPTER XX

297Dithmar of Merseburg,Chronicon, viii. 2 (Pertz,Monumenta Germaniæ historica, v. 861). Zimmer,op. cit.p. 330.

298Ralston,Songs of the Russian People, p. 327sq.

299Grimm,op. cit.p. 344.

300Cæsar,De bello gallico, vi. 19. In the ancient annals of the Irish there is one trace of human sacrifice being offered as a funeral rite (Cusack,History of the Irish Nation, p. 115 n.*).

301Iliad, xxiii. 175.

According to early notions, men require wives and servants not only during their life-time, but after their death. The surviving relatives want to satisfy their needs, out of affection or from fear of withholding from the dead what belongs to them—their wives and their slaves. The destruction of innocent life seems justified by the low social standing of the victims and their subjection to their husbands or masters. However, with advancing civilisation this sacrifice has a tendency todisappear, partly, perhaps, on account of a change of ideas as regards the state after death, but chiefly, I presume, because it becomes revolting to public feelings. It then dwindles into a survival. As a probable instance of this may be mentioned a custom prevalent among the Tacullies of North America: the widow is compelled by the kinsfolk of the deceased to lie on the funeral pile where the body of her husband is placed, whilst the fire is lighting, until the heat becomes intolerable.302In ancient Egypt little images of clay, or wood, or stone, or bronze, made in human likeness and inscribed with a certain formula, were placed within the tomb, presumably in the hopes that they would there attain to life and become the useful servants of the dead.303So also the Japanese304and Chinese, already in early times, placed images in, or at, the tombs of their dead as substitutes for human victims; and these images have always been considered to have no less virtual existence in the next world than living servitors, wives, or concubines. In China the original immolations were, moreover, replaced by the custom of allowing the nearest relatives and slaves of the deceased simply to settle on the tomb, instead of entering it, there to sacrifice to the manes, and by prohibiting widows from remarrying.305

302Wilkes,U.S. Exploring Expedition, iv. 453.

303Wiedemann,Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 63.

304Tylor,Primitive Culture, i. 463.

305de Groot,op. cit.(vol. ii. book) i. 794sqq.

The practice of sacrificing human beings to the dead is not exclusively based on the idea that they require servants and companions. It is extremely probable that the funeral sacrifice of men and animals in many cases involves an intention to vivify the spirits of the deceased with the warm, red sap of life.306This seems to be the meaning of the Dahoman custom of pouring blood over the graves of the ancestors of the king.307So, also, in Ashanti “human sacrifices are frequent and ordinary, towater the graves of the Kings.”308In the German folk-tale known under the name of ‘Faithful John,’ the statue said to the King, “If you, with your own hand, cut off the heads of both your children, and sprinkle me with their blood, I shall be brought to life again.”309According to primitive ideas, blood is life; to receive blood is to receive life; the soul of the dead wants to live, and consequently loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus’ sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time.310And it is all the more important that the soul should get what it desires as it otherwise may come and attack the living. The belief that the bloodless shades leave their graves at night and seek renewed life by drawing the blood of the living, is prevalent in many parts of the world.311As late as the eighteenth century this belief caused an epidemic of fear in Hungary, resulting in a general disinterment, and the burning or staking of the suspected bodies.312It is also possible that the mutilations and self-bleedings which accompany funerals are partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul.313The Samoans called it “an offering of blood” for the dead when the mourners beat their heads with stones till the blood ran.314

306Cf.Spencer,Principles of Sociology, i. 288sq.; Rockholz,Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, i. 55; Sepp,Völkerbrauch bei Hochzeit, Geburt und Tod, p. 154; Trumbull,Blood Covenant, p. 110sqq.

307Reade,Savage Africa, p. 51sq.

308Bowdich,Mission from Cape Castle to Ashantee, p. 289.

309Grimm,Kinder- und Hausmärchen, p. 29sq.

310Odyssey, xi. 153.

311Trumbull,Blood Covenant, p. 114sq.

312Farrer,Primitive Manners and Customs, p. 23sq.

313Cf.Spencer,Principles of Sociology, i. 181sq.

314Turner,Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 227.

Finally, as offenders are sacrificed to gods in order to appease their wrath, so manslayers are in many cases killed in order to satisfy their victims’ craving for revenge. In the next chapter we shall see that the execution of blood-revenge largely falls under the heading of “human sacrifice for the dead.”

ACCORDINGto early custom, a person who takes the life of another may himself be killed by the relatives of his victim, or some other member of his family, clan, or tribe may be killed in his stead.1The custom of blood-revenge is found among a host of existing savages and barbarians, and has long survived among many peoples who have reached a higher degree of culture.

1The collective responsibility usually involved in the blood-feud has been discussedsupra,p. 30sqq.

We meet with blood-revenge in the midst of Japanese civilisation, not as a mere fact, but as a legally permitted custom. The avenger had only to observe certain prescribed formalities and regulations: there was a regular official to whom he must announce his resolve, and he must fix the time within which he would carry it out. The way in which the enemy was killed was of no importance, except that, even in ancient times, the man who had recourse to assassination was reprehensible.2Among the Hebrews blood-revenge continued to exist during the periods of the Judges and Kings, and even later; under the Old Kingdom, says Wellhausen, “the administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help.”3It is a rule amongall the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person.4Says the Koran:—“O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain.”5In ancient Eran blood-revenge survived the establishment of tribunals.6There is evidence left of its prevalence in early times among the Aryan population of India, though no mention is made in the Sûtras of blood revenge as an existing custom.7Among the Greeks it was only in the post-Homeric age that it was given up as a fundamental principle, the avenger being transformed into an accuser.8In Gaul and Ireland, though justice was administered by Druids or Brehons, their judgments seem to have been merely awards founded upon a submission to arbitration, the injured person being at liberty to take the law into his own hands and redress himself.9In the preface to the Senchus Mór we read that retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and that Patrick brought forgiveness with him.10Among the clans of Scotland, as is well known, the blood-feud has existed up to quite modern times; in the Catholic period even the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy.11In England it was at least theoretically possible down to the middle of the tenth century for a manslayer to elect to bear the feud of the kindred of the slain, instead of paying thewer;12and long after the Conquest we still meet with a law against the system ofprivate revenge.13In Frisland, Lower Saxony, and parts of Switzerland, the blood-feud was practised as late as the sixteenth century.14In Italy it prevailed extensively, even among the upper classes, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.15In Corsica,16Albania,17and Montenegro,18it exists even to this day.

2Rein,Japan, p. 326. Dautremer, ‘The Vendetta or Legal Revenge in Japan,’ inTrans. Asiatic Soc. Japan, xiii. 84sq.

3Wellhausen,Prolegomena to the History of Israel, p. 467.

4Burckhardt,Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 85.

5Koran, ii. 173.Cf.ibid.xvii. 35.

6Geiger,Civilization of the Eastern Irānians, ii. 31sqq.

7Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 422.

8Idem,Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, § 50sq., especially pp. 375, 381. In Rome blood-revenge appears to have been very early suppressed. There is an echo of it in certain legends, but even in them it is represented as objectionable (Mommsen,History of Rome, i. 190).

9Maine,Early History of Institutions, lect. ii. d’Arbois de Jubainville, ‘Des attributions judiciaires de l’autorité publique chez les Celtes,’ inRevue Celtique, vii. 5.Ancient Laws of Ireland, iii. p. lxxxix.

10Skene,Celtic Scotland, iii. 152.

11Mackintosh,History of Civilisation in Scotland, ii. 279.

12Pollock and Maitland,History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.i. 48.

13Cherry,Growth of Criminal Law in Ancient Communities, p. 85.

14Günther,Idee der Wiedervergeltung, i. 207sq.Frauenstädt,Blutrache und Todtschlagsühne im Deutschen Mittelalter, p. 21.Cf.Arnold,Deutsche Urzeit, p. 342.

15Simonde de Sismondi,Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge, xvi. 456.

16Gregorovius,Wanderings in Corsica, i. 176sqq.

17Gopčević,Oberalbanien und seine Liga, p. 322sqq.

18Kohl,Reise nach Istrien, i. 406sqq.Popović,Recht und Gericht in Montenegro, p. 69.

Blood-revenge is regarded not only as a right, but as a duty. We are told that the holiest duty a West Australian native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relation. “Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly taunted by the old women; his wives, if he be married, would soon quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman would speak to him; his mother would constantly cry, and lament she should ever have given birth to so degenerate a son; his father would treat him with contempt, and reproaches would constantly be sounded in his ear.”19Among the tribes of Western Victoria “a man would consider it his bounden duty to kill his most intimate friend for the purpose of avenging a brother’s death, and would do so without the slightest hesitation.”20In his description of the Eskimo about Behring Strait, Mr. Nelson states that blood-revenge is considered a sacred duty among all the Eskimo, a duty incumbent on the nearest male relative; if the son of the murdered man is an infant, it rests with him to seek revenge as soon as he attains puberty.21Among the Dacotahs “no one can escape this law of retaliation; public opinion would brand with disgrace whoever fled under such circumstances.”22The Brazilian aboriginesconsider it a moral obligation, a matter of conscience, for a son, a brother, or a nephew, to avenge the death of his relative.23Speaking of the Guiana Indians, Sir E. F. Im Thurn observes that, “in all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty.”24Confucius affirmed, in the strongest and most unrestricted terms, the duty of avenging the murder of a father or a brother.25In Japan “the man who was weak enough not to try to put to death the murderer of his father or his lord, was obliged to flee into hiding; from that day, he was despised by his own companions.”26The Lord said to Moses:—“The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer; when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.”27A similar rule, as we have seen, is laid down in the Koran.28The idea that blood-revenge is a sacred duty incumbent on the kindred of the deceased was probably held by all so-called Aryan peoples.29It still prevails in Albania,30Montenegro,31and Corsica. “Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading…. Any one who shrinks from avenging himself … is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity.”32

19Grey,Journals of Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 240.

20Dawson,Australian Aborigines, p. 71.

21Nelson, ‘Eskimo about Bering Strait,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xviii. p. 292sq.

22Domenech,Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 338.

23von Martius,Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika’s, i. 128.

24Im Thurn,Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 329sq.

25Legge,Chinese Classics, i. 111. Douglas,Confucianism and Taouism, p. 145.

26Dautremer,loc. cit.p. 83.Cf.Griffis,Corea, p. 227 (Coreans).

27Numbers, xxxv. 19.

28For modern Arabs, see Burckhardt,Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 313sq.; Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 207.

29Geiger,op. cit.ii. 32 (Avesta people). Leist,Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 422.Idem,Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 323sqq.de Valroger,op. cit.p. 472 (Celts). Nordström,Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 229; Stemann,Den Danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.’s Lov, p. 574; Keyser,Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. ii. 95; Rosenberg,Nordboernes Aandsliv, i. 487 (Teutons). Miklosich, ‘Die Blutrache bei den Slaven,’ inDenkschriften der kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissensch. Philos. histor. Classe, Vienna, xxxvi. 127sqq.Ewers,Das alteste Recht der Russen, p. 50sq.

30Hahn,Albanesische Studien, i. 176.

31Popović,op. cit.p. 69. Kohl,op. cit.i. 409, 413sqq.Miklosich,loc. cit.p. 145.

32Gregorovius,op. cit.i. 180sq.For other instances of blood-revenge as a duty, see Boas, ‘Central Eskimo,’Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn.vi. 582; Petroff, ‘Report on Alaska,’ inTenth Census of the United States, p. 158 (Atkha Aleuts); Kohler, inZeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss.vii. 376 (Papuans of New Guinea); Modigliani,Viaggio a Nías, p. 471; Bowring,Visit to the Philippine Islands, p. 177; Macpherson,Memorials of Service in India, p. 82 (Kandhs); Radde,Die Chews’uren, p. 115; von Haxthausen,Transcaucasia, p. 406sqq.(Ossetes); Munzinger,Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 87; Mungo Park,Travels in the Interior of Africa, p. 13 (Feloops bordering on the Gambia); Leuschner, in Steinmetz,Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien, p. 23 (Bakwiri);ibid.p. 49 (Banaka and Bapuku); Nicole,ibid.p. 132 (Diakité-Sarrakolese); Lang,ibid.p. 256sq.(Washambala); Kraft,ibid.p. 292 (Wapokomo); Viehe,ibid.p. 311 (Ovaherero); Rautanen,ibid.p. 341 (Ondonga); Sorge,ibid.p. 418 (Nissan Islanders in the Bismarck Archipelago).

The duty of blood-revenge is, in the first place, regarded as a duty to the dead, not merely because he has been deprived of his highest good, his life, but because his spirit is believed to find no rest after death until the injury has been avenged.33The disembodied soul carries into its new existence an eager longing for revenge, and, till the crime has been duly expiated, hovers about the earth, molesting the manslayer or trying to compel its own relatives to take vengeance on him.

33See Kohler,Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, p. 131sq.; Steinmetz,Ethnol. Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, i. 291sqq.;Idem,Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 49 (Banaka and Bapuku); Nicole,ibid.p. 132 (Diakité-Sarrakolese); Lang,ibid.p. 257 (Washambala).

According to Yakut beliefs, a person who is murdered becomes ayor, that is, his ghost never comes to rest.34The Cheremises imagine that the spirits of persons who have died a violent death cause illness, especially fever and ague.35The Saoras of India seem to have most fear of the spirits of those who have died violent deaths.36The Burmese believe that persons who meet a violent death become “nats “and haunt the place where they were killed.37The Hudson Bay Eskimo regard the island of Akpatok as tabooed since the murder of part of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who camped on that island; “not a soul visits that locality lest the ghosts of the victims should appear and supplicate relief from the natives, who have not the proper offerings to make to appease them.”38The Omahas believe that the spirits of those who have been killed reappear after death, their errand being “to solicit vengeance on the perpetrators of the deed.”39According to Genesis, the voice ofblood shed cried for vengeance until the murderer was punished.40A similar notion prevailed among the Bedouins, hence they thought they might escape the taking of revenge by covering up the blood with earth.41One of the most popular ghost stories in folk-tales is that which treats of the ghost of a murdered person flitting about the haunts of the living with no gratification but to terrify them.42According to Rohde, this belief was in full force at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ.43Aeschylus attributes an Erinys to the heinous crime of a man’s neglecting his duty as avenger of blood44—in other words, the soul of the slain turned its anger against the neglectful relative. Traces of the same belief still survive in various parts of Europe.45In Wärend, in Sweden, the people maintain that the unsatisfied ghost of a murdered man visits his relatives at night, and disturbs their rest; and it was an ancient custom among them that, if the murderer was not known, the nearest relation of the dead, before the knell began, went forward to the corpse and asked the dead himself to avenge his murder.46

34Sumner, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxi. 101.

35Abercromby,Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, i. 168sq.

36Fawcett, inJour. Anthrop. Soc. Bombay, i. 59.

37Schway Yoe,The Burman, i. 286.

38Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xi. 186.

39James,Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, i. 267.

40Genesis, iv. 10.

41Jacob,Leben der vorislâmischen Beduinen, p. 146.Cf.Schwally,Leben nach dem Tode, p. 52sq.

42See Dyer,The Ghost World, p. 65sqq.; Andree,Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 80sqq.

43Rohde,Psyche, p. 240.Cf.Idem, ‘Paralipomena,’ inRheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 19sq.; Schmidt,Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 125sqq.

44Aeschylus,Choephori, 283sqq.Cf.ibid.400sqq.; Plato,Leges, ix. 866.

45Dyer,op. cit.p. 68sqq.Thorpe,Northern Mythology, ii. 19sq.

46Hyltén-Cavallius,Wärend och Wirdarne, ii. 274; i. 473.

From one point of view, blood-revenge is thus a form of human sacrifice. Sometimes it even formally bears a strong resemblance to certain other human sacrifices which are offered to the dead. Among some Queensland tribes, when the assassin has been caught red-handed, the slayer and slain are buried together in the same grave;47and among the ancient Teutons the avenger by preference slew the culprit at the feet of the murdered man, or at his tomb.48Blood-revenge also resembles other kinds of human sacrifice so far that it serves as a safeguard for the sacrificer—in this case the avenger, who would otherwise expose himself to the persecutions of the revengeful spirit of the dead.

47Roth,Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 165.

48Wilda,Strafrecht der Germanen, pp. 170, 692.

But the practice of blood-revenge is not exclusivelybased on a desire to avenge the injury done to a fellow-creature and to gratify the angry passion of his soul. The act which caused his death is at the same time an injury inflicted upon the survivors. Hence, in many cases, a murder committed within the family or kin is left unavenged.49Among the Iroquois, says Loskiel, any one who has murdered his own relative escapes without much difficulty, since the family, who alone have a right to take revenge, do not choose to weaken their influence by depriving themselves of another member besides the one whom they have already lost.50Again, when the murderer belongs to an extraneous family, the injury inflicted on the relatives of the murdered man suggests not only revenge, but reparation.

49Steinmetz,Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, ii. 159sqq.Mauss, ‘La religion et les origines du droit pénal,’ inRevue de l’histoire des religions, xxxv. 44. Kovalewsky, ‘Les origines du devoir,’ inRevue internationale de Sociologie, ii. 86.Cf.Seebohm,Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 30, 42 (Welsh); Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, p. 420;Idem,Marriage and Kinship in early Arabia, p. 25. Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco blood-revenge is taken for the killing of a cousin, but not for the killing of a brother.

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