The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

Fr. Boas, in Tenth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 49 sq., 58 sq. (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Ipswich meeting, 1895). It is remarkable, however, that in this tribe persons who are being initiated into the secret societies, of which there are six, are not always or even generally brought back by an artificial animal which represents their own totem. Thus while men of the eagle totem are brought back by an eagle which rises from underground, men of the bear clan return on the back of an artificial killer-whale which is towed across the river by ropes. Again, members of the wolf clan are brought back by an artificial bear, and members of the raven clan by a frog. In former times the appearance of the artificial totem animal, or of the guardian spirit, was considered a matter of great importance, and any failure which disclosed the deception to the uninitiated was deemed a grave misfortune which could only be atoned for by the death of the persons concerned in the disclosure.

667

See above, p. 213 (#x_16_i30).

668

This is the opinion of Dr. F. Boas, who writes: “The close similarity between the clan legends and those of the acquisition of spirits presiding over secret societies, as well as the intimate relation between these and the social organizations of the tribes, allow us to apply the same argument to the consideration of the growth of the secret societies, and lead us to the conclusion that the same psychical factor that molded the clans into their present shape molded the secret societies” (“The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the United States National Museum for 1895, p. 662). Dr. Boas would see in the acquisition of a manitoo or personal totem the origin both of the secret societies and of the totem clans; for according to him the totem of the clan is merely the manitoo or personal totem of the ancestor transmitted by inheritance to his descendants. As to personal totems or guardian spirits (manitoos) among the North American Indians, see Totemism and Exogamy, iii. 370 sqq.; as to their secret societies, see id., iii. 457 sqq.; as to the theory that clan totems originated in personal or individual totems, see id., iv. 48 sqq.

669

A. G. Morice, “Notes, archaeological, industrial, and sociological, on the Western Dénés,” Transactions of the Canadian Institute, iv. (1892-93) pp. 203-206. The honorific totems of the Carrier Indians may perhaps correspond in some measure to the sub-totems or multiplex totems of the Australians. As to these latter see Totemism and Exogamy, i. 78 sqq., 133 sqq.

670

See above, pp. 153 (#pgepubid00010)sq.

671

James Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, p. 357 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, April, 1900). Among the Shuswap of British Columbia, when a young man has obtained his personal totem or guardian spirit, he is supposed to become proof against bullets and arrows (Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report of the Committee on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 93, separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Leeds meeting, 1890).

672

H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), v. 683. In a letter dated 16th Dec. 1887, Mr. A. S. Gatschet, formerly of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, wrote to me: “Among the Toukawe whom in 1884 I found at Fort Griffin [?], Texas, I noticed that they never kill the big or grey wolf, hatchukunän, which has a mythological signification, ‘holding the earth’ (hatch). He forms one of their totem clans, and they have had a dance in his honor, danced by the males only, who carried sticks.”

673

The Laws of Manu, ii. 169, translated by G. Bühler (Oxford, 1886), p. 61 (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv.); J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), i. 125; Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1883), pp. 360 sq., 396 sq.; H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 466 sqq.

674

Lampridius, Commodus, 9; C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, Second Edition (London, 1887), pp. 127, 129. Compare Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, i. (Brussels, 1899) pp. 69 sq., 321 sq.; E. Rohde, Psyche

(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), ii. 400 n. 1; A. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie (Leipsic, 1903), pp. 91, 157 sqq.

675

Above, p. 110 (#x_7_i23); compare pp. 107 (#x_7_i19), 120 (#x_8_i11)sq., 132 (#x_9_i5), 133 (#x_9_i7).

676

Above, p. 120 (#x_8_i11).

677

Above, p. 106 (#x_7_i17).

678

Above, p. 145 (#x_9_i23). In the myth the throwing of the weapons and of the mistletoe at Balder and the blindness of Hother who slew him remind us of the custom of the Irish reapers who kill the corn-spirit in the last sheaf by throwing their sickles blindfold at it. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 144. In Mecklenburg a cock is sometimes buried in the ground and a man who is blindfolded strikes at it with a flail. If he misses it, another tries, and so on till the cock is killed. See K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg (Vienna, 1879-1880), ii. 280. In England on Shrove Tuesday a hen used to be tied upon a man's back, and other men blindfolded struck at it with branches till they killed it. See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), p. 68. W. Mannhardt (Die Korndämonen, Berlin, 1868, pp. 16 sq.) has made it probable that such sports are directly derived from the custom of killing a cock upon the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 277 sq. These customs, therefore, combined with the blindness of Hother in the myth, suggest that the man who killed the human representative of the oak-spirit was blindfolded, and threw his weapon or the mistletoe from a little distance. After the Lapps had killed a bear – which was the occasion of many superstitious ceremonies – the bear's skin was hung on a post, and the women, blindfolded, shot arrows at it. See J. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), p. 240.

679

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 12; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 1010. Compare below, p. 282 (#x_21_i8).

680

The Satapatha Brahmana, xii. 7. 3. 1-3, translated by J. Eggeling, Part v. (Oxford, 1900) pp. 222 sq. (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliv.); Denham Rouse, in Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1889) p. 61, quoting Taittīrya Brāhmana, I. vii. 1.

681

Col. E. T. Dalton, “The Kols of Chota-Nagpore,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society, N.S. vi. (1868) p. 36.

682

Jens Kamp, Danske Folkeminder (Odense, 1877), pp. 172, 65 sq., referred to in Feilberg's Bidrag til en Ordbog over Jyske Almuesmål, Fjerde hefte (Copenhagen, 1888), p. 320. For a sight of Feilberg's work I am indebted to the kindness of the late Rev. Walter Gregor, M.A., of Pitsligo, who pointed out the passage to me.

683

E. T. Kristensen, Iydske Folkeminder, vi. 380, referred to by Feilberg, l. c. According to Marcellus (De Medicamentis, xxvi. 115), ivy which springs from an oak is a remedy for stone, provided it be cut with a copper instrument.

684

A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks

(Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 175 sq., quoting Dybeck's Runa, 1845, pp. 62 sq.

685

A. Kuhn, op. cit. p. 176.

686

Quoted by A. Kuhn, op. cit. pp. 180 sq. In Zimbales, a province of the Philippine Islands, “a certain parasitic plant that much resembles yellow moss and grows high up on trees is regarded as a very powerful charm. It is called gay-u-ma, and a man who possesses it is called nanara gayuma. If his eyes rest on a person during the new moon he will become sick at the stomach, but he can cure the sickness by laying hands on the afflicted part.” See W. A. Reed, Negritos of Zambales (Manilla, 1904), p. 67 (Department of the Interior, Ethnological Survey Publications, vol. ii. part i.). Mr. Reed seems to mean that if a man who possesses this parasitic plant sees a person at the new moon, the person on whom his eye falls will be sick in his stomach, but that the owner of the parasite can cure the sufferer by laying his (the owner's) hands on his (the patient's) stomach. It is interesting to observe that the magical virtue of the parasitic plant appears to be especially effective at the new moon.

687

A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube

(Berlin, 1869), p. 97 § 128; L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden (London, 1870), p. 269. See above, p. 86 (#x_6_i25).

688

John Hay Allan, The Bridal of Caölchairn (London, 1822), pp. 337 sq.

689