The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)

The goddess Sedna, he tells us, the mother of the sea-mammals, may be considered to be the chief deity of the central Esquimaux. She is supposed to bear supreme sway over the destinies of mankind, and almost all the observances of these tribes have for their object to retain her good will or appease her anger. Her home is in the lower world, where she dwells in a house built of stone and whale-ribs. “The souls of seals, ground seals, and whales are believed to proceed from her house. After one of these animals has been killed, its soul stays with the body for three days. Then it goes back to Sedna's abode, to be sent forth again by her. If, during the three days that the soul stays with the body, any taboo or proscribed custom is violated, the violation (pitssēte) becomes attached to the animal's soul, and causes it pain. The soul strives in vain to free itself of these attachments, but is compelled to take them down to Sedna. The attachments, in some manner not explained, make her hands sore, and she punishes the people who are the cause of her pains by sending to them sickness, bad weather, and starvation. If, on the other hand, all taboos have been observed, the sea-animals will allow themselves to be caught; they will even come to meet the hunter. The object of the innumerable taboos that are in force after the killing of these sea-animals, therefore, is to keep their souls free from attachments that would hurt their souls as well as Sedna.

The souls of the sea-beasts have a great aversion to the dark colour of death and to the vapour that arises from flowing blood, and they avoid persons who are affected by these things.

“The souls of the sea-animals are endowed with greater powers than those of ordinary human beings. They can see the effect of contact with a corpse, which causes objects touched by it to appear dark in colour; and they can see the effect of flowing human blood, from which a vapour rises that surrounds the bleeding person and is communicated to every one and every thing that comes in contact with such a person. This vapour and the dark colour of death are exceedingly unpleasant to the souls of the sea-animals, that will not come near a hunter thus affected. The hunter must therefore avoid contact with people who have touched a body, or with those who are bleeding, more particularly with menstruating women or with those who have recently given birth. The hands of menstruating women appear red to the sea-animals. If any one who has touched a body or who is bleeding should allow others to come in contact with him, he would cause them to become distasteful to the seals, and therefore to Sedna as well. For this reason custom demands that every person must at once announce if he has touched a body, and that women must make known when they are menstruating or when they have had a miscarriage. If they do not do so, they will bring ill-luck to all the hunters.

The transgresser of a taboo must announce his transgression, in order that other people may shun him.

“These ideas have given rise to the belief that it is necessary to announce the transgression of any taboo. The transgressor of a custom is distasteful to Sedna and to the animals, and those who abide with him will become equally distasteful through contact with him. For this reason it has come to be an act required by custom and morals to confess any and every transgression of a taboo, in order to protect the community from the evil influence of contact with the evil-doer. The descriptions of Eskimo life given by many observers contain records of starvation, which, according to the belief of the natives, was brought about by some one transgressing a law, and not announcing what he had done.

Hence the central Esquimaux have come to think that sin can be atoned for by confession.

“I presume the importance of the confession of a transgression, with a view to warning others to keep at a distance from the transgressor, has gradually led to the idea that a transgression, or, we might say, a sin can be atoned for by confession. This is one of the most remarkable traits among the religious beliefs of the central Eskimo. There are innumerable tales of starvation brought about by the transgression of a taboo. In vain the hunters try to supply their families with food; gales and drifting snow make their endeavours fruitless. Finally the help of the angakok[678 - That is, the wizard or sorcerer.] is invoked, and he discovers that the cause of the misfortune of the people is due to the transgression of a taboo. Then the guilty one is searched for. If he confesses, all is well; the weather moderates, and the seals allow themselves to be caught; but if he obstinately maintains his innocence, his death alone will soothe the wrath of the offended deity…

The transgression of taboos affects the soul of the transgressor, becoming attached to it and making him sick. If the attachment is not removed by the wizard, the man will die.

“The transgressions of taboos do not affect the souls of game alone. It has already been stated that the sea-mammals see their effect upon man also, who appears to them of a dark colour, or surrounded by a vapour which is invisible to ordinary man. This means, of course, that the transgression also affects the soul of the evil-doer. It becomes attached to it, and makes him sick. The angakok[679 - That is, the wizard or sorcerer.] is able to see these attachments with the help of his guardian spirit, and is able to free the soul from them. If this is not done, the person must die. In many cases the transgressions become fastened also to persons who come in contact with the evil-doer. This is especially true of children, to whose souls the sins of their parents, and particularly of their mothers, become readily attached. Therefore, when a child is sick, the angakok first of all, asks its mother if she has transgressed any taboos. The attachment seems to have a different appearance, according to the taboo that has been violated. A black attachment is due to removing oil-drippings from under the lamp, a piece of caribou-skin represents the scrapings removed from a caribou-skin at a time when such work was forbidden. As soon as the mother acknowledges the transgression of a taboo, the attachment leaves the child's soul, and the child recovers.

The Esquimaux try to keep the sea-beasts free from contaminating influences, especially from contact with corpses and with women who have recently been brought to bed.

“A number of customs may be explained by the endeavours of the natives to keep the sea-mammals free from contaminating influences. All the clothing of a dead person, the tent in which he died, and the skins obtained by him, must be discarded; for if a hunter should wear clothing made of skins that had been in contact with the deceased, these would appear dark, and the seal would avoid him. Neither would a seal allow itself to be taken into a hut darkened by a dead body; and all those who entered such a hut would appear dark to it, and would be avoided.

“While it is customary for a successful hunter to invite all the men of the village to eat of the seal that he has caught, they must not take any of the seal-meat out of the hut, because it might come in contact with persons who are under taboo, and thus the hunter might incur the displeasure of the seal and of Sedna. This is particularly strictly forbidden in the case of the first seal of the season.

“A woman who has a new-born child, and who has not quite recovered, must eat only of seals caught by her husband, by a boy, or by an aged man; else the vapour arising from her body would become attached to the souls of other seals, which would take the transgression down to Sedna, thus making her hands sore.

“Cases of premature birth require particularly careful treatment. The event must be announced publicly, else dire results will follow. If a woman should conceal from the other people that she has had a premature birth, they might come near her, or even eat in her hut of the seals procured by her husband. The vapour arising from her would thus affect them, and they would be avoided by the seals. The transgression would also become attached to the soul of the seal, which would take it down to Sedna.”[680 - Fr. Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. pt. i. (1901) pp. 119-121, 124-126. In quoting these passages I have changed the spelling of a few words in accordance with English orthography.]

In the system of taboos of the central Esquimaux we see animism passing into religion; morality is coming to rest on a supernatural basis, namely the will of the goddess Sedna. In this evolution of religion the practice of confession has played a part. It seems to have been regarded as a spiritual purge or emetic, by which sin, conceived as a sort of morbid substance, was expelled from the body of the sinner.

In these elaborate taboos so well described by Dr. Boas we seem to see a system of animism in the act of passing into religion. The rules themselves bear the clearest traces of having originated in a doctrine of souls, and of being determined by the supposed likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies of the various classes of spirits toward each other. But above and behind the souls of men and animals has grown up the overshadowing conception of a powerful goddess who rules them all, so that the taboos come more and more to be viewed as a means of propitiating her rather than as merely adapted to suit the tastes of the souls themselves. Thus the standard of conduct is shifted from a natural to a supernatural basis: the supposed wish of the deity or, as we commonly put it, the will of God, tends to supersede the wishes, real or imaginative, of purely natural beings as the measure of right and wrong. The old savage taboos, resting on a theory of the direct relations of living creatures to each other, remain in substance unchanged, but they are outwardly transformed into ethical precepts with a religious or supernatural sanction. In this gradual passage of a rude philosophy into an elementary religion the place occupied by confession as a moral purgative is particularly interesting. I can hardly agree with Dr. Boas that among these Esquimaux the confession of sins was in its origin no more than a means of warning others against the dangerous contagion of the sinner; in other words, that its saving efficacy consisted merely in preventing the innocent from suffering with the guilty, and that it had no healing virtue, no purifying influence, for the evil-doer himself. It seems more probable that originally the violation of taboo, in other words, the sin, was conceived as something almost physical, a sort of morbid substance lurking in the sinner's body, from which it could be expelled by confession as by a sort of spiritual purge or emetic. This is confirmed by the form of auricular confession which is practised by the Akikuyu of British East Africa. Amongst them, we are told, “sin is essentially remissable; it suffices to confess it. Usually this is done to the sorcerer, who expels the sin by a ceremony of which the principal rite is a pretended emetic: kotahikio, derived from tahika, ‘to vomit.’ ”[681 - Le P. P. Cayzac, “La Religion des Kikuyu,” Anthropos, v. (1905) p. 311.] Thus among these savages the confession and absolution of sins is, so to say, a purely physical process of relieving a sufferer of a burden which sits heavy on his stomach rather than on his conscience. This view of the matter is again confirmed by the observation that these same Akikuyu resort to another physical mode of expelling sin from a sinner, and that is by the employment of a scapegoat, which by them, as by the Jews and many other people, has been employed as a vehicle for carting away moral rubbish and dumping it somewhere else. For example, if a Kikuyu man has committed incest, which would naturally entail his death, he produces a substitute in the shape of a he-goat, to which by an ignoble ceremony he transfers his guilt. Then the throat of the animal is cut, and the human culprit is thereby purged of his sin.[682 - Le P. P. Cayzac, loc. cit. The nature of the “ignoble ceremony” of transferring sin to a he-goat is not mentioned by the missionary. It can hardly have been the simple Jewish one of laying hands on the animal's head.]

Hence the confession of sins is employed as a sort of medicine for the recovery of the sick. Similarly the confession of sins is sometimes resorted to by women in hard labour as a means of accelerating their delivery. In these cases confession is a magical ceremony designed to relieve the sinner.

Hence we may suspect that the primary motive of the confession of sins among savages was self-regarding; in other words, the intention was rather to benefit the sinner himself than to safeguard others by warning them of the danger they would incur by coming into contact with him. This view is borne out by the observation that confession is sometimes used as a means of healing the sick transgressor himself, who is supposed to recover as soon as he has made a clean breast of his transgression. Thus “when the Carriers are severely sick, they often think that they shall not recover, unless they divulge to a priest or magician every crime which they may have committed, which has hitherto been kept secret. In such a case they will make a full confession, and then they expect that their lives will be spared for a time longer. But should they keep back a single crime, they as firmly believe that they shall suffer almost instant death.”[683 - D. W. Harmon, in Rev. Jedidiah Morse's Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New-haven, 1822), p. 345. The Carriers are an Indian tribe of North-West America who call themselves Ta-cul-lies, “a people who go upon water” (ibid. p. 343).] Again, the Aurohuaca Indians, who, under the tropical sun of South America, inhabit a chilly region bordering on the perpetual snows of the Sierra Nevada in Colombia, believe that all sickness is a punishment for sin. So when one of their medicine-men is summoned to a sick bed, he does not enquire after the patient's symptoms but makes strange passes over him and asks in a sepulchral voice whether he will confess his sins. If the sick man persists in drawing a veil of silence over his frailties, the doctor will not attempt to treat him, but will turn on his heel and leave the house. On the other hand if a satisfactory confession has been made, the leech directs the patient's friends to procure certain odd-looking bits of stone or shell to which the sins of the sufferer may be transferred, for when that is done he will be made whole. For this purpose the sin-laden stones or shells are carried high up into the mountains and laid in some spot where the first beams of the sun, rising in clear or clouded majesty above the long white slopes or the towering crags of the Sierra Nevada, will strike down on them, driving sin and sickness far away by their radiant influence.[684 - Francis C. Nicholas, “The Aborigines of Santa Maria, Colombia,” American Anthropologist, N.S. iii. (1901) pp. 639-641.] Here, again, we see that sin is regarded as something almost material which by confession can be removed from the body of the patient and laid on stones or shells. Further, the confession of sins has been resorted to by some people as a means of accelerating the birth of a child when the mother was in hard labour. Thus, “among the Indians of Guatemala, in the time of their idolatry when a woman was in labour, the midwife ordered her to confess her sins; and if she was not delivered, the husband was to confess his; and if that did not do they took off his clouts and put them about his wife's loins; if still she could not be delivered, the midwife drew blood from herself and sprinkled it towards the four quarters of heaven with some invocations and ceremonies.”[685 - A. de Herrera, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, translated by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725-26), iv. 148. The confession of sins appears to have held an important place in the native religion of the American Indians, particularly the Mexicans and Peruvians. There is no sufficient reason to suppose that they learned the practice from Catholic priests. For more evidence of the custom among the aborigines of America see L. H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois (Rochester, U.S. America, 1851), pp. 170 sq., 187 sq.; B. de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, bk. i. ch. 12, bk. vi. ch. 7, pp. 22-27, 339-344 (Jourdanet and Simeon's French translation); A. de Herrera, op. cit. iv. 173, 190; Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), pp. 154 sqq.; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale, ii. 114 sq., 567, iii. 567-569; P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp. 18, 28 sq.] In these attempts of the Indians to accelerate the birth of the child it seems clear that the confession of sins on the part first of the wife and afterwards of the husband is nothing but a magical ceremony like the putting of the husband's clothes on the suffering woman[686 - As to this means of hastening the delivery see Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 248 sqq. The intention of the exchange of clothes at childbirth between husband and wife seems to be to relieve the woman by transferring the travail pangs to the man.] or the sprinkling of the midwife's blood towards the four quarters of the heaven. Amongst the Antambahoaka, a savage tribe of Madagascar, when a woman is in hard labour, a sorcerer is called in to her aid. After making some magical signs and uttering some incantations, he generally declares that the patient cannot be delivered until she has publicly confessed a secret fault which she has committed. In such a case a woman has been known to confess to incest with her brother; and immediately after her confession the child was born.[687 - G. Ferrand, Les Musulmans à Madagascar, Deuxième Partie (Paris, 1893), pp. 20 sq.] In these cases the confession of sins is clearly not a mode of warning people to keep clear of the sinner; it is a magical ceremony primarily intended to benefit the sinner himself or herself and no other. The same thing may perhaps be said of a confession which was prescribed in a certain case by ancient Hindoo ritual. At a great festival of Varuna, which fell at the beginning of the rainy season, the priest asked the wife of the sacrificer to name her paramour or paramours, and she had to mention their names or at least to take up as many grass-stalks as she had lovers.[688 - H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 319 sq.] “Now when a woman who belongs to one man carries on intercourse with another, she undoubtedly commits a sin against Varuna. He therefore thus asks her, lest she should sacrifice with a secret pang in her mind; for when confessed the sin becomes less, since it becomes truth; this is why he thus asks her. And whatever connection she confesses not, that indeed will turn out injurious to her relatives.”[689 - Satapatha Brahmana, translated by J. Eggeling, pt. i. p. 397 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii.).] In this passage of the Satapatha Brahmana confession of sin is said to diminish the sin, just as if the mere utterance of the words ejected or expelled some morbid matter from the person of the sinner, thereby relieving her of its burden and benefiting also her relatives, who would suffer through any sin which she might not have confessed.

Thus the confession of sins is at first rather a bodily than a moral purgation, resembling the ceremonies of washing, fumigation, and so on, which are observed by many primitive peoples for the removal of sin.

Thus at an early stage of culture the confession of sins wears the aspect of a bodily rather than of a moral and spiritual purgation; it is a magical rather than a religious rite, and as such it resembles the ceremonies of washing, scouring, fumigation, and so forth, which in like manner are applied by many primitive peoples to the purification of what we should regard as moral guilt, but what they consider rather as a corporeal pollution or infection, which can be removed by the physical agencies of fire, water, fasts, purgatives, abrasion, scarification, and so forth. But when the guilt of sin ceases to be regarded as something material, a sort of clinging vapour of death, and is conceived as the transgression of the will of a wise and good God, it is obvious that the observance of these outward rites of purification becomes superfluous and absurd, a vain show which cannot appease the anger of the offended deity. The only means of turning away his wrath and averting the fatal consequences of sin is now believed to be the humble confession and true repentance of the sinner. At this stage of ethical evolution the practice of confession loses its old magical character as a bodily purge and assumes the new aspect of a purely religious rite, the propitiation of a great supernatural and moral being, who by a simple fiat can cancel the transgression and restore the transgressor to a state of pristine innocence. This comfortable doctrine teaches us that in order to blot out the effects of our misdeeds we have only to acknowledge and confess them with a lowly and penitent heart, whereupon a merciful God will graciously pardon our sin and absolve us and ours from its consequences. It might indeed be well for the world if we could thus easily undo the past, if we could recall the words that have been spoken amiss, if we could arrest the long train that follows, like a flight of avenging Furies, on every evil action. But this we cannot do. Our words and acts, good and bad, have their natural, their inevitable consequences. God may pardon sin, but Nature cannot.

It is possible that some savage taboos may still lurk, under various disguises, in the morality of civilised peoples.

It seems not improbable that in our own rules of conduct, in what we call the common decencies of life as well as in the weightier matters of morality, there may survive not a few old savage taboos which, masquerading as an expression of the divine will or draped in the flowing robes of a false philosophy, have maintained their credit long after the crude ideas out of which they sprang have been discarded by the progress of thought and knowledge; while on the other hand many ethical precepts and social laws, which now rest firmly on a solid basis of utility, may at first have drawn some portion of their sanctity from the same ancient system of superstition. For example, we can hardly doubt that in primitive society the crime of murder derived much of its horror from a fear of the angry ghost of the murdered man. Thus superstition may serve as a convenient crutch to morality till she is strong enough to throw away the crutch and walk alone. To judge by the legislation of the Pentateuch the ancient Semites appear to have passed through a course of moral evolution not unlike that which we can still detect in process among the Esquimaux of Baffin Land. Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the deity. This disguise is indeed a good deal more perfect in Palestine than in Baffin Land, but in substance it is the same. Among the Esquimaux it is the will of Sedna; among the Israelites it is the will of Jehovah.[690 - The similarity of some of the Mosaic laws to savage customs has struck most Europeans who have acquired an intimate knowledge of the savage and his ways. They have often explained the coincidences as due to a primitive revelation or to the dispersion of the Jews into all parts of the earth. Some examples of these coincidences were cited in my article “Taboo,” Encyclopaedia Britannica,

xxiii. 17. The subject has since been handled, with consummate ability and learning, by my lamented friend W. Robertson Smith in his Religion of the Semites (New Edition, London, 1894). In Psyche's Task I have illustrated by examples the influence of superstition on the growth of morality.]

But it is time to return to our immediate subject, to wit, the rules of conduct observed by hunters after the slaughter of the game.

Ceremonies observed by the Kayans after killing a panther. Ceremonies of purification observed by African hunters after killing dangerous beasts. Ceremonies observed by Lapp hunters after killing a bear.

When the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo have shot one of the dreaded Bornean panthers, they are very anxious about the safety of their souls, for they think that the soul of a panther is almost more powerful than their own. Hence they step eight times over the carcase of the dead beast reciting the spell, “Panther, thy soul under my soul.” On returning home they smear themselves, their dogs, and their weapons with the blood of fowls in order to calm their souls and hinder them from fleeing away; for being themselves fond of the flesh of fowls they ascribe the same taste to their souls. For eight days afterwards they must bathe by day and by night before going out again to the chase.[691 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 106 sq.] After killing an animal some Indian hunters used to purify themselves in water as a religious rite.[692 - J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 118.] When a Damara hunter returns from a successful chase he takes water in his mouth and ejects it three times over his feet, and also into the fire on his own hearth.[693 - C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 224.] Amongst the Caffres of South Africa “the slaughter of a lion, however honourable it is esteemed, is nevertheless associated with an idea of moral uncleanness, and is followed by a very strange ceremony. When the hunters approach the village on their return, the man who gave the lion the first wound is hidden from every eye by the shields which his comrades hold up before him. One of the hunters steps forward and, leaping and bounding in a strange manner, praises the courage of the lion-killer. Then he rejoins the band, and the same performance is repeated by another. All the rest meanwhile keep up a ceaseless shouting, rattling with their clubs on their shields. This goes on till they have reached the village. Then a mean hut is run up not far from the village; and in this hut the lion-killer, because he is unclean, must remain four days, cut off from all association with the tribe. There he dyes his body all over with white paint; and lads who have not yet been circumcised, and are therefore, in respect to uncleanness, in the same state as himself, bring him a calf to eat, and wait upon him. When the four days are over, the unclean man washes himself, paints himself with red paint in the usual manner, and is escorted back to the village by the head chief, attended with a guard of honour. Lastly, a second calf is killed; and, the uncleanness being now at an end, every one is free to eat of the calf with him.”[694 - L. Alberti, De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (Amsterdam, 1810), pp. 158 sq. Compare H. Lichtenstein, Reisen im südlichen Africa (Berlin, 1811-12), i. 419. These accounts were written about a century ago. The custom may since have become obsolete. A similar remark applies to other customs described in this and the following paragraph.] Among the Hottentots, when a man has killed a lion, leopard, elephant, or rhinoceros he is esteemed a great hero, but he is deluged with urine by the medicine-man and has to remain at home quite idle for three days, during which his wife may not come near him; she is also enjoined to restrict herself to a poor diet and to eat no more than is barely necessary to keep her in health.[695 - P. Kolbe, Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, I.

(London, 1738) pp. 251-255. The reason alleged for the custom is to allow the slayer to recruit his strength. But the reason is clearly inadequate as an explanation of this and similar practices.] Similarly the Lapps deem it the height of glory to kill a bear, which they consider the king of beasts. Nevertheless, all the men who take part in the slaughter are regarded as unclean, and must live by themselves for three days in a hut or tent made specially for them, where they cut up and cook the bear's carcase. The reindeer which brought in the carcase on a sledge may not be driven by a woman for a whole year; indeed, according to one account, it may not be used by anybody for that period. Before the men go into the tent where they are to be secluded, they strip themselves of the garments they had worn in killing the bear, and their wives spit the red juice of alder bark in their faces. They enter the tent not by the ordinary door but by an opening at the back. When the bear's flesh has been cooked, a portion of it is sent by the hands of two men to the women, who may not approach the men's tent while the cooking is going on. The men who convey the flesh to the women pretend to be strangers bringing presents from a foreign land; the women keep up the pretence and promise to tie red threads round the legs of the strangers. The bear's flesh may not be passed in to the women through the door of their tent, but must be thrust in at a special opening made by lifting up the hem of the tent-cover. When the three days' seclusion is over and the men are at liberty to return to their wives, they run, one after the other, round the fire, holding the chain by which pots are suspended over it. This is regarded as a form of purification; they may now leave the tent by the ordinary door and rejoin the women. But the leader of the party must still abstain from cohabitation with his wife for two days more.[696 - J. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), pp. 234-243; C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita et religione pristina commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), pp. 502 sq.; E. J. Jessen, De Finnorum Lapponumque Nouvegicorum religione pagana tractatus singularis, pp. 64 sq. (bound up with Leemius's work).]

Expiatory ceremonies performed for the slaughter of serpents.

Again, the Caffres are said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an enormous serpent resembling it; “and being influenced by certain superstitious notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put it to death, whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a running stream of water during the day for several weeks together; and no beast whatever was allowed to be slaughtered at the hamlet to which he belonged, until this duty had been fully performed. The body of the snake was then taken and carefully buried in a trench, dug close to the cattle-fold, where its remains, like those of a chief, were henceforward kept perfectly undisturbed. The period of penance, as in the case of mourning for the dead, is now happily reduced to a few days.”[697 - S. Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London, 1833), pp. 341 sq.] Amongst the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, who worship the python, a native who killed one of these serpents used to be burned alive. But for some time past, though a semblance of carrying out the old penalty is preserved, the culprit is allowed to escape with his life, but he has to pay a heavy fine. A small hut of dry faggots and grass is set up, generally near the lagoon at Whydah, if the crime has been perpetrated there; the guilty man is thrust inside, the door of plaited grass is shut on him, and the hut is set on fire. Sometimes a dog, a kid, and two fowls are enclosed along with him, and he is drenched with palm-oil and yeast, probably to render him the more combustible. As he is unbound, he easily breaks out of the frail hut before the flames consume him; but he has to run the gauntlet of the angry serpent-worshippers, who belabour the murderer of their god with sticks and pelt him with clods until he reaches water and plunges into it, which is supposed to wash away his sin. Thirteen days later a commemoration service is held in honour of the deceased python.[698 - J. Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (London, 1847), i. 195 sq.; F. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851), i. 107; P. Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves (Paris, 1885), p. 397; A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 58 sq.] In Madras it is considered a great sin to kill a cobra. When this has happened, the people generally burn the body of the serpent just as they burn the bodies of human beings. The murderer deems himself polluted for three days. On the second day milk is poured on the remains of the cobra. On the third day the guilty wretch is free from pollution.[699 - Indian Antiquary, xxi. (1892) p. 224. Many of the above examples of expiation exacted for the slaughter of animals have already been cited by me in a note on Pausanias, ii. 7. 7, where I suggested that the legendary purification of Apollo for the slaughter of the python at Delphi (Plutarch, Quaest. Graec., 12; id., De defectu oraculorum, 15; Aelian, Var. Hist. iii. 1) may be a reminiscence of a custom of this sort.] Under native rule, we may suspect, he would not get off so lightly.

All such expiatory rites are based on the respect which the savage feels for the souls of animals.

In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of superstition. Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of customs are based may be assumed to be substantially the same. Those ideas, if I am right, are the respect which the savage feels for the souls of beasts, especially valuable or formidable beasts, and the dread which he entertains of their vengeful ghosts. Some confirmation of this view may be drawn from the ceremonies observed by fishermen of Annam when the carcase of a whale is washed ashore. These fisherfolk, we are told, worship the whale on account of the benefits they derive from it. There is hardly a village on the sea-shore which has not its small pagoda, containing the bones, more or less authentic, of a whale. When a dead whale is washed ashore, the people accord it a solemn burial. The man who first caught sight of it acts as chief mourner, performing the rites which as chief mourner and heir he would perform for a human kinsman. He puts on all the garb of woe, the straw hat, the white robe with long sleeves turned inside out, and the other paraphernalia of full mourning. As next of kin to the deceased he presides over the funeral rites. Perfumes are burned, sticks of incense kindled, leaves of gold and silver scattered, crackers let off. When the flesh has been cut off and the oil extracted, the remains of the carcase are buried in the sand. Afterwards a shed is set up and offerings are made in it. Usually some time after the burial the spirit of the dead whale takes possession of some person in the village and declares by his mouth whether he is a male or a female.[700 - Le R. P. Cadière, “Croyances et dictons populaires de la Vallée du Nguôn-son, Province de Quang-binh (Annam),” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient, i. (1901) pp. 183 sq.]

Chapter V. Tabooed Things

§ 1. The Meaning of Taboo

Taboos of holiness agree with taboos of pollution, because in the savage mind the ideas of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated.

Thus in primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly, and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them, nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.[701 - On the nature of taboo see my article “Taboo” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, vol. xxiii. (1888) pp. 15 sqq.; W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites

(London, 1894), pp. 148 sqq., 446 sqq. Some languages have retained a word for that general idea which includes under it the notions which we now distinguish as sanctity and pollution. The word in Latin is sacer, in Greek, ἅγιος. In Polynesian it is tabu (Tongan), tapu (Samoan, Tahitian, Marquesan, Maori, etc.), or kapu (Hawaiian). See E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Wellington, N.Z., 1891), s. v.tapu. In Dacotan the word is wakan, which in Riggs's Dakota-English Dictionary (Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. vii., Washington, 1890, pp. 507 sq.) is defined as “spiritual, sacred, consecrated; wonderful, incomprehensible; said also of women at the menstrual period.” Another writer in the same dictionary defines wakan more fully as follows: “Mysterious; incomprehensible; in a peculiar state, which, from not being understood, it is dangerous to meddle with; hence the application of this word to women at the menstrual period, and from hence, too, arises the feeling among the wilder Indians, that if the Bible, the church, the missionary, etc., are ‘wakan,’ they are to be avoided, or shunned, not as being bad or dangerous, but as wakan. The word seems to be the only one suitable for holy, sacred, etc., but the common acceptation of it, given above, makes it quite misleading to the heathen.” On the notion designated by wakan, see also G. H. Pond, “Dakota Superstitions,” Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society for the year 1867 (Saint Paul, 1867), p. 33; J. Owen Dorsey, in Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1894), pp. 366 sq. It is characteristic of the equivocal notion denoted by these terms that, whereas the condition of women in childbed is commonly regarded by the savage as what we should call unclean, among the Herero the same condition is described as holy; for some time after the birth of her child, the woman is secluded in a hut made specially for her, and every morning the milk of all the cows is brought to her that she may consecrate it by touching it with her mouth. See H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 167. Again, whereas a girl at puberty is commonly secluded as dangerous, among the Warundi of eastern Africa she is led by her grandmother all over the house and obliged to touch everything (O. Baumann, Durch Massailand sur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 221), as if her touch imparted a blessing instead of a curse.]

To the illustrations of these general principles which have been already given I shall now add some more, drawing my examples, first, from the class of tabooed things, and, second, from the class of tabooed words; for in the opinion of the savage both things and words may, like persons, be charged or electrified, either temporarily or permanently, with the mysterious virtue of taboo, and may therefore require to be banished for a longer or shorter time from the familiar usage of common life. And the examples will be chosen with special reference to those sacred chiefs, kings and priests, who, more than anybody else, live fenced about by taboo as by a wall. Tabooed things will be illustrated in the present chapter, and tabooed words in the next.

§ 2. Iron tabooed

Kings may not be touched. The use of iron forbidden to kings and priests. Use of iron forbidden at circumcision, childbirth, and so forth. Use of iron forbidden at certain times and places among the Esquimaux. Use of iron forbidden on certain occasions among the Highlanders of Scotland. Iron not used in building sacred edifices.

In the first place we may observe that the awful sanctity of kings naturally leads to a prohibition to touch their sacred persons. Thus it was unlawful to lay hands on the person of a Spartan king;[702 - Plutarch, Agis, 19.] no one might touch the body of the king or queen of Tahiti;[703 - W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches,

iii. 102.] it is forbidden to touch the person of the king of Siam under pain of death;[704 - E. Aymonier, Le Cambodge, ii. (Paris, 1901) p. 25.] and no one may touch the king of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured monarch to his palace.[705 - J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge (Paris, 1883), i. 226.] Formerly no one might touch the king of Corea; and if he deigned to touch a subject, the spot touched became sacred, and the person thus honoured had to wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above all, no iron might touch the king's body. In 1800 King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.[706 - Ch. Dallet, Histoire de l'Église de Corée (Paris, 1874), i. pp. xxiv. sq.; W. E. Griffis, Corea, the Hermit Nation (London, 1882), p. 219. These customs are now obsolete (G. N. Curzon, Problems of the Far East (Westminster, 1896), pp. 154 sq. note).] Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;[707 - Macrobius, Sat. v. 19. 13; Servius on Virgil, Aen. i. 448; Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, i. 31. We have already seen (p. 16 (#x_3_i37)) that the hair of the Flamen Dialis might only be cut with a bronze knife. The Greeks attributed a certain cleansing virtue to bronze; hence they employed it in expiatory rites, at eclipses, etc. See the Scholiast on Theocritus, ii. 36.] and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig must be offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.[708 - Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. G. Henzen (Berlin, 1874), pp. 128-135; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.

(Das Sacralwesen) pp. 459 sq.] As a general rule iron might not be brought into Greek sanctuaries.[709 - Plutarch, Praecepta gerendae reipublicae, xxvi. 7. Plutarch here mentions that gold was also excluded from some temples. At first sight this is surprising, for in general neither the gods nor their ministers have displayed any marked aversion to gold. But a little enquiry suffices to clear up the mystery and set the scruple in its proper light. From a Greek inscription discovered some years ago we learn that no person might enter the sanctuary of the Mistress at Lycosura wearing golden trinkets, unless for the purpose of dedicating them to the goddess; and if any one did enter the holy place with such ornaments on his body but no such pious intention in his mind, the trinkets were forfeited to the use of religion. See Ἐφημερὶς ἀρχαιολογική (Athens, 1898), col. 249; Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 939. The similar rule, that in the procession at the mysteries of Andania no woman might wear golden ornaments (Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 653), was probably subject to a similar exception and enforced by a similar penalty. Once more, if the maidens who served Athena on the Acropolis at Athens put on gold ornaments, the ornaments became sacred, in other words, the property of the goddess (Harpocration, s. v. ἀρρηφορεῖν, vol. i. p. 59, ed. Dindorf). Thus it appears that the pious scruple about gold was concerned rather with its exit from, than with its entrance into, the sacred edifice. At the sacrifice to the Sun in ancient Egypt worshippers were forbidden to wear golden trinkets and to give hay to an ass (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 30) – a singular combination of religious precepts. In India gold and silver are common totems, and members of such clans are forbidden to wear gold and silver trinkets respectively. See Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 24.] In Crete sacrifices were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because the legend ran that Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.[710 - Callimachus, referred to by the Old Scholiast on Ovid, Ibis. See Callimachea, ed. O. Schneider, ii. p. 282, Frag. 100

E.; Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 686.] The Archon of Plataea might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataea, he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull.[711 - Plutarch, Aristides, 21. This passage was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse.] To this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz, in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a lad.[712 - Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi (London, 1881), p. 22.] Among the Ovambo of south-west Africa custom requires that lads should be circumcised with a sharp flint; if none is to hand, the operation may be performed with iron, but the iron must afterwards be buried.[713 - Dr. P. H. Brincker, “Charakter, Sitten und Gebräuche speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 80.] The Antandroy and Tanala of Madagascar cut the navel-strings of their children with sharp wood or with a thread, but never with an iron knife.[714 - A. van Gennep, Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar (Paris, 1904), p. 38.] In Uap, one of the Caroline Islands, wood of the hibiscus tree, which was used to make the fire-drill, must be cut with shell knives or shell axes, never with iron or steel.[715 - W. H. Furness, The Island of Stone Money, Uap of the Carolines (Philadelphia and London, 1910), p. 151.] Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, and so on have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies.[716 - J. G. Bourke, The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona (New York, 1891), pp. 178 sq.] After the Pawnees had ceased to use stone arrow-heads for ordinary purposes, they still employed them to slay the sacrifices, whether human captives or buffalo and deer.[717 - G. B. Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-tales (New York, 1889), p. 253.] We have seen that among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait the use of iron implements is forbidden for four days after the slaughter of a white whale, and that the use of an iron axe at a place where salmon are being dressed is believed by these people to be a fatal imprudence.[718 - See above, pp. 205 (#x_12_i21)sq.] They hold a festival in the assembly-house of the village, while the bladders of the slain beasts are hanging there, and during its celebration no wood may be cut with an iron axe. If it is necessary to split firewood, this may be done with wedges of bone.[719 - E. W. Nelson, “The Eskimo about Bering Strait,” Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part I. (Washington, 1899) p. 392.] At Kushunuk, near Cape Vancouver, it happened that Mr. Nelson and his party entered an assembly-house of these Esquimaux while the festival of the bladders was in progress. “When our camping outfit was brought in from the sledges, two men took drums, and as the clothing and goods of the traders who were with me were brought in, the drums were beaten softly and a song was sung in a low, humming tone, but when our guns and some steel traps were brought in, with other articles of iron, the drums were beaten loudly and the songs raised in proportion. This was done that the shades of the animals present in the bladders might not be frightened.”[720 - E. W. Nelson, op. cit. p. 383.] The Esquimaux on the western coast of Hudson Bay may not work on iron during the season for hunting musk-oxen, which falls in March. And no such work may be done by them until the seals have their pups.[721 - Fr. Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, xv. Part I. (1901) p. 149.] Negroes of the Gold Coast remove all iron or steel from their person when they consult their fetish.[722 - C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides (ed. 1883), p. 195.] The men who made the need-fire in Scotland had to divest themselves of all metal.[723 - James Logan, The Scottish Gael (ed. Alex. Stewart), ii. 68 sq.] There was hardly any belief, we are told, that had a stronger hold on the mind of a Scottish Highlander than that on no account whatever should iron be put in the ground on Good Friday. Hence no grave was dug and no field ploughed on that day. It has been suggested that the belief was based on that rooted aversion to iron which fairies are known to feel. These touchy beings live underground, and might resent having the roof pulled from over their heads on the hallowed day.[724 - J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), pp. 262, 298, 299.] Again, in the Highlands of Scotland the shoulder-blades of sheep are employed in divination, being consulted as to future marriages, births, deaths, and funerals; but the forecasts thus made will not be accurate unless the flesh has been removed from the bones without the use of any iron.[725 - R. C. Maclagan, M.D., “Notes on Folklore Objects from Argyleshire,” Folk-lore, vi. (1895) p. 157; J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1900), pp. 263-266. The shoulder-blades of sheep have been used in divination by many peoples, for example by the Corsicans, South Slavs, Tartars, Kirghiz, Calmucks, Chukchees, and Lolos, as well as by the Scotch. See J. Brand, Popular Antiquities, iii. 339 sq. (Bohn's ed.); Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Origin of Civilisation,

pp. 237 sq.; Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii. 224; Camden, Britannia, translated by E. Gibson (London, 1695), col. 1046; M. MacPhail, “Traditions, Customs, and Superstitions of the Lewis,” Folk-lore, vi. (1895) p. 167; J. G. Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 515 sqq.; F. Gregorovius, Corsica, (London, 1855), p. 187; F. S. Krauss, Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 166-170; M. E. Durham, High Albania (London, 1909), pp. 104 sqq.; E. Doutté, Magie et religion dans l'Afrique du Nord (Algiers, 1908), p. 371; W. Radloff, Proben der Volksliteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, iii. 115, note 1, compare p. 132; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 932; W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas (London, 1891), pp. 176, 341-344; P. S. Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs, i. 393; J. G. Georgi, Beschreibung aller Nationen des russischen Reichs, p. 223; T. de Pauly, Description ethnographique des peuples de la Russie, peuples de la Sibérie orientale (St. Petersburg, 1862), p. 7; Krahmer, “Der Anadyr-Bezirk nach A. W. Olssufjew,” Petermann's Mittheilungen, xlv. (1899) pp. 230 sq.; W. Bogoras, “The Chuckchee Religion,” Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vii. part ii. (Leyden and New York) pp. 487 sqq.; Crabouillet, “Les Lolos,” Missions Catholiques, v. (1873) p. 72; W. G. Aston, Shinto, p. 339; R. Andree, “Scapulimantia,” in Boas Anniversary Volume (New York, 1906), pp. 143-165.] In making the clavie (a kind of Yule-tide fire-wheel) at Burghead, no hammer may be used; the hammering must be done with a stone.[726 - C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, p. 226; E. J. Guthrie, Old Scottish Customs (London and Glasgow, 1885), p. 223.] Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the Temple at Jerusalem or in making an altar.[727 - 1 Kings vi. 7; Exodus xx. 25.] The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair without the use of iron or bronze.[728 - Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Roman. iii. 45, v. 24; Plutarch, Numa, 9; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 100.] It was expressly provided by law that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools.[729 - Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. G. Henzen, p. 132; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, i. No. 603.] The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.[730 - Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 100.] The late Rajah Vijyanagram, a member of the Viceroy's Council, and described as one of the most enlightened and estimable of Hindoo princes, would not allow iron to be used in the construction of buildings within his territory, believing that its use would inevitably be followed by small-pox and other epidemics.[731 - Indian Antiquary, x. (1881) p. 364.]

Everything new excites the awe and fear of the savage.

This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike.[732 - Prof. W. Ridgeway ingeniously suggests that the magical virtue of iron may be based on an observation of its magnetic power, which would lead savages to imagine that it was possessed of a spirit. See Report of the British Association for 1903, p. 816.] For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. “It is a curious superstition,” says a pioneer in Borneo, “this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything – whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky – that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot weather we have experienced of late.”[733 - Frank Hatton, North Borneo (1886), p. 233.] Some years ago a harmless naturalist was collecting plants among the high forest-clad mountains on the borders of China and Tibet. From the summit of a pass he gazed with delight down a long valley which, stretching away as far as eye could reach to the south, resembled a sea of bloom, for everywhere the forest was ablaze with the gorgeous hues of the rhododendron and azalea in flower. In this earthly paradise the votary of science hastened to install himself beside a lake. But hardly had he done so when, alas! the weather changed. Though the season was early June, the cold became intense, snow fell heavily, and the bloom of the rhododendrons was cut off. The inhabitants of a neighbouring village at once set down the unusual severity of the weather to the presence of a stranger in the forest; and a round-robin, signed by them unanimously, was forwarded to the nearest mandarin, setting forth that the snow which had blocked the road, and the hail which was blasting their crops, were alike caused by the intruder, and that all sorts of disturbances would follow if he were allowed to remain. In these circumstances the naturalist, who had intended to spend most of the summer among the mountains, was forced to decamp. “Collecting in this country,” he adds pathetically, “is not an easy matter.”[734 - A. E. Pratt, “Two Journeys to Ta-tsien-lu on the eastern Borders of Tibet,” Proceedings of the R. Geographical Society, xiii. (1891) p. 341.] The unusually heavy rains which happened to follow the English survey of the Nicobar Islands in the winter of 1886-1887 were imputed by the alarmed natives to the wrath of the spirits at the theodolites, dumpy-levellers, and other strange instruments which had been set up in so many of their favourite haunts; and some of them proposed to soothe the anger of the spirits by sacrificing a pig.[735 - W. Svoboda, “Die Bewohner des Nikobaren-Archipels,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, vi. (1893) p. 13.] When the German Hans Stade was a captive in a cannibal tribe of Brazilian Indians, it happened that, shortly before a prisoner was to be eaten, a great wind arose and blew away part of the roofs of the huts. The savages were angry with Stade, and said he had made the wind to come by looking into his thunder-skins, by which they meant a book he had been reading, in order to save the prisoner, who was a friend of his, from their stomachs. So the pious German prayed to God, and God mercifully heard his prayer; for next morning the weather was beautifully fine, and his friend was butchered, carved, and eaten in the most perfect comfort.[736 - The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse, ina. d.1547-1555, translated by A. Tootal (London, 1874), pp. 85 sq.] According to the Orotchis of eastern Siberia, misfortunes have multiplied on them with the coming of Europeans; “they even go so far as to lay the appearance of new phenomena like thunder at the door of the Russians.”[737 - E. H. Fraser, “The Fish-skin Tartars,” Journal of the China Branch of the R. Asiatic Society for the Year 1891-92, N.S. xxvi. p. 15.] In the seventeenth century a succession of bad seasons excited a revolt among the Esthonian peasantry, who traced the origin of the evil to a water-mill, which put a stream to some inconvenience by checking its flow.[738 - Fr. Kreutzwald und H. Neus, Mythische und magische Lieder der Ehsten (St. Petersburg, 1854), p. 113.] The first introduction of iron ploughshares into Poland having been followed by a succession of bad harvests, the farmers attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and discarded them for the old wooden ones.[739 - Alexand. Guagninus, “De ducatu Samogitiae,” in Respublica sive status regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc. (Elzevir, 1627) p. 276; Johan. Lasicius, “De diis Samogitarum caeterorumque Sarmatum,” in Respublica, etc. (ut supra), p. 294 (p. 84, ed. W. Mannhardt, in Magazin herausgegeben von der Lettisch – Literärischen Gesellschaft, vol. xiv.).] To this day the primitive Baduwis of Java, who live chiefly by husbandry, will use no iron tools in tilling their fields.[740 - L. von Ende, “Die Baduwis von Java,” Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xix. (1889) p. 10.]

The dislike of spirits to iron allows men to use the metal as a weapon against them. Iron used as a charm against fairies in the Highlands of Scotland. Iron used as a protective charm by Scotch fishermen and others. Iron used as a protective charm against devils and ghosts in India, Annam. Africa, and Scotland.

The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed by them to the gods; possibly this aversion may have been intensified in places by some such accidental cause as the series of bad seasons which cast discredit on iron ploughshares in Poland. But the disfavour in which iron is held by the gods and their ministers has another side. Their antipathy to the metal furnishes men with a weapon which may be turned against the spirits when occasion serves. As their dislike of iron is supposed to be so great that they will not approach persons and things protected by the obnoxious metal, iron may obviously be employed as a charm for banning ghosts and other dangerous spirits. And often it is so used. Thus in the Highlands of Scotland the great safeguard against the elfin race is iron, or, better yet, steel. The metal in any form, whether as a sword, a knife, a gun-barrel, or what not, is all-powerful for this purpose. Whenever you enter a fairy dwelling you should always remember to stick a piece of steel, such as a knife, a needle, or a fish-hook, in the door; for then the elves will not be able to shut the door till you come out again. So too when you have shot a deer and are bringing it home at night, be sure to thrust a knife into the carcase, for that keeps the fairies from laying their weight on it. A knife or a nail in your pocket is quite enough to prevent the fairies from lifting you up at night. Nails in the front of a bed ward off elves from women “in the straw” and from their babes; but to make quite sure it is better to put the smoothing-iron under the bed, and the reaping-hook in the window. If a bull has fallen over a rock and been killed, a nail stuck into it will preserve the flesh from the fairies. Music discoursed on that melodious instrument, a Jew's harp, keeps the elfin women away from the hunter, because the tongue of the instrument is of steel.[741 - J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1900), pp. 46 sq.] Again, when Scotch fishermen were at sea, and one of them happened to take the name of God in vain, the first man who heard him called out “Cauld airn,” at which every man of the crew grasped the nearest bit of iron and held it between his hands for a while.[742 - E. J. Guthrie, Old Scottish Customs, p. 149; Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1884-1886), iii. 218.] So too when he hears the unlucky word “pig” mentioned, a Scotch fisherman will feel for the nails in his boots and mutter “Cauld airn.”[743 - J. Macdonald, Religion and Myth, p. 91.] The same magic words are even whispered in the churches of Scotch fishing-villages when the clergyman reads the passage about the Gadarene swine.[744 - W. Gregor, Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 201. The fishermen think that if the word “pig,” “sow,” or “swine” be uttered while the lines are being baited, the line will certainly be lost.] In Morocco iron is considered a great protection against demons; hence it is usual to place a knife or dagger under a sick man's pillow.[745 - A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors (London, 1876), p. 273.] The Singhalese believe that they are constantly surrounded by evil spirits, who lie in wait to do them harm. A peasant would not dare to carry good food, such as cakes or roast meat, from one place to another without putting an iron nail on it to prevent a demon from taking possession of the viands and so making the eater ill. No sick person, whether man or woman, would venture out of the house without a bunch of keys or a knife in his hand, for without such a talisman he would fear that some devil might take advantage of his weak state to slip into his body. And if a man has a large sore on his body he tries to keep a morsel of iron on it as a protection against demons.[746 - Wickremasinghe, in Am Urquell, v. (1894) p. 7.] The inhabitants of Salsette, an island near Bombay, dread a spirit called gîrâ, which plays many pranks with a solitary traveller, leading him astray, lowering him into an empty well, and so on. But a gîrâ dare not touch a person who has on him anything made of iron or steel, particularly a knife or a nail, of which the spirit stands in great fear. Nor will he meddle with a woman, especially a married woman, because he is afraid of her bangles.[747 - G. F. D'Penha, “Superstitions and Customs in Salsette,” Indian Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 114.] Among the Majhwâr, an aboriginal tribe in the hill country of South Mirzapur, an iron implement such as a sickle or a betel-cutter is constantly kept near an infant's head during its first year for the purpose of warding off the attacks of ghosts.[748 - W. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, iii. 431.] Among the Maravars, an aboriginal race of southern India, a knife or other iron object lies beside a woman after childbirth to keep off the devil.[749 - F. Jagor, “Bericht über verschiedene Volksstämme in Vorderindien,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxvi. (1894) p. 70.] When a Mala woman is in labour, a sickle and some nïm leaves are always kept on the cot. In Malabar people who have to pass by burning-grounds or other haunted places commonly carry with them iron in some form, such as a knife or an iron rod used as a walking-stick. When pregnant women go on a journey, they carry with them a few twigs or leaves of the nïm tree, or iron in some shape, to scare evil spirits lurking in groves or burial-grounds which they may pass.[750 - E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. 341.] In Bilaspore people attribute cholera to a goddess who visits the afflicted family. But they think that she may be kept off by iron; hence during an epidemic of cholera people go about with axes or sickles in their hands. “Their horses are not shod, otherwise they might possibly nail horse-shoes to the door, but their belief is more primitive; for with them iron does not bring good luck, but it scares away the evil spirits, so when a man has had an epileptic fit he will wear an iron bracelet to keep away the evil spirit which was supposed to have possessed him.”[751 - E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk Tales (London, 1908), p. 31.] The Annamites imagine that a new-born child is exposed to the attacks of evil spirits. To protect the infant from these malignant beings the parents sometimes sell the child to the village smith, who makes a small ring or circlet of iron and puts it on the child's foot, commonly adding a little chain of iron. When the infant has been sold to the smith and firmly attached to him by the chain, the demons no longer have any power over him. After the child has grown big and the danger is over, the parents ask the smith to break the iron ring and thank him for his services. No metal but iron will serve the purpose.[752 - L. R. P. Cadière, “Coutumes populaires de la vallée du Nguôn-So'n,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, ii. (1902) pp. 354 sq.] On the Slave Coast of Africa when a mother sees her child gradually wasting away, she concludes that a demon has entered into the child and takes her measures accordingly. To lure the demon out of the body of her offspring, she offers a sacrifice of food; and while the devil is bolting it, she attaches iron rings and small bells to her child's ankles and hangs iron chains round his neck. The jingling of the iron and the tinkling of the bells are supposed to prevent the demon, when he has concluded his repast, from entering again into the body of the little sufferer. Hence many children may be seen in this part of Africa weighed down with iron ornaments.[753 - Baudin, “Le Fétichisme,” Missions Catholiques, xvi. (1884) p. 249; A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 113.] The use of iron as a means to exorcise demons was forbidden by the Coptic church.[754 - Il Fetha Nagast o legislazione dei re, codice ecclesiastico e civile di Abissinia, tradotto e annotato da Ignazio Guidi (Rome, 1899), p. 140.] In India “the mourner who performs the ceremony of putting fire into the dead person's mouth carries with him a piece of iron: it may be a key or a knife, or a simple piece of iron, and during the whole time of his separation (for he is unclean for a certain time, and no one will either touch him or eat or drink with him, neither can he change his clothes[755 - The reader may observe how closely the taboos laid upon mourners resemble those laid upon kings. From what has gone before, the reason of the resemblance is obvious.]) he carries the piece of iron about with him to keep off the evil spirit. In Calcutta the Bengali clerks in the Government Offices used to wear a small key on one of their fingers when they had been chief mourners.”[756 - Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. p. 61, § 282.] When a woman dies in childbed in the island of Salsette, they put a nail or other piece of iron in the folds of her dress; this is done especially if the child survives her. The intention plainly is to prevent her spirit from coming back; for they believe that a dead mother haunts the house and seeks to carry away her child.[757 - G. F. D'Penha, “Superstitions and Customs in Salsette,” Indian Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 115.] In the north-east of Scotland immediately after a death had taken place, a piece of iron, such as a nail or a knitting-wire, used to be stuck into all the meal, butter, cheese, flesh, and whisky in the house, “to prevent death from entering them.” The neglect of this salutary precaution is said to have been closely followed by the corruption of the food and drink; the whisky has been known to become as white as milk.[758 - W. Gregor, Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 206.] When iron is used as a protective charm after a death, as in these Hindoo and Scotch customs, the spirit against which it is directed is the ghost of the deceased.[759 - This is expressly said in Panjab Notes and Queries, iii. p. 202, § 846. On iron as a protective charm see also F. Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, pp. 99 sqq.; id., Zur Volkskunde, p. 311; L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, i. pp. 354 sq. § 233; A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,