 Chapter 53 of the Golden Bau, this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Golden Bau by Sir James Frasier. Chapter 53 – The Propetiation of Wild Animals by Hunters The explanation of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but extends to the animate creation in general. In so doing, he is more liberal and perhaps more logical than the civilized man who commonly denies to animals the privilege of immortality which he claims for himself. The savage is not so proud. He commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men and that, like men, they possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wonder about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. Thus to the savage, who regards all living creatures as practically on a footing of equality with man, the act of killing and eating an animal must wear a very different aspect from that which the same act presents to us who regard the intelligence of animals as far inferior to our own and deny them the possession of immortal souls. Hence on the principles of his rude philosophy the primitive hunter who slays an animal believes himself exposed to the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other animals of the same species whom he considers as knit together like men by the ties of kin and the obligations of the blood feud and therefore has bound to resent the injury done to one of their number. Accordingly this savage makes it the rule to spare the life of those animals which he has no pressing motive for killing at least such fierce and dangerous animals as are likely to exact the bloody vengeance for the slaughter of one of their kind. Crocodiles are animals of this sort. They are only found in hot countries whereas a rule for disabundant and primitive man has therefore little reason to kill them for the sake of their tough and unpalatable flesh hence it is accustomed with some savages to spare crocodiles who are rather only to kill them in obedience to the law of blood feud that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles. For example, the deox of Borneo will not kill a crocodile unless a crocodile has first killed a man. For why, say they, should they commit an act of aggression when he and his kindred can so easily repay them? But should the alligator take a human life revenge becomes a sacred duty of the living relatives who will trap the man eater in the spirit of an officer of justice pursuing a criminal. Others, even then hang back, reluctant to embroil themselves in a quarrel which does not concern them. The man eating alligator is supposed to be pursued by righteous nemesis and whenever one is caught they have a profound conviction that it must be the guilty one or his accomplice. Like the deox, the natives of Madagascar never kill a crocodile except in retaliation for one of their friends who have been destroyed by a crocodile. They believe that the wanton destruction of one of these reptiles will be followed by the loss of human life in accordance with the principle of lex talionis. The people who live near the lake Itasi in Madagascar make a yearly proclamation to the crocodiles announcing that they will revenge the death of some of their friends by killing as many crocodiles in return and warning all well disposed crocodiles to keep out of the way as they have no quarrel with them but only with their evil-minded relations who have taken human life. Various tribes of Madagascar believe themselves to be descended from crocodiles and accordingly they view the scaly reptile as to all intents and purposes a man and a brother. If one of the animals should so far forget himself as to devour one of his human kinsfolk the chief of the tribe or in his absence an old man familiar with the tribal customs repairs at the head of the people to the edge of the water and summons the family of the culprit to deliver him up to the arm of justice. A hook is then baited and cast into the river or lake. Next day the guilty brother or one of his family is dragged ashore and after his crime has been clearly brought home to him by a strict interrogation he is sentenced to death and executed. The claims of justice being thus satisfied and the majesty of the law fully vindicated the deceased crocodile is lamented and buried like a kinsman a mound is raised over his relics and the stone marks the place of his head. Again the tiger is another of those dangerous beasts whom the savage prefers to leave alone lest by killing one of the species he should excite the hostility of the rest. No consideration will induce a Sumateran to catch or wound the tiger except in self-defense or immediately after the tiger has destroyed a friend or relation. When a European has set traps for tigers the people of the neighborhood have been known to go by night to the place and explain to the animals that the traps are not set by them nor with their consent. The inhabitants of the hills near Rajemahal in Bengal are very adverse to killing a tiger unless one of their kinsfolk has been carried off by one of the beasts. In that case they go out for the purpose of hunting and slaying a tiger and when they have succeeded they are bows and arrows on the carcass and invoke guard declaring that they slew the animal in retaliation for the loss of a kinsman. Vengeance having been thus taken they swear not to attack another tiger except under similar provocation. The Indians of Carolina would not molest snakes when they came upon them but would pass by on the other side of the path believing that if they were to kill a serpent the reptiles kindred would destroy some of their brethren, friends or relations in return. So the Seminole Indians spared the rattlesnake because they feared that the soul of the dead rattlesnake would incite its kinsfolk to take vengeance. The Cherokee regard the rattlesnake as the chief of the snake tribe and fear and respect him accordingly. Few Cherokee will venture to kill a rattlesnake unless they cannot help it and even then they must atone for the crime by craving pardon of the snake's ghost either in their own person or through the mediation of a priest according to a set formula. If these precautions are neglected the kinsfolk of the dead snake will send one of their number as an Avenger of Blood who will track down the murderer and sting him to death. No ordinary Cherokee dares to kill a wolf if he can possibly help it for he believes that the kindred of the slain beast would surely avenge its death and that the weapon with which the deed has been done would be dangerous for the future unless it were cleaned and exercised by a medicine man. However, certain persons who know the proper rights of atonement for such a crime can kill wolves with impunity and they are sometimes hired to do so by people who have suffered from the rage of the wolves on their cattle or fish traps. In Jebel Nuba a district of the eastern Sudan it is forbidden to touch the nests or remove the young of the species after assembling our blackbirds because the people believe that the parent bird would avenge the wrong by causing a stormy wind to blow which would destroy the harvest but the savage clearly cannot afford to spare all animals he must either eat some of the most starve and when the question does comes to whether he or the animal should perish he is forced to overcome his superstitious scruples and take the life of the beast at the same time he does as he can to appease his victims and their kin spoke even in the act of killing them he testifies his respect for them endeavors to excuse or even conceal his share in procuring their death and promises that their remains will be honorably treated by thus robbing death of its terrors he hopes to reconcile his victims to their fate and to induce their fellows to come and be killed also for example it was a principle to kill a land or sea animal without first making excuses to it begging that the animal would not take it ill also they offered it cedar nuts and so forth to make it think that it was not a victim but a guest at the feast they believe that this hindered other animals of the same species from growing shy for instance after they had killed a bear and feasted on its flesh the host would bring the bear's head before the company wrap it in grass and present it with a variety of trifles then he would lay the blame of the bear's death on the Russians and bid the beast wreak his wrath upon them also he would ask the bear to inform the other bears how well he had been treated that they too might come without fear seals, sea lions and other animals were treated by the Kamchatkans with the same ceremonious respect moreover they used to insert sprigs of a plant resembling bear's worth of the animals they killed after which they would exhort the grinning skulls to have no fear to go and tell it to their fellows that they also might come and be caught and so partake of this splendid hospitality when the Osteaks have hunted and killed a bear they cut off its head and hang it on a tree then they gather round in a circle and pay divine honors next they run towards the carcass uttering lamentations and saying who killed you? it was the Russians who cut off your head? it was the Russian axe who skinned you? it was a knife made by the Russians they explained too that the feathers which sped the arrow on its flight came from the wing of a strange bird and that they did nothing but let the arrow go they do all this because they believed that the wandering ghost of the slain bear would attack them on the first opportunity if they did not thus appease it all they stuffed the skin of the slain bear with hay and after celebrating their victory with songs of mockery and insult after spitting on and kicking it they set it up on its hind legs and then for a considerable time they bestowed on it all the veneration due to a guardian god when a party of Koryak have killed a bear or a wolf they skin the beast and dress one of themselves in the skin then they dance around the skin-clad man saying that it was not they who killed the animal but someone else, generally a Russian when they kill a fox they skin it wrap the body in grass and bid him go tell his companions how hospitably he has been received and how he has received a new cloak instead of his old one a fuller account of the Koryak ceremonies is given by a more recent writer he tells us that when a dead bear is brought to the house the women come out to meet it dancing with firebrands the bear skin is taken off along with the head and one of the women puts on the skin dances in it and entreats the bear not to be angry but to be kind to the people at the same time they offer meat on a wooden platter to the dead beast saying eat friend afterwards the ceremonies performed for the purpose of sending the dead bear or rather his spirit away back to his home he is provided with provisions for the journey in the shape of pudding so reindeer flesh packed in a grass bag his skin is stuffed with grass and carried around the house after which he is supposed to depart towards the rising sun the intention of the ceremonies is to protect the people from the wrath of the slain bear and his kinsfolk and so to ensure success in future bear hunts the Finns used to try to persuade the slain bear that he had not been killed by them but had fallen from a tree or met his death in some other way moreover they held a funeral festival of honor at the close of which bards expiated on the homage that had been paid to him urging him to report to the other bears the high consideration with which he had been treated in order that they also following his example might come and be slain when the laps had succeeded in killing a bear with impunity they thanked him for not hurting them and for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him his death wounds and they prayed that he would not visit by sending storms or in any other way his fleshed and furnished the feast the reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and eat may thus be traced all along the northern region of the old world from Bearing Strait to Lapland it reappears in similar forms in North America with the American Indians a bear hunt was an important event for which they prepared by long fasts and purgations before setting out they offered expiatory sacrifices to the souls of bears slain in previous hunts and besought them to be favourable to the hunters when a bear was killed the hunter lit his pipe and putting them out of it between the bear's lips blew into the bowl filling the beast's mouth with smoke then he begged the bear not to be angry at having been killed and not to thwart him afterwards in the chase the carcass was roasted whole and eaten not a morsel or the flesh might be left over the head painted red and blue was hung on a post and addressed by orators who heaped praise on the dead beast when men or the bear clan in the Ottawa tribe killed the bear they made him a feast of his own flesh and addressed him thus cherished as no grudge because we have killed you you have sense you see that our children are hungry they love you and wish to take you into their bodies is it not glorious to be eaten by the children of a chief among the Nootka Indians in British Columbia when a bear had been killed it was brought in and seated before the head chief in an upright posture with the chief's bonnet brought in figures on its head and its fur powdered over with water down a tray of provisions was then set before it and it was invited by words and gestures to eat after that the animal was skinned boiled and eaten a like respect is testified for other dangerous creatures by the hunters who regularly trap and kill them when kathreh hunters are in the act of showering spears on an elephant they call out don't kill us great captain don't strike or thread upon us mighty chief when he is dead they make their excuses to him pretending that his death was a pure accident as a mock or respect they bury his trunk with much solemn ceremony for they say that the elephant is a great lord his trunk is his hand before the amaxosa kathris attack an elephant they shout to the animal and beg him to pardon them for the slaughter they are about to perpetrate professing great submission to his person and explaining clearly the need they have of his tusks to enable them to procure beads and supply their wounds when they have killed him they bury in the ground along with the end of his trunk a few of the articles they have obtained for the ivory thus hoping to avert some mishap that would otherwise befall them among some tribes of eastern Africa when a lion is killed the carcass is brought before the king who does homage to it by prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muscle of the beast in some parts of western Africa if a negro kills a leopard he is bound fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of their peers the man defends himself on the plead the dead leopard is the chief of the forest and therefore a stranger he is then set at liberty and rewarded but the dead leopard adorned with the chief's bonnet is set up in the village where nightly dances are held in its honor the bagunda greatly fear the ghosts of buffaloes which they have killed and they always appease these dangerous spirits on no account will they bring the head of a slain buffalo into a village or into a garden or plantains they always eat the flesh of the head in the open country afterwards they place the skull in a small hut built for that purpose where they pour out beer as an offering and pray to the ghosts to stay where he is and not to harm them another formidable beast whose life the savage hunter takes with joy yet with fear and trembling is the whale after the slaughter of a whale the maritime courier of northeastern Siberia hold a communal festival the essential part of which is based on the conception that the whale killed has come on a visit to the village that it is staying for some time during which it is treated with great respect that it then returns to the sea to repeat its visit the following year that it will induce its relatives to come along telling them of the hospitable reception that has been accorded to it according to the courier's ideas the whales, like all other animals constitute one tribe or rather family of related individuals who live in villages like the courier they avenge the murder of one of their number and are grateful for kindnesses they may have received where the inhabitants of the Isle of St. Mary to the north of Madagascar go wailing they single out the young whales for attack and humbly beg the mothers pardon stating the necessity that drives them to kill a progeny suggesting that she will be pleased to go below while the deed is doing that her maternal feelings may not be outraged by witnessing what must cause her so much uneasiness and a jumbo hunter having killed a female hippopotamus on the lake Atsingo in West Africa the animal was decapitated and its quarters and bowels removed then the hunter, naked stepped into the hollow of the ribs and kneeling down in the bloody pool washed his whole body with the blood and excretions of the animal while he prayed to the soul of the hippopotamus not to bear him a grudge for having killed her and so blighted her hopes of future maternity and he further entreated the ghost not to stir up other hippopotamuses to avenge her death by butting at and capsizing his canoe the Owens a leopard-like creature is dreaded for its depredations of Brazil when they have caught one of these animals in a snare they kill it and carry the body home to the village there the women deck the carcass with feathers of many colors put bracelets on its legs and a weep over it saying I pray thee not to take vengeance on our little ones for having been caught and killed through thine own ignorance for it was not we who deceived thee it was thyself our husbands only set the trap to catch animals that are good to eat we were taught to take thee in it therefore let not thy soul counsel thy fellows to avenge thy death on our little ones when a blackfoot Indian has caught eagles in a trap and killed them he takes them home to a special lodge called the Eagles Lodge which has been prepared for their reception outside of the camp here he sets the birds in a row on the ground and propping up their heads on a stick puts a piece of dried meat in each of their mouths in order that the spirits of the dead eagles may go and tell the other eagles how well they are being treated by the Indians so when Indian hunters or the Orinoco region have killed an animal they open its mouth and pour into it a few drops of the liquor they generally carry with them in order that the soul of the dead beast may inform its fellows of the welcome it has met with and that they too, cheered by the prospect of the same kind of reception may come with an acuity to be killed when a titan Indian is on a journey and he meets a grey spider or spider with yellow legs he kills it because some evil would befall him if he did not but he is very careful not to let the spider know that he kills it but if the spider knew his soul would go and tell the other spiders and one of them would be sure to avenge the death of his relation so in crushing the insect the Indian says our grandfather spider the thunder being kills him and the spiders crushed at once and believes what is told him his soul probably runs and tells the other spiders that the thunder beings have killed him but no harm comes of that for what can grey or yellow legged spiders do to the thunder beings but it is not merely dangerous creatures with whom the savage desires to keep in good terms it is through that the respect which he pays to wild beasts is in some measure proportion to their strength and ferocity thus the savage Steans of Cambodia believing that all animals have souls which roam about after the death begging animals pardon will they kill it left its soul should come and torment them also they offer it sacrifices but these sacrifices are proportion to the size and strength of the animal the ceremonies which they observe at the death of an elephant are conducted with much pomp and last seven days similar distinctions are drawn by North American Indians the bear, the buffalo and the beaver are money doves, divinities which furnish food the bear is formidable and good to eat they render ceremonies to him begging him to allow himself to be eaten although they know he has no fancy for it we kill you but you are not annihilated his head and paws are objects of homage other animals are treated similarly from similar reasons many of the animal money doves not being dangerous are often treated with contempt the therapist, the weasel, pole cat etc the distinction here is instructive animals which are feared or are good to eat or both are treated with ceremony suspect those which are neither formidable nor good to eat are despised we have had examples of reverence paid to animals which are both feared and eaten it remains to prove that similar respect is shown to animal switch without being feared are either eaten or valued for their skins when Siberian sable hunters have caught a sable no one is allowed to see it and they think that if good or evil be spoken of the captured sable no more sables will be caught a hunter has been known to express his belief that the sables could hear what was said of them as far off as Moscow the brief reason why sable hunt was now so unproductive was that some live sables had been sent to Moscow there they had been viewed with astonishment as strange animals and the sables cannot abide that another though minor cause of the diminished take of sables was he alleged that the world is now much worse than it used to be so that now a racer hunter will sometimes hide the sable which he has got instead of putting it into the common stock this also said he the sables cannot abide Alaskan hunters preserved the bones of sables and beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and then buried them carefully lest the spirits who look after the beavers and sables should consider that they are regarded with contempt and hence no more should be killed or trapped the Canadian Indians were equally particular not to let their dogs know the bones or at least certain of the bones of beavers they took the greatest pains to collect and preserve these bones and when the beaver had been caught in a net they threw them into the river the Jesuit who argued that the beavers could not possibly know what became of their bones the Indians replied you know nothing about catching beavers and yet you will be preting about it before the beaver is stone dead his soul takes a turn in the hut of the man who is killing him and makes a careful note of what is done with his bones if the bones are given to the dogs the other beavers would get word of it and would not let themselves be caught whereas if their bones are thrown into a fire or a river they are quite satisfied and it is particularly gratifying to the net which caught them before hunting the beaver they offered a solemn prayer to the great beaver and presented him with tobacco and when the chase was over an orator pronounced a funeral rations over the dead beavers he praised their spirit and wisdom you will hear no more said he the voice of the chieftains who commanded you and whom you chose from among all the warrior beavers to give you laws your language which the medicine men understand perfectly will be heard no more at the bottom of the lake you will fight no more battles with the otters your cruel foes no beavers but your skins shall serve to buy arms will carry your smoked hams to our children who will keep the dogs from eating your bones which are so hard the illan, deer and elk were treated by the American Indians with the same punctilious respect and for the same reason their bones might not be given to the dogs nor thrown into the fire nor might their fat be dropped upon the fire because the souls of the dead animals were believed to see what was done to their bodies and tell it to the other beasts living and dead hence if their bodies were ill-used the animals of that species would not allow themselves to be taken neither in this world nor in the world to come among the chiquites of Paraguay a sick man would be asked by the medicine man whether he had not thrown away some of the flesh of the deer or turtle and if he answered yes the medicine man would say that is what is killing you the soul of the deer or turtle has entered into your body to avenge the wrong you did it the Canadian Indians would not eat the embryos of the elk unless the close of the hunting season otherwise the mother elks would be shy and refuse to be caught in the Timor-Laut islands of the Indian Archipelago the skulls of all the turtles which a fisherman has caught are hung up under his hose before he goes out to catch another he addresses himself to the skull of the last turtle that he killed and having inserted beetle between its jaws he prays the spirit of the dead animal to incite its skin spulk in the sea to come and be caught in the Pozo district of central Salibis hunters keep the jaw bones of deer and wild pigs which they have killed and hanging them up in their houses near the fire then they say to the jaw bones you cry after your comrades that your grandfathers or nephews or children may not go away their notion is that the souls of the dead deer and pigs tearing near the jaw bones are the souls of living deers and pigs which are thus drawn into the toils of the hunter thus the wild savage employs dead animals as decoys to lure living animals to their doom the lengua Indians of the Grand Chaco love to hunt the ostrich but when they have killed one of these birds and are bringing home the carcass to the village they take steps to outwit the descentful ghost of their victim they think that when the first natural shock of death is passed the ghost of the ostrich pulls himself together and makes after his body acting on this sage calculation the Indians pluck feathers from the breast of the bird and threw them at intervals along the track at every bunch of feathers the ghost stops to consider is this the whole of my body or only a part of it the doubt gives him pause and when at last he has made up his mind fully at all the bunches and has further wasted valuable time which he invariably pursues in going from one to another the hunters are safe at home and the bilked ghost may stalk in vain round about the village which he is too timid to enter the iskimos about bearing straight believe that the souls of dead sea beasts such as seals, walrus and whales remain attached to their bladders and that by returning the bladders to the sea they can cause the souls to be reincarnated in fresh bodies and so multiply the game which the hunters pursue and kill acting on this belief every hunter carefully removes and preserve the bladders of the all the sea beasts that he kills and at the solemn festival held once a year in winter these bladders containing the souls of all the sea beasts that have been killed throughout the year are honored with dances and offerings of food in the public assembly room after which they are taken out on the ice and thrust through holes into the water for the simple iskimo imagine that the souls of the animals in high good humor at the kind treatment they have experienced will thereafter be born again as seals, walrus and whales and in that form will flock willingly to be against speared or pooned or otherwise done to death by the hunters for like reasons a tribe which depends on for its abstinence chiefly or in part upon fishing is careful to treat the fish with every mark of respect and honor the Indians of Peru adore the fish that they caught in greatest abundance for they said that the first fish that was made in the world above for so they named heaven gave birth to all other fish of that species and took care to send them plenty of its children to sustain their tribe for this reason they worshiped sardines in one region where they killed more of them than any other fish in others the skate in others the dog fish in others the golden fish for its beauty in others the crawfish in others for want of larger gods the crabs where they had no other fish or where they knew not how to catch and kill them in short they had whatever fish was most serviceable to them as their gods the quacutely Indians of British Columbia think that whenever a salmon is killed its soul returns to the salmon country hence they take care to throw the bones and offal into the sea in order that the souls may reanimate them by the resurrection of the salmon whereas if they burned the bones the soul would be lost and so it would be quite impossible for that salmon to rise from the dead in like manner the Ottawa Indians of Canada believing that the souls of dead fish passed into other bodies of fish never burned fish bones for fear of displeasing the souls of the fish who would come no more to the nets the Hurons also reframed from throwing fish bones into the fire lest the souls of the fish should go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be caught since the Hurons would burn their bones moreover they had men who preached to the fish and persuaded them to come and be caught a good preacher was much sought after for they thought that the exhortations of a clever man had a great effect in drawing the fish to the nets in the Huron fishing village where the French missionary Segard stayed after the fish brightened himself very much on his eloquence which was of a florid order every evening after supper having seen that all the people were in their places and that the strict silence was observed he preached to the fish his text was that the Hurons did not burn fish bones then enlarging on this team with extraordinary unction he exhorted and conjured and invited and implored the fish to come and be caught for it was all to serve their friends who honored them and did not burn their bones the natives are the Duke of York Island annually decorate the canoe with flowers and ferns laded or are supposed to laded with shell money and set it adrift to compensate the fish for their fellows who have been caught and eaten it is especially necessary to treat the first fish caught with consideration in order to conciliate the rest of the fish may be supposed to be influenced by the reception given to those of their kind which were the first to be taken accordingly the Maori's always put back into the sea the first fish caught with the prayer that it may tempt other fish to come and be caught still more stringent are the precautions taken when the fish are the first of the season on salmon rivers when the fish begin to run up the stream in spring they are recede with much deference by tribes who like the Indians of the pacific coast of North America subsist largely upon a fish diet in British Columbia the Indians used to go out to meet the first fish as they came up the river they paid court to them and would address them thus you fish, you fish you are all chiefs, you are you are all chiefs among the Klingi to Velasca the first halibut of the season is carefully handled and addressed as a chief and a festival is given in his honor to which the fishing goes on in spring when the winds blow soft on the south and the Salomon begin to run up the Klamat river the caroks of California dance for Salomon to ensure a good catch one of the Indians called the Kareya or good man retires to the mountains and fasts for 10 days on his return the people flee while he goes to the river takes the first Salomon of the catch eats some of it and with the rest kindles the sacred fire he goes back to his house now Indian may take a Salomon before this dance is held known for 10 days after it even if his family are starving the caroks also believe that the fisherman will take no Salmon if the poles of which his speeding booth is made were gathered on the river side where the Salmon might have seen them the poles must be brought from the top of the highest mountain the fisherman will also labor in vain if he uses the same poles because the old Salmon will have told the young ones about them there is a favorite fish of the Aino which appears in the rivers about May and June they prepare for the fishing by observing rules of ceremonial purity and when they have gone out to fish the women at home must keep strict silence or the fish would hear them and disappear when the first fish is caught he is brought home and passed through a small opening at the end of the hut but not through the door so if he were passed through the door the other fish would certainly see him and disappear this may partly explain the custom observed by other savages of bringing game in certain cases into their huts not by the door but by the window, the smoke hole or by a special opening at the back of the hut with some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game and generally of the animals which they eat is a belief that if the bones are preserved they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh and thus the animal will come to life again it is therefore clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game many of the Minetary Indians believed that the bones of those bison which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again, clothed with renewed flesh and quickened with life and become fat and fit for slaughter of the bison hence on the western prairies of America the skulls of buffaloes may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles awaiting their resurrection after feasting on a dog the Dakotas carefully collect the bones scrape, wash and bury them partly as it is said to testify to the dog species that in feasting upon one of their number no disrespect was meant to the species itself and partly also from the belief that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another in sacrificing an animal the laps regularly put aside the bones eyes, ears, heart, lungs sexual parts if the animal was a male and a morsel of flesh from each limb then after eating the remainder of the flesh they laid the bones and the rest in an anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the usual rites believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed they reclothed the bones with flesh and restored the animal to life in Judmaeimo, the subterranean world of the dead sometimes as after feasting on a bear they seem to have contented themselves with dust burying the bones thus the laps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in another world resembling in this respect the Kamchatkans who believed that every creature down to the smallest fly lived underground on the other hand the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the animals in the present world the habit observed especially by Mongolian peoples of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal or stretching it on a framework points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the latter short the objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to breaking the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed may be based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animal or on a fear of intimidating other creatures of the same species and offending the ghost of the slain animals the reluctance of North American Indians and Eskimo to let dogs ignore the bones of animals is perhaps only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broke but after all the resurrection of that game may have its inconveniences and accordingly some hunters take steps to prevent it and hamstring in the animal so as to prevent it or its ghost from getting up and running away this is the motive alleged for the practice by koi hunters in Laos they think that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose their magical virtue and that the slaughtered animal may consequently come to life again and escape to prevent that catastrophe they therefore hamstring the beast as soon as they have butchered it when an Eskimo of Alaska has killed a fox he carefully cuts the tendons of all the animals' legs in order to prevent the ghost from reanimating the body and walking about but hamstringing the carcass is not the only measure which the prudent savage adopts for the sake of disabling the ghost of his victim in old days when the Ainu went out hunting and killed a fox first they took care to tie its mouth up tightly in order to prevent the ghost of the animal from setting forth and warning its fellows against the approach of the hunter the Giliaks or the Amur river put out the eyes of the seals they have killed lest the ghosts of the slain animals should know their slayers and avenge their death by spoiling the seal hunt besides the animals which primitive man dredges for their strength and ferocity and those which he reveres on account of the benefits which he expects from them there is another class of creatures which he sometimes deems it necessary to conciliate by worship and sacrifice these are the vermin that infest his crops and his cattle to rid himself of these deadly foes the farmer has recourse to many superstitious devices of which though some are meant to destroy or intimidate the vermin others aim at propitiating them and persuading them by fair means to spare the fruits of the earth and the herds thus Estonian peasants in the island of Ursul stand in great awe of the weevil an insect which is exceedingly destructive to the grain they give it a fine name and if a child is about to kill a weevil they say don't do it, the more we hurt him the more he hurts us if they find a weevil they bury it in the earth instead of killing it some even put the weevil under a stone in the field and offer corn to it they think that thus it is a piece than does less harm amongst the Saxons of Transylvania in order to keep sparrows from the corn the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed backwards over his head saying that is for you sparrows to guard the corn against the attacks of leaflice he shuts his eyes and scatters three handfuls of oats in different directions having made this offering to the leaflice if you are sure that they will spare the corn a Transylvanian way of securing the crops against all birds beasts and insects is this after he has finished sowing the sower goes one small cement to end of the field imitating the gesture of sowing but with an empty hand as he does so he says I sow this for the animals I sow it for everything that flies and creeps that walks on stands that sings and springs in the name of God the Father etc the following is a German way of being a garden from caterpillars after sunset or at midnight the mistress of the house walks all around the garden dragging a broom after her she may not look behind her and must keep murmuring with evening mother caterpillar you shall come with your husband to church the garden gate is left open till the following morning sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer aims at hitting a happy mean between excessive rigor on the one hand and weak indulgence on the other kind but firm with clarity with mercy an ancient Greek treatise and farming advises the husband man who would rid his land of mice to act thus take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows I adore you, ye mice, here present that he neither injure me nor suffer any other mouse to do so I give you yonder field here you specified field but if I ever catch you here again by the mother of the gods I will rend you in seven pieces write this and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field between sunrise taking care to keep the ridden side up in the ardents they say that to get rid of rats you should repeat the following words erat verbum apuddeum vestrum male rats and female rats I conjure you by the great god to go out of my house out of all my habitations and to take yourselves to such and such a place and there to end your days the kretis reversis et disembarrasis virgopoltens glemens justitiziae then write the same words on pieces of paper fold them up and place one of them under the door by which the rats are to go forth and the other on the road which they are to take this exorcism should be performed at sunrise some years ago an American farmer was reported to have written a civil letter to the rats telling them that his crops were short that he could not afford to keep them through the winter that he had been very kind to them and that for their own good he thought that they had better leave him and go to some of his neighbors who had more grain this document he pinned to a post in his barn for the rats to read sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species while the rest are pursued with a relentless rigor in the east Indian island of Bali the mice which ravaged the rice fields are caught in great numbers and burned in the same way that corpses are burned but two of the captured mice are allowed to live and receive a little packet of white linen then the people bow down before them as before gods and let them go when the farms of the cediacs or evens of Sarawak are much pestered by birds and insects they catch the specimen of each kind of vermin one sparrow, one grasshopper put them in a tiny boat or bark well stocked with provisions and then allow the little vessel with its obnoxious passengers to float down the river if that does not drive the pests away the deacs resort to what they deem a more effectual mode of accomplishing the same purpose they make a clay crocodile as the largest life and set it up in the fields where they offer it food, rice, spirit and cloth and sacrifice a foal and pig before it mollified by these attentions the ferocious animal very soon gobbles up all the creatures that devour the crops in Albania if the fields of vineyards are ravaged by locusts or beetles some of the women will assemble with disabled hair catch a few of the insects and march with them in a funeral procession to a spring or stream in which they drown the creatures then one of the women sings all locusts and beetles who have left us bereaved and the dirge is taken up and repeated by all the women in chorus thus by celebrating the obsequies of a few locusts and beetles they hope to bring about the death of all of them when caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria the virgins were gathered and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother then they bewailed and buried it and conducted the mother to the place where the caterpillars were consoling her in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden end of chapter 53 recording by Monsbru Helsingfors Finland chapters 54 and 55 over a golden bow this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Golden Bow by Sir James Brasier Chapter 54 Types of Animal Sacrament 1. The Egyptian and the I know types of sacrament we are now perhaps in a position to understand the ambiguous behavior of the I know and Gileax toward the bear it has been shown that the sharp line of demarcation which we draw between lower animals does not exist for the savage to him many of the other animals appear as his equals or even his superiors not merely in brute force but in intelligence and if choice or necessity leads him to take their lives he feels bound out of regard to his own safety to do it in a way which will be as inoffensive as possible not merely to the living animal but to its departed spirit and to all the other animals of the same species to the descent and the front put upon one of their kind much as the tribal savages would revenge an injury or insult offered to the tribesmen we have seen that among the many devices by which the savage seeks to atone for the wrong done by him to his animal victims one is to show marked deference to a few chosen individuals of the species for such behavior is apparently regarded as entitling him to exterminate with impunity all the rest of the species which he can lay hands this principle perhaps explains the attitude at first sight puzzling and contradictory or the I know towards the bear the flesh and skin of the bear regularly affords them food and clothing but since the bear is an intelligent and powerful animal it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or atonement to the bear species for the loss which it sustains in the death of so many of its members this satisfaction or atonement is made by rearing young bears treating them so long as they live with respect and killing them with extraordinary marks of sorrow and devotion so the other bears are appeased and do not resent the slaughter of their kind by attacking the slayers or deserting the country which would deprive the I know of one of their means of subsistence thus the primitive worship of animals conforms to two types which are in some respects the converse of each other animals are worshipped and are therefore neither killed nor eaten on the other hand animals are worshipped because they are habitually killed and eaten in both types of worship the animal is revered on account of some benefit positive or negative which the savage hopes to receive from it in the former worship the benefit comes either in the positive shape of protection advice and help which the animal affords the man or in the negative shape of abstinence which it is in the power of the animal to inflict in the latter worship the benefit takes the material form of the animal's flesh and skin the two types of worship are in some measure antithetical in the one the animal is not eaten because it is revered in the other it is revered because it is eaten but both may be practiced by the same people as we see in the case of North American Indians who while they apparently revere and spare totem animals also revere the animals and fish upon which they subsist the aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known to us but there is no clear evidence that they attempt like the North American Indians to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat the means which the Australians adopt to secure a plentiful supply of gain appear to be primarily based not on conciliation but on sympathetic magic a principle to which the North American Indians also resort for the same purpose hence as the Australians undoubtedly represent the rudor and earlier stage of human progress than the American Indians it would seem that before hunters think of worshiping the game as a means of ensuring an abundant supply of it they seek to attain the same end by sympathetic magic this again would show what there is good reason for believing that sympathetic magic is one of the earliest means by which man endeavors to adapt the agencies of nature to his needs corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship there are two distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god on the one hand when the revered animal is habitually spared it is nevertheless killed and sometimes eaten on rare and solemn occasions examples of this custom have been already given and explanation of them offered on the other hand when the revered animal is habitually killed the slaughter of any one of the species involves the killing of the god and is atoned for on the spot by apologies and sacrifices especially when the animal is a powerful and dangerous one and in addition to this ordinary and everyday atonement there is a special annual atonement at which a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion clearly the two types of sacramental killing the egyptian and the inotypes as we may call them for distinction are liable to be confounded by an observer and before we can say to which type any particular example belongs it is necessary to ascertain whether the animal sacramental is slain belongs to a species which is habitually spared or the one which is habitually killed by the tribe in the former case the example belongs to the egyptian type of sacrament in the latter to the inotype the practice pastoral tribes appears to furnish examples of both types of sacrament pastoral tribes being sometimes obliged to sell their herds to strangers who may handle the bones disrespectfully seek to avert the danger which such a sacrilege would entail by consecrating one of the herd as an object of worship eating it sacramentally in the family circle with closed doors and afterwards treating the bones with all the ceremonious respect which strictly speaking should be accorded to every head of cattle but which being punctually paid to the representative animal is deemed to be paid to all such family meals are found amongst various peoples especially those in the Caucasus when amongst the absences in spring eat their common meal with their loin skirt and their states in their hands they may be looked upon both as a sacrament and as an out of mutual help and support for the strongest of all odds is that which is accompanied with the eating of a sacred substance since the perjured person cannot possibly escape the avenging god whom he has taken into his body and assimilated this kind of sacrament is of the Aino or expiatory type since it is meant to atone to the species for the possible ill usage of individuals an expiation similar in principle but different in details is offered by the Kalamuks to the sheep whose flesh is one of their staple foods rich kalamuks are in the habit of consecrating a white ram under the title the ram of heaven or the ram of the spirit the animal is never shorn and never sold but when it grows old and its owner wishes to consecrate the new one the old ram must be killed and eaten at a feast to which the neighbours are invited on a lucky day generally in autumn when the sheep are fat a sorcerer kills the old ram after sprinkling a toothed milk its flesh is eaten the skeleton with a portion of the fat is burned on a turf altar and the skin with the head and feet is hung up an example of the sacrament of the Egyptian type is furnished by the Todas a pastoral people of southern India who subsist largely upon the milk of their buffaloes among them the buffalo is to a certain degree whole sacred and is treated with great kindness even with the degree of adoration by the people they never eat the flesh of the cow buffalo and as a rule abstain from the flesh of the male but to the latter rule there is a single exception once a year all the adult males of the village join in the ceremony of killing and eating a very young male calf seemingly under a month old they take the animal into the dark recesses of the village wood where it is killed with a club made from the sacred tree of the Todas a sacred fire having been made by the rubbing of sticks the flesh of the calf is roasted on the embers of certain trees and is eaten by the men alone women being excluded from the assembly this is the only occasion on which the Todas eat buffalo flesh the Madi or Moro tribal Central Africa is a cattle though they also practice agriculture appeared to kill a lamb sacramentally on certain solemn occasions the custom is thus described by Dr. Felkin a remarkable custom is observed at stated times once a year I am led to believe I have not been able to ascertain what exact meaning is attached to it it seems however to relieve the people's minds for beforehand they win much sadness and seem very joyful when the ceremony is duly accomplished the following is what takes place a large concourse of people of all ages assemble and sit down around a table of stones which is erected by the side of a road really a narrow path a very choice lamb is then fetched by a boy who leads it four times around the assembled people as it passes they pluck off little bits of its fleece and place them in their hair or on some other part of their body the lamb is then led up to the stones and they are killed by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order who takes some of the blood and sprinkles it four times over the people he then applies it individually on the children he makes a small ring of blood on the lower end of the breastbone on women and girls he makes a mark above their breasts and the men he touches on each shoulder he then proceeds to explain the ceremony and to exhort the people to show kindness on this discourse which is at times of great length is over the people rise each places a leaf on or by the circle of stones and they then depart with signs of great joy the lamb skull is hung on a tree near the stones and its flesh is eaten by the poor this ceremony is observed on a small scale at other times if a family is in any great trouble through illness or bereavement their friends and neighbors come together and the lamb is killed and it is thought to avert further evil the same custom prevails at the grave of departed friends and also on joyful occasions such as the return of a son home after a very prolonged absence the sorrow that has manifested by the people at the annual slaughter of the lamb seems to show that the lamb's lane is a sacred or divine animal whose death is mourned by his worshippers just as the death of the sacred buzzard was mourned by the Californians and the death of the Teban ram by the Egyptians this mourning each of the worshippers with the blood of the lamb is a form of communion with the divinity the vehicle of the divine life is applied externally instead of being taken internally as when the blood is drunk or the flesh eaten 2. processions with sacred animals the form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to house that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence has been exemplified by the Gilek custom of promulgating the bear through the village before it is slain a similar form of communion with the sacred snake is observed by a snake tribe in the Punjab once a year in the month of September the snake is worshipped by all cased and religions for 9 days only at the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of the snake tribe make a snake of dough which they paint black and red and place on a winnowing basket this basket they carry around the village and on entering any house they say God be with you all may every yield be far may our patrons, Gugas, word thrive they present the basket with the snake saying a small cake of flour a little bit of butter if you obey the snake you and yours shall thrive strictly speaking a cake and butter should be given but it is seldom done everyone, however, gives something generally a handful of dough in houses where there is a new bride or when the bride is gone all where a son has been born it is usual to give a rupee and a quarter or some cloth sometimes the bearers of the snake also sing give the snake a piece of cloth and he will send a lively bride when every house has been thus visited the dough snake is buried and a small grave is erected over it thither during the 9 days of September the women come for worship they bring a basin of curds a small portion of which they offer at the snake's grave kneeling on the ground and touching the earth with their foreheads then they go home and divide the rest of the curds among the children here the dough snake is clearly a substitute for a real snake indeed in the districts where snakes are bound the worship is offered not at the grave of the dough snake but in the jungles where snakes are known to be besides this yearly worship performed by all the people they worship in the same way every morning after a new moon the snake tribe is not uncommon in the Punjab members of it will not kill a snake and they say that its bite does not hurt them if they find a dead snake they put clothes on it and give it a regular funeral ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have survived in Europe in the recent times and doubtless date from a very primitive paganism the best known example is the hunting of the ren by many European peoples the ancient Greeks and Romans the modern Italians Spaniards, French, Germans Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English and Welsh the ren has been designated the king the little king, the king of birds the hedge king and so forth and has been reckoned amongst those birds which it is extremely unlucky to kill in England it is supposed that if anyone kills a ren or harries its nest they will infallibly break a bone or meat with some dreadful misfortune within the year sometimes it is thought that the cows will give bloody milk in Scotland the ren is called the lady of heaven's hen and boys say malisons, malisons, mere than ten that harry the lady of heaven's hen at St. Donan in Brittany people believe that if children touched the young ren in the nest they would suffer from the fire from pimples on the face, legs and so on in other parts of France it is thought that if a person kills a ren or harries its nest his household is struck by lightning or that the fingers with which he did the deed will shrivel up and drop off or at least be maimed or that his cattle will suffer in their feet notwithstanding such beliefs the customer annually killing the ren has prevailed widely both in this country and in France in the Isle of Man down to the 18th century the customer was observed on Christmas Eve or rather Christmas morning on the 24th of December towards evening all the servants got a holiday they did not go to bed all night but rambled about till the bells rang in the churches at midnight when the prayers were over they went to hunt the ren and having found one of these birds they killed it and fastened it to the top of a long pole with its wings extended thus they carried it in procession to every house chanting the following rhyme we hunted the ren for Robin the bobbin we hunted the ren for Jakob the can we hunted the ren for Robin the bobbin we hunted the ren for everyone when they had gone from house to house and collected all the money they could they led the ren on a beer and carried it in procession to the parish churchyard where they made a grave and buried it with the utmost solemnity singing dirgs over her in the Manx language all her knell after which Christmas begins the burial over the company outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced the music a writer of the 18th century says that in Ireland the ren is still hunted and killed by the peasants on Christmas day and on the following since Stevens day he is carried about hung by the leg in the center of two hoops crossing each other at right angles and the procession made in every village of men, women and children to catch, importing him to be the king of all birds down to the present time the hunting of the ren still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught on Christmas day or St. Stevens day the boys hunt and kill the ren faster than it in the middle of a mass of holy and ivy on the top of a broomstick and on St. Stevens day go about with it from house to house singing the ren the ren the king of all birds since Stevens days was caught in the first little his family's great I pray you good landlady give us a treat money or food, bread butter, eggs etc were given them upon which they feasted in the evening in the first half of the 19th century similar customs were still observed in various parts of the south of France thus at Carcassonne every year on the first Sunday of December the young people of the street St. Jean used to go out of the town armed with sticks with which they beat the bushes for rents the first to strike down one of these birds was proclaimed king then they returned to the town in procession headed by the king who carried the ren on a pole on the evening of the last day of the year the king and all those who had hunted the ren marched through the streets of the town to the light of torches with drums beating and fives playing in front of them at the door of every house they stopped and one of them rode to chalk on the door Vivois the number of the year which was about to begin on the morning of 12th day the king again marched in procession with great pomp wearing a crown and a blue mantle and carrying a scepter in front of him was born the ren fastened to the top of a pole which was adorned with the verdant reed of olive of oak and sometimes a mistletoe grown on an oak after hearing high mass in the parish church of St. Vincent surrounded by his officers and guards the king visited the bishop the mayor, the magistrates and the chief inhabitants collecting money to defray the expenses of the royal banquet which took place in the evening and wound up with the dance the parallelism between this custom of hunting the ren and some of those which we have considered especially the Gileic procession of the bear and the Indian one with the snake seems too close to allow us to doubt that they all belong to the same sort of ideas there were ship full animals killed with special salamnity once a year and before or immediately after death it is promenaded from door to door that each of his worshippers may receive a portion of divine virtues that are supposed to emanate from the dead or dying god religious processions of this sort must have had a great place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times if we may judge from the numerous traces of them which have survived in full custom for example on the last day of the year or Hogmany as it was called it used to be customary in the highlands of Scotland for a man to dress himself up in a cow's hide and thus retired to go from house to house attended by young fellows each of them armed with a staff to which a bit of raw hide was tied around every house the hired clad man used to run thrice daisyel that is according to the course of the sun so as to keep the house on his right hand while the others pursued him beating the hide with the staves and thereby making a loud noise like the beating of a drum the early procession they also struck the walls of the house on being admitted one of the party standing within the threshold pronounced the blessing on the family in these words may god bless the house and all that belongs to it cattle, stones and timber in plenty of meat or bed and body clothes and the health of men may it ever abound then each of the party singed in the fire a little bit of the hide which was tied to his staff and having done so he applied the singed hide to the house of every person and of every domestic animal belonging to the house this was imagined to secure them from the daisies and other misfortunes particularly from witchcraft throughout the ensuing year the whole ceremony was called Kallun because of the great noise made in beating the hide it was observed in the hebrides including saint killer down to the second half of the 18th century at least and it seems to have survived well into the 19th century chapter 54 chapter 55 the transference of evil one the transference to inanimate objects we have now traced the practice of killing a god among peoples in hunting, pastoral and agricultural stages of society and I have attempted to explain the motives which led men to adopt so curious a custom one aspect of the custom still remains to be noticed the accumulated misfortunes and sins of a whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying god who is supposed to bear them away forever leaving the people innocent and happy the notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other beings who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind it arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental between the material and the inner material because it is possible to shift the wood, stones or what not from our own back to the back of another the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his paints and sorrows to another who will suffer them in his stead upon this idea he acts and the result is an endless number of very unameable devices for palming off upon someone else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself in short the principle of vicarious suffering is only understood and practiced by races who stand on a low level of social and intellectual culture in the following pages I shall illustrate the theory and the practice as they are found among savages in all their naked simplicity undisguised by the refinements of metaphysics and the subtleties of theology the devices to which the cunning and selfish savage resorts for the sake of easing himself at the expense of his neighbour are manifold for examples of a multitude can be cited at the outset it is to be observed that the evil of which a man seeks to rid himself need not be transferred to a person it may equal well be transferred to an animal or a thing though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to convey the trouble to the first person who touches it in some of the East Indian islands they think that epilepsy can be cured by striking the patient on the face with the leaves of certain trees and taking them away the disease is believed to have passed into the leaves and to have been thrown away with them to cure toothache some of the Australian blacks apply a heated spear thrower to the cheek the spear thrower is then cast away and the toothache goes with it in the shape of a black stone called karij stones of this kind are found in old mounds and sandhills they are carefully collected to give them toothache the bahima a pastoral tribe of Uganda often suffer from deep-seated obsesses their cure for this is to transfer disease to some other person by obtaining herbs on the medicine man rubbing them over the place where this swelling is and burying them in the road where people continually pass the first person who steps over these buried herbs contracts the disease and the original patient recovers sometimes in case of sickness the maladies transferred to an effigy as a preliminary to passing it on to a human being thus among the Baganda the medicine man would sometimes make a model of his patient in clay then a relative of the sick man would rub the image over the sufferer's body and either bury it in the road or in the grass by the wayside the first person who stepped over the image so passed by it would catch the disease sometimes the effigy was made out of a plain tin flower tied up so as to look like a person it was used in the same way as the clay figure but the use of images for this malefic purpose was a capital crime any person caught in the act of burying one of them in the public road surely have been put to death in the western district of the island of Timor where men and women are making long and tiring journeys they found themselves with leafy branches which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their forefathers did the same before them the fatigue which they felt is thus supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind others use stones instead of leaves similarly in the Babar archipelago tired people will strike themselves with stones believing that they thus transferred the stones to weirdness which they felt in their own bodies then they throw away the stones in places which are specially set apart for the purpose like belief and practice in many distant parts of the world have given rise to these cairns or heaps or sticks and leaves which the Abadars often observe beside the path and to which every passing native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone or stick or leaf thus in the Solomon and Banks islands the natives are wont to throw sticks, stones or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent where a difficult path begins saying there goes my fatigue the act is not a religious right for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering to spiritual powers and the words which accompany the act are not a prayer it is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue which is simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf or stone and so cast it from him 2. Transference to Animals Animals are often employed as a vehicle for carrying away or transferring the evil when a moor has a headache he will sometimes take a lamb or a goat and beat it till it falls down believing that the headache will thus be transferred to the animal in Morocco most wealthy moors keep a wild boar in their stables in order that the gin and evil spirits may be diverted from the horses and enter into the boar among the coffers of South Africa when other remedies have failed natives sometimes adopt the custom to bring a goat into the presence of the sick man and confess the sins of the crawl over the animal sometimes a few drops of blood from the sick man are allowed to fall on the head of the goat which is turned out into an uninhibited part of the wealth the sickness is supposed to be transferred to the animal and to become lost in the desert in Arabia when the plague is raging the people will sometimes lead a camel through all the quarters of the town in order that the animal may take the pestilence on itself then they strangle it in a sacred place and imagine that they have rid themselves of the camel and of the plague at one blow it is said that when smallpox is raging the savages of Formosa will dry the demon of the disease into a show then cut off the animal's ears and burn them or it believing that in this way they rid themselves of the plague among the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called the Faditra the Faditra is anything selected by the Sikidi divining word for the purpose of taking away hurtful evils or diseases that might prove injurious to an individual's happiness peace or prosperity the Faditra may be either ashes cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin or anything else the Sikidi may choose to direct after the particular article is appointed the priest counts upon it all the evils that may prove injurious to the person for whom it is made and which he then charges the Faditra to take away forever if the Faditra be ashes it is blown to be carried away by the wind if it be cut money it is thrown to the bottom of deep water or where it can never be found if it be a sheep it is carried away to a distance on the shoulders of a man who runs with all his might mumbling as he goes as if in the greatest rage against the Faditra for the evils it is bearing away if it be a pumpkin it is carried on the shoulders carried on the shoulders to a little distance and there dashed upon the ground with every appearance of fury and indignation a Malagasy was informed by a diviner that he was doomed to a bloody death but that possibly he might avert his fate by performing a certain right carrying a small vessel full of blood upon his head he was to mount upon the back of a bullock while thus mounted he was to spill the blood upon the bullock's head and then send the animal away into the wilderness and return the bataks of Sumatra have a ceremony which they call making the curse to fly away when a woman is childless and sacrifices offered to the gods of three grasshoppers representing a head of cattle a buffalo and a horse then a swallow is set free with the prayer that the curse may fall upon the bird and fly away with it the entrance into a house of an animal which does not generally seek to share the abode of man is regarded by the Malais as ominous or misfortune if a wild bird flies into a house it must be carefully caught and smeared with oil and must then be released in the open air a formula being recited in which it is forbidden to fly away with all ill luck and misfortunes of the occupier in antiquity Greek women seem to have done the same with swallows which they caught in the house they poured oil on them and let them fly away for the purpose of removing ill luck from the household the hussles of the Carpathians imagine that they can transfer freckles to the first swallow they see in spring by washing their face in flowing water and saying swallow swallow take my freckles and give me rosy cheeks among the butterguss of the Nilgiri hills in southern India when a death has taken place the sins of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo calf for this purpose the people gather around the corpse and carry it outside the village there an elder of the tribe standing at the head of the corpse resides a chance a long list of sins such as any badaga may commit and the people repeat the last word of each line after him the confession of sins is thrice repeated by a conventional mode of expression in some total of sins a man may do is said to be 1300 admitted that the deceased has committed them all the performance cries aloud stay not their flight to God's pure feet as he closes the whole assembly chants aloud stay not their flight again the performer enters in the details and cries he killed the crawling snake it is a sin in the moment the last word is caught up and all people cry it is a sin as they shout the performer lays his hand upon the calf the sin is transferred to the calf thus the whole catalogue is gone through and dies away but this is not enough after the last shout let all be well and dies away the performer gives place to another and again confession is made and all the people shout it is a sin the third time it is done then still in solemn silence the calf is let loose like a Jewish scapegoat it may never be used for secular work at the badaga funeral later the buffalo calf was let thrice around the beer and the dead man's hand was laid upon its head by this act the calf was supposed to receive all the sins of the deceased it was then driven away to a great distance that it might contaminate no one and it was said that it would never be sold but looked on as a dedicated sacred animal the idea of this ceremony is that the sins of the deceased enter the calf and that the task of his ablution is laid on it they say that the calf very soon disappears and that this is never heard of the transference to men again men sometimes play the part of the scapegoat by diverting to themselves the evils that threaten others when a singleese is dangerously ill and the physicians can do nothing a devil dancer is called in who by making offerings to the devils and dancing in the masks appropriate to them conjures the demons of a disease one after the other out of the sick man's body and into his own having thus successfully extracted the course of the melody the artful dancer lies down in a beer and shaming death is carried to an open place outside the village here being left to himself he soon comes to life again and hastens back to claim his reward in 1590 a Scotch witch of the name of Agnes Sampson was convicted of curing a certain Robert Cares of a disease laid upon him by a westland warlock when he was at Dumfries witch sickness she took upon herself and kept the same with great groaning and torment till the morning at which time there was a great din heard in the house the noise was made by the witch in her efforts to shift the disease by means of clothes from herself to a cat or dog unfortunately attempt partly miscarried the deceased missed the animal and hit Alexander Douglas of Dalkeet who dwindled and died because of it while the original patient Robert Cares was made whole in one part of New Zealand an expiation for sin was felt to be necessary a service was performed over an individual by which all the sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him a fernstalk was previously tied to his person with which he jumped into the river and their unbinding allowed it to float away to the sea bearing their sins with it in great emergencies the sins of the Raja of Manipur used to be transferred to somebody else usually to a criminal who earned his pardon by his vicarious sufferings to effect the transference the Raja and his wife clad in fine robes bathed in a scaffold erected in the bazaar while the criminal crouched beneath it with the water which dripped from them on him their sins also were washed away and fell on the human scapegoat to complete the transference the Raja and his wife made over their fine robes to their substitute while they themselves clad in new raiment mixed with the people till evening in Travancore when a Raja is near his end they seek out a holy brahman who consents to take upon himself the sins of the dying man in consideration of the sum of 10,000 rupees thus prepared to emulate himself on the altar of duty the saint is introduced into the chamber of death and closely embraces the dying Raja saying to him oh king I undertake to bear all your sins and diseases may your highness live long and reign happily having thus taken to himself the sins of the sufferer he sent away from the country and never more allowed to return at Utskurgan in Turkestan Mr. Shuler saw an old man who was said to get his living by taking on himself the sins of the dead and then sported the voting his life as the prayers for their souls in Uganda when an army has returned from war and the gods warned the king by their oracles that some evil has attached itself to the soldiers it was customary to pick out a woman slave from the captives together with a cow, a goat, a foal and a dog from the booty and to send them back under a strong guard to the borders of the country from which they had come there the limbs were broken they were left to die for they were too crippled to crawl back to Uganda in order to ensure the transparency of the evil to these substitutes bunches of grass were rubbed over the people and cattle and then tied to the victims after that the army was pronounced clean and was allowed to return to the capital so on his accession a new king of Uganda used to wound a man and send him away as a scapegoat to Bunyoro to carry away any uncleanliness 4. The transference of evil in Europe The examples of the transference of evil hitherto adduced have been mostly drawn from the customs of savage or barbarous peoples but similar attempts to shift the burden of disease misfortune and sin from one self to another person or to an animal or thing have been common also among the civilized nations of Europe both in ancient and modern times the common cure for fever was to pair the patient's nails and stick the pairings with wax on a neighbor's door before sunrise the fever then passed from the sick man to his neighbor similar devices must have been resorted to by the Greeks for laying down laws for his ideal state Plato thinks it too much to expect that men should not be alarmed at finding certain wax figures adhering to their doors or to the tombstones of their parents in the 4th century of our era Marcelus of Bordeaux prescribed the cure for warts which has still a great vogue among the superstitious in various parts of Europe you have to touch your warts with as many little stones as you have warts then wrap the stones in neither leaf and throw them away in a thoroughfare whoever picks them up will get the warts and you will be rid of them people in the Orkney Islands will sometimes wash the sick man and then throw the water down at the gateway in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be transferred to the first person who passes through the gate a Bavarian cure for fever is derived upon a piece of paper fevers stay away I'm not at home and to put the paper in somebody's pocket the latter then catches the fever and the patient is rid of it a Bohemian prescription for the same melody is this take an empty pot go with it to a crossroad throw it down and run away the first person who kicks against the pot will catch your fever and you will be cured often in Europe as among savages an attempt is made to transfer a pain or malady from a man to an animal grave writers of antiquity recommended that if a man be stung by a scorpion he should sit upon an ass with his face to detail or whisper in the animal's ear a scorpion has stung me in other case they thought the pain would be transferred from the man to the ass many cures of this sort are recorded by Marcelus for example he tells us that the following is a remedy for tooth ache standing booted under the open sky on the ground you catch a frog by the head spit into its mouth ask it to carry away the ache and then let it go but the ceremony must be performed on a lucky day or at a lucky hour in Cheshire after or thrush with effects the mouth or throats of infants it's not uncommonly treated in much the same manner a young frog is held for a few moments with its head inside the mouth of the sufferer who it is supposed to relieve by taking the malady to itself I assure you said an old woman who had often superintended such a cure we used to hear the poor frog whooping and coughing, mortal bad for days after there was an ache to hear the poor creature coughing as it did about the garden a Northampton shire Devonshire and Welsh Cure for a cough is to put the hair of the patient's head between two slices of buttered bread and give the sandwich to a dog the animal would thereupon catch the cough and the patient will lose it sometimes an ailment is transferred to an animal by sharing food with it thus in Oldenburg if you are sick of a fever take a bite before a dog and say good luck you hound, may you be sick and I be sound then when the dog has lapsed some of the milk you take a swig at the bowl and then the dog must lap again and then you must swig again and when you the dog have done it a third time he will have the fever and you will be quid of it a bohemian cure for fever is to go out into the forest before the sun is up and look for a snipest nest when you have found it take out one of the young birds with it beside you for three days then go back into the wood and set the snipe free the fever will leave you at once the snipe has taken it away so in the Vedic times the Hindus of old sent consumption away with the blue jay they said, our consumption, fly away, fly away with the blue jay with the wild rush of the storm and the whirlwind oh, vanish away in the village of Wandigla in Wales there is a church dedicated to the virgin martyre Saint Tecla where the falling sickness is or used to be cured by being transferred to a foal the patient first washed his limbs in a sacred well hard by dropped four pence into it as an offering walked thrice around the well and thrice repeated the Lord's prayer then the foal, which was a cock or a hen, according as the patient was a man or a woman was put into a basket and carried around the first well and afterwards the church next the sufferer entered the church and lay down under the communion table for a day after that he offered six pence and departed leaving the foal and the church if the bird died the sickness was supposed to have been transferred to it from the man or woman who was now rid of the disorder as late as 1855 the old perished clerk of the village remembered quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from the effect of the fits which had been transferred to them often the sufferer seeks to shift this bird in our sickness or ill luck to the ultimate object in Athens there is a little chapel of Saint John the Baptist built against an ancient column fever patients they saw did and by attaching a wax thread to the inner side of the column believed that they transferred the fever from themselves to the pillar in the mark of Brandenburg they say that if you suffer from giddiness you should strip yourself naked and run thrice around the flax field after sunset you should be rid of it but perhaps the thing most commonly employed in Europe as a receptacle for sickness and trouble of all sorts is a tree or bush a Bulgarian cure for fever is to run thrice around the willow tree at sunrise crying the fever shall shake thee and the sun shall warm me in the Greek island of Carpathus the priest ties a red thread around the neck of a sick person next morning the friends of the patient go out to the hillside where they tie the thread to a tree thinking that they thus transferred the sickness to the tree Italians attempt to cure fever in a like manner by tethering it to a tree the sufferer ties the thread around his left wrist at night and hangs the thread on a tree next morning the fever is thus believed to be tied up to the tree and the patient to be rid of it but he must be careful not to pass by that tree again otherwise the fever would break loose in its bounds and attack him afresh a Flemish cure for the egg is to go early in the morning to an old willow tie three knots in one of its branches say, good morrow old one I give you the cold, good morrow old one then turn and run away without looking round in Sonnenberg if you would rid yourself of goat you should go to a young fir tree and tie a knot in one of its twigs saying, God greet thee noble fir I bring thee my goat he will I tie a knot and bring my goat into it in the name etc another way of transferring goat from a man to a tree is this pair the nails of the sufferer's fingers and clip some hairs from his legs bore a hole in an oak stuff the nails and hair in the hole stop up the hole again and smear it with coats done if, for three months thereafter the patient is free of goat you may be sure the oak has it in his stead in Cheshire if you would be rid of warts you have only to rub them with a piece of bacon cut the slit in the bark of an ash tree and slip the bacon under the bark soon the warts will disappear from your hand only, however, to reappear in the shape of rough excrescences or knobs on the bark of the tree at Birkenstead in Hertzforscheier there used to be certain oak trees which were long celebrated for the cure of egg the transference or the melody to the tree was simple but painful a lock of the sufferer's hair was pegged into an oak then by a sudden wrench he left his hair and his egg behind him in the tree end of chapter 55 recording by Monsbru Helsingforsch Finland