 Chapter 56 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 is her gym's treasure. Chapter 56. The Public Expulsion of Evils. 1. The Omnipresence of Demons. In the foregoing chapter, the primitive principle of the transference of ills to another person, animal or thing, was explained and illustrated. But similar means have been adopted to free a whole community from diverse evils that affect it. Such attempts to dismiss at once the accumulated sorrows of a people are by no means rare or exceptional. On the contrary, they have been made in many lands, and from being occasional, they tend to become periodic and annual. It needs some effort, on our part, to realize the frame of mind which prompts these attempts. Read in a philosophy which strips nature of personality and reduces it to the unknown cause of an orderly series of impressions on our senses. We find it hard to put ourselves in the place of the savage, to whom the same impressions appear in the guise of spirits, or the handy work of spirits. For ages, the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science, from heartened home, from ruined cell and the ivy tower, from haunted glade and lonely mare, from the driven murky cloud that belches forth the lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silvery moon, or fret with flakes of burning red the gold neab. The spirits are gone even from the last stronghold in the sky, whose blue arch no longer passes, except with children, for the screen that hides from mortal eyes the glories of the celestial world. Only poets' dreams or impassioned flights of oratory, is it given to catch a glimpse of the last flutter of the standards of the treething host, to hear the beat of their invisible wings, the sound of them mocking laughter, or the swell of angel music dying away in the distance, far otherwise as it was the savage. His imagination, the world still deems with those motley beings, whom a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons still hover about him, both waking and sleeping. They dog his footsteps, dazzle his senses, enter into him, harass and deceive and torment him, in a thousand freakish and mischievous ways. The mishaps that befall him, the losses he sustains, the pains he has to endure, he commonly sets down, if not to the magic of his enemies, to despite or anger or caprice of the spirits. Their constant presence weirdies him, their sleepless malignity exasperates him, he longs with an unspeakable longing to be rid of them all together, and from time to time, driven to bay, his patience utterly exhausted, he turns fiercely on his persecutors, and makes a desperate effort to chase the whole pack of them from the land, to clear the air of their swarming multitudes, that he may breathe more freely, and go on his way un molested, at least for a time. Thus it comes about that the endeavor of primitive people to make a clean sweep of all their troubles generally takes the form of a grand hunting out and expulsion of devils or ghosts. They think that if they can only shake off these their accursed tormentors, they'll make a fresh-started life, happiness, the tales of Eden and the old poetic golden age will come through again. 2. The occasional expulsion of evils We can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to which from time to time the savage resorts should commonly take the form of a forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits, primitive man sees the cause of many, if not most, of his troubles, and he fancies that if he can only deliver himself from them, things will go better with him. The public attempts to expel the accumulated ills of the whole community may be divided into two classes. According as the expelled evils are immaterial and invisible, or are embodied in a material vehicle or scapegoat. The former may be called a direct or immediate expulsion of evils, latter the indirect or immediate expulsion, or the expulsion by scapegoat. We begin with examples of the former. In the island of Rook between New Guinea and New Britain, when any misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse, howl and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil, who is supposed to be the author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap took place, they drive him step by step to the sea, and on reaching the shore, they redouble their shouts and blows in order to expel him from the island. He generally retires to the sea, or to the island or lotting. The natives of New Britain ascribe sickness, drought, the failure of crops, and in short all misfortunes to the influence of wicked spirits. So at times when many people sicken and die, as at the beginning of the rainy season, all the inhabitants of a district armed with branches and clubs go out by moonlight into the fields, where they beat and stamp on the ground with wild howls till morning, believing that this drives away the devils. And for the same purpose, they rush through the village with burning torches. The natives of New Caledonia are said to believe that all evils are caused by a powerful and malignant spirit. Hence, in order to rid themselves of him, they will from time to time dig a great pit, around which the whole tribe gathers. After cursing the demon, they fill up the pit with earth and trample on the top with louder shouts, this they call burying the evil spirit. Among the deary tribe of Central Australia, when a serious illness occurs, the medicine men expel kuchi, or the devil, by beating the ground in and outside of the camp with the tougher tail of a kangaroo, until they have chased the demon away to some distance from the camp. When a village has been visited by a series of disasters or a severe epidemic, the inhabitants of Minahassa in Silibis lay the blame upon the devils for investing the village and who must be expelled from it. Accordingly, early one morning all the people, men, women and children, quit their homes, carrying their household goods with them, and take up their quarters in temporary huts which have been erected outside the village. Here they spend several days, offering sacrifices and preparing for the final ceremony. They blast the men, some wearing masks, others with their faces blackened and so on, but all armed with swords, guns, pikes or brooms, still cautiously and silently back into the deserted village. Then, at the signal from the priest, they rush furiously up and down the streets and into and under the houses, which are raised on piles above the ground, yelling and striking on walls, doors and windows to drive away the devils. Next the priest and the rest of the people come with the holy fire and march nine times around each house and thrice around the ladder that leads up to it, carrying the fire with them. Then they take the fire into the kitchen, where it must burn for three days continuously. The devils are now driven away, and general and great is the joy. The alphurs of Halmahera attribute epidemics to the devil, who comes from other villages to carry them off. So, in order to rid the village of the disease, the sorcerer drives away the devil. From all the villagers, he receives a costly garment and places it on four vessels, which he takes to the forest and leaves at the spot where the devil is supposed to be. Then, with mocking words, he bids the demon a pendant in place. In the Kay Islands, the south-west of New Guinea, the evil spirits who are quite distinct from the souls of the dead form a mighty host. Almost every tree at every cave is the lodging place of one of these fiends, who are moreover extremely irascible and apt to fly out on the smallest provocation. They manifest their displeasure by sending sickness and other calamities. Hence in times of public misfortune, as when an epidemic is raging and all other remedies have failed, the whole population go forth with the priest at their head to a place at some distance from the village. Here, at sunset, they erect a couple of poles with the crossbar between them, to which they attach bags of rice, wooden models of pivot guns, gongs, bracelets and so on. Then, when everybody has taken his place at the poles and the death-like silence reigns, the priest lifts up his voice and dresses the spirits in their own language as follows. Ho-ho-ho! Ye evil spirits who dwell in the trees, ye evil spirits who live in the grottoes, ye evil spirits who launch in the earth. We give you these pivot guns, these gongs, etc. Let the sickness cease and not so many people die of it. Then everybody runs home as fast as their legs can carry them. In the island of Nias, when a man is seriously ill and other remedies have been tried in vain, the sorcerer proceeds to exercise the devil who is causing the illness. A pole is set up in front of the house and on the top of the pole a rope of palm leaves is stretched to the roof of the house. Then the sorcerer mounts the roof with a pig which he kills and allows to roll from the roof to the ground. The devil anxious to get the pig lets himself down hastily from the roof by the rope of palm leaves and the good spirit invoked by the sorcerer prevents him from climbing up again. If this remedy fails, it is believed that other devils must still be lurking in the house. So a general hunt is made after them. All the doors and windows in the house are closed except a single dormer window in the roof. The men shut up in the house, hue and slash with the swords right and left in the clash of gongs and the rubber-dubbed drums. Terrified at this onslaught, the devil is escaped by the dormer window and sliding down the rope of palm leaves they take themselves off. As all the doors and windows except the one in the roof are shut, the devils cannot get into the house again. In the case of an epidemic, the proceedings are similar. All the gates of the village except one are closed. Every voice is raised, every gong and drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the devils are driven out and the last gate is shut behind them. For eight days thereafter the village is in a state of siege, no one being allowed to enter it. When cholera has broken out in a Burmese village, the able-bodied men scramble on the roofs and lay about them with bamboos and builds of wood, while all the rest of the population, old and young, stand below in thumped drums, blow trumpets, yells, scream, beat floors, walls, thin pants, everything to make a din. This uproar, repeated on three successive nights, is thought to be very effective in driving away the cholera demons. When smallpox first appeared amongst the Kumis of southeastern India, they thought it was a devil come from the Arakhan. The villagers were placed in a state of siege, no one being allowed to leave or enter them. A monkey was killed by being dashed on the ground and its body was hung at the village gate. Its blood, mixed with small river pebbles, was sprinkled on the houses, the threshold of every house was swept with the monkey's tail and the fin was adjured to the part. When an epidemic is raging on the Gold Coast of West Africa, the people will sometimes turn out a hundred clubs and torches to drive the evil spirits away. At a given signal the whole population begin with frightful yells to beat in every corner of the houses then rush like mad into the streets waving torches and striking frantically in the empty air. The uproar goes on till somebody reports that the cowed and daunted demons have made good their escape by a gate or the town or village. The people stream out after them, pursue them for some distance into the forest and warn them never to return. The expulsion of the devils is followed by a general massacre of all the cocks in the village or town. Lest by their unseasonable crowing they should betray to the banished demons the direction they must take to return to their old homes. When sickness was prevalent in a Huron village and all other remedies had been tried in vain, the Indians had recourse to the ceremony called Lono-Roya, which is the principal invention that the most proper means, so they say, to expel from the town or village where the devils and evil spirits which cause, induce and import all the maladies and infirmities, which they suffer in body and mind. Accordingly one evening the men would begin to rush like madmen about the village, baking and upsetting whatever they came across in the wigwams. They threw fire and burning brands about the streets and all night long they ran howling and singing without cessation. Then they all dreamed of something, a knife, dog, skin or whatever it might be, and when morning came they went from wigwam to wigwam asking for presents. These they received silently, till the particular thing was given to them which they had dreamed about. On receiving it they uttered a cry of joy and rushed from the hut amidst the congratulations of all present. The health of those who received what they had dreamed of was believed to be assured, whereas those who did not get what they had set their hearts upon regarded their faith as sealed. Sometimes, instead of chasing the demon of disease from their homes, savages prefer to leave him in peaceable possession while they themselves take the flight and attempt to prevent him from following in their tracks. Thus when the Patagonians were attacked by smallpox, which they attributed to the machinations of an evil spirit, they used to abandon their sickened flea, slashing the air with their weapons and throwing water about in order to keep off the dreadful pursuer. And when after several days marched they reached a place where they hoped to be beyond his reach, they used by way of precaution to plant all their cutting weapons with the sharp edges turned towards the quarter from which they had come, as if they were repelling a charge of cavalry. Similarly, when the Lules or the Tonokota Indians or the Grand Chaco were attacked by an epidemic, they regularly sought to evade it by flight, but in so doing, they always followed a senior's, not a straight course. Because they said that when the disease made after them, they would be so exhausted by the turnings and windings of the road that they would never be able to come up with them. When the Indians on New Mexico were decimated by smallpox or other infectious disease, they used to shift their quarters every day, retreating into the most sequestered parts of the mountains and choosing thorniest tickets they could find, in the hope that the smallpox would be too afraid of scratching himself on the thorns to follow them. When some chins on a visit to Rangoon were attacked by cholera, they went about with drone swords to scare away the demon, and they spent the day hiding on their bushes so that he might not be able to find them. 3. The periodic expulsion of evils. The expulsion of evils, from being occasional, tends to become periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malignant influences which have been long accumulated about them. Some of the Australian blacks annually expelled the ghosts of the dead from their territory. The ceremonials witnessed by the reverend W Ridley on the banks of the river Barwan. A chorus of 20, old and young, were singing in beating time with boomerangs. Suddenly, from under a sheet of bark darted the man with his body whitened by pipe clay, his head and face collared with lines of red and yellow, and a tuft of feathers fixed by means of a stick two feet above the crown of his head. He stood 20 minutes perfectly still, gazing upwards. An aboriginal who stood by told me he was looking for the ghosts of dead men. At last he began to move very slowly, and soon rushed to and fro at full speed, flourishing a branch as if to drive away some foes invisible to us. When I thought this pantomime must almost be over, 10 more similarly adorned suddenly appeared from behind the trees, and whole party joined in a brisk conflict with the mysterious assailants. At last, after some rapid evolutions in which they put forth all their strength, they rested from the exciting toil which they had kept up all night, and for some hours after sunrise. They seemed satisfied that the ghosts were driven away for 12 months. They were performing the same ceremony at every station along the river, and I am told it is an annual custom. Certain seasons of the year mark themselves naturally out as appropriate moments for a general expulsion of devils. Such a moment occurs towards the close of an arctic winter, when the sun reappears on the horizon after an absence of weeks or months. Accordingly, at Point Barrow, the most northernly extremity of Alaska, and nearly of America, the Eskimo chose the moment of the sun's reappearance to hunt the mistuous spirit Tunga from every house. The ceremony was witnessed by the members of the United States Polar Expedition, who entered at Point Barrow. A fire was built in front of the council house, and an old woman was posted at the entrance to every house. The men gathered round the council house while the young women and girls drove the spirit out of every house with their knives, stabbing viciously under the bunk and deerskins, and calling upon Tunga to be gone. When they thought he had been driven out of every hole and corner, they thrust him down the hole in the floor and chased him into the open air with loud cries and frantic gestures. Meanwhile, the old woman at the entrance of the house made a passes with a long knife in the air to keep him from returning. Each party drove the spirit towards the fire and invited him to go into it. All the way by this time drawn up in a semi-circle round the fire, when several of the leading men made specific charges against the spirit, and each after his speech brushed his clothes violently, calling on the spirit to leave him and go into the fire. Two men now stepped forward with rifles loaded with blank cartridges, while a third brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the flames. At the same time, one of the men fired a shot into the fire, and as the cloud of steam rose it received the other shot, which was supposed to finish Tunga for the time being. In the late autumn, when storms rage over the land and break the icy fetters by which the frozen seas as yet but slightly bound, when the loosened flows are driven against each other and break with loud crashes, and when the cakes of ice are piled in wild disorder upon one another, the Eskimos of Baffinland fancy they hear the voices of the spirits, who people their misty flayed in air. Then the ghost or the dead knock wildly at the huts, which they cannot enter, and the woe to the hapless white whom they catch, he soon sickens and dies. Then the phantom of a huge hairless dog pursues the real dogs, which expire in convulsions and cramps at sight of him. All the countless spirits of evil are abroad striving to bring sickness and death, foul weather and failure in hunting, on the Eskimos. Most dreaded of all these spectral visitants are Sedna, mistress of the Netherworld, and her father, to who share dead Eskimos fall, while the other spirits fill the air and water. She rises from underground, with his then abysses easing for the wizards. In every house you may hear them singing and praying while they conjure the spirits, seated in a mystic gloom at the back of the hut, which is dimly lit by a lamp burning low. The hardest task of all is to drive away Sedna, and this is reserved for the most powerful enchanter. A rope is called on the floor of a large hut, in such a way as to leave a small opening at the top, which represents the beating hole of a seal. Two enchanters stand beside it, one of them grasping a spear as if he were watching a seal hole in winter, the other holding the harpoon line. A third sorcerer sits at the back of the hut, chanting a magic song to lure Sedna to the spot. Now she is heard approaching under the floor of the hut, breathing heavily. Now she emerges at the hole. Now she is harpooned and sinks away in angry haste, dragging the harpoon with her, while the two men hold on the line with all their might. They struggle it severe, but at last by a desperate wrench she tears herself away and returns to her dwelling in a deadly womb. When the harpoon is drawn up over the hole, it is found to be splashed with blood, which the enchanters proudly exhibit as a proof of their prowess. Thus Sedna and the other evil spirits are at last driven away, and next day a great festival is celebrated by old and young in honour of the event. But they must still be cautious for the wounded Sedna is furious and will seize anyone she may find outside of his hut. So they all wear amulets on the top of their hoods to protect themselves against her. These amulets consist of pieces of the first garments that they wore after birth. The Iroquois inaugurated their new year in January, February or March, the time varied, with a festival of dreams, like that which the Hurons observed on special occasions. The whole ceremony lasted several days, or even weeks, and formed a kind of Saturnalia. Men and women, variously disguised, went from wigwam to wigwam, smashing and throwing down whatever they came across. It was a time with general licence that people were supposed to be out of their senses, and therefore not to be responsible for what they did. Accordingly, many seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belaboring obnoxious persons, drenching them with ice-cold water, and covering them with filth or hot ashes. Others seized burning brands or coals and flung them at the heads of the first person they met. The only way of escaping from these persecutors was to guess what they had dreamed of. On one day of the festival, the ceremony was driving away the evil spirits from the village took place. Men clothed in their skins or wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks and their hands with the shells of a tortoise, went from hut to hut making frightful noises. In every hut they took the fuel from the fire and remembered some ashes about the floor with their hands. The general confessional sins which preceded the festival was probably a preparation for the public expulsion of evil influences. It was waves dripping the people of their mortal burdens that these might be collected and cast out. In September, the Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Situa, the object of which was to banish from the capital and its vicinity all disease and trouble. In September, because the rains began about this time, and with the first rains there was generally much sickness. As a preparation for the festival, the people fasted on the first day of the moon after the autumnal equinox. Having fasted during the day and the night being come, they baked a coarse paste of mace. This paste was made of two sorts. One was knitted with the blood of children aged from 5 to 10 years, the blood being obtained by bleeding the children between the eyebrows. These two kinds of pastes were baked separately because they were for different uses. Each family assembled at the house of the eldest brother to celebrate the feast, and those who had no elder brother went to the house of their next relation of greater age. On the same night, all who had fasted during the day washed their bodies and, taking a little of the blood-netted paste, rubbed it over their head, face, breast, shoulders, arms and legs. They did this in order that the paste might take away all their infirmities. After this, the head of the family anointed the threshold with the same paste and left it there as a token that the inmates of the house had performed their ablutions and cleansed their bodies. Meantime, the high priest performed the same ceremonies in the temple of the sun. As soon as the sun rose, all the people worshipped and besought him to drive all evils out of the city, and then they broke the fast with the paste that had been knitted without blood. When they had paid their worship and broken their fast, they prayed at the state of the hour. In order that almighty door of the sun, as one man, an ink-of-the-blood royal came forth from the fortress as a messenger of the sun, richly dressed with his mantel girded round his body and a lance in his hand. The lance was decked with feathers of many hues, extending from the blade to the socket and fastened with rings of gold. He ran down the hill from the fortress, brandishing his lance, till he reached the center of the great square where stood the golden urn like a fountain that was used for the sacrifice of the fermented Jews of the Mace. Here four other ink-of-the-blood royal awaited him, each with the lance in his hand, and his mantel girded up to run. The messenger touched the four lances with his lance and told him that the sun bathed them, as his messengers drive the evils out of the city, the four ink-of-the-blood lances separated, and ran down the four royal roads which led out of the city to the four quarters of the world. While they ran, all the people, great and small, came to the doors of their houses, and with great shouts of joy and gladness, shook their clothes as if they were shaking of dust while they cried. But the evils be gone! How greatly desired has this festival been by us. O Creator of all things, permit us to reach another year that we may see another feast like this. After they had shaken their clothes, they passed their hands over their heads, faces, arms and legs, as if in the act of washing. All this was done to drive the evils out of their houses, that the messengers of the sun might banish them from the city, and it was done not only in the streets through which the Incas ran, but generally in all quarters of the city. Moreover, they all danced, the Inca himself among them, and bathed in the rivers and fountains, saying that their melodies would come out of them. Then they took great torches of straw bound around with cords. These they lighted and passed from one to the other, striking each other with them and saying, let all harm go away. Meanwhile, the runners ran with their lances for a quarter of league outside the city, where they found four other Incas ready who received the lances from their hands and ran with them. Thus the lances were carried by relays of runners for a distance of five or six leagues, at the end of which the runners washed themselves in their weapons in the river, and set up the lances in sign of a boundary within which the banished evils might not return. The Negro Soginia annually banished the devil from older towns which, much ceremony at a time, set apart for the purpose. At Axim on the Gold Coast, this annual expulsion is preceded by a feast of eight days, during which myrth and jollity, skipping, dancing and singing prevail, and a perfect lamp-pooning liberty is allowed and scandals so highly exalted that they may freely sing of all the faults, villainies and frauds of their superiors, as well as inferiors, without punishment, or so much as the least interruption. On the eighth day, they hunt out the devil with a dismal cry, running after him and pelting him with stick stones and whatever comes to hand. When they have driven him far enough out of the town, they all return. In this way, he is expelled from more than a hundred towns at the same time. To make sure that he does not return to their houses, the women wash and scour all their wooden and earthen vessels, to free them from all uncleanness and the devil. At Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast, the ceremony was witnessed on the night of October 1844 by an Englishman, who described it as follows. Tonight, the annual custom of driving the evil spirit, Abunsan, out of the town has taken place. As soon as the eight o'clock gun fired in the fort, the people began firing muskets in their houses, turning all their furniture out of doors, beating about in every corner of the room with sticks, etc. and screaming as loudly as possible in order to frighten the devil. Being driven out of the houses, as they imagined, they salad forth into the streets, throwing light and torches about, shouting, screaming, beating sticks together, rattling old pants, making the most horrid noise in order to drive him out of the town into the sea. The custom is preceded by four weeks dead silence. No gun is allowed to be fired, no drum to be beaten, no palaver to be made between man and man. If during these weeks, two natives should disagree and make a noise in the town, they are immediately taken before the king and fined heavily. If a dog or pig, sheep or goat be found at large in the street, it may be killed or taken by another. The former owner not being allowed to demand any compensation. This silence is designed to deceive Abunsan, that, being off his guard, he may be taken by surprise and frightened out of the place. If anyone died during this silence, his relatives are not allowed to weep until the four weeks have been completed. Sometimes the date of the annual expulsion of devils is fixed with reference to the agricultural seasons. Thus, amongst the horse of Togoland in West Africa, the expulsion is performed annually before the people partake of the new yams. The chief summons the priests and magicians and tells them that the people are now to eat the new yams and be merry, therefore they must cleanse the town and remove the evils. Accordingly the evil spirits, witches and all the ills that infest the people, are conjured in the bundles of leaves and creepers, fastened to poles which are carried away and set up in the earth on various roads outside the town. During the following night, no fire may be lit and no food eaten. Next morning the women sweep out their hearths and houses on broken wooden plates. Then the people pray, saying, All ye sicknesses that are in our body and plague us, we have come today to throw you out. Thereupon, they run as fast as they can in the direction of Mount Araklu, smiting their mouths and screaming, Out today, out today, that which kills anybody, out today, ye evil spirits, out today, and all that causes our heads to ache, out today. Unlow and Araklu are the places where their all ill shall but ache itself. When they have come to a certain tree on Mount Araklu, they throw everything away and return home. At Kirivina, in southeastern New Guinea, when the new yams had been harvested, the people feasted and danced for many days, and a great deal of property, such as armlets, native money, and so forth, was displayed conspicuously on a platform erected for the purpose. When the festivities were over, all the people gathered and expelled the spirits from the village by shouting, beating the posts of the houses, and overturning everything under which a vile spirit might be supposed to lurk. The explanation which the people gave to the missionary was that they had entertained and feasted the spirits and provided them with riches, and it was now time for them to take their departure. Had they not seen the dances and heard the songs and gored themselves on the soles of the yams, and appropriated the soles of the money and all the other fine things set out on the platform, what more could the spirit want? So out they must go. Among the halls of northeastern India, the great festival of the year is the Harvest Home, held in January, when the granaries are full of grain and all the people to use their own expression are full of devilry. They have a strange notion that at this period men and women are so overcharged with vicious profanities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions. The ceremonies open with the sacrifice to the village god of three falls, a cock and two hens, one of which must be black. Along with them are offered flowers of the palashtri Bhutaya Frondosa, bread made from rice flour and sesame seeds. These offerings are presented by the village priest, who praised that during the year about to begin, they and their children may be preserved in a small misfortune and sickness, and that they may have seasonable rain and good crops. Prayer is also made in some places for the souls of the dead. At this time an evil spirit is supposed to infest the place, and to get rid of it, men, women and children go in procession and round and through every part of the village with sticks in their hands, as if beating for game, singing a wild chant and shouting vociferously till they feel assured that the evil spirit must have fled. Children themselves have to feasting and drinking rice beer, till they are in a fit state for the wild debauch which follows. The festival now becomes a Saturnal during which the servants forget their duty to the masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy and gentleness, they became raging bakans. Usually the hosts are quiet and reserved in manner, but during this festival their natures appear to undergo a temporary change. Son and daughters revile their parents in gross language, in parents their children. Men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of the amorous propensities. The Munderis, kinsmen and neighbours of the hosts keep the festival in much the same manner. The resemblance to a Saturnal is very complete. As at this festival the firm labourers are feasted by their masters and allow the utmost freedom of speech in addressing them. It is the festival of the harvest home, the termination of one year's toil and a slight respite from it before they commence again. Among some of the Hindu Kush tribes as among the hosts and Munderis the expulsion of devils take place after harvest. On the last crop of autumn has been gotten it is thought necessary to drive away evil spirits from the granaries. A kind of porridge is eaten and the head of the family takes his matchlock and fires it into the floor. Then going outside he sets the work loading and firing till his power horn is exhausted while all his neighbours are similarly employed. The next day is spent in rejoicings. In Chitral this festival is called devil driving. On the other hand the Conants of India expel the devils at seed time instead of at harvest. At this time they worship pitta ripenu the god of increase and of gain in every shape. On the first day of the festival a rude car is made of a basket set upon a few sticks tied upon the bamboo rollers for wheels. The priest takes this car first to the house of the lineal head of the tribe whom precedence is given in all ceremonies connected with agriculture. Here he receives a little of each kind of seed and some feathers. He then takes the car to all the other houses in the village each of which contributes the same things. Lastly the car is conducted to a field without the village attended by all the young men who beat each other and strike the air violently with long sticks. The seed that is carried out is called share of the evil spirits, spoilers of the seed. These are considered to be driven out with the car and when it and its contents are abandoned to them they are held to have no excuse for interfering with the rest of the seed corn. The people of Bali an island to the east of Java have periodical expulsions of devils upon a great scale. Generally the time chosen for the expulsion is the day of the dark moon in the ninth month. When the demons have been long un molested the country is said to be warm and the priest issues orders to expel them by force. Lest the whole of Bali should be rendered uninhabitable. On the day appointed the people of the village or district assemble at the principal temple. Here at the crossroad offerings are set out for the devils. After prayers have been recited by the priests the blast of a horn summons the devils to partake of the meal which has been prepared for them. At the same time a number of men step forward and light their torches at the holy lamp which burns before the chief priest. Immediately afterwards followed by the bystanders they spread in all directions and marched through the streets and lanes crying, depart go away! Wherever they pass the people who have stayed at home hasten by a deafening clatter on doors beams, rice blocks and so forth to take their share in the expulsion of devils. Thus chased from the houses the fiends flee to the banquet which has been set out for them but here the priest receives them with curses which finally drive them from the district. When the last devil has taken his departure the uproar is succeeded by a dead silence which lasts during the next day also. The devils at this thought are anxious to return to their old homes and in order to make them think that Bali is not Bali but some desert island no one might stir from its own abode for 24 hours. Even ordinary household work including cooking is discontinued only the watchmen may show themselves in the street. Reeds of thorns and leaves are hung at all the entrances to warn strangers who are entering. Not till the third day is the state of siege raised and even then it is forbidden to work at the rice fields or to buy and sell in the market. Most people will stay at home whiling away the time with cards and dice. In Tongkwin a taekyu dove or general expulsion of malevolent spirits commonly took place once a year especially if there was a great mortality amongst men the elephants or horses of the general stable or the cattle of the country the cause of which they attribute to the malicious spirits of such men as have been put to death for treason, rebellion and conspiring the death of the king general princes and that in revenge of the punishment they have suffered they are bent to destroy everything and commit horrible violence. To prevent this their superstition has suggested the institution of this taekyu dove as a proper means to drive the devil away and purge the country of evil spirits the day appointed where the ceremony was generally the 25th of February one month after the beginning of the new year which fell on the 25th of January the intermediate month was a season of feasting merry making of all kinds and general license during the whole month the great seal was kept shut up in a box faced downwards and the law was as it were laid asleep all courts of justice were closed debtors could not be seized small crimes such as petty larceny, fighting and assault escaped with impunity only treason and murder were taken account of and the benefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again at the close of the southern alia the wicked spirits were driven away great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with flying colors and all the pomp of war the general began then to offer meat offerings to the criminal devils and malevolent spirits for it is usual and customary likewise amongst them to feast the condemned before their execution inviting them to eat and drink when presently he accuses them in a strange language by characters and figures etc of many offenses and crimes committed by them as to the having disquieted the land, killed his elephants and the horses etc for all which they justly deserved to be chastised and banished whereupon three great guns are fired as the last signal upon which all the artillery and muskets are discharged that by their most terrible noise the devils may be driven away and they are so blind as to believe for certain that they really and effectually put them to flight in Cambodia the expulsion of evil spirits took place in March bits of broken statues and stones considered as the abode of the demons were collected and brought to the capital here as many elephants were collected as could be got together on the evening of the full moon wally some musketry were fired and the elephants charged furiously to put the devils to flight the ceremony was performed in three successive days in Siam the banishment of demons is annually carried into effect on the last day of the old year a signal gun is fired from the palace it is answered from the next station and so from station to station till the firing has reached the outer gate of the city thus the demons are driven out step by step as soon as this is done a consecrated rope is fastened around the circuit of the city walls to prevent the vanished demons from returning the rope is made of tough coached grass and is painted in alternate stripes of red, yellow and blue annual expulsions of demons, witches or evil influences appear to have been common among the heathen of Europe if we may judge from the relics of such customs among their descendants at the present day thus among the heathen of Votyaks a Finnish people of eastern Russia all the young girls of the village assemble on the last day of the year or a new day as day onward sticks the ends of which are split in nine places with these they beat every corner of the house and yard saying we are driving satan out of the village afterwards the sticks are thrown into the river below the village and as they float downstream satan goes with them to the next village from which he must be driven out in turn in some villages the expulsion is managed otherwise the unmarried men receive from every house in the village grotes, flesh and brandy this they take to the fields light a fire on their fir tree boil the grotes and eat all the food they have brought with them after pronouncing the words go away into the wilderness come not into the house then they return to the village after there are young women they take hold of the young women and throw them into the snow saying may the spirits of disease leave you the remains of the grotes and other food are then distributed among all the houses in proportion to the amount that each contributed and each family consumes its share according to the Votyak or the Malmy's district the young women throw into the snow whomever they found in the houses and this is called driving out satan moreover some of the bold grotes are cast into the fire with the words oh god afflict us not with sickness and pestilence give us not up as prey to the spirits of the wood but the most antique form of the ceremony is that observed by the Votyaks or the Kasan government first of all a sacrifice is offered to the devil at noon then all the men assemble and horseback in the center of the village and decide with which house they shall begin which often gives rise to hot disputes is settled they tether their horses to the pailing and arm themselves with whips clubs of limewood bundles of lighted twigs the lighted twigs are believed to have the greatest terrors for satan thus armed they proceed with frightful cries to beat every corner of the house and yard then shut the door and spit at the ejected field so they go from house to house that the devil has been driven from everyone then they mount their horses and ride out of the village yelling wildly and branching their clubs in every direction outside of the village they fling away the clubs and spit once more at the devil the cherimies another Finnish people of eastern Russia chase satan from the dwellings by beating the walls with the cuddles of limewood for the same purpose they fire guns, stab their ground with knives and insert burning chips of woods in the crevices also they leap over bonfires shaking out their garments as they do so and in some districts they blow on long trumpets of lime tree bark to frighten them away when he has fled to the wood they pelt the trees with some of the cheesecakes and eggs which furnished the feast in Christian Europe the old heathen custom of expelling the powers of evil at certain times of the year has survived the modern times thus in some villages of Calabria the mountain march is inaugurated with the expulsion of witches it takes place at night to the sound of the church bells and people running about the streets and crying marches come they say that the witches roam about in march and the ceremony is repeated every Friday evening during the month often as might have been anticipated the ancient pagan rite has attached itself to church festivals in Albania on easter eel the young people light torches of residence wood and march in procession swinging them through the village at last they throw the torches into the river crying we throw you into the river like these torches that you may never return Silesian peasants believe that on good Friday the witches go their rounds and have great power for mischief hence about oils near Strehlitz the people on that day arm themselves with old brooms and drive the witches from house and home from farmyard and cattle stall great uproar and clatter as they do so in central europe the favourite time for expelling the witches is or was valpurgiskinite the eve of mayday when the baleful powers of these mischievous beings were supposed to be at their height in the tyrol for example as in other places the expulsion of the powers of evil at this season goes by the name of burning out the witches it takes place on mayday but people have been busy with their preparations for days before on a Thursday at midnight bundles are made up of resin and splinters black and red spotted hemlock kappersberg, rosemary and twigs of the slo these are kept and burned on mayday by men who must first have received plenary absolution from the church on the last three days of April all the houses are cleansed and fumigated with juniper berries in the room on mayday when the evening bell has rung the ceremony of burning out the witches begins men and boys make a racket with whips, bells, pots and pans the women carry sensors the dogs are unchained and run barking and yelping about as soon as the church bell begins to ring the bundles of twigs, fasteners and poles are set on fire and the incense is ignited then all the house bells and dinner bells are rung pots and pans are clashed dogs bark and everyone must make a noise at the mid this hubbub all scream at the pitch of their voices witch, flee, flee from here or it will go ill with thee then they run seven times around the houses the yard and the village third witches are smoked out to their lurking places and driven away the custom of expelling the witches on valpurgis night is still or washed down to recent years observed in many parts of avaria and among the Germans of Bohemia thus in the Birmerwald mountains all the young fellows of the village as humble after sunset on some height especially at the crossroad and crack whips for a while in unison with older strength this drives away the witches for so far as the sound of the whips is heard these malefic beings can do no harm in some places while the young men are cracking their whips the herdsmen wind their horns and the long drawn notes heard far off in the silence of the night the witches another witching time is the period of 12 days between christmas and epiphany hence in some parts of Silesia the people burned pine resin all night long between christmas and the new year in order that the pungent smoke may drive witches and evil spirits far away from house in homestead and on christmas eve and new years eve they fire shots over fields and meadows into shrubs and trees and wrap straw around the fruit trees to prevent the spirits from doing them harm on new years eve which is saint sylvester's day bahemian lads armed with guns form themselves into circles and fire thrice into the air this is called shooting the witches and is supposed to frighten the witches away the last or the mystic 12 days is epiphany or 12th night and it has been selected as a proper reason for the expulsion of the powers of evil in various parts of europe in the morning on the lake of lucerne boys go about in procession on 12th night carrying torches and making a great noise with horns bells, whips and so forth to frighten away two female spirits of the wood strudely and straddily the people think that if they do not make enough noise there will be little fruit that year again in labrugier a canton of southern france on the eve of 12th day the people run through the streets jangling bells clattering kettles and doing everything to make a discordant noise then by the light of torches and blazing faggots they set up a prodigious hue and cry an ear splitting uproar hoping thereby to chase all the wandering ghosts and devils from the town and of chapter 56 recording by monsbru helsing force finland james frazier this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org the golden bow by sir james frazier chapter 57 public scapegoats section 1 the expulsion of embodied evils thus far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of evils which i have called direct or immediate in this class the evils are invisible at least to common eyes and the mode of deliverance consists for the most part in beating the empty air and raising such a hubbub as may scare the mischievous spirits and put them to flight it remains to illustrate the second class of expulsions in which the evil influences are embodied in a visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people village or town the pomos of california celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years at which the devils are represented by disguised men 20 or 30 men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint and put vessels of pitch on their heads then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains these are to personify the devils a herald goes up to the top of the assembly house and makes a speech to the multitude at a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads and with all the frightful accessories of noise motion and costume which the savage mind can devise in representation of demons the terrified women and children flee for life the men huddle them inside a circle and on the principle of fighting the devil with fire they swing blazing firebrands in the air yell, whoop and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils so creating a terrific spectacle and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous protectors finally the devils succeeded getting into the assembly house and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them as a conclusion of the whole farce the men summon courage the devils are expelled from the assembly house and with a prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the mountains close quote in spring as soon as the willow leaves were full grown on the banks of the river the mandan Indians celebrated their great annual festival one of the features of which was the expulsion of the devil a man painted black to represent the devil entered the village from the prairie chased and frightened the women and acted the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year finally he was chased from the village the women pursuing him with hisses and jibes beating him with sticks and pelting him with dirt some of the native tribes of central Queensland believe in a noxious being called who prowls unseen and would kill men and violate women if certain ceremonies were not performed these ceremonies last for five nights and consist of dances in which only men fantastically painted and adorned take part on the fifth night, Molonga himself personified by a man tricked out with red ogre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear his fourth from the darkness at the spectators and makes as if he would run them through great is the excitement loud are the shrieks and shouts but after another feigned attack the demon vanishes in the gloom on the last night of the year the palace of the kings of Cambodia is purged of devils men painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts have been expelled a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched around the palace to keep them out in Manzura Bad a district of Mysore in southern India when cholera or smallpox has broken out in a parish the inhabitants assemble and conjure the demon of the disease into a wooden image which they carry generally at midnight into the next parish in like manner pass the image on to their neighbors and thus the demon is expelled from one village after another until he comes to the bank of a river into which he is finally thrown often or however the expelled demons are not represented at all but are understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which conveys them away here again it will be convenient to distinguish between occasional and periodical expulsions we begin with the former section 2 the occasional expulsion of evils in a material vehicle the vehicle which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds a common one is a little ship or boat thus in the southern district of the island of Saram when a whole village suffers from sickness a small ship is made of rice, tobacco, eggs and so forth which have been contributed by all the people a little sail is hoisted on the ship when all is ready a man calls out in a very loud voice oh all ye sicknesses ye smallpoxes egg use measles etc who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely but who now cease to plague us we have made ready this ship for you and we have furnished you with provenders sufficient for the voyage ye shall have no lack of food nor of betel leaves nor of orican nuts nor of tobacco depart and sail away from us directly never come near us again but go to a land which is far from here let all the tides and winds waft you speely thither and so convey you thither the time to come we may live sound and well and that we may never see the sun rise on you again the ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore and let it drift away with the land breeze feeling convinced that they are free from sickness forever or at least till the next time if sickness attacks them again they are sure it is not the same sickness but a different one which in due time they dismiss in the same manner when the demon laid in bark is lost to sight the bearers return to the village where upon a man cries out the sicknesses are now gone vanished expelled and sailed away at this all the people come running out of their houses passing the word from one to the other with great joy beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands thus in Timorlaut to mislead the demons who are causing sickness a small proa containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage is allowed to drift away with wind and tide as it is being launched the people cry oh sickness go from here turn back what do you hear in this poor land three days after this ceremony a pig is killed and part of the flesh is offered to dudila who lives in the sun one of the oldest men says old sir I beseech you make well the grand children children women and men that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink palm wine I will keep my promise your share and to make all the people in the village well if the proa is stranded at any inhabited spot the sickness will break out there hence a stranded proa excites much alarm amongst the coast population and they immediately burn it because demons fly from fire in the island of Buru the proa which carries away the demons of disease is about 20 feet long rigged out with sails oars, anchors and so on and well stocked with provisions for a day and a night the people beat gongs and drums and rush about to frighten the demons next morning 10 stalwart young men strike the people with branches which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water as soon as they have done so they run down to the beach put the branches on board the proa launch another boat in great haste and tow the disease burdened bark far out to sea there they cast it off and one of them calls out grandfathers smallpox go away go willingly away go visit another land we have made you food ready for the voyage we have now nothing more to give when they have landed all the people bathe together in the sea in this ceremony the reason for striking the people with the branches is clearly to rid them of the disease demons which are then supposed to be transferred to the branches hence the haste with which the branches are deposited on the proa and towed away to sea so in the island districts of saran when smallpox or other sicknesses raging the priest strikes all the houses with consecrated branches which are then thrown into the river to be carried down to the sea exactly as amongst the Wociaks of Russia the sticks with which have been used for expelling the devils from the village are thrown into the river that the current may sweep the baleful burden away the plan of putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons in order to lure the demons after them is not uncommon for example most of the pagan tribes on the coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic disease as follows they carve one or more rough human images from the pith of the Sego Palm and place them on a small raft or boat or full rigged melee ship together with rice or other food the boat is decked with blossoms of Areka Palm and with ribbons made from its leaves and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to sea with the ebtide bearing as the people fondly think or hope the sickness often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of the whole community is an animal or a scapegoat in the central provinces of India when cholera breaks out in the village everyone retires after sunset to his house the priests then parade the streets taking from the roof of each house a straw which is burnt with an offering of rice, ghee and turmeric attract some shrine to the east of the village chickens stopped with vermilion are driven away in the direction of the smoke and are believed to carry the disease with them if they fail, goats are tied and last of all, pigs when cholera rages among the bars malans and curmies of India they take a goat or a buffalo in either case the animal must be a female and as black as possible then having tied some grain, cloves and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back they turn it out of the village the animal is conducted beyond the boundary and not allowed to return sometimes the buffalo is marked with a red pigment and driven to the next village where he carries the plague with him amongst the dinkas a pastoral people of the west Nile each family possesses a sacred cow when the country is threatened with war, famine or any other public calamity the chiefs of the village require a particular family to surrender their sacred cow to serve as a scapegoat the animal is driven by the women to the brink of the river and across it to the other bank there to wander in the wilderness and fall prey to ravening beasts then the women return in silence and without looking behind them where they to cast a backward glance they imagine that the ceremony would have no effect in 1857 when the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru were suffering from a plague they loaded a black llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people sprinkled brandy on the clothes and then turned the animal loose on the mountains hoping that it would carry the pest away with it occasionally the scapegoat was a man for example from time to time the gods used to warn the king of Uganda that his foes, the banyoro were working magic against him and his people to make them die of disease to avert such a catastrophe the king would send a scapegoat to the frontier of banyoro the land of the enemy the scapegoat consisted of either a man and a boy or a woman and her child chosen because of some mark or bodily defect which the gods had noticed and by which the victims were to be recognized with the human victims were sent a cow, a goat a fowl and a dog and a strong guard escorted them to the land which the god had indicated there the limbs of the victims were broken and they were left to die a lingering death in the enemy's country being too crippled to crawl back to Uganda the disease or plague was thought to have been transferred to the victims and do have been conveyed back in their persons to the land from which it came some of the aboriginal tribes of China as a protection against pestilence select a man of great muscular strength to act the part of scapegoat having besmeared his face with paint he performs many antics with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only he is assisted by a priest finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms is driven with great haste out of the town or village in the punjab a cure for the myurene is to hire a man of the chumar cast turn his face away from the village brand him with a red hot sickle and let him go out into the jungle taking the myurene with him he must not look back section three the periodic expulsion of evils in a material vehicle the mediate expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material vehicle like the mediate expulsion of them in invisible form tends to become periodic and for like reason thus every year generally in march the people of leti, moa and lacor islands of the indian archipelago send away all their diseases to sea they make a proa about six feet long rig it with sails, ores, rudder and other gear and every family deposits in it some rice, fruit, a fowl, two eggs insects that ravage the field and so on then they let it drift away to sea saying take away from here all kinds of sickness take them to other islands, to other lands distribute them in places that lie eastward where the sun rises the biages of Borneo annually sent to sea a little bark laden with the sins and misfortunes of the people the crew of any ship that falls in with the ill-oamened bark at sea will suffer all the sorrows with which it is laden a like custom is annually observed by the doosuns of the Taurang district in British north Borneo the ceremony is the most important of the whole year the aim is to bring good luck to the villages during the ensuing year by solemnly expelling all the evil spirits that may have collected in or about the houses throughout the last twelve months the task of routing out the demons and banishing them devolves chiefly on women dressed in their finest array they go in procession through the village one of them carries a small sucking pig in a basket on her back and all of them bear wands with which they be labour the little pig at the appropriate moment its squeals help to attract the vagrant spirits at every house the women dance and sing clashing castanets or symbols of brass and jingling bunches of little brass bells in both hands when the performance has been repeated at every house in the village the procession defiles down to the river and all the evil spirits which the performers have chased from the houses follow them to the edge of the water there a raft has been made ready and moored to the bank it contains offerings of food, cloth cooking pots and swords and the deck is crowded with figures of men, women animals and birds all made out of the leaves of the sago palm the evil spirits now embark on the raft and when they are all aboard it is pushed off and allowed to float down with the current carrying the demons with it should the raft run aground near the village it is shoved off with all speed lest the invisible passengers should seize the opportunity of landing and returning to the village finally the sufferings of the little pig whose squeals serve to decoy the demons from their lurking places are terminated by death for it is killed and its carcass thrown away every year at the beginning of the dry season the Niko Bar Islanders carry the model of a ship through their villages the devils are chased out of the huts and driven on board the little ship which is then launched and suffered to sail away with the wind the ceremony has been described by a catechist who witnessed it at Car Niko Bar in July 1897 for three days the people were busy preparing two very large floating cars shaped like canoes fitted with sails and loaded with certain leaves which possessed the valuable property of expelling devils while the young people were thus engaged the exorcists and the elders sat in a house singing songs by turns but often they would come forth pace the beach armed with rods and forbid the devil to enter the village the fourth day of the solemnity bore a name which means expelling the devil by sails in the evening all the villagers assembled the women bringing baskets of ashes and bunches of devil expelling leaves these leaves were then distributed to everybody old and young when all was ready a band of robust men attended by a guard of exorcists carried one of the cars down to the sea on the right side of the village graveyard and set it floating in the water as soon as they had returned another band of men carried the other car to the beach and floated it similarly in the sea to the left of the graveyard the demon laden barks being now launched the women threw ashes from the shore and the whole crowd shouted saying fly away devil fly away never come again the wind and the tide being favorable the canoes sailed quickly away and that night all the people feasted together with great joy because the devil had departed in the direction of Chowra a similar expulsion of devils takes place once a year in other Niko Bar villages but the ceremonies are held at different times in different places amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China a great festival is celebrated in the third month of every year it is held by way of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills of the past 12 months the destruction is supposed to be affected in the following way a large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder stones and a bit of iron is buried in the earth a train of gunpowder communicating with the jar is then laid and a match being applied the jar and its contents are blown up the stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of the past year and the dispersion of them by the explosion is believed to remove the ills and disasters themselves the festival is attended with much reveling and drunkenness at Old Calabar on the coast of Guinea the devils and ghosts are, or used to be publicly expelled once in two years among the spirits thus driven from their haunts are the souls of all the people who died since the last illustration of the town about three weeks or a month before the expulsion which according to one account takes place in the month of November rude effigies representing men and animals such as crocodiles, leopards, elephants bullocks and birds are made of wicker work or wood and being hung with strips of cloth and be dizzened with gigas are set before the door of every house about three o'clock in the morning of the day appointed for the ceremony the whole population turns out into the streets and proceeds with a deafening uproar and in a state of the wildest excitement to drive all lurking devils and ghosts into the effigies in order that they may be banished with them from the abodes of men for this purpose bands of people roam through the streets knocking on doors, firing guns, beating drums blowing on horns, ringing bells clattering pots and pans shouting and hollowing with might and main in short making all the noise it is possible for them to raise the hubbub goes on till the approach of dawn when it gradually subsides and ceases altogether at sunrise by this time the houses have been thoroughly swept and all the frightened spirits are supposed to have huddled into the effigies or their fluttering drapery in these wicker figures are also deposited the sweepings of the houses and the ashes of yesterday's fires then the demon laden images are hastily snatched up carried into multuous procession down to the brink of the river and thrown into the water to the tuck of drums the ebb tide bears them away seaward and thus the town is swept clean of ghosts and devils for another two years similar annual expulsions of embodied evils are not unknown in Europe on the evening of Easter Sunday the gypsies of southern Europe take a wooden vessel like a band box which rests cradle wise on two cross pieces of wood in this they place herbs and symbols together with the dried carcass of a snake or lizard which every person present must have touched with his fingers the vessel is then wrapped in white and red wool carried by the oldest man from tent to tent and finally thrown into running water not however before every member of the band has spat into it once and the sorceress has uttered some spell over it they believe that by performing this ceremony they dispel all the illnesses that would otherwise have afflicted them in the course of the year and that if anyone finds the vessel and opens it out of curiosity he and his will be visited by all the maladies which the others have escaped the scapegoat by means of which the accumulated ills by whole year are publicly expelled is sometimes an animal for example among the garros of Assam quote besides the sacrifices for individual cases of illness there are certain ceremonies which are observed once a year by whole community or village and are intended to safeguard its members from dangers of the forest and from sickness and mishap during the coming 12 months the principle of these is the Assam Tata ceremony close to the outskirts of every big village a number of stones may be noticed stuck into the ground apparently without order or method these are known by the name of Assam and on them is offered the sacrifice which the Assam Tata demands the sacrifice of a goat takes place and a month later that of the Langer or a bamboo rat is considered necessary the animal chosen has a rope fastened round its neck and is led by two men one on each side of it to every house in the village it is taken inside each house in turn the assembled villagers meanwhile beating the walls from the outside to frighten and drive out any evil spirits which may have taken up their residence within the round of the village having been made in this manner the monkey or rat is led to the outskirts of the village killed by a blow of a dowel which disembowels it and then crucified on bamboos set up in the ground round the crucified animal long sharp bamboo stakes are placed which form Shebu De Fries round about it these commemorate the days when such defenses surrounded the villages on all sides to keep off human enemies and they are now assembled toward off sickness and dangers to life from the wild animals of the forest the Langer required for the purpose is hunted down some days before but should it be found impossible to catch one a browned monkey may take its place a hulak may not be used close quote here the crucified ape or rat is the public scapegoat which by its vicarious sufferings and death relieves the people from all sickness and mishap in the coming year again on one day of the year the Boteas of Juhar in the western Himalayas take a dog intoxicate him with spirits and bang or hemp and having fed him with sweet meats lead him round the village and let him loose then they chase and kill him with sticks and stones and believe that when they have done so no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year in some parts of Redalbane it was formally the custom on New Year's Day to take a dog to the door give him a bit of bread and drive him out saying get away you dog whatever death of men or loss of cattle would happen to this house to the end of the present year may it all light on your head on the day of Atonement which was the tenth day of the seventh month the Jewish high priest laid both his hands on the head of a live goat confessed over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel and having thereby transferred the sins of the people to the beast sent it away into the wilderness the scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid may also be a human being at Onitsha on the Niger two human beings used to be annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the land the victims were purchased by public subscription all persons who during the past year had fallen into gross sins such as incendiarism, theft, adultery witchcraft and so forth were expected to contribute 28 mugas or a little over two pounds the money thus collected was taken into the interior of the country and expended in the purchase of two sickly persons quote to be offered as a sacrifice for all these abominable crimes one for the land and one for the river close quote a man from a neighboring town was hired to put them to death on the 27th of February 1858 the Reverend G. C. Taylor took the sacrifice of one of these victims the sufferer was a woman about 19 or 20 years of age they dragged her alive along the ground face downward from the king's house to the river a distance of two miles the crowds who accompanied her crying wickedness, wickedness the intention was quote to take away the iniquities of the land the body was dragged along in a merciless manner as if the weight of all their wickedness was thus carried away close quote similar customs are said to be still secretly practiced every year by many tribes in the delta of the niche air in spite of the vigilance of the British government among the Yoruba Negroes of West Africa quote the human victim chosen for sacrifice and who may be either a freeborn or a slave a person of noble or wealthy parentage or one of humble birth is after he has been chosen and marked out for the purpose called an aloo-wo he is always well fed and nourished and supplied with whatever he should desire during the period of his confinement when the occasion arrives for him to be sacrificed and offered up he is commonly led about and paraded through the streets of the town or city of the sovereign who would sacrifice him for the well-being of his government and of every family and individual under it in order that he might carry off the sin, guilt, misfortune and death of all without exception ashes and chalk would be employed to hide his identity by the one being freely thrown over his head and his face painted with the latter whilst individuals would often rush out of their houses to lay their hands upon him that they might thus transfer to him their sin, guilt, trouble and death close quote this parade over he is taken to an inner sanctuary and beheaded his last words or dying groans are the signal for an outburst of joy among the people assembled outside who believe that the sacrifice has been accepted and the divine wrath appeased in Siam it used to be the custom on one day of the year to single out a woman broken down by debauchery and carry her on a litter through all the streets to the music of drums and houtboys the mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt and after having carried her through the whole city they threw her on a dung hill or a hedge of thorns outside the ramparts forbidding her ever to enter the walls again they believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits the bataks of Sumatra offer either a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to purify the land and obtain the favor of the gods formally it is said a man was bound to the same stake as the buffalo and when they killed the animal the man was driven away no one might receive him, converse with him or give him food doubtless he was supposed to carry away the sins of the people sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal the people of Malabar share the Hindu reverence for the cow to kill and eat which quote they esteem to be the crime as heinous as homicide or willful murder close quote nevertheless they quote Brahmans transfer the sins of the people into one or more cows which they are then carried away both the cows and the sins wherewith the beasts are charged to what place the Brahman shall appoint close quote when the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull they invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall themselves and the land of Egypt and thereupon they either sold the bull's head to the Greeks or cast it into the river now it cannot be said that in times known to us the Egyptians worshipped bulls in general for they seem to have commonly killed and eaten them but a good many circumstances point to the conclusion that originally all cattle bulls as well as cows were held sacred by the Egyptians for not only were the cows esteemed wholly by them and never sacrificed but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they had certain natural marks a priest examined every wool before it was sacrificed if it had the proper marks he put his seal on the animal in token that it might be sacrificed and if a man sacrificed a bull which had not been sealed he was put to death moreover the worship of the black bulls Apis and Nevis especially the former played an important part in Egyptian religion all bulls that died a natural death were usually buried in the suburbs of the city and their bones were afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt and interred in a single spot and at the sacrifice of a bull in the great rites of Isis all the worshippers beat their breasts and mourned on the whole then we are perhaps entitled to infer that bulls were originally as cows were always esteemed sacred by the Egyptians and that the slain bull in his head they laid the misfortunes of the people was once a divine scapegoat it seems not improbable that the lamb annually slain by the matis of central Africa is a divine scapegoat and the same supposition may partly explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle lastly the scapegoat may be a divine man thus in November the goons of India worship Gansim Deo the protector of the crops and at the festival the God himself is said to descend on the head of one of the worshippers who was suddenly seized with a kind of fit and after staggering about rushes off into the jungle where it is believed that if left to himself he would die mad however they bring him back but he does not recover his senses for one or two days the people think that one man is thus singled out as a scapegoat for the sins of the rest of the village in the temple of the moon the Albanians of the eastern Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves of whom many were inspired and prophesied when any one of these men exhibited more than the usual symptoms of inspiration or insanity and wandered solitary up and down the woods like the gold in the jungle the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain and maintained him in luxury for a year at the end of the year he was anointed with ungates and led forth to be sacrificed a man whose business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had given dexterity advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the victim's side piercing his heart from the manner in which the slain man fell omens were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth then the body was carried to a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony this last circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were transferred to the victim just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of the people to the scapegoat by laying his hands on the animal's head and since the man was believed to be possessed by a divine spirit we have here an undoubted example of a man-god, slain to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people in Tibet, the ceremony of the scapegoat presents some remarkable features the Tibetan New Year begins with the new moon which appears about the 15th of February for 23 days afterwards the government of Lhasa, the capital is taken out of the hands of the ordinary rulers and entrusted to the monk of the Dibang Monastery who offers to pay the highest sum for the privilege the successful bidder is called the Jalno and he announces his ascension to power in person going through the streets of Lhasa with a silver stick in his hand monks from all the neighboring monasteries and temples assemble to pay him homage the Jalno exercises his authority in the most arbitrary manner for his own benefit as all the fines which he exacts are his by purchase the profit he makes is about ten times the amount of the purchase money his men go about the streets in order to discover any conduct on the part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with every house in Lhasa is taxed at this time and the slightest offence is punished with unsparing rigor by fines the severity of the Jalno drives all working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over but if the laity go out the clergy come in all the Buddhist monasteries of the country for miles round about open their gates and discourage their inmates all the roads that lead down into Lhasa from the neighboring mountains are full of monks carrying to the capital some on foot, some on horseback some riding asses or lowering oxen all carrying their prayer books and culinary utensils in such multitudes do they come that the streets and squares of the city are encumbered with their swarms and incarnateened with their red cloaks the disorder and confusion are indescribable bands of the holy men traverse the streets chanting prayers or uttering wild cries they meet, they jostle, they quarrel, they fight bloody noses, black eyes and broken heads are freely given and received all day long too from before the peep of dawn till after darkness has fallen these red cloak monks hold services in the dim, incense-laden air of the great Machindranath Temple the Cathedral of Lhasa and thither they crowd thrice a day to receive their dolls of tea and soup and money the Cathedral is a vast building standing in the center of the city and surrounded by bazaars and shops the idols in it are richly inlaid with gold and precious stones twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have authority he assumes it again and for ten days acts in the same arbitrary manner as before on the first of the ten days the priests again assemble at the Cathedral praying to the gods to prevent sickness and other evils among the people quote and as a peace offering sacrifice one man the man is not killed purposely but the ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal grain is thrown against his head and his face is painted half white half black close quote thus grotesquely disguised and carrying a coat of skin on his arm he is called the King of the Years and sits daily in the marketplace where he helps himself to whatever he likes and goes about shaking a black yaks tail over the people who thus transfer their bad luck to him on the tenth day all the troops of Lhasa march to the great temple and form in line before it the King of the Years is brought forth from the temple and receives small donations from the assembled multitude he then ridicules the Jalno same to him whatever we perceive through the five senses is no illusion all you teach is untrue and the like the Jalno who represents the grand llama for the tying being contests these heretical opinions the dispute waxes warm and at last both agree to decide the question at issue by a cast of the dice the Jalno offering to change places with the scapegoat should the throw be against him if the King of the Years wins much evil is prognosticated but if the Jalno wins there is great rejoicing for it proves that his adversary has been accepted by the gods as a victim to bear all the sins of the people of Lhasa fortune however always favors the Jalno who throws sixes with unvarying success while his opponent turns up only ones nor is this so extraordinary as at first sight as it might appear for the Jalno's dice are marked with nothing but sixes and his adversaries with nothing but ones when he sees the finger of providence thus plainly pointed against him the King of the Years is terrified and flees away upon a white horse with a white dog a white bird salt and so forth which have all been provided for him by the government his face is still painted half white and half black and he still wears his leather coat the whole populace pursues him hooting, yelling and firing blank shots in volleys after him thus driven out of the city he is detained for seven days in the great chamber of horrors at the Samyas monastery surrounded by monstrous and terrific images of devils and skins of huge serpents and wild beasts thence he goes away into the mountains of Chitang where he is to remain an outcast for several months or a year in a narrow den if he dies before the time is out the people say it is an auspicious omen but if he survives he may return to Lhasa and play the part of scapegoat over again the following year this quaint ceremonial still annually observed in the secluded capital of Buddhism the Rome of Asia is interesting because it exhibits in a clearly marked religious stratification a series of divine redeemers themselves redeemed of vicarious sacrifices vicariously atoned for of gods undergoing a process of fossilization who, while they retain the privileges have disperned themselves of the pains and penalties of divinity in the Jalno we may without undue straining discern a successor of those temporary kings those mortal gods who purchase a short lease of power and glory at the price of their lives that he is the temporary substitute of the grand lama is certain that he is, or was once liable to act as scapegoat for the people is made nearly certain by his offer to change places with the real scapegoat the king of years if the arbitrament of the dice should go against him it is true that the conditions under which the question is now put to the hazard have reduced the offer to an idle form but such forms are no mere mushroom growths springing up of themselves in a night if they are now lifeless formalities empty husks devoid of significance we may be sure that they once had a life and a meaning if at the present day they are blind alleys leading nowhere we may be certain that in former days they were paths that led somewhere if only to death that death was the goal to which of old the Tibetan scapegoat passed after his brief period of license in the marketplace is a conjecture that has much to commend it analogy suggests it the blank shots fired after him the statement that the ceremony often proves fatal the belief that his death is a happy omen all confirm it we need not wonder then that the jhal know after paying so dear to act as deputy deity for a few weeks should have preferred to die by deputy rather than in his own person when his time was up the painful but necessary duty was accordingly laid on some poor devil some social outcast some wretch with whom the world had gone hard who readily agreed to throw away his life at the end of a few days if only he might have his fling in the meantime for observe that while the time allowed to the original deputy the jhal know was measured by weeks the time allowed to the deputy's deputy was cut down to days ten days according to one authority seven days according to another so short a rope was doubtless thought a long enough tether for so black or sickly a sheep so few sands in the hourglass slipping so fast away sufficed for one who had wasted so many precious years hence in the jack pudding who now masquerades with motley countenance in the marketplace of Lhasa sweeping up misfortune with a black yak's tail we may fairly see the substitute of a substitute the vicar of a vicar the proxy on whose back the heavy burden was laid when it had been lifted from nobler's shoulders but the clue, if we have followed it right does not stop at the jhal know it leads straight back to the pope of Lhasa himself the grand llama of whom the jhal know was merely the temporary vicar the analogy of many customs in many lands points to the conclusion that if this human divinity stooped to resign his ghostly power for a time into the hands of a substitute it is, or rather was once for no other reason than that the substitute might die in his stead thus through the mist of ages unallumined by the lamp of history the tragic figure of the pope of Buddhism God's vicar on earth for Asia looms dim and sad as the man-god who bore his people's sorrows the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep section 4 on scapegoats in general the foregoing survey of the custom of publicly expelling the accumulated evils of a village or town or country suggests a few general observations in the first place it will not be disputed that what I have called the immediate and the immediate expulsions of evil are identical in intention in other words whether the evils are conceived of as invisible or as embodied in a material form is a circumstance entirely subordinate to the main object of the ceremony which is simply to affect a total clearance of all the ills that have been infesting a people if any link were wanting to connect the two kinds of expulsions it would be furnished by such a practice as that of sending the evils away in a litter or a boat or here on the one hand the evils are invisible and intangible and on the other hand there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away and the scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle in the second place when a general clearance of evils is resorted to periodically the interval between the celebrations of the ceremony is commonly a year and the time of year when the ceremony takes place it coincides with some well marked change of season such as the beginning or end of winter in the arctic and temperate zones and the beginning or end of the rainy season in the tropics the increased mortality which such climatic changes are apt to produce especially amongst ill fed ill clothed and ill housed savages is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons who must accordingly be expelled hence in the tropical regions of New Britain and Peru the devils are or were driven out at the beginning of the rainy season hence on the dreary coasts of Baffin land they are banished at the approach of the bitter arctic winter when a tribe has taken to husbandry the time for the general expulsion of devils is naturally made to agree with one of the great epochs of the agricultural year as sowing or harvest but as these epochs themselves naturally coincide with changes of season it does not follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the agricultural life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating this great annual rite some of the agricultural communities of India and the Hindu Kush hold their general clearance of demons at harvest others at sowing time but at whatever season of the year it is held the general expulsion of devils commonly marks the beginning of the new year for before entering on a new year people are anxious to rid themselves of the troubles that have harassed them in the past hence it comes about that in so many communities there is inaugurated with a solemn and public banishment of evil spirits in the third place it is to be observed that this public and periodic expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a period of general license during which the ordinary restraints of society are thrown aside and all offenses short of the gravest are allowed to pass unpunished in Guinea and Tonkin the period of license precedes the public expulsion of demons and the suspension of the ordinary government in Lhasa previous to the expulsion of the scapegoat is perhaps a relic of a similar period of universal license amongst the Haas of India the period of license follows the expulsion of the devil amongst the Iroquois it hardly appears whether it preceded or followed the banishment of evils in any case the extraordinary relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct on such occasions is doubtless to be explained by the general clearance of evils which precedes or follows it on the one hand when a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is an immediate prospect people are encouraged to give instructions trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast on the other hand when the ceremony has just taken place men's minds are free from the oppressive sense under which they generally labor of an atmosphere surcharged with devils and in the first revulsion of joy they over leap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality when the ceremony takes place at harvest time the elation of feeling which it excites is further stimulated by the state of physical well-being produced by an abundant supply of food fourthly the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is especially to be noted indeed we are here directly concerned with the custom of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are believed to be transferred to a god who is afterwards slain it may be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from the example cited four as has already been pointed out the custom of killing a god dates from so early a period of human history that in later ages even when the custom continues to be practiced it is liable to be misinterpreted the divine character of the animal or man is forgotten and he comes to be regarded merely as an ordinary victim this is especially likely to be the case when it is a divine man who is killed for when a nation becomes civilized it does not drop human sacrifices altogether it at least selects as victims only such wretches as will be put to death at any rate thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the execution of a criminal if we ask why a dying god should be chosen to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrows of the people it may be suggested that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct on the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age on the other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once a year now if it occurred to people to combine these two customs the result would be the employment of the dying god as a scapegoat he was killed not originally to take away sin but to save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age but since he had to be killed at any rate people may have thought that he might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins in order that he might bear away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave the use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as we saw appears to hang about the European folk custom of carrying out death grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony the so-called death was originally the spirit of vegetation who was annually slain in spring in order that he might come to life again with all the vigor of youth but as I pointed out there are certain features in this ceremony which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone such are the marks of joy with which the effigy of death is carried out to be buried or burnt and the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers but these features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the death was not merely the dying god of vegetation but also a public scapegoat upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the past year joy on such an occasion is natural and appropriate and if the dying god appears to be the object of that fear and abhorrence which are properly do not to himself but to the sins and misfortunes with which he is laden this arises merely from the difficulty of distinguishing or at least of marking the distinction between the bearer and the burden when the burden is of a baleful character the bearer of it will be feared and shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with all those dangerous properties of which as it happens he is only the the hibble similarly we have seen that disease laden and sin laden boats are dreaded and shunned by East Indian peoples again the view that in these popular customs the death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit of vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that it's expulsion is always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples for the Slavonic year began in spring and thus in one of its aspects the ceremony of carrying out death would be an example of the widespread custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the old year before entering on a new one end of chapter 57