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

Rites of death and resurrection were formerly observed in Quoja, on the west coast of Africa, to the north of the Congo. They are thus described by an old writer: – “They have another ceremony which they call Belli-Paaro, but it is not for everybody. For it is an incorporation in the assembly of the spirits, and confers the right of entering their groves, that is to say, of going and eating the offerings which the simple folk bring thither. The initiation or admission to the Belli-Paaro is celebrated every twenty or twenty-five years. The initiated recount marvels of the ceremony, saying that they are roasted, that they entirely change their habits and life, and that they receive a spirit quite different from that of other people and quite new lights. The badge of membership consists in some lines traced on the neck between the shoulders; the lines seem to be pricked with a needle. Those who have this mark pass for persons of spirit, and when they have attained a certain age they are allowed a voice in all public assemblies; whereas the uninitiated are regarded as profane, impure, and ignorant persons, who dare not express an opinion on any subject of importance. When the time for the ceremony has come, it is celebrated as follows. By order of the king a place is appointed in the forest, whither they bring the youths who have not been marked, not without much crying and weeping; for it is impressed upon the youths that in order to undergo this change it is necessary to suffer death. So they dispose of their property, as if it were all over with them. There are always some of the initiated beside the novices to instruct them. They teach them to dance a certain dance called killing, and to sing verses in praise of Belli. Above all, they are very careful not to let them die of hunger, because if they did so, it is much to be feared that the spiritual resurrection would profit them nothing. This manner of life lasts five or six years, and is comfortable enough, for there is a village in the forest, and they amuse themselves with hunting and fishing. Other lads are brought thither from time to time, so that the last comers have not long to stay. No woman or uninitiated person is suffered to pass within four or five leagues of the sacred wood. When their instruction is completed, they are taken from the wood and shut up in small huts made for the purpose. Here they begin once more to hold communion with mankind and to talk with the women who bring them their food. It is amusing to see their affected simplicity. They pretend to know no one, and to be ignorant of all the customs of the country, such as the customs of washing themselves, rubbing themselves with oil, and so forth. When they enter these huts, their bodies are all covered with the feathers of birds, and they wear caps of bark which hang down before their faces. But after a time they are dressed in clothes and taken to a great open place, where all the people of the neighbourhood are assembled. Here the novices give the first proof of their capacity by dancing a dance which is called the dance of Belli. After the dance is over, the novices are taken to the houses of their parents by their instructors.”[647 - O. Dapper, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), pp. 268 sq. Dapper's account has been abridged in the text.]

Miss Kingsley on the rites of initiation into secret societies in West Africa.

Miss Kingsley informs us that “the great point of agreement between all these West African secret societies lies in the methods of initiation. The boy, if he belongs to a tribe that goes in for tattooing, is tattooed, and is handed over to instructors in the societies' secrets and formulae. He lives, with the other boys of his tribe undergoing initiation, usually under the rule of several instructors, and for the space of one year. He lives always in the forest, and is naked and smeared with clay. The boys are exercised so as to become inured to hardship; in some districts, they make raids so as to perfect themselves in this useful accomplishment. They always take a new name, and are supposed by the initiation process to become new beings in the magic wood, and on their return to their village at the end of their course, they pretend to have entirely forgotten their life before they entered the wood; but this pretence is not kept up beyond the period of festivities given to welcome them home. They all learn, to a certain extent, a new language, a secret language only understood by the initiated. The same removal from home and instruction from initiated members is observed also with the girls. However, in their case, it is not always a forest-grove they are secluded in, sometimes it is done in huts. Among the Grain Coast tribes, however, the girls go into a magic wood until they are married. Should they have to leave the wood for any temporary reason, they must smear themselves with white clay. A similar custom holds good in Okÿon, Calabar district, where, should a girl have to leave the fattening-house, she must be covered with white clay.”[648 - Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1867), p. 531. Perhaps the smearing with clay may be intended to indicate that the novices have undergone the new birth; for the negro child, though born reddish-brown, soon turns slaty-grey (E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, London, 1881, p. 67), which would answer well enough to the hue of the clay-bedaubed novices.]

The purraor poro, a secret society of Sierra Leone. The new birth. The semo, a secret society of Senegambia. Death and resurrection at initiation.

Among the natives of the Sherbro, an island lying close to the coast of Sierra Leone, there is a secret society called the purra or poro, “which is partly of a religious, but chiefly of a political nature. It resembles free-masonry in excluding females, and in obliging every member by a solemn oath, which I believe is seldom violated, not to divulge the sacred mysteries, and to yield a prompt and implicit obedience to every order of their superiors. Boys of seven or eight years of age are admitted, or rather serve a novitiate until they arrive at a proper age; for it is difficult to procure exact information, and even somewhat dangerous to make many inquiries. Every person on entering the society lays aside his former name and assumes a new one; to call him by his old name would produce a dispute. They have a superior or head purra man, assisted by a grand council, whose commands are received with the most profound reverence and absolute submission, both by the subordinate councils and by individuals. Their meetings are held in the most retired spots, amid the gloom of night, and carried on with inquisitorial secrecy. When the purra comes into a town, which is always at night, it is accompanied with the most dreadful howlings, screams, and other horrid noises. The inhabitants, who are not members of the society, are obliged to secure themselves within doors; should any one be discovered without, or attempting to peep at what is going forward, he would inevitably be put to death. To restrain the curiosity of the females, they are ordered to continue within doors, clapping their hands incessantly, so long as the purra remains. Like the secret tribunal, which formerly existed in Germany, it takes cognizance of offences, particularly of witchcraft and murder, but above all of contumacy and disobedience in any of its own members, and punishes the guilty with death in so secret and sudden a manner, that the perpetrators are never known: indeed, such is the dread created by this institution, that they are never even inquired after.”[649 - Thomas Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (London, 1803), pp. 135 sq. Compare John Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone (London, 1791), pp. 82-85; J. B. L. Durand, Voyage au Sénégal (Paris, 1802), pp. 183 sq. (whose account is copied without acknowledgment from Matthews). The purra or poro society also exists among the Timmes of Sierra Leone; in this tribe the novices are sometimes secluded from their families for ten years in the wood, they are tattooed on their backs and arms, and they learn a language which consists chiefly of names of plants and animals used in special senses. Women are not admitted to the society. See Zweifel et Moustier, “Voyage aux sources du Niger,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), VI. Série, xv. (1878) pp. 108 sq.] When the members of the purra or poro society visit a town, the leader of the troop, whom an English writer calls “the Poro devil,” draws discordant notes from a sort of reed flute, the holes of which are covered with spiders' webs. The only time when this devil and his rout make a prolonged stay in the town is on the evening before the day on which the newly initiated lads are to be brought back from the forest. Then the leader and his satellites parade the streets for hours, while all the uninitiated men, women, and children remain shut up in their houses, listening to the doleful strains of the flute, which signify that the devil is suffering the pangs of childbirth before he brings forth the initiated lads; for he is supposed to have been pregnant with them the whole of the rainy season ever since they entered into the forest. When they come forth from the wood, they wear four or five coils of twisted ferns round their waists in token of their being initiated members of the order.[650 - T. J. Alldridge, The Sherbro and its Hinterland (London, 1901), p. 130. This work contains a comparatively full account of the purra or poro society (pp. 124-131) and of the other secret societies of the country (pp. 131-149, 153-159). Compare L. Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (Halle, 1898), pp. 138-144 (Nova Acta, Abh. der Kaiserl. Leop. – Carol. Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher, vol. lxxiv. No. 1).] Among the Soosoos of Senegambia there is a similar secret society called semo: “the natives who speak English call it African masonry. As the whole ceremonies are kept very private, it is difficult to discover in what they consist: but it is said that the novices are met in the woods by the old men, who cut marks on several parts of their bodies, but most commonly on the belly; they are also taught a language peculiar to the semo, and swear dreadful oaths never to divulge the secrets revealed to them. The young men are then made to live in the woods for twelve months, and are supposed to be at liberty to kill any one who approaches and does not understand the language of the semo… It is said, when women are so unfortunate as to intrude upon the semo, they kill them, cut off their breasts, and hang them up by the side of the paths as a warning to others. This circumstance is perhaps less deserving of credit, because the Soosoos are fond of telling wonderful and horrid stories respecting this institution. They say, for instance, that when first initiated their throats are cut, and they continue dead for some time; at length they are reanimated and initiated into the mysteries of the institution, and are enabled to ramble about with much more vigour than they possessed before.”[651 - Thomas Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (London, 1803), pp. 137-139. As to the semo or simo society see further L. Frobenius, op. cit. pp. 130-138.]

Ritual of the new birth among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.

While the belief or the pretence of death and resurrection at initiation is common among the negroes of West Africa, few traces of it appear to be found among the tribes in the southern, central, and eastern parts of that continent; and it is notable that in these regions secret societies, which flourish in the West, are also conspicuously absent. However, the Akikuyu of British East Africa “have a curious custom which requires that every boy just before circumcision must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed. He lives on milk for some days afterwards.”[652 - Extract from a letter of Mr. A. C. Hollis to me. Mr. Hollis's authority is Dr. T. W. W. Crawford of the Kenia Medical Mission.] A fuller description of the ceremony was given by a member of the Kikuyu tribe as follows: “A day is appointed, any time of year, by father and mother. If the father is dead another elder is called in to act as proxy in his stead, or if the mother is not living another woman to act in her place. Any woman thus acting as representative is looked upon in future by the boy as his own mother. A goat or sheep is killed in the afternoon by any one, usually not by the father, and the stomach and intestines reserved. The ceremony begins in the evening. A piece of skin is cut in a circle, and passed over one shoulder of the candidate and under the other arm. The stomach of the goat is similarly treated and passed over the other shoulder and under the other arm. All the boy's ornaments are removed, but not his clothes. No men are allowed inside the hut, but women are present. The mother sits on a hide on the floor with the boy between her knees. The sheep's gut is passed round the woman and brought in front of the boy. The woman groans as in labour, another woman cuts the gut, and the boy imitates the cry of a new-born infant. The women present all applaud, and afterwards the assistant and the mother wash the boy. That night the boy sleeps in the same hut as the mother.”[653 - W. Scoresby Routledge and Katherine Routledge, With a Prehistoric People, the Akikuyu of British East Africa (London, 1910), p. 152. Compare C. W. Hobley, “Kikuyu Customs and Beliefs,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) p. 441.] Here the cutting of the sheep's gut, which unites the mother to the boy, is clearly an imitation of severing the navel string. Nor is it boys alone who are born again among the Akikuyu. “Girls go through the rite of second birth as well as boys. It is sometimes administered to infants. At one time the new birth was combined with circumcision, and so the ceremony admitted to the privileges and religious rites of the tribe. Afterwards trouble took place on account of mere boys wishing to take their place alongside of the young men and maintaining they were justified in doing so. The old men then settled the matter by separating the two. Unless the new birth has been administered the individual is not in a position to be admitted to circumcision, which is the outward sign of admittance to the nation. Any who have not gone through the rite cannot inherit property, nor take any part in the religious rites of the country.”[654 - Mr. A. W. McGregor, of the Church Missionary Society, quoted by W. S. Routledge and K. Routledge, With a Prehistoric People, p. 151, note. 1. Mr. McGregor “has resided amongst the Akikuyu since 1901. He has by his tact and kindness won the confidence of the natives, and is the greatest authority on their language” (id., p. xxi).] For example, a man who has not been born again is disqualified for carrying his dying father out into the wilds and for disposing of his body after death. The new birth seems to take place usually about the tenth year, but the age varies with the ability of the father to provide a goat, whose guts are necessary to enable the boy or girl to be born again in due form.[655 - W. S. Routledge and K. Routledge, op. cit. p. 151.]

Rites of initiation among the Bondeis of East Africa. Rites of initiation among the Bushongo of the Congo. The first ordeal. The second ordeal. The last ordeal: the descent from the tree.

Among the Bondeis, a tribe on the coast of German East Africa, opposite to the island of Pemba, one of the rites of initiation into manhood consists in a pretence of slaying one of the lads with a sword; the entrails of a fowl are placed on the boy's stomach to make the pretence seem more real.[656 - Rev. G. Dale, “An Account of the principal Customs and Habits of the Natives inhabiting the Bondei Country,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxv. (1896) p. 189.] Among the Bushongo, who inhabit a district of the Belgian Congo bounded on the north and east by the Sankuru River and on the west by the Kasai, young boys had formerly to undergo certain rites of initiation, amongst which a simulation of killing them would seem to have had a place, though in recent times the youths have been allowed to escape the ordeal by the payment of a fine. The supreme chief of the tribe, who in old days bore the title of God on Earth (Chembe Kunji), used to assemble all the lads who had just reached puberty and send them away into the forest, where they remained for several months under the care of one of his sons. During their seclusion they were deemed unclean and might see no one; if they chanced to meet a woman, she had to flee before them. By night the old men marched round the quarters of the novices, raising hideous cries and whirling bull-roarers, the noise of which the frightened lads took to be the voices of ghosts. They wore nothing but a comb, and passed their leisure hours in learning to make mats and baskets. After about a month they had to submit to the first ordeal. A trench about ten feet deep was dug in the ground and roofed over with sticks and earth so as to form a dark tunnel. In the sides of the tunnel were cut niches, and in each niche a man took post, whose business it was to terrify the novices. For this purpose one of them was disguised in the skin of a leopard, a second was dressed as a warrior with a knife in his hand, a third was a smith with his furnace and red-hot irons, and a fourth was masked to look like an ugly ape, while he too gripped a knife in his hand. The novices generally recoiled in dismay from each of these apparitions, and it was only by means of reiterated taunts and threats that the elders forced them to traverse the whole length of the tunnel. After the lapse of another month the youths had to face another ordeal of a similar character. A low tunnel, about three feet deep, was dug in the earth, and sticks were inserted in it so that their tops projected from the surface of the ground. At the end of the tunnel a calabash was set full of goat's blood. By way of encouraging the timid novices the master of the ceremonies himself crawled through the tunnel, his progress under ground being revealed to the novices above ground by the vibrations of the sticks with which he collided in the dark passage. Then having bedabbled his nose, his mouth, and all the rest of his body with the goat's blood, he emerged from the tunnel on hands and knees, dripping with gore and to all appearance in the last stage of exhaustion. Then he lay prostrate on his stomach in a state of collapse; the elders declared him to be dead and carried him off. The chief now ordered the lads to imitate the example set them by the master of the ceremonies, but they begged and prayed to be excused. At first the chief was inexorable, but in time he relented and agreed to accept a fine of so many cowries as a ransom paid by the youths for exemption from the ordeal. A month later the last of the ordeals took place. A great trunk of a tree was buried with its lower end in the earth and surrounded for three-quarters of its circumference with arrows stuck in the ground so that the barbs were pointed towards the tree. The chief and the leading men sat down at the gap in the circle of arrows, so as to conceal the gap from the eyes of the novices and other spectators, among whom the women were allowed to be present. To the eyes of the uninitiated it now seemed that the tree was surrounded by a bristling hedge of arrows, to fall upon which would be death. All being ready the master of the ceremonies climbed the tree amid breathless silence, and having reached the top, which was decorated with a bunch of leaves, he looked about him and asked the women, “Shall I come down?” “No! no!” they shrieked, “you will be killed by the arrows.” Then, turning disdainfully from these craven souls, the gallant man addressed himself to the youths and repeated his question, “Shall I come down?” A shout of “Yes!” gave the answer that might have been expected from these heroic spirits. In response the master of the ceremonies at once slid down the tree and, dropping neatly to the ground just at the gap in the hedge of arrows, presented himself unscathed to the gaze of the excited assembly. The chief now ordered the young men to go up and do likewise. But the dauntless courage with which they had contemplated the descent of the master of the ceremonies entirely forsook them when it came to their turn to copy his shining example. Their mothers, too, raised a loud cry of protest, joining their prayers and entreaties to those of their hopeful sons. After some discussion the chief consented to accept a ransom, and the novices were dispensed from the ordeal. Then they bathed and were deemed to have rid themselves of their uncleanness, but they had still to work for the chief for three months before they ranked as full-grown men and might return to their villages.[657 - E. Torday et T. A. Joyce, Les Bushongo (Brussels, 1910), pp. 82-85. As for the title “God on Earth,” applied to the principal chief or king, see id., p. 53.]

Rites of initiation among the Indians of Virginia: pretence of the novices that they have forgotten their former life.

Among the Indians of Virginia, an initiatory ceremony, called Huskanaw, took place every sixteen or twenty years, or oftener, as the young men happened to grow up. The youths were kept in solitary confinement in the woods for several months, receiving no food but an infusion of some intoxicating roots, so that they went raving mad, and continued in this state eighteen or twenty days. “Upon this occasion it is pretended that these poor creatures drink so much of the water of Lethe that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language. When the doctors find that they have drunk sufficiently of the Wysoccan (so they call this mad potion), they gradually restore them to their senses again by lessening the intoxication of their diet; but before they are perfectly well they bring them back into their towns, while they are still wild and crazy through the violence of the medicine. After this they are very fearful of discovering anything of their former remembrance; for if such a thing should happen to any of them, they must immediately be Huskanaw'd again; and the second time the usage is so severe that seldom any one escapes with life. Thus they must pretend to have forgot the very use of their tongues, so as not to be able to speak, nor understand anything that is spoken, till they learn it again. Now, whether this be real or counterfeit, I don't know; but certain it is that they will not for some time take notice of anybody nor anything with which they were before acquainted, being still under the guard of their keepers, who constantly wait upon them everywhere till they have learnt all things perfectly over again. Thus they unlive their former lives, and commence men by forgetting that they ever have been boys.”[658 - (Beverley's) History of Virginia (London, 1722), pp. 177 sq. Compare J. Bricknell, The Natural History of North Carolina (Dublin, 1737), pp. 405 sq.]

Ritual of death and resurrection at initiation into the secret societies of North America. The medicine-bag as an instrument of death and resurrection. Ritual of death and resurrection at initiation among the Dacotas.

Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there exist certain religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone through a pretence of being killed and brought to life again. In 1766 or 1767 Captain Jonathan Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association called “the friendly society of the Spirit” (Wakon-Kitchewah) among the Naudowessies, a Siouan or Dacotan tribe in the region of the great lakes. The candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that “he himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be restored again to life; to this he added, that the communication, however terrifying, was a necessary introduction to the advantages enjoyed by the community into which he was on the point of being admitted. As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated; till at last his emotions became so violent, that his countenance was distorted, and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean, at the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if he had been shot.” For a time the man lay like dead, but under a shower of blows he shewed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from his mouth the bean, or whatever it was that the chief had thrown at him, he came to life.[659 - J. Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, Third Edition (London, 1781), pp. 271-275. The thing thrown at the man and afterwards vomited by him was probably not a bean but a small white sea-shell (Cypraea moneta). See H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), iii. 287; J. G. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami (Bremen, 1859), i. 71; Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1891), pp. 191, 215; Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1896), p. 101.] In other tribes, for example, the Ojebways, Winnebagoes, and Dacotas or Sioux, the instrument by which the candidate is apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his “medicine” or charms. “They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to life.” The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the bag restores him to life.[660 - J. Carver, op. cit. pp. 277 sq.; H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, iii. 287 (as to the Winnebagoes), v. 430 sqq. (as to the Chippeways and Sioux); J. G. Kohl, Kitschi-Gami, i. 64-70 (as to the Ojebways). For a very detailed account of the Ojebway ceremonies, see W. J. Hoffman, “The Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the Ojibwa,” Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1891), especially pp. 215 sq., 234 sq., 248, 265. For similar ceremonies among the Menomini, see id., “The Menomini Indians,” Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1896), pp. 99-102; and among the Omahas, see J. Owen Dorsey, “Omaha Sociology,” Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), pp. 342-346. I have dealt more fully with the ritual in Totemism and Exogamy, iii. 462 sqq. Compare also P. Radin, “Ritual and Significance of the Winnebago Medicine Dance,” Journal of American Folk-lore, xxiv. (1911) pp. 149-208.] Among the Dacotas the institution of the medicine-bag or mystery-sack was attributed to Onktehi, the great spirit of the waters, who ordained that the bag should consist of the skin of the otter, raccoon, weasel, squirrel, or loon, or a species of fish and of serpents. Further, he decreed that the bag should contain four sorts of medicines of magical qualities, which should represent fowls, quadrupeds, herbs, and trees. Accordingly, swan's down, buffalo hair, grass roots, and bark from the roots of trees are kept by the Dacotas in their medicine-bags. From this combination there proceeds a magical influence (tonwan) so powerful that no human being can of his own strength withstand it. When the god of the waters had prepared the first medicine-bag, he tested its powers on four candidates for initiation, who all perished under the shock. So he consulted with his wife, the goddess of the earth, and by holding up his left hand and pattering on the back of it with the right, he produced myriads of little shells, whose virtue is to restore life to those who have been slain by the medicine-bag. Having taken this precaution, the god chose four other candidates and repeated the experiment of initiation with success, for after killing them with the bag he immediately resuscitated them by throwing one of the shells into their vital parts, while he chanted certain words assuring them that it was only sport and bidding them rise to their feet. That is why to this day every initiated Dacota has one of these shells in his body. Such was the divine origin of the medicine-dance of the Dacotas. The initiation takes place in a special tent. The candidate, after being steamed in a vapour-bath for four successive days, plants himself on a pile of blankets, and behind him stands an aged member of the order. “Now the master of the ceremonies, with the joints of his knees and hips considerably bent, advances with an unsteady, uncouth hitching, sack in hand, wearing an aspect of desperate energy, and uttering his ‘Heen, heen, heen’ with frightful emphasis, while all around are enthusiastic demonstrations of all kinds of wild passions. At this point the sack is raised near a painted spot on the breast of the candidate, at which the tonwan is discharged. At the instant the brother from behind gives him a push and he falls dead, and is covered with blankets. Now the frenzied dancers gather around, and in the midst of bewildering and indescribable noises, chant the words uttered by the god at the institution of the ceremony, as already recorded. Then the master throws off the covering, and chewing a piece of the bone of the Onktehi, spirts it over him, and he begins to show signs of returning life. Then as the master pats energetically upon the breast of the initiated person, he, convulsed, strangling, struggling, and agonizing, heaves up the shell which falls from his mouth on a sack placed in readiness to receive it. Life is restored and entrance effected into the awful mysteries. He belongs henceforth to the medicine-dance, and has a right to enjoy the medicine-feast.”[661 - G. H. Pond, “Dakota superstitions,” Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society for the year 1867 (Saint Paul, 1867), pp. 35, 37-40. A similar but abridged account of the Dakota tradition and usage is given by S. R. Riggs in his Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography (Washington, 1893), pp. 227-229 (Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. ix.).]

Ritual of mimic death among the Indians of Nootka Sound.

A ceremony witnessed by the castaway John R. Jewitt during his captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this class of customs. The Indian king or chief “discharged a pistol close to his son's ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc., enquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two others dressed in wolf skins, with masks over their faces representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner they entered.”[662 - Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt (Middletown, 1820), p. 119.] In another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince – a lad of about eleven years of age – wore a mask in imitation of a wolf's head.[663 - Id., p. 44. For the age of the prince, see id., p. 35.] Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the totem animal about their person,[664 - H. J. Holmberg, “Ueber die Völker des russischen Amerika,” Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, iv. (Helsingfors, 1856) pp. 292 sqq., 328; Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries and Resources of Alaska, pp. 165 sq.; A. Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer (Jena, 1885), p. 112; R. C. Mayne, Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island (London, 1862), pp. 257 sq., 268; Totemism and Exogamy, iii. 264 sqq.] it is probable that the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt represented the killing of the lad in order that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come to life again as a bear.

Rite of death and resurrection at initiation into the Nootka society of human wolves. Novice brought back by an artificial totemic animal among the Niska Indians.

This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was first put forward, been confirmed by the researches of Dr. Franz Boas among these Indians; though it would seem that the community to which the chief's son thus obtained admission was not so much a totem clan as a secret society called Tlokoala, whose members imitated wolves. The name Tlokoala is a foreign word among the Nootka Indians, having been borrowed by them from the Kwakiutl Indians, in whose language the word means the finding of a manitoo or personal totem. The Nootka tradition runs that this secret society was instituted by wolves who took away a chief's son and tried to kill him, but, failing to do so, became his friends, taught him the rites of the society, and ordered him to teach them to his friends on his return home. Then they carried the young man back to his village. They also begged that whenever he moved from one place to another he would kindly leave behind him some red cedar-bark to be used by them in their own ceremonies; and to this custom the Nootka tribes still adhere. Every new member of the society must be initiated by the wolves. At night a pack of wolves, personated by Indians dressed in wolf-skins and wearing wolf-masks, make their appearance, seize the novice, and carry him into the woods. When the wolves are heard outside the village, coming to fetch away the novice, all the members of the society blacken their faces and sing, “Among all the tribes is great excitement, because I am Tlokoala.” Next day the wolves bring back the novice dead, and the members of the society have to revive him. The wolves are supposed to have put a magic stone into his body, which must be removed before he can come to life. Till this is done the pretended corpse is left lying outside the house. Two wizards go and remove the stone, which appears to be quartz, and then the novice is resuscitated.[665 - Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 47 sq. (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Leeds meeting, 1890); id., “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the United States National Museum for 1895; (Washington, 1897), pp. 632 sq. But while the initiation described in the text was into a wolf society, not into a wolf clan, it is to be observed that the wolf is one of the regular totems of the Nootka Indians. See Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 32.] Among the Niska Indians of British Columbia, who are divided into four principal clans with the raven, the wolf, the eagle, and the bear for their respective totems, the novice at initiation is always brought back by an artificial totem animal. Thus when a man was about to be initiated into a secret society called Olala, his friends drew their knives and pretended to kill him. In reality they let him slip away, while they cut off the head of a dummy which had been adroitly substituted for him. Then they laid the decapitated dummy down and covered it over, and the women began to mourn and wail. His relations gave a funeral banquet and solemnly burnt the effigy. In short, they held a regular funeral. For a whole year the novice remained absent and was seen by none but members of the secret society. But at the end of that time he came back alive, carried by an artificial animal which represented his totem.[666 - Fr. Boas, in Tenth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 49 sq., 58 sq. (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Ipswich meeting, 1895). It is remarkable, however, that in this tribe persons who are being initiated into the secret societies, of which there are six, are not always or even generally brought back by an artificial animal which represents their own totem. Thus while men of the eagle totem are brought back by an eagle which rises from underground, men of the bear clan return on the back of an artificial killer-whale which is towed across the river by ropes. Again, members of the wolf clan are brought back by an artificial bear, and members of the raven clan by a frog. In former times the appearance of the artificial totem animal, or of the guardian spirit, was considered a matter of great importance, and any failure which disclosed the deception to the uninitiated was deemed a grave misfortune which could only be atoned for by the death of the persons concerned in the disclosure.]

In these initiatory rites the novice seems to be killed as a man and restored to life as an animal.

In these ceremonies the essence of the rite appears to be the killing of the novice in his character of a man and his restoration to life in the form of the animal which is thenceforward to be, if not his guardian spirit, at least linked to him in a peculiarly intimate relation. It is to be remembered that the Indians of Guatemala, whose life was bound up with an animal, were supposed to have the power of appearing in the shape of the particular creature with which they were thus sympathetically united.[667 - See above, p. 213 (#x_16_i30).] Hence it seems not unreasonable to conjecture that in like manner the Indians of British Columbia may imagine that their life depends on the life of some one of that species of creature to which they assimilate themselves by their costume. At least if that is not an article of belief with the Columbian Indians of the present day, it may very well have been so with their ancestors in the past, and thus may have helped to mould the rites and ceremonies both of the totem clans and of the secret societies. For though these two sorts of communities differ in respect of the mode in which membership of them is obtained – a man being born into his totem clan but admitted into a secret society later in life – we can hardly doubt that they are near akin and have their root in the same mode of thought.[668 - This is the opinion of Dr. F. Boas, who writes: “The close similarity between the clan legends and those of the acquisition of spirits presiding over secret societies, as well as the intimate relation between these and the social organizations of the tribes, allow us to apply the same argument to the consideration of the growth of the secret societies, and lead us to the conclusion that the same psychical factor that molded the clans into their present shape molded the secret societies” (“The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the United States National Museum for 1895, p. 662). Dr. Boas would see in the acquisition of a manitoo or personal totem the origin both of the secret societies and of the totem clans; for according to him the totem of the clan is merely the manitoo or personal totem of the ancestor transmitted by inheritance to his descendants. As to personal totems or guardian spirits (manitoos) among the North American Indians, see Totemism and Exogamy, iii. 370 sqq.; as to their secret societies, see id., iii. 457 sqq.; as to the theory that clan totems originated in personal or individual totems, see id., iv. 48 sqq.] That thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty being, with whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some part of it, and from whom he receives in return a gift of magical powers.

Honorific totems among the Carrier Indians. Initiatory rites at the adoption of a honorific totem. Simulated transformation of a novice into a bear. Pretence of death and resurrection at initiation.

The Carrier Indians, who dwell further inland than the tribes we have just been considering, are divided into four clans with the grouse, the beaver, the toad, and the grizzly bear for their totems. But in addition to these clan totems the tribe recognized a considerable number of what Father Morice calls honorific totems, which could be acquired, through the performance of certain rites, by any person who wished to improve his social position. Each totem clan had a certain number of honorific totems or crests, and these might be assumed by any member of the clan who fulfilled the required conditions; but they could not be acquired by members of another clan. Thus the Grouse clan had for its honorific totems or crests the owl, the moose, the weasel, the crane, the wolf, the full moon, the wind, and so on; the Toad clan had the sturgeon, the porcupine, the wolverine, the red-headed woodpecker, the “darding knife,” and so forth; the Beaver clan had the mountain-goat for one of its honorific totems; and the goose was a honorific totem of the Grizzly Bear clan. But the common bear, as a honorific totem or crest, might be assumed by anybody, whatever his clan. The common possession of a honorific totem appears to have constituted the same sort of bond among the Carrier Indians as the membership of a secret society does among the coast tribes of British Columbia; certainly the rites of initiation were similar. This will be clear from Father Morice's account of the performances, which I will subjoin in his own words. “The connection of the individual with his crest appeared more especially during ceremonial dances, when the former, attired, if possible, with the spoils of the latter, was wont to personate it in the gaze of an admiring assemblage. On all such occasions, man and totem were also called by the same name. The adoption of any such 'rite' or crest was usually accompanied by initiatory ceremonies or observances corresponding to the nature of the crest, followed in all cases by a distribution of clothes to all present. Thus whenever anybody resolved upon getting received as Lulem or Bear, he would, regardless of the season, divest himself of all his wearing apparel and don a bear-skin, whereupon he would dash into the woods there to remain for the space of three or four days and nights in deference to the wonts of his intended totem animal. Every night a party of his fellow-villagers would sally out in search of the missing ‘bear.’ To their loud calls: Yi! Kelulem (Come on, Bear!) he would answer by angry growls in imitation of the bear. The searching party making for the spot where he had been heard, would find by a second call followed by a similar answer that he had dexterously shifted to some opposite quarter in the forest. As a rule, he could not be found, but had to come back of himself, when he was speedily apprehended and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, where he would commence his first bear-dance in conjunction with all the other totem people, each of whom would then personate his own particular totem. Finally would take place the potlatch [distribution of property] of the newly initiated ‘bear,’ who would not forget to present his captor with at least a whole dressed skin. The initiation to the ‘Darding Knife’ was quite a theatrical performance. A lance was prepared which had a very sharp point so arranged that the slightest pressure on its tip would cause the steel to gradually sink into the shaft. In the sight of the multitude crowding the lodge, this lance was pressed on the bare chest of the candidate and apparently sunk in his body to the shaft, when he would tumble down simulating death. At the same time a quantity of blood – previously kept in the mouth – would issue from the would-be corpse, making it quite clear to the uninitiated gazers-on that the terrible knife had had its effect, when lo! upon one of the actors striking up one of the chants specially made for the circumstance and richly paid for, the candidate would gradually rise up a new man, the particular protégé of the ‘Darding Knife.’ ”[669 - A. G. Morice, “Notes, archaeological, industrial, and sociological, on the Western Dénés,” Transactions of the Canadian Institute, iv. (1892-93) pp. 203-206. The honorific totems of the Carrier Indians may perhaps correspond in some measure to the sub-totems or multiplex totems of the Australians. As to these latter see Totemism and Exogamy, i. 78 sqq., 133 sqq.]

Significance of these initiatory rites. Supposed invulnerability of men who have weapons for their guardian spirits.

In the former of these two initiatory rites of the Carrier Indians the prominent feature is the transformation of the man into his totem animal; in the latter it is his death and resurrection. But in substance, probably, both are identical. In both the novice dies as a man and revives as his totem, whether that be a bear, a “darding” knife, or what not; in other words, he has deposited his life or some portion of it in his totem, with which accordingly for the future he is more or less completely identified. Hard as it may be for us to conceive why a man should choose to identify himself with a knife, whether “darding” or otherwise, we have to remember that in Celebes it is to a chopping-knife or other iron tool that the soul of a woman in labour is transferred for safety;[670 - See above, pp. 153 (#pgepubid00010)sq.] and the difference between a chopping-knife and a “darding” knife, considered as a receptacle for a human soul, is perhaps not very material. Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia warriors who had a knife, an arrow, or any other weapon for their personal totem or guardian spirit, enjoyed this signal advantage over their fellows that they were for all practical purposes invulnerable. If an arrow did hit them, which seldom happened, they vomited the blood up, and the hurt soon healed. Hence these arrow-proof warriors rarely wore armour, which would indeed have been superfluous, and they generally took the most dangerous posts in battle. So convinced were the Thompson Indians of the power of their personal totem or guardian spirit to bring them back to life, that some of them killed themselves in the sure hope that the spirit would immediately raise them up from the dead. Others, more prudently, experimented on their friends, shooting them dead and then awaiting more or less cheerfully their joyful resurrection. We are not told that success crowned these experimental demonstrations of the immortality of the soul.[671 - James Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, p. 357 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, April, 1900). Among the Shuswap of British Columbia, when a young man has obtained his personal totem or guardian spirit, he is supposed to become proof against bullets and arrows (Fr. Boas, in Sixth Report of the Committee on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 93, separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Leeds meeting, 1890).]

Initiatory rite of the Toukaway Indians.

The Toukaway Indians of Texas, one of whose totems is the wolf, have a ceremony in which men, dressed in wolf-skins, run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves. At last they scratch up a living tribesman, who has been buried on purpose, and putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bid him do as the wolves do – rob, kill, and murder.[672 - H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), v. 683. In a letter dated 16th Dec. 1887, Mr. A. S. Gatschet, formerly of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, wrote to me: “Among the Toukawe whom in 1884 I found at Fort Griffin [?], Texas, I noticed that they never kill the big or grey wolf, hatchukunän, which has a mythological signification, ‘holding the earth’ (hatch). He forms one of their totem clans, and they have had a dance in his honor, danced by the males only, who carried sticks.”] The ceremony probably forms part of an initiatory rite like the resurrection from the grave of the old man in the Australian rites.

Traces of the rite of death and resurrection among more advanced peoples.

The simulation of death and resurrection or of a new birth at initiation appears to have lingered on, or at least to have left traces of itself, among peoples who have advanced far beyond the stage of savagery. Thus, after his investiture with the sacred thread – the symbol of his order – a Brahman is called “twice born.” Manu says, “According to the injunction of the revealed texts the first birth of an Aryan is from his natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Muñga grass, and the third on the initiation to the performance to a Srauta sacrifice.”[673 - The Laws of Manu, ii. 169, translated by G. Bühler (Oxford, 1886), p. 61 (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv.); J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), i. 125; Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1883), pp. 360 sq., 396 sq.; H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 466 sqq.] A pretence of killing the candidate perhaps formed part of the initiation to the Mithraic mysteries.[674 - Lampridius, Commodus, 9; C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, Second Edition (London, 1887), pp. 127, 129. Compare Fr. Cumont, Textes et Monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, i. (Brussels, 1899) pp. 69 sq., 321 sq.; E. Rohde, Psyche

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

The motive for attempting to deposit the soul in a safe place outside of the body at puberty may have been a fear of the dangers which, according to primitive notions, attend the union of the sexes.

Thus, on the theory here suggested, wherever totemism is found, and wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again the novice at initiation, there may exist or have existed not only a belief in the possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external object – animal, plant, or what not – but an actual intention of so doing. If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily stowed away in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the primitive mind with many serious perils; but the exact nature of the danger apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to totemism, but to the origin of the marriage system.

Chapter XII. The Golden Bough

Balder's life or death in the mistletoe.

Thus the view that Balder's life was in the mistletoe is entirely in harmony with primitive modes of thought. It may indeed sound like a contradiction that, if his life was in the mistletoe, he should nevertheless have been killed by a blow from the plant. But when a person's life is conceived as embodied in a particular object, with the existence of which his own existence is inseparably bound up, and the destruction of which involves his own, the object in question may be regarded and spoken of indifferently as his life or his death, as happens in the fairy tales. Hence if a man's death is in an object, it is perfectly natural that he should be killed by a blow from it. In the fairy tales Koshchei the Deathless is killed by a blow from the egg or the stone in which his life or death is secreted;[675 - Above, p. 110 (#x_7_i23); compare pp. 107 (#x_7_i19), 120 (#x_8_i11)sq., 132 (#x_9_i5), 133 (#x_9_i7).] the ogres burst when a certain grain of sand – doubtless containing their life or death – is carried over their heads;[676 - Above, p. 120 (#x_8_i11).] the magician dies when the stone in which his life or death is contained is put under his pillow;[677 - Above, p. 106 (#x_7_i17).] and the Tartar hero is warned that he may be killed by the golden arrow or golden sword in which his soul has been stowed away.[678 - Above, p. 145 (#x_9_i23). In the myth the throwing of the weapons and of the mistletoe at Balder and the blindness of Hother who slew him remind us of the custom of the Irish reapers who kill the corn-spirit in the last sheaf by throwing their sickles blindfold at it. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 144. In Mecklenburg a cock is sometimes buried in the ground and a man who is blindfolded strikes at it with a flail. If he misses it, another tries, and so on till the cock is killed. See K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg (Vienna, 1879-1880), ii. 280. In England on Shrove Tuesday a hen used to be tied upon a man's back, and other men blindfolded struck at it with branches till they killed it. See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), p. 68. W. Mannhardt (Die Korndämonen, Berlin, 1868, pp. 16 sq.) has made it probable that such sports are directly derived from the custom of killing a cock upon the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 277 sq. These customs, therefore, combined with the blindness of Hother in the myth, suggest that the man who killed the human representative of the oak-spirit was blindfolded, and threw his weapon or the mistletoe from a little distance. After the Lapps had killed a bear – which was the occasion of many superstitious ceremonies – the bear's skin was hung on a post, and the women, blindfolded, shot arrows at it. See J. Scheffer, Lapponia (Frankfort, 1673), p. 240.]

The view that the mistletoe contained the life of the oak may have been suggested by the position of the parasite among the boughs. Indian parallel to Balder and the mistletoe.

The idea that the life of the oak was in the mistletoe was probably suggested, as I have said, by the observation that in winter the mistletoe growing on the oak remains green while the oak itself is leafless. But the position of the plant – growing not from the ground but from the trunk or branches of the tree – might confirm this idea. Primitive man might think that, like himself, the oak-spirit had sought to deposit his life in some safe place, and for this purpose had pitched on the mistletoe, which, being in a sense neither on earth nor in heaven, might be supposed to be fairly out of harm's way. In the first chapter we saw that primitive man seeks to preserve the life of his human divinities by keeping them poised between earth and heaven, as the place where they are least likely to be assailed by the dangers that encompass the life of man on earth. We can therefore understand why it has been a rule both of ancient and of modern folk-medicine that the mistletoe should not be allowed to touch the ground; were it to touch the ground, its healing virtue would be gone.[679 - Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiv. 12; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 1010. Compare below, p. 282 (#x_21_i8).] This may be a survival of the old superstition that the plant in which the life of the sacred tree was concentrated should not be exposed to the risk incurred by contact with the earth. In an Indian legend, which offers a parallel to the Balder myth, Indra swore to the demon Namuci that he would slay him neither by day nor by night, neither with staff nor with bow, neither with the palm of the hand nor with the fist, neither with the wet nor with the dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea.[680 - The Satapatha Brahmana, xii. 7. 3. 1-3, translated by J. Eggeling, Part v. (Oxford, 1900) pp. 222 sq. (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliv.); Denham Rouse, in Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1889) p. 61, quoting Taittīrya Brāhmana, I. vii. 1.] The foam of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan in India.[681 - Col. E. T. Dalton, “The Kols of Chota-Nagpore,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society, N.S. vi. (1868) p. 36.]

Analogous superstitions attaching to a parasitic rowan.

Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly to its not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition about the mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found growing out of the top of another tree is esteemed “exceedingly effective against witchcraft: since it does not grow on the ground witches have no power over it; if it is to have its full effect it must be cut on Ascension Day.”[682 - Jens Kamp, Danske Folkeminder (Odense, 1877), pp. 172, 65 sq., referred to in Feilberg's Bidrag til en Ordbog over Jyske Almuesmål, Fjerde hefte (Copenhagen, 1888), p. 320. For a sight of Feilberg's work I am indebted to the kindness of the late Rev. Walter Gregor, M.A., of Pitsligo, who pointed out the passage to me.] Hence it is placed over doors to prevent the ingress of witches.[683 - E. T. Kristensen, Iydske Folkeminder, vi. 380, referred to by Feilberg, l. c. According to Marcellus (De Medicamentis, xxvi. 115), ivy which springs from an oak is a remedy for stone, provided it be cut with a copper instrument.] In Sweden and Norway, also, magical properties are ascribed to a “flying-rowan” (flögrönn), that is to a rowan which is found growing not in the ordinary fashion on the ground but on another tree, or on a roof, or in a cleft of the rock, where it has sprouted from seed scattered by birds. They say that a man who is out in the dark should have a bit of “flying-rowan” with him to chew; else he runs a risk of being bewitched and of being unable to stir from the spot.[684 - A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks

(Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 175 sq., quoting Dybeck's Runa, 1845, pp. 62 sq.] A Norwegian story relates how once on a time a Troll so bewitched some men who were ploughing in a field that they could not drive a straight furrow; only one of the ploughmen was able to resist the enchantment because by good luck his plough was made out of a “flying-rowan.”[685 - A. Kuhn, op. cit. p. 176.] In Sweden, too, the “flying-rowan” is used to make the divining rod, which discovers hidden treasures. This useful art has nowadays unfortunately been almost forgotten, but three hundred years ago it was in full bloom, as we gather from the following contemporary account. “If in the woods or elsewhere, on old walls or on high mountains or rocks you perceive a rowan-tree (runn) which has sprung from a seed that a bird has dropped from its bill, you must either knock or break off that rod or tree in the twilight between the third day and the night after Ladyday. But you must take care that neither iron nor steel touches it and that in carrying it home you do not let it fall on the ground. Then place it under the roof on a spot under which you have laid various metals, and you will soon be surprised to see how that rod under the roof gradually bends in the direction of the metals. When your rod has sat there in the same spot for fourteen days or more, you take a knife or an awl, which has been stroked with a magnet, and with it you slit the bark on all sides, and pour or drop the blood of a cock (best of all the blood from the comb of a cock which is all of one colour) on the said slits in the bark; and when the blood has dried, the rod is ready and will give public proof of the efficacy of its marvellous properties.”[686 - Quoted by A. Kuhn, op. cit. pp. 180 sq. In Zimbales, a province of the Philippine Islands, “a certain parasitic plant that much resembles yellow moss and grows high up on trees is regarded as a very powerful charm. It is called gay-u-ma, and a man who possesses it is called nanara gayuma. If his eyes rest on a person during the new moon he will become sick at the stomach, but he can cure the sickness by laying hands on the afflicted part.” See W. A. Reed, Negritos of Zambales (Manilla, 1904), p. 67 (Department of the Interior, Ethnological Survey Publications, vol. ii. part i.). Mr. Reed seems to mean that if a man who possesses this parasitic plant sees a person at the new moon, the person on whom his eye falls will be sick in his stomach, but that the owner of the parasite can cure the sufferer by laying his (the owner's) hands on his (the patient's) stomach. It is interesting to observe that the magical virtue of the parasitic plant appears to be especially effective at the new moon.] Just as in Scandinavia the parasitic rowan is deemed a countercharm to sorcery, so in Germany the parasitic mistletoe is still commonly considered a protection against witchcraft, and in Sweden, as we saw, the mistletoe which is gathered on Midsummer Eve is attached to the ceiling of the house, the horse's stall or the cow's crib, in the belief that this renders the Troll powerless to injure man or beast.[687 - A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube

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

The fate of the Hays believed to be bound up with the mistletoe on Errol's oak.

The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of Balder's death, but that it contained his life, is countenanced by the analogy of a Scottish superstition. Tradition ran that the fate of the Hays of Errol, an estate in Perthshire, near the Firth of Tay, was bound up with the mistletoe that grew on a certain great oak. A member of the Hay family has recorded the old belief as follows: “Among the low country families the badges are now almost generally forgotten; but it appears by an ancient MS. and the tradition of a few old people in Perthshire, that the badge of the Hays was the mistletoe. There was formerly in the neighbourhood of Errol, and not far from the Falcon stone, a vast oak of an unknown age, and upon which grew a profusion of the plant: many charms and legends were considered to be connected with the tree, and the duration of the family of Hay was said to be united with its existence. It was believed that a sprig of the mistletoe cut by a Hay on Allhallowmas eve, with a new dirk, and after surrounding the tree three times sunwise, and pronouncing a certain spell, was a sure charm against all glamour or witchery, and an infallible guard in the day of battle. A spray gathered in the same manner was placed in the cradle of infants, and thought to defend them from being changed for elf-bairns by the fairies. Finally, it was affirmed, that when the root of the oak had perished, ‘the grass should grow in the hearth of Errol, and a raven should sit in the falcon's nest.’ The two most unlucky deeds which could be done by one of the name of Hay were, to kill a white falcon, and to cut down a limb from the oak of Errol. When the old tree was destroyed I could never learn. The estate has been some time sold out of the family of Hay, and of course it is said that the fatal oak was cut down a short time before.”[688 - John Hay Allan, The Bridal of Caölchairn (London, 1822), pp. 337 sq.] The old superstition is recorded in verses which are traditionally ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer: —

“While the mistletoe bats on Errol's aik,
And that aik stands fast,
The Hays shall flourish, and their good grey hawk
Shall nocht flinch before the blast.

But when the root of the aik decays,
And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast,
The grass shall grow on Errol's hearthstane,
And the corbie roup in the falcon's nest.”[689 - Rev. John B. Pratt, Buchan, Second Edition (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and London, 1859), p. 342. “The corbie roup” means “the raven croak.” In former editions of this work my only source of information as to the mistletoe and oak of the Hays was an extract from a newspaper which was kindly copied and sent to me, without the name of the newspaper, by the late Rev. Walter Gregor, M.A., of Pitsligo. For my acquaintance with the works of J. H. Allan and J. B. Pratt I am indebted to the researches of my learned friend Mr. A. B. Cook, who has already quoted them in his article “The European Sky-God,” Folk-lore, xvii. (1906) pp. 318 sq.]

The life of the Lachlins and the deer of Finchra.

The idea that the fate of a family, as distinct from the lives of its members, is bound up with a particular plant or tree, is no doubt comparatively modern. The older view may have been that the lives of all the Hays were in this particular mistletoe, just as in the Indian story the lives of all the ogres are in a lemon; to break a twig of the mistletoe would then have been to kill one of the Hays. Similarly in the island of Rum, whose bold mountains the voyager from Oban to Skye observes to seaward, it was thought that if one of the family of Lachlin shot a deer on the mountain of Finchra, he would die suddenly or contract a distemper which would soon prove fatal.[690 - M. Martin, “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels (London, 1808-1814), iii. 661.] Probably the life of the Lachlins was bound up with the deer on Finchra, as the life of the Hays was bound up with the mistletoe on Errol's oak, and the life of the Dalhousie family with the Edgewell Tree.

The Golden Bough seems to have been a glorified mistletoe.