The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

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.

Expulsion of demons personified by men among the American Indians. Expulsion of a demon embodied in an image among the Mayas of Yucatan.

The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. “Twenty or thirty 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 succeed in 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.”[423 - Stephen Powers, Tribes of California (Washington, 1877), p. 159.] 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 gibes, beating him with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.[424 - G. Catlin, North American Indians, Fourth Edition (London, 1844), i. 166 sqq.; id., O-kee-pa, a Religious Ceremony, and other Customs of the Mandans (London, 1867).] The Mayas of Yucatan divided the year into eighteen months of twenty days each, and they added five supplementary days at the end of the year in order to make a total of three hundred and sixty-five days. These five supplementary days were deemed unlucky. In the course of them the people banished the evils that might threaten them in the year on which they were about to enter. For that purpose they made a clay image of the demon of evil Uuayayab, that is u-uayab-haab, “He by whom the year is poisoned,” confronted it with the deity who had supreme power over the coming year, and then carried it out of the village in the direction of that cardinal point to which, on the system of the Mayan calendar, the particular year was supposed to belong. Having thus rid themselves of the demon, they looked forward to a happy New Year.[425 - Diego de Landa, Relation des Choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), pp. 203-205, 211-215; E. Seler, “The Mexican Chronology,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 28 (Washington, 1904), p. 17. As to the Maya calendar see further Cyrus Thomas, The Maya Year (Washington, 1894), pp. 19 sqq. (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology).]

Expulsion of a demon personified by a man among the aborigines of Queensland. Expulsion of demons embodied in effigies in India and Russia. Expulsion of demons embodied in animals or boys in Esthonia and Spain.

Some of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious being called Molonga, 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 ochre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear, rushes forth 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.[426 - W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (Brisbane and London, 1897), pp. 120-125.] 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. When they have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep them out.[427 - J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge (Paris, 1883), i. 172. Compare above, p. 149.] In Munzerabad, 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. The inhabitants of that parish in like manner pass the image on to their neighbours, 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.[428 - R. H. Elliot, Experiences of a Planter in the Jungles of Mysore (London, 1871), i. 60 sq.] Russian villagers seek to protect themselves against epidemics, whether of man or beast, by drawing a furrow with a plough right round the village. The plough is dragged by four widows and the ceremony is performed at night; all fires and lights must be extinguished while the plough is going the round. The people think that no unclean spirit can pass the furrow which has thus been traced. In the village of Dubrowitschi a puppet is carried before the plough with the cry, “Out of the village with the unclean spirit!” and at the end of the ceremony it is torn in pieces and the fragments scattered about.[429 - A. C. Winter, “Russische Volksbräuche bei Seuchen,” Globus, lxxix. (1901) p. 302. For the Russian ceremony of drawing a plough round a village to keep out the cattle plague, see also W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, Second Edition (London, 1872), pp. 396 sqq.] No doubt the demon of the disease is supposed to be in the puppet and to be destroyed with it. Sometimes in an Esthonian village a rumour will get about that the Evil One himself has been seen in the place. Instantly the whole village is in an uproar, and the entire population, armed with sticks, flails, and scythes, turns out to give him chase. They generally expel him in the shape of a wolf or a cat, occasionally they brag that they have beaten the devil to death.[430 - J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen (Dresden and Leipsic, 1841), ii. 278.] At Carmona, in Andalusia, on one day of the year, boys are stripped naked and smeared with glue in which feathers are stuck. Thus disguised, they run from house to house, the people trying to avoid them and to bar their houses against them.[431 - Folk-lore Journal, vii. (1889) p. 174.] The ceremony is probably a relic of an annual expulsion of devils.

Annual expulsion of the demon of plague among the Khasis of Assam. The Tug of War probably a contest with demons represented by human beings. The Tug of War at funerals in Chittagong and Burma.

Some of the Khasis of Assam annually expel the demon of plague. The ceremony is called Beh-dieng-khlam, that is “Driving away (beh) the plague (khlam) with sticks (dieng)”; it takes place in the Deep-water month (June). On the day fixed for the expulsion the men rise early and beat the roof with sticks, calling upon the demon of the plague to leave the house. Later in the day they go down to the stream where the goddess Aitan dwells. Then long poles or bamboos, newly cut, are laid across the stream and the people jump on them, trying to break them; when they succeed, they give a great shout. Next a very large pole or bamboo is similarly laid across the stream, and the people divide themselves into two parties, one on each side of the stream, and pull against each other at opposite ends of the pole. According to one account the party which succeeds in dragging the pole to their side of the stream is supposed to gain health and prosperity during the coming year. According to another account, if the people on the east bank win in the contest or “tug-of-war,” good luck and prosperity are assured; but if the people on the west bank are victorious, then everything will go wrong. On this occasion the people disguise themselves as giants and wild beasts, and they parade images of serpents, elephants, tigers, peacocks, and so on. The men dance with enthusiasm, and the girls, dressed in their best, look on. Before the assembly breaks up, the men play a sort of game of hockey with wooden balls.[432 - Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (London, 1907), p. 157; A. Bastian, in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte, 1881, p. 151; id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra (Berlin, 1883), pp. 6 sq.] In this ceremonial contest or “tug of war” between two parties of the people, we may conjecture that the one party represents the expelled demons of the plague; and if that is so, we may perhaps assume that in the struggle the representatives of the demons generally allow themselves to be overcome by their adversaries, in order that the village may be free from pestilence in the coming year. Similarly in autumn the Central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties, representing summer and winter respectively, which pull at opposite ends of a rope; and they draw omens of the weather to be expected in the coming winter according as the party of summer or of winter prevails in the struggle.[433 - Fr. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,” Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1888), p. 605. See The Dying God, p. 259.] That in such contests, resembling our English game of “French and English” or the “Tug of War,” the one side may represent demons is proved by a custom observed by the Chukmas, a tribe of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in South-Eastern India. “On the death of a Dewan or of a priest a curious sport is customary at the funeral. The corpse is conveyed to the place of cremation on a car; to this car ropes are attached, and the persons attending the ceremony are divided into two equal bodies and set to work to pull in opposite directions. One side represents the good spirits; the other, the powers of evil. The contest is so arranged that the former are victorious. Sometimes, however, the young men representing the demons are inclined to pull too vigorously, but a stick generally quells this unseemly ardour in the cause of evil.”[434 - Capt. T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India (London, 1870), p. 185.] The contest is like that between the angels and devils depicted in the frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. In Burma a similar struggle takes place at the funeral of a Buddhist monk who passed for a saint in the popular estimation: ropes are attached to opposite ends of the car on which the coffin is placed, all the able-bodied men of the neighbourhood hold on to one or other of the two ends and pull as if for dear life against each other; even the women and girls sometimes join in the tug of war, and policemen have been seen, in a state of frantic excitement, waving their batons to encourage the combatants and dragging back shirkers by main force into the fighting line. The struggle is sometimes prolonged for hours or even days.[435 - Father Sangermano, Description of the Burmese Empire (Rangoon, 1885), p. 98; Capt. C. J. F. S. Forbes, British Burma (London, 1878), pp. 216 sq.; Shway Yoe, The Burman, his Life and Notions (London, 1882), ii. 334 sq., 342.] With the example of the Chukmas before us, we may conjecture that the original motive of this internecine strife was a persuasion that the eternal happiness or misery of the departed saint depended on the issue of this contest between the powers of good and evil for the possession of his mortal remains.

The Tug of War as a rain-making ceremony in Burma and else where.

But in Burma the tug of war has been employed for more secular purposes than the salvation or perdition of souls. “The inhabitants,” we are told, “still have a custom of pulling a rope to produce rain. A rain party and a drought party tug against each other, the rain party being allowed the victory, which in the popular notion is generally followed by rain.”[436 - F. E. Sawyer, “S. Swithin and Rainmakers,” The Folk-lore Journal, i. (1883) p. 214.] The mode in which this salutary result follows from tugging at a rope is explained by the Burmese doctrine of nats or spirits who cause rain. But it is only when these spirits sport in the air that rain falls; when they shut themselves up in their houses there is drought. Now in some Burmese writings “it is said, that when the sun is in the path of the goat, these Nat do not chuse to leave their houses on account of the great heat, whence there is then no rain. For this reason, the inhabitants of the Burma empire, in times of drought, are wont to assemble in great numbers, with drums and a long cable. Dividing themselves into two parties, with a vast shouting and noise, they drag the cable contrary ways, the one party endeavouring to get the better of the other: and they think, by this means, to invite the Nat to come out from their houses, and to sport in the air. The thunder and lightning, which frequently precede rain, are the clashing and shining of the arms of these Nat, who sometimes sport in mock battles.”[437 - Francis Buchanan, “On the Religion and Literature of the Burmas,” Asiatick Researches, vi. (London, 1801) pp. 193 sq. Compare Lieut. – General A. Fytche, Burma Past and Present (London, 1878), i. 248 note 1; Max and Bertha Ferrars, Burma (London, 1900), p. 184; (Sir) J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (Rangoon, 1900-1901), Part ii. vol. ii. pp. 95, 279.] Apparently, therefore, in the tug of war, practised as a rain-charm, the one party represent the spirits who have to be dragged reluctantly from their houses in order to make rain in the sky. Similarly in the Timor-laut Islands, when the people want a rainy wind from the west, the population of the village, men, women, and children divide into two parties and pull against each other at the end of a long bamboo. But the party at the eastern end must pull the harder, in order to draw the desired wind out of the west.[438 - J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Celebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), p. 282.] We can now perhaps understand why among the Khasis the victory of the eastern side in the tug of war is thought to prognosticate good luck and prosperity, and why the victory of the western side is believed to portend the contrary; the distinction is at once intelligible when we remember that in the country of the Khasis the rainy wind is the monsoon which blows from the south-west, whereas the wind which blows from the south-east is hot and dry.[439 - For particulars as to the winds of Assam I am indebted to my friend Mr. J. D. Anderson, formerly of the Indian Civil Service, who resided many years in that country.] Thus a victory of the eastern party in the tug of war means that they have drawn rain and consequently fertility into the country from the west; whereas a victory of the western party signifies that they have dragged drought and consequently dearth into the country from the east.

The Tug of War between the sexes. The Tug of War in Kamtchatka and New Guinea.

However, a somewhat different turn is given to the ceremony of rope-pulling in the East Indies by another writer, who informs us, that while the contest only takes place in some of these islands when rain is wanted, it is closely connected with those licentious rites performed for the fertilization of the ground which have been described in another part of this work.[440 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 98 sq.] According to this account the men and women appear to take opposite sides in the tug of war, and in pulling against each other they imitate by their movements the union of the sexes.[441 - G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoevell, “Leti-eilanden,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxiii. (1890) p. 207. However, it is not quite clear from the writer's words (“Immers de mannen en vrouwen in twee partijeen verdeelt en elk een stuk van de roten in de hande houdende bootsen toch ook door't voor- en achteroverbuigen van't lichaam de bewegingen van cohabitie na”) whether the men and women take opposite sides or are distributed between the two.] If that is so, it would seem that the rite is a magical ceremony designed to promote the fertility of the ground by means of homoeopathic or imitative magic. The same may perhaps be the intention of the tug of war as it is practised for the benefit of the crops by some of the Naga tribes of Assam, and this is the more likely because in the case of these tribes we are definitely told that the sexes take opposite sides, the women and girls tugging against the men and boys. This is done by the Tangkhuls of Assam a month after the rice has been sown; the ceremony is performed “in order to take the omens for the future of the crops,” and it “is followed by considerable license.” The tug of war between the sexes with its attendant license is repeated before the first-fruits are cut by the sacred headman.[442 - T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur (London, 1911), p. 168; compare 64. “The Chirus have six crop festivals, one of which, that before the crops are cut, is marked by a rope-pulling ceremony of the same nature as that observed among the Tangkhuls” (op. cit. p. 172). The headman (khullākpa) “is a sacrosanct person, the representative of the village in all religious rites, and surrounded by special alimentary, social and conjugal gennas” or taboos (op. cit. p. 110).] In Corea about the fifteenth day of the first month villages engage in the same kind of contest with each other, and it is thought that the village which wins will have a good harvest. The rope which they pull is made of straw, two feet in diameter, with its ends divided into branches. The men lay hold of the main stem, while the women grasp the branches, and they often tug harder than the men, for they load their skirts with stones, which adds weight to the force of their muscles.[443 - Stewart Culin, Korean Games (Philadelphia, 1895), p. 35; A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London and New York, 1898), p. 274.] In Kamtchatka, when the fishing season is over, the people used to divide into two parties, one of which tried to pull a birch-tree by a strap through the smoke-hole into their subterranean winter dwelling, while the other party outside, pulling at the end of the tree, endeavoured to hinder them. If the party in the house succeeded, they raised shouts of joy and set up a grass effigy of a wolf, which they preserved carefully throughout the year, believing that it espoused their young women and prevented them from giving birth to twins. For they deem the birth of twins a dreadful misfortune and a horrible sin; they put it down to the wolf in the forest, and all who chance to be in the house at the time shew a clean pair of heels, leaving the mother and her infants to shift for themselves. Should the twins be both girls, the calamity is even greater.[444 - G. W. Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka (Frankfort and Leipsic, 1774), pp. 327 sq.] In the village of Doreh, in Dutch New Guinea, when some of the inhabitants have gone on a long journey, the people who stay at home engage in a Tug of War among themselves to determine whether the journey will be prosperous or not. One side represents the voyagers and the other side those who are left behind. They pull at opposite ends of a long bamboo, and if the bamboo breaks or the side which represents the people at home is obliged to let go, the omen is favourable.[445 - H. von Rosenberg, Der malayisch Archipel (Leipsic, 1878), p. 462.]

The Tug of War in Morocco to procure rain or sunshine.

In Morocco, also, the Tug of War is resorted to as a means of influencing the weather, sometimes in order to procure rain and sometimes to procure sunshine; and here men and women appear usually to take opposite sides in the contest. For example, among the Igliwa, a Berber people of the Great Atlas, when rain is wanted, they take a rope and the men pull at one end and women at the other. While they are tugging away, a man suddenly cuts the rope and the women fall down. The same device for procuring rain in time of drought is practised by the Ait Warain, another Berber tribe of Morocco; but among them in the heat of the contest the women as well as the men will sometimes let go the rope and allow the opposite party to fall on their backs. However, the Tsûl, another Berber tribe of Morocco, employ the Tug of War for the opposite purpose of ensuring a supply of sunshine and heat in autumn, when they wish to dry their figs and grapes; the contest takes place at night by the light of the moon.[446 - Edward Westermarck, “The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,” Folk-lore, xxii. (1911) pp. 158 sq.; id., Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, Certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the Weather in Morocco (Helsingfors, 1913), p. 122.] The apparent contradiction of employing the same procedure for opposite purposes vanishes if we suppose that, as the Assamese custom seems to indicate, the intention is to draw either a rainy or a dry wind out of the quarters from which the breezes that bring rain or sunshine usually blow, and which will usually be on opposite sides of the sky. Hence in order fully to understand the Tug of War, when it is practised for the purpose of influencing the weather, we should know, first, the directions from which the rainy and the dry winds respectively come in the country under consideration, and second, the direction in which the rope is stretched between the contending parties. If, for example, as happens in Assam, the rainy wind blows from the west, and a victory of the eastern party in the Tug of War is an omen of prosperity, we may conclude with a fair degree of probability that the intention of the contest is to draw the rain from the quarter of the sky in which it is lingering. But these niceties of observation have usually escaped the attention of those who have described the Tug of War.

Games of ball in Morocco to procure rain or sunshine.

In various parts of Morocco games of ball are played for the sake now of procuring rain and now of procuring dry weather; the ball is sometimes propelled with sticks and sometimes with the feet of the competitors. An Arab questioned as to why a game of ball should bring on rain explained that the ball is dark like a rain-cloud.[447 - E. Westermarck, Ceremonies and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, Certain Dates of the Solar Year, and the Weather in Morocco (Helsingfors, 1913). pp. 121 sq.] Perhaps the answer furnishes the clue to the meaning of the rite. If in such games played to influence the weather the ball represents a rain-cloud, the success or failure of the charm will depend on which side contrives to get the ball home in the enemy's quarters. For example, if rain is desired and the rainy wind blows in Morocco, as may perhaps be assumed, from the west, then should the western side succeed in driving the ball through the eastern goal, there will be rain; but if the eastern party wins, then the rain is driven away and the drought will continue. Thus a game of ball would in theory and practice answer exactly to the Tug of War practised for the same purposes.

The Tug of War in Morocco to ensure prosperity.

In Morocco, however, the Tug of War is apparently used also for the purpose of ensuring prosperity in general without any special reference to the weather. Dr. Westermarck was informed by an old Arab from the Hiaina that the Tug of War “is no longer practised at the Great Feast, as it was in his childhood, but that it is performed in the autumn when the threshing is going on and the fruits are ripe. Then men and women have a tug of war by moonlight so that the bäs, or evil, shall go away, that the year shall be good, and that the people shall live in peace. Some man secretly cuts two of the three cords of which the rope is made, with the result that both parties tumble down.”[448 - E. Westermarck, “The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,” Folk-lore, xxii. (1911) p. 159.] In this contest one party perhaps represents the powers of good and the other the powers of evil in general. But why in these Moroccan cases of the Tug of War the rope should be so often cut and one or both sides laid on their backs, is not manifest. Perhaps the simple device of suddenly slacking the rope in order to make the opposite side lose their footing, and so to haul the rope away from them before they can recover themselves, may have led to the more trenchant measure of cutting it with a knife for the same purpose.

Spiritual significance of the Tug of War. The Tug of War in French Guiana, in North-Western India.

These examples make it probable that wherever the Tug of War is played only at certain definite seasons or on certain particular occasions, it was originally performed, not as a mere pastime, but as a magical ceremony designed to work some good for the community. Further, we may surmise that in many cases the two contending parties represent respectively the powers of good and evil struggling against each other for the mastery, and as the community has always an interest in the prevalence of the powers of good, it may well happen that the powers of evil do not always get fair play in these conflicts; though no doubt when it comes to be “pull devil, pull baker,” the devil is apt, in the spirit of a true sportsman, to tug with as hearty good will as his far more deserving adversary the baker. To take cases in which the game is played without any alleged practical motive, the Roocooyen Indians of French Guiana engage in the Tug of War as a sort of interlude during the ceremonial tortures of the youth.[449 - H. Coudreau, Chez nos Indiens, Quatre Années dans la Guayane Française (Paris, 1895), p. 234.] Among the Cingalese the game “is connected with the superstitious worship of the goddess Patiné; and is more intended for a propitiation to that deity, than considered as an indulgence, or pursued as an exercise. Two opposite parties procure two sticks of the strongest and toughest wood, and so crooked as to hook into one another without slipping; they then attach strong cords or cable-rattans of sufficient length to allow of every one laying hold of them. The contending parties then pull until one of the sticks gives way.” The victorious piece of wood is gaily decorated, placed in a palanquin, and borne through the village amid noisy rejoicings, often accompanied with coarse and obscene expressions.[450 - Major Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon (London, 1840), i. 358.] The use of foul language on this occasion suggests that the ceremony is here, as elsewhere, observed for the purpose of ensuring fertility. In the North-Western provinces of India the game is played on the fourteenth day of the light half of the month Kuar. The rope (barra) is made of the grass called makra, and is thicker than a man's arm. The various quarters of a village pull against each other, and the one which is victorious keeps possession of the rope during the ensuing year. It is chiefly in the east of these provinces that the game is played; in the west it is unknown.[451 - Sir Henry M. Elliot, Memoirs on the History, Folk-lore, and Distribution of the Races of the North-Western Provinces of India, edited, revised, and re-arranged by John Beames (London, 1869), i. 235.] Sometimes the contest is between the inhabitants of neighbouring villages, and the rope is stretched across the boundary; plenty is supposed to attend the victorious side.[452 - W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 321.] At the Great Feast, a yearly sacrificial festival of the Mohammedan world, some tribes in Morocco practise a Tug of War. Thus among the Ait Sadden it is observed on the first day of the festival before the sacrifice; among the Ait Yusi it is performed either before the religious service or in the afternoon of the same day, and also in the morning of the Little Feast. Both sexes generally take part in the contest, the men tugging at one end of the rope and the women at the other, and sometimes the weaker party applies for help to persons of the same sex in a neighbouring village. When they are all hard at it, the men may suddenly let go the rope and so send the women sprawling on their backs.[453 - E. Westermarck, “The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,” Folk-lore, xxii. (1911) p. 158.]

The Tug of War in Shropshire and Radnorshire. Contests for a ball (soule) in Normandy.

At Ludlow in Shropshire a grand Tug of War used to take place on Shrove Tuesday between the inhabitants of Broad Street Ward on the one side and of Corve Street Ward on the other. The rope was three inches thick and thirty-six yards long, with a red knob at one end and a blue knob at the other. The rope was paid out by the Mayor in person from a window in the Market Hall at four o'clock in the afternoon. The shops then put up their shutters, and the population engaged in the struggle with enthusiasm, gentle and simple, lawyers and parsons bearing a hand on one side or the other, till their clothes were torn to tatters on their backs. The injured were carried into the neighbouring houses, where their hurts were attended to. If the party of the Red Knob won, they carried the rope in triumph to the River Leme and dipped it in the water. Finally, the rope was sold, the money which it brought in was devoted to the purchase of beer, and drinking, squabbling, and fighting ended the happy day. This ancient and highly popular pastime was suppressed in 1851 on the frivolous pretext that it gave rise to disorderly scenes and dangerous accidents.[454 - John Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, New Edition (London, 1883), i. 92; Miss C. S. Burne and Miss G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), pp. 319-321.] A similar custom has long been observed on Shrove Tuesday at Presteign in Radnorshire. The rope is pulled by two parties representing the upper and the lower portions of the town, who strive to drag it either to a point in the west wall or to another point in Broad Street, where the River Lugg is reached.[455 - C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, op. cit. p. 321.] In the Bocage of Normandy most desperate struggles used to take place between neighbouring parishes on Shrove Tuesday for the possession of a large leathern ball stuffed with bran and called a soule. The ball was launched on the village green and contended for by representatives of different parishes, who sometimes numbered seven or eight hundred, while five or six thousand people might assemble to witness the combat; for indeed it was a fight rather than a game. The conflict was maintained with the utmost fury; old scores were paid off between personal enemies; there were always many wounded, and sometimes there were deaths. The aim of each side was to drive the ball over a stream and to lodge it in a house of their own parish. It was thought that the parish which was victorious in the struggle would have a better crop of apples that year than its neighbours. At Lande-Patry the ball was provided by the bride who had been last married, and she had the honour of throwing it into the arena. The scene of the fiercest battles was St. Pierre d'Entremont, on the highroad between Condé and Tinchebray. After several unsuccessful attempts the custom was suppressed at that village in 1852 with the help of four or five brigades of police. It is now everywhere extinct.[456 - Jules Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand (Condé-sur-Noireau, 1883-1887), i. 13, ii. 153-165. Compare Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France (Paris, 1875), i. 86 sqq.; and as to the game of soule, see Guerry, in Mémoires des Antiquaires de France, viii. (1829) pp. 459-461.] The belief that the parish which succeeded in carrying the ball home would have a better crop of apples that year raises a presumption that these conflicts were originally practised as magical rites to ensure fertility. The local custom of Lande-Patry, which required that the ball should be provided and thrown by the last bride,[457 - In the parish of Vieux-Pont, in the department of Orne, the man who is last married before the first Sunday in Lent must throw a ball from the foot of the cross. The village lads compete with each other for its possession. To win it the lad must carry it through three parishes without being overtaken by his rivals. See A. de Nore, Coutumes, Mythes, et Traditions des Provinces de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), pp. 244 sq.] points in the same direction. It is possible that the popular English, or rather Scotch, game of football had a similar origin: the winning side may have imagined that they secured good crops, good weather, or other substantial advantages to their village or ward.

Annual sham fights may represent contests with demons.

In like manner, wherever a sham or a real conflict takes place between two parties annually, above all at the New Year, we may suspect that the old intention was to ensure prosperity in some form for the people throughout the following year, whether by obtaining possession of a material object in which the luck of the year was supposed to be embodied, or by defeating and driving away a band of men who personated the powers of evil. For example, among the Tenggerese of eastern Java the New Year festival regularly includes a sham fight fought between two bands of men, who are armed with spears and swords and advance against each other again and again at a dancing step, thrusting at their adversaries with their spears, but always taking care to miss their aim.[458 - J. H. F. Kohlbrugge, “Die Tenggeresen, ein alter Javanischer Volksstamm,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, liii. (1901) pp. 140 sq.] Again, in Ferghana, a province of Turkestan, it is or used to be customary on the first day of the year for the king and chiefs to divide into two parties, each of which chose a champion. Then the two champions, clad in armour, engaged in a combat with each other, while the crowd joined in with bricks and stones. When one of them was slain the scrimmage stopped, and omens were drawn as to whether the year on which they had entered would be prosperous or the reverse.[459 - Edouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) Occidentaux (St. Petersburg, 1903), p. 148.] In these combats it seems probable that one side represents the demons or other powers of evil whom the people hope to vanquish and expel at the beginning of the New Year.

Oftener, 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.

§ 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

Demons of sickness expelled in a small ship in Ceram.

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 Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship is made and filled with 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, “O all ye sicknesses, ye smallpoxes, agues, 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 provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye shall have no lack of food nor of betel-leaves nor of areca 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 speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun rise on you again.” Then 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 for ever, 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-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the village, whereupon 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.[460 - François Valentyn, Oud- en nieuw Ost-Indiën (Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1724-1726), iii. 14. L. de Backer (L'Archipel Indien, Paris, 1874, pp. 377 sq.) copies from Valentyn.]

Demons of sickness expelled in a small ship in Timor-laut, in a ship in Buru, removed from the persons of the sufferers.

Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands. Thus in Timor-laut, 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, “O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor land?” Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men says, “Old sir, I beseech you make well the grandchildren, children, women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink palm-wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and 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.[461 - J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 304 sq.] In the island of Buru the proa which carries away the demons of disease is about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, 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 ten 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, “Grandfather 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.[462 - J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 25 sq.] 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 in the proa and towed away to sea. So in the inland districts of Ceram, when smallpox or other sickness is raging, the priest strikes all the houses with consecrated branches, which are then thrown into the river, to be carried down to the sea;[463 - Ibid. p. 141.] exactly as amongst the Wotyaks of Russia the sticks 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.[464 - See above, p. 155 (#x_14_i15).] In Amboyna, for a similar purpose, the whole body of the patient is rubbed with a live white cock, which is then placed on a little proa and committed to the waves;[465 - J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. p. 78.] and in the Babar archipelago the bark which is to carry away to sea the sickness of a whole village contains a bowl of ashes taken from every kitchen in the village, and another bowl into which all the sick people have spat.[466 - Ibid. p. 357.] The plan of putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons after them, is not uncommon.[467 - Ibid. pp. 266, 304 sq., 327, 357; H. Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo (London, 1896), i. 284.] 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 sago palm and place them on a small raft or boat or full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other food. The boat is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made from its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as the people fondly think or hope, the sickness away with it.[468 - Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (London, 1912), ii. 122 sq.]

Demons of disease expelled in a ship in Selangor.

In Selangor, one of the native states in the Malay Peninsula, the ship employed in the export of disease is, or used to be, a model of a special kind of Malay craft called a lanchang. This was a two-masted vessel with galleries fore and aft, armed with cannon, and used by Malay rajahs on the coast of Sumatra. So gallant a ship would be highly acceptable to the spirits, and to make it still more beautiful in their eyes it was not uncommonly stained yellow with turmeric or saffron, for among the Malays yellow is the royal colour. Some years ago a very fine model of a lanchang, with its cargo of sickness, was towed down the river to sea by the Government steam launch. A common spell uttered at the launching of one of these ships runs as follows: —

“Ho, elders of the upper reaches,
Elders of the lower reaches,
Elders of the dry land,
Elders of the river-flats,
Assemble ye, O people, lords of hill and hill-foot,
Lords of cavern and hill-locked basin,
Lords of the deep primeval forest,
Lords of the river-bends,
Come on board this lanchang, assembling in your multitudes.
So may ye depart with the ebbing stream,
Depart on the passing breeze,
Depart in the yawning earth,
Depart in the red-dyed earth.
Go ye to the ocean which has no wave,
And the plain where no green herb grows,
And never return hither.
But if ye return hither,
Ye shall be consumed by the curse.
At sea ye shall get no drink,
Ashore ye shall get no food,
But gape in vain about the world.”[469 - W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (London, 1900), pp. 433-435. For other examples of sending away plague-laden boats in the Malay region see J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 181, 210; R. van Eck, “Schetsen van het eiland Bali,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, N.S., viii. (1879) p. 104; A. Bastian, Indonesien, i. 147; C. Hupe, “Korte verhandeling over de godsdienst, zeden, enz. der Dajakkers,” Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands Indië, 1846, dl. iii. 150; C. F. H. Campen, “De godsdienstbegrippen der Halmaherasche Alfoeren,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxvii. (1882) p. 441; Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 12, pp. 229-231; A. L. van Hasselt, Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra (Leyden, 1882), p. 98; C. M. Pleyte, “Ethnographische Beschrijving der Kei-Eilanden,” Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, x. (1893) p. 835; H. Ling Roth, “Low's Natives of Sarawak,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxii, (1893) p. 25; C. Snouck Hurgronje, De Atjehers (Batavia and Leyden, 1893-1894), i. 461 sq.; J. A. Jacobsen, Reisen in der Inselwelt des Banda-Meeres (Berlin, 1896), p. 110.]

Demons of sickness expelled in small ships in New Guinea, the Philippines, Tikopia, and the Nicobar Islands.

The practice of sending away diseases in boats is known outside the limits of the Malay region. Thus when smallpox raged among the Yabim of German New Guinea, they used to make a little model of a canoe with mast, sail, and rudder. Then they said to the small vessel, on which the spirit of smallpox was supposed to have taken his passage, “Bear him away to another village. When the people come forth to draw you ashore, give them ‘the thing’ and do to them what you have done to us.” Lest the spirit should be hungry on the voyage, they put some taro on board, and to make sure of getting rid of the disease, they wiped their hands on the tiny canoe, after which they let it drift away. It often happened that the wind or tide drove the vessel back to the place from which it started. Then there would be a deafening rub-a-dub of drums and blowing of shell-trumpets; and the little ship, or rather its invisible passenger, would be again apostrophized, “Do go away, you have already raged among us so that the air is poisoned with the stench of corpses.” If this time it sailed away, they would stand on the shore and watch it with glad hearts disappearing; then they would climb the trees to get a last glimpse of it till it vanished in the distance. After that they came down joyfully and said to each other, “We have had enough of it. The sickness has happily gone away.”[470 - H. Zahn, “Die Jabim,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (1911) pp. 329 sq.] When the Tagbanuas and other tribes of the Philippines suffered from epidemics, they used to make little models of ships, supply them with rice and fresh drinking water, and launch them on the sea, in order that the evil spirits might sail away in them.[471 - F. Blumentritt, “Über die Eingeborenen der Insel Palawan und der Inselgruppe der Talamianen,” Globus, lix. (1891) p. 183.] When the people of Tikopia, a small island in the Pacific, to the north of the New Hebrides, were attacked by an epidemic cough, they made a little canoe and adorned it with flowers. Four sons of the principal chiefs carried it on their shoulders all round the island, accompanied by the whole population, some of whom beat the bushes, while others uttered loud cries. On returning to the spot from which they had set out, they launched the canoe on the sea.[472 - J. Dumont D'Urville, Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse, sur la corvette Astrolabe (Paris, 1832-1833), v. 311.] In the Nicobar Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, when there is much sickness in a village or no fish are caught, the blame is laid upon the spirits. They must be propitiated with offerings. All relations and friends are invited, a huge pig is roasted, and the best of it is eaten, but some parts are offered to the shades. The heap of offerings remains in front of the house till it is carried away by the rising tide. Then the priests, their faces reddened with paint and swine's blood, pretend to catch the demon of disease, and after a hand-to-hand tussle, force him into a model boat, made of leaves and decked with garlands, which is then towed so far to sea that neither wind nor tide is likely to drive it back to the shore.[473 - Roepstorff, “Ein Geisterboot der Nicobaresen,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (1881), p. 401; W. Svoboda, “Die Bewohner des Nikobaren-Archipels,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, vi. (1893) pp. 10 sq.] In Annam, when the population of a village has been decimated by cholera, they make a raft and lade it with offerings of money and food, such as a sucking pig, bananas, and oranges. Sticks of incense also smoke on the floating altar; and when all is ready and earnest prayers have been uttered, the raft is abandoned to the current of the river. The people hope that the demon of cholera, allured and gratified by these offerings, will float away on the raft and trouble them no more.[474 - P. Denjoy, “An-nam, Médecins et Sorciers, Remèdes et Superstitions,” etc., Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, v. (1894) pp. 409 sq. Compare É. Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos (Paris, 1895-1897), i. 121. For Siamese applications of the same principle to the cure of individuals, see A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. (Jena, 1867) pp. 295 sq., 485 sq.]

Demons of sickness expelled in the form of animals in India.

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one 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, at some shrine to the east of the village. Chickens daubed 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 tried, and last of all pigs.[475 - Panjab Notes and Queries, i. p. 48, § 418 (January, 1884).] When cholera rages among the Bhars, Malians, and Kurmis 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.[476 - Id., iii. p. 81, § 373 (February 1886).] Sometimes the buffalo is marked with a red pigment and driven to the next village, where he carries the plague with him.[477 - W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 142. Bulls are used as scapegoats for cholera in Cashmeer (H. G. M. Murray-Aynsley, in Folk-lore, iv. (1893) pp. 398 sq.).] The people of the city and cantonments of Sagar being afflicted with a violent influenza, General Sir William Sleeman received a request from the old Queen Dowager of Sagar “to allow of a noisy religious procession for the purpose of imploring deliverance from this great calamity. Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to the noise by ‘raising their voices in psalmody,’ beating upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging firearms where they could get them; and before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by general subscription, in order that every family might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out for eight miles, where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned, the disease, it was said, must return with it, and the ceremony be performed over again… It was, however, subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat, and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy pūjās in cases of epidemics.”[478 - Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of Indian Official, New Edition (Westminster, 1893), i. 203.] Once, when influenza was raging in Pithoria, a village to the north-west of Sagar, a man had a small carriage made, after a plan of his own, for a pair of scapegoats, which were harnessed to it and driven to a wood at some distance, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats never returned; had they done so, it was affirmed that the disease must have come back with them.[479 - Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman, op. cit. i. 198.]

Goats and cocks employed as scapegoats in various parts of India.

The use of a scapegoat is not uncommon in the hills of the Eastern Ghats. In 1886, during a severe outbreak of smallpox, the people of Jepur did reverence to a goat, marched it to the Ghats, and let it loose on the plains.[480 - F. Fawcett, “On the Saoras (or Savaras), an Aboriginal Hill People of the Eastern Ghats,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 213, note.] In Southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice covered with red powder, a wooden doll representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera had thus been transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony and passed on the scourge to its neighbours, and so on through a number of villages.[481 - Mr. Y. V. Athalye, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 37.] Among the Korwas of Mirzapur, when cholera has broken out, the priest offers a black cock or, if the disease is very malignant, a black goat, at the shrine of the local deity, and then drives the animal away in the direction of some other village. But it has not gone far before he overtakes it, kills it, and eats it; which he may do with perfect safety in virtue of his sacred office. Again, when cholera is raging among the Pataris, an aboriginal Dravidian race of South Mirzapur, the wizard and the village elders feed a black cock with grain and drive it beyond the boundaries, ordering the fowl to take the disease away with it. A little oil, red lead, and a spangle worn by a woman on her forehead are usually fastened to the bird's head before it is let loose. The cost of purchasing the cock is defrayed by public subscription. When such a bird of ill-omen appears in a village, the priest takes it to the shrine of the local deity and sacrifices it there; but sometimes he merely bows before it at the shrine and passes it on to some other village. If a murrain attacks their cattle, the Kharwars of Northern India take a black cock and put red lead on its head, antimony on its eyes, a spangle on its forehead, and a pewter bangle on its leg; thus arrayed they let it loose, calling out to the disease, “Mount on the fowl and go elsewhere into the ravines and thickets; destroy the sin.” Perhaps, as has been suggested, this tricking out of the bird with women's ornaments may be a relic of some grosser form of expiation in which a human being was sacrificed or banished.[482 - W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 169 sq.; id., Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), iii. 445.] Charms of this sort in India no doubt date from a remote antiquity. An ancient Indian book of magic, known as the Kausika Sutra, describes a ceremony of letting loose against a hostile army a white-footed ewe in which the power of disease was believed to be incarnate.[483 - Kausika Sutra, xiv. 22 (W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual, Amsterdam, 1900, p. 29); H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), p. 498.] In the same treatise we read of a mode of getting rid of ill-luck by fastening a hook to the left leg of a crow, attaching a sacrificial cake to the hook, and then letting the bird fly away in a south-westerly direction, while the priest or magician recites as usual the appropriate formula.[484 - Kausika Sutra, xviii. 16 (W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual, pp. 44 sq.).]

Cows, toads, and llamas as scapegoats in Africa and America.

Amongst the Dinkas, a pastoral people of the White 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 a prey to ravening beasts. Then the women return in silence and without looking behind them; were they to cast a backward glance, they imagine that the ceremony would have no effect.[485 - Dom Daniel Sour Dharim Dena (a Dinka convert), in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, lx. (1888) pp. 57 sq.] When influenza broke out in a virulent form among the negroes of Togoland during the winter of 1892, the natives set the trouble down to the machinations of evil spirits, who must be expelled the country. The principal instrument of expulsion was a fat toad, which was dragged through the streets of every town or village, followed by an elder who sprinkled holy water to right and left. All the evil was thus concentrated in the toad, which was finally thrown away into the forest. Thus the natives expected to rid the village of the influenza.[486 - H. Seidel, “Krankheit, Tod, und Begräbnis bei den Togonegern,” Globus, lxxii. (1897) p. 24.] 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.[487 - D. Forbes, “On the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru,” Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. ii. No. 3 (October, 1870), p. 237.]