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

(London, 1881), pp. 415, 421; W. G. Black, Folk-medicine (London, 1883), pp. 67 sq.; W. Wollaston Groome, “Suffolk Leechcraft,” Folk-lore, vi. (1895) pp. 123 sq.; E. S. Hartland, in Folk-lore, vii. (1896) pp. 303-306; County Folk-lore, Suffolk, edited by Lady E. C. Gurdon (London, 1893) pp. 26-28; Beatrix A. Wherry, “Miscellaneous Notes from Monmouthshire,” Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) p. 65; Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), p. 320. Sometimes the tree was an oak instead of an ash (M. Trevelyan, l. c.). To ensure the success of the cure various additional precautions are sometimes recommended, as that the ash should be a maiden, that is a tree that has never been topped or cut; that the split should be made east and west; that the child should be passed into the tree by a maiden and taken out on the other side by a boy; that the child should always be passed through head foremost (but according to others feet foremost), and so forth. In Surrey we hear of a holly-tree being used instead of an ash (Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, xi. Jan. – Jun. 1885, p. 46).]

The practice in Sussex.

Down to the second half of the nineteenth century the remedy was still in common use at Fittleworth and many other places in Sussex. The account of the Sussex practice and belief is notable because it brings out very clearly the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the ruptured child and the tree through which it has been passed. We are told that the patient “must be passed nine times every morning on nine successive days at sunrise through a cleft in a sapling ash-tree, which has been so far given up by the owner of it to the parents of the child, as that there is an understanding it shall not be cut down during the life of the infant who is to be passed through it. The sapling must be sound at heart, and the cleft must be made with an axe. The child on being carried to the tree must be attended by nine persons, each of whom must pass it through the cleft from west to east. On the ninth morning the solemn ceremony is concluded by binding the tree lightly with a cord, and it is supposed that as the cleft closes the health of the child will improve. In the neighbourhood of Petworth some cleft ash-trees may be seen, through which children have very recently been passed. I may add, that only a few weeks since, a person who had lately purchased an ash-tree standing in this parish, intending to cut it down, was told by the father of a child, who had some time before been passed through it, that the infirmity would be sure to return upon his son if it were felled. Whereupon the good man said, he knew that such would be the case; and therefore he would not fell it for the world.”[471 - “Some West Sussex superstitions lingering in 1868, collected by Charlotte Latham, at Fittleworth,” Folk-lore Record, i. (1878) pp. 40 sq.]

Sick children passed through cleft trees, especially oaks, as a cure in Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece.

A similar cure for various diseases, but especially for rupture and rickets, has been commonly practised in other parts of Europe, as Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden; but in these countries the tree employed for the purpose is usually not an ash but an oak; sometimes a willow-tree is allowed or even prescribed instead. With these exceptions the practice and the belief are nearly the same on the Continent as in England: a young oak is split longitudinally and the two sides held forcibly apart while the sick child is passed through the cleft; then the opening in the tree is closed, and bound up, and it is believed that as the cleft in the tree heals by the parts growing together again, so the rupture in the child will be simultaneously cured. It is often laid down that the ceremony must be performed in the strictest silence; sometimes the time prescribed is before sunrise, and sometimes the child must be passed thrice through the cleft.[472 - For the custom in Germany and Austria, see J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 975 sq.; A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube

(Berlin, 1869), p. 317, § 503; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Nord-deutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), pp. 443 sq.; J. F. L. Woeste, Volksüberlieferungen in der Grafschaft Mark (Iserlohn, 1848), p. 54; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben (Stuttgart, 1852), p. 390, § 56; F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie (Munich, 1848-1855), ii. 301; Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, ii. (Munich, 1863) p. 255; J. A. E. Köhler, Volksbrauch, Aberglauben, Sagen und andre alte Ueberlieferungen im Voigtlande (Leipsic, 1867), pp. 415 sq.; L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1867), i. 72 sq., § 88; K. Bartsch, Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Mecklenburg (Vienna, 1879-1880), ii. 290 sq., § 1447; J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Vienna, 1885), p. 264; P. Wagler, Die Eiche in alter und neuer Zeit, i. (Wurzen, 1891) pp. 21-23. As to the custom in France, see Marcellus, De medicamentis, xxxiii. 26 (where the tree is a cherry); J. B. Thiers, Traité des Superstitions (Paris, 1679), pp. 333 sq.; A. de Nore, Coutumes, Mythes et Traditions des Provinces de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), p. 231; L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, in Bullétins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, iv. série, i. (1890) pp. 895-902; id., Superstitions et Survivances (Paris, 1896), i. 523 sqq. As to the custom in Denmark and Sweden, see J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 976; H. F. Feilberg, “Zwieselbäume nebst verwandtem Aberglauben in Skandinavien,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) pp. 42 sqq. In Mecklenburg it is sometimes required that the tree should have been split by lightning (K. Bartsch, l. c.). The whole subject of passing sick people through narrow apertures as a mode of cure has been well handled in an elegant little monograph (Un Vieux Rite médical, Paris, 1892) by Monsieur H. Gaidoz, who rightly rejects the theory that all such passages are symbols of a new birth. But I cannot agree with him in thinking that the essence of the rite consists in the transference of the disease from the person to the tree; rather, it seems to me, the primary idea is that of interposing an impassable barrier between a fugitive and his pursuing foe, though no doubt the enemy thus left behind is apparently supposed to adhere to the further side of the obstacle (whether tree, stone, or what not) through which he cannot pass. However, the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the sufferer and the tree through which he has been passed certainly favours the view that he has left some portion of himself attached to the tree. But in this as in many similar cases, the ideas in the minds of the persons who practise the custom are probably vague, confused, and inconsistent; and we need not attempt to define them precisely. Compare also R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (Stuttgart, 1878), pp. 31 sq.; E. S. Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (London, 1894-1896), ii. 146 sq.; L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, Superstitions et Survivances (Paris, 1896), i. 523-540.] In Oldenburg and Mecklenburg they say that the cure should be performed on St. John's Eve (Midsummer Eve) by three men named John, who assist each other in holding the split oak-sapling open and passing the child through it.[473 - L. Strackerjan, l. c.; K. Bartsch, l. c.] Some people, however, prefer Good Friday or Christmas Eve as the season for the performance of the ceremony.[474 - E. Meier, l. c.; Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, ii. 255; A. Wuttke, l. c.] In Denmark copper coins are laid as an offering at the foot of the tree through which sick persons have been passed; and threads, ribbons, or bandages which have been worn by the sufferers are tied to a branch of the tree.[475 - H. F. Feilberg, “Zwieselbäume nebst verwandtem Aberglauben in Skandinavien,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 44.] In the Greek island of Ceos, when a child is sickly, the parents carry it out into the country “and the father selects a young oak; this they split up from the root, then the father is assisted by another man in holding the tree open whilst the mother passes the child three times through, and then they bind up the tree well, cover it all over with manure, and carefully water it for forty days. In the same fashion they bind up the child for a like period, and after the lapse of this time they expect that it will be quite well.”[476 - J. Theodore Bent, The Cyclades (London, 1885), pp. 457 sq.]

Sympathetic relation thought to exist between the child and the tree through which it has been passed. The disease is apparently thought to be left behind on the farther side of the cleft tree.

In Mecklenburg, as in England, the sympathetic relation thus established between the tree and the child is so close that if the tree is cut down the child will die.[477 - H. Ploss, Das Kind

(Leipsic, 1884), ii. 221.] In the island of Rügen people believe that when a person who has been thus cured of rupture dies, his soul passes into the same oak-tree through which his body was passed in his youth.[478 - R. Baier, “Beiträge von der Insel Rügen,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, ii. (1855) p. 141.] Thus it seems that in ridding himself of the disease the sufferer is supposed to transfer a certain vital part of his person to the tree so that it is impossible to injure the tree without at the same time injuring the man; and in Rügen this partial union is thought to be completed by the transmigration of the man's soul at death into the tree. Apparently the disease is conceived as something physical, which clings to the patient but can be stripped off him and left behind on the farther side of the narrow aperture through which he has forced his way; when the aperture is closed by the natural growth of the tree, the door is as it were shut against the disease, which is then unable to pursue and overtake the sufferer. Hence the idea at the root of the custom is not so much that the patient has transferred his ailment to the tree, as that the tree forms an impervious barrier between him and the malady which had hitherto afflicted him. This interpretation is confirmed by the following parallels.

Creeping through cleft trees to get rid of spirits in Armenia and Nias. Among the Bella Coola Indians mourners creep through cleft trees to get rid of the ghost.

In those parts of Armenia which are covered with forests, many great and ancient trees are revered as sacred and receive marks of homage. The people burn lights before them, fumigate them with incense, sacrifice cocks and wethers to them, and creep through holes in their trunks or push lean and sickly children through them “in order to put a stop to the influence of evil spirits.”[479 - Manuk Abeghian, Der armenische Volksglaube (Leipsic, 1899), p. 58.] Apparently, they think that evil spirits cannot creep through the cleft in the holy tree, and therefore that the sick who have effected the passage are safe from their demoniacal pursuers. The same conception of a fissure in a tree as an obstacle placed in the path of pursuing spirits meets us in a number of savage customs. Thus in the island of Nias, when a man is in training for the priesthood, he has to be introduced to the various spirits between whom and mankind it will be his office to mediate. A priest takes him to an open window, and while the drums are beating points out to him the great spirit in the sun who calls away men to himself through death; for it is needful that the future priest should know him from whose grasp he will often be expected to wrest the sick and dying. In the evening twilight he is led to the graves and shewn the envious spirits of the dead, who also are ever drawing away the living to their own shadowy world. Next day he is conducted to a river and shewn the spirit of the waters; and finally they take him up to a mountain and exhibit to him the spirits of the mountains, who have diverse shapes, some appearing like swine, others like buffaloes, others like goats, and others again like men with long hair on their bodies. When he has seen all this, his education is complete, but on his return from the mountain the new priest may not at once enter his own house. For the people think that, were he to do so, the dangerous spirits by whom he is still environed would stay in the house and visit both the family and the pigs with sickness. Accordingly he betakes himself to other villages and passes several nights there, hoping that the spirits will leave him and settle on the friends who receive him into their houses; but naturally he does not reveal the intention of his visits to his hosts. Lastly, before he enters his own dwelling, he looks out for some young tree by the way, splits it down the middle, and then creeps through the fissure, in the belief that any spirit which may still be clinging to him will thus be left sticking to the tree.[480 - Fr. Kramer, “Der Götzendienst der Niasser,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxxiii. (1890) pp. 478-480; H. Sundermann, Die Insel Nias und die Mission daselbst (Barmen, 1905), pp. 81-83. According to the latter writer the intention of passing through the cleft stick is “to strip off from himself (von zich abzustreifen) the last spirit that may have followed him.” The notion that the sun causes death by drawing away the souls of the living is Indian. See The Satapatha Brâhmana, ii. 3. 3. 7-8, translated by Julius Eggeling, Part I. (Oxford, 1882) p. 343 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii.): “Now yonder burning (sun) doubtless is no other than Death; and because he is Death, therefore the creatures that are on this side of him die. But those that are on the other side of him are the gods, and they are therefore immortal… And the breath of whomsoever he (the sun) wishes he takes and rises, and that one dies.”] Again, among the Bilqula or Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia “the bed of a mourner must be protected against the ghost of the deceased. His male relatives stick a thorn-bush into the ground at each corner of their beds. After four days these are thrown into the water. Mourners must rise early and go into the woods, where they stick four thorn-bushes into the ground, at the corners of a square, in which they cleanse themselves by rubbing their bodies with cedar branches. They also swim in ponds. After swimming they cleave four small trees and creep through the clefts, following the course of the sun. This they do on four subsequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day. Mourners cut their hair short. The hair that has been cut off is burnt. If they should not observe these regulations, it is believed that they would dream of the deceased.”[481 - Fr. Boas, in Seventh Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 13 (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association, Cardiff meeting, 1891). The Shuswap Indians of the same region also fence their beds against ghosts with a hedge of thorn bushes. See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 142.] To the savage, who fails to distinguish the visions of sleep from the appearances of waking life, the apparition of a dead man in a dream is equivalent to the actual presence of the ghost; and accordingly he seeks to keep off the spiritual intruder, just as he might a creature of flesh and blood, by fencing his bed with thorn-bushes. Similarly the practice of creeping through four cleft trees is clearly an attempt to shake off the clinging ghost and leave it adhering to the trees, just as in Nias the future priest hopes to rid himself in like manner of the dangerous spirits who have dogged his steps from the mountains and the graves.

The Madangs of Borneo creep through a cleft stick after a funeral in order to rid themselves of the ghost.

This interpretation of the custom is strongly confirmed by a funeral ceremony which Dr. Charles Hose witnessed at the chief village of the Madangs, a tribe of Kayans who occupy a hitherto unexplored district in the heart of Borneo. “Just across the river from where we were sitting,” says Dr. Hose, “was the graveyard, and there I witnessed a funeral procession as the day was drawing to a close. The coffin, which was a wooden box made from a tree-trunk, was decorated with red and black patterns in circles, with two small wooden figures of men placed at either end; it was lashed with rattans to a long pole, and by this means was lifted to the shoulders of the bearers, who numbered thirteen in all, and who then carried it to the burying-ground. After the mourners had all passed over to the graveyard, a man quickly cut a couple of small sticks, each five feet long and about an inch in diameter. One of these he split almost the whole way down, and forced the unsplit end into the ground, when the upper part opened like a V, leaving sufficient room for each person to pass through. He next split the top of the other stick, and, placing another short stick in the cleft, made a cross, which he also forced into the ground. The funeral procession climbed the mound on which the cemetery was situated, passing through the V of the cleft stick in single file. As soon as the coffin had been placed on the stage erected for the purpose, the people commenced their return, following on one another's heels as quickly as possible, each spitting out the words, ‘Pit balli krat balli jat tesip bertatip!’ (‘Keep back, and close out all things evil, and sickness’) as they passed through the V-shaped stick. The whole party having left the graveyard, the gate was closed by the simple process of tying the cleft ends of the stick together, and a few words were then said to the cross-stick, which they call ngring, or the wall that separates the living from the dead. All who had taken part in the ceremony then went and bathed before returning to their homes, rubbing their skins with rough pebbles, the old Mosaic idea of the uncleanness of the dead, as mentioned in Numbers (chap. xix.), evidently finding a place among their religious beliefs. It is apparently a great relief to their minds to think that they can shut out the spirit of the deceased. They believe that the spirit of the dead is not aware that life has left the body until a short time after the coffin has been taken to the graveyard, and then not until the spirit has had leisure to notice the clothes, weapons, and other articles belonging to its earthly estate, which are placed with the coffin. But before this takes place the gate has been closed.”[482 - C. Hose, “In the heart of Borneo,” The Geographical Journal, xvi. (1900) pp. 45 sq. Compare C. Hose and W. McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (London, 1912), ii. 36 sq., where, after describing the ceremony of passing through the cloven stick, the writers add: “In this way the Kayans symbolically prevent any of the uncanny influences of the graveyard following the party back to the house; though they do not seem to be clear as to whether it is the ghosts of the dead, or the Toh of the neighbourhood, or those which may have contributed to his death, against whom these precautions are taken.”]

The cleft stick or tree through which a person passes is a barrier to part him from a dangerous foe; the closing of the cleft is like shutting the door in the face of a pursuer. But combined with this in the case of ruptured patients seems to be the idea that the rupture heals sympathetically as the cleft in the tree closes. Analogous Roman cure for dislocation.

Here the words uttered by the mourners in passing through the cloven stick shew clearly that they believe the stick to act as a barrier or fence, on the further side of which they leave behind the ghost or other dangerous spirit whose successful pursuit might entail sickness and death on the survivors. Thus the passage of these Madang mourners through the cleft stick is strictly analogous to the passage of ruptured English children through a cleft ash-tree. Both are simply ways of leaving an evil thing behind. Similarly the subsequent binding up of the cloven stick in Borneo is analogous to the binding up of the cloven ash-tree in England. Both are ways of barricading the road against the evil which is dogging your steps; having passed through the doorway you slam the door in the face of your pursuer. Yet it seems probable that the intention of binding up the cleft in a tree through which a ruptured patient has been passed is not merely that of shutting the door on the malady conceived as a personal being; combined with this idea is perhaps the notion that in virtue of the law of magical homoeopathy the rupture in the body of the sufferer will close up exactly in the same measure as the cleft in the tree closes up through the force of bandages and of natural growth. That this shade of meaning attaches to the custom is rendered probable by a comparison of an ancient Roman cure for dislocation, which has been preserved for us by the grave authority of the elder Cato. He recommended that a green reed, four or five feet long, should be taken, split down the middle, and held by two men to the dislocated bones while a curious and now unintelligible spell was recited; then, when the spell had been recited and the aperture in the reed had closed, the reed was to be tied to the dislocated limb, and a perfect cure might be expected. Apparently it was supposed that just as the two sides of the split reed came together and coalesced after being held apart, so the dislocated bones would come together and fit into their proper places.[483 - Cato, De agri cultura, 159 (pp. 106 sq. ed. H. Keil, Leipsic, 1884): “Luxum siquod est, hac cantione sanum fiet. Harundinem prende tibi viridem P. III. aut quinque longam, mediam diffinde, et duo homines teneant ad coxendices. Incipe cantare in alio s. f. moetas vaeta daries dardaries asiadarides una petes, usque dum coeant. Motas vaeta daries dardares astataries dissunapiter, usque dum coeant. Ferrum insuper jactato. Ubi coierint et altera alteram tetigerint, id manu prehende et dextera sinistra praecide, ad luxum aut ad fracturam alliga, sanum fiet.” The passage is obscure and perhaps corrupt. It is not clear whether “usque dum coeant” and “ubi coierint” refer to the drawing together of the bones or of the split portions of the reed, but apparently the reference is to the reed. The charm is referred to by Pliny, Nat. Hist., xvii. 267: “Quippe cum averti grandines carmine credant plerique, cujus verba inserere non equidem serio ausim, quamquam a Catone proditis contra luxata membra jungenda harundinum fissurae.” Compare J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

i. 186, ii. 1031 sq.]

Other examples of creeping through narrow openings after a death.

But the usual idea in passing through a narrow aperture as a cure or preventive of evil would seem to be simply that of giving the slip to a dangerous pursuer. With this intention, doubtless, the savage Thays of Tonquin repair after a burial to the banks of a stream and there creep through a triangle formed by leaning two reeds against each other, while the sorcerer souses them with dirty water. All the relations of the deceased must wash their garments in the stream before they return home, and they may not set foot in the house till they have shorn their hair at the foot of the ladder. Afterwards the sorcerer comes and sprinkles the whole house with water for the purpose of expelling evil spirits.[484 - Pinabel, “Notes sur quelques peuplades dépendant du Tong-King,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Septième Série, v. (Paris, 1884) p. 430; A. Bourlet, “Funérailles chez les Thay,” Anthropos, viii. (1913) p. 45.] Here again we cannot doubt that the creeping through the triangle of reeds is intended to rid the mourners of the troublesome ghost. So when the Kamtchatkans had disposed of a corpse after their usual fashion by throwing it to the dogs to be devoured, they purified themselves as follows. They went into the forest and cut various roots which they bent into rings, and through these rings they crept twice. Afterwards they carried the rings back to the forest and flung them away westward. The Koryaks, a people of the same region, burn their dead and hold a festival in honour of the departed a year after the death. At this festival, which takes place on the spot where the corpse was burned, or, if that is too far off, on a neighbouring height, they sacrifice two young reindeer which have never been in harness, and the sorcerer sticks a great many reindeer horns in the earth, believing that thereby he is dispatching a whole herd of these animals to their deceased friend in the other world. Then they all hasten home, and purify themselves by passing between two poles planted in the ground, while the sorcerer strikes them with a stick and adjures death not to carry them off.[485 - S. Krascheninnikow, Beschreibung des Landes Kamtschatka (Lemgo, 1766), pp. 268, 282.] The Tokoelawi in the interior of Central Celebes hold a great sacrificial festival on the eighth day after the death of a man or the ninth day after the death of a woman. When the guests return homewards after the festival they pass under two poles placed in a slanting direction against each other, and they may not look round at the house where the death occurred. “In this way they take a final leave of the soul of the deceased. Afterwards no more sacrifices are offered to the soul.”[486 - N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Parigi, Sigi en Lindoe,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlii. (1898) p. 502. The poles are of a certain plant or tree called bomba.] Among the Toboengkoe, another tribe in the interior of Central Celebes, when a man buries his wife, he goes to the grave by a different road from that along which the corpse is carried; and on certain days afterwards he bathes, and on returning from the bath must pass through a teepee-shaped erection, which is formed by splitting a pole up the middle and separating the two split pieces except at the top. “This he must do in order that his second wife, if he has one, may not soon die.”[487 - Alb. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv. (1900) p. 223.] Here the notion probably is that the jealous ghost of the dead wife seeks to avenge herself on her living rival by carrying off her soul with her to deadland. Hence to prevent this catastrophe the husband tries to evade the ghost, first by going to the grave along a different path, and second by passing under a cleft stick, through which as usual the spirit cannot follow him.

The intention of the custom probably is to escape from the ghost of the dead.

In the light of the foregoing customs, as well as of a multitude of ceremonies observed for a similar purpose in all parts of the world,[488 - For examples of these ceremonies I may refer to my article, “On certain burial customs as illustrative of the primitive theory of the soul,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886) pp. 64 sqq.] we may safely assume that when people creep through rings after a death or pass between poles after a sacrifice to the dead, their intention simply is to interpose a barrier between themselves and the ghost; they make their way through a narrow pass or aperture through which they hope that the ghost will not be able to follow them. To put it otherwise, they conceive that the spirit of the dead is sticking to them like a burr, and that like a burr it may be rubbed or scraped off and left adhering to the sides of the opening through which they have squeezed themselves.

Passing through an archway in order to escape from demons. Crawling under an arch of bramble as a cure for various maladies. Crawling under arches of various sorts as a cure or preventive of sickness.

Similarly, when a pestilence is raging among the Koryaks, they kill a dog, wind its guts about two poles, and pass between the poles,[489 - S. Krascheninnikow, Beschreibung des Landes Kamtschatka (Lemgo, 1766), pp. 277 sq.] doubtless for the sake of giving the slip to the demon of the plague in the same way that they give the slip to the ghost. When the Kayans of Borneo have been dogged by an evil spirit on a journey and are nearing their destination, they fashion a small archway of boughs, light a fire under it, and pass in single file under the archway and over the fire, spitting into the fire as they pass. By this ceremony, we are told, “they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free from all baleful influences.”[490 - W. H. Furness, Folk-lore in Borneo, a Sketch, p. 28 (Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 1899, privately printed). Compare id., The Home-life of Borneo Head-hunters (Philadelphia, 1902), p. 28: “Here a halt for final purification was made. An arch of boughs about five feet high was erected on the beach, and beneath it a fire was kindled, and then Tama Bulan, holding a young chicken, which he waved and brushed over every portion of the arch, invoked all evil spirits which had been accompanying us, and forbade them to follow us further through the fire. The fowl was then killed, its blood smeared all over the archway and sprinkled in the fire; then, led by Tama Bulan, the whole party filed under the arch, and as they stepped over the fire each one spat in it vociferously and immediately took his place in the boats.”] Here, to make assurance doubly sure, a fire as well as an archway is interposed between the travellers and the dreadful beings who are walking unseen behind. To crawl under a bramble which has formed an arch by sending down a second root into the ground, is an English and Welsh cure for whooping-cough, rheumatism, boils, and other complaints. In some parts of the west of England they say that to get rid of boils the thing to do is to crawl through such a natural arch nine times against the sun; but in Devonshire the patient should creep through the arch thrice with the sun, that is from east to west. When a child is passed through it for whooping-cough, the operators ought to say:

“In bramble, out cough,
Here I leave the whooping-cough.”[491 - T. F. Thiselton Dyer, English Folk-lore (London, 1884), pp. 171 sq.; W. G. Black, Folk-medicine (London, 1883), p. 70; R. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, Third Edition (London, 1881), pp. 412, 415; Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), p. 320.]

In Perigord and other parts of France the same cure is employed for boils.[492 - A. de Nore, Coutumes, Mythes et Traditions des Provinces de France (Paris and Lyons, 1846), p. 152; H. Gaidoz, Un Vieux Rite médical (Paris, 1892), pp. 7 sq.] In Bulgaria, when a person suffers from a congenital malady such as scrofula, a popular cure is to take him to a neighbouring village and there make him creep naked thrice through an arch, which is formed by inserting the lower ends of two vine branches in the ground and joining their upper ends together. When he has done so, he hangs his clothes on a tree, and dons other garments. On his way home the patient must also crawl under a ploughshare, which is held high enough to let him pass.[493 - A. Strausz, Die Bulgaren (Leipsic, 1898), p. 414.] Further, when whooping-cough is prevalent in a Bulgarian village, an old woman will scrape the earth from under the root of a willow-tree. Then all the children of the village creep through the opening thus made, and a thread from the garment of each of them is hung on the willow. Adults sometimes go through the same ceremony after recovering from a dangerous illness.[494 - A. Strausz, op. cit. p. 404. As to the Bulgarian custom of creeping through a tunnel in a time of epidemic, see above, vol. i. pp. 282-284.] Similarly, when sickness is rife among some of the villages to the east of Lake Nyassa, the inhabitants crawl through an arch formed by bending a wand and inserting the two ends in the ground. By way of further precaution they wash themselves on the spot with medicine and water, and then bury the medicine and the evil influence together in the earth. The same ceremony is resorted to as a means of keeping off evil spirits, wild beasts, and enemies.[495 - Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa (London, 1874), i. 60.]

Custom in Uganda of causing a sick man to pass through a cleft stick or a narrow opening in the doorway.

In Uganda “sometimes a medicine-man directed a sick man to provide an animal, promising that he would come and transfer the sickness to the animal. The medicine-man would then select a plantain-tree near the house, kill the animal by it, and anoint the sick man with its blood, on his forehead, on each side of his chest, and on his legs above the knees. The plantain-tree selected had to be one that was about to bear fruit, and the medicine-man would split the stem from near the top to near the bottom, leaving a few inches not split both at the top and at the bottom; the split stem would be held open so that the sick man could step through it, and in doing so he would leave his clothing at the plantain-tree, and would run into the house without looking back. When he entered the house, new clothes would be given him to wear. The plantain, the clothing, and meat would be carried away by the medicine-man, who would deposit the plantain-tree on waste land, but would take the meat and clothing for himself. Sometimes the medicine-man would kill the animal near the hut, lay a stout stick across the threshold, and narrow the doorway by partially filling it with branches of trees; he would then put some of the blood on either side of the narrow entrance, and some on the stick across the threshold, and would also anoint with it the sick man, who would be taken outside for the purpose. The patient would then re-enter the house, letting his clothing fall off, as he passed through the doorway. The medicine-man would carry away the branches, the stick, the clothing, and the meat. The branches and the stick he would cast upon waste land, but the meat and the clothing he would keep for himself.”[496 - Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 343. Compare id., “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) p. 126; id., “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 42 sq.] Here the notion of transferring the sickness to the animal is plainly combined with, we may almost say overshadowed by the notion that the ailment is left behind adhering to the cleft plantain-stem or to the stick and branches of the narrow opening through which the patient has made his way. That obviously is why the plantain-stem or the stick and branches are thrown away on waste land, lest they should infect other people with the sickness which has been transferred to them.

Similar custom practised by the Kai of New Guinea and the Looboos of Sumatra for the purpose of giving the slip to spiritual pursuers.

The Kai of German New Guinea attribute sickness to the agency either of ghosts or of sorcerers, but suspicion always falls at first on ghosts, who are deemed even worse than the sorcerers. To cure a sick man they will sometimes cleave a stick in the middle, leaving the two ends intact, and then oblige the sufferer to insert his head through the cleft. After that they stroke his whole body with the stick from head to foot. “The stick with the soul-stuff of the ghosts is then hurled away or otherwise destroyed, whereupon the sick man is supposed to recover.”[497 - Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 141 sq.] Here the ghosts who cause the sickness are clearly supposed to be scraped from the patient's body by means of the cleft stick, and to be thrown away or destroyed with the implement. The Looboos, a primitive tribe in the Mandailing district of Sumatra, stand in great fear of the wandering spirits of the dead (soemangots). But “they know all sorts of means of protecting themselves against the unwelcome visits of the spirits. For example, if a man has lost his way in the forest, he thinks that this is the work of such a spirit (soemangot), who dogs the wanderer and bedims his sight. So in order to throw the malignant spirit off the track he takes a rattan and splits it through the middle. By bending the rattan an opening is made, through which he creeps. After that the rattan is quickly stretched and the opening closes. By this procedure the spirit (so they think) cannot find the opening again and so cannot further follow his victim.”[498 - J. Kreemer, “De Loeboes in Mandailing,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indie, lxvi. (1912) p. 327.] Here therefore, the passage through a cleft stick is conceived in the clearest way as an escape from a spiritual pursuer, and the closing of the aperture when the fugitive has passed through it is nothing but the slamming of the door in the face of his invisible foe.

Passing through cleft sticks in connexion with puberty and circumcision.

A similar significance is probably to be attached to other cases of ceremonially passing through a cleft stick even where the intention of the rite is not expressly alleged. Thus among the Ovambo of German South-West Africa young women who have become marriageable perform a variety of ceremonies; among other things they dance in the large and the small cattle-kraal. On quitting the large cattle-kraal after the dance, and on entering and quitting the small cattle-kraal, they are obliged to pass, one after the other, through the fork of a cleft stick, of which the two sides are held wide open by an old man.[499 - Hermann Tönjes, Ovamboland, Land, Leute, Mission (Berlin, 1911), pp. 139 sq. The writer was unable to ascertain the meaning of the rite; the natives would only say that it was their custom.] Among the Washamba of German East Africa, when a boy has been circumcised, two women bring a long sugar-cane, which still bears its leaves. The cane is split at some distance from its upper and lower ends and the two sides are held apart so as to form a cleft or opening; at the lower end of the cleft a danga ring is fastened. The father and mother of the circumcised youth now place the sugar-cane between them, touch the ring with their feet, and then slip through the cleft; and after them the lad's aunt must also pass through the cleft sugar-cane.[500 - A. Karasek, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Waschambo,” Baessler-Archiv, i. (Leipsic and Berlin, 1911) p. 192.] In both these cases the passage through the cleft stick is probably intended to give the slip to certain dangerous spirits, which are apt to molest people at such critical seasons as puberty and circumcision.

Crawling through a ring or hoop as a cure or preventive of disease. Passing sheep through a hoop of rowan. Milking a cow through a natural wooden ring or a “witch's nest.”Passing sick persons or animals through a ring of yarn. Passing diseased children through a coil. Passing through a hemlock ring during an epidemic. Passing through a ring of red-hot iron to escape an evil spirit.

Again, the passage through a ring or hoop is resorted to for like reasons as a mode of curing or preventing disease. Thus in Sweden, when a natural ring has been found in a tree, it is carefully removed and treasured in the family; for sick and especially rickety children are healed by merely passing through it.[501 - H. F. Feilberg, “Zwieselbäume nebst verwandtem Aberglauben in Skandinavien,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) pp. 49 sq.] A young married woman in Sweden, who suffered from an infirmity, was advised by a wise woman to steal three branches of willow, make them into a hoop, and creep through it naked, taking care not to touch the hoop and to keep perfectly silent. The hoop was afterwards to be burnt. She carried out the prescription faithfully, and her faith was rewarded by a perfect cure.[502 - H. F. Feilberg, op. cit. p. 44.] No doubt her infirmity was thought to adhere to the hoop and to be burnt with it. Similarly in Scotland children who suffered from hectic fever and consumptive patients used to be healed by passing thrice through a circular wreath of woodbine, which was cut during the increase of the March moon and was let down over the body of the sufferer from the head to the feet. Thus Jonet Stewart cured sundry women by “taking ane garland of grene woodbynd, and causing the patient pas thryis throw it, quhilk thairefter scho cut in nyne pieces, and cast in the fyre.” Another wise woman transmitted the sick “throw are girth of woodbind thryis thre times, saying, ‘I do this in name of the Father, the Sone, and the Halie Ghaist.’ ”[503 - J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1834), p. 121; Ch. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1884-1886), iii. 239.] The Highlanders of Strathspey used to force all their sheep and lambs to pass through a hoop of rowan-tree on All Saints' Day and Beltane (the first of November and the first of May),[504 - John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, edited by A. Allardyce, (Edinburgh and London, 1888), ii. 454. Immediately after mentioning this custom the writer adds: “And in Breadalbane it is the custom for the dairymaid to drive the cattle to the sheals with a wand of that tree [the rowan] cut upon the day of removal, which is laid above the door until the cattle be going back again to the winter-town. This was reckoned a preservative against witchcraft.” As to the activity of witches and fairies on Hallowe'en and the first of May, see above, vol. i. pp. 226 sqq., 295; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 52 sqq.; J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1900), p. 18; id., Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), p. 270. As to the power of the rowan-tree to counteract their spells, see W. Gregor, Notes on the Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 188; J. C. Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish (London, 1891), pp. 97 sqq.; The Scapegoat, pp. 266 sq.] probably as a means of warding off the witches and fairies, who are especially dreaded at these seasons, and against whose malignant arts the rowan-tree affords an efficient protection. In Oldenburg when a cow gives little or no milk, they milk her through a hole in a branch. In Eversten they say that this should be done through a ring which an oak-tree has formed round the scar where a branch has been sawn off. Others say the beast should be milked through a “witch's nest,” that is, through the boughs of a birch-tree which have grown in a tangle. Such a “witch's nest” is also hung up in a pig's stye to protect the pig against witchcraft.[505 - L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg (Oldenburg, 1867), i. p. 364, § 241.] Hence the aim of milking a cow through a “witch's nest” or through a natural wooden ring is no doubt to deliver the poor creature from an artful witch who has been draining away the milk into her own pail, as witches are too apt to do. Again, in Oldenburg sick children, and also adults and animals, are passed through a ring of rough unwashed yarn, just as it comes from the reel. To complete the cure you should throw a hot coal thrice through the ring, then spit through it thrice, and finally bury the yarn under a stone, where you leave it to rot. The writer who reports these remedies explains them as intended to strip the witchcraft, as you might say, from the bodies of the victims, whether human or animal, on whom the witch has cast her spell.[506 - L. Strackerjan, op. cit. i. p. 364, § 240.] Among the Lushais of Assam “five to ten days after the child is born its body is said to be covered with small pimples, its lips become black and its strength decreases. The family then obtain a particular kind of creeping plant called vawm, which they make into a coil. In the evening everything in the house that has a lid or covering is uncovered, and the child is thrice passed through this coil, which act is supposed to clear the child's skin and restore its strength. After this is finished, the parents go to bed and the pots or other receptacles are covered again by any of the other members of the family. The parents themselves must not replace any of these lids for fear that they might shut up the spirit of the child in them.”[507 - Lieutenant-Colonel H. W. G. Cole, “The Lushais,” in Census of India, 1911, vol. iii. Assam, Part i. Report (Shillong, 1912), p. 140.] When the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia fear the outbreak of an epidemic, a medicine-man takes a large ring of hemlock branches and causes every member of the tribe to pass through it. Each person puts his head through the ring and then moves the ring downwards over his body till it has almost reached his feet, when he steps out of it, right foot first. They think that this prevents the epidemic from breaking out.[508 - Franz Boas, in Eleventh Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 3 sq. (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Liverpool meeting, 1896).] In Asia Minor, “if a person is believed to be possessed by an evil spirit, one form of treatment is to heat an iron-chain red-hot, form it into a ring and pass the afflicted person through the opening, on the theory that the evil spirit cannot pass the hot chain, and so is torn from his victim and left behind.”[509 - Rev. G. E. White, Dean of Anatolia College, Survivals of Primitive Religion among the People of Asia Minor, p. 12 (paper read before the Victoria Institute or Philosophical Society of Great Britain, 6 Adelphi Terrace, Strand, London).] Here the intention of the passage through the aperture is avowedly to shake off a spiritual pursuer, who is deterred from further pursuit not only by the narrowness of the opening but by the risk of burning himself in the attempt to make his way through it.

Crawling through holed stones as a cure in Scotland and Cornwall.

But if the intention of these ceremonies is essentially to rid the performer of some harmful thing, whether a disease or a ghost or a demon, which is supposed to be clinging to him, we should expect to find that any narrow hole or opening would serve the purpose as well as a cleft tree or stick, an arch or ring of boughs, or a couple of posts fixed in the ground. And this expectation is not disappointed. On the coast of Morven and Mull thin ledges of rock may be seen pierced with large holes near the sea. Consumptive people used to be brought thither, and after the tops of nine waves had been caught in a dish and thrown on the patient's head, he was made to pass through one of the rifted rocks thrice in the direction of the sun.[510 - John Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 451 sq.] “On the farm of Crossapol in Coll there is a stone called Clach Thuill, that is, the Hole Stone, through which persons suffering from consumption were made to pass three times in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They took meat with them each time, and left some on the stone. The bird that took the food away had the consumption laid upon it. Similar stones, under which the patient can creep, were made use of in other islands.”[511 - J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), p. 100.] Here it is manifest that the patient left his disease behind him on the stone, since the bird which carried off the food from the stone caught the disease. In the Aberdeenshire river Dee, at Cambus o' May, near Ballater, there is a rock with a hole in it large enough to let a person pass through. Legend runs that childless women used to wade out to the stone and squeeze themselves through the hole. It is said that a certain noble lady tried the effect of the charm not very many years ago with indifferent success.[512 - Mr. James S. Greig, in a letter to me dated Lindean, Perth Road, Dundee, 17th August, 1913.] In the parish of Madern in Cornwall, near the village of Lanyon, there is a perforated stone called the Mên-an-tol or “holed stone,” through which people formerly crept as a remedy for pains in the back and limbs; and at certain times of the year parents drew their children through the hole to cure them of the rickets.[513 - W. Borlase, Antiquities, historical and monumental, of the County of Cornwall (London, 1769), pp. 177 sq.] The passage through the stone was also deemed a cure for scrofula, provided it was made against the sun and repeated three times or three times three.[514 - Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, Third Edition (London, 1881), pp. 176, 415.]

Crawling through holed stones as a cure in France.

Near the little town of Dourgne, not far from Castres, in Southern France, there is a mountain, and on the top of the mountain is a tableland, where a number of large stones may be seen planted in the ground about a cross and rising to a height of two to five feet above the ground. Almost all of them are pierced with holes of different sizes. From time immemorial people used to assemble at Dourgne and the neighbourhood every year on the sixth of August, the festival of St. Estapin. The palsied, the lame, the blind, the sick of all sorts, flocked thither to seek and find a cure for their various infirmities. Very early in the morning they set out from the villages where they had lodged or from the meadows where for want of better accommodation they had been forced to pass the night, and went on pilgrimage to the chapel of St. Estapin, which stands in a gorge at the southern foot of the mountain. Having gone nine times in procession round the chapel, they hobbled, limped, or crawled to the tableland on the top of the mountain. There each of them chose a stone with a hole of the requisite size and thrust his ailing member through the hole. For there are holes to suit every complaint; some for the head, some for the arm, some for the leg, and so on. Having performed this simple ceremony they were cured; the lame walked, the blind saw, the palsied recovered the use of their limbs, and so on. The chapel of the saint is adorned with the crutches and other artificial aids, now wholly superfluous, which the joyful pilgrims left behind them in token of their gratitude and devotion.[515 - Thomas-de-Saint-Mars, “Fête de Saint Estapin,” Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de France, i. (1817) pp. 428-430.] About two miles from Gisors, in the French department of Oise, there is a dolmen called Trie or Trie- Chateau, consisting of three upright stones with a fourth and larger stone laid horizontally on their tops. The stone which forms the back wall of the dolmen is pierced about the middle by an irregularly shaped hole, through which the people of the neighbourhood used from time immemorial to pass their sickly children in the firm belief that the passage through the stone would restore them to health.[516 - J. Deniker, “Dolmen et superstitions,” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, v. série, i. (1900) p. 111. Compare H. Gaidoz, Un Vieux Rite médical (Paris, 1892), pp. 26 sq.; G. Fouju, “Légendes et Superstitions préhistoriques,” Revue des Traditions Populaires, xiv. (1899) pp. 477 sq.]

Crawling through holed stones as a cure in Bavaria, Austria, and Greece.

In the church of St. Corona at the village of Koppenwal, in Lower Bavaria, there is a hole in the stone on which the altar rests. Through this hole, while service was going on, the peasants used to creep, believing that having done so they would not suffer from pains in their back at harvest.[517 - F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie (Munich, 1848-1855), ii. 48 § 61.] In the crypt of the old cathedral at Freising in Bavaria there is a tomb which is reputed to contain the relics of St. Nonnosius. Between a pillar of the tomb and the wall there is a narrow opening, through which persons afflicted with pains in the back creep in order to obtain thereby some mitigation of their pangs.[518 - F. Panzer, op. cit. ii. 431 sq.] In Upper Austria, above the Lake of Aber, which is a sheet of dark-green water nestling among wooded mountains, there stands the Falkenstein chapel of St. Wolfgang built close to the face of a cliff that rises from a little green dale. A staircase leads up from the chapel to a narrow, dark, dripping cleft in the rock, through which pilgrims creep in a stooping posture “in the belief that they can strip off their bodily sufferings or sins on the face of the rock.”[519 - Marie Andree-Eysn, Volkskundliches aus dem bayrisch-österreichischen Alpengebiet (Brunswick, 1910), pp. 1, 9, with the illustrations on pp. 10, 11.] Women with child also crawl through the hole, hoping thus to obtain an easy delivery.[520 - F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 431.] In the Greek island of Cythnos, when a child is sickly, the mother will take it to a hole in a rock about half an hour distant from Messaria. There she strips the child naked and pushes it through the hole in the rock, afterwards throwing away the old garments and clothing the child in new ones.[521 - J. Theodore Bent, The Cyclades (London, 1885), p. 437.]

Crawling through holed stones as a cure in Asia Minor. Passing through various narrow openings as a cure or preventive in India and Ireland.

Near Everek, on the site of the ancient Caesarea in Asia Minor, there is a rifted rock through which persons pass to rid themselves of a cough.[522 - E. H. Carnoy et J. Nicolaides, Traditions populaires de l'Asie Mineure (Paris, 1889), p. 338.] A writer well acquainted with Asia Minor has described how he visited “a well-known pool of water tucked away in a beautiful nook high up among the Anatolian mountains, and with a wide reputation for sanctity and healing powers. We arrived just as the last of a flock of three hundred sheep were being passed through a peculiar hole in the thin ledge of a huge rock to deliver them from a disease of the liver supposed to prevent the proper laying on of fat.”[523 - Rev. George E. White (of Marsovan, Turkey), Present Day Sacrifices in Asia Minor, p. 3 (reprinted from The Hartford Seminary Record, February 1906).] Among the Kawars of the Central Provinces in India a man who suffers from intermittent fever will try to cure it by walking through a narrow passage between two houses.[524 - Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, vii. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes (Allahabad, 1911), p. 46.] In a ruined church of St. Brandon, about ten miles from Dingle, in the west of Ireland, there is a narrow window, through which sick women pass thrice in order to be cured.[525 - So my friend Dr. G. W. Prothero informs me in a letter.] The Hindoos of the Punjaub think that the birth of a son after three girls is unlucky for the parents, and in order to avert the ill-luck they resort to a number of devices. Amongst other things they break the centre of a bronze plate and remove all but the rim; then they pass the luckless child through the bronze rim. Moreover, they make an opening in the roof of the room where the birth took place, and then pull the infant out through the opening; and further they pass the child under the sill of the door.[526 - Census of India, 1911, vol. xiv. Punjab, Part i. Report, by Pandit Harikishan Kaul (Lahore, 1912), p. 302.] By these passages through narrow apertures they apparently hope to rid the child of the ill-luck which is either pursuing it or sticking to it like a burr. For in this case, as in many similar ones, it might be hard to say whether the riddance is conceived as an escape from the pursuit of a maleficent spirit or as the abrasion of a dangerous substance which adheres to the person of the sufferer.

Crawling through holes in the ground as a cure for disease. Passing through the yoke of a chariot as a cure for skin disease.

Another way of ridding man and beast of the clinging infection of disease is to pass them through a hole dug in the ground. This mode of cure was practised in Europe during the Middle Ages, and has survived in Denmark down to modern times. In a sermon preached by St. Eloi, Bishop of Noyon, in the sixth century, he forbade the faithful to practise lustrations and to drive their sheep through hollow trees and holes in the earth, “because by this they seem to consecrate them to the devil.”[527 - H. Gaidoz, Un Vieux Rite médical (Paris, 1892), p. 10.] Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 690 a. d., decreed that “if any one for the health of his little son shall pass through a hole in the ground and then close it behind him with thorns, let him do penance for eleven days on bread and water.”[528 - H. Gaidoz, op. cit. p. 21.] Here the closing of the hole with thorns after the patient or his representative has passed through is plainly intended to barricade the narrow way against the pursuit of sickness personified as a demon; hence it confirms the general interpretation here given of these customs. Again, Burchard, Bishop of Worms, who died in a. d. 1025, repeated the same condemnation: “Hast thou done what certain women are wont to do? I mean those who have squalling babes; they dig the earth and pierce it, and through that hole they drag the babe, and they say that thus the squalling babe ceases to squall. If thou has done this or consented unto it, thou shalt do penance for fifteen days on bread and water.”[529 - H. Gaidoz, Un Vieux Rite médical (Paris, 1892), p. 21. Compare J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

ii. 975 sq.] At Fünen in Denmark, as late as the latter part of the nineteenth century, a cure for childish ailments was to dig up several sods, arrange them so as to form a hole, and then to pass the sick child through it.[530 - H. F. Feilberg, “Zwieselbäume nebst verwandtem Aberglaube in Skandinavien,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, vii. (1897) p. 45.] A simplified form of this cure is adopted in Jutland. At twelve o'clock on a Thursday night you go to a churchyard, dig up a circular piece of turf, and make a hole in it large enough to permit the passage through it of your infant progeny. Taking the sod with you, go home, salute nobody on the way, and speak to nobody. On getting to your house, take the child and pass it thrice through the turf from right to left; then take the turf back to the churchyard and replace it in position. If the turf takes root and grows afresh, the child will recover; but if the turf withers, there is no hope. Elsewhere it is at the hour of sunset rather than of midnight that people cut the turf in the churchyard. The same cure is applied to cattle which have been bewitched; though naturally in that case you must cut a much bigger turf and make a much bigger hole in it to let a horse or a cow through than is necessary for an infant.[531 - H. Gaidoz, Un Vieux Rite médical (Paris, 1892), pp. 22 sq., referring to Nyrop, in Dania, i. No. 1 (Copenhagen, 1890), pp. 5 sqq.] Here, again, the conception of a sympathetic relation, established between the sufferer and the thing which has rid him of his ailment, comes out clearly in the belief, that if the turf through which the child has been passed thrives, the child will thrive also, but that if the turf withers, the child will die. Among the Corannas, a people of the Hottentot race on the Orange River, “when a child recovers from a dangerous illness, a trench is dug in the ground, across the middle of which an arch is thrown, and an ox made to stand upon it; the child is then dragged under the arch. After this ceremony the animal is killed, and eaten by married people who have children, none else being permitted to participate of the feast.”[532 - Rev. John Campbell, Travels in South Africa, Second Journey (London, 1822), ii. 346. Among the same people “when a person is ill, they bring an ox to the place where he is laid. Two cuts are then made in one of its legs, extending down the whole length of it. The skin in the middle of the leg being raised up, the operator thrusts in his hand, to make way for that of the sick person, whose whole body is afterwards rubbed over with the blood of the animal. The ox after enduring this torment is killed, and those who are married and have children, as in the other case, are the only partakers of the feast.” (J. Campbell, op. cit. ii. 346 sq.). Here the intention seems to be not so much to transfer the disease to the ox, as to transfuse the healthy life of the beast into the veins of the sick man. The same is perhaps true of the Welsh and French cure for whooping-cough, which consists in passing the little sufferer several times under an ass. See J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London, 1882-1883), iii. 288; L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, in Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, Quatrième Série, i. (1890) p. 897; id., Superstitions et Survivances (Paris, 1896), i. 526. The same cure for whooping-cough “is also practised in Ireland; only here the sufferer is passed round, that is, over and under, the body of an ass” (letter of Miss A. H. Singleton to me, dated Rathmagle House, Abbey-Leix, Ireland, 24th February 1904). But perhaps the intention rather is to give the whooping-cough to the animal; for it might reasonably be thought that the feeble whoop of the sick child would neither seriously impair the lungs, nor perceptibly augment the stentorian bray, of the donkey.] Here the attempt to leave the sickness behind in the hole, which is probably the essence of the ceremony, may perhaps be combined with an endeavour to impart to the child the strength and vigour of the animal. Ancient India seems also to have been familiar with the same primitive notion that sickness could, as it were, be stripped off the person of the sufferer by passing him through a narrow aperture; for in the Rigveda it is said that Indra cured Apala of a disease of the skin by drawing her through the yoke of the chariot; “thus the god made her to have a golden skin, purifying her thrice.”[533 - H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), p. 495. According to a fuller account, Indra drew her through three holes, that of a war-chariot, that of a cart, and that of a yoke. See W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual (Amsterdam, 1900), p. 31 note 5.]

Passing under a yoke or arch as a rite of initiation.

At the small village of Damun, on the Kabenau river, in German New Guinea, a traveller witnessed the natives performing a ceremony of initiation, of which the following rite formed part. The candidates for initiation, six in number, were boys and lads of various ages from about four years of age to sixteen or seventeen. The company betook themselves to the bed of a small stream, where at the end of a gully a hollow in the rocks formed a natural basin. At the entrance to the gully a sort of yoke, so the traveller calls it, was erected by means of some poles, and from the cross-piece plants were hung so as to make an arch. One of the men took up his station in front of the arch, and as each candidate came up, the man seized him, spat on his breast and back a clot of red spittle, and gave him several severe blows with the stock of a plant. After that the candidate, who had previously stripped himself naked, passed under the leafy arch and bathed in the rocky pool at the other end of the gully. All the time that this solemnity was proceeding another man sat perched on a neighbouring rock, beating a drum and singing. Only men took part in the ceremony.[534 - Dr. E. Werner, “Im westlichen Finsterregebirge und an der Nordküste von Deutsch-Neuginea,” Petermanns Mitteilungen, lv. (1909) pp. 74 sq. Among some tribes of South-Eastern Australia it was customary at the ceremonies of initiation to bend growing saplings into arches and compel the novices to pass under them; sometimes the youths had to crawl on the ground to get through. See A. W. Howitt, “On some Australian ceremonies of Initiation,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) p. 445; id., Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p. 536.] Though no explanation of the ceremony is given by the observer who witnessed it, we may suppose that by passing under the yoke or arch the novices were supposed to rid themselves of certain evil influences, whether conceived as spiritual or not, which they left behind them on the further side of the barrier. This interpretation is confirmed by the bath which each candidate took immediately afterwards. In short the whole purpose of the rite would seem to have been purificatory.

The ancient Roman custom of passing enemies under a yoke was probably in origin a ceremony of purification rather than of degradation.

With the preceding examples before us, it seems worth while to ask whether the ancient Italian practice of making conquered enemies to pass under a yoke may not in its origin have been a purificatory ceremony, designed to rid the foe of some uncanny powers before dismissing him to his home. For apparently the ceremony was only observed with prisoners who were about to be released;[535 - Livy iii. 28, ix. 6, x. 36; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Roman. iii. 22. 7. The so-called yoke in this case consisted of two spears or two beams set upright in the ground, with a third spear or beam laid transversely across them. See Livy iii. 28; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, l. c.] had it been a mere mark of ignominy, there seems to be no reason why it should not have been inflicted also on men who were doomed to die. This conjectural explanation of the ceremony is confirmed by the tradition that the Roman Horatius was similarly obliged by his fellow-countrymen to pass under a yoke as a form of purification for the murder of his sister. The yoke by passing under which he cleansed himself from his sister's blood was still to be seen in Rome when Livy was writing his history under the emperor Augustus. It was an ancient wooden beam spanning a narrow lane in an old quarter of the city, the two ends of the beam being built into the masonry of the walls on either side; it went by the name of the Sister's Beam, and whenever the wood decayed and threatened to fall, the venerable monument, which carried back the thoughts of passers-by to the kingly age of Rome, was repaired at the public expense.[536 - Livy i. 26: “Itaque, ut caedes manifesta aliquo tamen piaculo lueretur, imperatum patri, ut filium expiaret pecunia publica. Is quibusdam piacularibus sacrificiis factis, quae deinde genti Horatiae tradita sunt, transmisso per viam tigillo capite adoperto velut sub jugum misit juvenem. Id hodie quoque publice semper refectum manet; sororium tigillum vocant;” Festus, s. v. “Sororium Tigillum,” pp. 297, 307, ed. C. O. Müller (Leipsic, 1839); Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Roman. iii. 22. The position of the beam is described exactly by the last of these writers, who had evidently seen it. According to Festus, the yoke under which Horatius passed was composed of three beams, two uprights, and a cross-piece. The similarity of the ceremony to that which was exacted from conquered foes is noted by Dionysius Halicarnasensis as well as by Livy. The tradition of the purification has been rightly explained by Dr. W. H. Roscher with reference to the custom of passing through cleft trees, holed stones, and so on. See W. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. (Leipsic, 1890-1897) col. 21. Compare G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer