The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)

§ 414 sq.; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,

i. 140; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 132 note. Many peoples, especially in Africa, regard the smith's craft with awe or fear as something uncanny and savouring of magic. Hence smiths are sometimes held in high honour, sometimes looked down upon with great contempt. These feelings probably spring in large measure from the superstitions which cluster round iron. See R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche, pp. 153-159; G. McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. 447; O. Lenz, Skizzen aus West-Afrika (Berlin, 1878), p. 184; A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 217; M. Merkel, Die Masai (Berlin, 1904), pp. 110 sq.; A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), pp. 330 sq.; id., The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), pp. 36 sq.; J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 776; E. Doutté, Magie et religion dans l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 40 sqq.; Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die geistige Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl (Berlin, 1896), p. 30; id., Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die materielle Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl (Berlin, 1893), p. 202; Th. Levebvre, Voyage en Abyssinie, i. p. lxi.; A. Cecchi, Da Zeila alle frontiere del Caffa, i. (Rome, 1886) p. 45; M. Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia

(London, 1868), pp. 300 sq.; J. T. Bent, Sacred City of the Ethiopians (London, 1893), p. 212; G. Rohlf, “Reise durch Nord-Afrika,” Petermann's Mittheilungen, Ergänzungsheft, No. 25 (Gotha, 1868), pp. 30, 54; G. Nachtigal, “Die Tibbu,” Zeitschrift für Erdkunde zu Berlin, v. (1870) pp. 312 sq.; id., Sahara und Sudan, i. 443 sq., ii. 145, 178, 371, iii. 189, 234 sq. The Kayans of Borneo think that a smith is inspired by a special spirit, the smith's spirit, and that without this inspiration he could do no good work. See A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, ii. 198.]

§ 3. Sharp Weapons tabooed

The use of sharp-edged weapons is sometimes forbidden lest they should wound spirits. Sharp-edged weapons removed from a room where there is a lying-in woman.

There is a priestly king to the north of Zengwih in Burma, revered by the Sotih as the highest spiritual and temporal authority, into whose house no weapon or cutting instrument may be brought.[760 - A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, i. (Leipsic, 1866) p. 136.] This rule may perhaps be explained by a custom observed by various peoples after a death; they refrain from the use of sharp instruments so long as the ghost of the deceased is supposed to be near, lest they should wound it. Thus among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait “during the day on which a person dies in the village no one is permitted to work, and the relatives must perform no labour during the three following days. It is especially forbidden during this period to cut with any edged instrument, such as a knife or an axe; and the use of pointed instruments, like needles or bodkins, is also forbidden. This is said to be done to avoid cutting or injuring the shade, which may be present at any time during this period, and, if accidentally injured by any of these things, it would become very angry and bring sickness or death to the people. The relatives must also be very careful at this time not to make any loud or harsh noises that may startle or anger the shade.”[761 - E. W. Nelson, “The Eskimo about Bering Strait,” Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part i. (Washington, 1899) p. 312. Compare ibid. pp. 315, 364; W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 146; id., in American Naturalist, xii. 7; id., in The Yukon Territory (London, 1898), p. 146.] We have seen that in like manner after killing a white whale these Esquimaux abstain from the use of cutting or pointed instruments for four days, lest they should unwittingly cut or stab the whale's ghost.[762 - See above, p. 205 (#x_12_i21).] The same taboo is sometimes observed by them when there is a sick person in the village, probably from a fear of injuring his shade which may be hovering outside of his body.[763 - A. Woldt, Captain Jacobsen's Reise an der Nordwestküste Americas 1881-1883 (Leipsic, 1884), p. 243.] After a death the Roumanians of Transylvania are careful not to leave a knife lying with the sharp edge uppermost as long as the corpse remains in the house, “or else the soul will be forced to ride on the blade.”[764 - W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt, 1866), p. 40; E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest, i. 312.] For seven days after a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese abstain from the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers.[765 - J. H. Gray, China (London, 1878), i. 288.] On the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the table and used no knives, and the women who served up the food were also without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them. When the meal was over the priest took a broom and swept the souls out of the house, saying, “Dear souls, ye have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth.”[766 - Jo. Meletius (Maeletius, Menecius), “De religione et sacrificiis veterum Borussorum,” in De Russorum Muscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacrificiis, nuptiarum, funerum ritu (Spires, 1582), p. 263; id., reprinted in Scriptores rerum Livonicarum, vol. ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) pp. 391 sq., and in Mitteilungen der Litterarischen Gesellschaft Masovia, viii. (Lötzen, 1902) pp. 194 sq. Compare Chr. Hartknoch, Alt und neues Preussen (Frankfort and Leipsic, 1684), pp. 187 sq.] In cutting the nails and combing the hair of a dead prince in South Celebes only the back of the knife and of the comb may be used.[767 - B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 136.] The Germans say that a knife should not be left edge upwards, because God and the spirits dwell there, or because it will cut the face of God and the angels.[768 - Tettau und Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens, p. 285; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,

iii. 454, compare pp. 441, 469; J. V. Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, p. 198, § 1387.] Among the Monumbos of New Guinea a pregnant woman may not use sharp instruments; for example, she may not sew. If she used such instruments, they think that she would thereby stab the child in her womb.[769 - Franz Vormann, “Zur Psychologie, Soziologie und Geschichte der Monumbo-Papua, Deutsch-Neuginea,” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 410.] Among the Kayans of Borneo, when the birth-pangs begin, all men leave the room, and all cutting weapons and iron are also removed, “perhaps in order not to frighten the child,” says the writer who reports the custom.[770 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, In Centraal Borneo (Leyden, 1900), i. 61; id., Quer durch Borneo, i. 69.] The reason may rather be a fear of injuring the flitting soul of mother or babe. In Uganda, when the hour of a woman's delivery is at hand, her husband carries all spears and weapons out of the house,[771 - Fr. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika (Berlin, 1894), p. 184.] doubtless in order that they may not hurt the tender soul of the new-born child. Early in the period of the Ming dynasty a professor of geomancy made the alarming discovery that the spiritual atmosphere of Kü-yung, a city near Nanking, was in a truly deplorable condition through the intrusion of an evil spirit. The Chinese emperor, with paternal solicitude, directed that the north gate, by which the devil had effected his entrance, should be built up solid, and that for the future the population of the city should devote their energies to the pursuits of hair-dressing, corn-cutting, and the shaving of bamboo-roots, because, as he sagaciously perceived, all these professions call for the use of sharp-edged instruments, which could not fail to keep the demon at bay.[772 - J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, iii. 1045 (Leyden, 1897).] We can now understand why no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of the Burmese pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as divine, and it is therefore right that his sacred spirit should not be exposed to the risk of being cut or wounded whenever it quits his body to hover invisible in the air or to fly on some distant mission.

§ 4. Blood tabooed

Raw meat tabooed because the life or spirit is in the blood.

We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name raw flesh.[773 - Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 110; Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 12. See above, p. 13.] At certain times a Brahman teacher is enjoined not to look on raw flesh, blood, or persons whose hands have been cut off.[774 - Grihya-Sutras, translated by H. Oldenberg, part i. pp. 81, 141 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxix.).] In Uganda the father of twins is in a state of taboo for some time after the birth; among other rules he is forbidden to kill anything or to see blood.[775 - J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 53.] In the Pelew Islands when a raid has been made on a village and a head carried off, the relations of the slain man are tabooed and have to submit to certain observances in order to escape the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in the house, touch no raw flesh, and chew betel over which an incantation has been uttered by the exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered man goes away to the enemy's country in pursuit of his murderer.[776 - J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer (Berlin, 1885), pp. 126 sq.] The taboo is probably based on the common belief that the soul or spirit of the animal is in the blood. As tabooed persons are believed to be in a perilous state – for example, the relations of the slain man are liable to the attacks of his indignant ghost – it is especially necessary to isolate them from contact with spirits; hence the prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo is only the special enforcement of a general precept; in other words, its observance is particularly enjoined in circumstances which seem urgently to call for its application, but apart from such circumstances the prohibition is also observed, though less strictly, as a common rule of life. Thus some of the Esthonians will not taste blood because they believe that it contains the animal's soul, which would enter the body of the person who tasted the blood.[777 - F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äussern Leben der Ehsten (St. Petersburg, 1876), pp. 448, 478.] Some Indian tribes of North America, “through a strong principle of religion, abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of any animal, as it contains the life and spirit of the beast.” These Indians “commonly pull their new-killed venison (before they dress it) several times through the smoke and flame of the fire, both by the way of a sacrifice and to consume the blood, life, or animal spirits of the beast, which with them would be a most horrid abomination to eat.”[778 - James Adair, History of the American Indians (London, 1775), pp. 134, 117. The Indians described by Adair are the Creek, Cherokee, and other tribes in the south-east of the United States.] Among the western Dénés or Tinneh Indians of British Columbia until lately no woman would partake of blood, “and both men and women abhorred the flesh of a beaver which had been caught and died in a trap, and of a bear strangled to death in a snare, because the blood remained in the carcase.”[779 - A. G. Morice, “The Western Dénés, their Manners and Customs,” Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, Third Series, vii. (1888-89) p. 164.] Many of the Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians scruple to taste the blood of game; hunters of the former tribes collect the blood in the animal's paunch and bury it in the snow.[780 - E. Petitot, Monographie des Dènè-Dindjié (Paris, 1876), p. 76.] The Malepa, a Bantu tribe in the north of the Transvaal, will taste no blood. Hence they cut the throats of the cattle they slaughter and let the blood drain out of the carcase before they will eat it. And they do the same with game.[781 - Schlömann, “Die Malepa in Transvaal,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1894, p. (67).] Jewish hunters poured out the blood of the game they had killed and covered it up with dust. They would not taste the blood, believing that the soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or actually was the blood.[782 - Leviticus xvii. 10-14. The Hebrew word (נפש) translated “life” in the English version of verse 11 means also “soul” (marginal note in the Revised Version). Compare Deuteronomy xii. 23-25.] The same belief was held by the Romans,[783 - Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 79; compare id. on Aen. iii. 67.] and is shared by the Arabs,[784 - J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentumes (Berlin, 1887), p. 217.] by Chinese medical writers,[785 - J. J. M. de Groot, Religious System of China, iv. 80-82.] and by some of the Papuan tribes of New Guinea.[786 - A. Goudswaard, De Papoewa's van de Geelvinksbaai (Schiedam, 1863), p. 77.]

Royal blood may not be spilt on the ground; hence kings and princes are put to death by methods which do not involve bloodshed.

It is a common rule that royal blood may not be shed upon the ground. Hence when a king or one of his family is to be put to death a mode of execution is devised by which the royal blood shall not be spilt upon the earth. About the year 1688 the generalissimo of the army rebelled against the king of Siam and put him to death “after the manner of royal criminals, or as princes of the blood are treated when convicted of capital crimes, which is by putting them into a large iron caldron, and pounding them to pieces with wooden pestles, because none of their royal blood must be spilt on the ground, it being, by their religion, thought great impiety to contaminate the divine blood by mixing it with earth.”[787 - Hamilton's “Account of the East Indies,” in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, viii. 469. Compare W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,

i. 369, note 1.] Other Siamese modes of executing a royal person are starvation, suffocation, stretching him on a scarlet cloth and thrusting a billet of fragrant sandal-wood into his stomach,[788 - De la Loubere, Du royaume de Siam (Amsterdam, 1691), i. 317.] or lastly, sewing him up in a leather sack with a large stone and throwing him into the river; sometimes the sufferer's neck is broken with sandal-wood clubs before he is thrown into the water.[789 - Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 271, 365 sq.] When Kublai Khan defeated and took his uncle Nayan, who had rebelled against him, he caused Nayan to be put to death by being wrapt in a carpet and tossed to and fro till he died, “because he would not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in the eye of Heaven and before the Sun.”[790 - Marco Polo, translated by Col. H. Yule (Second Edition, 1875), i. 335.] “Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar maxim: ‘One Khan will put another to death to get possession of the throne, but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the victim to be smothered somehow or other.’ The like feeling prevails at the court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is reserved for princes of the blood.”[791 - Col. H. Yule on Marco Polo, l. c.] Another writer on Burma observes that “according to Mongolian tradition, it is considered improper to spill the blood of any member of the royal race. Princes of the Blood are executed by a blow, or blows, of a bludgeon, inflicted on the back of the neck. The corpse is placed in a red velvet sack, which is fixed between two large perforated jars, and then sunk in the river Irawadi. Princesses are executed in a similar manner, with the exception that they are put to death by a blow in front, instead of the back of the neck.”[792 - A. Fytche, Burma, Past and Present (London, 1878), i. 217 note. Compare Indian Antiquary, xxix. (1900) p. 199.] In 1878 the relations of Theebaw, king of Burma, were despatched by being beaten across the throat with a bamboo.[793 - Indian Antiquary, xx. (1891) p. 49.] In Tonquin the ordinary mode of execution is beheading, but persons of the blood royal are strangled.[794 - Baron's “Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen,” in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, ix. 691.] In Ashantee the blood of none of the royal family may be shed; if one of them is guilty of a great crime he is drowned in the river Dah.[795 - T. E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1873), p. 207.] As the blood royal of Dahomey may not be spilled, offenders of the royal family are drowned or strangled. Commonly they are bound hand and foot, carried out to sea in a canoe, and thrown overboard.[796 - A. B. Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 224, compare p. 89.] When a king of Benin came to the throne he used to put his brothers to death; but as no one might lay hands on a prince of the blood, the king commanded his brothers to hang themselves, after which he buried their bodies with great pomp.[797 - O. Dapper, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 313.] In Madagascar the blood of nobles might not be shed; hence when four Christians of that class were to be executed they were burned alive.[798 - J. Sibree, Madagascar and its People, p. 430.] In Uganda “no one may shed royal blood on any account, not even when ordered by the king to slay one of the royal house; royalty may only be starved or burned to death.”[799 - J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 50.] Formerly when a young king of Uganda came of age all his brothers were burnt except two or three, who were preserved to keep up the succession.[800 - C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (London, 1882), i. 200.] Or a space of ground having been fenced in with a high paling and a deep ditch, the doomed men were led into the enclosure and left there till they died, while guards kept watch outside to prevent their escape.[801 - J. Roscoe, op. cit. p. 67. There is an Arab legend of a king who was slain by opening the veins of his arms and letting the blood drain into a bowl; not a drop might fall on the ground, otherwise there would be blood revenge for it. Robertson Smith conjectured that the legend was based on an old form of sacrifice regularly applied to captive chiefs (Religion of the Semites,

p. 369 note, compare p. 418 note).] Among the Bawenda of southern Africa dangerous princes are strangled, for their blood may not be shed.[802 - Rev. E. Gottschling, “The Bawenda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 366.]

Reluctance to shed any human blood on the ground. Reluctance to allow human blood to fall on the ground.

The reluctance to spill royal blood seems to be only a particular case of a general unwillingness to shed blood or at least to allow it to fall on the ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day persons caught in the streets of Cambaluc (Peking) at unseasonable hours were arrested, and if found guilty of a misdemeanour were beaten with a stick. “Under this punishment people sometimes die, but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed, for their Bacsis say that it is an evil thing to shed man's blood.”[803 - Marco Polo, i. 399, Yule's translation, Second Edition.] When Captain Christian was shot by the Manx Government at the Restoration in 1660, the spot on which he stood was covered with white blankets, that his blood might not fall on the ground.[804 - Sir Walter Scott, note 2 to Peveril of the Peak, ch. v.] In West Sussex people believe that the ground on which human blood has been shed is accursed and will remain barren for ever.[805 - Charlotte Latham, “Some West Sussex Superstitions,” Folk-lore Record, i. (1878) p. 17.] Among some primitive peoples, when the blood of a tribesman has to be spilt it is not suffered to fall upon the ground, but is received upon the bodies of his fellow-tribesmen. Thus in some Australian tribes boys who are being circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the living bodies of the tribesmen;[806 - Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 230; E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 335; R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 75 note.] and when a boy's tooth is knocked out as an initiatory ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast the blood flows and may not be wiped away.[807 - D. Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales (London, 1798), p. 580.] When Australian blacks bleed each other as a cure for headache and other ailments, they are very careful not to spill any of the blood on the ground, but sprinkle it on each other.[808 - Native Tribes of South Australia, pp. 224 sq.; G. F. Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand (London, 1847), i. 110 sq.] We have already seen that in the Australian ceremony for making rain the blood which is supposed to imitate the rain is received upon the bodies of the tribesmen.[809 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. p. 256.] “Also the Gauls used to drink their enemies' blood and paint themselves therewith. So also they write that the old Irish were wont; and so have I seen some of the Irish do, but not their enemies' but friends' blood, as, namely, at the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien, I saw an old woman, which was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartered and suck up all the blood that ran thereout, saying that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most terribly.”[810 - Edmund Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, p. 101 (reprinted in H. Morley's Ireland under Elizabeth and James the First, London, 1890).] After a battle in Horne Island, South Pacific, it was found that the brother of the vanquished king was among the wounded. “It was sad to see his wife collect in her hands the blood which had flowed from his wounds, and throw it on to her head, while she uttered piercing cries. All the relatives of the wounded collected in the same manner the blood which had flowed from them, down even to the last drop, and they even applied their lips to the leaves of the shrubs and licked it all up to the last drop.”[811 - “Futuna, or Horne Island and its People,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. i. No. 1 (April 1892), p. 43.] In the Marquesas Islands the persons who helped a woman at childbirth received on their heads the blood which flowed at the cutting of the navel-string; for the blood might not touch anything but a sacred object, and in Polynesia the head is sacred in a high degree.[812 - Max Radiguet, Les Derniers Sauvages (Paris, 1882), p. 175.] In South Celebes at childbirth a female slave stands under the house (the houses being raised on posts above the ground) and receives in a basin on her head the blood which trickles through the bamboo floor.[813 - B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 53.] Among the Latuka of central Africa the earth on which a drop of blood has fallen at childbirth is carefully scraped up with an iron shovel, put into a pot along with the water used in washing the mother, and buried tolerably deep outside the house on the left-hand side.[814 - Fr. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika, p. 795.] In West Africa, if a drop of your blood has fallen on the ground, you must carefully cover it up, rub and stamp it into the soil; if it has fallen on the side of a canoe or a tree, the place is cut out and the chip destroyed.[815 - Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, pp. 440, 447.] The Caffres, we are told, have a great horror of blood, and must purify themselves from the pollution if they have shed it and been bespattered by it. Hence warriors on the return from battle purge themselves with emetics, and that so violently that some of them give up the ghost. A Caffre would never allow even a drop of blood from his nose or a wound to lie uncovered, but huddles it over with earth, that his feet may not be defiled by it.[816 - A. Kropf, “Die religiösen Anschauungen der Kaffern,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1888, p. (46).] One motive of these African customs may be a wish to prevent the blood from falling into the hands of magicians, who might make an evil use of it. That is admittedly the reason why people in West Africa stamp out any blood of theirs which has fallen on the ground or cut out any wood that has been soaked with it.[817 - R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (London, 1904), p. 83.] From a like dread of sorcery natives of New Guinea are careful to burn any sticks, leaves, or rags which are stained with their blood; and if the blood has dripped on the ground they turn up the soil and if possible light a fire on the spot.[818 - Le R. P. Guis, “Les Nepu ou Sorciers,” Missions Catholiques, xxxvi. (1904) p. 370. See also The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. p. 205.] The same fear explains the curious duties discharged by a class of men called ramanga or “blue blood” among the Betsileo of Madagascar. It is their business to eat all the nail-parings and to lick up all the spilt blood of the nobles. When the nobles pare their nails, the parings are collected to the last scrap and swallowed by these ramanga. If the parings are too large, they are minced small and so gulped down. Again, should a nobleman wound himself, say in cutting his nails or treading on something, the ramanga lick it up as fast as possible. Nobles of high rank hardly go anywhere without these humble attendants; but if it should happen that there are none of them present, the cut nails and the spilt blood are carefully collected to be afterwards swallowed by the ramanga. There is scarcely a nobleman of any pretensions who does not strictly observe this custom,[819 - A. van Gennep, Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar, p. 338, quoting J. Sibree, “Remarkable Ceremonial at the Decease and Burial of a Betsileo Prince,” Antananarivo Annual, No. xxii. (1898) pp. 195 sq.] the intention of which probably is to prevent these parts of his person from falling into the hands of sorcerers, who on the principles of contagious magic could work him harm thereby. The tribes of the White Nile are said never to shed human blood in their villages because they think the sight of it would render women barren or bring misfortune on their children. Hence executions and murders commonly take place on the roads or in the forest.[820 - Brun-Rollet, Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan (Paris, 1855), pp. 239 sq.]

Unwillingness to shed the blood of animals.

The unwillingness to shed blood is extended by some peoples to the blood of animals. Thus, when the Caffres offer an ox to the spirits, the blood of the beast must be carefully caught in a calabash, and none of it may fall on the ground.[821 - Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 169.] When the Wanika in eastern Africa kill their cattle for food, “they either stone or beat the animal to death, so as not to shed the blood.”[822 - Lieut. Emery, in Journal of the R. Geographical Society, iii. 282.] Amongst the Damaras cattle killed for food are suffocated, but when sacrificed they are speared to death.[823 - Ch. Andersson, Lake Ngami (London, 1856), p. 224.] But like most pastoral tribes in Africa, both the Wanika and Damaras very seldom kill their cattle, which are indeed commonly invested with a kind of sanctity.[824 - Ch. New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 124; Francis Galton, “Domestication of Animals,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S., iii. (1865) p. 135. On the original sanctity of domestic animals see, above all, W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites,

pp. 280 sqq., 295 sqq.] Some of the Ewe-speaking negroes of Togoland, in West Africa, celebrate a festival in honour of the Earth at which it is unlawful to shed blood on the ground. Hence the fowls which are sacrificed on these occasions have their necks wrung, not their throats cut.[825 - J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme, p. 796.] In killing an animal for food the Easter Islanders do not shed its blood, but stun it or suffocate it in smoke.[826 - L. Linton Palmer, “A Visit to Easter Island,” Journal of the R. Geographical Society, xl. (1870) p. 171.] When the natives of San Cristoval, one of the Solomon Islands, sacrifice a pig to a ghost in a sacred place, they take great care that the blood shall not fall on the ground; so they place the animal in a large bowl and cut it up there.[827 - R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 129.] It is said that in ancient India the sacrificial victims were not slaughtered but strangled.[828 - Strabo, xv. 1. 54, p. 710.]

Anything on which a Maori chief's blood falls becomes sacred to him.

The general explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the ground is probably to be found in the belief that the soul is in the blood, and that therefore any ground on which it may fall necessarily becomes taboo or sacred. In New Zealand anything upon which even a drop of a high chief's blood chances to fall becomes taboo or sacred to him. For instance, a party of natives having come to visit a chief in a fine new canoe, the chief got into it, but in doing so a splinter entered his foot, and the blood trickled on the canoe, which at once became sacred to him. The owner jumped out, dragged the canoe ashore opposite the chief's house, and left it there. Again, a chief in entering a missionary's house knocked his head against a beam, and the blood flowed. The natives said that in former times the house would have belonged to the chief.[829 - R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,

pp. 194 sq.] As usually happens with taboos of universal application, the prohibition to spill the blood of a tribesman on the ground applies with peculiar stringency to chiefs and kings, and is observed in their case long after it has ceased to be observed in the case of others.

The prohibition to pass under a trellised vine is probably based on the idea that the juice of the grape is the blood or spirit of the vine. This notion is confirmed by the intoxicating or inspiring effect of wine.

We have seen that the Flamen Dialis was not allowed to walk under a trellised vine.[830 - Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 112; Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 13. See above, p. 14.] The reason for this prohibition was perhaps as follows. It has been shewn that plants are considered as animate beings which bleed when cut, the red juice which exudes from some of them being regarded as the blood of the plant.[831 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. ii. pp. 18, 20.] The juice of the grape is therefore naturally conceived as the blood of the vine.[832 - Compare W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,

p. 230.] And since, as we have just seen, the soul is often believed to be in the blood, the juice of the grape is regarded as the soul, or as containing the soul, of the vine. This belief is strengthened by the intoxicating effects of wine. For, according to primitive notions, all abnormal mental states, such as intoxication or madness, are caused by the entrance of a spirit into the person; such mental states, in other words, are accounted forms of possession or inspiration. Wine, therefore, is considered on two distinct grounds as a spirit, or containing a spirit; first because, as a red juice, it is identified with the blood of the plant, and second because it intoxicates or inspires. Therefore if the Flamen Dialis had walked under a trellised vine, the spirit of the vine, embodied in the clusters of grapes, would have been immediately over his head and might have touched it, which for a person like him in a state of permanent taboo[833 - “Dialis cotidie feriatus est,” Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 16.] would have been highly dangerous. This interpretation of the prohibition will be made probable if we can shew, first, that wine has been actually viewed by some peoples as blood, and intoxication as inspiration produced by drinking the blood; and, second, that it is often considered dangerous, especially for tabooed persons, to have either blood or a living person over their heads.

Wine treated as blood, and intoxication as inspiration.

With regard to the first point, we are informed by Plutarch that of old the Egyptian kings neither drank wine nor offered it in libations to the gods, because they held it to be the blood of beings who had once fought against the gods, the vine having sprung from their rotting bodies; and the frenzy of intoxication was explained by the supposition that the drunken man was filled with the blood of the enemies of the gods.[834 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 6. A myth apparently akin to this has been preserved in some native Egyptian writings. See Ad. Erman, Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 364. Wine might not be taken into the temple at Heliopolis (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 6). It was apparently forbidden to enter the temple at Delos after drinking wine (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 564). When wine was offered to the Good Goddess at Rome it was not called wine but milk (Macrobius, Saturn, i. 12. 5; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 20). It was a rule of Roman religion that wine might not be poured out in libations to the gods which had been made either from grapes trodden with bleeding feet or from the clusters of a vine beside which a human body had hung in a noose (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiv. 119). This rule shews that wine was supposed to be defiled by blood or death.] The Aztecs regarded pulque or the wine of the country as bad, on account of the wild deeds which men did under its influence. But these wild deeds were believed to be the acts, not of the drunken man, but of the wine-god by whom he was possessed and inspired; and so seriously was this theory of inspiration held that if any one spoke ill of or insulted a tipsy man, he was liable to be punished for disrespect to the wine-god incarnate in his votary. Hence, says Sahagun, it was believed, not without ground, that the Indians intoxicated themselves on purpose to commit with impunity crimes for which they would certainly have been punished if they had committed them sober.[835 - Bernardino de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, traduite par Jourdanet et Siméon (Paris, 1880), pp. 46 sq. The native Mexican wine (pulque) is made from the sap of the great American aloe. See the note of the French translators of Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 858 sqq.; E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 374 sqq. The Chiquites Indians of Paraguay believed that the spirit of chica, or beer made from maize, could punish with sickness the person who was so irreverent or careless as to upset a vessel of the liquor. See Charlevoix, Histoire du Paraguay (Paris, 1756), ii. 234.] Thus it appears that on the primitive view intoxication or the inspiration produced by wine is exactly parallel to the inspiration produced by drinking the blood of animals.[836 - See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. i. pp. 381 sqq.] The soul or life is in the blood, and wine is the blood of the vine. Hence whoever drinks the blood of an animal is inspired with the soul of the animal or of the god, who, as we have seen,[837 - Op. cit. vol. i. pp. 384 sq.] is often supposed to enter into the animal before it is slain; and whoever drinks wine drinks the blood, and so receives into himself the soul or spirit, of the god of the vine.

Fear of passing under women's blood.

With regard to the second point, the fear of passing under blood or under a living person, we are told that some of the Australian blacks have a dread of passing under a leaning tree or even under the rails of a fence. The reason they give is that a woman may have been upon the tree or fence, and some blood from her may have fallen on it and might fall from it on them.[838 - E. M. Curr, The Australian Race (Melbourne and London, 1887), iii. 179.] In Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, a man will never, if he can help it, pass under a tree which has fallen across the path, for the reason that a woman may have stepped over it before him.[839 - H. B. Guppy, The Solomon Islands and their Natives (London, 1887), p. 41.] Amongst the Karens of Burma “going under a house, especially if there are females within, is avoided; as is also the passing under trees of which the branches extend downwards in a particular direction, and the butt-end of fallen trees, etc.”[840 - E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. (1854) p. 312.] The Siamese think it unlucky to pass under a rope on which women's clothes are hung, and to avert evil consequences the person who has done so must build a chapel to the earth-spirit.[841 - A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 230.]

Disastrous effect of women's blood on men.

Probably in all such cases the rule is based on a fear of being brought into contact with blood, especially the blood of women. From a like fear a Maori will never lean his back against the wall of a native house.[842 - For the reason, see E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, pp. 112 sq., 292; E. Tregear, “The Maoris of New Zealand,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) p. 118.] For the blood of women is supposed to have disastrous effects upon males. The Arunta of central Australia believe that a draught of woman's blood would kill the strongest man.[843 - F. J. Gillen, in Report of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, pt. iv. p. 182.] In the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia boys are warned that if they see the blood of women they will early become grey-headed and their strength will fail prematurely.[844 - Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 186.] Men of the Booandik tribe in South Australia think that if they see the blood of their women they will not be able to fight against their enemies and will be killed; if the sun dazzles their eyes at a fight, the first woman they afterwards meet is sure to get a blow from their club.[845 - Mrs. James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 5.] In the island of Wetar it is thought that if a man or a lad comes upon a woman's blood he will be unfortunate in war and other undertakings, and that any precautions he may take to avoid the misfortune will be vain.[846 - J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 450.] The people of Ceram also believe that men who see women's blood will be wounded in battle.[847 - J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. p. 139, compare p. 209.] It is an Esthonian belief that men who see women's blood will suffer from an eruption on the skin.[848 - F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Ehsten, p. 475.] A Fan negro told Miss Kingsley that a young man in his village, who was so weak that he could hardly crawl about, had fallen into this state through seeing the blood of a woman who had been killed by a falling tree. “The underlying idea regarding blood is of course the old one that the blood is the life. The life in Africa means a spirit, hence the liberated blood is the liberated spirit, and liberated spirits are always whipping into people who do not want them. In the case of the young Fan, the opinion held was that the weak spirit of the woman had got into him.”[849 - Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 447. Conversely among the central Australian tribes women are never allowed to witness the drawing of blood from men, which is often done for purposes of decoration; and when a quarrel has taken place and men's blood has been spilt in the presence of women, it is usual for the man whose blood has been shed to perform a ceremony connected with his own or his father or mother's totem. See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 463.]

§ 5. The Head tabooed

The head sacred because a spirit resides in it.

Again, the reason for not passing under dangerous objects, like a vine or women's blood, is a fear that they may come in contact with the head; for among many peoples the head is peculiarly sacred. The special sanctity attributed to it is sometimes explained by a belief that it is the seat of a spirit which is very sensitive to injury or disrespect. Thus the Yorubas of the Slave Coast hold that every man has three spiritual inmates, of whom the first, called Olori, dwells in the head and is the man's protector, guardian, and guide. Offerings are made to this spirit, chiefly of fowls, and some of the blood mixed with palm-oil is rubbed on the forehead.[850 - A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 125 sq.] The Karens of Burma suppose that a being called the tso resides in the upper part of the head, and while it retains its seat no harm can befall the person from the efforts of the seven Kelahs, or personified passions. “But if the tso becomes heedless or weak certain evil to the person is the result. Hence the head is carefully attended to, and all possible pains are taken to provide such dress and attire as will be pleasing to the tso.”[851 - E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. (1854) pp. 311 sq.] The Siamese think that a spirit called khuan or kwun dwells in the human head, of which it is the guardian spirit. The spirit must be carefully protected from injury of every kind; hence the act of shaving or cutting the hair is accompanied with many ceremonies. The kwun is very sensitive on points of honour, and would feel mortally insulted if the head in which he resides were touched by the hand of a stranger. When Dr. Bastian, in conversation with a brother of the king of Siam, raised his hand to touch the prince's skull in order to illustrate some medical remarks he was making, a sullen and threatening murmur bursting from the lips of the crouching courtiers warned him of the breach of etiquette he had committed, for in Siam there is no greater insult to a man of rank than to touch his head. If a Siamese touch the head of another with his foot, both of them must build chapels to the earth-spirit to avert the omen. Nor does the guardian spirit of the head like to have the hair washed too often; it might injure or incommode him. It was a grand solemnity when the king of Burma's head was washed with water drawn from the middle of the river. Whenever the native professor, from whom Dr. Bastian took lessons in Burmese at Mandalay, had his head washed, which took place as a rule once a month, he was generally absent for three days together, that time being consumed in preparing for, and recovering from, the operation of head-washing. Dr. Bastian's custom of washing his head daily gave rise to much remark.[852 - A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 256, iii. 71, 230, 235 sq. The spirit is called kwun by E. Young (The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe, pp. 75 sqq.). See below, pp. 266 (#x_15_i19)sq.] The head of the king of Persia was cleaned only once a year, on his birthday.[853 - Herodotus, ix. 110. This passage was pointed out to me by the late Mr. E. S. Shuckburgh of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.] Roman women washed their heads annually on the thirteenth of August, Diana's day.[854 - Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 100. Plutarch's words (μάλιστα ῥύπτεσθαι τὰς κεφαλὰς καὶ καθαίρειν ἐπιτηδεύουσι) leave room to hope that the ladies did not strictly confine their ablutions to one day in the year.] The Indians of Peru fancied they could rid themselves of their sins by scrubbing their heads with a small stone and then washing them in a stream.[855 - P. J. de Arriaga, Extirpación de la Idolatria del Piru (Lima, 1621), pp. 28, 29.]

Objection to have any one overhead.

Again, the Burmese think it an indignity to have any one, especially a woman, over their heads, and for this reason Burmese houses have never more than one story. The houses are raised on posts above the ground, and whenever anything fell through the floor Dr. Bastian had always difficulty in persuading a servant to fetch it from under the house. In Rangoon a priest, summoned to the bedside of a sick man, climbed up a ladder and got in at the window rather than ascend the staircase, to reach which he must have passed under a gallery. A pious Burman of Rangoon, finding some images of Buddha in a ship's cabin, offered a high price for them, that they might not be degraded by sailors walking over them on the deck.[856 - A. Bastian, op. cit. ii. 150; Sangermano, Description of the Burmese Empire (Rangoon, 1885), p. 131; C. F. S. Forbes, British Burma, p. 334; Shway Yoe, The Burman (London, 1882), i. 91.] Formerly in Siam no person might cross a bridge while his superior in rank was passing underneath, nor might he walk in a room above one in which his superior was sitting or lying.[857 - E. Young, The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe (Westminster, 1898), p. 131.] The Cambodians esteem it a grave offence to touch a man's head; some of them will not enter a place where anything whatever is suspended over their heads; and the meanest Cambodian would never consent to live under an inhabited room. Hence the houses are built of one story only; and even the Government respects the prejudice by never placing a prisoner in the stocks under the floor of a house, though the houses are raised high above the ground.[858 - J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 178, 388.] The same superstition exists amongst the Malays; for an early traveller reports that in Java people “wear nothing on their heads, and say that nothing must be on their heads … and if any person were to put his hand upon their head they would kill him; and they do not build houses with storeys, in order that they may not walk over each other's heads.”[859 - Duarte Barbosa, Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century (Hakluyt Society, 1866), p. 197.] In Uganda no person belonging to the king's totem clan was allowed to get on the top of the palace to roof it, for that would have been regarded as equivalent to getting on the top of the king. Hence the palace had to be roofed by men of a different clan from the king.[860 - This I learned in conversation with Messrs. Roscoe and Miller, missionaries to Uganda. The system of totemism exists in full force in Uganda. No man will eat his totem animal or marry a woman of his own totem clan. Among the totems of the clans are the lion, leopard, elephant, antelope, mushroom, buffalo, sheep, grasshopper, crocodile, otter, beaver, and lizard. See Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 472 sqq.]

Sanctity of the head, especially of a chief's head, in Polynesia and elsewhere.

The same superstition as to the head is found in full force throughout Polynesia. Thus of Gattanewa, a Marquesan chief, it is said that “to touch the top of his head, or anything which had been on his head, was sacrilege. To pass over his head was an indignity never to be forgotten. Gattanewa, nay, all his family, scorned to pass a gateway which is ever closed, or a house with a door; all must be as open and free as their unrestrained manners. He would pass under nothing that had been raised by the hand of man, if there was a possibility of getting round or over it. Often have I seen him walk the whole length of our barrier, in preference to passing between our water-casks; and at the risk of his life scramble over the loose stones of a wall, rather than go through the gateway.”[861 - David Porter, Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate“Essex” (New York, 1822), ii. 65.] Marquesan women have been known to refuse to go on the decks of ships for fear of passing over the heads of chiefs who might be below.[862 - Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Desgraz Îles Marquises (Paris, 1843), p. 262.] The son of a Marquesan high priest has been seen to roll on the ground in an agony of rage and despair, begging for death, because some one had desecrated his head and deprived him of his divinity by sprinkling a few drops of water on his hair.[863 - Le P. Matthias G – , Lettres sur les Îles Marquises (Paris, 1843), p. 50.] But it was not the Marquesan chiefs only whose heads were sacred. The head of every Marquesan was taboo, and might neither be touched nor stepped over by another; even a father might not step over the head of his sleeping child;[864 - G. H. von Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt (London, 1812), i. 115 sq.] women were forbidden to carry or touch anything that had been in contact with, or had merely hung over, the head of their husband or father.[865 - Max Radiguet, Les Derniers Sauvages (Paris, 1882), p. 156.] No one was allowed to be over the head of the king of Tonga.[866 - Capt. James Cook, Voyages, v. 427 (London, 1809).] In Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands) if a man climbed upon a chiefs house or upon the wall of his yard, he was put to death; if his shadow fell on a chief, he was put to death; if he walked in the shadow of a chiefs house with his head painted white or decked with a garland or wetted with water, he was put to death.[867 - Jules Remy, Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, Histoire de l'Archipel Havaiien (Paris and Leipsic, 1862), p. 159.] In Tahiti any one who stood over the king or queen, or passed his hand over their heads, might be put to death.[868 - W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches

(London, 1832-36), iii. 102.] Until certain rites were performed over it, a Tahitian infant was especially taboo; whatever touched the child's head, while it was in this state, became sacred and was deposited in a consecrated place railed in for the purpose at the child's house. If a branch of a tree touched the child's head, the tree was cut down; and if in its fall it injured another tree so as to penetrate the bark, that tree also was cut down as unclean and unfit for use. After the rites were performed these special taboos ceased; but the head of a Tahitian was always sacred, he never carried anything on it, and to touch it was an offence.[869 - James Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), pp. 354 sq.] In New Zealand “the heads of the chiefs were always tabooed (tapu), hence they could not pass, or sit, under food hung up; or carry food, as others, on their backs; neither would they eat a meal in a house, nor touch a calabash of water in drinking. No one could touch their head, nor, indeed, commonly speak of it, or allude to it; to do so offensively was one of their heaviest curses, and grossest insults, only to be wiped out with blood.”[870 - W. Colenso, “The Maori Races of New Zealand,” p. 43, in Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, 1868, vol. i. (separately paged).] So sacred was the head of a Maori chief that “if he only touched it with his fingers, he was obliged immediately to apply them to his nose, and snuff up the sanctity which they had acquired by the touch, and thus restore it to the part from whence it was taken.”[871 - R. Taylor, To Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,

p. 165. We have seen that under certain special circumstances common persons also are temporarily forbidden to touch their heads with their hands. See above, pp. 146 (#x_10_i25), 156 (#x_10_i37), 158 (#x_11_i3), 160 (#x_11_i3), 183 (#x_11_i29).] On account of the sacredness of his head a Maori chief “could not blow the fire with his mouth, for the breath being sacred, communicated his sanctity to it, and a brand might be taken by a slave, or a man of another tribe, or the fire might be used for other purposes, such as cooking, and so cause his death.”[872 - R. Taylor, l. c.] It is a crime for a sacred person in New Zealand to leave his comb, or anything else which has touched his head, in a place where food has been cooked, or to suffer another person to drink out of any vessel which has touched his lips. Hence when a chief wishes to drink he never puts his lips to the vessel, but holds his hands close to his mouth so as to form a hollow, into which water is poured by another person, and thence is allowed to flow into his mouth. If a light is needed for his pipe, the burning ember taken from the fire must be thrown away as soon as it is used; for the pipe becomes sacred because it has touched his mouth; the coal becomes sacred because it has touched the pipe; and if a particle of the sacred cinder were replaced on the common fire, the fire would also become sacred and could no longer be used for cooking.[873 - E. Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand (London, 1851), p. 293; id., Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, pp. 107 sq.] Some Maori chiefs, like other Polynesians, object to go down into a ship's cabin from fear of people passing over their heads.[874 - J. Dumont D'Urville, Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de La Pérouse, exécuté sous son commandement sur la corvette“Austrolabe”: histoire du voyage, ii. 534.] Dire misfortune was thought by the Maoris to await those who entered a house where any article of animal food was suspended over their heads. “A dead pigeon, or a piece of pork hung from the roof, was a better protection from molestation than a sentinel.”[875 - R. A. Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months' Residence in New Zealand (London, 1823), p. 187; J. Dumont D'Urville, op. cit. ii. 533; E. Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand, p. 30.] If I am right, the reason for the special objection to having animal food over the head is the fear of bringing the sacred head into contact with the spirit of the animal; just as the reason why the Flamen Dialis might not walk under a vine was the fear of bringing his sacred head into contact with the spirit of the vine. Similarly King Darius would not pass through a gate over which there was a tomb, because in doing so he would have had a corpse above his head.[876 - Herodotus, i. 187.] Among the Awuna tribes of the Gold Coast, West Africa, the worshippers of Hebesio, the god of thunder, believe that their heads are sacred, being associated in some mysterious way with the presence of the protective spirit of their god, which has passed into them through this channel at baptism. Hence they carefully guard their heads against injury, especially against any wound that might draw blood, for they think that such a wound would entail the loss of reason on the sufferer, and that it would bring down the wrath of the thundering god and of his mouth-piece the fetish priest on the impious smiter.[877 - H. France, “Customs of the Awuna Tribes,” Journal of the African Society, No. 17 (October, 1905), p. 39.]

§ 6. Hair tabooed

When the head is sacred, the cutting of the hair becomes a difficult and dangerous operation. The hair of kings, priests, chiefs, sorcerers, and other tabooed persons is sometimes kept unshorn. Hair kept unshorn on various occasions, such as a wife's pregnancy, a journey, and war.

When the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be touched without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the hair must have been a delicate and difficult operation. The difficulties and dangers which, on the primitive view, beset the operation are of two kinds. There is first the danger of disturbing the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the process and may revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly, there is the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage believes that the sympathetic connexion which exists between himself and every part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connexion has been broken, and that therefore he will suffer from any harm that may befall the severed parts of his body, such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of his nails. Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to accidental injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who might work magic on them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are common to all, but sacred persons have more to fear from them than ordinary people, so the precautions taken by them are proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the peril is not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where the risk is thought to be more than usually great. The Frankish kings were never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they had to keep it unshorn.[878 - Agathias, Hist. i. 3; J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer,

pp. 239 sqq. Compare F. Kauffmann, Balder (Strasburg, 1902), pp. 209 sq. The story of the Phrygian king Midas, who concealed the ears of an ass under his long hair (Aristophanes, Plutus, 287; Ovid, Metam. xi. 146-193) may perhaps be a distorted reminiscence of a similar custom in Phrygia. Parallels to the story are recorded in modern Greece, Ireland, Brittany, Servia, India, and among the Mongols. See B. Schmidt, Griechische Märchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, pp. 70 sq., 224 sq.; Grimm's Household Tales, ii. 498, trans. by M. Hunt; Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 248 sqq. (ed. 1866); A. de Nore, Coutumes, mythes, et traditions des provinces de la France, pp. 219 sq.; W. S. Karadschitsch, Volksmärchen der Serben, No. 39, pp. 225 sqq.; North Indian Notes and Queries, iii. p. 104, § 218; B. Jülg, Mongolische Märchen-Sammlung, No. 22, pp. 182 sqq.; Sagas from the Far East, No. 21, pp. 206 sqq.] To poll the long locks that floated on their shoulders would have been to renounce their right to the throne. When the wicked brothers Clotaire and Childebert coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir, they inveigled into their power their little nephews, the two sons of Clodomir; and having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a naked sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The envoy shewed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the children should be shorn and live or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless uncle Clotaire with his own hand.[879 - Gregory of Tours, Histoire ecclésiastique des Francs, iii. 18, compare vi. 24 (Guizot's translation).] The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, must wear his hair long, and so must his grandees.[880 - Dr. Hahl, “Mitteilungen über Sitten und rechtliche Verhältnisse auf Ponape,” Ethnologisches Notizblatt, ii. Heft 2 (Berlin, 1901), p. 6.] The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to their hams, so that the weight of it became very troublesome; for they might never poll it so long as they lived, or at least until they had been relieved of their office on the score of old age. They wore it braided in great tresses, six fingers broad, and tied with cotton.[881 - Manuscrit Ramirez, Histoire de l'origine des Indiens qui habitent la Nouvelle Espagne (Paris, 1903), p. 171; J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ii. 365 (Hakluyt Society); A. de Herrera, General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, iii. 216 (Stevens's translation). The author of the Manuscrit Ramirez speaks as if the rule applied only to the priests of the god Tezcatlipoca.] A Haida medicine-man may neither clip nor comb his tresses, so they are always long and tangled.[882 - G. M. Dawson, “On the Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands,” in Geological Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1878-79, p. 123 b.] Among the Hos, a negro tribe of Togoland in West Africa, “there are priests on whose head no razor may come during the whole of their lives. The god who dwells in the man forbids the cutting of his hair on pain of death. If the hair is at last too long, the owner must pray to his god to allow him at least to clip the tips of it. The hair is in fact conceived as the seat and lodging-place of his god, so that were it shorn the god would lose his abode in the priest.”[883 - J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme, p. 229.] A rain-maker at Boroma, on the lower Zambesi, used to give out that he was possessed by two spirits, one of a lion, the other of a leopard, and in the assemblies of the people he mimicked the roaring of these beasts. In order that their spirits might not leave him, he never cut his hair nor drank alcohol.[884 - Missions Catholiques, xxv. (1893) p. 266.] The Masai clan of the El Kiboron, who are believed to possess the art of making rain, may not pluck out their beards, because the loss of their beards would, it is supposed, entail the loss of their rain-making powers. The head chief and the sorcerers of the Masai observe the same rule for a like reason: they think that were they to pull out their beards, their supernatural gifts would desert them.[885 - M. Merker, Die Masai (Berlin, 1904), pp. 21, 22, 143.] In central Borneo the chiefs of a particular Kayan family never allow their hair to be shorn.[886 - A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, i. 68.] Ancient Indian law required that when a new king had performed the ceremony of consecration he might not shave his hair for a year, though he was allowed to crop it. According to one account none of his subjects, except a Brahman, might have his hair cut during this period, and even horses were left unclipped.[887 - Satapatha Brahmana, translated by J. Eggeling, part iii. pp. 126, 128, with the translator's note on p. 126 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xli.).] Amongst the Alfoors of Celebes the Leleen or priest who looks after the rice-fields may not shear his hair during the time that he exercises his special functions, that is from a month before the rice is sown until it is housed.[888 - P. N. Wilken, “Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, vii. (1863) p. 126.] In Usukuma, a district to the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza, the people are forbidden to shave their heads till the corn has been sown.[889 - R. P. Ashe, Two Kings of Uganda (London, 1889), p. 109.] Men of the Tsetsaut tribe in British Columbia do not cut their hair, believing that if they cut it they would quickly grow old.[890 - Fr. Boas, in Tenth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 45 (separate reprint from the Report of the British Association for 1895).] In Ceram men do not crop their hair: if married men did so, they would lose their wives; if young men did so, they would grow weak and enervated.[891 - J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 137.] In Timorlaut married men may not poll their hair for the same reason as in Ceram, but widowers and men on a journey may do so after offering a fowl or a pig in sacrifice.[892 - J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 292 sq.] Malays of the Peninsula are forbidden to clip their hair during their wife's pregnancy and for forty days after the child has been born; and a similar abstention is said to have been formerly incumbent on all persons prosecuting a journey or engaged in war.[893 - W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 44.] Elsewhere men travelling abroad have been in the habit of leaving their hair unshorn until their return. The reason for this custom is probably the danger to which, as we have seen, a traveller is believed to be exposed from the magic arts of the strangers amongst whom he sojourns; if they got possession of his shorn hair, they might work his destruction through it. The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair uncut till they returned home.[894 - Diodorus Siculus, i. 18.] “At Tâif when a man returned from a journey his first duty was to visit the Rabba and poll his hair.”[895 - W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Cambridge, 1885), pp. 152 sq.] Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, because his father had vowed to offer it to the River Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.[896 - Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 141 sqq. This Homeric passage has been imitated by Valerius Flaccus (Argonaut. i. 378). The Greeks often dedicated a lock of their hair to rivers. See Aeschylus, Choephori, 5 sq.; Philostratus, Heroica, xiii. 4; Pausanias, i. 37. 3, viii. 20. 3, viii. 41. 3. The lock might be at the side or the back of the head or over the brow; it received a special name (Pollux, ii. 30).] Formerly when Dyak warriors returned with the heads of their enemies, each man cut off a lock from the front of his head and threw it into the river as a mode of ending the taboo to which they had been subjected during the expedition.[897 - S. W. Tromp, “Een Dajaksch Feest,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xxxix. (1890) p. 38.] Bechuanas after a battle had their hair shorn by their mothers “in order that new hair might grow, and that all which was old and polluted might disappear and be no more.”[898 - T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, Relation d'un voyage d'exploration, p. 565.]

Hair unshorn during a vow. The nails of infants should not be pared. Child's hair left unshorn as a refuge for its soul.

Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that “occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.”[899 - D. Porter, Journal of a Cruise made to the Pacific Ocean, ii. 120.] A similar custom was sometimes observed by the ancient Germans; among the Chatti the young warriors never clipped their hair or their beard till they had slain an enemy.[900 - Tacitus, Germania, 31. Vows of the same sort were occasionally made by the Romans (Suetonius, Julius, 67; Tacitus, Hist. iv. 61).] Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not poll their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their foes.[901 - Paulus Diaconus, Hist. Langobard. iii. 7; Gregory of Tours, Histoire ecclésiastique des Francs, v. 15, vol. i. p. 268 (Guizot's translation, Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1874).] On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years, “during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.”[902 - W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches,

iv. 387.] While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.”[903 - Numbers vi. 5.] Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man's head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives. The same feeling perhaps gave rise to the European rule that a child's nails should not be pared during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.[904 - J. A. E. Köhler, Volksbrauch, etc., im Voigtlande, p. 424; W. Henderson, Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, pp. 16 sq.; F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 258, § 23; I. V. Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meinungen des Tiroler Volkes,

§§ 46, 72; J. W. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 208, § 45, p. 209 § 53; O. Knoop, Volkssagen, Erzählungen, etc., aus dem östlichen Hinterpommern, p. 157, § 23; E. Veckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, Märchen und abergläubische Gebräuche, p. 445; J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen, p. 313; E. Krause, “Abergläubische Kuren und sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. (1883) p. 84.] For in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year or two is allowed to elapse.”[905 - Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. p. 205, § 1092.] The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North-West America do not pare the nails of female children till they are four years of age.[906 - G. Gibbs, “Notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America,” in Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 305; W. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 202. The reason alleged by the Indians is that if the girls' nails were cut sooner the girls would be lazy and unable to embroider in porcupine quill-work. But this is probably a late invention like the reasons assigned in Europe for the similar custom, of which the commonest is that the child would become a thief if its nails were cut.] In Uganda a child's hair may not be cut until the child has received a name. Should any of it be rubbed or plucked off accidentally, it is refastened to the child's head with string or by being knotted to the other hair.[907 - J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 30.] Amongst the Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast, a mother sometimes vows a sacrifice to the fetish if her infant should live. She then leaves the child unshorn till its fourth or sixth year, when she fulfils her vow and has the child's hair cut by a priest.[908 - Lieut. Herold, “Religiöse Anschauungen und Gebräuche der deutschen Ewe-Neger,” Mittheilungen aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, v. 148 sq.] To this day a Syrian mother will sometimes, like Hannah, devote her little one to God. When the child reaches a certain age, its hair is cut and weighed, and money is paid in proportion to the weight. If the boy thus dedicated is a Moslem, he becomes in time a dervish; if he is a Christian, he becomes a monk.[909 - S. J. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day (Chicago, etc., 1902), p.153.] Among the Toradjas of central Celebes, when a child's hair is cut to rid it of vermin, some locks are allowed to remain on the crown of the head as a refuge for one of the child's souls. Otherwise the soul would have no place in which to settle, and the child would sicken.[910 - A. C. Kruyt, “Het koppensnellen der Toradja's,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der konink. Akademie van Wetenschapen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, iv. Reeks, iii. 198 n

(Amsterdam, 1899).] The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra are much afraid of frightening away the soul (tĕndi) of a child; hence when they cut its hair, they always leave a patch unshorn, to which the soul can retreat before the shears. Usually this lock remains unshorn all through life, or at least up till manhood.[911 - R. Römer, “Bijdrage tot de Geneeskunst der Karo-Batak's,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, i. (1908) p. 216.] In some parts of Germany it is thought that if a child's hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;[912 - O. Knoop, Volkssagen, Erzählungen, etc., aus dem östlichen Hinterpommern (Posen, 1885), p. 157, § 23.] or that if a boy's hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.[913 - J. W. Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, i. p. 209, § 57.]