Chapter VIII: The Folk-Lore of the Cardinal Points

To weave romance and mystery around the four points of the compass might appear an impossible task, yet this feat was successfully performed by our rude forefathers, to whose primitive minds the plain, undeviating phenomena of Nature conveyed comfort or warning. A few simple superstitions, bequeathed from father to son, and ever amplified throughout a thousand generations, became at last a somewhat complex body of doctrine. This accumulated lore is now being rapidly scattered to the winds by the growth of science and the spread of education, but stray fragments may still be gathered by the student.

The magnetic compass, of which the history is a little uncertain (see p. 228, _supra_), may be put aside in our present inquiry, since it belongs to a state of society of comparatively high development. The unembellished teaching which is to be examined dates far earlier than the birth of science in the Middle Ages, or the period of the introduction of the magnetic needle into Europe. We shall find, however, that the folk-lore of the Cardinal Points received many additions at the hands of Mediaeval symbolists. The mythology of that epoch has, indeed, been fitly compared to a complex alloy, formed by the blending of pure ores from various sources. The traditions of previous ages were retained, and blended, but new material was thrown into the crucible.

Certain patent facts would appeal even to the elementary minds of the Stone Age men. These folk saw the sun rise daily in the East, traverse the sky by way of the South, and finally set at evening in the West. Birth and brightness were followed by ascendancy and power; the descent led to disappearance and darkness. There was the dawn, followed by warm beams which dispersed both gloom and vapour. The blue South yielded the heat of noonday, at which time the sunbeams were genial, even in the depth of winter. But when the dying sun had withdrawn for the day, primitive men would experience discomfort and uneasy forebodings. This disappearance of the great luminary, the lord and giver of life, was a permanent mystery; the rebirth next morning was even more perplexing. At a later period, the men of China and North America, of Greece and Rome, evolved curious explanations of these phenomena, but at first only the physical effects of the sun’s apparent movements would concern the barbaric mind.

Very early in the growth of ideas man would learn that the position of the sun was a good index of direction. It has been mooted whether the most ancient method of denoting direction, that is, “orientation” in its wider sense, was not to describe the speaker’s surroundings, or to indicate natural features known to him and his fellows[833]. Thus, a hunter might speak of a place by reference to some prominent rock or tree; his direction might, in the same way, be told in terms of the prevailing winds. One is nevertheless driven to believe that simple observations of the sun’s position would be made almost as soon as man began to take notice of any natural features or occurrences whatever; in either case, any slight priority of method is of such trivial account as to be negligible.

Seeing that the East and West points are much more clearly marked than the North and South, one would naturally expect that the ancients found those points more convenient as standards. To make accurate use of the North-to-South direction, one would either need to have an approximate method of determining time by the length of shadows, or to know how to find the Pole Star or the Great Bear by night. The modern schoolboy is occasionally taught to reckon his position by facing the East, and long ago Canon Isaac Taylor suggested that some of the early Aryan peoples similarly took the East as their standard[834]. According to this authority, the place-name Deccan is connected with the Latin _dexter_, the right hand, that is, the right hand as the observer faces the East. On this view, Deccan would be the right-hand, or South country. As an analogy, Taylor cites the Arabic word _yemin_, which means both right-hand and South (whence el-Yemen for Southern Arabia)[835]. These ideas have received considerable modern support. The Welsh name for South, _dehau_, like the Old Irish _dess_ (Mod. Irish, _deas_) means also right-hand[836]. Hence we get _Deheu-dir_, the South land, for South Wales, and the Brit-Latin adjectives, _dextralis_, Southern; _sinistralis_, Northern. So, too, the Continental names, Texel and Teisterbant, are supposed to mean places lying towards the South[837]. Similarly, with the Eskimos, the words used for North and South correspond with those used for the sides of the body[838]. Other languages might be cited to show like peculiarities, but it will be sufficient here to note a few curious instances of folk-memory illustrative of the root idea.

The Jewish rabbis taught that man was born with his face towards the East; hence the right and left hand directions were respectively indicative of good and evil[839]. We infer this from the New Testament parable, wherein the sheep are set on the right hand and the goats on the left. Our words _dexterous_ and _sinister_ have a groundwork of the old belief to support them; the latter word, at least, is not exclusively concerned with physical awkwardness or ineptitude. The superstition concerning the left-hand colours the current meaning. A difficulty, however, arises when we discover that the Roman augurs deemed the left side indicative of good-luck. How can the two ideas be reconciled? Schrader conjectures that the East, and not the North side, was intended as the equivalent of the left hand, the supposition being that the soothsayer faced the South in his divination. Seyffert states this as a fact, adding that, in ancient Greece, augurs looked towards the North[840]. The Greek usage seems to be reflected in Homer’s frequent employment of δεξιός, in the sense of favourable, or boding good, with respect to the flight of birds and other omens. It would appear that the Latin poets (e.g. Virgil and Livy) copied the Greek idea and mode of expression, using the cognate word _dexter_ to denote skilful or fortunate. This theory implies that the restricted meaning of _dexter_ is borrowed, and is not directly derived from Roman augury. Moreover, since the Roman diviner faced the South, _dexter_ could not be applied to that point of the compass. To this extent, then, the attempt to connect the word with Deccan and similar place-names breaks down. The main conclusion, nevertheless, is little affected, namely, that words of this character were often employed to distinguish the Cardinal Points. The pitfall to be avoided is the assumption that superstitions and beliefs everywhere take precisely the same form of expression. Professor Skeat traces a connection, for example, between the Malay word _kidal_ (= South), and _kidul_ (= left-handed)[841]. This relationship would suggest that the standard point for observation was the West, not the East. In Greece and Rome, as we have seen, the North and South respectively were so chosen.

In some districts, where the distinctive names of the four Cardinal Points have been fully accepted, the reverse principle is seen at work: the peasant, instead of using the terms “right hand” and “left hand” to signify East and West, applies the compass points to indicate position with respect to the body. Thus, in some parts of Scotland, one still hears such expressions as “the East trouser pocket[842].” And Miss C. F. Gordon-Cumming tells of an old Highland woman who inquired at the post-office whether the envelope should be stamped in the East or the West corner[843].

A little detail respecting the folk-lore of the Cardinal Points may not be unacceptable. Taking first the East, we find that this quarter, besides serving as the point of determination for certain races whose speech was of the Aryan stock, was the reputed home of deities. We have seen that folk of many climes turned to the East in prayer. That portion of the firmament was symbolical of hope, and purity, and fulness of life. Milton speaks of

... “the Eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state”--

as if the grandeur of dawn could not be overlooked by the most unresponsive eye. St Augustine considers the East emblematic of the “Light of Heaven.” How important this point of the compass was esteemed by Christian and pagan architects is proved by the practice of orientation--the word itself marks out the idea. Hawker, of Morwenstow, ever mystical in his beliefs, declared that the East was the realm of oracles and represented the special throne of God, while the West was the domain of the people--the Galilee of all nations[844].

The South, the region of warmth and midday, has always been beloved by the religious, as well as the superstitious, of most countries, especially in the Northern parts of the world. The prose Eddas speak of the Southern edge of heaven as the everlasting abode of righteous men. Again, one of the roots of the magic tree Yggdrasill springs from the warm South side, over the Urdur fountain. The preference for the South is well seen in ecclesiastical matters. The churchyard cross usually stands on the South side of the church (Fig. 62). As will be shown in