Chapter VI: Part 6

In this rite the fire-pit is thrice as long (at a rough estimate) as that of the Fijians. The fire is of wooden embers, not heated stones. As in Fiji, a man who falls is burned, clearly suggesting that the feet and legs, but not the whole body, are in some way prepared to resist the fire. As we shall find to be the practice in Bulgaria, the celebrants place their feet afterwards in water. As in Bulgaria, drums are beaten to stimulate the fire-walkers. Neither here nor in Fiji are the performers said to be entranced, like the Bulgarian Nistinares. {161} On the whole, the Kling rite (which the Klings, I am informed, also practise in the islands whither they are carried as coolies) so closely resembles the Fijian and the Tongan that one would explain the likeness by transmission, were the ceremony not almost as like the rite of the Hirpi. For the Tongan fire-ritual, the source is The Polynesian Society's Journal, vol. ii. No. 2. pp. 105-108. My attention was drawn to this by Mr. Laing, writing from New Zealand. The article is by Miss Tenira Henry, of Honolulu, a young lady of the island. The Council of the Society, not having seen the rite, 'do not guarantee the truth of the story, but willingly publish it for the sake of the incantation.' Miss Henry begins with a description of the ti-plant (Dracaena terminalis), which 'requires to be well baked before being eaten.' She proceeds thus:

'The ti-ovens are frequently thirty feet in diameter, and the large stones, heaped upon small logs of wood, take about twenty-four hours to get properly heated. Then they are flattened down, by means of long green poles, and the trunks of a few banana-trees are stripped up and strewn over them to cause steam. The ti-roots are then thrown in whole, accompanied by short pieces of ape-root (Arum costatum), that are not quite so thick as the ti, but grow to the length of six feet and more. The oven is then covered over with large leaves and soil, and left so for about three days, when the ti and the ape are taken out well cooked, and of a rich, light-brown colour. The ape prevents the ti from getting too dry in the oven.

'There is a strange ceremony connected with the Uum Ti (or ti-oven), that used to be practised by the heathen priests at Raiatea, but can now be performed by only two individuals (Tupua and Taero), both descendants of priests. This ceremony consisted in causing people to walk in procession through the hot oven when flattened down, before anything had been placed in it, and without any preparation whatever, bare-footed or shod, and on their emergence not even smelling of fire. The manner of doing this was told by Tupua, who heads the procession in the picture, to Monsieur Morne, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who also took the photograph {163} of it, about two years ago, at Uturoa, Raiatea, which, being on bad paper, was copied off by Mr. Barnfield, of Honolulu. All the white residents of the place, as well as the French officers, were present to see the ceremony, which is rarely performed nowadays.

'No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of this surprising feat, but it is to be hoped that scientists will endeavour to do so while those men who practise it still live.

Tupua's Incantation used in Walking Over the Uum-Ti.--Translation

'Hold the leaves of the ti-plant before picking them, and say: "O hosts of gods! awake, arise! You and I are going to the ti-oven to-morrow."

'If they float in the air, they are gods, but if their feet touch the ground they are human beings. Then break the ti-leaves off and look towards the direction of the oven, and say: "O hosts of gods! go to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go." Then wrap the ti-leaves up in han (Hibiscus) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae, where they must remain until morning, and say in leaving:

'"Arise! awake! O hosts of gods! Let your feet take you to the ti-oven; fresh water and salt water come also. Let the dark earth-worm and the light earth-worm go to the oven. Let the redness and the shades of fire all go. You will go; you will go to-night, and to-morrow it will be you and I; we shall go to the Uum-Ti." (This is for the night.)

'When the ti-leaves are brought away, they must be tied up in a wand and carried straight to the oven, and opened when all are ready to pass through; then hold the wand forward and say:

'"O men (spirits) who heated the oven! let it die out! O dark earth-worms! O light earthworms! fresh water and salt water, heat of the oven and redness of the oven, hold up the footsteps of the walkers, and fan the heat of the bed. O cold beings, let us lie in the midst of the oven! O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! hold the fan, and let us go into the oven for a little while!" Then, when all are ready to walk in, we say:

"Holder of the first footstep!
Holder of the second footstep!
Holder of the third footstep!
Holder of the fourth footstep!
Holder of the fifth footstep!
Holder of the sixth footstep!
Holder of the seventh footstep!
Holder of the eighth footstep!
Holder of the ninth footstep!
Holder of the tenth footstep!
"O Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies! all is covered!"

'Then everybody walks through without hurt, into the middle and around the oven, following the leader, with the wand beating from side to side.

'The Great-Woman-who-set-fire-to-the-skies was a high-born woman in olden times, who made herself respected by the oppressive men when they placed women under so many restrictions. She is said to have had the lightning at her command, and struck men with it when they encroached on her rights.

'All the above is expressed in old Tahitian, and when quickly spoken is not easily understood by the modern listener. Many of the words, though found in the dictionary, are now obsolete, and the arrangement of others is changed. Oe and tana are never used now in place of the plural outou and tatou; but in old folk-lore it is the classical style of addressing the gods in the collective sense. Tahutahu means sorcery, and also to kindle a fire.'

* * * * *

So far Miss Henry, on this occasion, and the archaic nature of the hymn, with the reference to a mythical leader of the revolt of women, deserves the attention of anthropologists, apart from the singular character of the rite described. In the third number of the Journal (vol. ii.) the following editorial note is published:

'Miss Tenira Henry authorises us to say that her sister and her
sister's little child were some of those who joined in the Uum-Ti
ceremony referred to in vol. ii. p. 108, and in the preceding note,
and actually walked over the red-hot stones. The illustration of the
performance given in the last number of the Journal, it appears, is
actually from a photograph taken by Lieutenant Morne, the original of
which Miss Henry has sent us for inspection.--EDITOR.'

Corroborative Evidence

The following corroborative account is given in the Journal, from a source vaguely described as 'a pamphlet published in San Francisco, by Mr. Hastwell:'

'The natives of Raiatea have some performances so entirely out of the ordinary course of events as to institute (sic) inquiry relative to a proper solution.

'On September 20, 1885, I witnessed the wonderful, and to me inexplicable, performance of passing through the "fiery furnace."

'The furnace that I saw was an excavation of three or four feet in the ground, in a circular form (sloping upwards), and about thirty feet across. The excavation was filled with logs and wood, and then covered with large stones. A fire was built underneath, and kept burning for a day. When I witnessed it, on the second day, the flames were pouring up through the interstices of the rocks, which were heated to a red and white heat. When everything was in readiness, and the furnace still pouring out its intense heat, the natives marched up with bare feet to the edge of the furnace, where they halted for a moment, and after a few passes of the wand made of the branches of the ti-plant by the leader, who repeated a few words in the native language, they stepped down on the rocks and walked leisurely across to the other side, stepping from stone to stone. This was repeated five times, without any preparation whatever on their feet, and without injury or discomfort from the heated stones. There was not even the smell of fire on their garments.'

* * * * *

Mr. N. J. Tone, in the same periodical (ii. 3,193), says that he arrived just too late to see the same rite at Bukit Mestajam, in Province Wellesley, Straits Settlements; he did see the pit and the fire, and examined the naked feet, quite uninjured, of the performers. He publishes an extract to this effect from his diary. The performers, I believe, were Klings. Nothing is said to indicate any condition of trance, or other abnormal state, in the fire-walkers.

The Fire-walk in Trinidad.

Mr. Henry E. St. Clair, writing on September 14. 1896, says: 'In Trinidad, British West Indies, the rite is performed annually about this time of the year among the Indian coolie immigrants resident in the small village of Peru, a mile or so from Port of Spain. I have personally witnessed the passing, and the description given by Mr. Ponder tallies with what I saw, except that, so far as I can remember, the number of those who took part in the rite was greater than six. In addition, there is this circumstance, which was not mentioned by that gentleman: each of the "passers" carried one or two lemons, which they dropped into the fire as they went along. These lemons were afterwards eagerly scrambled for by the bystanders, who, so far as I can recollect, attributed a healing influence to them.'

Bulgarian Fire-walk

As to the Bulgarian rite, Dr. Schischmanof writes to me:

'I am sure the observance will surprise you; I am even afraid that you
will think it rather fantastic, but you may rely on my information.
The danse de feu was described long ago in a Bulgarian periodical by
one of our best known writers. What you are about to read only
confirms his account. What I send you is from the Recueil de Folk
Lore, de Litterature et de Science (vol. vi. p. 224), edited, with my
aid and that of my colleague, Mastov, by the Minister of Public
Instruction. How will you explain these hauts faits de l'extase
religieuse? I cannot imagine! For my part, I think of the
self-mutilations and tortures of Dervishes and Fakirs, and wonder if
we have not here something analogous.'

The article in the Bulgarian serial is called 'The Nistinares.' The word is not Bulgarian; possibly it is Romaic.

The scene is in certain villages in Turkey, on the Bulgarian frontier, and not far from the town of Bourgas, on the Euxine, in the department of Lozen Grad. The ministrants (Nistinares) have the gift of fire-walking as a hereditary talent; they are specially _just_, and the gift is attributed as to a god in Fiji, in Bulgaria to St. Constantine and St. Helena.

'These _just ones_ feel a desire to dance in the flames during the
month of May; they are filled at the same time with some unknown
force, which enables them to predict the future. The best Nistinare
is he who can dance longest in the live flame, and utter the most
truthful prophecies.'

The Nistinares may be of either sex.

On May 1 the Nistinares hold a kind of religious festival at the house of one of their number. Salutations are exchanged, and presents of food and raki are made to the chief Nistinare. The holy icones of saints are wreathed with flowers, and perfumed with incense. Arrangements are made for purifying the holy wells and springs.

On May 21, the day of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish priest says Mass in the grey of dawn. At sunrise all the village meets in festal array; the youngest Nistinare brings from the church the icones of the two saints, and drums are carried behind them in procession. They reach the sacred well in the wood, which the priest blesses. This is parallel to the priestly benediction on 'Fountain Sunday' of the well beneath the Fairy Tree at Domremy, where Jeanne d'Arc was accused of meeting the Good Ladies. {169} Everyone drinks of the water, and there is a sacrifice of rams, ewes, and oxen. A festival follows, as was the use of Domremy in the days of the Maid; then all return to the village. The holy drum, which hangs all the year before St. Helena in the church, is played upon. A mock combat between the icones which have visited the various holy wells is held.

Meanwhile, in each village, pyres of dry wood, amounting to thirty, fifty, or even a hundred cartloads, have been piled up. The wood is set on fire before the procession goes forth to the hallowing of the fountains. On returning, the crowd dances a horo (round dance) about the glowing logs. Heaps of embers (Pineus acervus) are made, and water is thrown on the ground. The musicians play the tune called 'L'Air Nistinar.' A Nistinare breaks through the dance, _turns blue_, trembles like a leaf, and glares wildly with his eyes. The dance ends, and everybody goes to the best point of view. Then the wildest Nistinare seizes the icon, turns it to the crowd, and with naked feet climbs the pyre of glowing embers. The music plays, and the Nistinare dances to the tune in the fire. If he is so disposed he utters prophecies. He dances till his face resumes its ordinary expression; then he begins to feel the burning; he leaves the pyre, and places his feet in the mud made by the libations of water already described. The second Nistinare then dances in the fire, and so on. The predictions apply to villages and persons; sometimes sinners are denounced, or repairs of the church are demanded in this queer parish council. All through the month of May the Nistinares call out for fire when they hear the Nistinare music playing. They are very temperate men and women. Except in May they do not clamour for fire, and cannot dance in it.

In this remarkable case the alleged gift is hereditary, is of saintly origin, and is only exercised when the Nistinare is excited, and (apparently) entranced by music and the dance, as is the manner also of medicine-men among savages. The rite, with its sacrifices of sheep and oxen, is manifestly of heathen origin. They 'pass through the fire' to St. Constantine, but the observance must be far older than Bulgarian Christianity. The report says nothing as to the state of the feet of the Nistinares after the fire-dance. Medical inspection is desirable, and the photographic camera should be used to catch a picture of the wild scene. My account is abridged from the French version of the Bulgarian report sent by Dr. Schischmanof.

Indian Fire-walk

Since these lines were written the kindness of Mr. Tawney, librarian at the India Office, has added to my stock of examples. Thus, Mr. Stokes printed in the Indian Antiquary (ii. p. 190) notes of evidence taken at an inquest on a boy of fourteen, who fell during the fire-walk, was burned, and died on that day. The rite had been forbidden, but was secretly practised in the village of Periyangridi. The fire-pit was 27 feet long by 7.5 feet broad and a span in depth. Thirteen persons walked through the hot wood embers, which, in Mr. Stokes's opinion (who did not see the performance), 'would hardly injure the tough skin of the sole of a labourer's foot,' yet killed a boy. The treading was usually done by men under vows, perhaps vows made during illness. One, at least, walked 'because it is my duty as Pujari.' Another says, 'I got down into the fire at the east end, meditating on Draupati, walked through to the west, and up the bank.' Draupati is a goddess, wife of the Pandavas. Mr. Stokes reports that, according to the incredulous, experienced fire-walkers smear their feet with oil of the green frog. No report is made as to the condition of their feet when they emerge from the fire.

Another case occurs in Oppert's work, The Original Inhabitants of India (p. 480). As usual, a pit is dug, filled with faggots. When these have burned down 'a little,' and 'while the heat is still unbearable in the neighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow . . . walk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves as a rule much harm.'

Again, in a case where butter is poured over the embers to make a blaze, 'one of the tribal priests, in a state of religious afflatus, walks through the fire. It is said that the sacred fire is harmless, but some admit that a certain preservative ointment is used by the performers.' A chant used at Mirzapur (as in Fiji) is cited. {171}

In these examples the statements are rather vague. No evidence is adduced as to the actual effect of the fire on the feet of the ministrants. We hear casually of ointments which protect the feet, and of the thickness of the skins of the fire-walkers, and of the unapproachable heat, but we have nothing exact, no trace of scientific precision. The Government 'puts down,' but does not really investigate the rite.

Psychical Parallels

I now very briefly, and 'under all reserves,' allude to the only modern parallel in our country with which I am acquainted. We have seen that Iamblichus includes insensibility to fire among the privileges of Graeco- Egyptian 'mediums.' {172} The same gift was claimed by Daniel Dunglas Home, the notorious American spiritualist. I am well aware that as Eusapia Paladino was detected in giving a false impression that her hands were held by her neighbours in the dark, therefore, when Mr. Crookes asserts that he saw Home handle fire in the light, his testimony on this point can have no weight with a logical public. Consequently it is not as evidence to the _fact_ that I cite Mr. Crookes, but for another purpose. Mr. Crookes's remarks I heard, and I can produce plenty of living witnesses to the same experiences with D. D. Home:

'I several times saw the fire test, both at my own and at other
houses. On one occasion he called me to him when he went to the fire,
and told me to watch carefully. He certainly put his hand in the
grate and handled the red-hot coals in a manner which would have been
impossible for me to have imitated without being severely burnt. I
once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, taking a large piece of
red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one hand, and, covering it
with the other, blow into the extempore furnace till the coal was
white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers. No sign of
burning could be seen then or afterwards on his hands.'

On these occasions Home was, or was understood to be, 'entranced,' like the Bulgarian Nistinares. Among other phenomena, the white handkerchief on which Home laid a red-hot coal was not scorched, nor, on analysis, did it show any signs of chemical preparation. Home could also (like the Fijians) communicate his alleged immunity to others present; for example, to Mr. S. C. Hall. But it burned and marked a man I know. Home, entranced, and handling a red-hot coal, passed it to a gentleman of my acquaintance, whose hand still bears the scar of the scorching endured in 1867. Immunity was not _always_ secured by experimenters.

I only mention these circumstances because Mr. Crookes has stated that he knows no chemical preparation which would avert the ordinary action of heat. Mr. Clodd (on the authority of Sir B. W. Richardson) has suggested diluted sulphuric acid (so familiar to Klings, Hirpi, Tongans, and Fijians). But Mr. Clodd produced no examples of successful or unsuccessful experiment. {173} The nescience of Mr. Crookes may be taken to cover these valuable properties of diluted sulphuric acid, unless Mr. Clodd succeeds in an experiment which, if made on his own person, I would very willingly witness.

Merely for completeness, I mention Dr. Dozous's statement, {174} that he timed by his watch Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes, while, for fifteen minutes, she, in an ecstatic condition, held her hands in the flame of a candle. He then examined her hands, which were not scorched or in any way affected by the fire. This is called, at Lourdes, the Miracle du Cierge.

Here ends my list of examples, in modern and ancient times, of a rite which deserves, though it probably will not receive, the attention of science. The widely diffused religious character of the performance will, perhaps, be admitted as demonstrated. As to the method by which the results are attained, whether by a chemical preparation, or by the influence of a certain mental condition, or by thickness of skin, or whether all the witnesses fable with a singular unanimity (shared by photographic cameras), I am unable even to guess. On May 21, in Bulgaria, a scientific observer might come to a conclusion. At present I think it possible that the Jewish 'Passing through the Fire' may have been a harmless rite.

Conclusion as to Fire-walk

In all these cases, and others as to which I have first-hand evidence, there are decided parallels to the Rite of the Hirpi, and to Biblical and ecclesiastical miracles. The savage examples are _rites_, and appear intended to secure good results in food supplies (Fiji), or general well- being, perhaps by expiation for sins, as in the Attic Thargelia. The Bulgarian rite also aims at propitiating general good luck.

Psychical Research

But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and perhaps no philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously asked the question. The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air, and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. The possibility of plunging the hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the point. In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more, the well-attested performances of D. D. Home (entranced, like the Nistinares); the well observed and timed Miracle du Cierge at Lourdes--Bernadette being in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of Iamblichus; the case of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, {175} and other examples. There is no harm in collecting examples, and the question remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil's Hirpi to Bulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically neglected fact in nature? At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia rite philology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her modern rural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical research her 'cases' at first-hand. Anthropology had neglected the collection of these, perhaps because the Fire-walk is 'impossible.'

THE ORIGIN OF DEATH

Yama

This excursus on 'The Fire-walk' has been introduced, as an occasion arose, less because of controversy about a neglected theme than for the purpose of giving something positive in a controversial treatise. For the same reason I take advantage of Mr. Max Muller's remarks on Yama, 'the first who died,' to offer a set of notes on myths of the Origin of Death. Yama, in our author's opinion, is 'the setting sun' (i. 45; ii. 563). Agni (Fire) is 'the first who was born;' as the other twin, Yama, he was also the first who died (ii. 568). As 'the setting sun he was the first instance of death.' Kuhn and others, judging from a passage in the Atharva Veda (xviii. 3, 13), have, however, inferred that Yama 'was really a human being and the first of mortals.' He is described in the Atharva as 'the gatherer of men, who died the first of mortals, who went forward the first to that world.' In the Atharva we read of 'reverence to Yama, to Death, who first approached the precipice, finding out the path for many.' 'The myth of Yama is perfectly intelligible, if we trace its roots back to the sun of evening' (ii. 573). Mr. Max Muller then proposes on this head 'to consult the traditions of real Naturvolker' (savages). The Harvey Islanders speak of dying as 'following the sun's track.' The Maoris talk of 'going down with the sun' (ii. 574). No more is said here about savage myths of 'the first who died.' I therefore offer some additions to the two instances in which savages use a poetical phrase connecting the sun's decline with man's death.

The Origin of Death

Civilised man in a scientific age would never invent a myth to account for 'God's great ordinance of death.' He regards it as a fact, obvious and necessarily universal; but his own children have not attained to his belief in death. The certainty and universality of death do not enter into the thoughts of our little ones.

For in the thought of immortality
Do children play about the flowery meads.

Now, there are still many childlike tribes of men who practically disbelieve in death. To them death is always a surprise and an accident--an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world. 'Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,' says Dr. Tylor. These tribes have no conception of death as the inevitable, eventual obstruction and cessation of the powers of the bodily machine; the stopping of the pulses and processes of life by violence or decay or disease. To persons who regard Death thus, _his_ intrusion into the world (for Death, of course, is thought to be a person) stands in great need of explanation. That explanation, as usual, is given in myths.

Death, regarded as Unnatural

But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a scientific way for _violent_ deaths. The spear or club breaks or crushes a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But the deaths he disbelieves in are _natural_ deaths. These he is obliged to explain as produced by some supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits impelled by witches. Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the action of witches apart, man would even now be immortal. 'There are rude races of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were never bewitched, and never killed by violence, _they would never die at all_. Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead "what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts."' 'The natives,' says Sir George Grey, speaking of the Australians, 'do not believe that there is such a thing as death from natural causes.' On the death of an Australian native from disease, a kind of magical coroner's inquest is held by the conjurers of the tribe, and the direction in which the wizard lives who slew the dead man is ascertained by the movements of worms and insects. The process is described at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in his Aborigines of Victoria (i. 98-102). Turning from Australia to Hindustan, we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber's narrative) attribute all natural deaths to a supernatural cause--namely, witchcraft. That is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and necessity of Death. He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our living world. Again, in his Ethnology of Bengal (pp. 199, 200), Dalton tells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan race) are of the same opinion as the Puwarrees. 'They hold that all disease in men or animals is attributable to one of two causes: the wrath of some evil spirit or the spell of some witch or sorcerer. These superstitions are common to all classes of the population of this province.' In the New Hebrides disease and death are caused, as Mr. Codrington found, by tamates, or ghosts. {179} In New Caledonia, according to Erskine, death is the result of witchcraft practised by members of a hostile tribe, for who would be so wicked as to bewitch his fellow-tribesman? The Andaman Islanders attribute all natural deaths to the supernatural influence of e rem chaugala, or to jurn-win, two spirits of the jungle and the sea. The death is avenged by the nearest relation of the deceased, who shoots arrows at the invisible enemy. The negroes of Central Africa entertain precisely similar ideas about the non-naturalness of death. Mr. Duff Macdonald, in Africana, writes: 'Every man who dies what we call a natural death is really killed by witches.' It is a far cry from the Blantyre Mission in Africa to the Eskimo of the frozen North; but so uniform is human nature in the lower races that the Eskimo precisely agree, as far as theories of death go, with the Africans, the aborigines of India, the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, and the rest. Dr. Rink {180a} found that 'sickness or death coming about in an accidental manner was always attributed to witchcraft, and it remains a question whether death on the whole was not originally accounted for as resulting from magic.' Pere Paul le Jeune, writing from Quebec in 1637, says of the Red Men: 'Je n'en voy mourir quasi aucun, qui ne pense estre ensorcele.' {180b} It is needless to show how these ideas survived into civilisation. Bishop Jewell, denouncing witches before Queen Elizabeth, was, so far, mentally on a level with the Eskimo and the Australian. The familiar and voluminous records of trials for witchcraft, whether at Salem or at Edinburgh, prove that all abnormal and unwonted deaths and diseases, in animals or in men, were explained by our ancestors as the results of supernatural mischief.

It has been made plain (and the proof might be enlarged to any extent) that the savage does not regard death as 'God's great ordinance,' universal and inevitable and natural. But, being curious and inquisitive, he cannot help asking himself, 'How did this terrible invader first enter a world where he now appears so often?' This is, properly speaking, a scientific question; but the savage answers it, not by collecting facts and generalising from them, but by inventing a myth. That is his invariable habit. Does he want to know why this tree has red berries, why that animal has brown stripes, why this bird utters its peculiar cry, where fire came from, why a constellation is grouped in one way or another, why his race of men differs from the whites--in all these, and in all other intellectual perplexities, the savage invents a story to solve the problem. Stories about the Origin of Death are, therefore, among the commonest fruits of the savage imagination. As those legends have been produced to meet the same want by persons in a very similar mental condition, it inevitably follows that they all resemble each other with considerable closeness. We need not conclude that all the myths we are about to examine came from a single original source, or were handed about--with flint arrow-heads, seeds, shells, beads, and weapons--in the course of savage commerce. Borrowing of this sort may--or, rather, must--explain many difficulties as to the diffusion of some myths. But the myths with which we are concerned now, the myths of the Origin of Death, might easily have been separately developed by simple and ignorant men seeking to discover an answer to the same problem.

Why Men are Mortal

The myths of the Origin of Death fall into a few categories. In many legends of the lower races men are said to have become subject to mortality because they infringed some mystic prohibition or taboo of the sort which is common among untutored peoples. The apparently untrammelled Polynesian, or Australian, or African, is really the slave of countless traditions, which forbid him to eat this object or to touch that, or to speak to such and such a person, or to utter this or that word. Races in this curious state of ceremonial subjection often account for death as the punishment imposed for breaking some taboo. In other cases, death is said to have been caused by a sin of omission, not of commission. People who have a complicated and minute ritual (like so many of the lower races) persuade themselves that Death burst on the world when some passage of the ritual was first omitted, or when some custom was first infringed. Yet again, Death is fabled to have first claimed us for his victims in consequence of the erroneous delivery of a favourable message from some powerful supernatural being, or because of the failure of some enterprise which would have resulted in the overthrow of Death, or by virtue of a pact or covenant between Death and the gods. Thus it will be seen that death is often (though by no means invariably) the penalty of infringing a command, or of indulging in a culpable curiosity. But there are cases, as we shall see, in which death, as a tolerably general law, follows on a mere accident. Some one is accidentally killed, and this 'gives Death a lead' (as they say in the hunting-field) over the fence which had hitherto severed him from the world of living men. It is to be observed in this connection that the first of men who died is usually regarded as the discoverer of a hitherto 'unknown country,' the land beyond the grave, to which all future men must follow him. Bin dir Woor, among the Australians, was the first man who suffered death, and he (like Yama in the Vedic myth) became the Columbus of the new world of the dead.

Savage Death-Myths

Let us now examine in detail a few of the savage stories of the Origin of Death. That told by the Australians may be regarded with suspicion, as a refraction from a careless hearing of the narrative in Genesis. The legend printed by Mr. Brough Smyth {183a} was told to Mr. Bulwer by 'a black fellow far from sharp,' and this black fellow may conceivably have distorted what his tribe had heard from a missionary. This sort of refraction is not uncommon, and we must always guard ourselves against being deceived by a savage corruption of a Biblical narrative. Here is the myth, such as it is:--'The first created man and woman were told' (by whom we do not learn) 'not to go near a certain tree in which a bat lived. The bat was not to be disturbed. One day, however, the woman was gathering firewood, and she went near the tree. The bat flew away, and after that came Death.' More evidently genuine is the following legend of how Death 'got a lead' into the Australian world. 'The child of the first man was wounded. If his parents could heal him, Death would never enter the world. They failed. Death came.' The wound in this legend was inflicted by a supernatural being. Here Death acts on the principle ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute, and the premier pas was made easy for him. We may continue to examine the stories which account for death as the result of breaking a taboo. The Ningphos of Bengal say they were originally immortal. {183b} They were forbidden to bathe in a certain pool of water. Some one, greatly daring, bathed, and ever since Ningphos have been subject to death. The infringement, not of a taboo, but of a custom, caused death in one of the many Melanesian myths on this subject. Men and women had been practically deathless because they cast their old skins at certain intervals; but a grandmother had a favourite grandchild who failed to recognise her when she appeared as a young woman in her new skin. With fatal good-nature the grandmother put on her old skin again, and instantly men lost the art of skin-shifting, and Death finally seized them. {184}

The Greek Myth

The Greek myth of the Origin of Death is the most important of those which turn on the breaking of a prohibition. The story has unfortunately become greatly confused in the various poetical forms which have reached us. As far as can be ascertained, death was regarded in one early Greek myth as the punishment of indulgence in forbidden curiosity. Men appear to have been free from death before the quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephaestus fashioned a woman out of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, the brother of the Titan. Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. She brought her tabooed coffer: this was opened; and men--who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto lived exempt from 'maladies that bring down Fate'--were overwhelmed with the 'diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.' Now, in Hesiod (Works and Days, 70-100) there is nothing said about unholy curiosity. Pandora simply opened her casket and scattered its fatal contents. But Philodemus assures us that, according to a variant of the myth, it was Epimetheus who opened the forbidden coffer, whence came Death.

Leaving the myths which turn on the breaking of a taboo, and reserving for consideration the New Zealand story, in which the Origin of Death is the neglect of a ritual process, let us look at some African myths of the Origin of Death. It is to be observed that in these (as in all the myths of the most backward races) many of the characters are not gods, but animals.

The Bushman story lacks the beginning. The mother of the little Hare was lying dead, but we do not know how she came to die. The Moon then struck the little Hare on the lip, cutting it open, and saying, 'Cry loudly, for your mother will not return, as _I_ do, but is quite dead.' In another version the Moon promises that the old Hare shall return to life, but the little Hare is sceptical, and is hit in the mouth as before. The Hottentot myth makes the Moon send the Hare to men with the message that they will revive as he (the Moon) does. But the Hare 'loses his memory as he runs' (to quote the French proverb, which may be based on a form of this very tale), and the messenger brings the tidings that men shall surely die and never revive. The angry Moon then burns a hole in the Hare's mouth. In yet another Hottentot version the Hare's failure to deliver the message correctly caused the death of the Moon's mother (Bleek, Bushman Folklore). {185} Compare Sir James Alexander's Expedition, ii. 250, where the Namaquas tell this tale. The Fijians say that the Moon wished men to die and be born again, like herself. The Rat said, 'No, let them die, like rats;' and they do. {186}

The Serpent

In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin's Wild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death. The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for our purpose. At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:--God had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work to make man out of clay. A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate clay images while God slept. The serpent still comes and bites us all, and the end is death. If God never slept, there would be no death. The snake carries us off while God is asleep. But the oddest part of this myth remains. Not being able always to keep awake, God made a dog to drive away the snake by barking. And that is why dogs always howl when men are at the point of death. Here we have our own rural superstition about howling dogs twisted into a South Indian myth of the Origin of Death. The introduction of Death by a pure accident recurs in a myth of Central Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald. There was a time when the man blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet 'invented sleep.' A woman it was who came and offered to instruct two men in the still novel art of sleeping. 'She held the nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,' and since then the art of dying has been facile.

Dualistic Myths

A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is illustrated by a myth from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends of very many races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers who made things; one made things well, the other made them ill. In Pentecost Island it was Tagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five days only, and live again. But the malevolent Suque caused men 'to die right out.' {187} The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed in the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1879-80), p. 45. The younger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were wolves, said, 'When a man dies, send him back in the morning and let all his friends rejoice.' 'Not so,' said the elder; 'the dead shall return no more.' So the younger brother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning of death.

Economic Myth

There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal. The economical results were just what might have been expected. Property became concentrated in the hands of the few--that is, of the first generations--while all the younger people were practically paupers. To heal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more or less a spider) sent for Mate--that is, Death. Death lived near a volcanic crater of a mountain, where there is now a by-way into Hades--or Panoi, as the Melanesians call it. Death came, and went through the empty forms of a funeral feast for himself. Tangaro the Fool was sent to watch Mate, and to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might avoid that path in future. Now when Mate fled to his own place, this great fool Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed it out to men under the impression that it was the road to the _upper_, not to the _under_, world. Ever since that day men have been constrained to follow Mate's path to Panoi and the dead. {188} Another myth is somewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death to the imbecility of Tangaro the Fool.

Maui and Yama

The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr. Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a 'solar' explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology. He was not precisely a god, still less was he one of the early elemental gods, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one of the race of Titans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a Titan. Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore (as native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought him back to shore: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the most illustrious and successful of his household. So far Maui had the luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in folklore and mythology. This feature in his myth may be a result of the very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be used on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence came man's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. So far, what is there 'solar' about Maui? Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui had many. How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as to make him lame? This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent the sun from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire, indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever. There are various legends on this subject.

Maui Myths

Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men. He made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds which accompanied him. This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. Had he only come forth alive, men would have been deathless. Now, except that the bird which laughed sings at sunset, what is there 'solar' in all this? _The sun does daily what Maui failed to do_, {190a} passes through darkness and death back into light and life. Not only does the sun daily succeed where Maui failed, but it was his observation of this fact which encouraged Maui to risk the adventure. If Maui were the sun, we should all be immortal, for Maui's ordeal is daily achieved by the sun. But Dr. Tylor says: {190b} 'It is seldom that solar characteristics are more distinctly marked in the several details of a myth than they are here.' To us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar. Throughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition to the sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the sun could do Maui could not. Literally the one common point between Maui and the sun is that the little bird, the tiwakawaka, which sings at the daily death of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui.

Without pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, we may go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races. According to the Satapatha Brahmana, Death was made, like the gods and other creatures, by a being named Prajapati. Now of Prajapati, half was mortal, half was immortal. With his mortal half he feared Death, and concealed himself from Death in earth and water. Death said to the gods, 'What hath become of him who created us?' They answered, 'Fearing thee, hath he entered the earth.' The gods and Prajapati now freed themselves from the dominion of Death by celebrating an enormous number of sacrifices. Death was chagrined by their escape from the 'nets and clubs' which he carries in the Aitareya Brahmana. 'As you have escaped me, so will men also escape,' he grumbled. The gods appeased him by the promise that, _in the body_, no man henceforth for ever should evade Death. 'Every one who is to become immortal shall do so by first parting with his body.'

Yama

Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a protomartyr, Tama, 'the first of men who reached the river, spying out a path for many.' In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool, in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as 'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for many;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died, and the first who departed to the celestial world.' With him the Blessed Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes Yama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui. It is Yama, according to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his messengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of approaching death. Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the counterpart of the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally he was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.

Inferences

That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt, for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth. Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably, the myth of the Fire-stealer.

The Stealing of Fire

The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of fire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Muller the interest of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes. He will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor will he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. This does not seem satisfactory to the anthropologist, whose first curiosity is to know why fire is everywhere said to have been obtained for men by sly theft or 'flat burglary.' Of course it is obvious that a myth found in Australia and America cannot possibly be the result of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those two continents. The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some other origin.

'Fire Totems'

Mr. Max Muller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates two pages to 'Fire Totems.' 'If we are assured that there are some dark points left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much light as we can get' (ii. 804). Alas! I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Muller's own researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. 'The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the Indians.' 'We are told'--where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. 'If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one would object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of Prometheus' (ii. 810). Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek 'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'?

Prometheus