Chapter III: Survival in Culture (2)

Let us now put the theory of survival to a somewhat severe test, by seeking from it some explanation of the existence, in practice or memory, within the limits of modern civilized society, of three remarkable groups of customs which civilized ideas totally fail to account for. Though we may not succeed in giving clear and absolute explanations of their motives, at any rate it is a step in advance to be able to refer their origins to savage or barbaric antiquity. Looking at these customs from the modern practical point of view, one is ridiculous, the others are atrocious, and all are senseless. The first is the practice of salutation on sneezing, the second the rite of laying the foundations of a building on a human victim, the third the prejudice against saving a drowning man.

In interpreting the customs connected with sneezing, it is needful to recognize a prevalent doctrine of the lower races, of which a full account will be given in another chapter. As a man’s soul is considered to go in and out of his body, so it is with other spirits, particularly such as enter into patients and possess them or afflict them with disease. Among the less cultured races, the connexion of this idea with sneezing is best shown among the Zulus, a people firmly persuaded that kindly or angry spirits of the dead hover about them, do them good or harm, stand visibly before them in dreams, enter into them, and cause diseases in them. The following particulars are abridged from the native statements taken down by Dr. Callaway:—When a Zulu sneezes, he will say, ‘I am now blessed. The Idhlozi (ancestral spirit) is with me; it has come to me. Let me hasten and praise it, for it is it which causes me to sneeze!’ So he praises the manes of his family, asking for cattle, and wives, and blessings. Sneezing is a sign that a sick person will be restored to health; he returns thanks after sneezing, saying, ‘Ye people of ours, I have gained that prosperity which I wanted. Continue to look on me with favour!’ Sneezing reminds a man that he should name the Itongo (ancestral spirit) of his people without delay, because it is the Itongo which causes him to sneeze, that he may perceive by sneezing that the Itongo is with him. If a man is ill and does not sneeze, those who come to him ask whether he has sneezed or not; if he has not sneezed, they murmur, saying, ‘The disease is great!’ If a child sneezes, they say to it, ‘Grow!’ it is a sign of health. So then, it is said, sneezing among black men gives a man strength to remember that the Itongo has entered into him and abides with him. The Zulu diviners or sorcerers are very apt to sneeze, which they regard as an indication of the presence of the spirits, whom they adore by saying, ‘Makosi!’ (i.e. lords or masters). It is a suggestive example of the transition of such customs as these from one religion to another, that the Amakosa, who used to call on their divine ancestor Utixo when they sneezed, since their conversion to Christianity say, ‘Preserver, look upon me!’ or, ‘Creator of heaven and earth!’[111] Elsewhere in Africa, similar ideas are mentioned. Sir Thomas Browne, in his ‘Vulgar Errors,’ made well known the story that when the King of Monomotapa sneezed, acclamations of blessing passed from mouth to mouth through the city; but he should have mentioned that Godigno, from whom the original account is taken, said that this took place when the king drank, or coughed, or sneezed.[112] A later account from the other side of the continent is more to the purpose. In Guinea, in the last century, when a principal personage sneezed, all present fell on their knees, kissed the earth, clapped their hands, and wished him all happiness and prosperity.[113] With a different idea, the negroes of Old Calabar, when a child sneezes, will sometimes exclaim, ‘Far from you!’ with an appropriate gesture as if throwing off some evil.[114] Polynesia is another region where the sneezing salutation is well marked. In New Zealand, a charm was said to prevent evil when a child sneezed;[115] if a Samoan sneezed, the bystanders said, ‘Life to you!’[116] while in the Tongan group a sneeze on the starting of an expedition was a most evil presage.[117] A curious American instance dates from Hernando de Soto’s famous expedition into Florida, when Guachoya, a native chief, came to pay him a visit. ‘While this was going on, the cacique Guachoya gave a great sneeze; the gentlemen who had come with him and were lining the walls of the hall among the Spaniards there all at once bowing their heads, opening their arms, and closing them again, and making other gestures of great veneration and respect, saluted him with different words, all directed to one end, saying, “The Sun guard thee, be with thee, enlighten thee, magnify thee, protect thee, favour thee, defend thee, prosper thee, save thee,” and other like phrases, as the words came, and for a good space there lingered the murmur of these words among them, whereat the governor wondering said to the gentlemen and captains with him, “Do you not see that all the world is one?” This matter was well noted among the Spaniards, that among so barbarous a people should be used the same ceremonies, or greater, than among those who hold themselves to be very civilized. Whence it may be believed that this manner of salutation is natural among all nations, and not caused by a pestilence, as is vulgarly said,’ &c.[118]

In Asia and Europe the sneezing superstition extends through a wide range of race, age, and country.[119] Among the passages relating to it in the classic ages of Greece and Rome, the following are some of the most characteristic,—the lucky sneeze of Telemachos in the Odyssey;[120] the soldier’s sneeze and the shout of adoration to the god which rose along the ranks, and which Xenophon appealed to as a favourable omen;[121] Aristotle’s remark that people consider a sneeze as divine (τὸν ηὲν πταρμὸν θεὸν ἡγούμεθα εἶναι), but not a cough,[122] &c.; the Greek epigram on the man with the long nose, who did not say Ζεῦ σῶσον when he sneezed, for the noise was too far off for him to hear;[123] Petronius Arbiter’s mention of the custom of saying ‘Salve!’ to one who sneezed;[124] and Pliny’s question, ‘Cur sternutamentis salutamus?’ apropos of which he remarks that even Tiberius Cæsar, that saddest of men, exacted this observance.[125] Similar rites of sneezing have long been observed in Eastern Asia.[126] When a Hindu sneezes, bystanders say, ‘Live!’ and the sneezer replies, ‘With you!’ It is an ill omen, to which among others the Thugs paid great regard on starting on an expedition, and which even compelled them to let the travellers with them escape.[127]

The Jewish sneezing formula is, ‘Tobim chayim!’ i.e. ‘Good life!’[128] The Moslem says, ‘Praise to Allah!’ when he sneezes, and his friends compliment him with proper formulas, a custom which seems to be conveyed from race to race wherever Islam extends.[129] Lastly, the custom ranges through mediæval into modern Europe. To cite old German examples, ‘Die Heiden nicht endorften niesen, dâ man doch sprichet “Nu helfiu Got?”’ ‘Wir sprechen, swer niuset, Got helfe dir.’[130] For a Norman French instance in England, the following lines (A.D. 1100) may serve, which show our old formula ‘waes hæl!’ (‘may you be well!’—‘wassail!’) used also to avert being taken ill after a sneeze:—

‘E pur une feyze esternuer
Tantot quident mal trouer,
Si _uesbeil_ ne diez aprez.’[131]

In the ‘Rules of Civility’ (A.D. 1685, translated from the French) we read:—‘If his lordship chances to sneeze, you are not to bawl out, “God bless you, sir,” but, pulling off your hat, bow to him handsomely, and make that obsecration to yourself.’[132] It is noticed that Anabaptists and Quakers rejected these with other salutations, but they remained in the code of English good manners among high and low till half a century or so ago, and are so little forgotten now, that most people still see the point of the story of the fiddler and his wife, where his sneeze and her hearty ‘God bless you!’ brought about the removal of the fiddle case. ‘Got hilf!’ may still be heard in Germany, and ‘Felicità!’ in Italy.

It is not strange that the existence of these absurd customs should have been for ages a puzzle to curious enquirers. Especially the legend-mongers took the matter in hand, and their attempts to devise historical explanations are on record in a group of philosophic myths,—Greek, Jewish, Christian. Prometheus prays for the preservation of his artificial man, when it gives the first sign of life by a sneeze; Jacob prays that man’s soul may not, as heretofore, depart from his body when he sneezes; Pope Gregory prays to avert the pestilence, in those days when the air was so deadly that he who sneezed died of it; and from these imaginary events legend declares that the use of the sneezing formulas was handed down. It is more to our purpose to notice the existence of a corresponding set of ideas and customs connected with gaping. Among the Zulus, repeated yawning and sneezing are classed together as signs of approaching spiritual possession.[133] The Hindu, when he gapes, must snap his thumb and finger, and repeat the name of some God, as Rama: to neglect this is a sin as great as the murder of a Brahman.[134] The Persians ascribe yawning, sneezing, &c., to demoniacal possession. Among the modern Moslems generally, when a man yawns, he puts the back of his left hand to his mouth, saying, ‘I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the accursed!’ but the act of yawning is to be avoided, for the Devil is in the habit of leaping into a gaping mouth.[135] This may very likely be the meaning of the Jewish proverb, ‘Open not thy mouth to Satan!’ The other half of this idea shows itself clearly in Josephus’ story of his having seen a certain Jew, named Eleazar, cure demoniacs in Vespasian’s time, by drawing the demons out through their nostrils, by means of a ring containing a root of mystic virtue mentioned by Solomon.[136] The account of the sect of the Messalians, who used to spit and blow their noses to expel the demons they might have drawn in with their breath,[137] the records of the mediæval exorcists driving out devils through the patients’ nostrils,[138] and the custom, still kept up in the Tyrol, of crossing oneself when one yawns, lest something evil should come into one’s mouth,[139] involve similar ideas. In comparing the modern Kafir ideas with those of other districts of the world, we find a distinct notion of a sneeze being due to a spiritual presence. This, which seems indeed the key to the whole matter, has been well brought into view by Mr. Haliburton, as displayed in Keltic folk-lore, in a group of stories turning on the superstition that any one who sneezes is liable to be carried off by the fairies, unless their power be counteracted by an invocation, as ‘God bless you!’[140] The corresponding idea as to yawning is to be found in an Iceland folk-lore legend, where the troll, who has transformed herself into the shape of the beautiful queen, says, ‘When I yawn a little yawn, I am a neat and tiny maiden; when I yawn a half-yawn, then I am as a half-troll; when I yawn a whole yawn, then am I as a whole troll.’[141] On the whole, though the sneezing superstition makes no approach to universality among mankind, its wide distribution is highly remarkable, and it would be an interesting problem to decide how far this wide distribution is due to independent growth in several regions, how far to conveyance from race to race, and how far to ancestral inheritance. Here it has only to be maintained that it was not originally an arbitrary and meaningless custom, but the working out of a principle.[142] The plain statement by the modern Zulus fits with the hints to be gained from the superstition and folk-lore of other races, to connect the notions and practices as to sneezing with the ancient and savage doctrine of pervading and invading spirits, considered as good or evil, and treated accordingly. The lingering survivals of the quaint old formulas in modern Europe seem an unconscious record of the time when the explanation of sneezing had not yet been given over to physiology, but was still in the ‘theological stage.’

There is current in Scotland the belief that the Picts, to whom local legend attributes buildings of prehistoric antiquity, bathed their foundation-stones with human blood; and legend even tells that St. Columba found it necessary to bury St. Oran alive beneath the foundation of his monastery, in order to propitiate the spirits of the soil who demolished by night what was built during the day. So late as 1843, in Germany, when a new bridge was built at Halle, a notion was abroad among the people that a child was wanted to be built into the foundation. These ideas of church or wall or bridge wanting human blood or an immured victim to make the foundation steadfast, are not only widespread in European folk-lore, but local chronicle or tradition asserts them as matter of historical fact in district after district. Thus, when the broken dam of the Nogat had to be repaired in 1463, the peasants, on the advice to throw in a living man, are said to have made a beggar drunk and buried him there. Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother and walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried out, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and, as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’ The wall of Copenhagen, legend says, sank as fast as it was built; so they took an innocent little girl, set her on a chair at a table of toys and eatables, and, as she played and ate, twelve master-masons closed a vault over her; then, with clanging music, the wall was raised, and stood firm ever after. Thus Italian legend tells of the bridge of Arta, that fell in and fell in till they walled in the master-builder’s wife, and she spoke her dying curse that the bridge should tremble like a flower-stalk henceforth. The Slavonic chiefs founding Detinez, according to old heathen custom, sent out men to take the first boy they met and bury him in the foundation. Servian legend tells how three brothers combined to build the fortress of Skadra (Scutari); but, year after year, the demon (vila) razed by night what the three hundred masons built by day. The fiend must be appeased by a human sacrifice, the first of the three wives who should come bringing food to the workmen. All three brothers swore to keep the dreadful secret from their wives; but the two eldest gave traitorous warning to theirs, and it was the youngest brother’s wife who came unsuspecting, and they built her in. But she entreated that an opening should be left for her to suckle her baby through, and for a twelve-month it was brought. To this day, Servian wives visit the tomb of the good mother, still marked by a stream of water which trickles, milky with lime, down the fortress wall. Lastly, there is our own legend of Vortigern, who could not finish his tower till the foundation-stone was wetted with the blood of a child born of a mother without a father. As is usual in the history of sacrifice, we hear of substitutes for such victims; empty coffins walled up in Germany, a lamb walled in under the altar in Denmark to make the church stand fast, and the churchyard in like manner handselled by burying a live horse first. In modern Greece an evident relic of the idea survives in the superstition that the first passer-by after a foundation-stone is laid will die within the year, wherefore the masons will compromise the debt by killing a lamb or a black cock on the stone. With much the same idea German legend tells of the bridge-building fiend cheated of his promised fee, a soul, by the device of making a cock run first across; and thus German folk-lore says it is well, before entering a new house, to let a cat or dog run in.[143] From all this it seems that, with due allowance for the idea having passed into an often-repeated and varied mythic theme, yet written and unwritten tradition do preserve the memory of a bloodthirsty barbaric rite, which not only really existed in ancient times, but lingered long in European history. If now we look to less cultured countries, we shall find the rite carried on in our own day with a distinctly religious purpose, either to propitiate the earth-spirits with a victim, or to convert the soul of the victim himself into a protecting demon.

In Africa, in Galam, a boy and girl used to be buried alive before the great gate of the city to make it impregnable, a practice once executed on a large scale by a Bambarra tyrant; while in Great Bassam and Yarriba such sacrifices were usual at the foundation of a house or village.[144] In Polynesia, Ellis heard of the custom, instanced by the fact that the central pillar of one of the temples at Maeva was planted upon the body of a human victim.[145] In Borneo, among the Milanau Dayaks, at the erection of the largest house a deep hole was dug to receive the first post, which was then suspended over it; a slave girl was placed in the excavation; at a signal the lashings were cut, and the enormous timber descended, crushing the girl to death, a sacrifice to the spirits. St. John saw a milder form of the rite performed, when the chief of the Quop Dayaks set up a flagstaff near his house, a chicken being thrown in to be crushed by the descending pole.[146] More cultured nations of Southern Asia have carried on into modern ages the rite of the foundation-sacrifice. A 17th century account of Japan mentions the belief there that a wall laid on the body of a willing human victim would be secure from accident; accordingly, when a great wall was to be built, some wretched slave would offer himself as foundation, lying down in the trench to be crushed by the heavy stones lowered upon him.[147] When the gates of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, were built about 1780, as Mason relates on the evidence of an eye-witness, a criminal was put in each post-hole to become a protecting demon. Thus it appears that such stories as that of the human victims buried for spirit watchers under the gates of Mandalay, of the queen who was drowned in a Burmese reservoir to make the dyke safe, of the hero whose divided body was buried under the fortress of Thatung to make it impregnable, are the records, whether in historical or mythical form, of the actual customs of the land.[148] Within our own dominion, when Rajah Sala Byne was building the fort of Sialkot in the Punjab, the foundation of the south-east bastion gave way so repeatedly that he had recourse to a soothsayer, who assured him that it would never stand until the blood of an only son was shed there, wherefore the only son of a widow was sacrificed.[149] It is thus plain that hideous rites, of which Europe has scarcely kept up more than the dim memory, have held fast their ancient practice and meaning in Africa, Polynesia, and Asia, among races who represent in grade, if not in chronology, earlier stages of civilization.

When Sir Walter Scott, in the ‘Pirate,’ tells of Bryce the pedlar refusing to help Mordaunt to save the shipwrecked sailor from drowning, and even remonstrating with him on the rashness of such a deed, he states an old superstition of the Shetlanders. ‘Are you mad?’ says the pedlar; ‘you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?’ Were this inhuman thought noticed in this one district alone, it might be fancied to have had its rise in some local idea now no longer to be explained. But when mentions of similar superstitions are collected among the St. Kilda islanders and the boatmen of the Danube, among French and English sailors, and even out of Europe and among less civilized races, we cease to think of local fancies, but look for some widely accepted belief of the lower culture to account for such a state of things. The Hindu does not save a man from drowning in the sacred Ganges, and the islanders of the Malay archipelago share the cruel notion.[150] Of all people the rude Kamchadals have the prohibition in the most remarkable form. They hold it a great fault, says Kracheninnikow, to save a drowning man; he who delivers him will be drowned himself.[151] Steller’s account is more extraordinary, and probably applies only to cases where the victim is actually drowning: he says that if a man fell by chance into the water, it was a great sin for him to get out, for as he had been destined to drown he did wrong in not drowning, wherefore no one would let him into his dwelling, nor speak to him, nor give him food or a wife, but he was reckoned for dead; and even when a man fell into the water while others were standing by, far from helping him out, they would drown him by force. Now these barbarians, it appears, avoided volcanoes because of the spirits who live there and cook their food; for a like reason, they held it a sin to bathe in hot springs; and they believed with fear in a fish-like spirit of the sea, whom they called Mitgk.[152] This spiritualistic belief among the Kamchadals is, no doubt, the key to their superstition as to rescuing drowning men. There is even to be found in modern European superstition, not only the practice, but with it a lingering survival of its ancient spiritualistic significance. In Bohemia, a recent account (1864) says that the fishermen do not venture to snatch a drowning man from the waters. They fear that the ‘Waterman’ (i.e. water-demon) would take away their luck in fishing, and drown themselves at the first opportunity.[153] This explanation of the prejudice against saving the water-spirit’s victim may be confirmed by a mass of evidence from various districts of the world. Thus, in discussing the doctrine of sacrifice, it will appear that the usual manner of making an offering to a well, river, lake, or sea, is simply to cast property, cattle, or men into the water, which personally or by its indwelling spirit takes possession of them.[154] That the accidental drowning of a man is held to be such a seizure, savage and civilized folk-lore show by many examples. Among the Sioux Indians, it is Unk-tahe the water-monster that drowns his victims in flood or rapid;[155] in New Zealand huge supernatural reptile-monsters, called Taniwha, live in river-bends, and those who are drowned are said to be pulled under by them;[156] the Siamese fears the Pnük or water-spirit that seizes bathers and drags them under to his dwelling;[157] in Slavonic lands it is Topielec (the ducker) by whom men are always drowned;[158] when some one is drowned in Germany, people recollect the religion of their ancestors, and say, ‘The river-spirit claims his yearly sacrifice,’ or, more simply, ‘The nix has taken him:’[159]—

‘Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen,
Am Ende Fischer und Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei gethan.’

From this point of view it is obvious that to save a sinking man is to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water-spirit, a rash defiance of deity which would hardly pass unavenged. In the civilized world the rude old theological conception of drowning has long been superseded by physical explanation; and the prejudice against rescue from such a death may have now almost or altogether disappeared. But archaic ideas, drifted on into modern folk-lore and poetry, still bring to our view an apparent connexion between the primitive doctrine and the surviving custom.

As the social development of the world goes on, the weightiest thoughts and actions may dwindle to mere survival. Original meaning dies out gradually, each generation leaves fewer and fewer to bear it in mind, till it falls out of popular memory, and in after-days ethnography has to attempt, more or less successfully, to restore it by piecing together lines of isolated or forgotten facts. Children’s sports, popular sayings, absurd customs, may be practically unimportant, but are not philosophically insignificant, bearing as they do on some of the most instructive phases of early culture. Ugly and cruel superstitions may prove to be relics of primitive barbarism, for in keeping up such Man is like Shakespeare’s fox,

‘Who, ne’er so tame, so cherish’d, and lock’d up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.’

Footnote 55:

Will. de Rubruquis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. pp. 46, 67, 132; Michie,
‘Siberian Overland Route,’ p. 96.

Footnote 56:

Ovid. Fast. v. 487. For modern Italy and France, see Edélestane du
Méril, ‘Études d’Archéol.’ p. 121.

Footnote 57:

‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ (ed. by J. R. Logan), vol. ii. p. liv.

Footnote 58:

Klemm, ‘Cultur-Geschichte,’ vol. ii. p. 209.

Footnote 59:

Oldfield in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 266; Dumont d’Urville, ‘Voy.
de l’Astrolabe,’ vol. i. p. 411.

Footnote 60:

Strutt, ‘Sports and Pastimes,’ book ii. chap. ii.

Footnote 61:

Polack, ‘New Zealanders,’ vol. ii. p. 171.

Footnote 62:

Polack, ibid.; Wilkes, ‘U. S. Exp.’ vol. i. p. 194. See the account of
the game of liagi in Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 339; and Yate,
‘New Zealand,’ p. 113.

Footnote 63:

Petron. Arbitri Satiræ rec. Büchler, p. 64 (other readings are _buccæ_
or _bucco_).

Footnote 64:

Compare Davis, ‘Chinese,’ vol. i. p. 317; Wilkinson, Ancient
Egyptians, vol. i. p. 188; Facciolati, Lexicon, s.v. ‘micare’; &c.

Footnote 65:

Jamieson, ‘Dict. of Scottish Lang.’ s.v.

Footnote 66:

‘Early History of Mankind,’ p. 244, &c.; Grimm, ‘Deutsche Myth.,’ p.
573.

Footnote 67:

Grimm, _ibid._, p. 1200.

Footnote 68:

Halliwell, ‘Popular Rhymes,’ p. 112; Grimm, ‘D. M.’ p. 812. Bastian,
‘Mensch,’ vol. iii. p. 106. Johannis Philosophi Ozniensis Opera
(Aucher), Venice, 1834, pp. 78-89. ‘Infantium sanguini similam
commiscentes illegitimam communionem deglutiunt; quo pacto porcorum
suos fœtus immaniter vescentium exsuperant edacitatem. Quique illorum
cadavera super tecti culmen celantes, ac sursum oculis in cœlum
defixis respicientes, jurant alieno verbo ac sensu: _Altissimus
novit._ Solem vero deprecari volentes, ajunt: _Solicule_, _Lucicule_;
atque aëreos, vagosque dæmones clam invocant, juxta Manichæorum
Simonisque incantatoris errores. Similiter et primum parientis fœminæ
puerum de manu in manum inter eos invicem projectum, quum pessimâ
morte occiderint, illum, in cujus manu exspiraverit puer, ad primam
sectæ dignitatem provectum venerantur; atque per utriusque nomen
audent insane jurare; _Juro_, dicunt, _per unigenitum filium_: et
iterum: _Testem babeo tibi gloriam ejus, in cujus manum unigenitus
filius spiritum suum tradidit_.... Contra hos [the orthodox] audacter
evomere præsumunt impietatis suæ bilem, atque insanientes, ex mali
spiritus blasphemiâ, _Sculpticolas_ vocant.’

Footnote 69:

Polack, vol. i. p. 270.

Footnote 70:

Bosman, ‘Guinese Kust,’ letter x.; Eng. Trans. in Pinkerton, vol. xvi.
p. 399.

Footnote 71:

Homer, Iliad, vii. 171; Pindar, Pyth. iv. 338.

Footnote 72:

Tacit. Germania. 10.

Footnote 73:

Smith’s ‘Dic. of Gr. and Rom. Ant.,’ arts. ‘oraculum,’ ‘sortes.’

Footnote 74:

Roberts, ‘Oriental Illustrations,’ p. 163.

Footnote 75:

Gataker, pp. 91, 141; see Lecky, ‘History of Rationalism,’ vol. i. p.
307.

Footnote 76:

Jeremy Taylor, ‘Ductor Dubitantium,’ in Works, vol. xiv. p. 337.

Footnote 77:

See Wuttke, ‘Deutsche Volksaberglaube,’ pp. 95, 115, 178.

Footnote 78:

Mariner, ‘Tonga Islands,’ vol. ii. p. 239; Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p.
214; Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 228. Compare Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p.
231.

Footnote 79:

R. Taylor, ‘New Zealand,’ pp. 206, 348, 387.

Footnote 80:

Smith’s Dic., art. ‘talus.’

Footnote 81:

Brand, ‘Popular Antiquities,’ vol. ii. p. 412.

Footnote 82:

D. & C. Livingstone, ‘Exp. to Zambesi,’ p. 51.

Footnote 83:

Doolittle, ‘Chinese,’ vol. ii. pp. 108, 285-7; see 384; Bastian,
‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. iii. pp. 76, 125.

Footnote 84:

Smith’s Dic., art. ‘cottabos.’

Footnote 85:

Grimm, ‘Deutsche Myth.’ p. 222.

Footnote 86:

Plin. viii. 54.

Footnote 87:

From a letter of Mr. H. J. Stokes, Negapatam, to Mr. F. M. Jennings.
General details of the Couvade in ‘Early History of Mankind.’ p. 293.

Footnote 88:

Hâvamâl, 138.

Footnote 89:

Jamieson, ‘Scottish Dictionary,’ s.v. ‘coals’; R. Hunt, ‘Popular
Romances,’ 1st ser. p. 83.

Footnote 90:

Wuttke, ‘Volksaberglaube,’ p. 131.

Footnote 91:

Rochholz, ‘Deutscher Glaube und Brauch,’ vol. i. p. 120; R. Chambers,
‘Popular Rhymes of Scotland,’ Miscellaneous; Grimm, pp. 969, 976;
Wuttke, p. 115.

Footnote 92:

Mendes, ‘Service for the First Nights of Passover,’ London, 1862 (in
the Jewish interpretation the word _sbunra_,—‘cat,’ is compared with
_sbinâr_). Halliwell, ‘Nursery Rhymes,’ p. 288; ‘Popular Rhymes,’ p.
6.

Footnote 93:

Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 110.

Footnote 94:

Shortland, ‘Traditions of N. Z.’ p. 196.

Footnote 95:

Casalis, ‘Études sur la langue Séchuana.’

Footnote 96:

R. F. Burton, ‘Wit and Wisdom from West Africa.’ See also Waitz, vol.
ii. p. 245.

Footnote 97:

Callaway, ‘Nursery Tales, &c. of Zulus,’ vol. i. p. 364, &c.

Footnote 98:

Casalis, ‘Etudes sur la langue Séchuana,’ p. 91; ‘Basutos,’ p. 337.

Footnote 99:

Steere, ‘Swahili Tales,’ p. 418.

Footnote 100:

Burton, ‘Wit and Wisdom from West Africa,’ p. 212.

Footnote 101:

Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 216. See Polack, ‘New Zealanders,’ vol. ii. p.
171.

Footnote 102:

Sahagun, ‘Historia de Nueva España,’ in Kingsborough’s ‘Antiquities,
of Mexico,’ vol. vii. p. 178.

Footnote 103:

Grimm, p. 699.

Footnote 104:

Diog. Laert. i. 91; Athenagoras. x, 451.

Footnote 105:

Mannhardt’s ‘Zeitschr. für Deutsche Mythologie,’ vol. iii. p. 2, &c.:

‘Nóg er forthun nösgás vaxin,
Barngiorn su er bar bútimbr saman;
Hlifthu henni halms bitskálmir,
Thó lá drykkjar drynhrönn yfir.’

Footnote 106:

See Grote, ‘Hist. of Greece,’ vol. ii. p. 5.

Footnote 107:

Mannhardt’s ‘Zeitschr.’ l.c.

Footnote 108:

E. A. W. Zimmermann, ‘Geographische Geschichte des Menschen,’ &c.,
1778-83, vol. iii. See Professor Rolleston’s Inaugural Address,
British Association, 1870.

Footnote 109:

Earl of Chesterfield, ‘Letters to his Son,’ vol. ii. No. lxviii.

Footnote 110:

See Hylten-Cavallius, ‘Wärend och Wirdarne,’ vol. i. pp. 161-70 Grimm,
pp. 52-5, 1201; Brand, vol. ii. pp. 314, 325, &c.

Footnote 111:

Callaway, ‘Religion of Amazulu,’ pp. 64, 222-5, 263.

Footnote 112:

Godignus, ‘Vita Patris Gonzali Sylveriæ.’ Col. Agripp. 1616; lib. ii.
c. x.

Footnote 113:

Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ letter xviii. in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 478.

Footnote 114:

Burton, ‘Wit and Wisdom from West Africa,’ p. 373.

Footnote 115:

Shortland, ‘Trads. of New Zealand,’ p. 131.

Footnote 116:

Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 348; see also Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p.
250.

Footnote 117:

Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. i. p. 456.

Footnote 118:

Garcilaso de la Vega, ‘Hist. de la Florida,’ vol. iii. ch. xli.

Footnote 119:

Among dissertations on the subject, see especially Sir Thos. Browne
‘Pseudodoxia Epidemica’ (Vulgar Errors), book iv. chap. ix.; Brand
‘Popular Antiquities,’ vol. iii. p. 119, &c.; R. G. Haliburton, ‘New
Materials for the History of Man.’ Halifax, N. S. 1863; ‘Encyclopædia
Britannica,’ (5th ed.) art. ‘sneezing,’ Wernsdorf, ‘De Ritu
Sternutantibus bene precandi.’ Leipzig, 1741; see also Grimm, D. M. p.
1070, note.

Footnote 120:

Homer, Odyss. xvii. 541.

Footnote 121:

Xenophon, Anabasis, iii. 2, 9.

Footnote 122:

Aristot. Problem. xxxiii. 7.

Footnote 123:

Anthologia Græca, Brunck, vol. iii. p. 95.

Footnote 124:

Petron. Arb. Sat. 98.

Footnote 125:

Plin. xxviii. 5.

Footnote 126:

Noel, ‘Dic. des Origines;’ Migne, ‘Dic. des Superstitions,’ &c.;
Bastian, ‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. ii. p. 129.

Footnote 127:

Ward, ‘Hindoos,’ vol. i. p. 142; Dubois, ‘Peuples de l’Inde,’ vol. i.
p. 465; Sleeman, ‘Ramaseeana,’ p. 120.

Footnote 128:

Buxtorf, ‘Lexicon Chaldaicum;’ Tendlau, ‘Sprichwörter, &c.
Deutsch-Jüdischer Vorzeit.’ Frankf. a. M., 1860, p. 142.

Footnote 129:

Lane, ‘Modern Egyptians,’ vol. i. p. 282. See Grant, in ‘Tr. Eth.
Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 90.

Footnote 130:

Grimm, ‘D. M.’ pp. 1070, 1110.

Footnote 131:

‘Manuel des Pecchés,’ in Wedgwood, ‘Dic. English Etymology,’ s.v.,
‘wassail.’

Footnote 132:

Brand, vol. iii. p. 126.

Footnote 133:

Callaway, p. 263.

Footnote 134:

Ward, l.c.

Footnote 135:

‘Pend-Nameh,’ tr. de Sacy, ch. lxiii.; Maury, ‘Magie,’ &c., p. 302;
Lane, l.c.

Footnote 136:

G. Brecher, ‘Das Transcendentale im Talmud,’ p. 168; Joseph. Ant. Jud.
viii. 2, 5.

Footnote 137:

Migne, ‘Dic. des Hérésies,’ s.v.

Footnote 138:

Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ vol. ii. pp. 115, 322.

Footnote 139:

Wuttke, ‘Deutsche Volksaberglaube,’ p. 137.

Footnote 140:

Haliburton, op. cit.

Footnote 141:

Powell and Magnussen, ‘Legends of Iceland,’ 2nd ser. p. 448.

Footnote 142:

The cases in which a sneeze is interpreted under special conditions,
as with reference to right and left, early morning, &c. (see Plutarch,
De Genio Socratis, &c.), are not considered here, as they belong to
ordinary omen-divination.

Footnote 143:

W. Scott, ‘Minstrelsy of Scottish Border;’ Forbes Leslie, ‘Early Races
of Scotland,’ vol. i. pp. 194, 487; Grimm, ‘Deutsche Mythologie,’ pp.
972, 1095; Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ vol. ii. pp. 92, 407, vol. iii. pp. 105,
112; Bowring, ‘Servian Popular Poetry,’ p. 64. A review of the First
Edition of the present work in ‘Nature,’ June 15, 1871, contains the
following:—‘It is not, for example, many years since the present Lord
Leigh was accused of having built an obnoxious person—one account, if
we remember right, said eight obnoxious persons—into the foundation of
a bridge at Stoneleigh. Of course so preposterous a charge carried on
its face its own sufficient refutation; but the fact that it was
brought at all is a singular instance of the almost incredible
vitality of old traditions.’

Footnote 144:

Waitz, vol. ii. p. 197.

Footnote 145:

Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 346; Tyerman and Bennet, vol. ii. p.
39.

Footnote 146:

St. John, ‘Far East,’ vol. i. p. 46; see Bastian, vol. ii. p. 407. I
am indebted to Mr. R. K. Douglas for a perfect example of one meaning
of the foundation-sacrifice, from the Chinese book, ‘Yūh hea ke’
(‘Jewelled Casket of Divination’): ‘Before beginning to build, the
workmen should sacrifice to the gods of the neighbourhood, of the
earth and wood. Should the carpenters be very apprehensive of the
building falling, they, when fixing a post, should take something
living and put it beneath, and lower the post on it, and to liberate
[the evil influences] they should strike the post with an axe and
repeat—

“It is well, it is well,
May those who live within
Be ever warm and well fed.”’

Footnote 147:

Caron, ‘Japan,’ in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 623.

Footnote 148:

F. Mason, ‘Burmah,’ p. 100; Bastian, ‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. i. pp. 193,
214; vol. ii. pp. 91, 270; vol. iii. p. 16; Roberts, ‘Oriental
Illustrations,’ p. 283.

Footnote 149:

Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ vol. iii. p. 107. A modern Arnaut story is given by
Prof. Liebrecht in ‘Philologus,’ vol. xxiii. (1865), p. 682.

Footnote 150:

Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ vol. iii. p. 210; Ward, ‘Hindoos,’ vol. ii. p. 318.

Footnote 151:

Kracheninnikow, ‘Descr. du Kamchatka, Voy. en Sibérie,’ vol. iii. p.
72.

Footnote 152:

Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ pp. 265, 274.

Footnote 153:

J. V. Grohmann, ‘Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen,’ p. 12.

Footnote 154:

Chap. XVIII.

Footnote 155:

Eastman, ‘Dacotah,’ pp. 118, 125.

Footnote 156:

R. Taylor, ‘New Zealand,’ p. 48.

Footnote 157:

Bastian, ‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. iii. p. 34.

Footnote 158:

Hanusch, ‘Wissenschaft des Slawischen Mythus,’ p. 299.

Footnote 159:

Grimm, ‘Deutsche Myth,’ p. 462.