Chapter VI: Part 6

Finally, not to lengthen the list, if we may trust the Ynglinga-saga, Odin was the author of those crafts which men have long since plied, and among them of magic. He “was wise in that craft wherewith went most might, which is called spell-craft; and this he himself followed. Wherefore he had might to know the fate of men and things not yet come to pass; yea, or how to work for men bane or illhap or ill-heal, and to take wit or strength from men and give them unto others.” He was a notorious shape-shifter. “He knew how by words alone to slake the fire or still the sea, and how to turn {142} the wind to whichso way he would.” He could “wake up dead men from the earth.” He “knew of all buried treasures where they were hidden; and he knew lays whereby the earth opened before him, and mountains and rocks and mounds, and how to bind with words alone whoso might be found dwelling therein; and he would go in and take thence what he would. From all this craft he became exceeding famed, and his foes dreaded him, but his friends put their trust in him, and had faith in his craft and himself; but he taught the more part of his cunning to the temple-priests, and they were next to him in all wisdom and cunning: albeit many others got to them much knowledge thereof, and thence sorcery spread far and wide and endured long.”[142.1] Although the opening chapters of the Ynglinga-saga, from which I have extracted these particulars, are a late and euhemerized version of the Scandinavian mythology, the account of Odin’s magical powers contains little that does not appear in the early poems, or cannot be inferred from them. Whatever may have been the primitive form of this renowned god, there can be no doubt that he was before the close of the pagan age regarded as a god of magic and sorcery. His reputation as god of poetry, and probably as war-god, is bound up with this. The magical value attached to verse is very common among peoples in an archaic stage of culture; and it was shared to the full by the ancient Norsemen. Many of them--at least in Viking days, and it is by no means unlikely much earlier--combined in their own persons the warrior with the poet and the sorcerer. Nor shall we go far astray if we conclude that these various strands had been long interwoven to form the character of the Lord of the Anses. The intimate relation existing among the Norse between {143} religion and magic is further indicated by the superior magical knowledge and powers ascribed to them and stated to be originally derived from Odin.

Thus, on the one hand, we find constraint of the higher powers for public or private ends; on the other hand, the invention of spells and practice of magic are attributed to the gods themselves. We may think that constraint of the gods is inconsistent with worship. This is not the notion of peoples among which magic and religion are thus interwoven. The object of religion is to acquire benefits for the individual or the community. With this end men deem themselves justified in applying any means likely to secure it; and they treat their gods as they would powerful fellow-men, seeking favours where favours are to be had for the asking or in return for favours, enforcing compliance with their wishes where prayers will not avail, or cheating them where they get the chance. The repetition of a divine name may be either a favour to the god, or may be compulsion. The votary cares not to distinguish. In either case it brings about the gratification of his wishes. The village _genna_ practised by the Nagas is compulsion. It is none the less worship. Many of the magical texts of ancient Egypt are directed to assisting the gods to overcome their enemies, thus rendering them a favour which they were bound to return. The ritual of the Scapegoat, familiar to us in its Hebrew form,[143.1] but in fact found in many other quarters of the globe, presents another form of these magical practices. The sins of which men have been guilty, the evils from which they have been suffering are laden on the head of the unfortunate victim, who is forthwith put to death or driven away forever from society. {144} Whether in the earliest form of the rite the victim was regarded as divine may be doubted: it is certain that it has been taken up into the cult of the gods in many religions, and has been deemed a pious act, a work of obligation, for the wellbeing of the joint community of gods and men.

Divine beings may even be made accomplices in Black or antisocial Magic without any compulsion. The white-headed carrion-hawk (_Haliaster intermedius_) is the most important bird of omen observed by the Kenyahs of Borneo. Under the name of Bali Flaki he is looked upon as messenger and intermediary between themselves and Bali Penyalong, the Supreme Being. Apparently every individual hawk is such a messenger, but his sacred character appears in his title Bali: a word probably derived from the Sanskrit and sometimes translated _holy_, but having the force of “an adjectival equivalent of the _mana_ of the Melanesians, or of the _wakanda_ or _orenda_ of North American tribes, words which seem to connote all power other than purely mechanical.”[144.1] Bali Flaki is appealed to publicly on behalf of the community on various occasions, as on sowing or harvesting the rice-crop, making war or peace, or in fact before any undertaking or decision. His aid may also “be sought privately by any man who wishes to injure another. For this purpose a man makes a rough wooden image in human form, and retires to some quiet spot on the river-bank, where he sets up a _tegulun_, a horizontal pole supported about a yard above the ground by a pair of vertical poles. He lights a small fire beside the _tegulun_, and taking a fowl in one hand, he sits on the ground behind it, so as to see through it a square patch of sky, and so waits until a hawk becomes visible upon the patch. As {145} soon as a hawk appears he kills the fowl, and with a frayed stick smears its blood on the wooden image, saying: ‘Put fat in his mouth.’” This appears to be addressed to the hawk. In the description of what is in effect the same rite as practised among some of the Klemantans of the same island, we are definitely told it is so addressed. The expression means, “Let his head be taken”; for the people are head-hunters, and fat is put in the mouth of every head taken. Messrs Hose and M‘Dougall, whom I am quoting, proceed: “And he puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the image. Then he strikes at the breast of the image with a wooden spear, and throws it into a pool of water reddened with red earth, and then takes it out and buries it in the ground,” in the manner in which only persons dying by violence or some much feared disease are buried. “While the hawk is visible he waves it towards the left; for he knows that if it flies to the left he will prevail over his enemy, but that if it goes to the right his enemy is too strong for him.” In the Klemantan rite, as described for us, he also shouts to the hawk to go to the left. When it has gone in the desired direction he addresses a prayer beginning “O Bali Flaki, go your way, let this man (naming him) die; go and put him in the lake of blood, O Bali Flaki; stab him in the chest, Bali Flaki,” and so on, invoking all sorts of evil deaths upon him.[145.1] Now here we have a well-known rite of antisocial magic. But to make it effectual the coöperation of the divine power is requisite. That power is called upon. There is no attempt to coerce Bali Flaki, who, if not himself a god, is at least a messenger and intermediary of the great god Bali Penyalong. Yet there is confidence that he can perform the request, and that he shows by his flight that he will do so.

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So on the mainland of India, in the Nilgiri Hills, the Toda sorcerer, having procured some human hair--not that of the person to be injured, for it would be impossible to get it--ties together by its means five small stones, and with a piece of cloth makes a bundle of them. Over them thus tied up he utters his incantation. It begins by calling on his gods; and whether the opening clauses be precisely rendered or not in the following free translation, it is clear that the gods are invoked. Indeed, Dr Rivers, after careful enquiry, expresses the opinion that “in the formulæ used in Toda sorcery appeal to the gods is even more definite than in the prayers of the dairy ritual,” the most important of the religious ceremonies. “In them,” he says, “the names of four most important gods are mentioned, and it seems quite clear that the sorcerer believes he is effecting his purpose through the power of the gods.” The spell runs something like this: “For the sake of Pithioteu, Ön, Teikirzi and Tirshti; by the power of the gods, if there be power; by the gods’ country, if there be a country; may his calves perish; as birds fly away, may his buffaloes go when the calves come to suck; as I drink water, may he have nothing but water to drink; as I am thirsty, may he also be thirsty; as I am hungry, may he also be hungry; as my children cry, so may his children cry; as my wife wears only a ragged cloth, so may his wife wear only a ragged cloth.” The bundle thus enchanted he hides in the thatch of the victim’s hut.[146.1]

Another example of the complicity in hostile magic of a supernatural being, who perhaps can hardly be pronounced a god in the strict sense of the term, though {147} powerful for good and ill, may be cited, this time from the continent of Africa. The religion of the Boloki (Bangala) on the Upper Congo, we are told, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole or appease, cheat, or conquer and kill those spirits that trouble them--hence their _nganga_ [medicine-man], their rites, their ceremonies and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to be circumvented, there would be no need of their medicine-men and their charms.” Among these various spirits is one called _Ejo_, the spirit of wealth. “A man who wants to become rich pays a large fee to _nganga ya bwaka_ [the most feared and respected of all the classes of medicine-men], who then uses his influence with _Ejo_ on behalf of his client, who must in all future gains set apart a portion for _Ejo_, and should he fail to do so, _Ejo_ has the power to punish him.… When a person has received the _mono mwa ejo_ (_ejo_ medicine or charm), and has become wealthy by his luck-giving power, he takes the nail-parings and hair-cuttings of a woman and makes medicine with them; and the woman soon dies and her spirit goes to _Ejo_ as an offering for its help. He is said to _lekia nkali_ (to pass her on as a gift or sacrifice to _Ejo_).”[147.1] It is difficult to distinguish a transaction like this from the ordinary relations of a man to his god. The votary pays tithe of his gains obtained by favour of the spirit; and over and above the tithe, he is under the necessity of providing a human sacrifice from time to time for the spirit. But the means by which the sacrifice is provided are the exercise of witchcraft, and that with the full knowledge and assistance {148} of the supernatural being who is to be kept in good humour thereby.

An example of the intermingling of religion and magic in a different way may also be taken from the same people. “Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place about the time that a person dies, or is being buried, are regarded as caused by the deceased person; hence when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and, giving him a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: ‘Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.’ The son, after this rite, must not drink water (he may drink sugar-cane wine), nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe this custom, the rain will at once fall.”[148.1] The boy’s father, having died, has become a _mongoli_, that is to say, an ancestral spirit of indefinite powers, who watches over the perpetuation of his family, haunts the forest or the river, inspires mediums to deliver oracles, and visits the village at times in the material form of a crocodile or a hippopotamus to receive offerings of sugar-cane wine and food. His favourite son has influence with him to change his purposes, and exercises that influence by prayer. But to make the prayer effectual in staying the storm, he must use a widely diffused charm against rain--the waving of a brand and abstinence from water.

It is probable, as we have seen, that the early stages of ritual were vague and inchoate. It was adaptable to {149} interpretation as culture progressed, as new beliefs were evolved or imported. Such an example of adaptability has been pointed out by Miss Werner in a rite practised by the Anyanja of British Central Africa when rain is wanted. It is complete in itself, but is now prefaced by an appeal to Mpambe, a quasi-supreme being. “The principal part was taken by a woman--the chief’s sister. She began by dropping _ufa_ [maize-flour] on the ground, slowly and carefully, till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched voice, ‘_Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula_’ (Hear thou, O God, and send rain!), and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning--they always intone their prayers--‘_Imva Mpambe_.’ The beer was then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a form of salutation to superiors), and finally danced round the chief where he sat on the ground.” Then followed the rite in question. “The dance ceased; a large jar of water was brought and placed before the chief. First Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms and face; then water was poured over her by another woman; then all the women rushed forward with calabashes in their hands, and, dipping them into the jar, threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild gesticulations.” This is obviously a rain-charm, but, as Miss Werner says, it “might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is wanted.” She adds: “Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to show that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and wash themselves in the rivers and streams.”[149.1] The women’s action and cries may {150} be interpreted as addressed to someone or something, though possibly originating merely in excessive emotion and now become traditional. It would be only necessary for the cries to become articulate and the name of Mpambe, or some other name, to be pronounced, to form a genuine invocation, as has happened in the Boloki rite just described. Actually the invocation forms the preliminary of the rite: that may be what, for want of better knowledge, we should call an accident. That it is comparatively recent is shown by the employment of maize-flour. The evolution might easily have taken another course.

Turning to another continent, we may find an example of adaptability of a more elaborate ceremony. The Navaho are in the main an Athapascan people who have wandered down to the sterile plains of New Mexico and Arizona. There, ages ago, they came into contact with the more settled Pueblo tribes. The researches of American anthropologists show the practical identity of certain of their religious rituals with those of their Pueblo neighbours. It would seem that these rituals have been taken over from the latter. This is only natural, seeing that the Navaho came down from the north with an undeveloped culture and organization into a country where new needs were experienced and a higher civilization was met with. But in taking over the rituals they have applied them to purposes different from those of their original performers. The chief aim of the ceremonies as used among the Pueblo tribes is to obtain fertility, and the condition of fertility is rain. This is clear from the use made of corn-meal and corn-pollen. “Pollen is the symbol of fertility, and the rite at bottom is for rain. The Navaho took over the use of the corn and the pollen together with the other features; but the corn no longer served its previous {151} purpose as a prayer for rain and the ripening of the crops: it was used for the cure of disease.”[151.1] The Dene or Athapascans, of which stem the Navaho are a branch, are a people of migratory hunters. Agriculture would be foreign to them. Their principal ceremonies are concerned with the conjuration of evil spirits and the cure of diseases, which are usually ascribed to the spirits. It was natural that when they borrowed the ceremonies of a settled agricultural community they should imbue them with their own ideas. In their hands the cure of disease “became the fundamental feature of the borrowed rites. A ceremony intended for rain-making would naturally need some alteration in order to serve as a cure of disease.”[151.2] And it has received it. The fact that they have been able so to adapt the rites probably points to some want of definiteness in the form of the rites at the time they were borrowed.

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism--at {152} least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved--a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory’s famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.

The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and {153} comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.

If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. But this unity, as civilization progresses, becomes more and more unstable. Where, as is said to be the case in Morocco, civilization has recoiled, magic comes more and more to the front. Though it does so not without protests on the part of those who retain any consciousness of the higher development of religion, still on the whole it is successful in overlaying religion and pushing it into the background. Another people whose religion is in process of degeneration, if Dr Rivers’ opinion be correct, is the Todas. There the magic of the dairy ritual has thrust aside the worship of the gods. In this case, however, the opposition is not open and avowed. The history of the Todas is a blank. We cannot put our finger on one period and say: Here the gods were worshipped and the dairy magic was unknown. We have no records. We can only conclude from an examination of the internal evidence that the gods once played a more prominent part in the life of the community than they do now, but that Toda culture had not so far progressed that magic was not an inseparable part of religion, and that any growth of magic at the expense of religion would have {154} been viewed without misgiving or even consciousness. Even religions where the opposition is most pronounced are themselves by no means pure from magic. All the subtlety, all the rhetoric of theologians may well be needed to rebut the charge of magic against the seven sacraments of the Church. I at least have no intention to risk the curse levelled by the Council of Trent at him who denies their efficacy _ex opere operato_, and whether or not the minister may be in a state of mortal sin.

In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live”[154.1] is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: “When thou art come into the land which Yahwè thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahwè; and because of these abominations Yahwè thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”[154.2] This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding.[154.3] Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahwè; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination {155} is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahwè, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets--one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar (_massebah_), and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”[155.1] The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahwè, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.

Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahwè at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.

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Similar considerations inspired mediæval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.

But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one’s neighbours {157} by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.

It is, in fact, the tendency to individualism rather than magic itself that has awakened hostility everywhere. But this tendency is inherent in magic. In the lower stages of civilization magic is undistinguished not only from religion but from medicine, from astronomy, from engineering, from literary learning, from the practice of industries other than the simplest and of art. Consequently everyone who possesses a little more skill than ordinary, or is credited with a knowledge surpassing that of the vulgar, faces the inevitable risk of being reputed a magician, and the suspicion of using his advantages to the detriment of others. Nor is the suspicion unfounded. Human nature being what it is, power, of whatever kind, is utilized for the benefit of its possessor, frequently without regard to the claims of others or the public good. The shaman or the wizard who is called in to the aid of the sick is often the depositary of knowledge of healing herbs and of poisons. The powers that are at the disposal of beneficence are equally applied to baleful ends. The healing of disease, whether it be effected by suggestion or by physical remedies, may be a social good: primarily and directly it is an individual benefit. To put the public foe under a spell excites the approval of the community. To lay a private enemy low is a very different matter. But the same expert by the exercise of the same skill performs both. Moreover, he subserves the ends of private gain and private revenge with equal indifference, and, it is {158} believed, by the same mysterious means. In all these instances the professor of magic places his skill, knowledge, experience, and the terror of his name and incantations--in one word, his _orenda_--at the service of his clients without distinction. As civilization advances, and religion and religious ministers begin to be differentiated from the wizard or medicine-man, the latter is probably called on less and less to perform rites on behalf of the public, and more and more on behalf of individuals. The portions of magic that can be disposed for the purposes of the community are taken up into religion. What remains when this is done becomes specifically the method and practice of the magician. Small wonder then that the only magic recognized as such is antisocial magic.

On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. Everyone observes it, because upon it depends the weal of all alike. Everyone’s eye too is upon his neighbour; and a departure from custom is sure to be noticed, and equally sure to be resented as something sinister. At the least it is viewed with suspicion and concern. Done innocently, it will bring misfortune on the doer and all connected with him. Done with a purpose, it is abhorred and punished as evil magic. Happily the fear of witchcraft is not everywhere an obsession. Where it is, as almost all over Africa, it has become the most powerful cause of the stagnation of culture. Mr Weeks, a missionary of long {159} experience, and an admirable observer, speaking of the Bangala on the Upper Congo, says the native “has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native, to save his life and live in peace, has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him.”[159.1]

This deplorable result is attributable to the suspicion of antisocial ends. It is this kind of magic which alone is reprobated in the lower culture. Death is very generally regarded as unnatural. If not caused by open violence, it must be due to spirits or to magic. Magic indeed is often deemed responsible for deaths by violence, or deaths credited to the immediate action of the spirits. Magic sets both causes in motion. Hence at a death, however occasioned, an inquest is commonly held to ascertain who is responsible; the accused is required to undergo an ordeal, and is punished if found guilty--as he usually is. But it is not the practice of magic that is condemned; it is the application of magic to the injury of the community. The chieftain of a tribe of Bantu “smells out” and puts to death the witch who has slain his father. The same chieftain will habitually practise magic on another chief before fighting with him. He {160} will make rain, or employ a wizard for the purpose. His sacrifices and acts of worship are inextricably mingled with magic. Even when the schism between magic and religion has attained much wider dimensions than anywhere among the Bantu, it is rather magic in its antisocial aspect than in itself that is reprobated and punished. The departure from established custom and established belief involves a severance from the community and an imputation of antisocial ends. The pursuit of individual desires and hatreds at odds with the general interest is what arouses the anger of society. Practices essentially magical may be incorporated in religious rites and exercised for what is believed to be the public good; and they will continue to be exercised with general assent, even in the highest forms of religion.

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

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Ælian, writing of the boldness of the Celts, relates that many of them await the overflowing sea, some throwing themselves armed into the waves and receiving their onset with drawn swords and threatening spears, just as if they could scare back or wound them.[161.1] This report seems to have come to him in the shape of gossip; nor does he assign it to any tribe or definite locality. That there was some ground for it, however, is to be inferred from the existence in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century, of a short tradition, obviously of much earlier date, concerning Tuirbhe Trághmar, the father of Gobán Saer, who owned Tráigh Tuirbhi. “’Tis from that heritage he, standing on Telach Bela (the Hill of the Axe), would hurl a cast of his axe in the face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over the axe.”[161.2]

The rhetorician perhaps regarded this Celtic practice as a useless piece of bravado, and only cited it by way of climax to his illustrations of Celtic daring and recklessness. There is little doubt that to the Celts themselves it was quite different. The sea and the waves were looked upon as personal beings with whom it was possible literally to fight, and who might even be overcome. {162} Such a view is common to many seaboard peoples. A curiously parallel tradition is found among the Malays at Jugra on the Selangor coast concerning the bore of the Langat River. This bore was conceived to be caused by the passage of a gigantic animal, probably a dragon. When it came up the river the Malays used to go out in small canoes or dug-outs to “sport amongst the breakers,” frequently getting upset for their pains. Eventually however, as Mr Skeat was told, the bore was killed by a Malay, who struck it upon the head with a stick. Whether from this cause or from the diversion of the stream into a new channel to the sea, there is no longer a bore in the river.[162.1] We may conclude that the Malays who went out to sport among the breakers really went to assail the bore in force, and that when the bore ceased to flow the belief arose that one of them had attacked it successfully and killed it.

European folk-tales have been found recording a similar belief. Among the Basques we are told that a witch once determined to sink a certain fishing-boat and drown its crew. Her plan was to overwhelm it with three immense waves, the first of milk, the second of tears, and the third of blood. The boat might ride in safety over the first two; but the third wave would be herself in person, and the only way to escape would be to launch a harpoon into the midst of it: the weapon would pierce her heart, and the boat with its crew would be saved. With the want of caution which, fortunately for the heroes of folk-tales, is so remarkable a characteristic of cunning and malevolent beings, the plot was laid in the hearing of the cabin-boy. At the critical moment he nerved his arm to fling the harpoon, and struck the wave in the midst. It divided and dashed upon the shore, {163} covering all the strand with a bloody foam. The bark was saved; but on his return the master found his wife dying of her wound, for she was the witch who had planned the destruction of her husband and his craft.[163.1] This Basque story, though only recorded in a literary version, appears to be a genuine folk-tale, since it is also found substantially the same among the traditions of the Frisian Islands and Norway.[163.2]

Other waters than the sea have likewise been endowed with personality. Rivers and streams have everywhere been regarded as conscious beings, or (in a later stage of animism) as the haunt of such beings. Usually they have been reckoned as endowed with a might too mystical and too tremendous to be attacked by man; but occasionally men of heroic mould have been supposed to fight and overcome them. Professor Frazer has argued with probability that the angel who wrestled with Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok was in the original tale the river-god himself, the awful spirit of the Jabbok.[163.3] He has not adduced any direct parallel in support of the conjecture, though the examples of offerings to streams for leave to cross them, of which he has collected a number from various parts of the world, do show that these waters are inhabited by supernatural beings, who must be treated with respect and whose goodwill must be obtained. Where he has failed to find parallels it is not likely that another can succeed. Yet it is curious that he should have overlooked the {164} traditions of the water-kelpie current in his native Scotland. Take one story told by Dr Gregor concerning a water-kelpie who used to come out of the stream and visit the sheeling where a certain blacksmith’s family and cow spent the summer. His visits, as was natural, caused terror and annoyance. At last the wife told the husband, who resolved to kill the creature. The wife took fright at the proposal and tried to dissuade him, under the fear that the kelpie would carry him off to his pool. He was deaf to her appeals. Preparing two long, sharp-pointed spits of iron, he repaired to the sheeling. He made a large fire on the hearth, and laid the two spits in it. In a short time the kelpie made his appearance as usual. The smith waited his opportunity, and with all his might drove the red-hot spits into the creature’s sides. It fell on the ground like a heap of starch.[164.1]

In this case the kelpie was killed. More numerous are the tales in which he approaches a traveller in the shape of a horse and induces him to mount; then he rushes to the pool, carrying the unwary man to his death. Often, however, he can be caught and made to work, by throwing over his head a bridle on which had been made the sign of the cross. When this was done, the creature became quiet and might be employed in labour needing strength and endurance, like that of carrying stones to build a mill or a farm-steading. When set free again, he took his leave, repeating the words:

“Sehr back an’ sehr behns, Cairrit a’ ----s’ stanes.”[164.2]

In Sweden the corresponding water-spirit--if that may be called a spirit which, as in all these cases, is regarded {165} as essentially corporeal--is called the Neck, a word connected with Hnikarr, the Old Norse appellation of Odin regarded as a water-god, and with the Nicors, or water-monsters referred to in _Beowulf_. The Neck is said to appear in various forms. Sometimes he is a grown man, and then “particularly dangerous to haughty and pert damsels”; sometimes he is a comely youth with his lower extremities like those of a horse; sometimes he is an old man with a long beard; occasionally a handsome youth with yellow locks flowing over his shoulders and a red cap, sitting in a summer evening on the surface of the water with a golden harp in his hand. In return for a black lamb he is not unwilling to communicate his skill in music; and if the offering be accompanied by the expression of a hope of his salvation, he is rendered especially gracious. For above all things he longs for eternal happiness; nor can deeper distress be inflicted upon him than by denying this possibility. A Neck who takes up his abode under a bridge, or in a stream, is commonly called a _Strömkarl_. He usually plays not on the harp but on the viol. Near Hornborgabro in West Gothland a Strömkarl was once heard singing to a pleasant melody these words thrice repeated: “I know--and I know--and I know--that my Redeemer liveth.” He is acquainted with a measure which, if played, will cause even inanimate things, as trees and stones, to dance; so powerful is his music.

But he appears in other forms. A favourite is that of a horse, sometimes described as with hoofs reversed. At Bohuus in West Gothland he was caught by means of a cunningly contrived halter, from which he could not break loose. His captor kept him all the spring and made him plough his fields. Only when once the halter accidentally slipped off was the Neck able to escape this {166} slavery. He sprang like lightning into the water, dragging the harrow after him. The Neck also causes disease. His appearance forbodes tempest. He haunts wells and must be propitiated with offerings, or measures must be taken to render him innocuous.[166.1]

Without pausing to analyse the complex character assigned to the Neck, it will be abundantly clear that he belongs to the same category as the foregoing, and may be subdued by similar means. To fetch parallels to the spirit of the Jabbok from Scotland and Sweden may be thought going far afield. It is going no farther than Dr Frazer himself goes for examples of the custom of propitiating river-spirits. The protest often uttered by cautious anthropologists against those who would cast the net so widely has its reason. When we are dealing with customs it is well to remember that customs superficially alike may spring from quite different social organizations, and their real intentions may be divergent or even opposite: in short, they may have nothing in common but external resemblance. They cannot be understood without taking into account the sequences of which they are often part, and the social organization and cultural condition from which they spring. It is otherwise when those great products of human imagination that animate the world about us are concerned. The personalities believed to haunt mountain and stream, air and water, heaven and earth, are elemental conceptions, the inevitable offspring of the human mind in its intercourse with nature. Analogies discovered between them are real analogies; they are the proofs of the essential oneness of mankind in the snow-hut of an arctic winter and the tree-shelter of a tropical forest. And when we find the relations believed to exist between such personalities {167} and human beings, the need of their conciliation or coercion in order to obtain benefits for their human worshipper or antagonist, and the means taken for this purpose, the same, with only such variations as may be accounted for by differences of environment, then we may with confidence appeal to them as mutually illustrative.

For these reasons it would appear that we must regard such tales as those of the kelpie and the water-bull of Scotland and the Isle of Man, or the Neck of Sweden, as illuminating the legend of Jacob’s struggle at the ford of the Jabbok. Professor Frazer rightly adduces as in some degree analogous the story of Menelaus catching the shy sea-god Proteus sleeping on the sands, and compelling him to say his sooth, as Jacob compels the angel to pronounce a blessing, and that of Peleus catching and conquering the sea-goddess Thetis to be his bride. Here we are reminded of a cycle of traditions found all over the world, and known as the Swan-maiden cycle. The heroine of the tale is a supernatural being, usually in the form of a bird which casts its feathers like a robe and becomes human. The hero, possessing himself of the robe, acquires power over her and makes her his wife, only to lose her again when she recovers it. As told in Scotland and the adjacent isles, in the Faeroe Islands and Iceland, the lady is a seal.[167.1] It may be doubtful whether Thetis was ever so represented; but it is certainly most suggestive that Proteus was discovered sleeping among the seals. For it is not only for matrimonial purposes that these supernatural beings are caught in modern _märchen_. In a Tamil tale the hero {168} steals the dress of one of a band of divine maidens, and thereby compels her to bring him a certain divine parijata, or flower of the coral tree, which was demanded by another lady as the price of her hand.[168.1] In the Spanish tale of The Marquis of the Sun, the Marquis is a great gamester. A man who played with him lost all he had, and then staked his soul and lost it. To get it back he was advised to watch on the banks of a river. Three princesses would come in the guise of doves, cast their feathers and bathe. He was to take the dress of the smallest and thus compel her to show him the road to the Marquis her father’s castle.[168.2] It is true that both these adventures do result in the hero’s union with the bird-maiden. Such union is, however, incidental. In a Samoyed Swan-maiden story the heroine, captured in the usual way, flings the hearts of herself and her husband, as well as of other members of his family, into the air; and their owners in consequence remain neither living nor dead. The husband’s father’s sister goes in search of the hearts to the lake where the bride was captured, and finds her six sisters there swimming as before. She takes possession of the clothes of one of them, and thus compels her to restore the hearts of her relatives.[168.3] So the hero of a tale told by a tribe on Vancouver Island is sent in search of his daughter, who has eloped with a wolf. He sees a number of young wolves playing at ball, having laid aside their mantles. He sets himself down beside the mantles, and in this way putting their owners to shame at being found naked, compels them to bring him to his son-in-law’s abode.[168.4] The mantles are obviously the wolf-skins, laid aside to enable their owners to appear in human form.

{169}

Wolves are of course not water-spirits, like swans or seals; but they obey the same law as that imagined for the latter. The man who seizes something which is at once the symbol of their supernatural character and the source of their power, renders them helpless and compels them to his will. The contest is in these cases one of trickery and determination, rather than of strength. The captures of Proteus and of Thetis, however, seem to have been effected by main force and a wrestler’s skill. This is often the case with the capture of mermaids in the west of Europe. Hugh Miller long ago translated into literature a local legend of Cromarty which told how John Reid captured on the shores of the Firth a mermaid, from whom he extracted as a ransom the grant of three wishes, including prosperity and union with the maiden of his choice.[169.1] Mermaid-stories thus agree with kelpie-stories and with those of Proteus and the spirit of the Jabbok in assigning victory to the strength and skill of the human wrestler.

Water-spirits are not the only supernatural beings with whom men are represented in story as matching themselves. The Lushei clans of Assam believe in various demons that inhabit hills, streams and trees. They are called Huai, those inhabiting the water being known as Tui-huai, and those residing on the land as Rām-huai. A certain sacrifice, generally of a big sow, is offered to the Rām-huai. It is called Sakhua. One night, towards morning, it is related, a Rām-huai appeared to a man who had unwittingly neglected his Sakhua sacrifice. It came into the straw where he was sleeping and wrestled with him until daylight. Even then it followed him and wrestled with him again; nor does the man seem to have been loth. At last he conquered the Rām-huai, {170} who then told him that his Sakhua sacrifice was over-due; and he performed it at once. Sometimes the Rām-huai appears as a tiger and sometimes as a man. On this occasion he seems to have been in human form.[170.1]

Yet even in such a contest the skill displayed may be much more than a trick of _jiu-jitsu_. An example or two will suffice. In the Wild Huntsman of Teutonic lands anthropologists agree in recognizing traditions of the god Woden. He is well known to the German rustic as Wod. A tale from Mecklenburg represents a peasant as encountering him one dark night in the form of a tall man on a white horse. The peasant accepts the stranger’s challenge to pull against him, and grasps one end of a heavy chain, while the stranger ascends into the clouds with the other end. The peasant knows that, if he lose, he is himself lost. He quickly twists the end around a stalwart oak, and the Huntsman tugs in vain. A second and a third time the contest is renewed, after he has persuaded the stranger that he is holding the chain, and it is only his own strength that is being put forth. The oak-tree creaks and crackles to its roots, but finally holds its ground. Wod owns himself vanquished, and rewards his courageous antagonist with a share of his game--a haunch of venison, which turns to a rich booty of gold and silver ere he reaches home.[170.2] We are indebted to Ovid for another example. He tells us how Numa by the advice of Egeria entrapped Picus and Faunus, two ancient rustic deities who were wont to drink of a certain stream. The king tempted them by means of wine placed beside the fountain; and when they had fallen into the slumber of intoxication he issued from his ambush and put them in chains. As the price of freedom he compelled them to bring down Jupiter from the sky, to give him the famous {171} formula for averting the thunderbolt.[171.1] Innocents like these are of course easily caught with strong drink. In Greek tradition Silenus, who as the son of a nymph was described as of condition inferior to the gods, but superior to mortals and to death, was not superior to some mortal weaknesses. Indeed, he was notoriously convivial. Hence he fell victim to a similar wile on the part of Midas, the Phrygian king. Nor was he released before he had revealed some astounding geographical and ethnological information, that staggered the sceptical Ælian when he found it placed on record in the now lost pages of Theopompus.[171.2]