Chapter VII: Part 7

Such legends of contest are not confined to merely second-rate personages like these subordinate or superseded divinities. When in the _Iliad_ Diomed attacks and wounds Aphrodite, she goes crying to her mother. Dione by way of consolation recounts a list of Olympian gods who have grievously suffered in fight with headstrong and violent men. It includes Ares, Hera, and Hades, all of them potent figures in Greek mythology. Ares was bound by Otus and Ephialtes, the sons of Aloeus, and kept in durance vile for thirteen moons, until Hermes came to his rescue. Even he, it seems, was obliged to have recourse to secret means to steal him away. The arrows of Herakles inflicted grievous wounds on Hera and Pluto. And though naturally Dione denounces untimely death as the penalty for such presumption, the injuries received in the conflict are not all on one side.[171.3] Odin himself fights more than once in the Scandinavian lays and sagas against human antagonists. Nay, if M. A. J. Reinach’s interpretation be accepted, Jacob’s {172} opponent at the ford of the Jabbok was no other than “Elohim in person.” The growth of religious feeling, on this theory, found this coarse representation abhorrent; and while the incident, being part of the sacred legends, could not be ignored or repudiated, it was so altered as to obscure its real significance.[172.1]

However this may be, tales like these are echoes of belief in the possibility of a successful corporeal struggle with the mysterious powers. They are blurred memories of the practice of threatening and even attacking what we call supernatural beings under their material manifestations. Those beings were conceived, if not always in human form, at least as human in their wills and passions, hence in their motives and modes of action. The only way in which they differed from humanity was in their vaster and undefined powers. They were, to adopt Matthew Arnold’s phrase, magnified, non-natural--that is to say, mysterious--men.[172.2] Thus conceived, they were accessible to every sort of influence that affected mankind, including coercion. But it took a bold man to coerce them, though the task might be attempted upon occasion, even by ordinary mortals--not always with success. Sometimes the contest is of a more distinctly intellectual character. The trial of musical skill between Apollo and Marsyas will occur to everyone. The Egyptian king called by Herodotus Rhampsinitus is said to have penetrated to Hades and there played at dice with Demeter. Varying fortune attended him; but he was so far successful that he returned with a golden handkerchief, the gift of the goddess. And the Egyptians {173} still in the historian’s time celebrated a feast in memory of the adventure.[173.1]

If we turn from legend to fact, we find the belief translated into action, into the attempt to control the supernatural by force. Thus did Xerxes when he lashed the Hellespont and let down fetters into it, for destroying the bridge he had endeavoured to build.[173.2] Thus did the ancient priestesses of the Canary Islands when rain was too long in coming: they beat the sea with rods to punish the spirit of the waters for withholding the boon they needed.[173.3] In the same way (the tale is probably at least founded on fact), when the Nile had risen to the height of eighteen cubits--higher than it had ever risen before--Pheros, the son and successor of Sesostris, is declared to have taken a spear and driven it into the midst of the whirling waters. It is added--and here we have a testimony to the recognition by the ancient Egyptians of the awful divinity whom the king had thus challenged--that he was thereupon struck with a disease of the eyes and made blind.[173.4] The vengeance mentioned by Dr Frazer as taken by the Kakhyeen of Upper Burmah points distinctly to the same intention. “If some friend or relative has been drowned in crossing a river, the avenger repairs once a year to the banks, and, filling a bamboo vessel with the water, hews it through with his _dah_ [sword] as if he were despatching {174} a living enemy.”[174.1] The Korwas of Chota Nagpur on a similar occasion shoot arrows into the river.[174.2]

After comparing these cases there can be little doubt that the Celtic practice of fighting the waves reported by Ælian was not undertaken as a foolhardy piece of presumption, but literally as a combat with a foe susceptible to such attacks, or (as the Irish text suggests) a necessary proceeding in self-defence, lest otherwise the sea should encroach upon the land. The _orenda_ of the land-dwellers was pitted against that of the waters.

The conclusion will be confirmed by considering a few examples of the treatment of divinities other than those of sea or river. The tribe of the Getai, the bravest of the Thracians, were in the habit, during thunderstorms, of shooting arrows up to the sky and threatening their god. It is indeed not clear what god they threatened. Usually it is understood to be the god Zalmoxis, pre-eminently the god of the Getai. But he seems to have been a chthonic divinity; and as the text of Herodotus stands they recognized no other god. The historian’s account of him is rationalized; and there is reason to think that he failed to grasp all the essentials of the Getic religion: his own doubts on the subject are more than hinted at. In shooting upwards, however, and uttering threats, the Getai must have menaced some being conceived more or less in personal terms. This is sufficient for our present purpose.[174.3] The Atarantes, who dwelt ten days’ journey from Mount Atlas, in like {175} manner cursed the sun when he was at his height and reviled him with all manner of foul terms, because he oppressed both themselves and their land by his burning heat.[175.1] Among the Bayaka of the Kasai district in the Congo State it is common to hear people running about at night and shouting insults to Moloki, a malignant spirit who has made them ill, or caused the death of a relation.[175.2] The Bechuana, on the great central plain of South Africa, ascribe changes of weather to the influence of the _manes_ of deceased members of the tribe. They are called by the generic term _Barimo_, of which the singular form, _Morimo_, was adopted by the early missionaries to translate God; and it is now frequently used with that meaning. When hail damaged the crops, or rain fell unseasonably, Moffat tells us, Morimo would be cursed in the vilest language. “Would that I could catch it, I would transfix it with my spear!” exclaimed in the missionary’s hearing a chief whose judgement on other subjects would command attention.[175.3] On the occasion of an earthquake a traveller saw the Bakwena women in an instant rushing out of their huts, with clubs and hoes in their hands, holding them up at the sky, and cursing God with most awful imprecations and demoniac yells.[175.4] The proceedings of the Zulus, neighbours of the Bakwena, during a thunderstorm were thus described by a native to Bishop Callaway: “When it thunders the doctors go out and scold it; they take a stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven. They say they can overcome the lightning. They shout and take shields and sticks; they strike on their shields and shout. And when it clears away again {176} they say, ‘We have conquered it.’ They say they can overcome the heaven.”[176.1] The Hottentots curse the thunder and shoot their poisoned arrows at the lightning, telling him to be off. Some of them, however, adopt a milder course, assembling to dance and sing an incantation. Two specimens of these incantations have been preserved. The thunder is thus addressed:

“Son of the Thunder-cloud, Thou brave loud-speaking Guru! Talk softly, please, For I have no guilt! Leave me alone (Forgive me)! For I have become quite weak (= I am quite stunned, perplexed). Thou, O Guru, Son of the Thunder-cloud!”

The other incantation is addressed to the lightning. It is a dramatic performance, the lightning being played by one person, the chorus representing the appeal of the inhabitants of the kraal.

_Chorus._
“Thou, Thunder-cloud’s daughter, daughter-in-law of the Fire!
Thou who hast killed my brother!
Therefore thou liest now so nicely in a hole!

_Solo._
(Yes) indeed, I have killed thy brother so well!

_Chorus._
(Well) therefore thou liest (now) in a hole.
Thou who hast painted thy body red, like Goro!
Thou who dost not drop the menses,
Thou wife of the Copper-bodied man (the mythical ancestor of the
Hottentots)!”[176.2]

{177}

Perhaps the sex of the lightning here may render it more amenable to the softer arts of persuasion. The Bushmen used to look steadily at the quarter whence the lightning came. They believed its object was to kill them by stealth, and that if they looked towards it they would cause the thunderbolts to turn back. It appears, they said, “to fear our eye, when it feels that we quickly look towards it.… Therefore it goes over us; it goes to sit on the ground yonder, while it does not kill us.”[177.1] In other words, they believed themselves so powerful that the lightning quailed before them and did not dare to strike. Among the Nandi, a Nilotic tribe of East Africa, it is the duty of the Toiyoi, or Thunder-clan, when a heavy thunderstorm occurs, to seize an axe and, having rubbed it in the ashes of the fire, to throw it outside the hut, crying out: “Thunder, be silent in our village!”[177.2] Among their neighbours (but not kinsfolk), the Wawanga, an old man was recently found by a government official to have stuck a curious-looking spear in an ant-hill in his village to drive off the hail.[177.3]

Similar practices are found in the less advanced cultures of the New World. The Hurons of Canada were in the habit of sticking their javelins into the ground point upwards. The explanation they gave, as reported by the Jesuit Father, was that the thunder had intelligence, and it would, on seeing these naked javelins, turn aside and be careful not to come near their cabins.[177.4] The Salinans of California possess an amulet which will stop the thunder, if it be held in the hand and pushed out towards a thunder-cloud.[177.5] The Guaycurus of Paraguay, {178} great and small, on the occasion of a great storm of wind and rain, issued from their huts armed with clubs and sticks, and uttering terrible cries, to fight with the hurricane, persuaded that it was an attack on them by evil spirits, and that they must defend themselves without showing cowardice.[178.1] According to legends current at the time of the conquest, “the _hapiñuñu_, or bosom-clutching spirits, who were believed to have been the original occupants of the Peruvian valleys, were forcibly expelled by the early human inhabitants, immigrants from the country of the Guaycurus. When the ancestors of the Incas arrived in the sierra ‘from beyond Potosi’--that is, from the Gran Chaco--these spirits, according to a fragment of an ancient song which has been preserved by an Indian writer, disappeared with terrible cries, saying:

‘We are conquered! We are conquered! Alas, for I lose my lands!’”[178.2]

The tribes of the Uaupes River in Brazil, after a funeral, shoot into the air to chase away, and if possible kill, the evil-disposed spirit which has caused the death.[178.3]

In tropical surroundings, separated from the Hurons by nearly half the globe, by the whole breadth of the Pacific Ocean and nearly the whole breadth of the continent of North America, the Kai-folk of the Kai, or forest hinterland of the south-eastern coast of German New Guinea, adopt the very same measure as they for protection against the storms. Like their surroundings, their culture is widely different from that of the Hurons. They dwell in frail cabins raised upon posts, in order to secure them from the intrusion of their half-domesticated swine and the attacks of the wilder animals. These huts {179} cluster on the mountain-side in tiny villages of from two to six. Their framework is of wood, bound together with tough lengths of a climbing plant. The walls consist of long pandanus leaves; and they are thatched with leaves of the sago-palm, or with grass. It is obvious that such feeble structures can offer little resistance to high winds. Happily wind-storms are of rare occurrence; but when they do come they wield terrific force, splitting or uprooting powerful trees. Against the onslaught of such foes, which, it need not be said, are regarded as personal beings, the Kai-folk have more than one means of defence. They take one of the jawbones of wild beasts which hang in the hut as trophies of the chase, put it in the fire and pray the storm-spirit to accept the soul of the deceased animal and spare the house. But they do not rely on the chance of placating the spirit; they oppose him with threats and with weapons. They fasten a pointed stake or spear before the windward side of the house, its point turned to the wind, so that it will “prick him in the belly,” and thus compel him to leave the hut in peace. Or they reply to each gust by striking the threshold with a club or stone-axe, crying out: “If you tread here on my house, I will smash your feet!”[179.1]

Almost all nations in the lower culture hold an eclipse to be the attempt on the part of some evil-disposed being to eat up or destroy the sun or moon. The custom of terrifying and driving him away is too well known to need illustration.

In these cases, though the supernatural being may be out of reach, that does not hinder men and women from pitting their _orenda_ against his; and as soon as the storm {180} or the eclipse comes to an end they naturally vaunt their success. In the form of wind indeed he may be held to descend to actual blows with his human opponents. Professor Frazer has collected a number of examples of fighting the storm and the whirlwind.[180.1] Nor are those examples confined to such as already recounted. Even in Europe eddies and gusts of wind are attacked without hesitation by peasants, whether Scottish, Breton, German, Slav, or Esthonian. A small whirlwind of the kind with which we are all familiar is believed to be caused by a witch, who is carried along unseen at its centre, and may be revealed and rendered harmless by launching some object, preferably a knife, into it. In the Tirol a knife of special form is used for the purpose, on the blade of which are engraved nine St Andrew’s crosses and nine crescent moons. It wounds the witch as surely as the harpoon in the Basque tale cited at the beginning of this essay.[180.2]

Here and in many of the other instances the supernatural being is regarded as actually hostile. At certain stages of evolution there is, however, as little hesitation in turning upon a god with whom one is usually on terms of friendship and submission. We have had some examples of this. A god may provoke a worshipper, and human nature will not always put up with the provocation. When he is found in tangible shape as an idol his {181} aggrieved client may even resort to corporal chastisement. Dr Farnell refers in this connection to the passage in the seventh idyll of Theocritus, where the poet mentions the whipping of the image of Pan with squills when food was scarce, and to a Breton smith “who threatened the saint’s image with red-hot pincers to compel him to heal his son.”[181.1] The two practices thus put together are not strictly parallel. Originally at least they were widely different in purpose, though they have some outward resemblance. To beat the image of Pan with squills was not to punish the god for neglect of duty, but to bring him into touch with the powers of growth, to drive out the barrenness that possessed him and to recreate his fructifying forces. It was a magical means of restoring his life-giving properties. It may have been to some extent, like punishment, a relief to the feelings of the beater; but the chief object is unmistakably shown by the ritual requirement to beat with squills.[181.2] It would seem, however, as if this had been forgotten by the time of Theocritus; for in the following lines (not cited by Dr Farnell) the poet goes on to threaten stinging with nettles in case of the god’s recalcitrance, as if this were the same sort of petty torment.

On the other hand, means are often taken, like those of the Breton smith, to compel a god to grant his suppliant’s wishes, and in default to inflict indignity and injury. Pietro della Valle tells in his _Voyages_ of an image of Saint Anthony which was thus treated by Portuguese sailors. First of all, prayers were addressed to the image for a favourable wind. The wind not being forthcoming, the {182} image was taken from its shrine and lashed to the mast, in the beginning with comparatively slack cords. The bonds were progressively tightened as the saint delayed to accede to his worshippers’ demands. They were not in a mood to stand any nonsense. The image before which they had knelt in prayer only a few hours earlier was now the object of curses and derision; and every day the wind was delayed a new cord was added to bind the sacred victim more tightly. At last, however, the wind changed and blew from the quarter desired; the saint was loosed from his uncomfortable position and replaced respectfully in his niche; the sailors thanked him, but mingled with their thanks reproaches for the obstinacy which had forced them to take severe measures with him.[182.1] Saint Anthony indeed suffers much from his votaries. The Spanish population of New Mexico do not hesitate to hang his image head downwards to urge him to his duty of performing miracles. Other obstinate saints they simply put away or imprison.[182.2] The modern Aztecs give their sacred images a whipping when their prayers are not attended to. The Tarascos of Mexico make San Mateo responsible for the weather and the crops. When it freezes his image is taken from the church in the early morning and dumped into cold water as a punishment. On the other hand, he is rewarded for good crops by a procession, a big feast, and abundance of brandy and tamales.[182.3]

In France, near the village of la Selle, on the highway from Autun to Château Chinon, is a granite rock, on the top of which rustic piety has erected a Calvary. Just below it is a little grotto that serves as a niche to shelter {183} the statue of the good Saint Merri, the patron of the parish. Saint Merri has a reputation extending far and wide. Formerly on the stone at his feet might be seen offerings of eggs and small change; and even yet pilgrimages are made to his shrine in pursuance of vows or for the cure of certain diseases. Among these, it would seem, as the offering of eggs may indicate, he was expected to cure sterility. It is related that a pious woman of a neighbouring village was in the habit of coming to implore the saint for her daughter, who had been married for some years, but had had no children. She had another daughter, who was not married; and the saint made a mistake: it was her unmarried daughter to whom a child was granted. The good woman, enraged at a blunder so inexcusable, returned to the saint. Bitterly reproaching him with his mockery of her prayers, she took a stick and inflicted on him a sound castigation, breaking his arm and rolling him over on the ground, where he long remained, a witness to his own unseemly jest and her righteous indignation. The inhabitants at last made a collection to buy a new saint, which is now placed on a pedestal in the foreground of the grotto, while the old and guilty saint is relegated shamefully to a corner, and still bears the scornful title of the Weeper.[183.1]

Corporal punishment of saints, otherwise than by way of penance during their mortal life, has never enjoyed official favour in any form of Christianity, however gratifying it may be to the feelings of disappointed worshippers. So far as it is employed as a serious means of compelling attention to the needs and prayers of {184} their clients it is by no means confined to Christianity. Savage and barbaric peoples do not hesitate to punish their idols in this manner. The practice is reported from the Southern Pacific to the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean in both hemispheres. Two or three examples will suffice. The Eskimo who wander along the inhospitable coasts of Ungava to the north of Hudson’s Bay are attended each by a guardian spirit, often in the form of a doll carried somewhere about the person. These spirits are not naturally benevolent. They must be abundantly propitiated with offerings of food, water and clothing, to induce them to confer success and prosperity upon the man who may with equal propriety be termed their master or their worshipper. If the spirit prove obdurate and, like Saint Anthony, reluctant to grant the needful assistance, its owner sometimes becomes angry with it and inflicts a condign chastisement, deprives it of food, strips it of its garments, or even palms it off secretly on some unsuspecting friend, to his discomfort or injury.[184.1] When a chief dies in the district of Ibouzo, on the Niger, without leaving a son, his _Ikengua_, or domestic wooden idol of the god of riches, is cut in two and flung away into the bush, because it has procured no male descendant for its worshipper.[184.2] A Brahman boy in India attended a mission-school, and was selected to compete in a tennis tournament. He and his two younger brothers had each an image of Ganesa, which was kept in a shrine for worship. Previous to the tournament the images were taken out and solemnly threatened by the three brothers with something very disagreeable if the eldest brother lost the match. He lost it. The brothers returned home, and carried out their threat by pitching the three {185} images into the well at the back of the house. The next day they sallied out and bought three new images of the god to replace the old ones.[185.1] The Paraiyans of Southern India on the occasion of a drought invoke the dēvata called Kodumpāvi (wicked one). “The ceremony consists in making a huge figure of Kodumpāvi in clay, which is placed on a cart and dragged through the streets for seven to ten days. On the last day the final death ceremonies of the figure are celebrated.” It is mutilated, and funeral rites are performed by the grave-diggers. “This procedure is believed to put Kodumpāvi to shame,” and to get her to induce her paramour Sukra, who has neglected his duty, to stay the drought.[185.2] If this be so, it is evident that the figure is not identified with the dēvata, and the punishment operates by the mental rather than the corporeal annoyance inflicted upon her. Japan affords an example of righteous indignation expressing itself in castigation which is passing, or has already passed, into a spell. When the owner of a tea-house is dissatisfied with the number of his customers, the wooden pestle of the tub in which various kinds of meal and salt are mixed for the preparation of a certain dish is taken out and struck through the uppermost paper panel of the door or window, so that it falls on the floor with a crash. Out come the people of the house armed with sticks, brooms, and so forth; and they scold and thrash the pestle, making him responsible for the fewness of their guests. He is bound and thrown into a chest. If shortly afterwards the guests increase, the pestle is taken out of his prison, his forgiveness is asked, and he is drenched with _saki_. It is hardly necessary to observe that the pestle is a phallic representative, and that the business of a tea-house {186} often extends to the entertainment of a guest in more ways than one.[186.1]

The practice, however, is so well known that it would be waste of time to multiply illustrations. I will only add that in the valley of the Nile, in the days when the worship of animals, whatever its exact origin or meaning, prevailed, the sacred beasts were carefully tended and trained, and all their wants were provided for. In return they were expected to grant their worshippers’ wishes. If they “could not or would not help in emergency they were beaten; and if this measure failed to prove efficacious, then the creatures were punished by death;… and it was the priests themselves who condemned and executed the sacred animal. Afterwards indeed they sought to secure its immortality by the embalmment of the body, thereby hoping to appease the wrath of the god, lest he should avenge the killing of the creature in which he had been incarnate.”[186.2] There is such a thing as carrying punishment too far, especially when you cannot carry it far enough to put an end to a being of indefinite but superhuman power, who will bottle up his anger until he can catch you off your guard. This inconvenience is incident to the theory evolved by Egyptian syncretism that the sacred animals were incarnations of the divinities.

Another method of dealing with a god or any supernatural being is to bind and imprison him, if you can catch him. This needs but a cursory mention here. It has been dealt with at some length by Mr William {187} Crooke, who has ingeniously suggested that the Homeric story, already referred to, of the binding and imprisonment of Ares by Otus and Ephialtes owes its origin to this practice.[187.1] In any case it is a common expedient for the laying of a ghost. I was privileged to live for some years in a house concerning which one of these ghost-laying traditions was told; and so far as my experience goes the expedient was entirely successful. It is still in use by medicine-men for delivering their clients from the persecution of troublesome spirits. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo “sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.”[187.2]

Obviously the adage “First catch your hare” applies here. The supernatural being cannot always be caught. But he may be driven away. Dr Frazer has illustrated very fully the widespread practice of expelling evils considered as personal beings either periodically or occasionally by ceremonies of violence or of enticement, persuasion and magical spells.[187.3] The ancient Scandinavians seem to have instituted solemn legal proceedings against troublesome ghosts. There is a remarkable story in the _Eyrbyggia Saga_ of a number of malignant ghosts who haunted the settlement at Frodiswater with disastrous effects to men and stores. The Christian priest sang the hours there, manufactured holy water and shrived all folk. This was not enough to disperse the ghosts, who had audaciously come and sat by the fires, to the horror of the survivors, and devastated the place with sickness and misfortune. It was but the preparation for the stringent measures to follow. The bed-gear of Thorgunna, the deceased stranger-woman who had started {188} the mischief, was burned. The ghosts were summoned to a door-doom; “and it was done in all matters even as at a doom of the Thing: verdicts were delivered, cases summed up and doom given.” The ghosts attended in obedience to the summons. As each was found guilty he was sentenced to depart. “But as soon as the sentence on Thorir Wooden-leg was given out, he rose and said: ‘Here have I sat while sit I might’”; and thereafter he stumped out by the door opposite to that before which the court was holding its session. Thus they were banished one after another; “and each arose as the sentence fell on him, and all said somewhat at their going forth; but ever it seemed by the words of each that they were all loth to depart.” Last of all judgement was given upon Thorod, the recently deceased goodman of the house, “and when he heard it he stood up and said: ‘Meseems little peace is here; so get us all gone otherwhere’; and therewith he went out. Then in walked Kiartan [the heir] and his folk, and the priest bare hallowed water and the holy things throughout the house; and on the next day they sang all the hours and mass with great solemnity; and so there was an end thereafter to all walkings and hauntings at Frodiswater.”[188.1]

What is important to observe here is the entire respect paid by the criminal _revenants_ to the formal and deliberate decision of the society against which they had sinned. They obeyed it as they would have obeyed it in their lifetime. In heathen times, out of which Iceland had scarcely emerged, the Thing was the lawful assembly of the whole community. Its doom outlawed those members who were convicted of antisocial conduct, and such was undoubtedly the conduct of the dead who returned to {189} harm the living. Though dead they were still members of the society and subject to its laws. By those laws it was their duty to abide in the howe, or grave-mound, and thence watch over the well-being of the family, receiving in return a cult. The authority of the Thing extended to all matters interesting the community, religious as well as political, juridical and administrative. Under Christianity, and the advancing civilization of which it was a part, the religious authority was beginning to be separated from its control, of which perhaps we may see a hint in the narrative. But the religious officials were acting in unison with the rest, though hardly now as part of them. On the other hand, the cult of the dead was no longer officially recognized. It is improbable that it had ceased; and assuredly the defunct were still charged with the negative duty of remaining quietly in the howe and abstaining from all molestation of those whom they had left behind. There may be some doubt as to the technical status of the assembly which dealt with the case. If not a local and subordinate Thing, it seems at least to have been a properly constituted tribunal, proceeding in a perfectly regular manner, and carrying in its decisions the force of law. It had probably not yet become entirely divested of spiritual jurisdiction, or at least of spiritual prestige, which may indeed be taken to be sanctioned and supported by the countenance and assistance of the priest of the new religion. The ghostly transgressors recognized its authority, the propriety of its procedure, the justice and the binding character of its sentence; and however much they grudged it, they submitted.

It need not be said that more summary measures were often taken with those who “walked” after death to the inconvenience of the survivors. They consisted in {190} digging out and destroying the corpse, or dealing with it in a way similar to that used with vampires, which are indeed one species of these troublesome visitors. Examples are not uncommon in the Norse sagas, and are plentiful in the folklore of the Scandinavian and other countries.

An alternative to driving away the supernatural being is to threaten and insult him. Of this I have in previous pages given some examples. The ancient Greeks had a technical term for formulæ of this kind. They called them θεῶν ἀνάγκαι, compulsions of the gods. It will be sufficient to refer to a few cases of insult employed by different peoples in all seriousness, and often in the sacred ritual. When a sacrifice is offered to the ancestral _manes_ by the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa on the occasion of sickness in the family, they are told: “You are useless, you gods; you only give us trouble! For although we give you offerings, you do not listen to us! We are deprived of everything! You [naming the ancestral spirit who is addressed as the cause of the evil] are full of hatred! You do not enrich us! All those who succeed do so by the help of their gods!” We are informed that when some great misfortune is the occasion for a special sacrifice, the request presented in the prayer is preceded or followed by a ritual insulting of the gods (_manes_). “There are two words used to designate this curious part of the prayer: _holobela_, to scold the gods, or _rukatela_, the real word for _to insult_.”[190.1] Here it must not be forgotten that the personages addressed are {191} members of the family. It is true that they have been divinized by death, but their family relationship has not been dissolved. They have still their duties to perform, as well as the survivors; and if they neglect them a family quarrel may reasonably be the consequence, as it might in their lifetime.

This method of bullying divinities is well known in India. A pair of examples from the extremities of the peninsula will suffice. Parakutty is a debased form of Vishnu (or perhaps it may be more correct to say an aboriginal demon identified with Vishnu), worshipped by some of the low castes in Cochin. The Nayadis are a jungle tribe reputed to be skilful hunters. Parakutty is supposed to aid them in hunting. When they fail to get the expected game they abuse him for his ingratitude, and for betraying the trust they have reposed in him. He is also the favourite deity of the Parayans. A Paraya magician is frequently called in to assist in recovering stolen property. He invokes Parakutty for the purpose. If the property be not recovered the magician prays again, this time in a more indignant and abusive form, and he thinks that then his object is sure to be gained.[191.1] In _The Legends of the Panjab_, Sir R. C. Temple gives a long poem in which a woman in trouble expresses her intention of cursing her patron saint Gorakh Nâth for the misfortunes that have befallen her.[191.2] In the same spirit Charlemagne, in the romances, is made to threaten God to throw down his altars and make the churches with all their priests cease from the land of the Franks.[191.3]

Great and awful as gods may be, they are after all but {192} human. The most mysterious of them are conceived in quasi-human terms. On the other hand, human beings are often looked upon as gods and treated accordingly. But then their treatment is simply that of powerful men, men possessed of and filled with a greater or less degree of _mana_, who therefore require to be handled gingerly, like an unexploded bomb. Such a man-god, if a native ruler or fellow-tribesman, can seldom be driven away; but he may, especially if his _mana_ be suspected of departing from him, be attacked and slain. To expound this practice and the belief on which it is founded, or with which it is bound up, Dr Frazer’s great work, _The Golden Bough_, has been written. The white man, like the gods, is to peoples in the lower culture mysterious, powerful, endowed with _mana_. To that extent he is the object of wonder and fear, he is a god. Yet he may be fought and overpowered, killed or driven away. Of the Bangala in the Upper Congo basin we are told that before the unknown and mysterious the native “is timid, fearful, and very superstitious. He will regard you as a _god_, and yet try to fight you; he will superstitiously believe that you have wonderful occult powers that can stop the rain, cause pestilence and plagues; and yet he will not attempt to conciliate you, but he will savagely tell you to clear out of his town and take your witchcraft elsewhere.”[192.1]

So and not otherwise the savage treats his gods. Where milder means avail not, and he can get his way by rough treatment of the idols or other tangible forms in which they are presented, he does not hesitate to use physical force. As little will he hesitate to use guile to eke out his inferior strength. It is but another manifestation of his _orenda_. Hence the tales of audacious heroes {193} who have measured their strength or their cunning against more tremendous personages. Hence the threats and insults addressed to powers beyond immediate reach by peoples all over the world. Hence the punishment inflicted on the images of gods and saints. Hence the boldness of the Celts.

THE HAUNTED WIDOW

{194}

According to the legend of Osiris as preserved for us by Plutarch, the slain divinity accompanied with Isis, his sister-wife, after his death, with the result that she had by him a child whose name is given in Greek form as Harpocrates.[194.1] Doubt has been thrown by some Egyptologists upon the accuracy of Plutarch’s report; but it is probably correct. At all events the incident is fairly widespread both in tale and superstition, as I shall proceed to show.

Among the Chinese the dead of both sexes have always been held capable of sexual intercourse with the living. A favourite topic of Chinese tales is that of a belated wanderer entertained by a liberal host or hostess and passing the time in agreeable conversation, eating, drinking, sleeping and sexual intercourse, and then suddenly awaking to find himself or herself, as the case may be, in or on a tomb, with no trace of human dwelling near. Visits are paid by the dead to the living for various purposes, from which the enjoyment of the pleasures of married life are not excluded. One famous story concerns a man of the Ma clan, who died childless, leaving a wife who refused to marry again. In her sorrow she {195} caused to be made a clay image of the deceased and offered something to it whenever she took a meal, as she had done to her husband in his lifetime. One night the image became animated, and telling her that he was her husband permitted to return and solace her fidelity and chastity, he passed the night with her, rising at cockcrow and going away. The visit was repeated every night, with the result that before the end of a month she had conceived and in due time bore a son. Information was laid before the magistrate and the woman was arrested. On hearing her story the magistrate said: “I have heard that the children of ghosts are shadowless, and that those that have shadows are not genuine.” He took the child into the sunshine, and lo, its shadow was as faint as a light smoke. He further tested it by pricking its finger and putting the blood on the clay image of the woman’s husband, into which it soaked without leaving a trace, whereas smeared on another image it was wiped off at once. These experiments convinced the magistrate that the woman’s tale was true; and all traces of suspicion subsequently vanished when, as the boy grew up, he was found closely to resemble the deceased in face, gesture and speech.[195.1]

Gansám, a divinity worshipped by the Muásís and Gonds of Bengal, is said to have been a Gond chief who was devoured by a tiger just after his marriage at an early age. “Cut off at such a moment, it was unreasonable to suppose that his spirit would rest. One year after his death he visited his wife, and she conceived by him; and the descendants of the ghostly embrace are, it is said, living to this day at Amodah in the Central Provinces.” As a result of other apparitions to many of his old friends he persuaded them to inaugurate a regular worship of {196} him, and two festivals in the year were established in his honour.[196.1] Not in all cases, however, do the deceased husband’s visits to his widow result in the birth of a child. The legend of Záhir Pir, the saint of a Mohammedanized caste of scavengers about Benares, relates that he was involved in strife with his mother’s sister’s sons, who disputed his succession to his father’s kingdom, and slew them. For this he was cursed by his mother never to see her face again. In his anguish he called upon Mother Earth to receive him into her bosom. On her refusal, because, being a Hindu, he was not burnt, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and accepted Islam. Afterwards renewing his petition, the earth opened and disclosed a chapel as for a hermit. Záhir Pir entered on his charger, and the earth closed above him and his devotions. Siryal, his widow, reduced with his mother to poverty, mourned him and cried: “Mother Earth, give me back my husband!” By God’s command the earth yielded him up to visit her nightly; but every morning at daybreak he flew away on his winged charger. Siryal had discarded her jewels as became a widow when she lost her husband. Now that she received these secret visits she resumed them as a matron. When her mother-in-law upbraided her, saying: “What means this wanton finery?” she returned: “To thee thy son is dead: to me my husband is alive.” In explanation of the riddle she placed her beneath the bedstead at night that she might see her son. But when Záhir Pir came at midnight his aged mother had fallen into a deep sleep, which was undisturbed by the caresses above her; nor was it until he had quitted the bed and vaulted into the saddle that Siryal could rouse her. She started up and clutched his bridle. Even then her curse prevented her from {197} seeing her son’s face. “I do but obey thy bidding,” he groaned, turning his face away. “Look back! thy house is burning.”[197.1] So among the Calmucks we hear of a khan who, being married to a wife whom he did not love, resorted to a girl living a little distance away. His visits resulted in her pregnancy; but before the birth of her child he died. Death does not prevent him from carrying her off to his funeral rites, nor from afterwards paying her marital visits on the fifteenth of every month, and spending the night with her, disappearing in the morning. When she urges him to stay, so that his mother may see him and be convinced of her truth, he gives her directions to go to the place of the dead and fetch his heart. This she accomplishes, and thus recovers him as her husband permanently.[197.2] The islanders of the East Indian Archipelago are profoundly convinced that various kinds of spirits can have similar intercourse with human beings. The spirits of the dead are not excepted from this belief; and albinos are held to be their offspring by a living mother. A famous priest-king of the Toba-bataks, called Singa Mangaraja, owed his birth to this cause.[197.3]

A story is told by the Dene (Athapascans) of the northern provinces of Canada concerning a man who one night suddenly disappeared from his wife’s side, and in the morning, in the ashes of the hearth, were found the cloven footprints of a reindeer: he had been transformed. {198} His wife was an adept in magic. By its aid she became an expert hunter, and after the loss of her husband supplied the family, consisting of her mother and little son, with food. As her son grew up, he in turn hunted and successfully snared reindeer. One day he caught a reindeer with human hair between its horns. He brought its carcase to his mother, who had constantly mourned her husband. She at once recognized the dead reindeer as her husband. Lying down along with it, the animal revived and once more became man. Thus she recovered the husband whom she had loved, and for whom she had so long sorrowed. The story is ætiological, told to explain why so many reindeer are caught with snares made of magical bonds of pine-root, and why certain parts of the reindeer are not eaten.[198.1]

Plutarch mentions that Harpocrates was born lame, that is to say, with his lower limbs feebly developed, and interprets this as a parable of the new corn with its tender and imperfect shoots. We find, however, that the offspring born of the unnatural connection with a dead man is represented as being as remarkable as the manner of his generation, and not infrequently monstrous. We have seen that the Toba-bataks thus account for the birth of an albino. A story told by the Transylvanian Gypsies concerns a girl named Mariutza of the Chale tribe, the daughter of a wealthy chief. She loved a youth named Jarko, to whom her father refused to give her. Her brothers caught her in his arms one night, and slew him. They killed one of their father’s horses and buried it with him in a grave on the edge of the forest, spreading the report abroad that he had fled and would never return to the tribe. She was not a witness of his death, and did not know what had become of him. One {199} night, unable to sleep, she went out of the tent, sat down beside a brook and wept bitterly, crying aloud: “Oh that I could once more see him, dead or alive!” Hardly had she uttered the words when she heard the ring of a horse’s hoofs, and her lover galloped up on a white steed, his clothing covered with blood and his hair with icicles. He took her up; and the steed made off to the grave, where he lay down with her in his arms. She rested thus in her lover’s arms until day began to break, when he sent her back to her tent, charging her to cease from disturbing his rest any further with her tears. As she hurried away the grave closed. After nine months she bore a great stone that flew from tent to tent until it met her brothers, and, striking them on the head, hurled them both dead to the ground. Then it disappeared; and when folk came to look for Mariutza, she too lay dead on her bed.[199.1] In a modern Icelandic tale a youth and maiden love one another, but are prevented from marrying. The youth dies, but after death visits his beloved by night. An old woman in whom she confides compels the dead man to confess. He tells her that the girl is pregnant, and will bear a son who will surpass all men in beauty and intellect, and will become a priest; but unless someone be found bold enough to stab him in the breast during his first mass, the church will sink into the earth with all the people in it. It was done; and the young priest disappeared, leaving behind on the floor of the church nothing but three drops of blood.[199.2]

In Brittany a story is told with much circumstance of place and name, relating how a peasant-farmer of the village of Keranniou died, leaving a wife much younger {200} than himself and seven children. After death he reappeared as ghost, and played a variety of tricks. At length his widow found herself pregnant, and, seeking the priest, confessed with tears that the deceased had lain with her several times, insisting that he had been sent back by God because he had not had his full tale of children. The duty of bringing into the world one’s allotted number of children, it may be observed, is a motive in many of the grimmer Breton stories. As her condition became visible the neighbours taunted the unfortunate widow; but the priest took her part openly in the church. A child was born, but without eyes. The ghost appeared again, and took far more interest in it than in any of the children born during his lifetime. The child was extremely precocious, but lived only for seven months. When it died the dead man’s ghost was seen to accompany the funeral procession. From that hour he was never beheld again; and the villagers said he had been waiting for the babe to lead him by the hand to Paradise.[200.1] A similar incident is found as far away as among the Bella Coola of the British Columbian fiords. There a husband and wife who were devoted to one another made vows of mutual fidelity, even after the death of either of them. The husband died; and his body was placed, as was usual, in a little dead-hut. The widow wept bitterly, entered the dead-hut and lay down to sleep beside the corpse. In her dreams she saw him once more alive. He begot upon her a child, which was born after the lapse of a fortnight. It was not like other children, for it consisted only of a head without a body. The widow was unwilling to exhibit such a monster; but her mother did not rest until she was allowed to take it in her arms. When she saw what it was she let it fall {201} in terror. The head sank into the earth and disappeared from view.[201.1]

Cases like these suggest that Plutarch’s view of the crippled condition in which Harpocrates was born is not to be accepted. It does not necessarily follow that the interpretation of Osiris as a deity of vegetation, adumbrated by the philosopher and adopted by Professor Frazer, is wholly incorrect. We are in error if we suppose the myth of Osiris to be one and self-consistent. The myths of Osiris were innumerable. The realm of Egypt was formed by the union of a number of small independent states or communities. Each of these communities had its own customs, institutions, beliefs, _märchen_. Many stories told, whether for serious credence or by way of pastime, in every district were doubtless common to all Egypt. But probably even they had their local variants; and these variants must often have been irreconcilable. The phenomenon is familiar. It is abundantly exemplified in the tales of the Greek and Scandinavian mythologies. In Egypt, however, the formation of a strong central authority, and the consequent growth and maintenance during many ages of a powerful and educated priesthood, were among the influences that led to a persistent attempt to unify and explain the principal divine myths, to attach them to the various local and periodical solemnities already observed from time immemorial, and to educe from the jumble something like a system, a philosophy. Whether in this process an originally independent myth had become united with a series of agricultural rites, or whether a myth previously annexed to such rites had acquired an independent existence by virtue of a higher inspiration, {202} matters not to us. The story of Osiris is found on the Egyptian monuments in a number of frequently disconnected texts, of which there is no authoritative canon. Among those texts the exact status and meaning of the Harpocratian episode is probably a subject on which the Egyptians themselves would have been unable to agree. We can hardly be wrong in indulging our scepticism at the expense of Plutarch’s interpretation, though he may simply have reported it as it was given to him. The parallel tales, whether of Europe or America, at least are purely human. They yield no trace of vegetable symbolism. They are founded upon impulses and beliefs that have all over the world influenced the conduct of men towards the supernatural.

It was a common belief in antiquity, and thence through the Middle Ages and right down, among the uneducated classes, to modern times, that dead men and other supernatural beings might have intercourse with living women. Upon this belief and the innumerable tales connected therewith was founded Bürger’s famous ballad of _Lenore_.[202.1] The story told by Herodotus of the paternity of Demaratus, King of Sparta, is an early example. Demaratus, being accused of not being the son of his predecessor, Ariston, adjured his mother in a solemn ceremony to tell him the truth. Her account was that, on the third night after her marriage to Ariston, an apparition in his likeness and wearing garlands came to her, and, having embraced her in conjugal wise, transferred to her the garlands it wore and departed. Ariston, coming in afterwards, saw the garlands and asked who had given them to her. She told him he had done so himself; and when he denied {203} it she confirmed it with an oath. Ariston then began to suspect divine interference. On making enquiry it was found that the garlands were from the adjacent temple of the hero Astrabakus; and the diviners identified the apparition with the hero himself. In that night Demaratus’ mother became pregnant of him.[203.1] Satyrs and Fauns, under the name of _incubi_, were generally held to be guilty of criminal assaults upon women when opportunity offered. Among the Gauls, we are told by Saint Augustine, this kind of evil spirit was known as Dusii; and their constant exploits, as well as those of the Silvans and Fauns, were so well attested that to the great ecclesiastic it seemed it would be impudent to deny them.[203.2]