Chapter M: C. H. Gaidoz takes exception to this interpretation. In his opinion, (6)

“In order to infuse courage into boys, a warrior, Kerketegerkai, would take the eye and tongue of a dead man (probably of a slain enemy), and after mincing them and mixing with his urine, would administer the compound in the following manner. He would tell the boy to shut his eyes and not look, adding: ‘I give you proper kaikai’ (‘kaikai’ is an introduced word, being the jargon English for food). The warrior then stood up behind the sitting youth, and putting the latter’s hand between his (the man’s) legs, would feed him. After this dose, ‘heart along, boy no fright.’”—(A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits,” in Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, Great Britain and Ireland, xix. no. 3, 1890, p. 420. Received through the kindness of Professor H. C. Henshaw, U. S. Geol. Survey, Washington, D. C.)

“Some other customs are altogether so obscene and disgusting I must, even at the risk of leaving my subject incomplete, pass them over by only thus briefly referring to them.”—(“Nat. Tr. of S. Australia,” p. 280.)

Monier Williams repeats almost what Müller says about the Parsis. A young Parsi undergoes a sort of confirmation, during which “he is made to drink a small quantity of the urine of a bull.”—(“Modern India,” London, 1878, p. 178.)

FEARFUL RITE OF THE HOTTENTOTS.

A religious rite of still more fearful import occurs among the same people at the initiation of their young men into the rank of warriors—a ceremony which must be deferred until the postulant has attained his eighth or ninth year. It consists, principally, in depriving him of the left testicle, after which the medicine man voids his urine upon him.[67]

“At eight or nine years of age, the young Hottentot is, with great ceremony deprived of his left testicle.” (Kolbein, p. 402.) He says nothing about an aspersion with urine in this instance, but on the succeeding page he narrates that there is first a sermon from one of the old men, who afterwards “evacuates a smoking stream of urine all over him, having before reserved his water for that purpose. The youth receives the stream with eagerness and joy; and making furrows with the long nails in the fat upon his body, rubs in the briny fluid with the quickest action. The old man, having given him the last drop, utters aloud the following benediction: ‘Good fortune attend thee; live to old age. Increase and multiply. May thy beard grow soon.’”—(Idem, p. 403.)

“The young Hottentot, who has won the reputation of a hero by killing a lion, tiger, leopard, elephant, etc., is entitled to wear a bladder in his hair; he is formally congratulated by all his kraal. One of the medicine-men marches up to the hero and pours a plentiful stream over him from head to foot,—pronouncing over him certain terms which I could never get explained. The hero, as in other cases, rubs in the smoking stream upon his face and every other part with the greatest eagerness.”—(Idem, p. 404.)

Rev. Theophilus Hahn cites Kolbein in “Beiträge für Kunde der Hottentoten,” in Jahrbuch für Erdkunde, von Dresden, 1870, p. 9, as communicated by Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C. For further references to the Hottentot ceremony of Initiation, by sprinkling the young warrior with urine, consult Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” vol. xvi. pp. 89 and 141, where there is a quotation from Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope.” See also Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.” vol. ii. article “The Cape of Good Hope.”

The Indians of California gave urine to newly-born children. “At time of childbirth, many singular observances obtained; for instance, the old women washed the child as soon as it was born, and drank of the water; the unhappy infant was forced to take a draught of urine medicinally.”—(Bancroft, H. H. “Native Races,” vol. i. p. 413.)

Forlong states that at the time of investiture of the Indian boy with the sacred thread, “the fire is kindled with the droppings of the sacred cow.”—(“Rivers of Life,” London, 1883, vol. i. p. 323.)

Valuable information was also received from Mr. Edward Palmer, of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, especially in regard to the Kalkadoon tribe near Cloncurry, who are among those who split the urethra.

In order to bring up an Eskimo child to be an “Angerd-lartug-sick,”—that is, “a man brought up in a peculiar manner, with a view to acquiring a certain faculty by means of which he might be called to life again and returned to land, in case he should be drowned,”—“for this purpose the mother had to keep a strict fast and the child to be accustomed to the smell of urine.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” p. 45.)

Réclus says of the Inuit child selected to be trained as an Angekok: “Sitôt née, la petite créature sera aspergée d’urine de manière à l’imprégner de son odeur caractéristique; c’est décidément leur eau bénite. Ailleurs, la barbe, la chevelure, l’entière personne des rois et sacrificateurs sont ointes d’huile prise dans de saintes ampoules; ailleurs, elles sont beurrées et barbouillées de bouse soigneusement étendue.”—(“Les Primitifs,” p. 84, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)

For initiation in witchcraft, “Dans la Hesse, le postulant se place sur du fumier en prononçant des formules magiques, et pique un crapaud avec un bâton blanc qu’il jette ensuite à l’eau.”—(“La Fascination,” J. Tuchmann, in “Mélusine,” Paris, July-August, 1890, p. 93.)

“I am strongly inclined to the belief that all these rites are survivals or debased vestiges of the blood-covenant practice, by which the partaking of each other’s selves (by whatever is a portion of one’s self) is a form of covenanting by which two persons become as one. Are you aware of the fact that the habit of giving the urine of a healthy child to a new-born babe has prevailed down to the present day among rustic nurses in New England, if not elsewhere, in America? I can bear personal testimony to this fact from absolute knowledge. It is a noteworthy fact that the Hebrew word _chaneek_, which is translated ‘trained’ or ‘initiated,’ and which is used in the proverb, ‘Train up a child,’ etc., has as its root-idea (as shown in the corresponding Arabic word) the ‘opening of the gullet’ in a new-born child, the starting the child in its new life. Among some primitive peoples fresh blood, as added life, is thus given to a babe; and in other cases it is urine.”—(Personal letter from Rev. H. K. Trumbull, editor of the “Sunday-School Times,” Philadelphia, April 19, 1888.)

“The priesthood of the false gods is hereditary in the family.... Others may be introduced into the corps of fetich priests, but they have to pay dearly for the honor.... Every morning before sunrise and every evening at sunset the aspirants were heard singing in choir, directed by an old fetich priestess.” These ceremonies of consecration “last several days.... The crinkled hair which is completely shaved off of some, and only from the crown of the head of others, the aspersion of lustral water, the imposition of the new name.”—(“Fetichism,” Rev. P. Baudin, New York, 1885, pp. 74, 75.)

“One observer of the customs of the blacks has stated in the journal of the Anthropological Society of London that in the Hunter River District of New South Wales, the catechumens at some parts of the Bora ceremonies are required to eat ordure; but I have made diligent inquiries in the same locality and elsewhere, but have found nothing to corroborate his statement. Similarly, in one district in Queensland, it is said that the blacks, whether at the Bora or not I cannot say, make cup-like holes in the clay soil, collect their urine in them, and drink it afterwards. This latter statement may be true, but I have never been able to substantiate it by information from those who know. Various considerations, however, lead me to think it possible that our blacks, in some places at least (for their observances are not everywhere the same), may use ordure and urine in that way, thinking that the evil spirit will be propitiated by their eating in his honor that which he himself delights to eat; just as in Northwestern India a devotee may be seen going about with his body plastered all over with human dung in honor of his god. And our blacks have good reason to try to propitiate this unclean spirit (Gunungdhukhya) in every possible way, for they believe that he can enter their bodies, and effecting a lodgment in their abdomen, feed there on the foulest of the contents, and thus cause cramps, fits, madness, and other serious disorders. The non-Aryan population of India have similar beliefs; for among the devil-worshippers of Western India there are certain malignant spirits called Bhutas; and these in their habits are similar to Gunungdhukhya. They too cause mischief by taking possession of the body, and they delight to devour human beings; they too live in desert places, especially among tall trees. They take the forms of men and animals, and prowl about in burial-grounds, and eat the carcasses.”—(Personal letter from John Frazer, LL.D., dated Sydney, New South Wales, December 24, 1889.)

This correspondent has struck the keynote of the curious behavior of the prophet Ezekiel and others. Believing, as was believed in their day, that deities ate excrement, why should not they, the representatives of the gods, eat it too? And if a god enter into a man’s body to eat excrement, why should not the victim feed him on that which is so acceptable, and by gorging him free himself from pain?

See, under “War Customs,” the use of the drink _wysoccan_ by the Indians of Virginia, in their ceremonies of initiation.

See, under “Ordeals and Punishments,” page 254, in regard to the belief of the Australians.

WAR-CUSTOMS.—ARMS AND ARMOR.

It is remarkable that we should be able to adduce any example of the employment of excrementitious matter in war customs; not that we should not suspect their existence, but because on occasions of such importance the medicine-men, who arrogate to themselves so much consequence in all military affairs, would naturally be more careful to conceal their performances from profane eyes. There is very little reason to doubt that a fuller examination would be rewarded with new facts of additional interest and value.

When the Dutch were besieging Batavia, in the Island of Java, in 1623, the natives daubed themselves with human ordure, in all likelihood for some vague religious purpose,—“a 1629, in obsidione Batavos obsessos, in defectu aliorum ad defensionem necessariorum requisitorum hostes suos Indos stercore humano ex cloacis collecto, ollisque in ipsorum nuda corpora conjecto, fugasse.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 795.)

“Les Malais se servent de l’urine pour tremper leurs fameux criss. Ils enfoncent ces poignards dans la terre, et pendant un certain temps, ils viennent uriner de manière que cette terre soit toujours imbibée d’urine.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Bernard, Cannes, France, dated July 7, 1888.)

Against what was known in the Middle Ages as “magical impenetrability,” human ordure was in high repute. The sword or “machete” of the person exposed to attack from such an enemy should be rubbed in pig-dung. But let Schurig tell his own story: “Scilicet, priusquam cum adversario hujus rei suspecto congrediaris, cuspis machæræ vel gladii, stercori suillo infigatur; vel si eminus agendum, globuli bomberdis infarciendi per sphincterem ani ducantur; quod certissimum dicitur antidotum contra hanc non minus quam Diaboli Incantationes.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 791, par. 64.)

Frommann states that arms may be bewitched so that they can do harm; but he makes no mention of human or animal excreta in such connection.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 654.)

“Dum gladio quo vulnus fuit inflictum sive cruento sive non cruento applicatur unguentum quod vocant magneticum armarium quo curatur vulnus.” (Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.) This magnetic ointment was made of human ordure and human urine.

See also page 298 of this volume.

“The Scythians prefer mares for the purposes of war, because they can pass their urine without stopping in their career.”—(Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 66.)

The “black drink” of the Creeks and Seminoles was an emetic and cathartic of somewhat violent nature. It was used by the warriors of those tribes when about to start out on the war-path or engage in any important deliberations.—(See Cornwallis Clay’s dissertation upon the Seminoles of Florida, in “Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology,” Washington, D. C., 1888.)

The “black drink” of the Creeks was made from the Iris Versicolor (Natural order, Iridacæa), “an active emeto-cathartic, abundant in swampy grounds throughout the Southern States.”—(See Brinton, “Myths of the New World,” New York, 1868, p. 274.)

Beverly mentions “a mad potion,” “the Wysoccan,” used by the Indians of Virginia during “an initiatory ceremony called Huskansaw, which took place every sixteen or twenty years,” which he calls “the water of Lethe,” and by the use of which they “perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language.”—(“Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 349, quoting Beverly’s “History of Virginia,” London, 1722, p. 177.)

See, under “Insults,” p. 256, for the war customs of the Samoans. See also “Catamenia;” “Witchcraft.”

XXXIV.

HUNTING AND FISHING.

The African hunter in pursuit of game, such as elephants, anoints himself “all over with their dung.”—(Father Merolla, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 251, “Voyage to Congo.”) This, he says, is merely to deceive the animal with the smell.

Pliny relates that in Heraklea the country-people poisoned panthers with aconite. But the panthers had sense enough to know that human excrement was an antidote. (Lib. xxviii. c. 2.) Again in lib. viii. c. 41 he tells of the aconite-poisoned panther curing itself by eating human excrement. Knowing this fact, the peasants suspend human excrement in a pot so high in the air that the panther exhausts itself in jumping to reach it, and dies all the sooner.

Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 774) has the above tale, but has taken it from Claudius Æmilianus, as well as Pliny.

The reindeer Tchuktchi feign to be passing urine in order to catch their animals which they want to use with their sleds. The reindeer, horses, and cattle of the Siberian tribes are very fond of urine, probably on account of the salt it contains, and when they see a man walking out from the hut, as if for the purpose of relieving his bladder, they follow him up, and so closely that he finds the operation anything but pleasant.

“The Esquimaux of King William’s Land and the adjacent peninsula often catch the wild reindeer by digging a pit in the deep snow, and covering it with thin blocks of snow, that would break with the weight of an animal. They then make a line of urine from several directions, leading to the centre of the cover of the pitfall, where an accumulation of snow, saturated with the urine of the dog, is deposited as bait. One or more animals are thereby led to their destruction.”—(Personal letter from the Arctic explorer, W. H. Gilder, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)

“The dogs of the Esquimaux are equally fond of excrement, especially in cold weather, and when a resident of the Arctic desires to relieve himself, he finds it necessary to take a whip or a stick to defend himself against the energy of the hungry dogs. Often, when a man wants to urge his dog-team to greater exertion, he sends his wife or one of the boys to run ahead, and when at a distance, to stoop down and make believe he is relieving himself. The dogs are thus spurred to furious exertion, and the boy runs on again, to repeat the delusion. This never fails of the desired effect, no matter how often repeated.”—(Idem.)

“I only know one superstitious use of excrement,—that wherein the hooks were placed round some before the fishing incantations began.” (“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthrop. Institute,” London, 1889.) This bears a very close resemblance to certain of the uses of cow-dung in India.

The people of Angola, west coast of Africa, when about to set out on a hunt, are careful to collect the dung of the elephant, antelope, and other kinds of wild animals, and hand them to the medicine-man, who makes a magical compound out of them, and places it in a horn. It then serves as an amulet, and will ensure success in the hunt.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola; interpretation made by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

XXXV.

DIVINATION.—OMENS.—DREAMS.

Among the ancients there was a method of divination by excrementitious materials.—(See “Scatomancie,” in Bib. Scat. p. 28.)

“Gaule, in his ‘Mag-Astromancers Posed and Puzzled’ (p. 165), enumerates as follows the several species of divination.” (Here follows a list of fifty-three kinds.) One of the kinds enumerated is “Spatalomancy, by skin, bones, excrement.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” pp. 329, 330.)

In the “Rhudhiradhyaya, or Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the Calica Puran, in the 4th vol. “Asiatic Researches,” 4th ed., London, 1807, the following is stated in regard to human victims: “If, at the time of presenting the blood, the victim discharges fæces or urine, or turns about, it indicates certain death to the sacrificer.”

The Peruvians had one class of wizards (i. e., medicine-men) who “told fortunes by maize and the dung of sheep.”—(“Fables and Rites of the Yncas,” Padre Cristoval de Molina, translated by Clement C. Markham, Hakluyt Society Transactions, London, 1873, vol. xlviii., p. 14. Molina resided in Cuzco, as a missionary, from 1570 to 1584.)

“Les Hachus (a division of the Peruvian priesthood) consultaient l’avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux.”—(Balboa, “Histoire de Pérou,” p. 29, in Ternaux, vol. xv.)

See, also, D. G. Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” New York, 1868, pp. 278, 279.

Ducange, enumerating the pagan superstitions which still survived in Europe in A.D. 743, mentions divination or augury by the dung of horses, cattle, or birds: “De auguriis vel avium, vel equorum, vel boum stercoracibus.”—(Ducange, Glossary, article “Stercoraces.”)

“What wise man would think that God would commit his counsel to a dog, an owle, a swine, or a toade; or that he would hide his secret purposes in the dung or bowels of beastes?” Reg. Scot (“Discoverie,” p. 150), speaking of the omens consulted by Spaniards, English, and others, says: “Among the rustics of France, to dream of ordure was regarded as a sign of good luck; in like manner, to have a ball, or anything that one carried in the hand, fall in ordure, was also a sign of good fortune.”

“To dream of ordure means that somebody is going to try to bewitch you.”—(“Muhongo,” a boy from Angola, Eastern Africa, in conversation with Captain Bourke; translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

This belief in the good or bad prognostications to be derived from dreams about ordure, was very widely disseminated. “Luck, or Good Luck. To tread in Sir Reverence; to be bewrayed; an allusion to the proverb, ‘Sh-tt-n luck is good luck.’”—(“Grose, Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)

“Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or spring, comes out of the dark-blue bird of night, we can understand the popular Italian and German superstition, that when the excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is an omen of good luck. The excrement of the mythical bird of night, or winter, is the sun.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” Angelo de Gubernatis, vol. ii. p. 176, London, 1872.)

“When a Hindu child’s horoscope portends misfortune or crime, he is born again from a cow, thus: being dressed in scarlet, and tied on a new sieve, he is passed between the hind legs of a cow, forward through the fore legs to the mouth, and again in the reverse direction, to simulate birth; the ordinary birth ceremonies (aspersion, etc.) are then gone through, and the father smells his son as a cow smells her calf.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 33.)

To put one’s foot in dung is supposed by the French peasantry to imply the acquirement of wealth.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)

Among the Kamtchatkans, if a child has been born in stormy weather, they believe that to be a bad omen, and that the child will cause storm and rain wherever it goes. As soon as it is grown and can speak, they purify it, and appease heaven by the following method: During a most violent storm of wind and rain, the child is compelled to walk naked, holding a cup or shell of Mytues high above its head, around the ostrag and all balagans and dog huts, and to say the following prayer to Billukai and his Kamuli: “Gsaulga, set yourselves down and stop urinating or storming; this shell is used to salty but not to sweet water; you make me very wet, and I almost freeze to death; besides, I have no clothing; see how I tremble.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

Divination by urine seems to have been superseded by holy water in a “chrystall.” Scot, speaking of the latter mode, says: “They take a glass vial, full of holy water, ... on the mouth of the vial or urinall,” etc.—(“Discoverie,” p. 188.)

There is among children in the United States and England, and possibly on the continent of Europe as well, a superstition to the effect that the one who plucks the dandelion will become addicted to the habit of urinating in bed during sleep. The author has been unable to trace the origin of the curious notion or to obtain any explanation of it.

“Leontodon. Dandelion. Children that eat it in the evening experience its diuretic effects in the night, which is the reason that other European nations as well as the British vulgarly call it piss-a-bed.”—(Encyclopædia, Philadelphia, Penn., 1797, article “Leontodon.”)

“The following compendious new way of magical divination, which we find so humorously described in Butler’s ‘Hudibras’ as follows, is affirmed by M. Le Blanc, in his ‘Travels,’ to be used in the East Indies:—

“‘Your modern Indian magician
Makes but a hole in th’ earth to pisse in,
And straight resolves all questions by it,
And seldom fails to be in th’ right.’”

(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 331, article “Divination.”)

Cicero makes no mention of a method of divination by excrement, although, as shown by the references from the “Bib. Scat.” and from Ducange, such methods must have been in vogue.

The Kamtchatkans believe that “if they ease nature during sleep, it signifies guests of their nation.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

Montfaucon says that the Roman Haruspices “observed in the beasts that were sacrificed not only the entrails in general, but also the gall and bladder in particular.”—(“L’Antiquité expliquée,” lib. i. part 1, cap. 6.)

See extract from Gilder’s “Schwatka’s Search,” under “Mortuary Ceremonies,” p. 262. See “Witchcraft,” “Amulets and Talismans,” “Urinoscopy,” “Virginity,” “Sterility,” “Courtship and Marriage,” “Childbirth.”

XXXVI.

ORDEALS AND PUNISHMENTS, TERRESTRIAL AND SUPERNAL.

In beginning this chapter it is fair to say that oaths will herein be regarded as a modified form of the ancient ordeal, in which the affiant invokes upon himself, if proved to have sworn falsely, the tortures of the ordeal, mundane or celestial, which in an older form of civilization he would have been obliged to undergo as a preliminary trial.

The author learned while campaigning against the Sioux and Cheyennes, in 1876-1877, that the Sioux and Assinaboines had a form of oath sworn to while the affiant held in each hand a piece of buffalo chip.

Among the Hindus, “sometimes the trial was confined to swallowing the water in which the priest had bathed the image of one of the divinities.... The negroes of Issyny dare not drink the water into which the fetiches have been dipped when they affirm what is not the truth.”—(“Phil. of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. ii. p. 123.)

They formerly may have drunk the urine of the god or priest.

In “the ‘Domesday Survey,’ in the account of the city of Chester, vol. i. p. 262, we read: ‘Vir sive mulier falsam mensuram in civitate faciens deprehensus, IIII solid. emendab. Similiter malam cervisiam faciens, aut in Cathedra ponebatur stercoris, aut IIII solid. de prepotis.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 103, article “Ducking Stool.”)

“The ducking stool was a legal punishment. Roguish brewers and bakers were also liable to it, and they were to be ducked in stercore in the town ditch.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, p. 401, London, 1849.)

In Loango, Africa, “When a man is suspected of an offence he is carried before the king,” and “is compelled to drink an infusion of a kind of root called ‘imbando.’ ... The virtue of this root is that, if they put too much into the water, the person that drinketh it cannot void urine.... The ordeal consists in drinking and then in urinating as a proof of innocence.”—(See “Adv. of Andrew Battell,” in Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” vol. xvi. p. 334.)

In Sierra Leone the natives have a curious custom to which they subject all of their tribe suspected of poisoning. They make the culprit drink a certain “red water; after which for twenty-four hours he is not allowed to ease nature by any evacuation; and should he not be able to restrain them, it would be considered as strong a proof of his guilt as if he had fallen a victim to the first draught.”—(Lieutenant John Matthews, R. N., “Voyage to Sierra Leone,” 1785, London, 1788, p. 126.)

In the Hindu mythology, “slanderers and calumniators, stretched upon beds of red-hot iron, shall be obliged to eat excrements.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, London, 1849, p. 249. He also refers to 2 Kings xviii. 27, and to Isaiah xxxvi. 12.)

“D’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourris d’excréments.”—(Majer. Dict. Mythol. en Allemagne, t. 2, p. 46; Bib. Scat., p. 12.)

Herodotus relates that Pheron, the son of Sesostris, conqueror of Egypt, became blind, and remained so for ten years.

“But in the eleventh year an oracle reached him from the city of Buto, importing that the time of his punishment was expired, and he should recover his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had intercourse with her own husband only, and had known no other man.” Herodotus goes on to relate that Pheron tried the urine of his own wife and that of many other women ineffectually; finally he was cured by the urine of a woman whom he took to wife; all the others he burnt to death.—(“Euterpe,” part ii. cap. 3.)

In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” par M’lle Laubert, Paris, 1790, King Petaud orders Prince Gadourd to be buried alive in ordure,—a punishment which would have suggested the author’s acquaintance with Brahminical literature even had she not confessed it in these terms: “Genre de supplice qui n’était pas nouveau puisque d’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourri d’excréments.”

The Africans have an ordeal,—“a superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous Muave,” which induces vomiting only, according to Livingston (“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 120). This may or may not be the “red drink” of Lieutenant Matthews cited above.

Under the head of “Latrines,” allusion has been made to the prohibition, in the laws of the Thibetan Buddhists, against throwing ordure upon growing plants, etc. There is another case mentioned by Rockhill, which may as well be inserted here: “Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments de l’autre côté d’un mur sans y avoir regardé, c’est un pacittiya.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)

In the words just quoted we find the definition of the offence as a “pacittiya,” or sin. The punishment for each sin or class of sins was carefully regulated and well understood in Thibetan nunneries.

“Cock-stool.” “A seat of ignominy ... in which scolding or immoral women used to be placed formerly as a punishment; ... same as ‘sedes Stercoraria.’”—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smythe-Palmer, London, 1882. See also Chambers’s “Book of Days,” vol. i. p. 211.)

The Chinese have a very curious and very horrible mode of punishment; criminals of certain classes are enclosed in barrels or boxes filled with building lime, and exposed in a public street to the rays of the noon-day sun; food in plenty is within reach of the unfortunate wretches, but it is salt fish, or other salt provision, with all the water needed to satisfy the thirst this food is certain to excite, but in the very alleviation of which the poor criminals are only adding to the torments to overtake them when by a more copious discharge from the kidneys the lime shall “quicken” and burn them to death.

In the famous bull of Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester, cited in “Tristram Shandy,” the delinquent was to be cursed, “mingendo, cacando.”—(See “Tristram Shandy,” Lawrence Sterne, ed. of London, 1873, vol. i. p. 188.)

“Fasting on bread and drinking water defiled by the excrement of a fowl” are among the disciplinary punishments cited in Fosbroke’s “Monachism,” London, 1817, p. 308, note.

This specimen of monastic discipline may be better understood when read between the lines. The veneration surrounding chicken-dung in the religious system of the Celts, prior to the introduction of the Christian religion, could be uprooted in no more complete manner than by making its use a matter of scorn and contempt; history is replete with examples wherein we are taught that the things which are held most sacred in one cult are the very ones upon which the fury and scorn of the superseding cultus are wreaked. On this point read the notes taken from the pamphlet of Mr. James Mooney, in regard to the superstitions attaching to the uses of chicken-dung among the Irish peasantry.

“I have mentioned the sacrifice of cocks by Kelts; it was, and still is, all over Asia, the cheap, common, and very venial substitute for man.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. ii. p. 274.)

We may reasonably infer that the dung of chickens as used by the Irish is a representative of, and a substitute for, human ordure.

The Easter season which has preserved and transmitted to our times so many pagan usages, has among its superstitions one to the effect that “every person must have some part of his dress new on Easter day, or he will have no good fortune that year. Another saying is that unless that condition be fulfilled, the birds are likely to spoil your clothes.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. i. p. 165, art. “Easter Day.”)

The Kalmucks believe in many places of future punishment, one of them being “un de ces séjours est couvert d’une nuée d’ordures et de vidanges.” (Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 552.) This is the belief inculcated by their Lamas.

At the Lithuanian festival called “Sabarios,” fowls were killed and eaten. “The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 70.)

In cases of sickness “the inhabitants of a village are forbidden to wash themselves for a number of days, ... and to clean their chamber-pots before sun-rise.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Dr. Franz Boas, in Sixth An. Rep. Bur. of Ethnol. Wash. D. C. 1888, p. 593.)

“We have seen that in modern Europe, the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-laborers. For example, he is bound up in the last sheaf and thus encased is carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, etc.”—(“The Golden Bough,” i. 367.)

In several parts of Germany, the Fool of the Carnival was buried under a dung-heap. (Idem, vol. i. p. 256.) Further on, is given this explanation: “The burying of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilizing influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 270.)

“In Siam it was formerly the custom, on one day of the year, to single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the streets, to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and, after having carried her through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill.... They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 196.)

In Suabia there is a rough harvest game in which one of the laborers takes the part of the sow; he is pursued by his comrades and if they catch him “they handle him roughly, beating him, blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth.... At other times he is put in a wheelbarrow.... After being wheeled round the village, he is flung on a dunghill.”—(Idem, vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.)

The negroes of Guinea are firm believers in the theory of Obsession, and have a god “Abiku” who “takes up his abode in the human body.” He generally bothers little children, who sometimes die. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap to be devoured by wild beasts.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)

“The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January” with “a festival of dreams.... It was a time of general license.... Many seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belaboring obnoxious persons, ... covering them with filth and hot ashes.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 165, quoting Charlevoix, “La Nouvelle France.”)

“During the madder harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand, a stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder roots, ‘will sometimes call out to them, Koortspillers’ (a term of reproach). Upon this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and if they catch him, they bring him back to the madder field and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least, jeering at him all the while; they then ease nature before his face.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 379.)

“Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves for a certain time against interruption.... The fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger proves that they consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed.”—(Idem, p. 380.)

In connection with the above, the following deserves consideration: “Reverence. An ancient custom which obliges any person easing himself near the highway or footpath, on the word ‘reverence’ being given him by a passenger, to take off his hat with his teeth, and, without moving from his station, to throw it over his head, by which it frequently falls into the excrement. This was considered as a punishment for the breach of delicacy. A person refusing to obey this law might be pushed backwards. Hence, perhaps, the term ‘sir-reverence.’”—(Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang.”)

It is more likely that the practice had some connection with the fear of witchcraft, or the evil eye of the stranger; we can hardly credit that peasantry living in an age when the highest classes received their guests at bedside receptions, “ruelles,” or in their “cabinets d’aisance,” would be squeamish in the trifling matter just alluded to.

In Japan “When any of these panders die ... their bodies are cast upon a dunghill.”—(John Saris, in Purchas, i. 368, A.D. 1611.)

“The tricks of the fayry called Pach.” “I smurch her face if it be cleane, but if it be durty, I wash it in the next pisse-pot I can finde.”—(“Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Black Letter, London, 1628, in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 205.)

But the “women fayries,” under similar circumstances, “wash their faces and hands with a gilded child’s clout.”—(Idem, p. 206.)

“Their own spirits too will have nothing but excrement to eat, if during life the rites of the Bora (Initiation) have not been duly performed. With this compare the declaration of the Indian Manes (xii. 71) that a Kahatya who has not done his duty, will, after death, have to live on ordure and carrion. And in the Melanesian Hades the ghosts of the wicked have nothing to eat but vile refuse and excrement.”—(Personal Letter from John Frazer, LL.D., to Captain Bourke, dated Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.)

The Australians believed that if a man did not allow the septum of the nose to be pierced, he would suffer in the next world. “As soon as ever the spirit Egowk left the body, it would be required, as a punishment, to eat Toorta-gwannang” (filth not proper for translation).—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 274.)

Among some of the Australian tribes is found a potent deity named “Pund-jel,” whom Mr. Andrew Lang thinks may be the Eagle-Hawk. “As a punisher of wicked people, Pund-jel was once moved to drown the world, and this he did by a flood which he produced (as Dr. Brown says of another affair) by a familiar Gulliverian application of hydraulics.”—(“Myth, Rit., and Relig.,” Lang, London, 1887, ii. 5.)

Maurice cites five meritorious kinds of suicide, in the second of which the Hindu devotee is described as “covering himself with cow-dung, setting it on fire, and consuming himself therein.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. ii. p. 49.)

“Throw this slave upon the dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iii. sc. 6.)

When Squire Iden killed Jack Kade he exclaimed:—

“Hence will I drag thee, headlong by the heels,
Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave.”—(2 K. Henry, vi. 10.)

“_Steward._ Out, dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iv. sc. 6.)

“Forbearance from meat and work are also prescribed to a single woman in case the sun or moon (though we should rather call it a bird flying by) should let any uncleanness drop upon her; otherwise, she might be unfortunate, or even deprived of her life.”—(Crantz, “History of Greenland,” London, 1767, vol. i. p. 216.)

The “bitter water” of the Hebrew ordeals by which the woman accused of unfaithfulness was either proved innocent, or had her belly burst upon drinking, presents itself in this connection.—(See Numbers v.)

Dante, in his cap. xiii. speaks of those condemned for flattery: “a crowd immersed in ordure.”—(Cary’s translation.)

Ducange alludes to what may have been an ordeal or a punishment: “Aquam sordidam et stercoratem super sponsam jactare.”—(“In Lege Longobardi,” lib. i. tit. 16, c. 8.)

The Hebrew prophets sat on dungheaps while the recalcitrant people of Israel were warned: “Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it.”—(Malachi ii. 3.)

By reference to another portion of this volume, it will be seen that stercoraceous matter was deemed potent in frustrating witchcraft. Thus a mother was ordered to throw a “changeling” child upon a dunghill (p. 403.) The prostitutes of Amsterdam kept horse-dung in their houses for good luck, etc. Consequently, when we read of the corpses of criminals or witches having been thrown upon dunghills, we may let fancy indulge the idea that it was to render nugatory any schemes the ghost might cherish of wreaking revenge.

The historian Suetonius relates that the unfortunate Roman emperor Vitellius was pelted with excrement before being put to death.

Among the unlawful acts for Brahmans or Kshatriyas who are compelled to support themselves by following the occupations of Vaisyas, is selling sesamum, unless “they themselves have produced it by tillage.... If he applies sesamum to any other purpose but food, anointing, and charitable gifts, he will be born again as a worm, and together with his ancestors be plunged into his own ordure.”—(“Vasishtha,” cap. ii. 27-30. “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1882, vol. xiv., edition of Max Müller. This is one of the oldest of the Sacred Books. The same prohibition is to be found in “Prasna” 11, “Adhyaya” 1, “Kandika” 2.)

XXXVII.

INSULTS.

It is somewhat singular to find in the myths of the Zuñis—the very people among whom we have discovered the existence of this filthy rite of urine-drinking—an allusion to the fact that to throw urine upon persons or near their dwellings was to be looked upon as an insult of the gravest character. During the early winter of 1881 the author was at the Pueblo of Zuñi, New Mexico, while Mr. Frank H. Cushing was engaged in the researches which have since placed him at the head of American anthropologists, and then heard recited by the old men the long myth of the young boy who went to the Spirit Land to seek his father. One of the incidents upon which the story-tellers dwelt with much insistence was the degradation and ignominy in which the boy and his poor mother lived in their native village, as was shown by the fact that their neighbors were in the habit of emptying their urine vessels upon their roof and in front of their door.

The threat made against the Jews by Sennacherib (in Isaiah xxxvi. 12) deserves consideration in this connection; and also the threat in the Old Testament, “There shall not be left one that pisses against the wall.”

“Connected with the Samoan wars, several other things may be noted, such as consulting the gods, ... haranguing each other previous to a fight, the very counterpart of Abijah, King of Judah, and even word for word with the filthy-tongued Rabshakeh.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, p. 194.)

The people of Samoa have a myth relating a separation which occurred between the natives of several islands, due to the fact that the men and women living on Tutuaila “began to make a dunghill of their floating island.”—(Olosenga, idem, p. 225.)

“Nebuchadnezzar likewise gave Zedekiah (after he had made him dance and play before him a long while) a laxative drink, so that, like a beastly old fellow (as there are many such betwixt York and London), _totus deturpatus fuit_, he smelt as ill as your Ajax.” In a marginal reference, he adds: “According to an old ballad,—

‘And all to b⸺n was he, was he.’”

—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)

This behavior, disgusting as it appears to us in all its features, had its parallel in the conduct of a prominent member of European aristocracy, who was wont to indulge his anger in a manner strikingly similar to the above at such moments as seemed to be proper for the punishment of his servants. His name is suppressed at the request of the correspondent furnishing the item.

Niebuhr says that the grossest insult that can be offered to a man, especially a Mahometan, in Arabia, is to spit upon his beard, or to say “De l’ordure sur ta barbe.”—(“Desc. de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 26.)

Niebuhr’s remarks in regard to the offence taken by the Bedouins at such an infraction of their etiquette as flatulence are repeated in a vague and guarded form by Maltebrun (“Univ. Geog.,” vol. ii. part “Arabia”).

In Angola, Africa, the greatest insult is, “Go and eat s—t.”—(Muhongo.)

“Dunghill. A coward. A cock-pit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled dunghills.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Slang,” London, 1811.)

Tailors who accepted the wages prescribed by law were styled “Dung” by the “Flints,” who refused them.—(Idem.)

Among the rough games of English sailors was one, “The Galley,” in which a mopful of excrement was thrust in a landsman’s face.—(Idem.)

In Angola, Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives; but any license of this kind taken while strangers are in the vicinity is regarded as a deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” translated by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

In the report of one of the early American explorations to the Trans-Missouri region occurs the story that the Republican Pawnees, Nebraska, once (about 1780-90) violated the laws of hospitality by seizing a calumet-bearer of the Omahas who had entered their village, and, among other indignities, making him “drink urine mixed with bison gall.”—(“Long’s Expedition,” Philadelphia, 1823, vol. i. p. 300.)

Bison gall itself sprinkled upon raw liver, just warm from the carcass, was regarded as a delicacy. The expression “excrement eater” is applied by the Mandans and others on the Upper Missouri as a term of the vilest opprobrium, according to Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army (author of “Hidatsa,” and other ethnological works of authority), whose remarks are based upon an unusually extended and intelligent experience.

“They gave me the abuse of the Punjabi, ... pelting me with sticks and cow-dung till I fell down and cried for mercy.”—(“Gemini,” Rudyard Kipling, in “Soldiers Three,” New York, 1890.)

“May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food; may the drains of the city be thy drink.”—(“The Chaldean Account of Genesis,” George Smith, New York, 1880.)

Among the Cheyenne expressions of contempt is to be found one which recalls the objurgations of the Bedouins; namely, _natsi-viz_, or “s—t-mouth.”—(Personal notes of September 25, 1878, interview with the chiefs of the Northern Cheyennes, Ben Clark, interpreter.)

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who has made such prolonged and careful studies of the manners and myths of the tribes of the Siouan stock, is authority for the statement that the worst insult that one Ponca can give another is to say, “You are an eater of dog-dung;” and it is noticeable that the words of the expression are rarely used in the language of every-day life. He gives other examples from myths, etc., and supplies a variant of the story narrated by Captain Long; but as all this is to appear in one of the Doctor’s coming books, it is omitted from these pages.

The Kamtchatkans say, “May you have one hundred burning lamps in your podex,” “Eater of fæces with his fish-spawn,” etc.—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

“Stercus.” As a term of abuse.—“Nolo stercus curiæ dici Glauciam.”—(Cicero, “De Oratoribus,” 3, 41, 164; Andrew’s “Latin Dictionary,” New York, 1879, article “Stercus.”)

Caracalla put to death those who made water in front of his statues. “Damnati sunt eo tempore (that is, the end of his wars with the Germans) qui urinam in eo loco ferrant in quo statuæ aut imagines erant principis.”—(Ælius Lampridius, “Life of the Emperor Caracalla,” edition of Frankfort, 1588, p. 186, lines 43 and 44.)

There are some very singular laws of the ancient Burgundians in regard to abusive words. “Si quis alterum concagatum clamaverit, 120 denariis mulctetur.”—(Barrington, “Obs. on the Statutes,” London, 1775, p. 315.)

“I’ll pick thy head upon my sword,
And piss in thy very visonomy.”

(“Ram Alley,” Ludowick Barry, 1611, edition of London, 1825.)

“The devil’s dung in thy teeth.”

(“The Honest Whore,” Thomas Dekkar, 1604, edition of London, 1825.)

“Again the coarsest word, _khara_. The allusion is to the vulgar saying, ‘Thou eatest skitel’ (that is, ‘Thou talkest nonsense’). Decent English writers modify this to ‘Thou eatest dirt;’ and Lord Beaconsfield made it ridiculous by turning it into ‘eating sand.’”—(“Arabian Nights,” Burton’s edition, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223.)

Readers of classical history will recall the incident of the outrage perpetrated by the mob of Tarentum upon the person of the Roman ambassador Posthumus, 282 B.C. A buffoon in the street threw filth upon his toga. The ambassador refused to be mollified, and tersely telling his assailants that many a drop of Tarentine blood would be required to wash out the stains, took out his departure. A cruel war followed, and the Tarentines were reduced to the rank of a conquered province.—(See “History of Rome,” Victor Duruy, English translation, Boston, 1887, vol. i. p. 462.)

“When the multitude had come to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and the Roman cohort stood over the temple, ... one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and stooping down after an indecent manner, turned his posteriors to the Jews, and spake such words as might be expected upon such a posture.” The narration describes the riot which followed as a result, and ten thousand people were killed.—(See Josephus, “Wars of the Jews,” book ii. edition of New York, 1821.)

The dispute between Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Arch-Duke of Austria, which resulted afterwards in the incarceration of the English king in a dungeon, had its rise in the great insult of throwing the Austrian standard down into a privy. Matthew of Paris says distinctly that Richard himself did this. “Now he, being over well disposed to the cause of the Norman, waxed wroth with the Duke’s train, and gave a headstrong, unseemly order for the Duke’s banner to be cast into a cesspool.”—(See “The Third Crusade and Richard the First,” T. A. Archer, in “English History from Contemporary Writers,” New York, 1889.)

“_Bigot._ Out, dunghill! Darest thou brave a nobleman?”

(“King John,” iv. 3.)

“_Gloster._ Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?”

(“1 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)

“_York._ Base dunghill villain and mechanical.”

(“2 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)

“‘Khara,’ meaning dung, is the lowest possible insult. ‘Ta-kara’ is the commonest of insults, used also by modest women. I have heard a mother use it to her son.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 59, footnote.)

XXXVIII.

MORTUARY CEREMONIES.

A Parsi is defiled by touching a corpse. “And when he is in contact and does not move it, he is to be washed with bull’s urine and water.”—(“Shapast la Shayast,” cap. 2.; “Sacred Books of the East,” Max Müller, editor, Oxford, 1880, pp. 262, 269, 270, 272, 273, 279, 281, 282, 333, 349.)

In the cremation of a Hindu corpse at Bombay, the ashes of the pyre were sprinkled with water, a cake of cow-dung placed in the centre, and around it a small stream of cow-urine; upon this were placed plantain-leaves, rice-cakes, and flowers.—(“Modern India,” Monier Williams, p, 65.)

“They who return from the funeral must touch the stone of Priapus, a fire, the excrement of a cow, a grain of sesame, and water,—all symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have destroyed.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 49.)

The followers of Zoroaster were enjoined to pull a dead body out of the water. “No sin attaches to him for any bone, hair, grass, flesh, dung, or blood that may drop back into the water.”—(Fargard VI., Vendidad, Zendavesta, Darmesteter’s edition; Max Müller’s edition of the “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 70.)

“There dies a man in the depths of the vale; a bird takes flight from the top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale, and it eats up the corpse of the dead man there; then up it flies from the depths of the vale to the top of the mountain; it flies to some one of the trees there,—of the hard-wooded or the soft-wooded, and upon that tree it vomits, it deposits dung, it drops pieces from the corpse.... If a man chop any of that wood for a fire, he is not regarded as defiled because ... Ahura-Mazda answered, ‘There is no sin upon any man for any dead matter that has been brought by dogs, by birds, by wolves, by winds, or by flies.’”—(Fargard V., of same work.)

If a dog had died on a piece of ground, the ground had to lie fallow for a year; at the end of that time, “they shall look on the ground for any bones, hair, flesh, dung, or blood that may be there.”—(Fargard VI.)

If the clothing of the dead “has not been defiled with seed or sweat or dirt or vomit, then the worshippers of Mazda shall wash it with gomez.”—(Fargard VII. Gomez (bull-urine) again alluded to as the great purifier on pp. 78-80, 104, 117, 118, 122, 123, 128, 182, 183, 212.)

The sacred vessels that had been defiled by the touch of a corpse were to be cleaned with gomez.—(Idem, pp. 91, 92.)

The most efficacious gomez was that of “an ungelded bull.”—(Idem, p. 212.)

“They shall cover the surface of the grave with ashes or cow-dung.”—(Fargard VIII.)

“Let the worshippers of Mazda here bring the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard VIII. See, also, p. 201 of this volume.)

In describing the funerals of the Eskimo, Gilder says: “The closing ceremony was a most touching one. After ‘Papa’ had returned from the grave, Armow went out of doors and brought in a piece of frozen something that it is not polite to specify, further than that the dogs had entirely done with it, and with it he touched every block of snow on a level with the beds of the igloo. The article was then taken out of doors and tossed up in the air, to fall at his feet; and by the manner in which it fell he could joyfully announce that there was no liability of further deaths in camp for some time to come.”—(“Schwatka’s Search,” Gilder, p. 234.)

“The Africans have an evil spirit called ‘Abiku,’ who takes up his abode in the human body.” This spirit is believed to cause the death of children. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)

There is also a purification of the soul of the dying by the same peculiar methods. In Coromandel,[68] the dying man is so placed that his face will come under the tail of a cow; the tail is lifted, and the cow excited to void her urine. If the urine fall on the face of the sick man, the people cry out with joy, considering him to be one of the blessed; but if the sacred animal be in no humor to gratify their wishes, they are greatly afflicted.