Chapter M: C. H. Gaidoz takes exception to this interpretation. In his opinion, (12)

The Rev. W. Ellis, speaking of the Tahitians, says: “The parings of nails, a lock of the hair, the saliva from the mouth, or other secretions from the body, or else a portion of the food which the person was to eat, this was considered as the vehicle by which the demon entered the person who afterwards became possessed.... The sorcerer took the hair, saliva, or other substance, which had belonged to his victim, to his house, or marae, performed his incantations over it, and offered his prayers; the demon was then supposed to enter the substance (called tubu), and through it to the individual who had suffered from the enchantment.”—(“Polynesian Researches,” vol. ii. p. 228, quoted in “The Nat. Trib. of S. Australia,” p. 25.)

“If the death of any obnoxious person is desired to be procured by sorcery, the malevolent native secures a portion of his enemy’s hair, refuse of food, or excrement; these substances are carried in a bag specially reserved for the artillery of witchcraft, a little wallet which is slung over the shoulders. The refuse of food is subjected to special treatment, part of which is scorching and melting before a fire; but, in the case of excrement, my information is to the effect that it is just allowed to moulder away, and as it decays the health and strength of the enemy is supposed to decline contemporaneously. Excrement is thus employed in the south of Queensland.”—(Personal letter from John Matthew, Esq., M. A., dated “The Manse,” Coburg, Victoria, Nov. 29, 1889. This correspondent has had a great deal of experience with the savages of Australia.)

The Patagonians have the belief that their witches can do harm to those from whom they obtain any exuviæ or excrement,—“if they can possess themselves of some part of their intended victim’s body, or that which has proceeded from it, such as hair, pieces of nails, etc.; and this superstition is the more curious from its exact accordance with that so prevalent in Polynesia.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” quoting the Jesuit Falkner, vol. ii. p. 163.)

There was some ill-defined relation between the power of urination and virginity. Burton speaks of “such strange, absurd trials in Albertus Magnus ... by stones, perfumes, to make them piss and confess I know not what in their sleep.”—(“Anat. of Melancholy,” vol. ii. p. 451.)

Speaking of the Australians, Smith says: “The only remarkable custom (differing from other savages) in their fighting expeditions, is the adoption of the custom commanded to the Israelites on going out to war. (Deut. c. 23, ver. 12-14,—about hiding excrement.) The natives believe that if the enemy discovered it, they would burn it in the fire, and thus ensure their collective destruction, or that, individually, they would pine away and die.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” vol. i. p. 165.)

“In the middle of the hall ... was a vase, of which the contents were at least as varied as those of the caldron of Macbeth; a mixture, in part, composed of nameless ingredients.”—(“Dictionnaire Universel du XIXme Siècle,” by P. Larousse, quoted in “Reports of Voudoo Worship in Hayti and Louisiana,” by W. W. Newell, in “Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore,” Jan.-March, 1889, p. 43.)

There is on record the confession of a young French witch, Jeanne Bosdean, at Bordeaux, 1594, wherein is described a witches’ mass, at which the devil appeared in the disguise of a black buck, with a candle between his horns. When holy water was needed, the buck urinated in a hole in the ground and the officiating witch aspersed it upon the congregation with a black sprinkler. Jeanne Bosdean adhered to her story even when in the flames.[80]

One of the ceremonies of the initiation of the neophytes into witchcraft was “kissing the devil’s bare buttocks.” (Reg. Scot. “Discoverie,” pp. 36, 37.) Pope Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to several German bishops in 1234, describes the initiation of sorcerers as follows: The novices, on being introduced into the assembly, “see a toad of enormous size.... Some kiss its mouth, others its rear.” Next, “a black cat is presented.... The novice kisses the rear anatomy of the cat, after which he salutes in a similar manner those who preside at the feast, and others worthy of the honor.” (“Med. in Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 41.) Again, “At witches’ reunions, the possessed kissed the devil’s rear, kissing it goat fashion, in a butting attitude.” (Idem, p. 50.) “Le baiser d’hommage est donné au derrière du Diable parce qu’il n’a été permis à Moïse, selon l’Exode, de voir que le derrière de Dieu.”—(Mélusine, Paris, July-August, 1890, p. 90, art. “La Fascination,” by J. Tuchmann.)

The devil hates nothing more than human ordure. (On this point, see Luther’s Table Talk.) The devil cannot be more completely frustrated than by placing upon some of his works human ordure, or hanging it in the smoke of the chimney. The Laplanders were reputed to be able to detain a ship in full sail; yet when such a vessel had been besmeared along its seams in the interior with the ordure of virgins, then the efforts of the witches were of no avail. (Paullini, p. 260.) “A certain man bewitched a boy, nine years old, by placing the boy’s ordure in a hog’s bladder and hanging the ‘sausage’ in the chimney. (Idem, p. 261.) But some believed that by this smoking of ordure the evil often became worse; that the diseased person gradually dried up until at last he died, as he experienced in the case of his own father-in-law.... Farmers’ wives, to make the butter come in spite of the witches, poured fresh cow’s milk upon human ordure, or down into the privy, and the witches were thereupon rendered powerless.”—(Idem, p. 263. See also citation from Schurig, “Chylologia.”)

The Magi also taught to drink the ashes of a pig’s pizzle in sweet wine, and so to make water into a dog’s kennel, adding the words, “Lest he, like a hound, should make urine in his own bed.” If a man, in the morning, made water a little on his own foot, it would be a preservative against mala medicamenta, doses meant to do him harm.—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. p. 12, quoting Pliny. See citations already made from that author.)

Beckherius (Med. Microcosmus, p. 114) tells the story of the Lapland witches being able to hold a ship in its course, except when the inner seams of the vessel had been calked with the ordure of a virgin; see extract already entered.

Again, Beckherius quotes Josephus as narrating that a certain lake, near Jericho, ejected asphalt which adhered so tenaciously to a ship that it was in danger of wreck, had not the asphalt been loosened by an application of menstrual blood and human urine.—(Idem, p. 43, quoting Josephus, “De Bello Judaico,” lib. iv. c. 47.)

Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” p. 43, cites Josephus in regard to a certain plant to which magical properties were ascribed, but only to be brought out by watering it with menstrual blood and the urine of a woman.—(Josephus, “De Bell. Jud.” lib. vii. c. 23, p. 146.)

Dittmar Bleekens, speaking of the “Islanders” (Icelanders), says: “And truly, it is a wonder that Satan so sporteth with them, for hee hath shewed them a remedie in staying of their ships, to wit, the excrements of a maide being a Virgin; if they anoynt the Prow and certaine plancks of the ship hee hath taught them that the spirit is put to flight and driven away with this stinke.”—(In Purchas, vol. i. p. 646.)

Josephus says (his remarks have already been given in quotation, but are repeated to show exactly what he did say): The bitumen of Lake Asphaltites “is so tenacious as to make the ship hang upon the clods till they set it loose with blood and with urine, to which alone it yields.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” Eng. trans., New York, 1821, book 4, c. 7.)

The people of the Island of Mota, or Banks Island, “have a kind of individual totem, called tamaniu. It is some object, generally an animal, as a lizard or snake, but sometimes a stone, with which the person imagines that his life is bound up; if it dies or is broken or lost, he will die. Fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be found by drinking an infusion of certain kinds of herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 56.)

Compare the preceding paragraph with the practice, elsewhere noted, of determining whether or not a woman is pregnant by pouring some of her urine upon bran and allowing it to ferment and then watching the appearance of animal life. Also, the method of determining whether or not a man was stricken with leprosy.

To determine whether a woman be pregnant of a boy or a girl, make two small holes in the ground; in one, put wheat; in the other, barley; let her urinate on both; if the wheat sprout first, she will have a boy; if the barley, a girl. To determine whether a man had been attacked by leprosy (elephantiasis), the ashes of burnt lead (plumbi usti cineres) were thrown into his urine; if they fell to the bottom, he was well; if they floated on top, he was in danger.

To tell whether a man had been bewitched, “Coque in olla nova, ad ignem, urinam hominis quæ si ebullierit, liber erit a veneficio.”—(Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” pp. 61, 62.)

To determine whether a sick man was to die during the current month, some of his urine was shaken up in a glass vessel until it foamed; then the observer took some of his own earwax (cerumen) and placed it in this foam; if it separated, the man was to recover; if not, not.—(Idem, p. 62.)

“It is said that King Louis Philippe before mounting on horseback never failed to urinate against the left hind leg of his horse, according to an old tradition in cavalry that such a proceeding had the effect of strengthening the leg of the beast and rendering the animal more apt to sustain the effort made by the rider when jumping upon the saddle. I tell you the fact as I heard it reported by one of the king’s sons, Prince of Joinville, forty-five years ago when I was sailing in a frigate—‘La Belle Poule’—under his command.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy.)

The people of Lake Ubidjwi, near Lake Tanganyika, are thus described: “Both sexes of all classes carry little carved images round their necks or tied to the upper part of their arms as a charm against evil spirits. They are usually hollow, and filled with filth by the medicine-men.”—(“Across Africa,” Cameron, London, 1877, vol. i. p. 336.)

In the incantations made by the medicine-men to avert disaster from fire and preserve his expedition, Cameron notes, among other features, “a ball made of shreds of bark, mud, and filth.” (Idem, vol. ii. p. 118.) The term “filth,” as here employed, can have but one meaning.

“Poor Robin, in his Almanac for 1695 ... ridicules the following indelicate fooleries then in use, which must surely have been either of Dutch or Flemish extraction. They who when they make water go streaking the walls with their urine, as if they were planning some antic figures or making some curious delineations, or shall piss in the dust, making I know not what scattering angles and circles, or some chink in a wall, or a little hole in the ground, to be brought in, after two or three admonitions, as incurable fools.” (Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 175, article “Nose and Mouth Omens.”) This was possibly a survival from some old method of divining.

Cameron, describing the dance of a medicine-man in the village of Kwinhata, near the head of the Congo, and the humble deference shown to these Mganga by the women, says of one of the women: “She soon went away quite happy, the chief Mganga having honored her by spitting in her face and giving her a ball of beastliness as a charm. This she hastened to place in safety in her hut.”—(“Across Africa,” vol. ii. p. 82.)

An article in “Table Talk,” copied in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., of Dec. 17, 1888, entitled “Christmas under the Polar Star,” says that “in Southern Lapland, should the householder neglect to provide an ample store of fuel for the season’s needs, in popular belief, the disgusted Yule-swains or Christmas goblins would so befoul the wood-pile that there would be no getting at its contents.”

Frommann devotes a long article to a refutation of the popular idea of his day that from the urine or seed of a man innocently hanged for theft, could be generated “homunculi.” “Anile istud placitum, ex urina vel semine hominis innocenter ad suspendium furti crimine damnati homunculum generari.”—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 672.)

“Butler’s description in his ‘Hudibras’ of ‘a cunning man or fortune-teller,’ is fraught with a great deal of his usual pleasantry,—

“‘To him, with questions and with urine,
They for discovery flock, or curing.’”

—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 62, article “Sorcerer.”)

“There were Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of water, it is not certain which. They were thought to bring the rain or water out of their bellies.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 22.)

The bed-chamber of Munza, King of the Mombottoes, was “painted with many geometrical designs ... the white from dog’s dung (album Græcum).”—(“Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, London, 1878, vol. ii. p. 36.)

It is quite safe to assert that these “geometrical designs” were “magical.”

“Witches are supposed to acquire influence over any one by becoming possessed of anything belonging to the intended victim,—such as a hair, a piece of wearing apparel, or a pin. The influence acquired by the witch is greater if such an article be voluntarily or unconsciously handed to her by the person asked for it.... A witch can be disabled by securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and placing it against a tree as a target into which a silver bullet is to be fired from a gun.... When the patient reaches the age of adolescence, the alleged relief (from incontinence of urine) is obtained by urinating into a newly-made grave; the corpse must be of the opposite sex to that of the experimenter.”—(“Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Hoffman, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” January-March, 1889, pp. 28-32.)

Black alludes to the same ideas. See his “Folk-Medicine,” p. 16.

To frustrate the effects of witchcraft, Dr. Rosinus Lentilius recommended that the patient take a quantity of his own ordure, the size of a filbert, and drink it in oil. (See “Ephem. Medic.,” Leipsig, 1694, p. 170.) According to Paullini, the antidotes were to take human ordure both internally and externally, and human urine externally. Schurig, for the same purpose, recommended the human urine and ordure, but both to be taken internally, mixed with hyoscyamus.—(“Chylologia,” pp. 765, 766.)

In France witches were transformed into animals, and vice versa, “by washing their hands in a certain water which they kept in a pot.” Reference is also made to “a basin of anything but holy water with which the initiated were sprinkled.”—(“Sorcery and Magic,” Thomas Wright, London, 1851, vol. i. pp. 310, 311, 328, 329.)

Reginald Scot tells the story of “a mass-priest” who was tormented by an incubus; after all other remedies had failed, he was advised by “a cunning witch ... that the next morning, about the dawning of the day, I should pisse, and immediately should cover the pisse-pot, or stop it with my right nether-stock.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 65.)

The Thlinkeet of the northwest coast of America believe that a drowned man can be restored to life by cutting his skin and applying a medicine made of certain roots infused in the urine of a child, which has been kept for three moons. Drowned men, according to their medicine-men, are turned into otters.—(See Franz Boas, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” vol. i. p. 218.)

“It was a supposed remedy against witchcraft to put some of the bewitched person’s water, with a quantity of pins, needles, and nails, into a bottle, cork them up, and set them before the fire, in order to confine the spirit; but this sometimes did not prove sufficient, as it would often force the cork out with a loud noise, like that of a pistol, and cast the contents to a considerable height.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 13, article “Sorcerers.”)

Where the limbs of a man had been bewitched, he should bathe them with his own urine; some recommended an addition of garlic or assafœtida.—(Frommann, “Tract. de Fascinat.,” pp. 961, 962.)

“Jorden, in his curious treatise, ‘Of the Suffocation of the Mother,’ 1603, p. 24, says: ‘Another policie Marcellus Donatus tells us of, which a physitian used toward the Countesse of Mantua, who, being in that disease which we call melancholia hypochondriaca, did verily believe that she was bewitched, and was cured by conveying of nayles, needles, feathers, and such like things, into her close-stool when she took physicke, making her believe that they came out of her bodie.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 13, article “Sorcerers.”)

Schurig prescribed hen and dove dung for the cure of the bewitched.—(“Chylologia,” p. 817.)

Beckherius highly extolled human ordure for the same purpose.—(“Med. Microcosmus,” p. 113.)

“The catamenial blood of women was looked upon as efficacious in chasing away demons.”—(Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 154, quoting Sinistrari.)

In Scotland, “they put a small quantity of salt into the first milk of a cow, after calving, that is given to any person to drink. This is done with a view to prevent skaith (harm), if it should happen that the person is not canny.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 165, art. “Salt-Falling.” Compare the foregoing with what Sir Samuel Baker tells us about African superstitions on the same subject.)

“On line 160, Reinerstein’s and Retz’s edition of Lucian’s ‘Dea Syra,’ 4vo, vol. iii. p. 654, you will find human dung mentioned as a medicine or charm, and urine some lines lower.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11, 1888.)

One of the most curious features about Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass’ translation, London, 1882), is the absence of any mention of the use of human or animal ordure or urine in any manner, either medicinally or religiously, or to baffle witchcraft. He may have issued a supplement, in which all this may have been corrected; but if he did not, then his work is most singularly defective.

Mr. Sylvester Baxter states that in a recent conversation with Mr. Frank H. Cushing, near Tempe, Arizona, he learned that in Mr. Cushing’s youth, people in Central and Western New York were still using charms against witchcraft, and that Mr. Cushing was personally acquainted with a family which had prepared a decoction, one of whose ingredients was human urine; this as a preventive of witchcraft. The locality referred to was about eighteen miles from Rochester, N. Y.

“Spitting into recently voided urine prevents one from getting ‘warrle’ on his eyes.” (Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.) This remedy goes back to Pliny.

“To unbewitch the bewitched, you must spit in the pot where you have made water.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 263, art. “Saliva,” quoting from Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie.”)

“Several fetid and stinking matters, such as old urine, are excellent means for keeping away all kinds of evil-intentioned spirits and ghosts.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Edinburgh, 1875, pp. 50, 452.)

“The Manxmen still place a vessel full of water outside their doors at night, to enable the fairies (who, they say, were the first inhabitants of their island,) to wash themselves, and prevent them from doing harm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 494, art. “Fairy Mythology.”)

It is certainly singular to find here a trace of the custom noted as existing among the Laplanders and the people of Siberia, who placed tubs of urine for the same purpose, urine being used in ordinary ablutions.

In England, there was a superstition that the woman who made water upon nettles would be “peevish for a whole day.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 359, art. “Divination by Flowers.”)

Fosbroke (“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii.) says that this proverb is ancient. “Nettles were in ancient times regarded as an aphrodisiac.”

Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 795) repeats the story to the effect that the Laplanders calked the inner seams of their ships with the ordure of virgins to increase their speed. The Laplanders, when any of their reindeer die of disease, abandon their camp, being careful “to burn all the excrement of the animal before they depart.”—(Leem’s “Account of Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 484. See previous citations from Sauer in regard to the Yakuts of Siberia.)

The story was current in California, about twenty years since, that the immigrants to that state from Missouri and Arkansas, in the gold-mining days, had the custom of depositing their evacuations, before starting on the march of the day, in the camp-fires of the preceding night. Nothing was learned of the meaning, if any, of the custom. Nursing women sprinkled a few drops of their milk on the burning coals in the fireplace, to ensure an abundant flow.—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.)

The author has been fortunate in obtaining a copy of the address of Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., upon the “Medical Mythology of Ireland.”

This interesting and extremely valuable contribution, which can be found in the “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society for 1887,” leaves no uncertainty in regard to the mystic powers ascribed by the Celtic peasantry to both urine and ordure. Urine and chicken-dung are shown to be potent in frustrating the mischief of fairies; “fire, iron, and dung” are spoken of as the “three great safeguards against the influence of fairies and the infernal spirits.” Dung is carried about the person, as part of the contents of amulets; and children suffering from convulsions are, as a last resort, bathed from head to foot in urine, to rescue them from the clutches of their fairy persecutors. See also p. 377, in regard to the “dwarves,” who, in England, seem to be the same as fairies.

Du Chaillu, in his “Land of the Midnight Sun,” makes no reference to the use, in any manner, by the inhabitants of that region, of excrementitious materials for any purposes. His stay was of such an extremely short duration, that his observations cannot be compared with those made by Leems and others, from whom information has already been extracted.

A curious survival, in France, of the Parsi custom of the “Nirang” is demonstrated in the May number of “Mélusine,” Paris, 1888, entitled “Le Nirang des Parsis, en Basse Bretagne.”

“J’ai passé mon enfance, jusqu’à l’âge de quatorze ans, dans un vieux manoir breton, du nom de Keramborgne, dans la commune de Plouarte, arrondissement de Lannion. Le manoir paternel était bien connu des malheureux et des mendiants errants ... qui venaient demander le vivre et le couvert pour la nuit.... Parmi les pauvres errants qui étaient les hôtes les plus assidus de Keramborgne ... se trouvait une vieille femme nommée Gillette Kerlohiou, qui connaissait toutes les nouvelles du pays ... et, de plus, avait la réputation d’être quelque peu sorcière, et de guérir certaines maladies par des oraisons et des herbes dont elle seule avait le secret.... Un matin que Gillette avait passé la nuit à l’étable ... elle marmottait des prières.... Une vache s’étant mise à uriner, la vieille mendiante se précipita vers elle, reçut de l’urine dans le creux de sa main et s’en frotta la figure à plusieurs reprises.... Ce que voyant le vacher, il la traita de salope et de vieille folle. Mais Gillette lui dit, sans s’émouvoir: ‘Rien n’est meilleur, mon fils, que de se laver la figure, le matin, en se levant, avec de l’urine de la vache, et même avec sa propre urine si l’on ne peut se procurer de celle de vache. Quand vous avez fait cette ablution, le matin, vous êtes, pour toute la journée, à l’abri des embûches et des méchancetés du diable, car vous devenez invisible pour lui.’”

The writer of the above, M. F.-M. Luzel, learned from the other peasants and beggars standing about that the belief expressed by the old woman was fully concurred in by her comrades.

“Nos paysannes de France se lavaient les mains dans leur urine ou dans celle de leurs maris, ou de leurs enfants, pour détourner les maléfices ou en empêcher l’effet.”—(Réclus, “Les Primitifs,” p. 98.)

Father Le Jeune must have been on the track of something corresponding to an ur-orgy among the Hurons when he learned that the devil imposed upon the sick, in dreams, the duty of wallowing in ordure if they hoped for restoration to health.[81]

This penitential wallowing was retained by nations of a high order of advancement, the ordure of primitive times being generally superseded by clay and other less filthy matter.

“Let it suffice to display the points where Greek found itself in harmony with Australian and American and African practice.... 3. The habit of daubing persons about to be initiated with clay, ... or anything else that is sordid, and of washing this off, apparently by way of showing that old guilt is removed, and a new life entered upon.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 282.)

“Plutarch, in his essay on superstition, represents the guilty man who would be purified actually rolling in clay.”—(Idem, p. 286.)

The following is described as the Abyssinian method of exorcising a woman: The exorcist “lays an amulet on the patient’s heaving bosom, makes her smell of some vile compound, and the moment her madness is somewhat abated begins a dialogue with the Bouda (demon), who answers in a woman’s voice. The devil is invited to come out in the name of all the saints; but a threat to treat him with some red-hot coals is usually more potent, and after he has promised to obey, he seeks to delay his exit by asking for something to eat. _Filth and dirt_ are mixed and hidden under a bush, when the woman crawls to the sickening repast and gulps it down with avidity.”—(From an article entitled “Abyssinian Women,” in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., October 17, 1885.)

“A Pretty Charme or Conclusion for one Possessed.... The possessed body must go upon his or her knees to church, ... and so must creep without going out of the way, being the common highway, in that sort how foul and dirty soever the same may be, or whatsoever lie in the way, not shunning anything whatsoever, untill he come to the church, where he must heare masse devoutly.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 178.)

By the Irish peasantry urine was sprinkled upon sick children.[82]

American boys urinate upon their legs to prevent cramp while swimming.

In Stirling, Scotland, “a certain quantity of cow-dung is forced into the mouth of a calf immediately after it is calved, or at least before it has received any meat; owing to this, the vulgar believe that witches and fairies can have no power ever after to injure the calf.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 257, article “Rural Charms.”)

Frommann gives a preparation of twenty-five ingredients for freeing infants from witchcraft (fascinatio); but neither human nor animal egestæ are mentioned.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 449, 450.)

Cox, in his history of Ireland, gives a description of the trial of Lady Alice Kettle, of Ossory, charged with being a witch, and with sacrificing to a familiar spirit at night, at cross-roads, nine red cocks and nine peacock’s eyes, and with sweeping the streets of Kilkenny, “raking all the filth towards the doors of her son, William Outlaw, murmuring and muttering secretly with herself these words:—

“‘To the House of William, my son,
Hie all the Wealth of Kilkenny town.’”

—(“History of Ireland,” London, 1639, vol. i. p. 102. The date of the above was about 1325.)

This story is quoted by Vallencey, “Collect. de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 369, and by Henry C. Lea, “History of the Inquisition,” New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 457; it is originally to be found in Camden.

In the Island of Guernsey, within the present generation, “John Lane, of Anneville, Lane Parish,” has been tried on the charge of “having practised necromancy,” and “induced many persons in the country parishes to believe that they were bewitched,” and that he could drive away the devil and other bad spirits “by boiling herbs to produce a certain perfume not at all grateful to the olfactory nerves of demons, ... and the sprinkling of celestial water.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 66, article “Sorcerers.”)

In the valuable compilation of superstitious practices interdicted by Roman Catholic councils Thiers includes the persons who bathe their hands with urine in the morning to avert witchcraft or nullify its effect. He says, too, that Saint Lucy was reputed to be a witch, for which reason the Roman Judge, Paschasius, at her trial sprinkled her with urine.[83]

See the extract just quoted from “Mélusine.”

The Romans had a feast to the mother of all the gods, Berecinthia, in which the matrons took their idol and sprinkled it with their urine.[84]

Berecinthia was one of the names under which Cybele or Rhea, the primal earth goddess, was worshipped by the Romans and by many nations in the East. Her priests, the Galli, emasculated themselves in orgies whose frenzy was of the same general type as the Omophagi of the Greeks, previously described.

The emasculation of the priests of Cybele was performed with a piece of Samian pottery.—(See footnote to Rev. Lewis Evans’ translation of the Satires of Lucilius, lib. vii., edition of New York, 1860.)

The priests of Cybele were by some supposed to have received the name of Galli from the River Gallus, “near which these priests inflicted upon themselves the punishment we are speaking of.... The effect of the water of that river was to throw them into fits of enthusiasm,—‘qui bibit, inde furit,’ as Ovid has it.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, London, 1740, vol. ii. p. 563.)

“Here they set down their litters at night and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations.”—(Juvenal, Sixth Satire, describing the rites of Bona Dea, translated by Rev. Lewis Evans, M.A., Wadhams College, Oxford, New York, 1860.)

Father Baudin speaks of the secret society called the “Ogbuni:” “From what I have been able to learn, this society is simply an institution similar to the secret societies of the pagan people of ancient times, where the members were initiated into the infamous mysteries of the great goddess.” (Negroes of Guinea.)—(“Fetichism and Fetich-worshippers,” Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 64.)

The Eskimo living near Point Barrow have a yearly ceremony for driving out an evil spirit which they call Tuna. Among the ceremonies incident to the occasion is this: One of the performers “brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the fire.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 164, quoting “Report of the International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow,” Washington, 1885, p. 42.)

It is strange to encounter in races so diverse apparently as the Greeks and the Hottentots the same rites of emasculation and urine sprinkling.

The sect of the “Skoptsi” or the “Eunuchs,” in Russia, “base their peculiar tenets on Christ’s saying, ‘There are some eunuchs which were born so from their mother’s womb, and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men, and there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it let him receive it’ (Matt. xix. 12).”—(Heard, “Russian Creed and Russian Dissent,” p. 265.)

“This heresy, which is the most modern of all, probably owes its origin to influences from the East slowly filtering through the lower ranks of the population.”—(Idem, p. 267.)

Reginald Scot tells the story of a quack who preyed upon the fears of patients suffering from tympanitis, telling them they had vipers in their bellies, which vipers he would try to smuggle into the patient’s “ordure or excrement, after his purgations.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 198.)

Schurig relates that the countrywomen in Germany, if after milking their cows for a long time they were unable to bring the proper quantity of butter, suspected that they were under the spell of a witch; to undo this spell it was only necessary to mix some fresh milk with human ordure and throw the mixture down the privy; or human ordure was applied to the teats of the cows, much as Sir Samuel Baker has shown the Africans will do in our day. “Quippe quæ, siquando in conficiendo butyro, per tempus frustra laborarunt, suspicione veneficii cujusdam seductæ lac vaccinum recens emulsum stercori humano commixtum cloacæ simul infundunt, atque sic illico a Veneficio liberantur.... Si ferrum ignitum una stercore humano lacte vaccino consperso inseras, veneficæ pustulas inducet.... Contra magicam lactis vaccarum ablationem, ipsarum ubera stercore humano aliquamdiu inungi solent.” And he ends his paragraph by quoting the dictum of Johannis Michaelis, “Sine omni fascinatione et superstitione proprio stercore efficere possit.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” pp. 788, 789, par. 62.)

Compare with the information derived from Paullini.

The above practice seems to have been transplanted to Pennsylvania, with its more objectionable features omitted.

“The housewife sometimes finds difficulty in butter-making, the spell being believed to be the work of a witch.... The remedy was to plunge a red-hot poker into the contents of the churn, when the spell was broken, and the butter immediately began to form.”—(“Folk-Lore of the Penn’a Germans.”)—(Hoffman, in “Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore,” 1889.)

From all this it would appear plausible to assume that the “ripening of cheese” in human urine was originally induced by a desire to avert the evils of witchcraft. Refer also to the notes from Sir Samuel Baker.

In “South Mountain Magic,” Mrs. M. V. Dahlgren, Boston, Mass., 1882, may be found references to the bewitching of milk and cream, and to the remedy employed of putting in hot stones or “a wedge of hot iron” (pp. 165-167). In this partial “survival,” we see the disappearance of the more objectionable features of the practices of the old country. Mrs. Dahlgren’s book treats of the superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans living close to the Maryland border.

“The urine casters, a set of quacks almost within our own recollection, had a peculiar jargon, which it is not necessary to attend to.”—(“Medical Dictionary,” Bartholomew Parr, M. D., Philadelphia, Penn’a, 1819, art. “Urine.”)

When cattle had been killed by witchcraft, Reginald Scot gave a long formula for detecting the culprit; among other things, the farmer was directed to “traile the bowels of the beast unto your house ... into the kitchen, and there make a fire, and set ouer the same a grediron, and thereupon lay the inwards or bowels, and as they wax hot, so shall the witches’ entrails be molested with extreme heat and pain.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 198. It should be observed that there are no directions about “cleaning” the bowels of the animal.)

Among the modes of detecting witches in England, were “by shaving off every hair of the witch’s body. They were also detected by putting hair, parings of the nails, and urine of any person bewitched into a stone bottle, and hanging it up in the chimney.”—(Cotta, in his “Short Discovery of the Unobserved Dangers,” p. 54, speaks of “the burning of the dung or urine of such as are bewitched.”) In “A Pleasant Grove of New Fancies,” by H. R. 8vo, London, 1857, p. 76, we have:—

“A charm to bring in the witch,
To house the hag you must do this:
Commix with meal, a little p—
Of him bewitched; then forthwith make
A little wafer or a cake;
And this rarely baked, will bring
The old hag in; no surer thing.”

Among other methods given for baffling witches and making their evil deeds turn upon themselves, we find: “taking some of the thatch from over the door; or a tyle, if the house be tyled ... sprinkle it over with the patient’s water.... Put salt into the patient’s water and dash it upon the red hot tyle.” Another: heat a horse-shoe red hot and “quench him in the patient’s urine.... Having the patient’s urine, set it over the fire.... Put into it three horse-nails and a little salt.... Or, heat a horse-shoe red hot” and “quench him several times in the urine.” Still another: “stop the urine of the patient close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a little white salt, keeping the urine always warm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. pp. 170 _et seq._, art. “Sorcery and Witchcraft.”)

“To ascertain if one be bewitched, take his urine and boil it in a new, unused pot; if it foam up, he is not bewitched; if not, it is uncertain. Or, take clean ashes, put them in a new pot, let the patient urinate thereon. Tie up the pot, and let it stand in the sun; then break the ashes apart; if the person be bewitched, hairs will be found therein.”—(Paullini, pp. 260, 261.)

“Neither can I belieue (I speak it with reuerence unto graue judgments) that ... the burning of the dung or vrine of such as are bewitched, or floating bodies aboue the water, or the like, are any trial of a witch.”—(“A Short Discouerie of the Unobserued Dangers of Seuerall sorts of Ignorant and Vnconsiderate Practisers of Physicke in England,” John Cotta, London, 1612, p. 54.)

Beckherius inclined to believe that human teeth, taken medicinally, would break down witchcraft: “Contra maleficia et veneficia prodesse scribit.”—(“Med. Microcosmus,” p. 265.)

“On New Year’s Day they (the Highlanders) burn juniper before their cattle, and on the first Monday in every quarter, sprinkle them with urine.”—(“Pennant’s Tour in Scotland,” in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 90.)

“Les rustres slaves secouaient sur leur bétail des herbes de la Saint Jean, bouillies dans de l’urine pour le préserver des mauvais sorts.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 98.)

We should not forget that from the earliest recorded times the cedar and juniper have been devoted to sacred offices. “The god of the cedar, to which tree was ascribed a peculiar power to avert fatal influences and sorcery.” (This, among the Accadians, the earliest known inhabitants of Mesopotamia.)—(See “Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 178.)

From a very early date, urine seems to have been symbolized or superseded by holy water, salt and water, “celestial water,” “fore-spoken water,” juniper water, or wine or water, according to circumstances. “For lung disorders in cattle ... take fennel and hassock, etc.... make five crosses of hassuck-grass, set them on four sides of the cattle, and one in the middle; sing about the cattle Benedicam, etc.... Sprinkle holy water upon them, burn about them incense.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. p. 57; the same remedy for diseased sheep, idem, p. 57.)

“If a horse or other beast be shot (elf-shot) take seed of dock and Scotch wax, let a mass priest sing twelve masses over them, and put holy water on the horse.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 47; again, vol. iii. p. 157.)

“When a contagious disease enters among cattle, the fire is extinguished in some villages round; then they force fire with a wheel, or by rubbing a piece of dry wood upon another, and therewith burn juniper in the stalls of the cattle that the smoke may purify the air about them; they likewise boil juniper in water which they sprinkle upon the cattle.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 286, art. “Physical Charms,” quoting Shaw’s “History of the Province of Moray in Scotland.” Brand thinks that “this is, no doubt, a Druid custom.”)

Scot, in his “Discoverie” (p. 157), says: “Men are preserved from witchcraft by sprinkling of holy water,” etc. (Idem, vol. i. p. 19, art. “Sorcery.”) “For the devils are observed to have delicate nostrils, abominating and flying some kind of stinks; witness the flight of the evil spirit into the remote parts of Egypt, driven by the smell of the fish’s liver, burnt by Tobit.” Conjurors are reported as always careful to “first exorcise the wine and water which they sprinkle on their circle.”—(Idem, vol. iii. pp. 55, 57, art. “Sorcery.”)

The foul condition of the atmosphere of sleeping-apartments was supposed to be rectified by the burning of juniper, sometimes of rosemary. “He doth sacrifice two pence in juniper to her every morning.” (“Every Man out of his Humor,” Ben Jonson) “Then put fresh water into both the bough-pots, and burn a little juniper in the hall chimney. Like a beast, as I was, I pissed out the fire last night.” (“Mayor of Tumborough,” Beaumont and Fletcher.) “Burn a little juniper in my murrin; the maid made it in her chamber-pot.”—(“Cupid’s Rev.” Beaumont and Fletcher, iv. 3; contributed by Dr. Fletcher.)

The diuretic effects of juniper berries are well known; we may conjecture that the “water of juniper” superseded another fluid induced by the use of the berries.

The “fore-spoken water” with which sick cattle are sprinkled in the Orkneys, is still to be noted in places in the Highlands.—(See Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 274, art. “Physical Charms.”)

The following spell is from Herrick’s “Hesperides,” p. 304:—

“Holy water come and bring;
Cast in salt for seasoning;
Set the brush for sprinkling.”

(Idem, vol. iii. p. 58, art. “Sorcerer.”)

“The charmer muttered some words over water, in imitation of Catholic priests consecrating holy water.”—(“Phil. of Magic,” Salverte, p. 52. Shetland Islands.)

According to Dalyell, this “fore-spoken water” was made of water, salt, and the saliva of the conjurer.—(See “Superstitions of Scotland,” p. 98.)

“For information of a cherished relative and his fate, in the other world, they apply to the fetich-priest, who takes a little child and bathes his face with lustral-water.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 65.)

The “lustral water” of the foregoing paragraph, is made of “snails and vegetable butter.”—(Idem, p. 88.)

Reginald Scot gives a “cure” for one “possessed,” one point of which is that the victim “must mingle holy water with his meate and his drink, and holy salt also must be a portion of the mixture.” (“Discoverie,” p. 178.) Witches were required to drink holy water at their trials.—(Idem, p. 21.)

Salt was called “divine” by the ancients.—(See “Morals,” Plutarch, Goodwin’s English edit., Boston, 1870, vol. iii. p. 338.)

“Both Greeks and Romans mixed salt with their sacrificial cakes; in their lustrations, also, they made use of salt and water, which gave rise, in after times, to the superstition of holy water.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 161, art. “Salt Falling.”)

The Scottish use of salt and water, as already noted, is described by Black (“Folk Medicine,” p. 23); and by Napier (“Folk-Lore,” pp. 36, 37.)

Salt is put in the cradle of a new-born babe in Holland.—(“Times,” New York, Nov. 10, 1889.) “No one will go out on any material affairs without putting some salt in their pockets; much less remove from one house to another, marry, put out a child, or take one to nurse, without salt being interchanged.” (Dalyell, “Superst. of Scotland,” p. 96.) Salt is not used by the Eastern Inuit: “Le sel leur répugne, peut-être parceque l’atmosphère et les poissons crus en sont déjà saturés.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 33.)

Having shown that witches were exorcised in France, England, Scotland, etc., by sprinkling with urine, we have reason to claim the following treatment to be at least cousin-german to our subject. In the west of Scotland, a peasant suffering from a mysterious and obstinate disease, was reputed to be under the influence of the “evil eye.” The following remedy was then resorted to: “An old sixpence is borrowed from some neighbor, without telling the object to which it is to be applied; as much salt as can be lifted upon the sixpence is put into a tablespoonful of water and melted; the sixpence is then put into the solution, and the soles of the feet and palms of the hands of the patient are moistened three times with the salt water; it is then tasted three times, and the patient ‘scored aboun the breath,’ that is, by the operator dipping the fore finger into the salt water and drawing it along the brow. When this is done, the contents of the spoon are thrown behind and right over the fire, the throwers at the same time saying: ‘Lord preserve us from all scathe.’”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. iii. p. 47, art. “Fascination of Witches.”)

Wright calls attention to the fact that at the meetings of witches, “at times, every article of luxury was placed before them, and they feasted in the most sumptuous manner. Often, however, the meats served on the table were nothing but toads and rats, and other articles of a revolting nature. In general they had no salt, and but seldom bread.” After these feasts came “wild and uproarious dancing and revelry.... Their backs, instead of their faces, were turned inwards.... It may be observed, as a curious circumstance, that the modern waltz is first traced among the meetings of the witches and their imps.... The songs were generally obscene or vulgar, or ridiculous.”—(“Sorcery and Magic,” Thomas Wright, London, 1851, pp. 310, 311, 328, 329.)

Reginald Scot also states that the waltz was derived from the dance of the witches.—(See “Discoverie,” p. 36.)

The presents which the devil gave to witches all turned into filth the next morning.—(See Grimm, “Teut. Mythol.,” vol. iii. p. 1070.)

For a specimen of the filthy in literature, read the dream of Zador of Vera Cruz, who wished to sell his soul to the devil, in “El Bachiller de Salamanca,” Le Sage, Paris, 1847, part iv. cap. 2, p. 129.

The best explanation of the above story—which represents Zador as making a compact with his satanic majesty whereby in exchange for Zador’s soul the devil discloses a gold mine in a graveyard, from which the poor dupe extracts enough for his present needs, and then marks the locality by an ingenious method, only to be awakened by his angry wife to the mortifying consciousness that he has defiled his own bed—is that it reflects the current opinion of the Spaniards of Le Sage’s era in regard to the transmutability of the gifts received from the evil one. See the story of the god “Kutka.”

“Popular tales, which most frequently arise from traditions ... are remnants of olden times, and illustrate them.... When a vicious or evil spirit is mentioned in any tale or popular tradition, I consider it always implies a reminiscence of some being who formerly, during the supremacy of a religion now rejected, was worshipped as a god. He is considered to benefit his worshippers, but to molest those who hold another belief. Mankind, when in a rude state, often attribute their own intolerance to their gods. Thus mankind creates his own god after his own image.”—(Sven Nilson, “The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,” edited by Sir John Lubbock, London, 1868, Preface, liii.)

Speculation would lead to no profitable result were we to endeavor by its aid—the only means now left us—to fathom the obscurity surrounding the rites and dances, and especially the foods of those witches’ gatherings.

Doctor Dupouy, in “Le Moyen Age Médical,” to which special attention is due, advances an opinion which seems to cover much of the ground in a logical manner. This in one word, amounts to the belief that the witches’ gatherings of Europe were not figments of the imagination, but really existed, and were the conventions of votaries of the cults stamped out of existence, and only traceable in the distorted and outlandish features which would most naturally commend themselves to an ignorant peasantry. “Among these sorcerers there were old panderers, who knew from personal experience all practices of debauchery, and who gave the name of ‘vigils’ to the saturnalia indulged in among villagers on certain nights,—gatherings composed of bawds and pimps, to which were invited numerous novices in libidinousness. These sorcerers and witches also knew the remedies that young girls must take when they wish to destroy the physiological results of their own imprudence, and what old men needed to restore their virility. They knew the medicinal qualities of plants, especially those that stupefied.”—(Translated by T. C. Minor, M.D., under title of “Medicine in the Middle Ages,” p. 40.)

The initiates in witchcraft may have been compelled to adopt loathsome foods as a test of the sincerity of their purposes, or they may have taken them to induce an intoxication such as that of the Zuñis of New Mexico and the wild tribes of Siberia. There is still another hypothesis to be considered before relinquishing this topic. The best food, we know, was always offered to the deities of the ruling sect, and the use of any of the appurtenants of the rites of the ruling religion in the ceremonial of a superseded cult was looked upon as the veriest sacrilege and blasphemy. For example, the use of holy water at the witches’ sabbath was considered a worse crime than that of being a witch. Therefore we may conclude that, as the votaries of the superseded religion did not dare to employ the best, they necessarily had to fall back upon inferior material out of which to construct their oblations; and as they assembled generally in mountain recesses, in caves, etc., where nothing better could be had, they offered themselves in sacrifice,—that is, they recurred to the old practices of human sacrifice, if indeed they had ever abandoned them, and gave the pledges of their own hair, saliva, urine, and egestæ.

“Pure prayer ascends to Him that High doth sit,
Down falls the filth for fiends of Hell more fit.”

Such was the answer made to the father of lies by a venerable monk,—

“A godly father sitting on a draught,
To do as need and nature hath us taught.”

The devil had reproached him for saying his prayers at such a moment.—(Harington, “Ajax,” pp. 33, 34.)

Mooney relates an instance of the abduction of an Irishwoman by fairies. She managed to impart to her husband the knowledge of the means by which her rescue could be accomplished: “He must be ready with some urine and some chicken-dung, which he must throw upon her, and then seize her.... Soon he heard the fairies approaching, and when the noise came in front of him he threw the dung and urine in the direction of the sound, and saw his wife fall from her horse.” (“The Medical Mythology of Ireland,” James Mooney, Amer. Phil. Society, 1887.) The Irish peasantry firmly believe in the power of the fairies to carry off their children; to effect a restoration, “a wise woman” is summoned, whose method is to “heat the shovel in the fireplace, place the changeling upon it, and put it out upon the dung-hill.” (Idem.) “Fire, iron, and dung, the three great safeguards against the influence of fairies and the infernal spirits.”—(Idem.)

The peasantry of Ireland carry about the person “medicine bags” very much like those in use among the North American Indians. Among the contents of these bags “are usually found tobacco, garlic, salt, chicken-dung, lus-crea, and some dust from the roadside.” (Idem.) This is “carried as a protection against the fairies; ... also as a protection against the evil eye; and something of the same nature is sewed into the clothing of the bride when her friends are preparing her for the marriage ceremony.”—(Idem.)

“A charm to be said each morning by a witch fasting, or at least before she goes abroad: ‘The fire bite, the fire bite; hog’s turd over it, hog’s turd over it, hog’s turd over it! The Father with thee; the Son with thee; the Holy Ghost between us both to be!’ This last refrain three times; then spit over one shoulder, and then over the other, and then three times right forward.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 177.)

“Item. They hang ... garlicke in the roof of the house for to keep away witches and spirits, ... and so they do alicium likewise.”—(Idem, p. 192.)

Garlic was put in the cradle of a new-born babe in Holland.—(“Times,” New York, Nov. 10, 1889.)

Garlic could not be eaten by the monks or nuns of Thibet (Bhikshuni); to eat it was considered a sin. “140. Si une Bhikshuni mange de l’ail,” etc. But in a footnote it is stated that it might be eaten when it was the only remedy for some disease or infirmity; but even then the patient should not enter a dormitory, a latrine, could not expound the law, mingle with brahmins, enter a park, a market, or a temple until he had undergone a three days’ purification, been bathed and fumigated.—(See “Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1885, Société Asiatique.)

XLIV.

A FEW REMARKS UPON TEMPLE OR SACRED PROSTITUTION, AND UPON THE HORNS OF CUCKOLDS.

“The bawds of Amsterdam believed (in 1637) that horse’s dung dropped before the house and put fresh behind the door ... would bring good luck to their houses.”—(“Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam,” p. 56, quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 18, article “Sorcery.”)