Chapter XI: The External Soul in Folk-Custom (1)

§ 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things.

(M122) Thus the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to shew that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs.

(M123) We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary peril. Thus among the people of Minahassa in Celebes, when a family moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger.(411) In Southern Celebes, when a woman is brought to bed, the messenger who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him something made of iron, such as a chopping-knife, which he delivers to the doctor. The doctor must keep the thing in his house till the confinement is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The chopping-knife, or whatever it is, represents the woman’s soul, which at this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of the object; for were it lost, the woman’s soul would assuredly, they think, be lost with it.(412) But in Celebes the convenience of occasionally depositing the soul in some external object is apparently not limited to human beings. The Alfoors, or Toradjas, who inhabit the central district of that island, and among whose industries the working of iron occupies a foremost place, attribute to the metal a soul which would be apt to desert its body under the blows of the hammer, if some means were not found to detain it. Accordingly in every smithy of Poso—for that is the name of the country of these people—you may see hanging up a bundle of wooden instruments, such as chopping-knives, swords, spear-heads, and so forth. This bundle goes by the name of _lamoa_, which is the general word for “gods,” and in it the soul of the iron that is being wrought in the smithy is, according to one account, supposed to reside. “If we did not hang the _lamoa_ over the anvil,” they say, “the iron would flow away and be unworkable,” on account of the absence of the soul.(413) However, according to another interpretation these wooden models are substitutes offered to the gods in room of the iron, whose soul the covetous deities might otherwise abstract for their own use, thus making the metal unmalleable.(414)

(M124) Among the Dyaks of Pinoeh, a district of South-Eastern Borneo, when a child is born, a medicine-man is sent for, who conjures the soul of the infant into half a coco-nut, which he thereupon covers with a cloth and places on a square platter or charger suspended by cords from the roof. This ceremony he repeats at every new moon for a year.(415) The intention of the ceremony is not explained by the writer who describes it, but we may conjecture that it is to place the soul of the child in a safer place than its own frail little body. This conjecture is confirmed by the reason assigned for a similar custom observed elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago. In the Kei Islands, when there is a newly-born child in a house, an empty coco-nut, split and spliced together again, may sometimes be seen hanging beside a rough wooden image of an ancestor. The soul of the infant is believed to be temporarily deposited in the coco-nut in order that it may be safe from the attacks of evil spirits; but when the child grows bigger and stronger, the soul will take up its permanent abode in its own body. Similarly among the Esquimaux of Alaska, when a child is sick, the medicine-man will sometimes extract its soul from its body and place it for safe-keeping in an amulet, which for further security he deposits in his own medicine-bag. (416) It seems probable that many amulets have been similarly regarded as soul-boxes, that is, as safes in which the souls of the owners are kept for greater security.(417) An old Mang’anje woman in the West Shire district of British Central Africa used to wear round her neck an ivory ornament, hollow, and about three inches long, which she called her life or soul (_moyo wanga_). Naturally, she would not part with it; a planter tried to buy it of her, but in vain.(418) When Mr. James Macdonald was one day sitting in the house of a Hlubi chief, awaiting the appearance of that great man, who was busy decorating his person, a native pointed to a pair of magnificent ox-horns, and said, “Ntame has his soul in these horns.” The horns were those of an animal which had been sacrificed, and they were held sacred. A magician had fastened them to the roof to protect the house and its inmates from the thunder-bolt. “The idea,” adds Mr. Macdonald, “is in no way foreign to South African thought. A man’s soul there may dwell in the roof of his house, in a tree, by a spring of water, or on some mountain scaur.”(419) Among the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain there is a secret society which goes by the name of Ingniet or Ingiet. On his entrance into it every man receives a stone in the shape either of a human being or of an animal, and henceforth his soul is believed to be knit up in a manner with the stone. If it breaks, it is an evil omen for him; they say that the thunder has struck the stone and that he who owns it will soon die. If nevertheless the man survives the breaking of his soul-stone, they say that it was not a proper soul-stone and he gets a new one instead.(420) The emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer that the life of Simeon, prince of Bulgaria, was bound up with a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column were removed, Simeon would immediately die. The emperor took the hint and removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by enquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in Bulgaria.(421) The deified kings of ancient Egypt appear to have enjoyed the privilege of depositing their spiritual doubles or souls (_ka_) during their lifetime in a number of portrait statues, properly fourteen for each king, which stood in the chamber of adoration (_pa douaït_) of the temple and were revered as the equivalents or representatives of the monarchs themselves.(422) Among the Karens of Burma “the knife with which the navel string is cut is carefully preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some way connected with it, for, if lost or destroyed, it is said the child will not be long lived.”(423) Among the Shawnee Indians of North America it once happened that an eminent man was favoured with a special revelation by the Great Spirit. Wisely refusing to hide the sacred light of revelation under a bushel, he generously communicated a few sparks of the illumination to John Tanner, a white man who lived for many years as an Indian among the Indians. “Henceforth,” said the inspired sage, “the fire must never be suffered to go out in your lodge. Summer and winter, day and night, in the storm, or when it is calm, you must remember that the life in your body, and the fire in your lodge, are the same, and of the same date. If you suffer your fire to be extinguished, at that moment your life will be at its end.”(424)

(M125) Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man’s soul or strength is sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboyna used to think that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man, who was tried for murder, endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his hair.(425) In Ceram it is still believed that if young people have their hair cut they will be weakened and enervated thereby.(426)

(M126) Here in Europe it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of witches and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could make any impression on these miscreants so long as they kept their hair on. Hence in France it was customary to shave the whole bodies of persons charged with sorcery before handing them over to the torturer. Millaeus witnessed the torture of some persons at Toulouse, from whom no confession could be wrung until they were stripped and completely shaven, when they readily acknowledged the truth of the charge. A woman also, who apparently led a pious life, was put to the torture on suspicion of witchcraft, and bore her agonies with incredible constancy, until complete depilation drove her to admit her guilt. The noted inquisitor Sprenger contented himself with shaving the head of the suspected witch or wizard; but his more thorough-going colleague Cumanus shaved the whole bodies of forty-one women before committing them all to the flames. He had high authority for this rigorous scrutiny, since Satan himself, in a sermon preached from the pulpit of North Berwick church, comforted his many servants by assuring them that no harm could befall them “sa lang as their hair wes on, and sould newir latt ane teir fall fra thair ene.”(427) Similarly in Bastar, a province of India, “if a man is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is beaten by the crowd, his hair is shaved, the hair being supposed to constitute his power of mischief, his front teeth are knocked out, in order, it is said, to prevent him from muttering incantations.... Women suspected of sorcery have to undergo the same ordeal; if found guilty, the same punishment is awarded, and after being shaved, their hair is attached to a tree in some public place.”(428) So among the Bhils of India, when a woman was convicted of witchcraft and had been subjected to various forms of persuasion, such as hanging head downwards from a tree and having pepper put into her eyes, a lock of hair was cut from her head and buried in the ground, “that the last link between her and her former powers of mischief might be broken.”(429) In like manner among the Aztecs of Mexico, when wizards and witches “had done their evil deeds, and the time came to put an end to their detestable life, some one laid hold of them and cropped the hair on the crown of their heads, which took from them all their power of sorcery and enchantment, and then it was that by death they put an end to their odious existence.”(430)

§ 2. The External Soul in Plants.

(M127) Further it has been shewn that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person.(431) Similarly among the natives of the Pennefather River in Queensland, when a visiter has made himself very agreeable and taken his departure, an effigy of him about three or four feet long is cut on some soft tree, such as the _Canarium australasicum_, so as to face in the direction taken by the popular stranger. Afterwards from observing the state of the tree the natives infer the corresponding state of their absent friend, whose illness or death are apparently supposed to be portended by the fall of the leaves or of the tree.(432) In Uganda, when a new royal enclosure with its numerous houses was built for a new king, barkcloth trees used to be planted at the main entrance by priests of each principal deity and offerings were laid under each tree for its particular god. Thenceforth “the trees were carefully guarded and tended, because it was believed that as they grew and flourished, so the king’s life and power would increase.”(433) Among the M’Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will soon die.(434) In Sierra Leone also it is customary at the birth of a child to plant a shoot of a _malep_-tree, and they think that the tree will grow with the child and be its god. If a tree which has been thus planted withers away, the people consult a sorcerer on the subject.(435) Among the Wajagga of German East Africa, when a child is born, it is usual to plant a cultivated plant of some sort behind the house. The plant is thenceforth carefully tended, for they believe that were it to wither away the child would die. When the navel-string drops from the infant, it is buried under the plant. The species of birth-plant varies with the clan; members of one clan, for example, plant a particular sort of banana, members of another clan plant a sugar-cane, and so on.(436) Among the Swahili of East Africa, when a child is born, the afterbirth and navel-string are buried in the courtyard and a mark is made on the spot. Seven days afterwards, the hair of the child is shaved and deposited, along with the clippings of its nails, in the same place. Then over all these relics of the infant’s person a coco-nut is planted. As the tree grows up from the nut, the child likes to point it out to his playfellows and tell them, “This coco-nut palm is my navel.” In planting the coco-nut the parents say, “May God cause our child to grow up, that he or she may one day enjoy the coco-nut milk of the tree which we plant here.”(437) Though it is not expressly affirmed, we may perhaps assume that such a birth-tree is supposed to stand in a sympathetic relation with the life of the person. In the Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree.(438) The chief of Old Town in Calabar kept his soul in a sacred grove near a spring of water. When some Europeans, in frolic or ignorance, cut down part of the grove, the spirit was most indignant and threatened the perpetrators of the deed, according to the king, with all manner of evil.(439) Among the Fans of the French Congo, when a chief’s son is born, the remains of the navel-string are buried under a sacred fig-tree, and “thenceforth great importance is attached to the growth of the tree; it is strictly forbidden to touch it. Any attempt on the tree would be considered as an attack on the human being himself.”(440) Among the Boloki of the Upper Congo a family has a plant with red leaves (called _nkungu_) for its totem. When a woman of the family is with child for the first time, one of the totemic plants is planted near the hearth outside the house and is never destroyed, otherwise it is believed that the child would be born thin and weak and would remain puny and sickly. “The healthy life of the children and family is bound up with the healthiness and life of the totem tree as respected and preserved by the family.”(441) Among the Baganda of Central Africa a child’s afterbirth was called the second child and was believed to be animated by a spirit, which at once became a ghost. The afterbirth was usually buried at the root of a banana tree, and afterwards the tree was carefully guarded by old women, who prevented any one from going near it; they tied ropes of fibre from tree to tree to isolate it, and all the child’s excretions were thrown into this enclosure. When the fruit ripened, it was cut by the old woman in charge. The reason for guarding the tree thus carefully was a belief that if any stranger were to eat of the fruit of the tree or to drink beer brewed from it, he would carry off with him the ghost of the child’s afterbirth, which had been buried at the root of the banana-tree, and the living child would then die in order to follow its twin ghost. Whereas a grandparent of the child, by eating the fruit or drinking the beer, averted this catastrophe and ensured the health of the child.(442) Among the Wakondyo, at the north-western corner of Lake Albert Nyanza, it is customary to bury the afterbirth at the foot of a young banana-tree, and the fruit of this particular tree may be eaten by no one but the woman who assisted at the birth.(443) The reason for the custom is not mentioned, but probably, as among the Baganda, the life of the child is supposed to be bound up with the life of the tree, since the afterbirth, regarded as a spiritual double of the infant, has been buried at the root of the tree.

(M128) Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born child sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child’s life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.(444) After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a _tohu oranga_ or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for their child.(445) In the Chatham Islands, when the child of a leading man received its name, it was customary to plant a tree, “the growth of which was to be as the growth of the child,” and during the planting priests chanted a spell.(446) In some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male child is planted together with a coco-nut or the slip of a breadfruit-tree, and the child’s life is supposed to be intimately connected with that of the tree.(447) With certain Malayo-Siamese families of the Patani States it is customary to bury the afterbirth under a banana-tree, and the condition of the tree is afterwards regarded as ominous of the child’s fate for good or evil.(448) In Southern Celebes, when a child is born, a coco-nut is planted and watered with the water in which the afterbirth and navel-string have been washed. As it grows up, the tree is called the “contemporary” of the child.(449) So in Bali a coco-palm is planted at the birth of a child. It is believed to grow up equally with the child, and is called its “life-plant.”(450) On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo plant a palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes, they reckon on good fortune; but if it withers or dies, they expect misfortune.(451) Amongst the Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, districts of Dutch Borneo, it is customary to plant a fruit-tree for a child, and henceforth in the popular belief the fate of the child is bound up with that of the tree. If the tree shoots up rapidly, it will go well with the child; but if the tree is dwarfed or shrivelled, nothing but misfortune can be expected for its human counterpart.(452) According to another account, at the naming of children and certain other festivals the Dyaks are wont to set a _sawang_-plant, roots and all, before a priestess; and when the festival is over, the plant is replaced in the ground. Such a plant becomes thenceforth a sort of prophetic index for the person in whose honour the festival was held. If the plant thrives, the man will be fortunate; if it fades or perishes, some evil will befall him.(453) The Dyaks also believe that at the birth of every person on earth a flower grows up in the spirit world and leads a life parallel to his. If the flower flourishes, the man enjoys good health, but if it droops, so does he. Hence when he has dreamed bad dreams or has felt unwell for several days, he infers that his flower in the other world is neglected or sickly, and accordingly he employs a medicine-man to tend the precious plant, weed the soil, and sweep it up, in order that the earthly and unearthly life may prosper once more.(454)

(M129) It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is tended with special care.(455) The custom is still pretty general in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people think that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree.(456) In Mecklenburg the afterbirth is thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the tree.(457) In Bosnia, when the children of a family have died one after the other, the hair of the next child is cut with some ceremony by a stranger, and the mother carries the shorn tresses into the garden, where she ties them to a fine young tree, in order that her child may grow and flourish like the tree.(458) At Muskau, in Lausitz, it used to be customary for bride and bridegroom on the morning of their wedding-day to plant a pair of young oaks side by side, and as each of the trees flourished or withered, so the good luck of the person who planted it was believed to wax or wane.(459) On a promontory in Lake Keitele, in Finland, there used to stand an old fir-tree, which according to tradition had been planted by the first colonists to serve as a symbol or token of their fortune. First-fruits of the harvest used to be offered to the tree before any one would taste of the new crop; and whenever a branch fell, it was deemed a sign that some one would die. More and more the crown of the tree withered away, and in the same proportion the family whose ancestors had planted the fir dwindled away, till only one old woman was left. At last the tree fell, and soon afterwards the old woman departed this life.(460) When Lord Byron first visited his ancestral estate of Newstead “he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as _it_ flourished so should _he_.”(461) On a day when the cloud that settled on the later years of Sir Walter Scott lifted a little, and he heard that _Woodstock_ had sold for over eight thousand pounds, he wrote in his journal: “I have a curious fancy; I will go set two or three acorns, and judge by their success in growing whether I shall succeed in clearing my way or not.”(462) Near the Castle of Dalhousie, not far from Edinburgh, there grows an oak-tree, called the Edgewell Tree, which is popularly believed to be linked to the fate of the family by a mysterious tie; for they say that when one of the family dies, or is about to die, a branch falls from the Edgewell Tree. Thus, on seeing a great bough drop from the tree on a quiet, still day in July 1874, an old forester exclaimed, “The laird’s deid noo!” and soon after news came that Fox Maule, eleventh Earl of Dalhousie, was dead.(463) At Howth Castle in Ireland there is an old tree with which the fortunes of the St. Lawrence family are supposed to be connected. The branches of the tree are propped on strong supports, for tradition runs that when the tree falls the direct line of the Earls of Howth will become extinct.(464) On the old road from Hanover to Osnabrück, at the village of Oster-Kappeln, there used to stand an ancient oak, which put out its last green shoot in the year 1849. The tree was conjecturally supposed to be contemporary with the Guelphs; and in the year 1866, so fatal for the house of Hanover, on a calm summer afternoon, without any visible cause, the veteran suddenly fell with a crash and lay stretched across the highroad. The peasants regarded its fall as an ill omen for the reigning family, and when King George V. heard of it he gave orders that the giant trunk should be set up again, and it was done with much trouble and at great expense, the stump being supported in position by iron chains clamped to the neighbouring trees. But the king’s efforts to prop the falling fortunes of his house were vain; a few months after the fall of the oak Hanover formed part of the Prussian monarchy.(465)

(M130) In the midst of the “Forbidden City” at Peking there is a tiny private garden, where the emperors of the now fallen Manchu dynasty used to take the air and refresh themselves after the cares of state. In accordance with Chinese taste the garden is a labyrinth of artificial rockeries, waterfalls, grottoes, and kiosks, in which everything is as unlike nature as art can make it. The trees in particular (_Arbor vitae_), the principal ornament of the garden, exhibit the last refinement of the gardener’s skill, being clipped and distorted into a variety of grotesque shapes. Only one of the trees remained intact and had been spared these deformations for centuries. Far from being stunted by the axe or the shears, the tree was carefully tended and encouraged to shoot up to its full height. “It was the ‘Life-tree of the Dynasty,’ and according to legend the prosperity or fall of the present dynasty went hand in hand with the welfare or death of the tree. Certainly, if we accept the tradition, the days of the present reigning house must be numbered, for all the care and attention lavished on the tree have been for some years in vain. A glance at our illustration shews the tree as it still surpasses all its fellows in height and size; but it owes its pre-eminence only to the many artificial props which hold it up. In reality the ‘Life-tree of the Dynasty’ is dying, and might fall over night, if one of its artificial props were suddenly to give way. For the superstitious Chinese—and superstitious they certainly are—it is a very, very evil omen.”(466) Some twelve years have passed since this passage was written, and in the interval the omen has been fulfilled—the Manchu dynasty has fallen. We may conjecture that the old tree in the quaint old garden has fallen too. So vain are all human efforts to arrest the decay of royal houses by underpropping trees on which nature herself has passed a sentence of death.

(M131) At Rome in the ancient sanctuary of Quirinus there grew two old myrtle-trees, one named the Patrician and the other the Plebeian. For many years, so long as the patricians were in the ascendant, their myrtle-tree flourished and spread its branches abroad, while the myrtle of the plebeians was shrivelled and shrunken; but from the time of the Marsian war, when the power of the nobles declined, their myrtle in like manner drooped and withered, whereas that of the popular party held up its head and grew strong.(467) Thrice when Vespasia was with child, an old oak in the garden of the Flavian family near Rome suddenly put forth branches. The first branch was puny and soon withered away, and the girl who was born accordingly died within the year; the second branch was long and sturdy; and the third was like a tree. So on the third occasion the happy father reported to his mother that a future emperor was born to her as a grandchild. The old lady only laughed to think that at her age she should keep her wits about her, while her son had lost his; yet the omen of the oak came true, for the grandson was afterwards the emperor Vespasian.(468)

(M132) In England children are sometimes passed through a cleft ash-tree as a cure for rupture or rickets, and thenceforward a sympathetic connexion is supposed to exist between them and the tree. An ash-tree which had been used for this purpose grew at the edge of Shirley Heath, on the road from Hockly House to Birmingham. “Thomas Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining farm, now about thirty-four, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it is believed the life of the patient depends on the life of the tree, and the moment that it is cut down, be the patient ever so distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification ensues, and terminates in death, as was the case in a man driving a waggon on the very road in question.” “It is not uncommon, however,” adds the writer, “for persons to survive for a time the felling of the tree.”(469) The ordinary mode of effecting the cure is to split a young ash-sapling longitudinally for a few feet and pass the child, naked, either three times or three times three through the fissure at sunrise. In the West of England it is said that the passage should be “against the sun.” As soon as the ceremony has been performed, the tree is bound tightly up and the fissure plastered over with mud or clay. The belief is that just as the cleft in the tree closes up, so the rupture in the child’s body will be healed; but that if the rift in the tree remains open, the rupture in the child will remain too, and if the tree were to die, the death of the child would surely follow.(470)

(M133) Down to the second half of the nineteenth century the remedy was still in common use at Fittleworth and many other places in Sussex. The account of the Sussex practice and belief is notable because it brings out very clearly the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the ruptured child and the tree through which it has been passed. We are told that the patient “must be passed nine times every morning on nine successive days at sunrise through a cleft in a sapling ash-tree, which has been so far given up by the owner of it to the parents of the child, as that there is an understanding it shall not be cut down during the life of the infant who is to be passed through it. The sapling must be sound at heart, and the cleft must be made with an axe. The child on being carried to the tree must be attended by nine persons, each of whom must pass it through the cleft from west to east. On the ninth morning the solemn ceremony is concluded by binding the tree lightly with a cord, and it is supposed that as the cleft closes the health of the child will improve. In the neighbourhood of Petworth some cleft ash-trees may be seen, through which children have very recently been passed. I may add, that only a few weeks since, a person who had lately purchased an ash-tree standing in this parish, intending to cut it down, was told by the father of a child, who had some time before been passed through it, that the infirmity would be sure to return upon his son if it were felled. Whereupon the good man said, he knew that such would be the case; and therefore he would not fell it for the world.”(471)

(M134) A similar cure for various diseases, but especially for rupture and rickets, has been commonly practised in other parts of Europe, as Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden; but in these countries the tree employed for the purpose is usually not an ash but an oak; sometimes a willow-tree is allowed or even prescribed instead. With these exceptions the practice and the belief are nearly the same on the Continent as in England: a young oak is split longitudinally and the two sides held forcibly apart while the sick child is passed through the cleft; then the opening in the tree is closed, and bound up, and it is believed that as the cleft in the tree heals by the parts growing together again, so the rupture in the child will be simultaneously cured. It is often laid down that the ceremony must be performed in the strictest silence; sometimes the time prescribed is before sunrise, and sometimes the child must be passed thrice through the cleft.(472) In Oldenburg and Mecklenburg they say that the cure should be performed on St. John’s Eve (Midsummer Eve) by three men named John, who assist each other in holding the split oak-sapling open and passing the child through it.(473) Some people, however, prefer Good Friday or Christmas Eve as the season for the performance of the ceremony.(474) In Denmark copper coins are laid as an offering at the foot of the tree through which sick persons have been passed; and threads, ribbons, or bandages which have been worn by the sufferers are tied to a branch of the tree.(475) In the Greek island of Ceos, when a child is sickly, the parents carry it out into the country “and the father selects a young oak; this they split up from the root, then the father is assisted by another man in holding the tree open whilst the mother passes the child three times through, and then they bind up the tree well, cover it all over with manure, and carefully water it for forty days. In the same fashion they bind up the child for a like period, and after the lapse of this time they expect that it will be quite well.”(476)

(M135) In Mecklenburg, as in England, the sympathetic relation thus established between the tree and the child is so close that if the tree is cut down the child will die.(477) In the island of Rügen people believe that when a person who has been thus cured of rupture dies, his soul passes into the same oak-tree through which his body was passed in his youth.(478) Thus it seems that in ridding himself of the disease the sufferer is supposed to transfer a certain vital part of his person to the tree so that it is impossible to injure the tree without at the same time injuring the man; and in Rügen this partial union is thought to be completed by the transmigration of the man’s soul at death into the tree. Apparently the disease is conceived as something physical, which clings to the patient but can be stripped off him and left behind on the farther side of the narrow aperture through which he has forced his way; when the aperture is closed by the natural growth of the tree, the door is as it were shut against the disease, which is then unable to pursue and overtake the sufferer. Hence the idea at the root of the custom is not so much that the patient has transferred his ailment to the tree, as that the tree forms an impervious barrier between him and the malady which had hitherto afflicted him. This interpretation is confirmed by the following parallels.

(M136) In those parts of Armenia which are covered with forests, many great and ancient trees are revered as sacred and receive marks of homage. The people burn lights before them, fumigate them with incense, sacrifice cocks and wethers to them, and creep through holes in their trunks or push lean and sickly children through them “in order to put a stop to the influence of evil spirits.”(479) Apparently, they think that evil spirits cannot creep through the cleft in the holy tree, and therefore that the sick who have effected the passage are safe from their demoniacal pursuers. The same conception of a fissure in a tree as an obstacle placed in the path of pursuing spirits meets us in a number of savage customs. Thus in the island of Nias, when a man is in training for the priesthood, he has to be introduced to the various spirits between whom and mankind it will be his office to mediate. A priest takes him to an open window, and while the drums are beating points out to him the great spirit in the sun who calls away men to himself through death; for it is needful that the future priest should know him from whose grasp he will often be expected to wrest the sick and dying. In the evening twilight he is led to the graves and shewn the envious spirits of the dead, who also are ever drawing away the living to their own shadowy world. Next day he is conducted to a river and shewn the spirit of the waters; and finally they take him up to a mountain and exhibit to him the spirits of the mountains, who have diverse shapes, some appearing like swine, others like buffaloes, others like goats, and others again like men with long hair on their bodies. When he has seen all this, his education is complete, but on his return from the mountain the new priest may not at once enter his own house. For the people think that, were he to do so, the dangerous spirits by whom he is still environed would stay in the house and visit both the family and the pigs with sickness. Accordingly he betakes himself to other villages and passes several nights there, hoping that the spirits will leave him and settle on the friends who receive him into their houses; but naturally he does not reveal the intention of his visits to his hosts. Lastly, before he enters his own dwelling, he looks out for some young tree by the way, splits it down the middle, and then creeps through the fissure, in the belief that any spirit which may still be clinging to him will thus be left sticking to the tree.(480) Again, among the Bilqula or Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia “the bed of a mourner must be protected against the ghost of the deceased. His male relatives stick a thorn-bush into the ground at each corner of their beds. After four days these are thrown into the water. Mourners must rise early and go into the woods, where they stick four thorn-bushes into the ground, at the corners of a square, in which they cleanse themselves by rubbing their bodies with cedar branches. They also swim in ponds. After swimming they cleave four small trees and creep through the clefts, following the course of the sun. This they do on four subsequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day. Mourners cut their hair short. The hair that has been cut off is burnt. If they should not observe these regulations, it is believed that they would dream of the deceased.”(481) To the savage, who fails to distinguish the visions of sleep from the appearances of waking life, the apparition of a dead man in a dream is equivalent to the actual presence of the ghost; and accordingly he seeks to keep off the spiritual intruder, just as he might a creature of flesh and blood, by fencing his bed with thorn-bushes. Similarly the practice of creeping through four cleft trees is clearly an attempt to shake off the clinging ghost and leave it adhering to the trees, just as in Nias the future priest hopes to rid himself in like manner of the dangerous spirits who have dogged his steps from the mountains and the graves.

(M137) This interpretation of the custom is strongly confirmed by a funeral ceremony which Dr. Charles Hose witnessed at the chief village of the Madangs, a tribe of Kayans who occupy a hitherto unexplored district in the heart of Borneo. “Just across the river from where we were sitting,” says Dr. Hose, “was the graveyard, and there I witnessed a funeral procession as the day was drawing to a close. The coffin, which was a wooden box made from a tree-trunk, was decorated with red and black patterns in circles, with two small wooden figures of men placed at either end; it was lashed with rattans to a long pole, and by this means was lifted to the shoulders of the bearers, who numbered thirteen in all, and who then carried it to the burying-ground. After the mourners had all passed over to the graveyard, a man quickly cut a couple of small sticks, each five feet long and about an inch in diameter. One of these he split almost the whole way down, and forced the unsplit end into the ground, when the upper part opened like a V, leaving sufficient room for each person to pass through. He next split the top of the other stick, and, placing another short stick in the cleft, made a cross, which he also forced into the ground. The funeral procession climbed the mound on which the cemetery was situated, passing through the V of the cleft stick in single file. As soon as the coffin had been placed on the stage erected for the purpose, the people commenced their return, following on one another’s heels as quickly as possible, each spitting out the words, ‘_Pit balli krat balli jat tesip bertatip!_’ (‘Keep back, and close out all things evil, and sickness’) as they passed through the V-shaped stick. The whole party having left the graveyard, the gate was closed by the simple process of tying the cleft ends of the stick together, and a few words were then said to the cross-stick, which they call _ngring_, or the wall that separates the living from the dead. All who had taken part in the ceremony then went and bathed before returning to their homes, rubbing their skins with rough pebbles, the old Mosaic idea of the uncleanness of the dead, as mentioned in Numbers (chap. xix.), evidently finding a place among their religious beliefs. It is apparently a great relief to their minds to think that they can shut out the spirit of the deceased. They believe that the spirit of the dead is not aware that life has left the body until a short time after the coffin has been taken to the graveyard, and then not until the spirit has had leisure to notice the clothes, weapons, and other articles belonging to its earthly estate, which are placed with the coffin. But before this takes place the gate has been closed.”(482)

(M138) Here the words uttered by the mourners in passing through the cloven stick shew clearly that they believe the stick to act as a barrier or fence, on the further side of which they leave behind the ghost or other dangerous spirit whose successful pursuit might entail sickness and death on the survivors. Thus the passage of these Madang mourners through the cleft stick is strictly analogous to the passage of ruptured English children through a cleft ash-tree. Both are simply ways of leaving an evil thing behind. Similarly the subsequent binding up of the cloven stick in Borneo is analogous to the binding up of the cloven ash-tree in England. Both are ways of barricading the road against the evil which is dogging your steps; having passed through the doorway you slam the door in the face of your pursuer. Yet it seems probable that the intention of binding up the cleft in a tree through which a ruptured patient has been passed is not merely that of shutting the door on the malady conceived as a personal being; combined with this idea is perhaps the notion that in virtue of the law of magical homoeopathy the rupture in the body of the sufferer will close up exactly in the same measure as the cleft in the tree closes up through the force of bandages and of natural growth. That this shade of meaning attaches to the custom is rendered probable by a comparison of an ancient Roman cure for dislocation, which has been preserved for us by the grave authority of the elder Cato. He recommended that a green reed, four or five feet long, should be taken, split down the middle, and held by two men to the dislocated bones while a curious and now unintelligible spell was recited; then, when the spell had been recited and the aperture in the reed had closed, the reed was to be tied to the dislocated limb, and a perfect cure might be expected. Apparently it was supposed that just as the two sides of the split reed came together and coalesced after being held apart, so the dislocated bones would come together and fit into their proper places.(483)

(M139) But the usual idea in passing through a narrow aperture as a cure or preventive of evil would seem to be simply that of giving the slip to a dangerous pursuer. With this intention, doubtless, the savage Thays of Tonquin repair after a burial to the banks of a stream and there creep through a triangle formed by leaning two reeds against each other, while the sorcerer souses them with dirty water. All the relations of the deceased must wash their garments in the stream before they return home, and they may not set foot in the house till they have shorn their hair at the foot of the ladder. Afterwards the sorcerer comes and sprinkles the whole house with water for the purpose of expelling evil spirits.(484) Here again we cannot doubt that the creeping through the triangle of reeds is intended to rid the mourners of the troublesome ghost. So when the Kamtchatkans had disposed of a corpse after their usual fashion by throwing it to the dogs to be devoured, they purified themselves as follows. They went into the forest and cut various roots which they bent into rings, and through these rings they crept twice. Afterwards they carried the rings back to the forest and flung them away westward. The Koryaks, a people of the same region, burn their dead and hold a festival in honour of the departed a year after the death. At this festival, which takes place on the spot where the corpse was burned, or, if that is too far off, on a neighbouring height, they sacrifice two young reindeer which have never been in harness, and the sorcerer sticks a great many reindeer horns in the earth, believing that thereby he is dispatching a whole herd of these animals to their deceased friend in the other world. Then they all hasten home, and purify themselves by passing between two poles planted in the ground, while the sorcerer strikes them with a stick and adjures death not to carry them off.(485) The Tokoelawi in the interior of Central Celebes hold a great sacrificial festival on the eighth day after the death of a man or the ninth day after the death of a woman. When the guests return homewards after the festival they pass under two poles placed in a slanting direction against each other, and they may not look round at the house where the death occurred. “In this way they take a final leave of the soul of the deceased. Afterwards no more sacrifices are offered to the soul.”(486) Among the Toboengkoe, another tribe in the interior of Central Celebes, when a man buries his wife, he goes to the grave by a different road from that along which the corpse is carried; and on certain days afterwards he bathes, and on returning from the bath must pass through a teepee-shaped erection, which is formed by splitting a pole up the middle and separating the two split pieces except at the top. “This he must do in order that his second wife, if he has one, may not soon die.”(487) Here the notion probably is that the jealous ghost of the dead wife seeks to avenge herself on her living rival by carrying off her soul with her to deadland. Hence to prevent this catastrophe the husband tries to evade the ghost, first by going to the grave along a different path, and second by passing under a cleft stick, through which as usual the spirit cannot follow him.

(M140) In the light of the foregoing customs, as well as of a multitude of ceremonies observed for a similar purpose in all parts of the world,(488) we may safely assume that when people creep through rings after a death or pass between poles after a sacrifice to the dead, their intention simply is to interpose a barrier between themselves and the ghost; they make their way through a narrow pass or aperture through which they hope that the ghost will not be able to follow them. To put it otherwise, they conceive that the spirit of the dead is sticking to them like a burr, and that like a burr it may be rubbed or scraped off and left adhering to the sides of the opening through which they have squeezed themselves.

(M141) Similarly, when a pestilence is raging among the Koryaks, they kill a dog, wind its guts about two poles, and pass between the poles,(489) doubtless for the sake of giving the slip to the demon of the plague in the same way that they give the slip to the ghost. When the Kayans of Borneo have been dogged by an evil spirit on a journey and are nearing their destination, they fashion a small archway of boughs, light a fire under it, and pass in single file under the archway and over the fire, spitting into the fire as they pass. By this ceremony, we are told, “they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free from all baleful influences.”(490) Here, to make assurance doubly sure, a fire as well as an archway is interposed between the travellers and the dreadful beings who are walking unseen behind. To crawl under a bramble which has formed an arch by sending down a second root into the ground, is an English and Welsh cure for whooping-cough, rheumatism, boils, and other complaints. In some parts of the west of England they say that to get rid of boils the thing to do is to crawl through such a natural arch nine times against the sun; but in Devonshire the patient should creep through the arch thrice with the sun, that is from east to west. When a child is passed through it for whooping-cough, the operators ought to say:

“_In bramble, out cough,_
_Here I leave the whooping-cough._”(491)