Chapter XI: Sacred Wells and Trees (2)

Another kind of cairn is that which is piled over the place where death, especially a violent death, has been suffered. To this every wayfarer makes his contribution; and doubtless originally the dead body lay beneath the mass. The most familiar instances are the cairns raised over Achan and Absalom.[206.3] The custom, however, is by no means confined to the Hebrews, or to the Semitic race; and in districts where stones are few, branches and pieces of wood are piled. Thus, near Leipzig is a heap of boughs to which every passenger adds three. Elsewhere in Germany, in Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, Lesbos, Armenia, the upper valley of the Nile, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Venezuela, the valley of the Plate, and Patagonia, similar piles are recorded, as well as among the Bushmen and Amakosa of South Africa. The Bushmen are reported to declare that the Devil is buried under these heaps; and every Bushman throws a stone as he passes, that Satan may not rise again. In case of sickness, pilgrimages are made to them and prayers for help {207} offered.[207.1] The various graves of Heitsi-eibib, or Tsuni-ǁgoam, the ancestor-god of the Khoi-khoi, are marked by cairns on which every one who passes by flings a stone or twig. Sometimes the offering is a piece of the wayfarer’s clothes, flowers or zebra-dung. A prayer for success is muttered if the wayfarer be hunting; and occasionally even honey and honey-beer are offered.[207.2] These graves are, in fact, shrines of worship. And it is noteworthy that the gifts to the divinity are in general of no value in themselves, and that prominent among them are the stones and branches which are thrown, in other parts of the world, upon grave-cairns to which no other act of worship is now offered.

The third class of cairns consists of such as are erected on spots which for any reason are recognised as sacred. To this class belong the obo of Tibet. In Buddhist lands cairns are to be seen on the top of every pass and almost of every mountain. Frequently they are adorned with prayer-streamers and bones of sheep; and flat stones inscribed with the formula _Om mani padme hum_ are laid upon them by worshippers. Passengers constantly add to the pile rough stones which they have picked up in climbing the ascent. In India cairns, especially cairns of _Kankar_, or calcareous limestone, to which every one adds, are not uncommon. Such is the shrine of Anktaha Bir, the hero of the Kankar-heap, in the village of Niámatpur.[207.3] {208} Among the Dyaks of Batang Lupar the heaps are said to be erected in memory of great liars. Stones and branches are thrown upon them; and after the liar’s name has been long forgotten the heap remains. In the Caucasus the mountain-tops are sacred to the prophet Elijah (who, there is little reason to doubt, has succeeded to an ancient thunder-god) or to some other saint. Perilous places and places struck by lightning are marked by cairns. At the latter a pole is stuck up from which a black goat-skin flies. Around a certain rock in the Sinaitic peninsula Professor Palmer found small heaps of stones, said to have been first erected by the Israelites in memory of the water obtained from that very rock by Moses. The Arabs retain the practice in hopes of propitiating the great lawgiver. If any of them have a sick friend, he throws a stone in his name, and in the expectation of his speedy recovery. In Arabia, indeed, heaps of this kind are often to be seen, some of them of enormous size. In South America the passes of the Cordilleras are marked by cairns originally built before the Conquest. To this day the Indians fling stones upon them, or lay there a little offering of fresh coca-leaves, or spit upon them the coca-quids they have been chewing. Sometimes they stand and pull out a few of their eyebrow-hairs, blowing them in the direction of the sun--an ancient rite recorded by the Spanish conquerors among their observations of the Peruvian cult. In North America piles of stones are often mentioned, to which every traveller is accustomed to add. The old inhabitants of Nicaragua threw stones and grass upon them, believing themselves thereby to be freed from hunger and fatigue. In Europe, Saint Wolfgang’s chapel and well are renowned among the shrines of the Salzkammergut. Up the steep {209} stony path on either side pilgrims carry to the sacred spot heavy stones, which now lie there in heaps. The story goes that when enough have been gathered, the saint will build himself a new and larger church; but this is, of course, a modern theory to account for the practice.[209.1] In the Aran Islands, though we are not told of any such piles, “numerous rounded pebbles are placed on the well and on the altar of St. Columb Kill.”[209.2] On the island of Iniskill, off the coast of Donegal, on the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage where the last of the “stations” performed by the pilgrims is a rough pile of stones, formerly the altar of a now ruined church. On the top of the pile is laid a flat stone, through which a circular hole about three inches in diameter has been bored. In this hole Mr. Borlase found shreds of coloured stuff (doubtless from their own clothes), rosaries and bronze medals, put there by devotees.[209.3] Lastly, it may be mentioned that, among the Basuto, heaps of stones are to be found by the wayside near a village, to which every traveller adds a pebble, on which he has first spit.[209.4]

Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places {210} are sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who must always be propitiated--all the more if they have died in a manner unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an earlier part of the present chapter. Alike--and this is a point of cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices--the gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be, it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed, by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from his mouth. The _Landnámabók_ mentions an early settler of Iceland named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into it all remnants had to be thrown.[210.1] This was not a mere paltry economy of worship; for we are told {211} he was “a great blót-man,” in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity; and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.

With the practices at cairns in our mind, then, let us return to the customs at wells and trees.

M. Monseur, fixing his attention on instances like those of the Croix Saint Zè and Saint Guirec, in which pins or nails were stuck into the cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, suggests that the aim was, by causing pain or inconvenience to the object of worship, to keep in his memory the worshipper’s prayer. And he refers, by way of illustration, to the tortures inflicted on children at the beating of boundaries, and to the flogging said to have been given to children in Lorraine on the occasion of a capital punishment, the intention of which incontestably was to preserve a recollection of the place or the incident.[211.1] M. Gaidoz, dealing with similar cases, and similar cases only, propounded years ago a theory somewhat different. In replying recently to M. Monseur, he recalls his previous exposition, and reiterates it in these words: “The idol is a god who always appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and, peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time a memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the member corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is directed to the prayer. And more than that is done in leaving a nail or a pin in its body, {212} for this is a material memento for the idol.” In putting it in this way, the learned professor does not desire to exclude the ideas of an offering and a transfer of disease, for he expressly adds that both these ideas are mingled with that of a memento.[212.1]

Let us take stock of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to a satisfactory solution of the problem. It must be equally applicable to sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns and temples. It must account not merely for the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but also for the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and coca-quids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese temples, the pilgrims’ names written on the walls of the temple of Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors of Protestant churches in Eastern France. These are the outcome of equivalent practices, and the solution of their meaning, if a true one, must fit them all. M. Gaidoz’ suggestion of a memento comes nearer to this ideal than any other hitherto put forward. But does it touch cases like those of the Lapalud, the Stock im Eisen, and the Cella Jovis, where the rite was unaccompanied by any prayer? The two former cases, indeed, if they stood alone, might be deemed worn and degraded relics of a rite once gracious with adoration, prayer and thanksgiving. But nothing of the sort accompanied the driving of a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter, nor, so far as we can learn, the yet older custom observed by the Etruscans at Vulsinii, of {213} sticking a nail every year in the temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess. On the contrary, in both these classical instances the rite was so bare and so ill-understood, that it was looked upon merely as an annual register or record. Almost as little does M. Gaidoz’ explanation seem to fit the throwing of pins into a well, the burial of a coin, as in Mecklenburgh, under a tree, or the marriage-nails of Montbéliard. Like M. Monseur’s theory, it is applicable in its full significance only to examples of the rite as practised on statues; and it assumes that trees and crosses and other rude forms are mere makeshifts for the carven image, deteriorated survivals of idols strictly so called.[213.1] But this is to put the cart before the horse. There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to {214} suppose exactly the reverse. And in this connection it is significant that neither at Rome nor at Vulsinii (the earliest examples we have in point of time) were the nails fastened into the image, but into the temple wall.

I believe that a profounder thought forms the common ground in which all the customs under consideration--or, as I should prefer to say, all the variations of a single custom--are rooted. They are simply another application of the reasoning that underlies the practices of witchcraft and folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters. If an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart, even if not covered with my blood, has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to {215} represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well--my name written upon the walls of a temple--a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn--a remnant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree--is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I may become permanently united with the god.

This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. Of course, it cannot be denied that there are instances, like some of the Japanese and Breton cases, where, the real object of the rite having been forgotten, the practice has become to a slight extent deflected from its earlier form. But it is not difficult to trace the steps whereby the idea and practice of divination became substituted for that of union with the object of devotion. Still less can it be denied that, where the practice has not been deflected, the real intention has in most places been obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us everywhere, and will mislead no one who understands that the real meaning is not what the people who practise a rite say about it, but that which emerges from a comparison of analogous observances.

A few other customs remain to be considered. Prominent among these is a rite well known to all students of classical antiquity--that of the consecration of locks of hair at various shrines. It was usually performed in consequence of a vow made by the parents at birth. The actual ceremony took place on arriving at manhood or womanhood. A lock of the hair and of the sprouting beard of the youth, a tress from the maiden’s head, was cut off and presented {216} to the god; and in Greece the youth then received the clothing of an ephebos and was admitted to such of the privileges of a free citizen as his age entitled him. The dedication of the hair was regarded as a symbol of that of the entire person. And this dedication was extended to other occasions, such as before marriage, before and after childbed, or at the time of making or fulfilling a vow. Pausanias mentions a statue of Hygeia hardly to be seen, by reason partly of the hair cut off by women and bound or placed upon it.[216.1] On the death of one very dear, a lock of the survivor’s hair was frequently cut off and placed in the corpse’s hand or upon the grave, as Herakles did to Sostratos, and Achilles to Patroklos. So Death was said to cut off the hair of those who were about to die. Euripides represents him as declaring:

“Sacred to us Gods below
That head whose hair this sword shall sanctify.”

Graves and sacred trees were favourite places for the deposit of the hair. Beneath the olive which grew upon the tomb of Hyperoche and Laodike, in the entrance of the sanctuary of Artemis at Delos, epheboi laid the first fruits of their beards, and bridal pairs their hair. At Megara was the grave of the virgin Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous. Brides there performed funeral rites, before the wedding ceremony, and cut off their hair. The Roman Vestals, on attaining womanhood, consecrated to Juno Lucina and {217} hung upon her tree, which was older than the temple, the locks of their hair; whence it was called the _arbor capillata_. At the completion of the mysteries of Cybele the votaries dedicated locks of their hair at the door of her temple; and in the same way the Bacchic votaries, when their mysteries were finished, dedicated their locks at sacred pine-trees. In this connection, too, we may remember that the Flamen Dialis buried the clippings of his hair and nails beneath a lucky tree.[217.1]

The usage also extended to the Hebrews. It is referred to in the legislation on vows and on mourning; and many examples are familiar to us in the Bible, from Samson and Job to the Apostle Paul. The ancient Arabs and Egyptians also on similar occasions cut or shaved their hair.[217.2] Nor was it confined to ancient times. In the seventeenth century the Serbs used to cut their hair and bind it on the grave of a dead relative; and among the Albanians the sisters, daughters-in-law, grown-up daughters and wife of a dead man are said still to cut their hair in token of grief. The mourning women at Lecce in Apulia pluck out their hair and strew it on the corpse.[217.3] Zingerle quotes from an old manuscript in the Franciscan monastery at Botzen in the Tirol a superstition which directs the hair of a sick man to be cut off, rolled in wax and afterwards offered at some sacred shrine.[217.4] A story is told in the province of Posen of the daughter of a day-labourer who was sick and given up by the physician. She begged her parents, as they stood by her bed plunged in helpless grief, {218} to cut off her hair and lay it upon the crucifix in the convent at Exin. This was done, and she recovered; and, marvellous to state, the hair grew upon the head of the crucifix until it reached the ground, to the gratification of the pious from all parts of the province.[218.1] At Flastroff, in Lorraine, sick or vicious horses are taken in pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Elias on the 25th June. After mass, at which the owners of the animals are present, the horses are paraded round the outside of the chapel. A handful of hairs from the tail of each of them is deposited on the steps of the altar, sometimes accompanied by a gift of money; and the owner takes away a cupful of holy water, made for the purpose, in order to mix it with the animal’s drink. The custom of taking the horses themselves is now disappearing. The owners, instead, take their handfuls of horsehair, make the tour of the altar after mass to kiss the relic of the saint, and deposit the offerings of hair in a niche in the wall of the apse on the left side of the altar. And this has probably been found equally efficacious.[218.2]

In some districts of the Abruzzi there is yet practised a rite that seems to be a survival of an ancient act of worship such as I have just referred to. Two or more girls who are desirous of swearing eternal friendship of the most sacred kind join hands in a church and compass the altar three times. They afterwards exchange kisses; and each of them, pulling out a hair, hides it in some hole or dark recess of the building. One of them then, standing in {219} front of the altar, lifts her hand as if to count her companions, and solemnly chants verses, the import of which is to pronounce them henceforth gossips, spiritual kindred, entitled to share one another’s food, and further to invoke blessing or ban, according as either of them shall fulfil or neglect the duties of the relationship.[219.1] Reginald Scot, apparently quoting Martin of Arles and speaking of the Spaniards, mentions that “maids forsooth hang some of their haire before the image of S. Urbane, bicause they would have the rest of their haire grow long and be yellow.”[219.2] Pettigrew cites Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall as authorities for the statement that pilgrims to Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, a sacred well dedicated to Saints Quan and Brogawn, after performing certain circuits and reciting prayers, go thrice round a tree on their bare knees and then cut off locks of their hair and tie them on the branches as a specific against headache. The tree, we are told, was an object of veneration and was covered with human hair.[219.3] So at the two Hungarian fountains already mentioned clothes and hair from the patients’ heads are left on adjacent trees “as gifts for the water-spirit.”[219.4] In Turkey among the Greek Christians three tiny locks are cut, if they can be found on a baby’s head at his baptism, and thrown into the font in the name of the Trinity; and the font is afterwards emptied into a pit or well under the floor of the church.[219.5]

Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few examples, and must content myself {220} with referring the reader for others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to sticks over the graves of females.[220.1] And Olearius, who was in Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr. Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.[220.2] When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of his successor and offering them to his _manes_.[220.3] At the junction of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage, Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the stream.[220.4] The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.[220.5] Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the crater.[220.6] About Lake Nyassa, {221} in East Central Africa, one of the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the bush.[221.1] On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath is administered by the fetish-priest. His _bossum_, or fetish, consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath, he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel, rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker, and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the vessel.[221.2] The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging them upon the dead body;[221.3] and in various parts of America widows are required to shave or cut their hair.[221.4] Indeed, haircutting or shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, {222} it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when

“Round the funeral pyre the populace Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped O’er the dead body of their withered prince.”[222.1]

It was not, however, always possible or convenient to do this; and it has consequently been dispensed with until the purpose has been forgotten.

These practices all explain themselves in the same way. The dedication of the hair at a temple, or the placing of it in the hand of a corpse, or on the grave, effects union with the divinity, or with the departed friend. The tress is more than a symbol of devotion; it is more than a gage of fidelity. The owner of the head whence it has been taken, and the holder of the severed lock are in actual, though invisible, union. This accounts for the efficacy of the practice in healing disease: this accounts for its value as a guard of fidelity to an oath. In the last chapter we saw that not only hair but nail-parings, teeth and other things previously part of the patient, or in contact with him, were plugged into trees, or hung from their branches, for the purpose of uniting him with a living healthy body, which was believed to react upon him. Much more powerful would be the action of an object regarded as the abode of a supernatural being, even if only a departed friend,--or rather, {223} the action of the supernatural being himself, thus linked through that object with his worshipper, patient or friend. Abruzzian girls put themselves in the hands of the saint when they hide their hairs in his sanctuary, and doubtless feel abundantly satisfied that he will perform the blessing or the ban they invoke upon themselves in their rustic ritual. We had occasion in the last chapter to consider the disposal of the hair when ceremonially cut off. It will be recollected that the _Grihya-Sûtra_ of Hiranyakesin directs the clippings of hair, beard and nails, made up into a lump with bull’s dung, to be buried in a cow-stable, or near an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. It is true that the words accompanying the act of burial were: “Thus I hide the sin of N. N.” These words were probably not primitive, for the real intention of the rite is revealed by the places prescribed for the burial. Had it been meant simply to hide the lump of dung and hair, any secret place would have sufficed. But the cow-stable, the Udumbara-tree and the Darbha-grass were all sacred; and the object of placing these clippings of the person in, or adjacent to, them must have been that the man from whom the clippings had been taken might be blessed by the hallowed influences which would surround those portions of himself, severed indeed to outward appearance, but still subtly connected with his frame. So also something more than a desire for safety leads the sponsors of the Japanese boy to deposit his forelock on the family shrine. And when the Omaha children received the tonsure, the first-fruits (if I may so call them) of their heads, wrapped in the sacred buffalo-hide, not merely secured the heads themselves from harm, but kept them in a perpetual environment of positive good. For the same reason in Tahiti the {224} child’s navel-string was buried in the _marae_, or temple.[224.1] In Mecklenburgh and Thuringia the navel-string, or a piece of it, is taken by the mother to her churching and laid down behind the altar or elsewhere in the church. This will keep the child continually surrounded with such holy influences that he will grow up god-fearing and pious. If, on the other hand, it be left in a shop, he will--at least in Thuringia--become courteous and clever in business.[224.2]

Again. Athenian women who for the first time became pregnant used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. So the Spanish women tied their girdles or shoe-latchets about one of the church-bells, and struck the bell thrice.[224.3] In the French department of Côtes-du-Nord, to cure a certain childish disease the infant’s cap is placed at the foot of the statue of St. Méen in the church of Plaine-Haute.[224.4] Among the French superstitions enumerated by Thiers is that of passing a child afflicted with Saint Giles’ sickness through his father’s shirt, and carrying the shirt afterwards--not the child--to Saint Giles’ altar, as a means of cure.[224.5] European settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measure a child for a disease called “the Go-backs” with a yarn string; and having by this means diagnosed the disease they hang the string on the hinge of a gate in the premises of the infant’s parents, believing that the disease will die away with the decay of the string.[224.6] They have no local shrines.

{225}

The converse case of measurement as a method of conveying the divine effluence was a favourite during the Middle Ages, and is still practised in Roman Catholic countries. It consisted in measuring with a string or fillet the body of a saint, and passing the string afterwards round the patient. Many miracles performed in this way were attributed to Simon de Montfort. Pope Clement VIII. is said to have given his sanction to a similar measurement purporting to be the “true and correct length of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” found in the Holy Sepulchre. Copies of this measurement were current in Germany up to a comparatively late date.[225.1] By an application of the same reasoning it seems to have been believed up to the seventeenth century in this country that, to measure a living person with a rope which had been used in a prescribed manner to measure a corpse, was to inflict misfortune and misery.[225.2] The object specially in view of the Athenian women was attained in Germany towards the end of the Middle Ages by measuring a wick by Saint Sixtus’ image, and wearing it as a girdle.[225.3] In Japan it is enough to wear, inside the sash, a coloured strip made in imitation of a temple-flag.[225.4] The underlying thought in these cases is the same as that of the Breton girdles of Notre Dame de Délivrance, mentioned in a previous chapter. And so far is the practice carried in China that a woman who wishes to bear children will borrow {226} on certain days in the year from the temple of the goddess of children one of the votive shoes offered there, and, taking it home, will pay it the same honours as to the goddess herself; while another woman will take a flower from the hands of the sacred image, or from a vase beside it, and wear it in her hair.[226.1] Saint Francis’ girdle and other “blessed girdles” were formerly worn in Europe for the purpose of facilitating delivery, and for healing various diseases.[226.2] And still in Mexico the measure of the head of an image of Saint Francis at Magdalena is sovran for headache, the measurement of his waist for diseases of the abdomen, and so on of other parts.[226.3]

In Poitou sick children are taken to the shrine of Saint Roch at Saint-Rémy, to embrace the Saint’s image. But because it is so horribly ugly, many children turn away with cries of fright. The parents then content themselves with passing a handkerchief over the statue, and afterwards wiping with it the child’s face and hands.[226.4] Among the Basuto, travellers on entering a strange country seek to render the indigenous gods propitious to them by rubbing their foreheads with a little of the dust which they collect on the road, or by making a girdle of the grass.[226.5] Newcomers to places lying on the river Körös, in Hungary, used to {227} be dipped in the water as a sort of baptism.[227.1] Many wells in Ireland are called by the name of Saint Patrick. In the seventeenth century it seems to have been a common belief among the Irish that a stranger who drank at any of these wells would never after forsake the country, or if he left it he would be sure to return thither.[227.2] At Rome an old superstition, incidentally noticed in the last chapter, prescribes for those who desire to return to the city to drink a little of the Fountain of Trevi and to throw a small offering in the shape of a coin into the basin. And with a little earth from the churchyard of Applecross, in Ross-shire, where Saint Maelrubha is buried, a man may fare the world round and safely come back to the neighbouring bay.[227.3] Among the North American tribes, figures of sacred animals and gods are drawn in coloured sand on the floor of the medicine-lodge. The patient is rubbed with the dust composing the figures. Applied to dying men, as a Roman Catholic Indian piously told Captain Bourke, it corresponds to Extreme Unction.[227.4] Those who doubt whether it be equally efficient may be recommended {228} to try both. At any rate the parallel is instructive; for in all these cases a substance which has been hallowed by contact with the divinity, or with his shrine, brought afterwards into contact with the devotee and patient, sets up union between the worshipper and his god; a portion of the sacred earth or water in contact with the traveller or votary, or united with his person, unites him with the remainder in such a bond that he is infallibly brought back to it, or else he is endowed with all the blessings that could be conferred by the touch of the entirety.

Our examination of the practices of throwing pins into wells, of tying rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, of throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the analogous practices throughout the world, leads to the conclusion that they are to be interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified with well, with tree, or stock, or cairn. In course of time, as the real intention of the rite has been forgotten, it has been resorted to (in Christian countries at least) chiefly for the cure of diseases, and the meaning has been overlaid by the idea of the transfer of the disease. This idea belongs to the same category as that of the union by means of the nail or the rag with divinity, but apparently to a somewhat later stratum of thought. Since the spread of Christianity the reason for the sacredness of many trees or wells has passed from memory; and it has consequently been natural to substitute any tree or any well for a particular one. The substitution has favoured the idea of transfer of disease, which has thus become the ordinary intention of the rite in later times.[228.1]

{229}

But I cannot close this inquiry without referring to one or two other ceremonies not quite so easily deciphered. The first is reported by a German writer whose authority for the statement I have been unable to trace. He says it is the custom in Wales for a bride and bridegroom to go and lie down beside a well or fountain and throw in pins as a pledge of the new relation into which they have entered. And he adds that in clearing out an old Roman well in the Isle of Wight, about the year 1840, some bushels of ancient British pins for the clothes were found.[229.1] Whether or not the British pins are to be connected with the alleged custom in Wales, it is difficult to account for a collection of pins in such a situation except upon the supposition that they were purposely thrown into the well. As in the case of the pins found in the Meuse and the Sambre, however, we can only guess at the reason that brought them there. If the alleged Welsh rite be correctly described, no prayer is offered. Could we find an early shape of it, we should probably recognise a solemn consecration of the one spouse to the domestic divinity of the other--a ritual reception into the kin. The analogy with the marriage custom of the Montbéliard Protestants is obvious. An instance in which the same analogy lies even more on the surface is a ceremony in use among the Mohammedan tribes of Daghestan. Imperfectly civilised, they are still organised in _gentes_, each of which derives its origin from a mythical ancestor. But it is possible for a man to break with his _gens_, if he desire to do so. The desire must be expressed solemnly and publicly at a meeting in the mosque; and {230} he must announce that every tie is broken between himself and his _touchoum_, or clan. By way of memorial a nail is then driven into one of the walls of the mosque.[230.1] It seems to be unnecessary now to enter another clan in place of the one renounced; and the words employed express no more than the _detestatio sacrorum_, or renunciation. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, this could only have been half the original ceremony. It must once have been followed by admission into another kin, for no one would be content to be a kinless man. The ceremony now takes place in a mosque. Before the conversion to Islam it must have taken place in the hut or temple where the totem or ancestor-god of the new kin was worshipped. And the driving of the nail into the wall of the mosque may be imagined to be the only remaining relic of the rite of admission into the new _gens_ and of initiation into its cult. If this be so, it probably expressed and effected the neophyte’s union with the divinity into whose kin and worship he was entering.

Assuming this conjecture to be correct, we may go a step further. To anticipate again what I shall have to explain more fully hereafter, the union with the totem-god would have to be renewed at intervals. Some such intention perhaps governed the rite at Reggio Emilia, in Italy, which is now called “burying the old year.” At midnight of the last day of the year the head of the household goes into the courtyard of his house and thrusts into the ground a stake.[230.2] Turning back to Wales, at Gumfreston, in Pembrokeshire, there is a holy well to which the villagers {231} used to repair on Easter Day, when each of them would throw a crooked pin into the water. This was called “throwing Lent away.”[231.1] On the same day at Bradwell, in Derbyshire, it was the practice for children to drop pins into the various wells in the town. A fairy was said to preside over each well, and to know whether a child had deposited a pin in her well, or not. On Easter Monday every child carried a bottle of sweetmeats all day long; and if a bottle were broken, it was because the child had forgotten to drop a pin into one of the wells, “the fairy of the well being the protector of the bottle.”[231.2] I need hardly pause on the proof, which the comparison of these rites affords, of the absolute ritual equivalence of throwing pins into a holy well and driving a stake, or a nail, into the ground, or into a wall. Nor--even apart from the evidence of the custom at Bradwell, which is obviously much degraded--can it be necessary to insist on the improbability that anything would be thrown into a holy well with the idea of simply getting rid of it. The pins must have been intended, as elsewhere, to unite the thrower with the god. And the custom may accordingly be supposed to be a periodical renewal of union with the divinity, removed under Christian influences from the day of the pagan festival (perhaps May-day) to the nearest great feast-day of the Church. In the same way the Italian peasant in planting a stake in his courtyard--doubtless in the centre of his dwelling--would be renewing his union with his household god, and emphatically asserting once more his ownership of the house and his headship of the household.