Chapter XVIII

THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

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Popular as the story of the rescue of the devoted maiden is, and appealing as it does to the imagination, it is not a little remarkable that it appears to be indigenous only in the Old World. Legends of the slaughter of a destructive monster are by no means so confined in their range, where there is no specific human being to deliver; and not infrequently they form part of the cosmogony of peoples alien in race and occupying distant portions of the globe. Few of them exhibit any details in common with those of the Perseus cycle. I have already mentioned some, and to others I shall have occasion to refer hereafter. The rest it would little avail us to analyse. Enough to note that the thought underlying them all is that the monster slain is preternatural and hostile to mankind. The suggestion has often been made that these stories are traditions of the saurians which abounded in geologic times. Of this, not a particle of evidence has been adduced; and it is in itself so wildly improbable as hardly to deserve notice. None of the giant reptiles of the secondary period were contemporary with man. The process of evolution was still far short of that consummation. And when man {67} appeared in the Quaternary, or perhaps at an advanced stage of the Tertiary, period, the remains of iguanodons and pterodactyles had long been peacefully fossilised beyond his reach. It is true that he made war on the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros; but these could have furnished no hints for the construction of the winged dragon or the _lindwurm_. We may indeed reasonably ask what hints were needed beyond the existence of snakes and birds or bats? The conscious weakness of humanity, the mystery of serpentine motions, the magnifying, the combining and the distorting powers of human imagination, amply account for the result. The hero who is believed to have succeeded in vanquishing a monster thus created, is regarded as somewhat more than man; he is frequently worshipped as a god. This, however, we know, was comparatively late in civilisation. There was a time when gods, in the sense of beings distinct from and above man, though human in their passions, and more or less human in their proper form, did not exist in the belief of mankind. The worship of confessedly human ancestors, totemism, and other and ruder superstitions preceded them. Science has not yet determined the exact relations of ancestor-worship and totemism. But it is at least certain that the dead were constantly held to assume animal shape. Multitudes of the lower animals--even noxious and repulsive creatures like snakes--were venerated as totems. Veneration grows easily into worship; the totem-feast develops into what we understand by a sacrifice. That many of the classical deities themselves emerged into anthropomorphism from an earlier and less advanced existence is probable from the tales which represented them on various occasions and for various purposes “disguised in brutish forms,” and from {68} the wolves, the horses, the swine, the dogs, the mice and even the flies associated with them, or dedicated to them in the ordinary offerings of the temples or in the more secret and solemn cult of the Mysteries. Egypt, down to the latest moment of its independence, in spite of the political vicissitudes of its long and splendid history, and the consequent evolution of its manifold religious faith, never got beyond its zoomorphic deities. The crocodile and the goose, the ibis and the ram, the jackal, the cat and the bull, decorated with divine names, received in their proper bestial persons the adoration of their worshippers. To living gods like these food was a daily necessity; and for such as were carnivorous flesh, doubtless part of the daily sacrifices, must have been provided. A savage nation on days of festival, or under stress of some great impending calamity, would not hesitate to give human flesh. If, by the concurrence of an advance in civilisation and a political revolution, the worship of any such divinity were suppressed, he would become in tradition a deadly monster; and the milder divinity who succeeded to his place in popular regard would be credited with his conquest and destruction.

The hypothesis I venture to put forward to explain the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda is, that it is the record of some such religious reformation. In dealing with the previous incidents I was able to show that they were founded on beliefs, which, if we may not call them primitive, at least go down very deep into savage life. Here it is different. Considerable progress in civilisation must have been made before such a reformation could have been effected, though it would still be compatible with the continuance of a vast amount of wilful and deliberate {69} cruelty constantly inflicted on human beings in the service of the gods. The Church, that zealously propagated the legend of Saint George, regarded the tortures inflicted on the hero as highly improper for an orthodox knight, but quite suitable for a heretic. Even the polished Greeks occasionally offered human sacrifices--if we may trust some of the reports, with torments which would have done no dishonour to the genius of Saint Dominic or the most amiable of his “sons.” But the practice of presenting such offerings to wild beasts in their capacity as gods had been abandoned; and the story of the Slaughter of the Dragon would seem to be the mode wherein tradition preserved the effect upon the collective mind, not indeed of a specific event, so much as of the total result. Tradition loves to be pictorial, dramatic. While its presentations are usually wide of the actual series of occurrences, they often embody in imaginative shape some genuine memory; and it is the task of the historian or the scientific student to bid them render up the secrets they enclose.

The traces of human sacrifice among the Egyptians are faint and uncertain. Classical writers, indeed, alleged it; but they brought forward hardly any tangible evidence, beyond the statement of Plutarch--and that at second-hand--that the engraving on the seals of the Sphragistai, whose business it was to seal the beasts intended for the offerings, was a man bound and kneeling, with a knife at his throat.[69.1] Nor is there reason to suppose that in any case men or women were given during historical times to their sacred animals. We must turn to a lower range of culture for such a custom. At Bonny, on the West Coast of Africa, a virgin was bound to a stake on the sea-shore at the first {70} low water of every spring-tide, and left there as a sacrifice to the shark-god.[70.1] In the East Indies we find many traditions of such practices. “It has been somewhere related that the Rájá of Kupang, on the island of Timor, formerly sacrificed a young virgin of royal descent to the Alligator, by throwing her into the sea in order to be swallowed by that monster.”[70.2] Dr. Pleyte, the friend and pupil of the late Professor Wilken, relates “how in Boeroe at sunset, after the day’s work, the notables of the island would gather round him [Professor Wilken] and go down to the cool sea-shore, where he would sit on a rock in the midst of an improvised assembly, and the old men would tell traditions of past glories in the days when every year a maiden, chosen for her beauty, was led down to the sea as a sacrifice to the crocodile-god for the prosperity of the people.”[70.3] In the seventeenth century, Gautier Schouten, a medical man in the service of the Dutch East India Company, heard a story on the same island, which discloses a somewhat different motive for the sacrifice. A holy crocodile, it runs, having fallen in love with one of the daughters of the king of the island, who was very beautiful, ravaged the coast every day, carrying off and devouring men, women, and children. The inhabitants assembled in arms to surprise the brute and to kill it. The crocodile was prepared for this, and cried out to them in their own tongue that they should beware of insulting him, for he was mighty enough to destroy them and all their island; and that he would do so unless they delivered up to him the {71} king’s daughter; but, on the other hand, if they did this he would become the protector of the island and would load it with benefits. The islanders could not resist these promises and threats. They led the princess to the beach, and bound her to a pillar, whence the crocodile carried her off in due course, and by her became the parent of all crocodiles; on which account they are honoured as gods.[71.1] If Archdeacon Gray’s information is to be trusted, the Shurii-Kia-Miau, one of the aboriginal tribes of China, still offer human sacrifices to their canine deity, though not exactly to a living dog. They possess a large temple in which is an idol in the form of a dog. There they hold an annual religious festival, when the wealthy members of the tribe “entertain their poorer brethren at a banquet given in honour of one who has agreed, for a sum of money paid to his family, to allow himself to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of the dog idol. At the end of the banquet, the victim, having drunk wine freely, is put to death before the idol.” And the people “believe that, were they to neglect this rite, they would be visited with pestilence, famine, or the sword.”[71.2] Among the South Sea Islanders, themselves cannibals, human offerings were frequent. Their idols, it is true, were roughly human in form; yet the divinities often took the shape of other animals. Ellis relates that “birds resorting to the temple were said to feed upon the bodies of the human sacrifices, and it was imagined that {72} the god approached the temple in the birds, and thus devoured the victims placed upon the altar. In some of the islands ‘man-eater’ was an epithet of the principal deities.” To the king, who was a sacred being descended from the gods, and who often personated the god, the eye, as the most precious part of the victim, the organ or emblem of power, was presented. He feigned to eat it; the simulation being, there can be little doubt, a relic of a former period when he actually did eat the eye and probably other parts of the body. Portions of some of the victims were also eaten by the priests, who of course were also representatives of the gods.[72.1] The legends of the Greeks and Romans afford us glimpses of a belief like that of the Polynesians. How else may we interpret the stories, reported by Plutarch, of Helena, a noble virgin of Lacedæmon, who, in obedience to an oracle, was prepared for sacrifice, but was saved by an eagle carrying away the sword and laying it upon a heifer; and of Valeria Luperca, a maiden of Falerii to whom a similar adventure happened--an adventure commemorated still by a yearly ceremony in the days of Plutarch, or at least of Aristides, the author whom he cites?[72.2] The tradition of Lycaon points in the same direction. He, having offered an infant to Zeus, was changed into a wolf; and it was believed that any one who imitated his example would share his fate, though with the chance of regaining his own form if for ten years he abstained from human flesh.[72.3]

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Several of the foregoing examples exhibit the being to whom the sacrifice is offered as a crocodile, or some analogous inhabitant of the waters. Nor will it pass unnoticed that many of the tales of the Rescue of Andromeda represent the dragon as inhabiting a spring or lake, or keeping the waters and giving them only in exchange for the victim. A shark- or crocodile-god has, it would seem, a natural tendency to pass into a purely mythical being. Such is Ju-ju, an object of worship in the delta of the Niger, to which a young girl is commonly sacrificed in the way already described as customary at Bonny in sacrificing to the shark-god.[73.1] To this origin we may probably ascribe the numerous Eastern tales of dragons and evil spirits taking possession of rivers, lakes and tanks, and demanding sacrifices to induce them to release the water. The Chinese annals of Khotan, a city in Cashgar, have preserved a legend concerning a river that dried up, to the injury of the inhabitants of the city. The king, having consulted his ecclesiastical advisers, was informed that the river-dragon had interrupted the current, and advised to mollify him by a sacrifice. No sooner was the sacrifice offered than a lady came (so we are told, if the translation be accurate) out of the waters, though it is hard to know how she could do this when the river-bed was dry. But whencesoever she may have come, she declared that her husband had prematurely died, and that his demise had stopped the flow. And she required of the monarch one of his grandees as a new husband, so that the stream might resume its course. One of the nobles, named Mieou, offered himself to supply the place of the late lamented he-dragon. Mounted on a white steed, he rode into the river-bottom, {74} and boldly advanced till he met the returning waters. Nor then did he hesitate, but opening a passage amid them with his whip, he entered and was seen no more. The horse in a short time reappeared, on his back a drum of sandalwood and a letter assuring the king that Mieou had been elevated to the rank of a god, and would thenceforth watch over the prosperity of the realm. Meanwhile, the new deity begged his majesty’s acceptance of the accompanying magical drum, which, if suspended at the south-eastern gate of the city, would give warning in case of any hostile attack. Since that time the people of the city have had no cause to complain of deficiency in their water-supply.[74.1] A somewhat different cause for the human sacrifice is alleged in the following Hindu story. The Talao Lake was made by a Bargújar rajah named Menh or Mehan. When it was finished the water all became blood-red. The pandits, consulted by the rajah, declared that the water had become impure, because the work had been done by low-caste labourers; and the only way of purifying it was by sacrificing the rajah’s son, Chattar-bhuj, with his wife, his horse, and his servants, in the lake. With the consent of the principal victim the foul water was drained off, and a room was built in the floor of the lake for the reception of Chattar-bhuj and his household. They accordingly entered it, provided with six months’ food. The room was then closed, and a temple built over it. The result was satisfactory, for when the pool was filled at the next rainy season the water remained pure. “It is the universal belief that whenever the lake overflows,” the rajah’s son “is seen by night riding down the hill from the {75} highest point on a blue horse. Some say that two torches are carried before him, and that his servants follow behind, until all disappear into the lake. Others say that his appearance on the blue horse precedes the fall of rain.”[75.1] Both these cases look like legends which have grown up, in consequence of a change of population or religion, to account for an ancient worship, and for a divinity still believed to haunt the spot, and still regarded with awe, though no longer the object of the special honours at one time rendered to him.[75.2] In the latter story, as it reaches us, there is no mention of a dragon or other supernatural being. It would seem, however, to be implied in the sacrifice, as well as in the temple erected by the rajah.

But, though this may be a true explanation of the story of the Talao Lake, it will generally be agreed that the legend could not have assumed its present form had not human sacrifices to water and water-gods been familiar to the natives of India. The sacred books of the Aryans prescribe human sacrifices on divers occasions to various deities; and it is doubtful whether even yet British rule has entirely extinguished them. Among the aboriginal tribes they have been put down with extreme difficulty. All over India the folktales are full of them; and many are the sagas relating to the consecration of tanks in this way. I need only add two instances. “At Ahmadábád, by the advice of a Brahman, a childless Ványa was induced to dig a tank to appease the goddess Sítalá. The water refused to enter it without the sacrifice of a man. As soon as the victim’s blood fell on the ground the tank filled, and the {76} goddess came down from heaven to rescue the victim. The Vadála lake in Bombay likewise refused to hold water till the local spirit was appeased by the sacrifice of the daughter of the village headman.”[76.1] Among the records of actual sacrifices to water, the author of the treatise on the names of rivers and mountains attributed to Plutarch cites Archelaus (a philosopher of the fifth century before Christ, whose works have perished) for the statement that virgins were nailed to wooden crosses and flung into the Hydaspes, one of the five great rivers (tributaries of the Indus) from which the Panjáb takes its name. These offerings were accompanied by hymns addressed to a goddess called by the writer Aphrodite--probably Párvatí, to whom in her character of Kálí there is reason to suspect that human victims are still presented in remote places.[76.2] As Párvatí, however, she is still, with her husband Siva, the joint object of an instructive rite in the Kánagrá district during some part of March and April. The girls of the village procure two clay images, the one of Siva and the other of Párvatí, which they marry together with full ceremonial. A feast follows; and on the Sankránt of Baisákh (in April) “they all go together to the riverside, throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place, as though they were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the neighbourhood often annoy them by diving after the images, bringing them up, and waving them about while the girls are crying over them.” The custom is called _Ralí Ka melá_ or the Fair of Ralí, “the _Ralí_ being a small painted earthen image of Siva or Párvatí”; and its object is said to be to {77} secure good husbands.[77.1] “Until the beginning of the present century,” says Mr. Crooke, “the custom of offering a first-born child to the Ganges was common”; and he goes on to suggest that “akin to this is the Gangá Játra, or murder of sick relatives on the bank of the sacred river, of which a case occurred quite recently at Calcutta.” However this may be, the natives are still suspicious when a bridge is built. “The Narbadá, it was believed, would never allow herself to be bridged until she carried away part of the superstructure and caused the loss of lives as a sacrifice.” And the rumours that a victim was required when the Hooghly Bridge at Calcutta was built, and when the waterworks of Benares were constructed, point to a wide prevalence of the superstition that these and other great public works demand a human sacrifice.[77.2]

On the western continent there lingers among the Zuñi, one of the four stocks of Pueblo Indians in Arizona and New Mexico, a tradition pointing to the prevalence at one time of human sacrifices to water. Zuñi is built upon a knoll in a broad valley walled by picturesque mesas or tablelands, of red and white sandstone. The waters of the valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a mesa several hundred feet high for safety. And {78} still the waters rose, threatening to submerge the mesa itself, until the priests determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them. The two were dressed in their most beautiful clothes, adorned with many necklaces of turquoise and other precious beads, and cast into the flood. The offering stayed the calamity; and the victims, turned to stone, are yet to be seen in a columnar rock broken near the top into two parts, which are capped with head-like forms and called by the people the father and mother rocks.[78.1]

Europe furnishes numerous remains of human sacrifice to water. At Rome, during historical times, the Vestal Virgins threw from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber, every year on the Ides of May, thirty human effigies formed of rushes. We cannot doubt that at an earlier period living men were hurled into the flood. This was the opinion entertained by the Romans themselves, who held that it was Hercules who first substituted images of straw.[78.2] A similar substitution is practised in India by the Gonds in their offerings to Burha deo; and, we are told, they find it answers the purpose;[78.3] as did the Romans.

Human sacrifices to water were certainly not unknown among the ancient Greeks. I need not cite more than two examples. Athenæus quotes Anticlides, an Athenian writer, as recording that certain colonists of Lesbos were directed {79} by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea as an offering to Poseidon. This was accordingly done; but Enalos, one of the chiefs of the expedition, being in love with the maiden, leaped after her to save her, and disappeared with her in the depths. The colonists founded Methymna; and in later years when the town had grown populous he was said to have shown himself to them again, swimming to land on a great wave with a wondrous cup of gold in his hand, and to have related that the lady was dwelling beneath the sea with the Nereids, while he himself had become Master of the Horse to Poseidon.[79.1] Such a legend as this could only have arisen where sacrifices of the kind had been practised. In historical times the Greeks performed the rites of Adonis, originally, it would seem, a Semitic cult. Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite, according to his story, was slain by a boar. “His death was annually lamented with bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial, and then thrown into the sea or into springs; and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day.”[79.2] If not in Greece, at all events in Syria, whence perhaps it was borrowed, the ceremony here described was doubtless performed with a human being. Mr. Frazer, from whom I take the foregoing description, has made a large collection of cases in which an effigy is prepared and, after the performance of certain rites, is slain and buried, or thrown into the water. We may put aside the instances of burial, only noting them as evidence that the intention is to put some living victim, represented by the effigy, to death. At Altdorf and Weingarten, {80} villages of Swabia, a straw man is made on Ash Wednesday and called the “Carnival Fool.” He is carried round and then thrown with mournful music into the water.[80.1] At Balwe, in Westphalia, on the contrary, the straw-man is thrown into the river Hönne with shouts of joy on Shrove Tuesday. In both instances the ceremony is called “burying the Carnival.”[80.2] In the Thuringian villages of Oberhain and Maukenbach the children used to “carry out Death” in the shape of a puppet of birchen twigs, on Mid-Lent Sunday, and throw it into a pool.[80.3] “At Tabor, in Bohemia, the figure of Death is carried out of the town and flung from a high rock into the water, while” the following song is sung:

“Death swims on the water, Summer will soon be here, We have carried Death away for you, We have brought the Summer. And do thou, O holy Marketa Give us a good year For wheat and for rye.”[80.4]

Passing over a number of similar observances in German and Slavonic lands, I need only mention the “Funeral of Kostroma” as celebrated in Russia on Saint Peter’s day, the 29th June. “In the Murom district, Kostroma was represented by a straw figure dressed in woman’s clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At last the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and ornaments, trod the straw of which it was made under foot, and flung it into {81} the stream, while the defenders of the figure hid their faces in their hands, and pretended to bewail the death of Kostroma.” Elsewhere a maiden plays the part of Kostroma. She is treated with reverence, carried to the brink of a stream and there bathed.[81.1] In some Swabian villages, where the Carnival Fool is represented by a living man, he is treated less gently, being at last thrown into the water.[81.2]

All these customs are perfectly unambiguous. Whatever their agricultural significance (and I see no reason to doubt that the sense attached to them by Mannhardt and Frazer is accurate) they are unquestionably relics of human sacrifice to water. The victim may have been identified with the spirit of vegetation or with some more concrete expression of the same idea, and the ceremonies themselves may have been dramatic in character; but that is in no way inconsistent with their being also sacrificial. Moreover, we have other traces of the same kind of oblation, in the superstition so widely prevalent in this island, as well as in Germany, of the periodical victim demanded by a river or lake. On the banks of the Saal in Thuringia, especially among the fisher-folk of Jena, it is even yet believed that the Saal-nixe requires a sacrifice every year; and the lake at Salzungen boils with rage unless it obtain its yearly offering.[81.3] On the island of Rügen there is a vague tradition of a lake which would rise and overwhelm the entire {82} country, unless a maiden were offered to it every year. At Trampke in Pomerania a peasant was once ploughing near the Lake of Madüe, when he heard a voice out of the pool cry: “Now, come! Now is the time!” He looked around him puzzled, and again the voice exclaimed in more imperious tones: “Now, come! Now is the time!” Thereupon, mastered by an uncontrollable impulse, he left the plough, rushed to the mere and flung himself in. His farm-servant, who was spreading manure, ran to his assistance and drew him out of the water; but an instant later he plunged in again and was dragged by the water-maiden down to the bottom.[82.1] Always before anybody is drowned in the Lahn near Giessen there is heard--the millers and bleachers engaged on the river are ready to vouch for it--between eleven and twelve o’clock in the day a loud cry: “The time is here, the hour is here; where is the man?” It is said that two lads were one evening by the Mümmling, not far from Michelstadt, when a voice called from under the bridge: “The hour is here, but not the man!” At that moment a man hurried down the hill and was about to jump into the river. The lads caught him, held him back, and spoke to him; but he answered never a word. They took him to the inn and pressed some wine upon him. His head, however, sank forward on the table; and he was dead. Among other German rivers which demand an annual human victim are the Fulda and the Neckar.[82.2] The Lorelei is a nixe of the Rhine, famous for the number of her slain. Nor is she alone in her misdeeds; but the legends of sirens haunting German rivers are too numerous and too well known to require illustration. {83} An old spring at Friedberg used every year to require an offering, and if it happened that no one fell in during the year, it cried out: “Come down, come down!” and anybody who was in the neighbourhood and heard the voice would be irresistibly drawn into the fountain.[83.1] The Drome in Normandy, according to a local proverb, has every year horse or man.[83.2] Peg Powler, Nanny Powler, Peg o’ Nell, and Jenny Greenteeth, are spirits that haunt various rivers and pools in the north of England; and they are not less bloodthirsty;[83.3] while in Scotland, the kelpie and his congeners are familiar.

Among Europeans the superstition seems in this form to belong especially to Teutonic peoples. In other parts of the world, however, not a few examples are to be gleaned. The Indians of Guiana “firmly believe in the reality of” certain “mermaids, or ‘water māmās,’ as they are called in Dutch-creole; and where they are supposed to have their caves or nests, there great danger awaits the traveller. Some are related to be extremely beautiful and possessing long golden hair, like the Lorelei, and whoever casts his eye on them is seized with madness, jumps into the deep water, and never returns. Others are hideous, snakes being twined about them, and with their long white talons they drag boats under the surface and devour their occupants. On the Orinoco and Amazon similar creatures are supposed to exist; but these are capable of drawing their prey into their mouths at a distance of a hundred yards. In order to avoid such a calamity, the natives always blow a horn before entering a creek or lagoon in {84} which one of these monsters may be living; if it happens to be there, it will immediately answer the horn, and thus give warning to the intruder.”[84.1] The people of Guiana having come under the influence of the Dutch, may be supposed to have learned the superstition from them; but this can hardly be thought of the natives of the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazons. In like manner the belief in South Africa that rivers call their victims, who cannot resist the fascination, may be attributed to the Dutch colonists. Here again the ascription of such an origin must be very doubtful, though it is perhaps right to take note of the same intrusive Teutons. The Rev. James Macdonald, who laboured for twelve years among various Bantu tribes, says that “to the Bathlapin the crocodile is sacred, and by all it is revered, but rather under the form of fear than affection”; and he regards the superstition (which reigns even where there are no crocodiles) as “the survival of an ancient recollection of the time when the ancestors of the present Kaffirs dwelt on the margin of rivers infested by these murderous brutes, and where they often saw their women drawn underneath when going to the river to fetch water.”[84.2] There may be some reason for this conjecture. It probably expresses, however, only half the truth, since if the crocodile were revered, offerings would naturally be made to it, as in fact we have seen to be the case in other parts of Africa. In Senegal the water-spirits {85} appear in crocodile form. A legend is told of a girl to whom the spirit presented himself as a fair youth; but when she listened to his overtures he turned into a horrible cayman.[85.1] The Bantu tribes are believers also in a mysterious being called an “incanti” which often inhabits rivers, and whose glance is fatal. “While we were living at Duff,” says the writer just cited, “a man was found dead one morning close by the river’s bank, not far from the mission. It was clearly a case of suicide by poisoning, but our native neighbours regarded it as a case of having seen an incanti, and no one would approach the spot for months. The pools were bewitched, haunted, bedevilled.”[85.2] The Zulus tell of a bloated, squatting, bearded monster dwelling in rivers. It steals the clothing and ornaments of girls who come to bathe, and is capable of swallowing men and beasts. Happily, however, it is amenable to prayers.[85.3] Another “imaginary amphibious creature, mostly abiding in the deep portions of the rivers,” is the subject of Zulu superstition. It is universally believed that “aided by some mysterious and evil influence, the nature of which no one can define or explain, bad persons may enter into a league with” it, as they can also with {86} wolves, baboons, and jackals.[86.1] On the whole it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to lay much emphasis on the superstitions mentioned in the present paragraph, since we lack the independent evidence which we have concerning the Teutons and Slavs, of customs pointing to human sacrifices to water.

The ancient Mexicans, however, were innocent of Dutch influence. Yet, if we may believe Sahagun, they had their water-monsters as malignant as those of the Bantus. Among these monsters, and by no means the only one, was the Ahuizotl, pictorially represented as a smooth, rat-like animal with a long prehensile tail, accompanied by the sign for water. The tail was believed to be furnished at its extremity with a hand, wherewith it dragged down into the depths of the pool where it abode any person who approached the banks. A few days afterwards, the body was cast up again, and then found to be deprived of eyes, teeth, and nails. No one dared to touch it, but the priests, who, when informed of its presence, would fetch it “on a litter with great reverence and bury it in one of the oratories called Ayauhcalco--literally house in, or surrounded by, water. For it was said that the Tlalocs (or rain-gods) had sent his soul to the terrestrial paradise. They adorned the litter with mace-reeds, and it was preceded by musicians playing on flutes.” The reasons assigned for such a death were that “either the deceased had been very good, and therefore the rain-gods desired his company in the terrestrial paradise; or he had perchance certain precious stones in his possession. This would give offence to the rain-gods, who do not wish that persons should {87} possess precious stones, and for this reason they may have killed him in anger, but nevertheless taken him to the terrestrial paradise.” His relatives found consolation, not merely in the belief that he was with the gods in paradise, but also that through him they themselves would become rich and prosperous.[87.1] Here the sacred character of the corpse, its place and manner of burial, and the superstitions concerning the departed point with tolerable certainty to a religious offering; and the conclusion is altogether in harmony with what we know of the bloodthirsty Aztec rites.

Passing with these illustrations away from sacrifices to water, and from legends of water-monsters, we may note that another object with which the sagas of dragons are connected is a hill, often shown as the creature’s resting-place. He lies curled upon it, or around it, or dwells in a cave or den. Thus the Lambton Worm lay coiled thrice about the base of an oval hill on the northern bank of the Wear. I am not aware what this oval hill may be; but some of the hills mentioned in these stories are prehistoric barrows. Mr. Andrew Lang published some years ago a story from Galloway of a snake that used to lie twined round the tumulus at Dalry. “In colour it was snow-white, and the thickest part of its body was as thick as three bags of meal. This creature was a terror to all the neighbourhood, as it not only destroyed cattle and men, but had an ugly habit of going at night to the neighbouring churchyard, digging up coffins with its claws, and devouring the newly dead.” The Lord of Galloway offered a reward for its destruction. But one of his knights was swallowed up by the serpent, horse and armour and all; and another was {88} deterred by evil omens. The adventure was then undertaken, as at Deerhurst, by a smith, who devised a suit of armour for himself covered with long sharp spikes which could be drawn in or thrust out at the wearer’s will. Scarcely was his armour completed when the smith’s young and beautiful wife died, and was buried in the churchyard. The night after the funeral the smith came upon the brute scraping the earth from the newly-made grave, and attacked it vigorously. The snake swallowed him whole; but as he slipped down its throat he suddenly shot out his spikes, rolling about violently inside. This was more than the creature had bargained for; and in a short time the smith by strenuous efforts tore his way through his enemy’s carcase. There lay the serpent quite dead, and for three days following the river Ken ran red with its blood. “Here,” says Mr. Andrew Lang, “the story should properly end; but a later and more romantic fancy has added that at the very moment of victory the second knight arrived on the spot, and, in a fury of disappointed ambition, attacked the smith, who of course was as victorious in the second fight as he had been in the first.”[88.1] With all deference to Mr. Lang’s great authority, I venture to think that the second knight’s attack was part of the original story, embodying as it seems to do the germ of the Impostor incident so common in Rescue tales. Be this, however, as it may, the point whereto I desire to direct attention is that the connection of the snake with a prehistoric tumulus, and that of other dragons with hills or mounds, both in this country and on the Continent, is probably not without its significance. {89} There, if anywhere, sacrifices would have been offered in early times; and their memory, transformed by the popular imagination into the form of a dragon with a propensity for human flesh, may have lingered for many a century after their abolition. But to raise this beyond the value of a conjecture careful inquiry and comparison of instances, for which I have no opportunity at present, would be required. I may point out, however, that the conjecture is countenanced by analogous legends of dragons haunting other sacred spots. At Aarhuus in Denmark, for instance, bodies placed overnight for the funeral solemnities in the cathedral frequently disappeared by the morning. A dragon whose lair was near the cathedral had eaten them. At length a strolling glazier devised a coffin of mirrors, pierced by one hole just large enough to thrust a sword through; and he caused himself to be laid within it in the cathedral. Around the coffin stood four tapers, which he lighted at midnight. When the prowling dragon beheld its reflection in the mirrors it drew nigh, deeming the image to be its mate. The glazier instantly thrust his sword through the hole of the coffin into his enemy’s throat; but he himself perished in the floods of blood and venom that spouted from the body of the dying monster. An ancient image in the church is said to preserve the memory of the heroic act, as at Mansfeld, Deerhurst, and elsewhere.[89.1]

It is hardly necessary for the completion of the argument to enumerate any stories of rescue of human sacrifices to beings confessedly worshipped as divine, or at least superhuman. Yet one or two specimens may not be without interest. They cannot be numerous, because the rescue {90} itself implies an insult to, and almost a denial of, the divinity. Wherefore we must look for them only, or chiefly, among races who practise a tolerant religion like the Buddhist, which whithersoever its conquests extended, permitted the continuance of offerings to the overshadowed and indigenous gods. We will begin with Japan, where we have already found legends corresponding to that of Andromeda. A young warrior wandering in the northern province one evening lost his way in the mountains; and reaching at length a small secluded shrine, where there was only just room for him to lie down, he took shelter within it and soon fell fast asleep. About midnight he was awakened by a noise. Peeping through the interstices of the timber walls of his refuge, he espied a troop of cats engaged in a wild, unnatural dance by the light of the moon, and yelling in fiendish tones. As he kept perfectly still in his hiding-place and listened, he could distinguish, incessantly repeated amid their shrieks, the words: “Don’t tell Shippei Taro! Keep it secret! Don’t tell Shippei Taro!” The midnight hour passed away, and with it the mysterious cats, leaving him in peace for the rest of the night. In the morning he found a path leading to a village. As he drew near he heard a sound of weeping, and entering the nearest hut, he inquired what was the matter. He was told that the mountain-spirit required the sacrifice of a maiden every year, and the very next night was the appointed time. On further inquiry he learnt that the shrine he had just left was the scene of the offering, and that it was customary to place the victim in a cage in the immediate neighbourhood. Recalling the incidents of the past night he next inquired who Shippei Taro was, and was told that Shippei Taro was the name of the great dog belonging {91} to the chief officer of the prince who lived not very far away. To this personage accordingly he went, and asked for the loan of the dog for the following night. After hearing his story the dog’s master consented and handed over Shippei Taro to the stranger. To arrange with the girl’s parents to keep her safely at home, and to put Shippei Taro into the cage in her stead was the next business. Having accomplished these things the youth betook himself to the shrine and awaited what would happen. At midnight when the moon had risen over the mountains the cats returned in full cry led by a gigantic black tom-cat, in whom our adventurer without difficulty recognised the dreaded mountain-spirit. The tom-cat approached the cage with hideous shrieks of delight and danced around it. At length he opened it and peered in, searching for his victim. In an instant Shippei Taro leaped upon him and held him with his teeth, while the warrior with one well-aimed blow put an end to the brute. Turning then on the other cats, hound and man speedily put them to flight and destroyed not a few. The rout was complete; and from that time no more human sacrifices have been offered to the mountain-spirit.[91.1]

{92}

One of the aboriginal tribes of India, now Buddhist, has preserved a somewhat similar instance of the abolition of these offerings. “The early religion of Láhaul is still known under the name of _Lung pe Chhoi_, that is, the religion of the valley. When it was flourishing many bloody, and even human, sacrifices seem to have been regularly offered up to certain _Chá_, that is, gods or evil spirits residing in or near old pencil cedar-trees, rocks, caves, etc. This cruel custom disappeared gradually after the doctrine of the Buddhists had influenced for a time the minds of the people. There is a story which I shall relate, as it seems to show that this was the case. Near the village of Kailang a large dry pencil cedar-tree was standing till last year, when we felled it for firewood: the story goes that before this tree in ancient times a child of eight years old was annually sacrificed to make the spirit who resided in it well disposed towards the inhabitants of Kailang. The children seem to have been supplied in turn by the different families of the village. It happened one year to be a widow who had to give up an only child of the required age of eight years. The day before her only one was to be taken from her, she was crying loudly, when a travelling Láma from Tibet met her, and asked the cause of her distress. Having heard her story, the Láma said: ‘Well, I will go instead of your child.’ He did so, but did not allow himself to be killed. ‘The spirit must kill me himself if he wants human flesh,’ said he: so saying, he sat down before the tree and waited for a long time, but as the demon made no attack on him he became angry, took down from the tree the signs and effigies, and threw them into the Bhága river, telling the people not to sacrifice any more human beings, which advice was followed from that {93} time forward. The demon fled and settled on the top of the Koko Pass, where it still dwells under the name of _Kailang Chá_, or god of Kailang, getting now only the annual sacrifice of a sheep supplied by the shepherds.” The writer from whom I quote goes on to state that (contrary to the principles of Buddhism) sheep and goats are yearly killed near not a few villages in Láhaul, and offered up to the Chá, and he hazards the opinion these animals have taken the place of men.[93.1] I am not aware what evidence there may be for this substitution beyond the foregoing tradition. At Manáli in Kúlú, also in Northern India, is a temple of some antiquity to Manú Rikhi. In front of it stands an altar of stone, supporting a pile of spruce logs, which are replaced, three at a time, every three years. An annual fair is held on the spot, at which a _keprá_ (literally, evil form) or mask of Tundi is carried about. Tundi Bhút was a local _dait_ or demon who conquered the _deotas_ or gods, and demanded one of their sisters in marriage. Manú in turn vanquished him at Khoksar in Lahul and compelled him to marry instead “the daughter of a Tháwi or mason, named Túnar Sháchká, who appears in other stories as a Rakhsháin.” The temple was erected to commemorate Manú’s success; but the tale does not account for the spruce logs. To explain these it is popularly said that Tundi devoured men and that Manú, having conquered him, put the logs into his mouth and killed him.[93.2] Whatever the real significance of the logs may be, it is probable that we have here a legend of the suppression of human sacrifice. Other stories of substitution have been mentioned in the {94} course of the foregoing pages. And the legend of Abraham, which will occur to every reader, points back to a period when the fathers of the Hebrew nation, in common with the surrounding peoples, practised human sacrifices. But with substitution, as distinguished from rescue, we are hardly concerned.

Still less need we discuss the revolting subject of human sacrifice in general. The stories I have cited (and they could easily be multiplied) are intended to confirm the hypothesis that we have in the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda a reminiscence of the abolition of human sacrifices to deities in the shape of the lower animals. I have shown that in certain stages of civilisation sacrifices of the kind are practised, and that they are frequently offered to water-spirits conceived in animal form. In offerings to water, and in traditions of water-spirits, we have the product of savage animism. And it may, of course, be that the monster sent to devour Andromeda, and that which appears so often in the legend of Saint George, are to be regarded simply as the personification of water, or of specific rivers and pools, in their sinister aspect. Strictly speaking, however, personification belongs to a higher plane of thought than that which finds the spirit embodied as an actual living creature. Moreover, the dragon is by no means invariably connected with water; and in estimating the probability of this explanation we must not overlook the tales which represent it as having its abode on a hill or mound, or in a cave.