The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

225

Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6. 24.

226

Livy, vii. 1-3. The plague raged from 365 to 363 b. c., when it was happily stayed in the manner described in the text.

227

Livy, ix. 28. This happened in the year 313 b. c.

228

Livy, viii. 18. These events took place in 331 b. c.

229

Livy, vii. 3. Livy says nothing as to the place where the nails were affixed; but from Festus (p. 56 ed. C. O. Müller) we learn that it was the wall of a temple, and as the date of the ceremony was also the date of the dedication of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol (Plutarch, Publicola, 14), we may fairly conjecture that this temple was the scene of the rite. It is the more necessary to call attention to the uncertainty which exists on this point because modern writers, perhaps misunderstanding the words of Livy, have commonly stated as a fact what is at best only a more or less probable hypothesis. Octavian seems to have provided for the knocking of a nail into the temple of Mars by men who had held the office of censor. See Dio Cassius, lv. 10, ἧλόν τε αὐτῷ ὑπὸ τῶν τιμητευσάντων προσπήγνυσθαι.

230

Livy, vii. 3. Festus speaks (p. 56 ed. C. O. Müller) of “the annual nail, which was fixed in the walls of temples for the purpose of numbering the years,” as if the practice were common. From Cicero's passing reference to the custom (“Ex hoc die clavum anni movebis,” Epist. ad Atticum, v. 15. 1) we see that it was matter of notoriety. Hence we may safely reject Mommsen's theory, which Mr. W. Warde Fowler is disposed to accept (The Roman Festivals of the period of the Republic, London, 1899, pp. 234 sq.), that the supposed annual custom never existed except in the brains of Roman Dryasdusts.

231

See Livy and Festus, ll.cc.

232

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 63.

233

County Folk-lore, Suffolk, edited by Lady E. C. Gurdon (London, 1893), p. 14. In the north-west Highlands of Scotland it used to be customary to bury a black cock alive on the spot where an epileptic patient fell down. Along with the cock were buried parings of the patient's nails and a lock of his hair. See (Sir) Arthur Mitchell, On various Superstitions in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1862), p. 26; J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), p. 97. Probably the disease was supposed to be buried with the cock in the ground. The ancient Hindoos imagined that epilepsy was caused by a dog-demon. When a boy fell down in a fit, his father or other competent person used to wrap the sufferer in a net, and carry him into the hall, not through the door, but through an opening made for the purpose in the roof. Then taking up some earth in the middle of the hall, at the place where people gambled, he sprinkled the spot with water, cast dice on it, and laid the boy on his back on the dice. After that he prayed to the dog-demon, saying, “Doggy, let him loose! Reverence be to thee, barker, bender! Doggy, let him loose! Reverence be to thee, barker, bender!” See The Grihya Sutras, translated by H. Oldenberg, Part i. (Oxford, 1886) pp. 296 sq.; id. Part ii. (Oxford, 1892) pp. 219 sq., 286 sq. (Sacred Books of the East, vols. xxix. and xxx.). Apparently the place where people gambled was for some reason supposed to be a spot where an epileptic could divest himself most readily of his malady. But the connexion of thought is obscure.

234

The analogy of the Roman custom to modern superstitious practices has been rightly pointed out by Mr. E. S. Hartland (Folk-lore, iv. (1893) pp. 457, 464; Legend of Perseus, ii. 188), but I am unable to accept his general explanation of these and some other practices as modes of communion with a divinity.

235

A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste (Jena, 1874-1875), ii. 176.

236

A. Bastian, op. cit. ii. 175-178. Compare Father Campana, “Congo, Mission Catholique de Landana,” Les Missions Catholiques, xxvii. (1895) p. 93; Notes Analytiques sur les Collections Ethnographiques du Musée du Congo, i. (Brussels, 1902-1906) pp. 153, 246; B. H. Mullen, “Fetishes from Landana, South-West Africa,” Man, v. (1905) pp. 102-104; R. E. Dennett, “Bavili Notes,” Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) pp. 382 sqq.; id., At the Back of the Black Man's Mind (London, 1906), pp. 85 sqq., 91 sqq. The Ethnological Museum at Berlin possesses a number of rude images from Loango and Congo, which are thickly studded with nails hammered into their bodies. The intention of the custom, as explained to me by Professor von Luschan, is to pain the fetish and so to refresh his memory, lest he should forget to do his duty.

237

Sir John Rhys, “Celtae and Galli,” Proceedings of the British Academy, ii. (1905-1906) pp. 114 sq.

238

Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (London, 1894), ii. 598 sq., note.

239

A. Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S., iii. (1865) p. 228.

240

J. Büttikoffer, “Einiges über die Eingebornen von Liberia,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, i. (1888) p. 85.

241

Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897) pp. 442 sq.

242

G. Zündel, “Land und Volk der Eweer auf der Sclavenküste in Westafrika,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, xii. (1877) pp. 412-414. Full details as to the religious creed of the Ewes, including their belief in a Supreme Being (Mawu), are given, to a great extent in the words of the natives themselves, by the German missionary Jakob Spieth in his elaborate and valuable works Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906) and Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo (Leipsic, 1911). As to Mawu in particular, the meaning of whose name is somewhat uncertain, see J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme, pp. 421 sqq.; Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo, pp. 15 sqq.

243

Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper Congo River,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) p. 377.

244

Rev. John H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 261.

245

Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper Congo River,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) pp. 368, 370. The singular form of mingoli is mongoli, “a disembodied spirit.” Compare id., Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 252; and again ibid. p. 275. But great as is the fear of evil spirits among the natives of the Congo, their dread of witchcraft seems to be still more intense. See Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) pp. 51 sq.: “The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways, and touches them socially at a hundred different points. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other. A man may believe any theory he likes about creation, about God, and about the abode of departed spirits, but he must believe in witches and their influence for evil, and must in unmistakable terms give expression to that belief, or be accused of witchcraft himself… But for witchcraft no one would die, and the earnest longing of all right-minded men and women is to clear it out of the country by killing every discovered witch. It is an act of self-preservation… Belief in witches is interwoved into the very fibre of every Bantu-speaking man and woman, and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch, to be killed as soon as possible.” Could we weigh against each other the two great terrors which beset the minds of savages all over the world, it seems probable that the dread of witches would be found far to outweigh the dread of evil spirits. However, it is the fear of evil spirits with which we are at present concerned.

246

G. McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) pp. 405 sq.

247

On this subject Mr. Dudley Kidd has made some judicious observations (Savage Childhood, London, 1906, pp. 131 sq.). He says: “The Kafirs certainly do not live in everlasting dread of spirits, for the chief part of their life is not spent in thinking at all. A merrier set of people it would be hard to find. They are so easy-going that it would seem to them too much burden to be for ever thinking of spirits.”

248

(Sir) E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana. (London, 1883), pp. 356 sq. As to the dread which the Brazilian Indians entertain of demons, see J. B. von Spix and C. F. Ph. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien (Munich, 1823-1831), iii. 1108-1111.

249

W. Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land (London, 1911), pp. 118, 119.

250

L. M. Turner, “Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory,” Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1894), pp. 193 sq.

251

W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), i. 331.

252

W. Ellis, op. cit. i. 406.

253

The Voyages of Captain James Cook round the World (London, 1809), vi. 152.

254

R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, Second Edition (London, 1870), p. 104.

255

J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde (Berlin, 1888), i. 46.

256

J. Kubary, “Die Bewohner der Mortlock-Inseln,” Mittheilungen der geographischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg, 1878-79, p. 36.

257

W. A. Reed, Negritos of Zambales (Manilla, 1904), p. 65 (Ethnological Survey Publications, vol. ii. Part i.).

258

Mgr. Couppé “En Nouvelle-Poméranie,” Les Missions Catholiques, xxiii. (1891) pp. 355 sq.

259

P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, preface dated 1906), pp. 336 sq. Compare Joachim Graf Pfeil, Studien und Beobachtungen aus der Südsee (Brunswick, 1899), p. 159; id., in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxvii. (1898) pp. 183 sq.

260

R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 120, 121.

261

J. L. van Hasselt, “Die Papuastämme an der Geelvinkbai (Neu-guinea),” Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Jena, ix. (1891) p. 98. As to Mr. van Hasselt's twenty-five years' residence among these savages, see id., p. 22.

262

Stefan Lehner, “Bukaua,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. (Berlin, 1911) pp. 414-416.

263

W. G. Lawes, “Notes on New Guinea and its Inhabitants,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1880, p. 615.

264

J. G. F. Riedel, “Die Landschaft Dawan oder West-Timor,” Deutsche geographische Blätter, x. 278 sq.

265

G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers (Dordrecht, 1875), p. 148.

266

N. P. Wilken en J. A. Schwarz, “Het heidendom en de Islam in Bolaang Mongondou,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xi. (1867) p. 259.

267

R. van Eck, “Schetsen van het eiland Bali,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, August, 1880, p. 83.

268

S. E. Harthoorn, “De Zending op Java en meer bepaald die van Malang,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, iv. (1860) pp. 116 sq.

269

C. A. L. M. Schwaner, Borneo, Beschrijving van het stroomgebied van den Barito (Amsterdam, 1853-54), i. 176.

270

J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane- en Bila-stroomgebied,” Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, iii. Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (Amsterdam, 1886), p. 287.

271

B. Hagen, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xxviii. (1883) p. 508. The persons of the Batta Trinity are Bataraguru, Sori, and Balabulan. The most fundamental distinction between the persons of the Trinity appears to be that one of them is allowed to eat pork, while the others are not (ibid. p. 505).

272

M. Joustra, “Het leven, de zeden en gewoonten der Bataks,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 412.

273

The Census of India, 1901, vol. iii. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, by Lieut. – Colonel Sir Richard C. Temple (Calcutta, 1903), p. 206.

274

Borie, “Notice sur les Mantras, tribu sauvage de la péninsule Malaise,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, x. (1860) p. 434.

275

S. Krascheninnikow, Beschreibung des Landes Kamtschatka (Lemgo, 1766), p. 215.

276

We may compare the instructive remarks made by Mr. W. E. Maxwell on the stratification of religious beliefs among the Malays (“The Folk-lore of the Malays,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 7, June, 1881, pp. 11 sq.). He says: “Two successive religious changes have taken place among them, and when we have succeeded in identifying the vestiges of Brahmanism which underly the external forms of the faith of Muhammed, long established in all Malay kingdoms, we are only half-way through our task. There yet remain the powerful influences of the still earlier indigenous faith to be noted and accounted for. Just as the Buddhists of Ceylon turn, in times of sickness and danger, not to the consolations offered by the creed of Buddha, but to the propitiation of the demons feared and reverenced by their early progenitors, and just as the Burmese and Talaings, though Buddhists, retain in full force the whole of the Nat superstition, so among the Malays, in spite of centuries which have passed since the establishment of an alien worship, the Muhammedan peasant may be found invoking the protection of Hindu gods against the spirits of evil with which his primitive faith has peopled all natural objects.”

277

H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (Berlin, 1894), pp. 39 sq.

278

Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1883), pp. 210 sq.

279

Monier Williams, op. cit. pp. 230 sq. The views here expressed by the late Professor Monier Williams are confirmed from personal knowledge by Mr. E. T. Atkinson, The Himalayan Districts of the North-Western Provinces of India, ii. (Allahabad, 1884) p. 840.

280

E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal (Calcutta, 1872), pp. 256, 257, 258.

281

Rev. S. Endle, The Kacharis (London, 1911), p. 33.

282

Bertram S. Carey and H. N. Tuck, The Chin Hills, i. (Rangoon, 1896) p. 196.

283

L. A. Waddell, “Demonolatry in Sikhim Lamaism,” The Indian Antiquary, xxiii. (1894) p. 197.

284

L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895), p. 152.

285

Lt. – Colonel J. Shakespear, The Lushei Kuki Clans (London, 1912), pp. 61, 65 sq., 67.

286

Rev. S. Mateer, The Land of Charity (London, 1883), p. 207.

287

R. Percival, Account of the Island of Ceylon, Second Edition (London, 1805), pp. 211-213.

288

C. J. F. S. Forbes, British Burma (London, 1878), pp. 221 sq.

289

Shway Yoe, The Burman, his Life and Notions (London, 1882), i. 276 sq.

290

Shway Yoe, op. cit. i. 278. “To the Burman,” says A. Bastian, “the whole world is filled with nats. Mountains, rivers, waters, the earth, etc., have all their nat.” (Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 497).

291

Mgr. Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam (Paris, 1854), i. 42.

292

C. Bock, Temples and Elephants (London, 1884), p. 198.

293

Mgr. Bruguière, in Annales de l'Association de la Propagation de la Foi, v. (1831) p. 128.

294

J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900), pp. 400 sqq.

295

A. Bourlet, “Les Thay,” Anthropos, ii. (1907) p. 619.

296

A. Bourlet, op. cit. p. 632.

297

J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, v. (Leyden, 1907) p. 470.

298

J. J. M. de Groot, op. cit. vi. (Leyden, 1910) pp. 930-932. This sixth volume of Professor de Groot's great work is mainly devoted to an account of the ceaseless war waged by the Chinese people on demons or spectres (kwei). A more summary notice of this curious national delusion will be found in his work The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910), chapter ii., “The Struggle against Spectres,” pp. 33-61.

299

Mrs. Bishop (Isabella L. Bird), Korea and her Neighbours (London, 1898), ii. 227 sq., 229. I have taken the liberty of changing the writer's “daemon” and “daemoniacal” into “demon” and “demoniacal.”

300

C. von Dittmar, “Über die Koräken und die ihnen sehr nahe verwandten Tschuktschen,” Bulletin de la Classe Historico-philologique de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St. Pétersbourg, xiii. (1856) coll. 123 sq.

301

W. Jochelson, The Koryak (Leyden and New York, 1908), p. 28 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History).

302

L. Sternberg, “Die Religion der Giljaken,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, viii. (1905) pp. 460 sq.

303

M. Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898), pp. 260 sqq.; id., Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, i. (Giessen, 1905) pp. 278 sqq.; C. Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne (Paris, 1902), pp. 27-30, 34; E. Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, Dritte Auflage, neu bearbeitet von H. Zimmern und H. Winckler (Berlin, 1902), pp. 458 sqq.

304

E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, 1911), ii. 150.

305

E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Paisley and London, 1895), chap. x. pp. 231 sq.

306

C. B. Klunzinger, Bilder aus Oberägypten, der Wüste und dem Rothen Meere (Stuttgart, 1877), p. 382; compare ibid. pp. 374 sq.

307

Aristotle, De anima, i. 5. 17; Diogenes Laertius, i. 1. 27.

308

Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iv. 23.

309

Elsewhere I have attempted to shew that a particular class of purifications – those observed by mourners – is intended to protect the living from the disembodied spirits of the dead (“On certain Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886) pp. 64 sqq.).

310

C. Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters (Bâle, 1884), pp. 109-111, 191 sq.

311

E. Gerard, The Land beyond the Forest (Edinburgh and London, 1888), i. 328. The superstitions of the Roumanians of Transylvania have been collected by W. Schmidt in his tract Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens (Hermannstadt, 1866).

312

Manuk Abeghian, Der armenische Volksglaube (Leipsic, 1899), pp. 31 sq.

313

Paul Reina, “Über die Bewohner der Insel Rook,” Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, N.F., iv. (1858) p. 356.

314

R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel (Leipsic, 1887), p. 142; id., Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 119.

315

O. Opigez, “Aperçu général sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), VII. Série, vii. (1886) p. 443.

316

S. Gason, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. (1895) p. 170.

317

Rev. James Macdonald, Religion and Myth (London, 1893), pp. 100-102. The writer, who describes the ceremony at first hand, remarks that “there is no periodic purging of devils, nor are more spirits than one expelled at a time.” He adds: “I have noticed frequently a connection between the quantity of grain that could be spared for making beer, and the frequency of gatherings for the purging of evils.”

318

[P. N. Wilken], “De godsdienst en godsdienstplegtigheden der Alfoeren in de Menahassa op het eiland Celebes,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië, December 1849, pp. 392-394; id., “Bijdragen tot de kennis van de zeden en gewoonten der Alfoeren in de Minahassa,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, vii. (1863) pp. 149 sqq.; J. G. F. Riedel, “De Minahasa in 1825,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xviii. (1872) pp. 521 sq. Wilken's first and fuller account is reprinted in N. Graafland's De Minahassa (Rotterdam, 1869), i. 117-120. A German translation of Wilken's earlier article is printed in Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, N.F., x. (1861) pp. 43-61.

319

J. G. F. Riedel, “Galela und Tobeloresen,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xvii. (1885) p. 82; G. A. Wilken, “Het Shamanisme bij de Volken van de Indischen Archipel,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indie, xxxvi. (1887) p. 484; id., Verspreide Geschriften (The Hague, 1912), iii. 383. When smallpox is raging, the Toradjas of Central Celebes abandon the village and live in the bush for seven days in order to make the spirit of smallpox believe that they are all dead. But it does not appear that they forcibly expel him from the village. See N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De Bare'e-sprekende Toradja's van Midden-Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) p. 417.

320