The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed.

These customs shew that in the opinion of some primitive peoples a woman at and after childbirth is pervaded by a certain dangerous influence which can infect anything and anybody she touches; so that in the interest of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows. This dread of lying-in women appears to be widespread, for the practice of shutting them up at such times in lonely huts away from the rest of the people is very common. Sometimes the nature of the danger which is apprehended from them is explicitly stated. Thus in the island of Tumleo, off German New Guinea, after the birth of her first child a woman is shut up with her infant for five to eight days, during which no man, not even her husband, may see her; for the men think that were they to see her, their bodies would swell up and they would die.533 Apparently their notion is that the sight of a woman who has just been big with child will, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, make their bodies big also to bursting. The Sulka of New Britain imagine that, when a woman has been delivered of a child, the men become cowardly, weapons lose their force, and the slips which are to be planted out are deprived of their power of germinating. Hence they perform a ceremony which is intended to counteract this mysterious influence on men and plants. As soon as it is known that a woman has been brought to bed, all the male population of the village assembles in the men's clubhouse. Branches of a strong-smelling tree are fetched, the twigs are broken off, the leaves stripped off and put on the fire. All the men present then seize branches with young buds. One of them holds ginger in his hand, which, after reciting a spell over it, he distributes to the others. They chew it and spit it out on the twigs, and these twigs are afterwards laid on the shields and other weapons in the house, and also on the slips which are to be planted; moreover they are fastened on the roofs and over the doorways of the houses. In this way they seek to annul the noxious infection of childbirth.534 Among the Yabim of German New Guinea, when a birth has taken place in the village, all the inhabitants remain at home next morning “in order that the fruits of the field may not be spoiled.”535 Apparently they fear that if they went out to their fields and gardens immediately after a woman had been brought to bed, they would carry with them a dangerous contagion which might blight the crops. When a Herero woman has given birth to a child, her female companions hastily construct a special hut for her to which she is transferred. Both the hut and the woman are sacred and “for this reason, the men are not allowed to see the lying-in woman until the navel string has separated from the child, otherwise they would become weaklings, and when later they yumbana, that is, go to war with spear and bow, they would be shot.”536 Thus the Herero like the Sulka appear to imagine that the weakness of a lying-in woman can, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, infect any men who may chance to see her.

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by Indians and Esquimaux.

Among the Saragacos Indians of eastern Ecuador, as soon as a woman feels the travail-pangs beginning, she retires into the forest to a distance of three or four leagues from her home, where she takes up her abode in a hut of leaves which has been already prepared for her. “This banishment,” we are told, “is the fruit of the superstition of these Indians, who are persuaded that the spirit of evil would attach himself to their house if the women were brought to bed in it.”537 The Esquimaux of Baffin Land think that the body of a lying-in woman exhales a vapour which would adhere to the souls of seals if she ate the flesh of any seals except such as have been caught by her husband, by a boy, or by an aged man. “Cases of premature birth require particularly careful treatment. The event must be announced publicly, else dire results will follow. If a woman should conceal from the other people that she has had a premature birth, they might come near her, or even eat in her hut of the seals procured by her husband. The vapor arising from her would thus affect them, and they would be avoided by the seals. The transgression would also become attached to the soul of the seal, which would take it down to Sedna,” the mythical mother of the sea-mammals, who lives in the lower world and controls the destinies of mankind.538

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by Bantu tribes of South Africa. Dangers apprehended from a concealed miscarriage.

Some Bantu tribes of South Africa entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has concealed it. An experienced observer of these people tells us that the blood of childbirth “appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted with a pollution still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid. The husband is excluded from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare not take his child in his arms for the three first months after the birth. But the secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the product of a miscarriage, especially a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not merely the man who is threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the sky itself which suffers. By a curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic troubles!”539 Thus, for example, the Ba-Pedi believe that a woman who has procured abortion can kill a man merely by lying with him; her victim is poisoned, shrivels up, and dies within a week. As for the disastrous effect which a miscarriage may have on the whole country I will quote the words of a medicine-man and rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: “When a woman has had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the country is no longer in order. When the rain approaches the place where the blood is, it will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a distance. That woman has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country of the chief, for she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed to fashion a man. That blood is taboo (yila). It should never drip on the road! The chief will assemble his men and say to them, ‘Are you in order in your villages?’ Some one will answer, ‘Such and such a woman was pregnant and we have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.’ Then they go and arrest the woman. They say to her, ‘Shew us where you have hidden it.’ They go and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of mbendoula and nyangale (two sorts of roots) prepared in a special pot. They take a little of the earth of this grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the river and sprinkle it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash every day with the medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by rain). Further, we (medicine-men) summon the women of the country; we tell them to prepare a ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring it to us one morning. If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle the whole country, we crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days we send little boys and little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women's affairs and have not yet had relations with men. We put the medicine in the horns of oxen, and these children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of the country. A little girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a branch in the horn and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, ‘Rain! rain!’ So we remove the misfortune which the women have brought on the roads; the rain will be able to come. The country is purified!”540

Belief of the Ba-Thonga that severe droughts result from the concealment of miscarriages by women.

Similarly the Ba-Thonga, another Bantu tribe of South Africa in the valley of the Limpopo river, attribute severe droughts to the concealment of miscarriages by women, and they perform the following rites to remove the pollution and procure rain. A small clearing is made in a thick and thorny wood, and here a pot is buried in the ground so that its mouth is flush with the surface. From the pot four channels run in the form of a cross to the four cardinal points of the horizon. Then a black ox or a black ram, without a speck of white on it, is killed and the pot is stuffed with the half-digested grass found in the animal's stomach. Next, little girls, still in the age of innocence, are sent to draw water, which they pour into the pot till it overflows into the four channels. After that the women assemble, strip off their clothes, and covering their nakedness only with a scanty petticoat of grass they dance, leap, and sing, “Rain, fall!” Then they go and dig up the remains of the prematurely born infants and of twins buried in dry ground on a hill. These they collect in one place. No man may approach the spot. The women would beat any male who might be so indiscreet as to intrude on their privacy, and they would put riddles to him which he would have to answer in the most filthy language borrowed from the circumcision ceremonies; for obscene words, which are usually forbidden, are customary and legitimate on these occasions. The women pour water on the graves of the infants and of twins in order to “extinguish” (timula) them, as the natives phrase it; which seems to imply that the graves are thought to be the source of the scorching heat which is blasting the country. At the fall of evening they bury all the remains they have discovered, poking them away in the mud near a stream. Then the rain will be free to fall.541 In these ceremonies the pouring of water into channels which run in the direction of the four quarters of the heaven is clearly a charm based on the principles of homoeopathic magic to procure rain. The supposed influence of twins over the waters of heaven and the use of foul language at rain-making ceremonies have been illustrated in another part of this work.542

Dangers apprehended from women in childbed by some tribes of Annam.

Among the natives of the Nguôn So'n valley in Annam, during the first month after a woman has been delivered of a child, all the persons of the house are supposed to be affected with an evil destiny or ill luck called phong long. If a member of such a household enters another house, the inmates never fail to say to him, “You bring me the phong long!” Should a member of a family in which somebody is seriously ill have to enter a house infected by the phong long, on returning home he always fumigates himself with tea leaves or some other plant in order to rid himself of the infection which he has contracted; for they fear that the blood of the woman who has been brought to bed may harm the patient. All the time a house is tainted with the phong long, a branch of cactus (Euphorbia antiquorum) or pandanus is hung at the door. The same thing is done to a house infected by small-pox: it is a danger signal to warn people off. The phong long only disappears when the woman has gone to market for the first time after her delivery.543 A trace of a similar belief in the dangerous infection of childbirth may be seen in the rule of ancient Greek religion, which forbade persons who had handled a corpse or been in contact with a lying-in woman to enter a temple or approach an altar for a certain time, sometimes for two days.544

Taboos imposed on lads at initiation.

Restrictions and taboos like those laid on menstruous and lying-in women are imposed by some savages on lads at the initiatory rites which celebrate the attainment of puberty; hence we may infer that at such times young men are supposed to be in a state like that of women at menstruation and in childbed. Thus, among the Creek Indians a lad at initiation had to abstain for twelve moons from picking his ears or scratching his head with his fingers; he had to use a small stick for these purposes. For four moons he must have a fire of his own to cook his food at; and a little girl, a virgin, might cook for him. During the fifth moon any person might cook for him, but he must serve himself first, and use one spoon and pan. On the fifth day of the twelfth moon he gathered corn cobs, burned them to ashes, and with the ashes rubbed his body all over. At the end of the twelfth moon he sweated under blankets, and then bathed in water, which ended the ceremony. While the ceremonies lasted, he might touch no one but lads who were undergoing a like course of initiation.545 Caffre boys at circumcision live secluded in a special hut; they are smeared from head to foot with white clay; they wear tall head-dresses with horn-like projections and short skirts like those of ballet-dancers. When their wounds are healed, all the vessels which they had used during their seclusion and the boyish mantles which they had hitherto worn are burned, together with the hut, and the boys rush away from the burning hut without looking back, “lest a fearful curse should cling to them.” After that they are bathed, anointed, and clad in new garments.546

§ 4. Warriors tabooed

Taboos laid on warriors when they go forth to fight.

Once more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say, in an atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a variety of superstitious observances quite different in their nature from those rational precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt against foes of flesh and blood. The general effect of these observances is to place the warrior, both before and after victory, in the same state of seclusion or spiritual quarantine in which, for his own safety, primitive man puts his human gods and other dangerous characters. Thus when the Maoris went out on the war-path they were sacred or taboo in the highest degree, and they and their friends at home had to observe strictly many curious customs over and above the numerous taboos of ordinary life. They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans who knew them in the old fighting days, “tabooed an inch thick”; and as for the leader of the expedition, he was quite unapproachable.547 Similarly, when the Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of ceremonial purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian blackfellows on the war-path. The vessels they used were sacred, and they had to practise continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which the original motive, if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who conform to the same custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their destruction by magic.548 Among some Indian tribes of North America a young warrior in his first campaign had to conform to certain customs, of which two were identical with the observances imposed by the same Indians on girls at their first menstruation: the vessels he ate and drank out of might be touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could not help scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick.549 The latter rule, like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we choose to call it, of the tabooed hands.550 Moreover among these Indian tribes the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their faces turned towards their own country; however uneasy the posture they might not change it. They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet their feet, nor walk on a beaten path if they could help it; when they had no choice but to walk on a path, they sought to counteract the ill effect of doing so by doctoring their legs with certain medicines or charms which they carried with them for the purpose. No member of the party was permitted to step over the legs, hands, or body of any other member who chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and it was equally forbidden to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything that belonged to him. If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the duty of the member whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the other member down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked down peaceably and without resistance. The vessels out of which the warriors ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark, with marks to distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians invariably drank out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out of the other. When on their way home they came within a day's march of the village, they hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on the prairie,551 doubtless to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being communicated with disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have seen that the vessels and clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at childbirth and menstruation, of boys at circumcision, and of persons defiled by contact with the dead are destroyed or laid aside for a similar reason. The first four times that an Apache Indian goes out on the war-path, he is bound to refrain from scratching his head with his fingers and from letting water touch his lips. Hence he scratches his head with a stick, and drinks through a hollow reed or cane. Stick and reed are attached to the warrior's belt and to each other by a leathern thong.552 The rule not to scratch their heads with their fingers, but to use a stick for the purpose instead, was regularly observed by Ojebways on the war-path.553

Ceremonies observed by American Indians before they went out on the war-path. Rules observed by Indians on a war-expedition.

For three or four weeks before they went on a warlike expedition, the Nootka Indians made it an invariable rule to go into the water five or six times a day, when they washed and scrubbed themselves from head to foot with bushes intermixed with briars, so that their bodies and faces were often entirely covered with blood. During this severe exercise they continually exclaimed, “Good or great God, let me live, not be sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of them.” All this time they had no intercourse with their women, and for a week before setting out abstained from feasting and every kind of merriment. For the last three days they were almost constantly in the water, scrubbing and lacerating themselves in a terrible manner. They believed that this hardened their skin, so that the weapons of the enemy could not pierce them.554 Before they went out on the war-path the Arikaras and the Big Belly Indians (“Gros Ventres”) “observe a rigorous fast, or rather abstain from every kind of food for four days. In this interval their imagination is exalted to delirium; whether it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of the warlike plans they cherish, they pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe, being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their explanations are received as oracles by which the expedition will be faithfully regulated. So long as the preparatory fast continues, the warriors make incisions in their bodies, insert pieces of wood in the flesh, and having fastened leather thongs to them cause themselves to be hung from a beam which is fixed horizontally above an abyss a hundred and fifty feet deep. Often indeed they cut off one or two fingers which they offer in sacrifice to the Great Spirit in order that they may come back laden with scalps.”555 It is hard to conceive any course of training which could more effectually incapacitate men for the business of war than that which these foolish Indians actually adopted. With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred tribes we are told they “will not cohabit with women while they are out at war; they religiously abstain from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home, because they are to sanctify themselves.”556 And as a preparation for attacking the enemy they “go to the aforesaid winter house, and there drink a warm decoction of their supposed holy consecrated herbs and roots for three days and nights, sometimes without any other refreshment. This is to induce the deity to guard and prosper them, amidst their impending dangers. In the most promising appearance of things, they are not to take the least nourishment of food, nor so much as to sit down, during that time of sanctifying themselves, till after sunset. While on their expedition, they are not allowed to lean themselves against a tree, though they may be exceedingly fatigued, after a sharp day's march; nor must they lie by, a whole day to refresh themselves, or kill and barbicue deer and bear for their war journey. The more virtuous they are, they reckon the greater will be their success against the enemy, by the bountiful smiles of the deity. To gain that favourite point, some of the aged warriors narrowly watch the young men who are newly initiated, lest they should prove irreligious, and prophane the holy fast, and bring misfortunes on the out-standing camp. A gentleman of my acquaintance, in his youthful days observed one of their religious fasts, but under the greatest suspicion of his virtue in this respect, though he had often headed them against the common enemy: during their three days' purification, he was not allowed to go out of the sanctified ground, without a trusty guard, lest hunger should have tempted him to violate their old martial law, and by that means have raised the burning wrath of the holy fire against the whole camp.” “Every war captain chuses a noted warrior, to attend on him and the company. He is called Etissû, or ‘the waiter.’ Everything they eat or drink during their journey, he gives them out of his hand, by a rigid abstemious rule, – though each carries on his back all his travelling conveniencies, wrapt in a deer skin, yet they are so bigoted in their religious customs in war that none, though prompted by sharp hunger or burning thirst, dares relieve himself. They are contented with such trifling allowance as the religious waiter distributes to them, even with a scanty hand. Such a regimen would be too mortifying to any of the white people, let their opinion of its violation be ever so dangerous. When I roved the woods in a war party with the Indians, though I carried no scrip, nor bottle, nor staff, I kept a large hollow cane well corked at each end, and used to sheer off now and then to drink, while they suffered greatly by thirst. The constancy of the savages in mortifying their bodies, to gain the divine favour, is astonishing, from the very time they beat to arms, till they return from their campaign. All the while they are out, they are prohibited by ancient custom, the leaning against a tree, either sitting or standing; nor are they allowed to sit in the day-time, under the shade of trees, if it can be avoided; nor on the ground, during the whole journey, but on such rocks, stones, or fallen wood, as their ark of war rests upon. By the attention they invariably pay to those severe rules of living, they weaken themselves much more than by the unavoidable fatigues of war; but it is fruitless to endeavour to dissuade them from those things which they have by tradition, as the appointed means to move the deity, to grant them success against the enemy, and a safe return home.”557 “An Indian, intending to go to war, will commence by blacking his face, permitting his hair to grow long, and neglecting his personal appearance, and also will frequently fast, sometimes for two or three days together, and refrain from all intercourse with the other sex. If his dreams are favorable, he thinks that the Great Spirit will give him success.”558 Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of south Africa not only have the warriors to abstain from women, but the people left behind in the villages are also bound to continence; they think that any incontinence on their part would cause thorns to grow on the ground traversed by the warriors, and that success would not attend the expedition.559