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

Hair unshorn during a vow. The nails of infants should not be pared. Child's hair left unshorn as a refuge for its soul.

Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that “occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.”899 A similar custom was sometimes observed by the ancient Germans; among the Chatti the young warriors never clipped their hair or their beard till they had slain an enemy.900 Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not poll their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their foes.901 On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years, “during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.”902 While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.”903 Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man's head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives. The same feeling perhaps gave rise to the European rule that a child's nails should not be pared during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.904 For in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year or two is allowed to elapse.”905 The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North-West America do not pare the nails of female children till they are four years of age.906 In Uganda a child's hair may not be cut until the child has received a name. Should any of it be rubbed or plucked off accidentally, it is refastened to the child's head with string or by being knotted to the other hair.907 Amongst the Ewe negroes of the Slave Coast, a mother sometimes vows a sacrifice to the fetish if her infant should live. She then leaves the child unshorn till its fourth or sixth year, when she fulfils her vow and has the child's hair cut by a priest.908 To this day a Syrian mother will sometimes, like Hannah, devote her little one to God. When the child reaches a certain age, its hair is cut and weighed, and money is paid in proportion to the weight. If the boy thus dedicated is a Moslem, he becomes in time a dervish; if he is a Christian, he becomes a monk.909 Among the Toradjas of central Celebes, when a child's hair is cut to rid it of vermin, some locks are allowed to remain on the crown of the head as a refuge for one of the child's souls. Otherwise the soul would have no place in which to settle, and the child would sicken.910 The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra are much afraid of frightening away the soul (tĕndi) of a child; hence when they cut its hair, they always leave a patch unshorn, to which the soul can retreat before the shears. Usually this lock remains unshorn all through life, or at least up till manhood.911 In some parts of Germany it is thought that if a child's hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;912 or that if a boy's hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.913

§ 7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting

Solemn ceremonies observed at hair-cutting.

But when it becomes necessary to crop the hair, measures are taken to lessen the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation. The chief of Namosi in Fiji always ate a man by way of precaution when he had had his hair cut. “There was a certain clan that had to provide the victim, and they used to sit in solemn council among themselves to choose him. It was a sacrificial feast to avert evil from the chief.”914 This remarkable custom has been described more fully by another observer. The old heathen temple at Namosi is called Rukunitambua, “and round about it are hundreds of stones, each of which tells a fearful tale. A subject tribe, whose town was some little distance from Namosi, had committed an unpardonable offence, and were condemned to a frightful doom. The earth-mound on which their temple had stood was planted with the mountain ndalo (arum), and when the crop was ripe, the poor wretches had to carry it down to Namosi, and give at least one of their number to be killed and eaten by the chief. He used to take advantage of these occasions to have his hair cut, for the human sacrifice was supposed to avert all danger of witchcraft if any ill-wisher got hold of the cuttings of his hair, human hair being the most dangerous channel for the deadliest spells of the sorcerers. The stones round Rukunitambua represented these and other victims who had been killed and eaten at Namosi. Each stone was the record of a murder succeeded by a cannibal feast.”915 Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause.916 “He who has had his hair cut is in immediate charge of the Atua (spirit); he is removed from the contact and society of his family and his tribe; he dare not touch his food himself; it is put into his mouth by another person; nor can he for some days resume his accustomed occupations or associate with his fellow-men.”917 The person who cuts the hair is also tabooed; his hands having been in contact with a sacred head, he may not touch food with them or engage in any other employment; he is fed by another person with food cooked over a sacred fire. He cannot be released from the taboo before the following day, when he rubs his hands with potato or fern root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and this food having been taken to the head of the family in the female line and eaten by her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New Zealand the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for hair-cutting; the people assembled in large numbers on that day from all the neighbourhood.918 Sometimes a Maori chief's hair was shorn by his wife, who was then tabooed for a week as a consequence of having touched his sacred locks.919 It is an affair of state when the king of Cambodia's hair is cropped. The priests place on the barber's fingers certain old rings set with large stones, which are supposed to contain spirits favourable to the kings, and during the operation the Brahmans keep up a noisy music to drive away the evil spirits.920 The hair and nails of the Mikado could only be cut while he was asleep,921 perhaps because his soul being then absent from his body, there was less chance of injuring it with the shears.

Ceremonies at cutting the hair of Siamese children.

From their earliest days little Siamese children have the crown of the head clean shorn with the exception of a single small tuft of hair, which is daily combed, twisted, oiled, and tied in a little knot until the day when it is finally removed with great pomp and ceremony. The ceremony of shaving the top-knot takes place before the child has reached puberty, and great anxiety is felt at this time lest the kwun, or guardian-spirit who commonly resides in the body and especially the head of every Siamese,922 should be so disturbed by the tonsure as to depart and leave the child a hopeless wreck for life. Great pains are therefore taken to recall this mysterious being in case he should have fled, and to fix him securely in the child. This is the object of an elaborate ceremony performed on the afternoon of the day when the top-knot has been cut. A miniature pagoda is erected, and on it are placed several kinds of food known to be favourites of the spirit. When the kwun has arrived and is feasting on these dainties, he is caught and held fast under a cloth thrown over the food. The child is now placed near the pagoda, and all the family and friends form a circle, with the child, the captured spirit, and the Brahman priests in the middle. Hereupon the priests address the spirit, earnestly entreating him to enter into the child. They amuse him with tales, and coax and wheedle him with flattery, jest, and song; the gongs ring out their loudest; the people cheer and only a kwun of the sourest and most obdurate disposition could resist the combined appeal. The last sentences of the formal invocation run as follows: “Benignant kwun! Thou fickle being who art wont to wander and dally about! From the moment that the child was conceived in the womb, thou hast enjoyed every pleasure, until ten (lunar) months having elapsed and the time of delivery arrived, thou hast suffered and run the risk of perishing by being born alive into the world. Gracious kwun! thou wast at that time so tender, delicate, and wavering as to cause great anxiety concerning thy fate; thou was exactly like a child, youthful, innocent, and inexperienced. The least trifle frightened thee and made thee shudder. In thy infantile playfulness thou wast wont to frolic and wander to no purpose. As thou didst commence to learn to sit, and, unassisted, to crawl totteringly on all fours, thou wast ever falling flat on thy face or on thy back. As thou didst grow up in years and couldst move thy steps firmly, thou didst begin to run and sport thoughtlessly and rashly all round the rooms, the terrace, and bridging planks of travelling boat or floating house, and at times thou didst fall into the stream, creek, or pond, among the floating water-weeds, to the utter dismay of those to whom thy existence was most dear. O gentle kwun, come into thy corporeal abode; do not delay this auspicious rite. Thou art now full-grown and dost form everybody's delight and admiration. Let all the tiny particles of kwun that have fallen on land or water assemble and take permanent abode in this darling little child. Let them all hurry to the site of this auspicious ceremony and admire the magnificent preparations made for them in this hall.” The brocaded cloth from the pagoda, under which lurks the captive spirit, is now rolled up tightly and handed to the child, who is told to clasp it firmly to his breast and not let the kwun escape. Further, the child drinks the milk of the coco-nuts which had been offered to the spirit, and by thus absorbing the food of the kwun ensures the presence of that precious spirit in his body. A magic cord is tied round his wrist to keep off the wicked spirits who would lure the kwun away from home; and for three nights he sleeps with the embroidered cloth from the pagoda fast clasped in his arms.923

§ 8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails

Belief that people may be bewitched through the clippings of their hair, the parings of their nails, and other severed parts of their persons.

But even when the hair and nails have been safely cut, there remains the difficulty of disposing of them, for their owner believes himself liable to suffer from any harm that may befall them. The notion that a man may be bewitched by means of the clippings of his hair, the parings of his nails, or any other severed portion of his person is almost world-wide,924 and attested by evidence too ample, too familiar, and too tedious in its uniformity to be here analysed at length. The general idea on which the superstition rests is that of the sympathetic connexion supposed to persist between a person and everything that has once been part of his body or in any way closely related to him. A very few examples must suffice. They belong to that branch of sympathetic magic which may be called contagious.925 Thus, when the Chilote Indians, inhabiting the wild, deeply indented coasts and dark rain-beaten forests of southern Chili, get possession of the hair of an enemy, they drop it from a high tree or tie it to a piece of seaweed and fling it into the surf; for they think that the shock of the fall, or the blows of the waves as the tress is tossed to and fro on the heaving billows, will be transmitted through the hair to the person from whose head it was cut.926 Dread of sorcery, we are told, formed one of the most salient characteristics of the Marquesan islanders in the old days. The sorcerer took some of the hair, spittle, or other bodily refuse of the man he wished to injure, wrapped it up in a leaf, and placed the packet in a bag woven of threads or fibres, which were knotted in an intricate way. The whole was then buried with certain rites, and thereupon the victim wasted away of a languishing sickness which lasted twenty days. His life, however, might be saved by discovering and digging up the buried hair, spittle, or what not; for as soon as this was done the power of the charm ceased.927 A Marquesan chief told Lieutenant Gamble that he was extremely ill, the Happah tribe having stolen a lock of his hair and buried it in a plantain leaf for the purpose of taking his life. Lieutenant Gamble argued with him, but in vain; die he must unless the hair and the plantain leaf were brought back to him; and to obtain them he had offered the Happahs the greater part of his property. He complained of excessive pain in the head, breast, and sides.928 A Maori sorcerer intent on bewitching somebody sought to get a tress of his victim's hair, the parings of his nails, some of his spittle, or a shred of his garment. Having obtained the object, whatever it was, he chanted certain spells and curses over it in a falsetto voice and buried it in the ground. As the thing decayed, the person to whom it had belonged was supposed to waste away.929 Again, an Australian girl, sick of a fever, laid the blame of her illness on a young man who had come behind her and cut off a lock of her hair; she was sure he had buried it and that it was rotting. “Her hair,” she said, “was rotting somewhere, and her Marm-bu-la (kidney fat) was wasting away, and when her hair had completely rotted, she would die.”930 When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring tribe, where he gives it to a friend. His friend sticks the spear-thrower up every night before the camp fire, and when it falls down it is a sign that the wife is dead.931 The way in which the charm operates was explained to Dr. Howitt by a Wirajuri man. “You see,” he said, “when a blackfellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.”932 A slightly different form of the charm as practised in Australia is to fasten the enemy's hair with wax to the pinion bone of a hawk, and set the bone in a small circle of fire. According as the sorcerer desires the death or only the sickness of his victim he leaves the bone in the midst of the fire or removes it and lays it in the sun. When he thinks he has done his enemy enough harm, he places the bone in water, which ends the enchantment.933 Lucian describes how a Syrian witch professed to bring back a faithless lover to his forsaken fair one by means of a lock of his hair, his shoes, his garments, or something of that sort. She hung the hair, or whatever it was, on a peg and fumigated it with brimstone, sprinkling salt on the fire and mentioning the names of the lover and his lass. Then she drew a magic wheel from her bosom and set it spinning, while she gabbled a spell full of barbarous and fearsome words. This soon brought the false lover back to the feet of his charmer.934 Apuleius tells how an amorous Thessalian witch essayed to win the affections of a handsome Boeotian youth by similar means. As darkness fell she mounted the roof, and there, surrounded by a hellish array of dead men's bones, she knotted the severed tresses of auburn hair and threw them on the glowing embers of a perfumed fire. But her cunning handmaid had outwitted her; the hair was only goat's hair; and all her enchantments ended in dismal and ludicrous failure.935

Clipped hair may cause headache.

The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that if mice get a person's shorn hair and make a nest of it, the person will suffer from headache or even become idiotic.936 Similarly in Germany it is a common notion that if birds find a person's cut hair, and build their nests with it, the person will suffer from headache;937 sometimes it is thought that he will have an eruption on the head.938 The same superstition prevails, or used to prevail, in West Sussex. “I knew how it would be,” exclaimed a maidservant one day, “when I saw that bird fly off with a bit of my hair in its beak that blew out of the window this morning when I was dressing; I knew I should have a clapping headache, and so I have.”939 In like manner the Scottish Highlanders believe that if cut or loose hair is allowed to blow away with the wind and it passes over an empty nest, or a bird takes it to its nest, the head from which it came will ache.940 The Todas of southern India hide their clipped hair in bushes or hollows in the rocks, in order that it may not be found by crows, and they bury the parings of their nails lest they should be eaten by buffaloes, with whom, it is believed, they would disagree.941

Cut hair may cause rain, hail, thunder and lightning. Magical uses of cut hair.

Again it is thought that cut or combed-out hair may disturb the weather by producing rain and hail, thunder and lightning. We have seen that in New Zealand a spell was uttered at hair-cutting to avert thunder and lightning. In the Tyrol, witches are supposed to use cut or combed-out hair to make hailstones or thunderstorms with.942 Thlinkeet Indians have been known to attribute stormy weather to the rash act of a girl who had combed her hair outside of the house.943 The Romans seem to have held similar views, for it was a maxim with them that no one on shipboard should cut his hair or nails except in a storm,944 that is, when the mischief was already done. In the Highlands of Scotland it is said that no sister should comb her hair at night if she have a brother at sea.945 In West Africa, when the Mani of Chitombe or Jumba died, the people used to run in crowds to the corpse and tear out his hair, teeth, and nails, which they kept as a rain-charm, believing that otherwise no rain would fall. The Makoko of the Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their beards as a rain-charm.946 When Du Chaillu had his hair cut among the Ashira of West Africa, the people scuffled and fought for the clippings of his hair, even the aged king himself taking part in the scrimmage. Every one who succeeded in getting some of the hairs wrapped them up carefully and went off in triumph. When the traveller, who was regarded as a spirit by these simple-minded folk, asked the king what use the clippings could be to him, his sable majesty replied, “Oh, spirit! these hairs are very precious; we shall make mondas (fetiches) of them, and they will bring other white men to us, and bring us great good luck and riches. Since you have come to us, oh spirit! we have wished to have some of your hair, but did not dare to ask for it, not knowing that it could be cut.”947 The Wabondei of eastern Africa preserve the hair and nails of their dead chiefs and use them both for the making of rain and the healing of the sick.948 The hair, beard, and nails of their deceased chiefs are the most sacred possession, the most precious treasure of the Baronga of south-eastern Africa. Preserved in pellets of cow-dung wrapt round with leathern thongs, they are kept in a special hut under the charge of a high priest, who offers sacrifices and prayers at certain seasons, and has to observe strict continence for a month before he handles these holy relics in the offices of religion. A terrible drought was once the result of this palladium falling into the hands of the enemy.949 In some Victorian tribes the sorcerer used to burn human hair in time of drought; it was never burned at other times for fear of causing a deluge of rain. Also when the river was low, the sorcerer would place human hair in the stream to increase the supply of water.950

Cut hair and nails may be used as hostages for good behaviour of the persons from whose bodies they have been taken.

If cut hair and nails remain in sympathetic connexion with the person from whose body they have been severed, it is clear that they can be used as hostages for his good behaviour by any one who may chance to possess them; for on the principles of contagious magic he has only to injure the hair or nails in order to hurt simultaneously their original owner. Hence when the Nandi have taken a prisoner they shave his head and keep the shorn hair as a surety that he will not attempt to escape; but when the captive is ransomed, they return his shorn hair with him to his own people.951 For a similar reason, perhaps, when the Tiaha, an Arab tribe of Moab, have taken a prisoner whom they do not wish to put to death, they shave one corner of his head above his temples and let him go. So, too, an Arab of Moab who pardons a murderer will sometimes cut off the man's hair and shave his chin before releasing him. Again, when two Moabite Arabs had got hold of a traitor who had revealed their plan of campaign to the enemy, they contented themselves with shaving completely one side of his head and his moustache on the other, after which they set him at liberty.952 We can now, perhaps, understand why Hanun King of Ammon shaved off one-half of the beards of King David's messengers and cut off half their garments before he sent them back to their master.953 His intention, we may conjecture, was not simply to put a gross affront on the envoys. He distrusted the ambitious designs of King David and wished to have some guarantee of the maintenance of peace and friendly relations between the two countries. That guarantee he may have imagined that he possessed in half of the beards and garments of the ambassadors; and if that was so, we may suppose that when the indignant David set the army of Israel in motion against Ammon, and the fords of Jordan were alive with the passage of his troops, the wizards of Ammon were busy in the strong keep of Rabbah muttering their weird spells and performing their quaint enchantments over the shorn hair and severed skirts in order to dispel the thundercloud of war that was gathering black about their country. Vain hopes! The city fell, and from the gates the sad inhabitants trooped forth in thousands to be laid in long lines on the ground and sawed asunder or ripped up with harrows or to walk into the red glow of the burning brick kilns.954 Again, the parings of nails may serve the same purpose as the clippings of hair; they too may be treated as bail for the good behaviour of the persons from whose fingers they have been cut. It is apparently on this principle that when the Ba-yaka of the Congo valley cement a peace, the chiefs of the two tribes meet and eat a cake which contains some of their nail-parings as a pledge of the maintenance of the treaty. They believe that he who breaks an engagement contracted in this solemn manner will die.955 Each of the high contracting parties has in fact given hostages to fortune in the shape of the nail-parings which are lodged in the other man's stomach.

Cut hair and nails are deposited in sacred places, such as temples and cemeteries, to preserve them from injury. Cut hair and nails buried under certain trees or deposited among the branches.

To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the dangerous uses to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is necessary to deposit them in some safe place. Hence the natives of the Maldives carefully keep the cuttings of their hair and nails and bury them, with a little water, in the cemeteries; “for they would not for the world tread upon them nor cast them in the fire, for they say that they are part of their body, and demand burial as it does; and, indeed, they fold them neatly in cotton; and most of them like to be shaved at the gates of temples and mosques.”956 In New Zealand the severed hair was deposited on some sacred spot of ground “to protect it from being touched accidentally or designedly by any one.”957 The shorn locks of a chief were gathered with much care and placed in an adjoining cemetery.958 The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their hair at the temples.959 In the streets of Soku, West Africa, a modern traveller observed cairns of large stones piled against walls with tufts of human hair inserted in the crevices. On asking the meaning of this, he was told that when any native of the place polled his hair he carefully gathered up the clippings and deposited them in one of these cairns, all of which were sacred to the fetish and therefore inviolable. These cairns of sacred stones, he further learned, were simply a precaution against witchcraft, for if a man were not thus careful in disposing of his hair, some of it might fall into the hands of his enemies, who would, by means of it, be able to cast spells over him and so compass his destruction.960 When the top-knot of a Siamese child has been cut with great ceremony, the short hairs are put into a little vessel made of plantain leaves and set adrift on the nearest river or canal. As they float away, all that was wrong or harmful in the child's disposition is believed to depart with them. The long hairs are kept till the child makes a pilgrimage to the holy Footprint of Buddha on the sacred hill at Prabat. They are then presented to the priests, who are supposed to make them into brushes with which they sweep the Footprint; but in fact so much hair is thus offered every year that the priests cannot use it all, so they quietly burn the superfluity as soon as the pilgrims' backs are turned.961 The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were buried under a lucky tree.962 The shorn tresses of the Vestal virgins were hung on an ancient lotus-tree.963 In Morocco women often hang their cut hair on a tree that grows on or near the grave of a wonder-working saint; for they think thus to rid themselves of headache or to guard against it.964 In Germany the clippings of hair used often to be buried under an elder-bush.965 In Oldenburg cut hair and nails are wrapt in a cloth which is deposited in a hole in an elder-tree three days before the new moon; the hole is then plugged up.966 In the West of Northumberland it is thought that if the first parings of a child's nails are buried under an ash-tree, the child will turn out a fine singer.967 In Amboyna, before a child may taste sago-pap for the first time, the father cuts off a lock of the infant's hair, which he buries under a sago-palm.968 In the Aru Islands, when a child is able to run alone, a female relation shears a lock of its hair and deposits it on a banana-tree.969 In the island of Rotti it is thought that the first hair which a child gets is not his own, and that, if it is not cut off, it will make him weak and ill. Hence, when the child is about a month old, his hair is polled with much ceremony. As each of the friends who are invited to the ceremony enters the house he goes up to the child, snips off a little of its hair and drops it into a coco-nut shell full of water. Afterwards the father or another relation takes the hair and packs it into a little bag made of leaves, which he fastens to the top of a palm-tree. Then he gives the leaves of the palm a good shaking, climbs down, and goes home without speaking to any one.970 Indians of the Yukon territory, Alaska, do not throw away their cut hair and nails, but tie them up in little bundles and place them in the crotches of trees or wherever they are not likely to be disturbed by beasts. For “they have a superstition that disease will follow the disturbance of such remains by animals.”971