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

Cut hair and nails may be stowed away for safety in any secret place.

Often the clipped hair and nails are stowed away in any secret place, not necessarily in a temple or cemetery or at a tree, as in the cases already mentioned. Thus in Swabia you are recommended to deposit your clipped hair in some spot where neither sun nor moon can shine on it, for example in the earth or under a stone.972 In Danzig it is buried in a bag under the threshold.973 In Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, men bury their hair lest it should fall into the hands of an enemy who would make magic with it and so bring sickness or calamity on them.974 The same fear seems to be general in Melanesia, and has led to a regular practice of hiding cut hair and nails.975 In Fiji, the shorn hair is concealed in the thatch of the house.976 Most Burmese and Shans tie the combings of their hair and the parings of their nails to a stone and sink them in deep water or bury them in the ground.977 The Zend-Avesta directs that the clippings of hair and the parings of nails shall be placed in separate holes, and that three, six, or nine furrows shall be drawn round each hole with a metal knife.978 In the Grihya-Sûtras it is provided that the hair cut from a child's head at the end of the first, third, fifth, or seventh year shall be buried in the earth at a place covered with grass or in the neighbourhood of water.979 At the end of the period of his studentship a Brahman has his hair shaved and his nails cut; and a person who is kindly disposed to him gathers the shorn hair and the clipped nails, puts them in a lump of bull's dung, and buries them in a cow-stable or near an adumbara tree or in a clump of darbha grass, with the words, “Thus I hide the sins of So-and-so.”980 The Madi or Moru tribe of central Africa bury the parings of their nails in the ground.981 In Uganda grown people throw away the clippings of their hair, but carefully bury the parings of their nails.982 The A-lur are careful to collect and bury both their hair and nails in safe places.983 The same practice prevails among many tribes of South Africa, from a fear lest wizards should get hold of the severed particles and work evil with them.984 The Caffres carry still further this dread of allowing any portion of themselves to fall into the hands of an enemy; for not only do they bury their cut hair and nails in a secret spot, but when one of them cleans the head of another he preserves the vermin which he catches, “carefully delivering them to the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by another, the blood of his neighbour would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.”985 Amongst the Wanyoro of central Africa all cuttings of the hair and nails are carefully stored under the bed and afterwards strewed about among the tall grass.986 Similarly the Wahoko of central Africa take pains to collect their cut hair and nails and scatter them in the forest.987 The Asa, a branch of the Masai, hide the clippings of their hair and the parings of their nails or throw them away far from the kraal, lest a sorcerer should get hold of them and make their original owners ill by his magic.988 In North Guinea the parings of the finger-nails and the shorn locks of the head are scrupulously concealed, lest they be converted into a charm for the destruction of the person to whom they belong.989 For the same reason the clipped hair and nail-parings of chiefs in Southern Nigeria are secretly buried.990 Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia loose hair was buried, hidden, or thrown into the water, because, if an enemy got hold of it, he might bewitch the owner.991 In Bolang Mongondo, a district of western Celebes, the first hair cut from a child's head is kept in a young coco-nut, which is commonly hung on the front of the house, under the roof.992 To spit upon the hair before throwing it away is thought in some parts of Europe to be a sufficient safeguard against its use by witches.993 Spitting as a protective charm is well known.994

Cut hair and nails kept against the resurrection.

Sometimes the severed hair and nails are preserved, not to prevent them from falling into the hands of a magician, but that the owner may have them at the resurrection of the body, to which some races look forward. Thus the Incas of Peru “took extreme care to preserve the nail-parings and the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the walls; and if they fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and put them in their places again. I very often asked different Indians, at various times, why they did this, in order to see what they would say, and they all replied in the same words saying, ‘Know that all persons who are born must return to life’ (they have no word to express resuscitation), ‘and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may be brought together more conveniently, and, whenever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place.’ ”995 In Chili this custom of stuffing the shorn hair into holes in the wall is still observed, it being thought the height of imprudence to throw the hair away.996 Similarly the Turks never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully stow them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the resurrection.997 The Armenians do not throw away their cut hair and nails and extracted teeth, but hide them in places that are esteemed holy, such as a crack in the church wall, a pillar of the house, or a hollow tree. They think that all these severed portions of themselves will be wanted at the resurrection, and that he who has not stowed them away in a safe place will have to hunt about for them on the great day.998 With the same intention the Macedonians bury the parings of their nails in a hole,999 and devout Moslems in Morocco hide them in a secret place.1000 Similarly the Arabs of Moab bestow the parings of their nails in the crannies of walls, where they are sanguine enough to expect to find them when they appear before their Maker.1001 Some of the Esthonians keep the parings of their finger and toe nails in their bosom, in order to have them at hand when they are asked for them at the day of judgment.1002 In a like spirit peasants of the Vosges will sometimes bury their extracted teeth secretly, marking the spot well so that they may be able to walk straight to it on the resurrection day.1003 In the village of Drumconrath, near Abbeyleix, in Ireland, there used to be some old women who, having ascertained from Scripture that the hairs of their heads were all numbered by the Almighty, expected to have to account for them at the day of judgment. In order to be able to do so they stuffed the severed hair away in the thatch of their cottages.1004 In Abyssinia men who have had their hands or feet cut off are careful to dry the severed limbs over a fire and preserve them in butter for the purpose of being buried with them in the grave. Thus they expect to get up with all their limbs complete at the general rising.1005 The pains taken by the Chinese to preserve corpses entire and free from decay seems to rest on a firm belief in the resurrection of the dead; hence it is natural to find their ancient books laying down a rule that the hair, nails, and teeth which have fallen out during life should be buried with the dead in the coffin, or at least in the grave.1006 The Fors of central Africa object to cut any one else's nails, for should the part cut off be lost and not delivered into its owner's hands, it will have to be made up to him somehow or other after death. The parings are buried in the ground.1007

Cut hair and nails burnt to prevent them from falling into the hands of sorcerers.

Some people burn their loose hair to save it from falling into the hands of sorcerers. This is done by the Patagonians and some of the Victorian tribes.1008 In the Upper Vosges they say that you should never leave the clippings of your hair and nails lying about, but burn them to hinder the sorcerers from using them against you.1009 For the same reason Italian women either burn their loose hairs or throw them into a place where no one is likely to look for them.1010 The almost universal dread of witchcraft induces the West African negroes, the Makololo of South Africa, and the Tahitians to burn or bury their shorn hair.1011 For the same reason the natives of Uap, one of the Caroline Islands, either burn or throw into the sea the clippings of their hair and the parings of their nails.1012 One of the pygmies who roam through the gloomy depths of the vast central African forests has been seen to collect carefully the clippings of his hair in a packet of banana leaves and keep them till next morning, when, the camp breaking up for the day's march, he threw them into the hot ashes of the abandoned fire.1013 Australian aborigines of the Proserpine River, in Queensland, burn a woman's cut hair to prevent it from getting into a man's bag; for if it did, the woman would fall ill.1014 When an English officer had cut off a lock of hair of a Fuegian woman, the men of her party were angry, and one of them, taking the lock away, threw half of it into the fire and swallowed the rest. “Immediately afterwards, placing his hands to the fire, as if to warm them, and looking upwards, he uttered a few words, apparently of invocation: then, looking at us, pointed upwards, and exclaimed, with a tone and gesture of explanation, ‘Pecheray, Pecheray.’ After which they cut off some hair from several of the officers who were present, and repeated a similar ceremony.”1015 The Thompson Indians used to burn the parings of their nails, because if an enemy got possession of the parings he might bewitch the person to whom they belonged.1016 In the Tyrol many people burn their hair lest the witches should use it to raise thunderstorms; others burn or bury it to prevent the birds from lining their nests with it, which would cause the heads from which the hair came to ache.1017 Cut and combed-out hair is burned in Pomerania and sometimes in Belgium.1018 In Norway the parings of nails are either burned or buried, lest the elves or the Finns should find them and make them into bullets wherewith to shoot the cattle.1019 In Corea all the clippings and combings of the hair of a whole family are carefully preserved throughout the year and then burned in potsherds outside the house on the evening of New Year's Day. At such seasons the streets of Seoul, the capital, present a weird spectacle. They are for the most part silent and deserted, sometimes muffled deep in snow; but through the dusk of twilight red lights glimmer at every door, where little groups are busy tending tiny fires whose flickering flames cast a ruddy fitful glow on the moving figures. The burning of the hair in these fires is thought to exclude demons from the house for a year; but coupled with this belief may well be, or once have been, a wish to put these relics out of the reach of witches and wizards.1020

Inconsistency in burning cut hair and nails.

This destruction of the hair and nails plainly involves an inconsistency of thought. The object of the destruction is avowedly to prevent these severed portions of the body from being used by sorcerers. But the possibility of their being so used depends upon the supposed sympathetic connexion between them and the man from whom they were severed. And if this sympathetic connexion still exists, clearly these severed portions cannot be destroyed without injury to the man.

Hair is sometimes cut because it is infected with the virus of taboo. In these cases hair-cutting is a form of purification. Hair of mourners cut to rid them of the pollution of death.

Before leaving this subject, on which I have perhaps dwelt too long, it may be well to call attention to the motive assigned for cutting a young child's hair in Rotti.1021 In that island the first hair is regarded as a danger to the child, and its removal is intended to avert the danger. The reason of this may be that as a young child is almost universally supposed to be in a tabooed or dangerous state, it is necessary, in removing the taboo, to remove also the separable parts of the child's body because they are infected, so to say, by the virus of taboo and as such are dangerous. The cutting of the child's hair would thus be exactly parallel to the destruction of the vessels which have been used by a tabooed person.1022 This view is borne out by a practice, observed by some Australians, of burning off part of a woman's hair after childbirth as well as burning every vessel which has been used by her during her seclusion.1023 Here the burning of the woman's hair seems plainly intended to serve the same purpose as the burning of the vessels used by her; and as the vessels are burned because they are believed to be tainted with a dangerous infection, so, we must suppose, is also the hair. Similarly among the Latuka of central Africa, a woman is secluded for fourteen days after the birth of her child, and at the end of her seclusion her hair is shaved off and burnt.1024 Again, we have seen that girls at puberty are strongly infected with taboo; hence it is not surprising to find that the Ticunas of Brazil tear out all the hair of girls at that period.1025 Once more, the father of twins in Uganda is tabooed for some time after the birth of the children, and during that time he may not dress his hair nor cut his finger nails. This state of taboo lasts until the next war breaks out. When the army is under orders to march, the father of twins has the whole of his body shaved and his nails cut. The shorn hair and the cut nails are then tied up in a ball, which the man takes with him to the war, together with the bark cloth he wore at the ceremonial dances after the birth of the twins. When he has killed a foe, he crams the ball into the dead man's mouth, ties the bark cloth round the neck of the corpse, and leaves them there on the battlefield.1026 The ceremony appears to be intended to rid the man of the taint of taboo which may be supposed to adhere to his hair, nails, and the garment he wore. Hence we can understand the importance attached by many peoples to the first cutting of a child's hair and the elaborate ceremonies by which the operation is accompanied.1027 Again, we can understand why a man should poll his head after a journey.1028 For we have seen that a traveller is often believed to contract a dangerous infection from strangers, and that, therefore, on his return home he is obliged to submit to various purificatory ceremonies before he is allowed to mingle freely with his own people.1029 On my hypothesis the polling of the hair is simply one of these purificatory or disinfectant ceremonies. Certainly this explanation applies to the custom as practised by the Bechuanas, for we are expressly told that “they cleanse or purify themselves after journeys by shaving their heads, etc., lest they should have contracted from strangers some evil by witchcraft or sorcery.”1030 The cutting of the hair after a vow may have the same meaning. It is a way of ridding the man of what has been infected by the dangerous state, whether we call it taboo, sanctity, or uncleanness (for all these are only different expressions for the same primitive conception), under which he laboured during the continuance of the vow. Still more clearly does the meaning of the practice come out in the case of mourners, who cut their hair and nails and use new vessels when the period of their mourning is at an end. This was done in ancient India, obviously for the purpose of purifying such persons from the dangerous influence of death and the ghost to which for a time they had been exposed.1031 Among the Bodos and Dhimals of Assam, when a death has occurred, the family of the deceased is reckoned unclean for three days. At the end of that time they bathe, shave, and are sprinkled with holy water, after which they hold the funeral feast.1032 Here the act of shaving must clearly be regarded as a purificatory rite, like the bathing and sprinkling with holy water. At Hierapolis no man might enter the great temple of Astarte on the same day on which he had seen a corpse; next day he might enter, provided he had first purified himself. But the kinsmen of the deceased were not allowed to set foot in the sanctuary for thirty days after the death, and before doing so they had to shave their heads.1033 At Agweh, on the Slave Coast of West Africa, widows and widowers at the end of their period of mourning wash themselves, shave their heads, pare their nails, and put on new cloths; and the old cloths, the shorn hair, and the nail-parings are all burnt.1034 The Kayans of Borneo are not allowed to cut their hair or shave their temples during the period of mourning; but as soon as the mourning is ended by the ceremony of bringing home a newly severed human head, the barber's knife is kept busy enough. As each man leaves the barber's hands, he gathers up the shorn locks and spitting on them murmurs a prayer to the evil spirits not to harm him. He then blows the hair out of the verandah of the house.1035 Among the Wajagga of East Africa mourners shear their hair under a fruit-bearing banana-tree and lay their shorn locks at the foot of the tree. When the fruit of the tree is ripe, they brew beer with it and invite all the mourners to partake of it, saying, “Come and drink the beer of those hair-bananas.”1036 The tribes of British Central Africa destroy the house in which a man has died, and on the day when this is done the mourners have their heads shaved and bury the shorn hair on the site of the house; the Atonga burn it in a new fire made by the rubbing of two sticks.1037 When an Akikuyu woman has, in accordance with custom, exposed her misshapen or prematurely born infant in the wood for the hyaenas to devour, she is shaved on her return by an old woman and given a magic potion to drink; after which she is regarded as clean.1038 Similarly at some Hindoo places of pilgrimage on the banks of rivers men who have committed great crimes or are troubled by uneasy consciences have every hair shaved off by professional barbers before they plunge into the sacred stream, from which “they emerge new creatures, with all the accumulated guilt of a long life effaced.”1039 The matricide Orestes is said to have polled his hair after appeasing the angry Furies of his murdered mother.1040

§ 9. Spittle tabooed

People may be bewitched by means of their spittle. Hence people take care of their spittle to prevent it from falling into the hands of sorcerers.

The same fear of witchcraft which has led so many people to hide or destroy their loose hair and nails has induced other or the same people to treat their spittle in a like fashion. For on the principles of sympathetic magic the spittle is part of the man, and whatever is done to it will have a corresponding effect on him. A Chilote Indian, who has gathered up the spittle of an enemy, will put it in a potato, and hang the potato in the smoke, uttering certain spells as he does so in the belief that his foe will waste away as the potato dries in the smoke. Or he will put the spittle in a frog and throw the animal into an inaccessible, unnavigable river, which will make the victim quake and shake with ague.1041 When a Cherokee sorcerer desires to destroy a man, he gathers up his victim's spittle on a stick and puts it in a joint of wild parsnip, together with seven earthworms beaten to a paste and several splinters from a tree which has been struck by lightning. He then goes into the forest, digs a hole at the foot of a tree which has been struck by lightning, and deposits in the hole the joint of wild parsnip with its contents. Further, he lays seven yellow stones in the hole, then fills in the earth, and makes a fire over the spot to destroy all traces of his work. If the ceremony has been properly carried out, the man whose spittle has thus been treated begins to feel ill at once; his soul shrivels up and dwindles; and within seven days he is a dead man.1042 In the East Indian island of Siaoo or Siauw, one of the Sangi group, there are witches who by means of hellish charms compounded from the roots of plants can change their shape and bring sickness and misfortune on other folk. These hags also crawl under the houses, which are raised above the ground on posts, and there gathering up the spittle of the inmates cause them to fall ill.1043 If a Wotjobaluk sorcerer cannot get the hair of his foe, a shred of his rug, or something else that belongs to the man, he will watch till he sees him spit, when he will carefully pick up the spittle with a stick and use it for the destruction of the careless spitter.1044 The natives of Urewera, a district in the north island of New Zealand, enjoyed a high reputation for their skill in magic. It was said that they made use of people's spittle to bewitch them. Hence visitors were careful to conceal their spittle, lest they should furnish these wizards with a handle for working them harm.1045 Similarly among some tribes of South Africa no man will spit when an enemy is near, lest his foe should find the spittle and give it to a wizard, who would then mix it with magical ingredients so as to injure the person from whom it fell. Even in a man's own house his saliva is carefully swept away and obliterated for a similar reason.1046 For a like reason, no doubt, the natives of the Marianne Islands use great precautions in spitting and take care never to expectorate near somebody else's house.1047 Negroes of Senegal, the Bissagos Archipelago, and some of the West Indian Islands, such as Guadeloupe and Martinique, are also careful to efface their spittle by pressing it into the ground with their feet, lest a sorcerer should use it to their hurt.1048 Natives of Astrolabe Bay, in German New Guinea, wipe out their spittle for the same reason;1049 and a like dread of sorcery prevents some natives of German New Guinea from spitting on the ground in presence of others.1050 The Telugus say that if a man, rinsing his teeth with charcoal in the mornings, spits on the road and somebody else treads on his spittle, the spitter will be laid up with a sharp attack of fever for two or three days. Hence all who wish to avoid the ailment should at once efface their spittle by sprinkling water on it.1051

Precautions taken by chiefs, kings, and wizards to guard their spittle from being put to evil uses by magicians.

If common folk are thus cautious, it is natural that kings and chiefs should be doubly so. In the Sandwich Islands chiefs were attended by a confidential servant bearing a portable spittoon, and the deposit was carefully buried every morning to put it out of the reach of sorcerers.1052 On the Slave Coast of Africa, for the same reason, whenever a king or chief expectorates, the saliva is scrupulously gathered up and hidden or buried.1053 The same precautions are taken for the same reason with the spittle of the chief of Tabali in Southern Nigeria.1054 At Bulebane, in Senegambia, a French traveller observed a captive engaged, with an air of great importance, in covering over with sand all the spittle that fell from the lips of a native dignitary; the man used a small stick for the purpose.1055 Page-boys, who carry tails of elephants, hasten to sweep up or cover with sand the spittle of the king of Ashantee;1056 an attendant used to perform a similar service for the king of Congo;1057 and a custom of the same sort prevails or used to prevail at the court of the Muata Jamwo in the interior of Angola.1058 In Yap, one of the Caroline Islands, there are two great wizards, the head of all the magicians, whose exalted dignity compels them to lead a very strict life. They may eat fruit only from plants or trees which are grown specially for them. When one of them goes abroad the other must stay at home, for if they were to meet each other on the road, some direful calamity would surely follow. Though they may not smoke tobacco, they are allowed to chew a quid of betel; but that which they expectorate is carefully gathered up, carried away, and burned in a special manner, lest any evil-disposed person should get possession of the spittle and do their reverences a mischief by uttering a curse over it.1059 Among the Guaycurus and Payaguas of Brazil, when a chief spat, the persons about him received his saliva on their hands,1060 probably in order to prevent it from being misused by magicians.