Part 13

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism--at {152} least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved--a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory’s famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.

The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and {153} comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.

If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. But this unity, as civilization progresses, becomes more and more unstable. Where, as is said to be the case in Morocco, civilization has recoiled, magic comes more and more to the front. Though it does so not without protests on the part of those who retain any consciousness of the higher development of religion, still on the whole it is successful in overlaying religion and pushing it into the background. Another people whose religion is in process of degeneration, if Dr Rivers’ opinion be correct, is the Todas. There the magic of the dairy ritual has thrust aside the worship of the gods. In this case, however, the opposition is not open and avowed. The history of the Todas is a blank. We cannot put our finger on one period and say: Here the gods were worshipped and the dairy magic was unknown. We have no records. We can only conclude from an examination of the internal evidence that the gods once played a more prominent part in the life of the community than they do now, but that Toda culture had not so far progressed that magic was not an inseparable part of religion, and that any growth of magic at the expense of religion would have {154} been viewed without misgiving or even consciousness. Even religions where the opposition is most pronounced are themselves by no means pure from magic. All the subtlety, all the rhetoric of theologians may well be needed to rebut the charge of magic against the seven sacraments of the Church. I at least have no intention to risk the curse levelled by the Council of Trent at him who denies their efficacy _ex opere operato_, and whether or not the minister may be in a state of mortal sin.

In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live”[154.1] is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: “When thou art come into the land which Yahwè thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahwè; and because of these abominations Yahwè thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”[154.2] This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding.[154.3] Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahwè; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination {155} is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahwè, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets--one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar (_massebah_), and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”[155.1] The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahwè, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.

Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahwè at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.

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Similar considerations inspired mediæval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.

But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one’s neighbours {157} by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.

It is, in fact, the tendency to individualism rather than magic itself that has awakened hostility everywhere. But this tendency is inherent in magic. In the lower stages of civilization magic is undistinguished not only from religion but from medicine, from astronomy, from engineering, from literary learning, from the practice of industries other than the simplest and of art. Consequently everyone who possesses a little more skill than ordinary, or is credited with a knowledge surpassing that of the vulgar, faces the inevitable risk of being reputed a magician, and the suspicion of using his advantages to the detriment of others. Nor is the suspicion unfounded. Human nature being what it is, power, of whatever kind, is utilized for the benefit of its possessor, frequently without regard to the claims of others or the public good. The shaman or the wizard who is called in to the aid of the sick is often the depositary of knowledge of healing herbs and of poisons. The powers that are at the disposal of beneficence are equally applied to baleful ends. The healing of disease, whether it be effected by suggestion or by physical remedies, may be a social good: primarily and directly it is an individual benefit. To put the public foe under a spell excites the approval of the community. To lay a private enemy low is a very different matter. But the same expert by the exercise of the same skill performs both. Moreover, he subserves the ends of private gain and private revenge with equal indifference, and, it is {158} believed, by the same mysterious means. In all these instances the professor of magic places his skill, knowledge, experience, and the terror of his name and incantations--in one word, his _orenda_--at the service of his clients without distinction. As civilization advances, and religion and religious ministers begin to be differentiated from the wizard or medicine-man, the latter is probably called on less and less to perform rites on behalf of the public, and more and more on behalf of individuals. The portions of magic that can be disposed for the purposes of the community are taken up into religion. What remains when this is done becomes specifically the method and practice of the magician. Small wonder then that the only magic recognized as such is antisocial magic.

On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. Everyone observes it, because upon it depends the weal of all alike. Everyone’s eye too is upon his neighbour; and a departure from custom is sure to be noticed, and equally sure to be resented as something sinister. At the least it is viewed with suspicion and concern. Done innocently, it will bring misfortune on the doer and all connected with him. Done with a purpose, it is abhorred and punished as evil magic. Happily the fear of witchcraft is not everywhere an obsession. Where it is, as almost all over Africa, it has become the most powerful cause of the stagnation of culture. Mr Weeks, a missionary of long {159} experience, and an admirable observer, speaking of the Bangala on the Upper Congo, says the native “has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native, to save his life and live in peace, has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him.”[159.1]

This deplorable result is attributable to the suspicion of antisocial ends. It is this kind of magic which alone is reprobated in the lower culture. Death is very generally regarded as unnatural. If not caused by open violence, it must be due to spirits or to magic. Magic indeed is often deemed responsible for deaths by violence, or deaths credited to the immediate action of the spirits. Magic sets both causes in motion. Hence at a death, however occasioned, an inquest is commonly held to ascertain who is responsible; the accused is required to undergo an ordeal, and is punished if found guilty--as he usually is. But it is not the practice of magic that is condemned; it is the application of magic to the injury of the community. The chieftain of a tribe of Bantu “smells out” and puts to death the witch who has slain his father. The same chieftain will habitually practise magic on another chief before fighting with him. He {160} will make rain, or employ a wizard for the purpose. His sacrifices and acts of worship are inextricably mingled with magic. Even when the schism between magic and religion has attained much wider dimensions than anywhere among the Bantu, it is rather magic in its antisocial aspect than in itself that is reprobated and punished. The departure from established custom and established belief involves a severance from the community and an imputation of antisocial ends. The pursuit of individual desires and hatreds at odds with the general interest is what arouses the anger of society. Practices essentially magical may be incorporated in religious rites and exercised for what is believed to be the public good; and they will continue to be exercised with general assent, even in the highest forms of religion.

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

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Ælian, writing of the boldness of the Celts, relates that many of them await the overflowing sea, some throwing themselves armed into the waves and receiving their onset with drawn swords and threatening spears, just as if they could scare back or wound them.[161.1] This report seems to have come to him in the shape of gossip; nor does he assign it to any tribe or definite locality. That there was some ground for it, however, is to be inferred from the existence in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century, of a short tradition, obviously of much earlier date, concerning Tuirbhe Trághmar, the father of Gobán Saer, who owned Tráigh Tuirbhi. “’Tis from that heritage he, standing on Telach Bela (the Hill of the Axe), would hurl a cast of his axe in the face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over the axe.”[161.2]

The rhetorician perhaps regarded this Celtic practice as a useless piece of bravado, and only cited it by way of climax to his illustrations of Celtic daring and recklessness. There is little doubt that to the Celts themselves it was quite different. The sea and the waves were looked upon as personal beings with whom it was possible literally to fight, and who might even be overcome. {162} Such a view is common to many seaboard peoples. A curiously parallel tradition is found among the Malays at Jugra on the Selangor coast concerning the bore of the Langat River. This bore was conceived to be caused by the passage of a gigantic animal, probably a dragon. When it came up the river the Malays used to go out in small canoes or dug-outs to “sport amongst the breakers,” frequently getting upset for their pains. Eventually however, as Mr Skeat was told, the bore was killed by a Malay, who struck it upon the head with a stick. Whether from this cause or from the diversion of the stream into a new channel to the sea, there is no longer a bore in the river.[162.1] We may conclude that the Malays who went out to sport among the breakers really went to assail the bore in force, and that when the bore ceased to flow the belief arose that one of them had attacked it successfully and killed it.

European folk-tales have been found recording a similar belief. Among the Basques we are told that a witch once determined to sink a certain fishing-boat and drown its crew. Her plan was to overwhelm it with three immense waves, the first of milk, the second of tears, and the third of blood. The boat might ride in safety over the first two; but the third wave would be herself in person, and the only way to escape would be to launch a harpoon into the midst of it: the weapon would pierce her heart, and the boat with its crew would be saved. With the want of caution which, fortunately for the heroes of folk-tales, is so remarkable a characteristic of cunning and malevolent beings, the plot was laid in the hearing of the cabin-boy. At the critical moment he nerved his arm to fling the harpoon, and struck the wave in the midst. It divided and dashed upon the shore, {163} covering all the strand with a bloody foam. The bark was saved; but on his return the master found his wife dying of her wound, for she was the witch who had planned the destruction of her husband and his craft.[163.1] This Basque story, though only recorded in a literary version, appears to be a genuine folk-tale, since it is also found substantially the same among the traditions of the Frisian Islands and Norway.[163.2]

Other waters than the sea have likewise been endowed with personality. Rivers and streams have everywhere been regarded as conscious beings, or (in a later stage of animism) as the haunt of such beings. Usually they have been reckoned as endowed with a might too mystical and too tremendous to be attacked by man; but occasionally men of heroic mould have been supposed to fight and overcome them. Professor Frazer has argued with probability that the angel who wrestled with Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok was in the original tale the river-god himself, the awful spirit of the Jabbok.[163.3] He has not adduced any direct parallel in support of the conjecture, though the examples of offerings to streams for leave to cross them, of which he has collected a number from various parts of the world, do show that these waters are inhabited by supernatural beings, who must be treated with respect and whose goodwill must be obtained. Where he has failed to find parallels it is not likely that another can succeed. Yet it is curious that he should have overlooked the {164} traditions of the water-kelpie current in his native Scotland. Take one story told by Dr Gregor concerning a water-kelpie who used to come out of the stream and visit the sheeling where a certain blacksmith’s family and cow spent the summer. His visits, as was natural, caused terror and annoyance. At last the wife told the husband, who resolved to kill the creature. The wife took fright at the proposal and tried to dissuade him, under the fear that the kelpie would carry him off to his pool. He was deaf to her appeals. Preparing two long, sharp-pointed spits of iron, he repaired to the sheeling. He made a large fire on the hearth, and laid the two spits in it. In a short time the kelpie made his appearance as usual. The smith waited his opportunity, and with all his might drove the red-hot spits into the creature’s sides. It fell on the ground like a heap of starch.[164.1]

In this case the kelpie was killed. More numerous are the tales in which he approaches a traveller in the shape of a horse and induces him to mount; then he rushes to the pool, carrying the unwary man to his death. Often, however, he can be caught and made to work, by throwing over his head a bridle on which had been made the sign of the cross. When this was done, the creature became quiet and might be employed in labour needing strength and endurance, like that of carrying stones to build a mill or a farm-steading. When set free again, he took his leave, repeating the words:

“Sehr back an’ sehr behns, Cairrit a’ ----s’ stanes.”[164.2]

In Sweden the corresponding water-spirit--if that may be called a spirit which, as in all these cases, is regarded {165} as essentially corporeal--is called the Neck, a word connected with Hnikarr, the Old Norse appellation of Odin regarded as a water-god, and with the Nicors, or water-monsters referred to in _Beowulf_. The Neck is said to appear in various forms. Sometimes he is a grown man, and then “particularly dangerous to haughty and pert damsels”; sometimes he is a comely youth with his lower extremities like those of a horse; sometimes he is an old man with a long beard; occasionally a handsome youth with yellow locks flowing over his shoulders and a red cap, sitting in a summer evening on the surface of the water with a golden harp in his hand. In return for a black lamb he is not unwilling to communicate his skill in music; and if the offering be accompanied by the expression of a hope of his salvation, he is rendered especially gracious. For above all things he longs for eternal happiness; nor can deeper distress be inflicted upon him than by denying this possibility. A Neck who takes up his abode under a bridge, or in a stream, is commonly called a _Strömkarl_. He usually plays not on the harp but on the viol. Near Hornborgabro in West Gothland a Strömkarl was once heard singing to a pleasant melody these words thrice repeated: “I know--and I know--and I know--that my Redeemer liveth.” He is acquainted with a measure which, if played, will cause even inanimate things, as trees and stones, to dance; so powerful is his music.