Part 15

In these cases, though the supernatural being may be out of reach, that does not hinder men and women from pitting their _orenda_ against his; and as soon as the storm {180} or the eclipse comes to an end they naturally vaunt their success. In the form of wind indeed he may be held to descend to actual blows with his human opponents. Professor Frazer has collected a number of examples of fighting the storm and the whirlwind.[180.1] Nor are those examples confined to such as already recounted. Even in Europe eddies and gusts of wind are attacked without hesitation by peasants, whether Scottish, Breton, German, Slav, or Esthonian. A small whirlwind of the kind with which we are all familiar is believed to be caused by a witch, who is carried along unseen at its centre, and may be revealed and rendered harmless by launching some object, preferably a knife, into it. In the Tirol a knife of special form is used for the purpose, on the blade of which are engraved nine St Andrew’s crosses and nine crescent moons. It wounds the witch as surely as the harpoon in the Basque tale cited at the beginning of this essay.[180.2]

Here and in many of the other instances the supernatural being is regarded as actually hostile. At certain stages of evolution there is, however, as little hesitation in turning upon a god with whom one is usually on terms of friendship and submission. We have had some examples of this. A god may provoke a worshipper, and human nature will not always put up with the provocation. When he is found in tangible shape as an idol his {181} aggrieved client may even resort to corporal chastisement. Dr Farnell refers in this connection to the passage in the seventh idyll of Theocritus, where the poet mentions the whipping of the image of Pan with squills when food was scarce, and to a Breton smith “who threatened the saint’s image with red-hot pincers to compel him to heal his son.”[181.1] The two practices thus put together are not strictly parallel. Originally at least they were widely different in purpose, though they have some outward resemblance. To beat the image of Pan with squills was not to punish the god for neglect of duty, but to bring him into touch with the powers of growth, to drive out the barrenness that possessed him and to recreate his fructifying forces. It was a magical means of restoring his life-giving properties. It may have been to some extent, like punishment, a relief to the feelings of the beater; but the chief object is unmistakably shown by the ritual requirement to beat with squills.[181.2] It would seem, however, as if this had been forgotten by the time of Theocritus; for in the following lines (not cited by Dr Farnell) the poet goes on to threaten stinging with nettles in case of the god’s recalcitrance, as if this were the same sort of petty torment.

On the other hand, means are often taken, like those of the Breton smith, to compel a god to grant his suppliant’s wishes, and in default to inflict indignity and injury. Pietro della Valle tells in his _Voyages_ of an image of Saint Anthony which was thus treated by Portuguese sailors. First of all, prayers were addressed to the image for a favourable wind. The wind not being forthcoming, the {182} image was taken from its shrine and lashed to the mast, in the beginning with comparatively slack cords. The bonds were progressively tightened as the saint delayed to accede to his worshippers’ demands. They were not in a mood to stand any nonsense. The image before which they had knelt in prayer only a few hours earlier was now the object of curses and derision; and every day the wind was delayed a new cord was added to bind the sacred victim more tightly. At last, however, the wind changed and blew from the quarter desired; the saint was loosed from his uncomfortable position and replaced respectfully in his niche; the sailors thanked him, but mingled with their thanks reproaches for the obstinacy which had forced them to take severe measures with him.[182.1] Saint Anthony indeed suffers much from his votaries. The Spanish population of New Mexico do not hesitate to hang his image head downwards to urge him to his duty of performing miracles. Other obstinate saints they simply put away or imprison.[182.2] The modern Aztecs give their sacred images a whipping when their prayers are not attended to. The Tarascos of Mexico make San Mateo responsible for the weather and the crops. When it freezes his image is taken from the church in the early morning and dumped into cold water as a punishment. On the other hand, he is rewarded for good crops by a procession, a big feast, and abundance of brandy and tamales.[182.3]

In France, near the village of la Selle, on the highway from Autun to Château Chinon, is a granite rock, on the top of which rustic piety has erected a Calvary. Just below it is a little grotto that serves as a niche to shelter {183} the statue of the good Saint Merri, the patron of the parish. Saint Merri has a reputation extending far and wide. Formerly on the stone at his feet might be seen offerings of eggs and small change; and even yet pilgrimages are made to his shrine in pursuance of vows or for the cure of certain diseases. Among these, it would seem, as the offering of eggs may indicate, he was expected to cure sterility. It is related that a pious woman of a neighbouring village was in the habit of coming to implore the saint for her daughter, who had been married for some years, but had had no children. She had another daughter, who was not married; and the saint made a mistake: it was her unmarried daughter to whom a child was granted. The good woman, enraged at a blunder so inexcusable, returned to the saint. Bitterly reproaching him with his mockery of her prayers, she took a stick and inflicted on him a sound castigation, breaking his arm and rolling him over on the ground, where he long remained, a witness to his own unseemly jest and her righteous indignation. The inhabitants at last made a collection to buy a new saint, which is now placed on a pedestal in the foreground of the grotto, while the old and guilty saint is relegated shamefully to a corner, and still bears the scornful title of the Weeper.[183.1]

Corporal punishment of saints, otherwise than by way of penance during their mortal life, has never enjoyed official favour in any form of Christianity, however gratifying it may be to the feelings of disappointed worshippers. So far as it is employed as a serious means of compelling attention to the needs and prayers of {184} their clients it is by no means confined to Christianity. Savage and barbaric peoples do not hesitate to punish their idols in this manner. The practice is reported from the Southern Pacific to the frozen shores of the Arctic Ocean in both hemispheres. Two or three examples will suffice. The Eskimo who wander along the inhospitable coasts of Ungava to the north of Hudson’s Bay are attended each by a guardian spirit, often in the form of a doll carried somewhere about the person. These spirits are not naturally benevolent. They must be abundantly propitiated with offerings of food, water and clothing, to induce them to confer success and prosperity upon the man who may with equal propriety be termed their master or their worshipper. If the spirit prove obdurate and, like Saint Anthony, reluctant to grant the needful assistance, its owner sometimes becomes angry with it and inflicts a condign chastisement, deprives it of food, strips it of its garments, or even palms it off secretly on some unsuspecting friend, to his discomfort or injury.[184.1] When a chief dies in the district of Ibouzo, on the Niger, without leaving a son, his _Ikengua_, or domestic wooden idol of the god of riches, is cut in two and flung away into the bush, because it has procured no male descendant for its worshipper.[184.2] A Brahman boy in India attended a mission-school, and was selected to compete in a tennis tournament. He and his two younger brothers had each an image of Ganesa, which was kept in a shrine for worship. Previous to the tournament the images were taken out and solemnly threatened by the three brothers with something very disagreeable if the eldest brother lost the match. He lost it. The brothers returned home, and carried out their threat by pitching the three {185} images into the well at the back of the house. The next day they sallied out and bought three new images of the god to replace the old ones.[185.1] The Paraiyans of Southern India on the occasion of a drought invoke the dēvata called Kodumpāvi (wicked one). “The ceremony consists in making a huge figure of Kodumpāvi in clay, which is placed on a cart and dragged through the streets for seven to ten days. On the last day the final death ceremonies of the figure are celebrated.” It is mutilated, and funeral rites are performed by the grave-diggers. “This procedure is believed to put Kodumpāvi to shame,” and to get her to induce her paramour Sukra, who has neglected his duty, to stay the drought.[185.2] If this be so, it is evident that the figure is not identified with the dēvata, and the punishment operates by the mental rather than the corporeal annoyance inflicted upon her. Japan affords an example of righteous indignation expressing itself in castigation which is passing, or has already passed, into a spell. When the owner of a tea-house is dissatisfied with the number of his customers, the wooden pestle of the tub in which various kinds of meal and salt are mixed for the preparation of a certain dish is taken out and struck through the uppermost paper panel of the door or window, so that it falls on the floor with a crash. Out come the people of the house armed with sticks, brooms, and so forth; and they scold and thrash the pestle, making him responsible for the fewness of their guests. He is bound and thrown into a chest. If shortly afterwards the guests increase, the pestle is taken out of his prison, his forgiveness is asked, and he is drenched with _saki_. It is hardly necessary to observe that the pestle is a phallic representative, and that the business of a tea-house {186} often extends to the entertainment of a guest in more ways than one.[186.1]

The practice, however, is so well known that it would be waste of time to multiply illustrations. I will only add that in the valley of the Nile, in the days when the worship of animals, whatever its exact origin or meaning, prevailed, the sacred beasts were carefully tended and trained, and all their wants were provided for. In return they were expected to grant their worshippers’ wishes. If they “could not or would not help in emergency they were beaten; and if this measure failed to prove efficacious, then the creatures were punished by death;… and it was the priests themselves who condemned and executed the sacred animal. Afterwards indeed they sought to secure its immortality by the embalmment of the body, thereby hoping to appease the wrath of the god, lest he should avenge the killing of the creature in which he had been incarnate.”[186.2] There is such a thing as carrying punishment too far, especially when you cannot carry it far enough to put an end to a being of indefinite but superhuman power, who will bottle up his anger until he can catch you off your guard. This inconvenience is incident to the theory evolved by Egyptian syncretism that the sacred animals were incarnations of the divinities.

Another method of dealing with a god or any supernatural being is to bind and imprison him, if you can catch him. This needs but a cursory mention here. It has been dealt with at some length by Mr William {187} Crooke, who has ingeniously suggested that the Homeric story, already referred to, of the binding and imprisonment of Ares by Otus and Ephialtes owes its origin to this practice.[187.1] In any case it is a common expedient for the laying of a ghost. I was privileged to live for some years in a house concerning which one of these ghost-laying traditions was told; and so far as my experience goes the expedient was entirely successful. It is still in use by medicine-men for delivering their clients from the persecution of troublesome spirits. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo “sometimes the witch-doctor will drive the spirit into a saucepan or calabash, and either kill it or imprison it.”[187.2]

Obviously the adage “First catch your hare” applies here. The supernatural being cannot always be caught. But he may be driven away. Dr Frazer has illustrated very fully the widespread practice of expelling evils considered as personal beings either periodically or occasionally by ceremonies of violence or of enticement, persuasion and magical spells.[187.3] The ancient Scandinavians seem to have instituted solemn legal proceedings against troublesome ghosts. There is a remarkable story in the _Eyrbyggia Saga_ of a number of malignant ghosts who haunted the settlement at Frodiswater with disastrous effects to men and stores. The Christian priest sang the hours there, manufactured holy water and shrived all folk. This was not enough to disperse the ghosts, who had audaciously come and sat by the fires, to the horror of the survivors, and devastated the place with sickness and misfortune. It was but the preparation for the stringent measures to follow. The bed-gear of Thorgunna, the deceased stranger-woman who had started {188} the mischief, was burned. The ghosts were summoned to a door-doom; “and it was done in all matters even as at a doom of the Thing: verdicts were delivered, cases summed up and doom given.” The ghosts attended in obedience to the summons. As each was found guilty he was sentenced to depart. “But as soon as the sentence on Thorir Wooden-leg was given out, he rose and said: ‘Here have I sat while sit I might’”; and thereafter he stumped out by the door opposite to that before which the court was holding its session. Thus they were banished one after another; “and each arose as the sentence fell on him, and all said somewhat at their going forth; but ever it seemed by the words of each that they were all loth to depart.” Last of all judgement was given upon Thorod, the recently deceased goodman of the house, “and when he heard it he stood up and said: ‘Meseems little peace is here; so get us all gone otherwhere’; and therewith he went out. Then in walked Kiartan [the heir] and his folk, and the priest bare hallowed water and the holy things throughout the house; and on the next day they sang all the hours and mass with great solemnity; and so there was an end thereafter to all walkings and hauntings at Frodiswater.”[188.1]

What is important to observe here is the entire respect paid by the criminal _revenants_ to the formal and deliberate decision of the society against which they had sinned. They obeyed it as they would have obeyed it in their lifetime. In heathen times, out of which Iceland had scarcely emerged, the Thing was the lawful assembly of the whole community. Its doom outlawed those members who were convicted of antisocial conduct, and such was undoubtedly the conduct of the dead who returned to {189} harm the living. Though dead they were still members of the society and subject to its laws. By those laws it was their duty to abide in the howe, or grave-mound, and thence watch over the well-being of the family, receiving in return a cult. The authority of the Thing extended to all matters interesting the community, religious as well as political, juridical and administrative. Under Christianity, and the advancing civilization of which it was a part, the religious authority was beginning to be separated from its control, of which perhaps we may see a hint in the narrative. But the religious officials were acting in unison with the rest, though hardly now as part of them. On the other hand, the cult of the dead was no longer officially recognized. It is improbable that it had ceased; and assuredly the defunct were still charged with the negative duty of remaining quietly in the howe and abstaining from all molestation of those whom they had left behind. There may be some doubt as to the technical status of the assembly which dealt with the case. If not a local and subordinate Thing, it seems at least to have been a properly constituted tribunal, proceeding in a perfectly regular manner, and carrying in its decisions the force of law. It had probably not yet become entirely divested of spiritual jurisdiction, or at least of spiritual prestige, which may indeed be taken to be sanctioned and supported by the countenance and assistance of the priest of the new religion. The ghostly transgressors recognized its authority, the propriety of its procedure, the justice and the binding character of its sentence; and however much they grudged it, they submitted.

It need not be said that more summary measures were often taken with those who “walked” after death to the inconvenience of the survivors. They consisted in {190} digging out and destroying the corpse, or dealing with it in a way similar to that used with vampires, which are indeed one species of these troublesome visitors. Examples are not uncommon in the Norse sagas, and are plentiful in the folklore of the Scandinavian and other countries.

An alternative to driving away the supernatural being is to threaten and insult him. Of this I have in previous pages given some examples. The ancient Greeks had a technical term for formulæ of this kind. They called them θεῶν ἀνάγκαι, compulsions of the gods. It will be sufficient to refer to a few cases of insult employed by different peoples in all seriousness, and often in the sacred ritual. When a sacrifice is offered to the ancestral _manes_ by the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa on the occasion of sickness in the family, they are told: “You are useless, you gods; you only give us trouble! For although we give you offerings, you do not listen to us! We are deprived of everything! You [naming the ancestral spirit who is addressed as the cause of the evil] are full of hatred! You do not enrich us! All those who succeed do so by the help of their gods!” We are informed that when some great misfortune is the occasion for a special sacrifice, the request presented in the prayer is preceded or followed by a ritual insulting of the gods (_manes_). “There are two words used to designate this curious part of the prayer: _holobela_, to scold the gods, or _rukatela_, the real word for _to insult_.”[190.1] Here it must not be forgotten that the personages addressed are {191} members of the family. It is true that they have been divinized by death, but their family relationship has not been dissolved. They have still their duties to perform, as well as the survivors; and if they neglect them a family quarrel may reasonably be the consequence, as it might in their lifetime.

This method of bullying divinities is well known in India. A pair of examples from the extremities of the peninsula will suffice. Parakutty is a debased form of Vishnu (or perhaps it may be more correct to say an aboriginal demon identified with Vishnu), worshipped by some of the low castes in Cochin. The Nayadis are a jungle tribe reputed to be skilful hunters. Parakutty is supposed to aid them in hunting. When they fail to get the expected game they abuse him for his ingratitude, and for betraying the trust they have reposed in him. He is also the favourite deity of the Parayans. A Paraya magician is frequently called in to assist in recovering stolen property. He invokes Parakutty for the purpose. If the property be not recovered the magician prays again, this time in a more indignant and abusive form, and he thinks that then his object is sure to be gained.[191.1] In _The Legends of the Panjab_, Sir R. C. Temple gives a long poem in which a woman in trouble expresses her intention of cursing her patron saint Gorakh Nâth for the misfortunes that have befallen her.[191.2] In the same spirit Charlemagne, in the romances, is made to threaten God to throw down his altars and make the churches with all their priests cease from the land of the Franks.[191.3]

Great and awful as gods may be, they are after all but {192} human. The most mysterious of them are conceived in quasi-human terms. On the other hand, human beings are often looked upon as gods and treated accordingly. But then their treatment is simply that of powerful men, men possessed of and filled with a greater or less degree of _mana_, who therefore require to be handled gingerly, like an unexploded bomb. Such a man-god, if a native ruler or fellow-tribesman, can seldom be driven away; but he may, especially if his _mana_ be suspected of departing from him, be attacked and slain. To expound this practice and the belief on which it is founded, or with which it is bound up, Dr Frazer’s great work, _The Golden Bough_, has been written. The white man, like the gods, is to peoples in the lower culture mysterious, powerful, endowed with _mana_. To that extent he is the object of wonder and fear, he is a god. Yet he may be fought and overpowered, killed or driven away. Of the Bangala in the Upper Congo basin we are told that before the unknown and mysterious the native “is timid, fearful, and very superstitious. He will regard you as a _god_, and yet try to fight you; he will superstitiously believe that you have wonderful occult powers that can stop the rain, cause pestilence and plagues; and yet he will not attempt to conciliate you, but he will savagely tell you to clear out of his town and take your witchcraft elsewhere.”[192.1]

So and not otherwise the savage treats his gods. Where milder means avail not, and he can get his way by rough treatment of the idols or other tangible forms in which they are presented, he does not hesitate to use physical force. As little will he hesitate to use guile to eke out his inferior strength. It is but another manifestation of his _orenda_. Hence the tales of audacious heroes {193} who have measured their strength or their cunning against more tremendous personages. Hence the threats and insults addressed to powers beyond immediate reach by peoples all over the world. Hence the punishment inflicted on the images of gods and saints. Hence the boldness of the Celts.

THE HAUNTED WIDOW

{194}

According to the legend of Osiris as preserved for us by Plutarch, the slain divinity accompanied with Isis, his sister-wife, after his death, with the result that she had by him a child whose name is given in Greek form as Harpocrates.[194.1] Doubt has been thrown by some Egyptologists upon the accuracy of Plutarch’s report; but it is probably correct. At all events the incident is fairly widespread both in tale and superstition, as I shall proceed to show.