scene 1.)

The concordance consulted was that of the Clarkes.

The association of “toadstools” with witchcraft may have been due to the belief that toads were the constant companions and servants of the witches and fairies.

Gesner says that witches made use of toads as a charm, “ut vim coeundi, ni fallor, in viris tollerunt.”—(Brand, Pop. Ant. London, 1872, vol. ii. page 170, art. “Divination at Weddings.”)

“Un crapaud noir de venin” was to be employed by those seeking favor of the witches of “Les Bourbonnais,” “La Fascination.”—(J. Tuchmann, in “Mélusine,” Paris, July, August, 1890.)

May dew was considered a most beneficial application for the skin, but young maidens while gathering it were careful not “to put foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power.”—(“Illustrations of Shakspeare,” Francis Douce, London, 1807, vol. i. p. 180.)

It would seem that the Saxons in England, at the time of the Norman Conquest, were fully aware of the deadly effects producible by the mushroom: “The old woman came back to her, ere she went to bed. ‘I have found it all out and more. I know where to get scarlet toadstools and I put the juice in his men’s ale. They are laughing and roaring now, merry-mad every one of them.’”

The effects of the potion are thus described: “His men were grouped outside of the gate, chattering like monkeys; the porter and the monks from the inside entreating them, vainly, to come in and go to bed quietly.

“But they would not. They vowed and swore that a great gulf had opened all down the road, and that one step more would tumble them in headlong.... In vain Hereward stormed; assured them that the supposed abyss was nothing but the gutter; proved the fact by kicking Martin over it. The men determined to believe their own eyes, and after a while fell asleep in heaps in the roadside, and lay there till morning, when they woke, declaring, as did the monks, that they had been bewitched. They knew not—and happily, the lower orders, both in England and on the Continent, do not yet know—the potent virtues of that strange fungus with which Lapps and Samoieds have, it is said, practised wonders for centuries past.”—(“Hereward, the last of the English,” Charles Kingsley, New York, 1866, p. 111.)

See also under “Ordeals and Punishments,” and “Insults.”

XIII.

A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS.

That some such use of poisonous fungi as has been shown exists among the tribes of Siberia was made by other nations, would be difficult to prove in the absence of direct testimony, but many incidental references are encountered which the reflective mind must consider with care before rejecting them as absolutely irrelevant in this connection. The Mexicans, as we learn from Sahagun, were not ignorant of the mushroom, which is described as the basis of one of their festivals. He says that they ate the nanacatl, a poisonous fungus which intoxicated as much as wine; after eating it, they assembled in a plain, where they danced and sang by night and by day to their fullest desire. This was on the first day, because on the following day they all wept bitterly, and they said that they were cleaning themselves and washing their eyes and faces with their tears.[17]

It is true that Sahagun does not describe any specially revolting feature in this orgy, but it is equally patent that he is describing from hearsay, and, probably, he was not allowed to know too much. In a second reference to this fungus, which he now calls teo-nanacatl, he alludes to the toxic properties, which coincide closely with those of the mushrooms noted in Siberia and on the northwest coast of America.

“There are some mushrooms in this country which are called teo-nanacatl. They grow under the grass in the fields and plains; ... they are hurtful to the throat and intoxicate; ... those who eat them see visions and feel flutterings in the heart; those who eat many of them are excited to lust, and even so if they eat but few.”[18]

The proof is not at all conclusive that this intoxication was produced as among the Siberian and Cape Flattery tribes; but it is very odd that the Aztecs should eat mushrooms for the same purpose; that they should hold their dance out in a plain and by night (that is, in a place as remote as possible from Father Sahagun’s inspection). On the second day, to trust Sahagun’s explanation, they would appear to have bewailed their behavior on the first; although it should be remarked here that ceremonial weeping has not been unknown to the American aborigines, and may, in this case, have been induced by causes not revealed to the stranger. Lastly, it is important to note that this poisonous fungus was a violent excitant, a nervous irritant, and an aphrodisiac.

Another early Spanish observer, also cited by Kingsborough, describes them in these terms:—

“They had another kind of drunkenness, ... which was with small fungi or mushrooms, ... which are eaten raw, and, on account of being bitter, they drink after them or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly after that they see a thousand visions, especially snakes.

“They went raving mad, running about the streets in a wild state (‘bestial embriaguez’). They called these fungi ‘teo-na-m-catl,’ a word meaning ‘bread of the gods.’”

This author does not allude to any effect upon the kidneys.[19]

This account can be compared, word for word, with those previously quoted from the Moqui Indian and from the descriptions of the Ur-Orgies of the Siberians.

The list of quotations is not yet complete. Tezozomoc, also an author of repute, relates that at the coronation of Montezuma the Mexicans gave wild mushrooms to the strangers to eat; that the strangers became drunk, and thereupon began to dance.[20] All of which is a terse description of a drunken orgy induced by poisonous mushrooms, but not represented with the disgusting sequences which would have served to establish a connection with urine dances.

Diego Duran also gives the particulars of the coronation of this Montezuma (the second of the name and the one on the throne at the date of the arrival of Cortés). He says that, after the usual human sacrifices had been offered up in the temples, all went to eat raw mushrooms, which caused them to lose their senses and affected them more than if they had drunk much wine. So utterly beside themselves were they that many of them killed themselves with their own hands, and by the potency of those mushrooms they saw visions and had revelations of the future, the devil speaking to them in their drunkenness.[21] Duran, of course, is not describing what he _saw_. Doubtless, in that case, his narrative would have been more animated and, possibly, more to our purpose.

MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS WORSHIPPED BY AMERICAN INDIANS.

Dorman is authority for the statement that mushrooms were worshipped by the Indians of the Antilles, and toadstools by those in Virginia,[22] but for what toxic or therapeutic qualities, real or supposed, he does not say. The toxic properties of fungi would seem to have been known to the Algonkins:—

“Paused to rest beneath a pine tree, From whose branches trail the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead Man’s Moccasin Leather, With the fungus white and yellow.”

“Hiawatha,” Henry W. Longfellow, canto ix.

A FORMER USE OF FUNGUS INDICATED IN THE MYTHS OF CEYLON, AND IN THE LAWS OF THE BRAHMINS.

On the west shore of the Pacific Ocean, aside from the orgies of the Siberian Shamans, no instance is on record of the use of the mushroom, or other fungus in religious rites in the present day.

A former use of it is indicated in the Cingalese myths, which teach that “Chance produced a species of mushroom called mattika[23] or jessathon, on which they lived for sixty-five thousand years; but being determined to make an equal division of this, also, they lost it. Luckily for them, another creeping plant [mistletoe?] called badrilata grew up, on which they (the Brahmins) fed for thirty-five thousand years, but which they lost for the same reason as the former ones.”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1807, vol. vii. p. 441.)

Among the Brahmins of the main land no such myth is related; but an English writer says:

“The ancient Hindus held the fungus in such detestation that Yama, a legislator, supposed now to be the judge of departed spirits, declares: ‘Those who eat mushrooms, whether springing from the ground or growing on a tree, fully equal in guilt to the slayers of Brahmins and the most despicable of all deadly sinners.’”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1795, vol. iv. p. 311.)

Dubois refers to the same subject. “The Brahmins,” he says, “have also retrenched from their vegetable food, which is the great fund of their subsistence, all roots which form a head or bulb in the ground, such as onions,[24] and those also which assume the same shape above ground, like mushrooms and some others.... Are we to suppose that they had discovered something unwholesome in the one species and proscribed the other on account of its fetid smell? This I cannot decide; all the information I have ever obtained from those among those whom I have consulted on the reasons of their abstinence from them being that it is customary to avoid such articles.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 117.)

This inhibition, under such dire penalties, can have but one meaning. In primitive times the people of India must have been so addicted to the debauchery induced by potions into the composition of which entered poisonous fungi and mistletoe (the mushroom “growing on a tree”), and the effects of such debauchery must have been found so debasing and pernicious, that the priest-rulers were compelled to employ the same maledictions which Moses proved of efficacy in withdrawing the children of Israel from the worship of idols.[25]

XIV.

THE ONION ADORED BY THE EGYPTIANS.

There are examples of the ideas surrounding onions, leeks, garlic, and bulbous vegetables of different kinds, in many countries.

“The Egyptians likened the whole firmament to an onion with its varied shells and radiations; and this, together with the aphrodisiacal and fertilizing properties which this vegetable is almost universally held to possess, rendered it sacred.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 474.)

“The species of onion which the Egyptians abhorred was the squill or red squill, because consecrated to Typhon; the other kinds they ate indiscriminately.”—(Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 109, article “Onion.”)

“At Babylon, beside Memphis, they made an onion their god.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,” London, 1651, p. 376.)

“Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country; neither do they eat those that happen to grow there, nor taste them when dressed. The priests indeed abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it impure.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 36.)

Among the Romans, “the Flamen Dialis might not ride, or even touch, beans or ivy.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 117.)

Pliny mentions the medicinal use of certain bulbs, difficult of identification in our day. “The bulb of Mægara acts as a strong aphrodisiac;” others “aid delivery;” others were used “for the cure of the sting of serpents.” The ancients used to give bulb-seeds “to persons afflicted with madness, in drink.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 20, cap. 40.)

Martial has the following: “XXXIV. Bulbs. If your wife is old and your members languid, bulbs can do no more for you than fill your belly” (edition of London, 1871). A footnote to the above says: “To what particular bulb provocative effects were attributed is unknown.”

Acosta says of the Peruvians that before any of their great ceremonies, “to prepare themselves, all the people fasted two days, during which they did neyther company with their wives nor eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink any chica.”—(Acosta, “Historie of the Indies,” edition of London, 1604, quoted by Lang, “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 283.)

According to Avicenna, garlic was a provocative of the menses (vol. i. p. 276 a 52).

When a priest of the state religion of China is about to offer a sacrifice he must abstain from cohabitation with his wives and “from eating onions, leeks, or garlic.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 52.)

Juvenal says of the Egyptians: “It is an impious act to break with the teeth a leek or an onion.”—(Satire XV., Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation.)

By the Irish peasantry “garlic is planted in the thatch” to drive away fairies and witches.—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” James Mooney, American Philosophical Society, 1887.)

The Danes placed garlic in the cradle of the new-born child to avert the maleficence of witches.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 73, article “Groaning Cakes and Cheese.”)

In rustic England many good folk still believe that the house upon which grows the leek will never be struck by lightning.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 317, article “Rural Charms.”)

Speaking of the Russian dissenters, known as the Raskol, Heard says: “They carried their resistance into all the details of daily life; as matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for ‘the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man’ (Mark vii. 15); of the potato, as being the fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve.”—(“The Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” Albert F. Heard, New York and London, 1887, p. 194.)

The quotation from the New Testament seems applicable to the subject of urine dances, and the interdiction of the use of the potato may mean more than appears on the surface.

Possibly, the intention in Russia was to wean the sectaries away from the use of bulbs or fungi not to the liking of the more thoughtful leaders of the new movement.

“From the earliest times garlic has been an article of diet.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, mentioning Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.)

In the time of Shakspeare, “to smell of garlic was accounted a sign of vulgarity.”—(Idem, referring to “Coriolanus,” iv. 6, and “Measure for Measure,” iii. 2.)

“Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads as a supper for Hecate.”—(Idem.)

“According to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium, in Lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food.”—(Encyc. Brit., article “Garlic.”)

Garlic is “fastened to the caps of children, suspended from the sterns of vessels and from new houses, in the Levant, as, centuries ago, it was hung over the door in the more civilized parts of Europe.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” John Graham Dalyell, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.)

“The onion was among the earliest cultivated vegetables, and in Egypt was a sort of divinity.”—(American Encyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Onion.”)

“A phallic importance seems to have attached to the onion. Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ edition of 1660, p. 538, speaks of ‘cromnysmantia,’—a kind of divination with onions laid on the altar at Christmas Eve, practised by girls to know when they shall be married and how many husbands they shall have. This appears also to have been a German custom.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. pp. 356, 357.)

Sir Thomas More wrote the following (the original is in Latin; the translation is by Harington):—

“If leeks you leek, but do their smell disleek, Eat onions, and you shall not smell the leek; If you of onions would the scent expel, Eat garlic, that shall drown the onion’s smell; But against garlic’s savour, at one word, I know but one receipt. What’s that? Go look.”

The last line is left untranslated; in the original it reads,—

“Aut nihil, aut tantum, tollere merda potest.”

(Harington, “Ajax,” quoting Sir Thomas More.)

XV.

SACRED INTOXICATION AND PHALLISM.

Two fundamental principles underlie the structure of primordial religion,—Intoxication and Phallism. All perversion of the cerebral functions, whether temporary estrangement or permanent alienation, is classified as Obsession; and the pranks and gibberish of the maniac or the idiot are solemnly treasured as outbursts of inspiration.

Where such temporary exaltation can be produced by an herb, bulb, liquid, or food, the knowledge of such excitant is kept as long as possible from the laity; and even after the general diffusion of a more enlightened intelligence has broadened the mental horizon of the devotee, these narcotics and irritants are “sacred,” and the frenzies they induce are “sacred” also.

If the drug in question, whatever it be, possess the additional recommendation of acting upon the genito-urinary organs, and by arousing the sexual energies appeals to the phallic element in the religious nature, the apotheosis of the drug follows as a matter of course, no matter under what expression or symbolism it may be veiled; and as human nature feels the necessity of restraint upon the passions as well as a stimulus thereof, it follows that there are to be noted many cases in which a veneration is paid to plants and drugs which have just the opposite effect,—that is to say that where an aphrodisiac is held among the sacred essences or agents its counter or antagonist is held in almost equal esteem.

Mushroom, mistletoe, rue, ivy, mandrake, hemp, opium, the stramonium of the medicine-man of the Hualpai Indians of Arizona,—all may well be examined in the light of this proposition. Frazer says: “According to primitive notions, all abnormal states—such as intoxication or madness—are caused by the entrance of a spirit into the person; such mental states, in other words, are regarded as forms of possession or inspiration.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 184.)

“Women who were addicted to Bacchanalian sports presently ran to the ivy and plucked it off, tearing it to pieces with their hands and gnawing it with their mouths.... It was reported ... it hath a spirit that stirreth and moveth to madness, transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that alone by itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that have an easy inclination to enthusiasm.”—(Plutarch, “Morals,” Goodwin’s English translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 264.)

An eternal drunkenness was the reward held out to the savage warrior in many regions of the world; the Scandinavians, as well as the Indians of the Pampas, had this belief.—(See “Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 123.)

Speaking of the Ur-Orgy of the Siberians, Dr. J. W. Kingsley comments in the following terms: “I remember being shown this fungus by an Englishman who was returning via the Central Pacific Railway from Siberia. He fully confirmed all that I had heard on the subject, having seen the orgy himself.... Nothing religious in this, you may say; but look at the question a little closer and you will see that these ‘intoxicants,’ which nowadays are used to produce mere excitement or brutal drunkenness, were at first looked upon as media able to raise the mere man up to a level with his gods, and enable him to communicate with them, as was certainly the case with the ‘soma’ of the Hindu ecstatics and the hashich I have seen used by some tribes of Arabs. It would be well worth while trying to ascertain whether the actors in the Ur-Orgy had eaten any particular kind of herb before its commencement, or whether they had any tradition of their ancestors having done so.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated Cambridge, England, May, 1888.)

For sacred intoxication among the Finns, see also “Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 255, where there is a reference to “intoxicating drugs.”

XVI.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE DRUIDICAL USE OF THE MISTLETOE.

But the question at once presents itself, For what reason did the Celtic Druids employ the much venerated mistletoe? This question becomes of deep significance in the light of the learning shed by Godfrey Higgins and General Vallencey upon the derivation of the Druids from Buddhistic or Brahminical origin.

“Ajasson enumerates the following superstitions of ancient Britain, as bearing probable marks of an Oriental origin: ... the ceremonials used in cutting the plants.”—(“Mistletoe,” Pliny, Bohn, lib. 30, cap. 6, footnote.)

That the mistletoe was regarded as a medicine, and a very potent one, is easy enough to show. All the encyclopædias admit that much; but the accounts that have been preserved of the ideas associated with this worship are not complete or satisfactory.

“The mistletoe, which they (the Druids) called ‘all-heal,’ used to cure disease.”—(McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, quoting Stukeley.)

“The British bards and Druids had an extraordinary veneration for the number three. ‘The mistletoe,’ says Vallencey, in his ‘Grammar of the Irish Language,’ ‘was sacred to the Druids, because not only its berries, but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stock. The Christian Irish held the Seamroy sacred in like manner, because of three leaves united to one stock.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i, p. 109, article “St. Patrick’s Day.”)

“Within recent times the mistletoe has been regarded as a valuable remedy in epilepsy (query, on the principle of _similia similibus_?) and other diseases, but at present is not employed.... The leaves have been fed to sheep in time of scarcity of other forage (which shows at least that it is edible).”—(Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.)

“Seems to possess no decided medical properties.”—(International Encyclopædia.)

“It is now perhaps impossible to account for the veneration in which it was held and the wonderful qualities which it was supposed to possess.”—(“The Druids,” Rev. Richard Smiddy, Dublin, 1871, p. 90.)

Pliny mentions three varieties. Of these “the hyphar is useful for fattening cattle, if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative effect it produces at first; the viscum is medicinally of value as an emollient, and in cases of tumors, ulcers, and the like.”

Pliny is also quoted as saying that it was considered of benefit to women in childbirth,—“in conceptum feminarum adjuvare si omnino secum habeant.”[26] Pliny is also authority for the reverence in which the mistletoe growing on the robur (Spanish _roble_, or evergreen oak) was held by the Druids. The robur, he says, is their sacred tree, and whatever is found growing upon it, they regard as sent from heaven and as the mark of a tree chosen by God.—(Encyclopædia Britannica.)

Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. article “Mistletoe”) cites the opinion of various old authors that mistletoe was regarded “as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders.... The high veneration in which the Druids were held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak.... The mistletoe of the oak, which is very rare, is vulgarly said to be a cure for wind-ruptures in children; the kind which is found upon the apple is said to be good for fits.”

“The Persians and Masagetæ thought the mistletoe something divine, as well as the Druids.”—(“Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1796, p. 63.)

After telling of the use of this plant among the Druids and their mode of gathering it, Fosbroke adds: “Mistletoe was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, and was supposed to have magical and medicinal properties.”—(Fosbroke, Cyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 1047, article “Mistletoe,” London, 1843.)

Mr. W. Winwood Reade mentions, in his “Veil of Isis” (London, 1861), at page 69, that the missolding or mistletoe of the oak, still called in Wales “all-iach,” or “all-heal,” was the sovereign remedy of the Druids; and at page 71 he adds that a powder from its berries was considered a cure for sterility. He describes the effect of mistletoe as that of a strong purgative.—(Personal letter from Frank Rede Fowke, Esq., South Kensington Museum, London, England, June 18, 1888.)

“The Druids named it Uil-loc or All-Heal, because they said it promoted increase of species or prevented sterility.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)

“We shall probably never hear the whole truth in regard to this ancient religion (Druidism); for, as Mr. Davies says, ‘most of the offensive ceremonies must have been either retrenched or concealed,’ as the Roman laws and edicts had for ages (before the Bardic writings) restrained the more cruel and bloody sacrifices, and at the time of the Bards nothing remained but symbolic rites.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)

The plant (mistletoe) is one of world-wide fame. Masagetæ, Skythians, and the most ancient Persians called it the “Healer,” and Virgil calls it a “branch of gold;” while Charon was dumb in presence of such an augur of coming bliss; it was “the expectancy of all nations, longe post tempore visum, as betokening Sol’s return to earth.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 81.)

Borlase sees much similarity between the Magi and our Druids, and Strabo did the same. “Both carried in their hands, during the celebration of their rites, a bunch of plants; that of the Magi was of course the Hom, called Barsom,—Assyrian and Persepolis sculptures substantiate this. The Hom looks very much like the Mistletoe, and the learned Dr. Stukeley thinks that this parasite is meant as being on the tree mentioned by Isaiah, vi. 13.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 43.)

“But yet it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as a teil tree and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”—(Isaiah, vi. 13.)

“The mistletoe wreath marks in one sense Venus’s temple, for any girl may be kissed if caught under its sprays,—a practice, though modified, which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by Herodotus, where all women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in Mylitta’s temple.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 91.)

The following are Frazer’s views on this subject: “The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter, the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of the sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence, when the god had to be killed, when the sacred tree had to be burnt, it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe, for so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable,—all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart, the mistletoe, and the tree nodded to its fall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, vol. ii. pp. 295, 296.)

This train of reasoning would be irrefutable, as it is most logical, were we in a position to be able to say that the excision of the fungus was followed by the felling of the tree; but, unfortunately, that is just what we are not able to determine. As a surmise, there is no impropriety in believing that such excision may have marked the oak for destruction at some future day; but there is no authority that we can produce at this time to justify anything more than a surmise in the premises. That the sacred character of the oak was due to the properties discovered in the mistletoe is quite likely in view of all the facts already presented.

O’Curry, who appears to have known all that was to be learned on the subject of Druidism, admits that the world is in possession of very little that is reliable; he inclines to the view that Druidism was of Eastern origin. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” Eugene O’Curry, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York, 1873.) He contends that “the Sacred Wand” of the Druids was made of the yew, and not of the oak or mistletoe.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 194.)

Vallencey did not believe that the Persians were acquainted with the mistletoe; at least, he could not find any name for it in Persian.—(See Major Charles Vallencey, “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 433.)

“In Cambodia, when a man perceives a certain parasitic plant growing on a tamarind-tree, he dresses in white and taking a new earthen pot climbs the tree at mid-day. He puts the plant in the pot and lets the whole fall to the ground. Then in the pot he makes a decoction which renders him invulnerable.”—(Aymonier, “Notes sur les Coûtumes, etc., des Cambodgiens,” quoted in “The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 286, footnote.)

“It was that only which is found upon the oak which the Druids employed; and being a parasitic plant, the seeds of which are not sown by the hand of man, it was well adapted for the purposes of superstition.”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 229.)

Much testimony may be adduced to show that the mistletoe was valued as an aphrodisiac, as conducive to fertility, as sacred to love, and, in general terms, an excitant of the genito-urinary organs, which is the very purpose for which the Siberian and North American medicine-men employed the fungus, and perhaps the very reason for which both fungus and mistletoe were excluded from the Brahminical dietary.

Brand shows that mistletoe “was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, particularly the Greeks,” and that the use of it, savoring strongly of Druidism, prevailed at the Christmas service of York Cathedral down to our own day.—(See in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. p. 524.)

The merry pastime of kissing pretty girls under the Christmas mistletoe seems to have a phallic derivation. “This very old custom has descended from feudal times, but its real origin and significance are lost.” (“Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.”) Brand shows that the young men observed the custom of “plucking off a berry at each kiss.” (Vol. i. p. 524.) Perhaps, in former times, they were required to swallow the berry. The deductions of a recent writer merit attention:—

“The mistletoe was dedicated to Mylitta, in whose worship every woman must once in her life submit to the sexual embrace of a stranger. When she concluded to perform this religious duty in honor of her acknowledged deity, she repaired to the temple and placed herself under the mistletoe, thus offering herself to the first stranger who solicited her favors. The modern modification of the ceremony is found in the practice among some people of hanging the mistletoe, at certain seasons of the year, in the parlor or over the door, when the woman entering that door, or found standing under the wreath, must kiss the first man who approaches her and solicits the privilege.” (“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, C. E., St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 202.)

A writer in “Notes and Queries” (Jan. 3, 1852, vol. v. p. 13) quotes Nares to the effect that “the maid who was not kissed under it at Christmas would not be married in that year.” But another writer (Feb. 28, 1852, same volume) points out that “we should refer the custom to the Scandinavian mythology, wherein the mistletoe is dedicated to Friga, the Venus of the Scandinavians.”[27]

Grimm speaks of Paltar (Balder) being killed by the stroke of a piece of mistletine, but ventures upon no explanation.—(“Teutonic Mythology,” vol. i. p. 220, article “Paltar.”)

“Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis.) Tradition averred that the fatal branch was that ‘golden bough’ which at the Sibyl’s bidding, Æneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 4, article “The Arician Grove.”)

“A plant associated with the death of one of their greatest and best-beloved gods must have been supremely sacred to all of Teutonic blood; and yet this opinion of its sacredness was shared by the Celtic nations.” (Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. iii. p. 1205.) “Our herbals divide mistletoe into those of the oak, hazel, and pear tree; and none of them must be let touch the ground.”—(Idem, p. 1207.)

Another writer (“Notes and Queries,” 2d series, vol. iv. p. 506) says: “As it was supposed to possess the mystic power of giving fertility and a power to preserve from poison, the pleasant ceremony of kissing under the mistletoe may have some reference to this belief.”

In vol. iii. p. 343, it is stated: “A Worcestershire farmer was accustomed to take down his bough of mistletoe and give it to the cow that calved first after New Year’s Day. This was supposed to insure good luck to the whole dairy. Cows, it may be remarked, as well as sheep, will devour mistletoe with avidity.”

And still another (in 2d series, vol. vi. p. 523) recognizes that “the mistletoe was sacred to the heathen Goddess of Beauty,” and “it is certain that the mistletoe, though it formerly had a place among the evergreens employed in the Christian decorations, was subsequently excluded.” This exclusion he accounts for thus: “It is also certain that, in the earlier ages of the church, many festivities not at all tending to edification (the practice of mutual kissing among the rest) had gradually crept in and established themselves, so that, at a certain part of the service, ‘statim clerus, ipseque populus per basia blande sese invicim oscularetur.’”

This author cites Hone, Hook, Moroni, Bescherelle, Ducange, and others. Finally (in the 3d series, vol. vii. p. 76), an inquirer asks, “How came it in Shakspeare’s time to be considered ‘baleful,’ and, in our days, the most mirth-provoking of plants?” And still another correspondent, in the same series (vol. vii. p. 237), claims that “mistletoe will produce abortion in the female of the deer or dog.”

“Sir John Ollbach, in his dissertation concerning mistletoe, which he strongly recommends as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders, observes that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty for other and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes or to be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits. He tells (p. 12) that ‘the high veneration in which the Druids were anciently held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak; this tree being sacred to them, but none so that had not the mistletoe upon them.’ Mr. F. Williams, dating from Pembroke, Jan. 28, 1791, tells us, in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for February that year, that ‘“Guidhel,” mistletoe, a magical shrub, appeared to be the forbidden tree in the middle of the trees of Eden; for, in the Edda, the mistletoe is said to be Balder’s death, who yet perished through blindness and a woman.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 519, article “Evergreen-decking at Christmas.”)

FORMER EMPLOYMENT OF AN INFUSION OR DECOCTION OF MISTLETOE.

That an infusion or decoction of the plant was once in use may be gathered from the fact narrated by John Eliot Howard: “Water, in which the sacred mistletoe had been immersed, was given to or sprinkled upon the people.”—(“The Druids and their Religion,” John Eliot Howard, in “Transactions of Victoria Institute,” vol. xiv. p. 118, quoting “Le gui de chêne et les Druides,” E. Magdaleine, Paris, 1877.)

Montfaucon says of the Druids: “Ils croient que les animaux stériles deviennent féconds en buvant de l’eau de gui.”—(“L’antiquité Expliquée, Paris, 1722, tome 2, part 2, p. 436, quoting and translating Pliny.)

“The misselto, or ‘Uil-ice,’ was required to be taken, if possible, from the Jovine tree when in its prime; but it was rare to find it on any oak. If obtained from one about thirty-five years old, and taken in a potion, it conferred fertility on men, women, and children.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 355.)

Eugene O’Curry speaks of the Irish Druids having a “drink of oblivion,” the composition of which has not, however, come down to us. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” vol. ii. p. 198.) O’Curry calls this drink of oblivion a “Druidical charm,” and a “Druidical incantation.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 226.)[28]

See notes in this monograph on the Hindu Lingam.

THE MISTLETOE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN HELD SACRED BY THE MOUND-BUILDERS.

An American writer says that among the Mound-builders the mistletoe was “the holiest and most rare of evergreens,” and that when human sacrifices were offered to sun and moon the victim was covered with mistletoe, which was burnt as an incense. (Pidgeon, “Dee-coo-dah,” New York, 1853, p. 91 _et seq._) Pidgeon claimed to receive his knowledge from Indians versed in the traditions and lore of their tribes.[29]

Mrs. Eastman presents a drawing of what may be taken as the altar of Haokah, the anti-natural god of the Sioux, in which is a representation of a “large fungus that grows on trees” (query, mistletoe?), which, if eaten by an animal, will cause its death.[30]

THE MISTLETOE FESTIVAL OF THE MEXICANS.

That the Mexicans had a reverence for the mistletoe would seem to be assured. They had a mistletoe festival. In October they celebrated the festival of the Neypachtly, or bad eye, which was a plant growing on trees and hanging from them, gray with the dampness of rain; especially did it grow on the different kinds of oak.[31] The informant says he can give no explanation of this festival.

VESTIGES OF DRUIDICAL RITES AT THE PRESENT DAY.

It may be interesting to detect vestiges of Druidical rites tenaciously adhering to the altered life of modern civilization.

In the department of Seine-et-Oise, twelve leagues from Paris (says a recent writer), when a child had a rupture (hernia) he was brought under a certain oak, and some women, who no doubt earned a living in that trade, danced around the oak, muttering spell-words till the child was cured,—that is, dead.—(“Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. vii. p. 163.)

It has already been shown that the Druids ascribed this very medical quality to the mistletoe of the oak.

“In Brittany a festival for the mistletoe is still kept.... The people there call it ‘touzon ar gros,’—‘the herb of the cross.’”—(“Commonplace Book,” Buckle, vol. ii. of his Works, p. 440, London, 1872.)

Mistletoe has been burned in England in love divinations.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 358, article “Divination by Flowers.”)

Frommann enumerates mistletoe among “Recentiorum ad fascinum remedia.... Viscum corylinum et tiliaceum” (hazel or filbert and linden trees). The genitalia of the bewitched person were anointed with an ointment prepared from the hazel mistletoe to untie “ligatures.” (See Frommann, “Tractatus de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, pp. 938, 957, 958, 965.)

“We find that persons in Sweden who are afflicted with the falling sickness carry with them a knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, to ward off attacks. A piece of mistletoe hung round the neck would ward off other sicknesses. We have Culpepper’s authority for saying ‘it is excellent good for the grief of the sinew, itch, sores, and tooth-ache, the biting of mad dogs, and venemous beasts, and that it purgeth choler very gently.’ Grimm notes that it was with a branch of mistletoe that Balder was killed.... The Kadeir Taliasin says that the mistletoe was one of the ingredients in the _awen a gwybodeu_, or water of inspiration, science, and immortality, which the goddess Kod prepared in her cauldron. Witches were thought to have no power to hurt those who bore mistletoe round their neck. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of the virtues of mistletoe in cases of epilepsy.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 196.)

The same belief in Waters of Life, science, immortality, etc., seems to obtain among the Slav nations, who also speak in their myths of “the crazy weed,” which may, perhaps, be classified with the weed of the Borgie well, which, as we have seen, “set a’ the Camerslang fo’k wrang i’ th’ head.”—(See “Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars,” Jeremiah Curtin, Boston, Mass., 1890.)

The mistletoe, especially that from the linden and the oak, was enumerated by Etmuller among the cures for epilepsy (“tiliaceum et quercinum”); others recommended that from the elder or willow. For the same disease, on the same page, “zibethum” was prescribed. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Lyons, 1690, vol. i. p. 198: “Comment. Ludovic.”)

The mistletoe of the juniper, gathered in the month of May, was good for eye-water. “Maio mense instar musci adnascitur inservit aquæ ophthalmicæ.”—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 84, “Schroderi Dilucidati Phytologia.”)

Fungi of different kinds dried were used as styptics.—(Idem, p. 70.)

The fungus of the oak was especially good for this purpose.—(Idem, p. 127.)

The mistletoe of the oak was regarded as of special value in all uterine troubles, hemorrhages, suppression of the menses, etc.—(Idem, p. 127.)

In the Myth of Kale-wala a young maiden is represented as becoming pregnant by eating a berry. (See “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 179.)

We may ask the question, what kind of a berry this was. Reference may also be had to what Lang has to say on the mythical conceptions alleged to have been induced by juniper and other berries.—(Idem, p. 180.)

The “mistletoe of the oake” was administered internally against “epilepsie.”—(“Most Excellent and Most Approved Remedies,” London, 1654, p. 14.)

“A ring made of mistletoe is esteemed in Sweden as an amulet.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 173.)

In Murrayshire, Scotland, “at the full moon in March, the inhabitants cut withies of the mistletoe or ivy, make circles of them, keep them all the year, and pretend to cure hectics and other troubles with them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 151, article “Moon.”)

“In North Germany, where the old Teutonic cult still lingers, the villagers run about on Christmas, striking the doors and windows with hammers, and shouting, ‘Guthyl! Guthyl!’—plainly the Druidical name for mistletoe used by Pliny. In Holstein, the people call the mistletoe ‘the branch of spectres;’ ... they think it cures fresh wounds and ensures success in hunting.” Stukeley is quoted to show that the veneration for the plant prevailed at the Cathedral of York down to the most recent times.—(Encyclopædia Metropolitana.)

“Misseltoe of the oake drunk cureth certainly this disease” (epilepsy).—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” John Moncrief, Edinburgh, 1716, p. 71.)

Still another writer reckons it a specific in epilepsy; also in apoplexy, vertigo, to prevent convulsions, and to assist children in teething, being worn round their necks. “We have accounts of strange superstitious customs used in gathering it, and that if they are not complied with it loses its virtue. This is by some conjectured to be the golden bough which Æneas made use of to introduce him to the Elysian regions, as is beautifully described in Virgil’s sixth Æneid.”—(“Complete English Dispensatory,” John Quincy, M.D., London, 1730, p. 134.)

Culpepper wrote that the mistletoe, especially that growing upon the oak, was beneficial in the falling sickness, in apoplexy, and in palsy; also as a preventive of witchcraft; in the last-named case it should be worn about the neck. He did not seem to know anything of the origin of these ideas and practices.—(See Richard Culpepper, “The English Physician,” London, 1765, p. 217.)

Pomet, in his “History of Drugs,” London, 1737, describes agaric as an excrescence “found on the larch, oak, etc.... The best agaric is that from the Levant;” only that “which the antients used to call the female should be used in medicine.” It was prescribed in “all distempers proceeding from gross humors and obstructions,”—such as epilepsy, vertigo, mania, etc.; and this partly on the sympathetic or _similia similibus_ principle.

In one of the preparations for epilepsy, said by Beckherius to have been recommended by Galen, occurs “Agaricus Viscus Querci.”—(See Danielus Beckherius, “Medicus Microcosmus,” London, 1660, p. 208.)

“When found growing on the oak, the mistletoe represented man.”—(Opinion of the French writer Reynaud, in his article “Druidism,” quoted in the Encyclopædia Britannica.)

Notwithstanding this abundant proof, which might, if necessary, be swollen in volume, of the survival in domestic medicine, as well as in medical practice of a more pretentious character, of the use of the mistletoe, more particularly in cases of epilepsy, there is no instance of its employment noticed in “Saxon Leechdoms.”

The explanation may be found in the fact that that compilation was rather exponential of the knowledge still possessed by the monks of classical therapeutics than of the skill attained by the Saxons themselves; there are pages of quotations from Sextus Placitus and other authorities, but scarcely anything to show that the ideas of the Saxons themselves were represented.

THE LINGUISTICS OF THE MISTLETOE.

Other curious instances of survival present themselves in the linguistics of the subject. The French word “gui,” meaning mistletoe, is not of Latin, but of Druidical derivation, and so the Spanish “aguinaldo,” meaning Christmas or New Year’s present, conserves the cry, slightly altered, of the Druid priest to the “gui” at the opening of the new year.

“Aguillanneuf, et plus clairement, ‘au gui, l’an neuf,’ ou bien encore, ‘l’anguil l’an neuf.’”—(Le Roux de Lincy, Livre des Proverbes Français, 1848, Paris, tome 1, p. 2, quoted in Buckle’s “Commonplace Book,” vol. ii. p. 440.)

“The next business was to arrange for the collection of the sacred plant, and bards were sent forth in all directions to summon the people to the great religious ceremony. The words of the proclamation are believed to survive in the custom which prevails, especially at Chartres, the old metropolis of the Druids, of soliciting presents on the New Year, with the words ‘au gui l’an neuf.’”—(“Le Gui de Chêne et les Druides,” Magdaleine, quoted by John Elliot Howard, in “Victoria Society Transactions,” vol. xiv.)

“The Celtic name for the oak was ‘gue,’ or ‘guy.’”—(Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. i. p. 458.)

A writer in “Notes and Queries” shows (vol. ii. p. 163) that the word mistletoe is “le gui” in French; the continental Druid was called Gui, or a Guy, from “cuidare,” whence “Guide.” At the present day, while the mistletoe itself is a charm, the name is a term of opprobrium,—guy, in English.

M. C. H. Gaidoz takes exception to this interpretation. In his opinion, the words “aguinaldo” and “à gui l’an neuf” are to be derived from the Latin “ad calendas.”—(Personal letter, dated Paris, France, March 11, 1889.)

XVII.

COW DUNG AND COW URINE IN RELIGION.

The sacrificial value of cow dung and cow urine throughout India and Thibet is much greater than the reader might be led to infer from the brief citation already noted from Max Müller.

“Hindu merchants in Bokhara now lament loudly at the sight of a piece of cow’s flesh, and at the same time mix with their food, that it may do them good, the urine of a sacred cow, kept in that place.”—(Erman, “Siberia,” London, 1848, vol. i. p. 384.)

Picart narrates that the Brahmins fed grain to a sacred cow, and afterward searched in the ordure for the sacred grains, which they picked out whole, drying and administering them to the sick, not merely as a medicine, but as a sacred thing.[32]

Not only among the people of the lowlands, but among those of the foot-hills of the Himalayas as well, do these rites find place; “the very dung of the cow is eaten as an atonement for sin, and its urine is used in worship.”—(Notes on the Hill Tribes of the Neilgherries, Short, Trans. Ethnol. Society, London, 1868, p. 268.)

“The greatest, or, at any rate, the most convenient of all purifiers is the urine of a cow; ... Images are sprinkled with it. No man of any pretensions to piety or cleanliness would pass a cow in the act of staling without receiving the holy stream in his hand and sipping a few drops.... If the animal be retentive, a pious expectant will impatiently apply his finger, and by judicious tickling excite the grateful flow.”—(Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon,” London, 1810, p. 143.)

See, also, note from Forlong, under “Initiation,” p. 164.

“It may be noted that, according to Lajarde, ‘cow’s-water’ originally meant rain-water, the clouds being spoken of as cows. I give this for what it is worth. Your collection of facts goes strongly against the explanation.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11, 1888.)

Speaking of the sacrifice called Poojah, Maurice says: “The Brahman prepares a place, which is purified with dried cow-dung, with which the pavement is spread, and the room is sprinkled with the urine of the same animal.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. i. p. 77.)

“As in India, so in Persia, the urine of the cow is used in ceremonies of purification, during which it is drunk.”—(“Zoölogical Mythology,” Angelo de Gubernatis, London, 1872, vol. i. p. 95, quoting from Anquétil du Pérron, “Zendavesta,” ii. p. 245.)

Dubois, in his chapter “Restoration to the Caste,” says that a Hindu penitent “must drink the _panchakaryam_,—a word which literally signifies the five things, namely, milk, butter, curd, dung, and urine, all mixed together.” And he adds:—

“The urine of the cow is held to be the most efficacious of any for purifying all imaginable uncleanness. I have often seen the superstitious Hindu accompanying these animals when in the pasture, and watching the moment for receiving the urine as it fell, in vessels which he had brought for the purpose, to carry it home in a fresh state; or, catching it in the hollow of his hand, to bedew his face and all his body. When so used it removes all external impurity, and when taken internally, which is very common, it cleanses all within.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 29.)

Very frequently the excrement is first reduced to ashes. The monks of Chivem, called Pandarones, smear their faces, breasts, and arms with the ashes of cow dung; they run through the streets demanding alms, very much as the Zuñi actors demanded a feast, and chant the praises of Chivem, while they carry a bundle of peacock feathers in the hand, and wear the _lingam_ at the neck.[33]

COW DUNG ALSO USED BY THE ISRAELITES.

“The tribes had not many feelings in common when they came to be writers and told us what they thought of each other. As a rule, they bitterly reviled each other’s gods and temples.... Judeans called the Samaritan temple, where calves and bulls were holy, in a word of Greek derivation, ‘Pelethos Naos,’ ‘the dung-hill temple.’ ... The Samaritans, in return, called the temple of Jerusalem ‘the house of dung.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 162.)

Commentators would be justified in believing that these terms preserve the fact of there having been in these places of worship the same veneration for dung that is to be found to this day among the peoples of the East Indies.

In another place Dulaure calls attention to the similar use among the Hebrews of the ashes of the dung of the red heifer as an expiatory sacrifice.[34]

In one of the Hindu fasts the devotee adopts these disgusting excreta as his food. On the fourth day, “his disgusting beverage is the urine of the cow; the fifth, the excrement of that holy animal is his allotted food.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. v. p. 222.)

“I do not think that you can lay weight on the fact that in Israel, when a victim was entirely burned, the dung was not exempted from the fire. I think this only means that the victim was not cleared of offal, as in sacrifices that were eaten.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, Christ College, Cambridge, England.)

“Refert etiam Waltherus Schulzius (“Oest-Indianische Reise,” lib. 3, cap. 10, 1, m. 188, seq.) certam Indorum sectam Gioghi dictam nullum assumere cibum, nisi fimo vaccino coctum; capillos et faciem Croco et Stercore vaccino inungunt; nemo etiam in hanc societatem admittitur nisi antea per longum temporis spatium Corpus suum hoc stercore nutriverit, etc.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 783, quoted in “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 93-96.)

Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Commentar. Ludovic., Lyons, 1690, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172, says that the Benjani, an Oriental sect, believers in the Transmigration of Souls, save the dung of their cows, gathering it up in their hands.

Rosinus Lentilius, in the “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig, 1694, quotes from the Itinerary of Tavernier, lib. 1, cap. 18, in regard to the Scybolophagi Indorum, who, in pursuance of vows to eat flesh only, scrape up the droppings of horses, bulls, cows, and sheep. “Scybolophagi Indorum, de qua Tavernier, quod Benjanæ aliæque mulieres voto semet obstringant soli manducationi quisquiliarum, quas in pecorum, equorum, boum, vaccarum, stercoribus ruspatione sedula conquirunt.... Nec proprie de Homerda seu humanis excrementis, quibus Indorum nonnulli cibos condire, iisque ptarmici pulvere vice uti, quin et medicamentis, ceu panaceam, commiscere, non aversuntur.”

No mention is made by Marco Polo of the use by the people of India of cow-dung or urine in any of their religious ceremonies, excepting one example cited under the head of “Industries.” But the antiquity of the rite is demonstrated by the fact that it is frequently alluded to in the oldest of the canonical books of the people of India.

“Regarding the installation of Yudhisthira (the oldest son of Pandu and eldest brother of the Pandavas), who became Maharajah after the defeat and death of the Kauravas on the field of Kuruk-shetra, the Brahminical authors of the Maha-Bharata, in its present form, describe among the ceremonies used on the occasion the following one:” (Condensed from the text of J. Talboys Wheeler, “History of India,” “The Vedic Period and the Maha-Bharata,” vol. i. p. 371.) “After this, the five purifying articles which are produced from the sacred cow—namely, milk, the curds, ghee, the urine, and the ordure—were brought up by Krishna and the Maharaja and by the brothers of Yudhisthira, and poured by them over the heads of Yudhisthira and Draupadi.”

“The appearance of Krishna here stamps the narrative with the characteristic cultus of a period far later than that in which the Vedic Aryans had used the cow as a religious symbol. The animal was now sacred to Vishnu, who held no place in the Vedic Pantheon, and his worship had been sufficiently developed to admit of his incarnation as Krishna.”—(Personal letter from Dr. J. Hampden Porter, dated Washington, D. C., Sept. 29, 1888.)

De Gubernatis speaks of “the superstitious Hindoo custom of purifying one’s self by means of the excrement of a cow. The same custom passed into Persia; and the Kharda Avesta has preserved the formula to be recited by the devotee while he holds in his hand the urine of an ox or cow, preparatory to washing his face with it: ‘Destroyed, destroyed, be the Demon Ahriman, whose actions and works are cursed.’”—(“Zoölogical Mythology,” De Gubernatis, pp. 99-100, vol. i.)

“We must complete the explanation of another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying. The moon, as aurora, yields ambrosia. It is considered to be a cow; the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray and the aurora purifies and makes clear the path of the sky, which the shadows of night darken and contaminate.

“The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to cow’s dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are considered as making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these excrements being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows which their friend the heroine preserves are not ashes, but golden powder or golden flour (the golden cake again occurs in that flour or powder of gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories) which, mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning robber-hero.

“The ashes of the sacrificed, pregnant cow (i. e., the cow which dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by the Romans in the Temple of Vesta with bean-stalks, which are used to fatten the earth sown with corn, as a means of expiation. Ovid mentions this rite. (Fasti, iv. 721.) The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 275-277.)

The learned author overlooks in his argument that cows were sacrificed and worshipped in India before they were transferred to the Zodiac and to the symbolism of the elements.[35]

“Religion, at its base, is the product of imagination working on early man’s wants and fears, and is in no sense supernatural or the result of any preconceived and deliberate thought or desire to work out a system of morals. It arose in each case from what appeared to be the pressing needs of the day or season on the man or his tribe. The codification and expansion of faiths would then be merely the slow outcome of the cogitations and teachings of reflective minds, working usually with a refining tendency on the aforesaid primitive Nature-worship, and in elucidation of its ideas, symbolism, and legends. Early rude worshippers could not grasp abstractions, nor follow sermons even if they had been preached, and certainly not recondite theories on what the West designates ‘Solar,’ and other theories.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 36.)

“In the Shapast la Shayast (Sacred Books of the East, vol. v. part I.) much stress is laid on bull’s urine as a purifier.”—(Personal letter from Professor R. A. Oakes, Watertown, New York, April 20, 1888.)

“During the last few years we have been treated to a great deal of foolish gush about the beauty and nobility of Eastern religions. I don’t deny that there are many commendable features about them, and that they often get near to the heart of true religion, as we understand it. But in their practical results they cannot be compared with Christianity. Take a concrete instance:—

“The Rev. T. W. Jex-Blake has this to say about Benares, with its three thousand Hindu temples: ‘Step into the city,’ he says; ‘one temple swarms with fœtid apes; another is stercorous with cows. The stench in the passages leading to the temples is frightful; the filth beneath your feet is such that the keenest traveller would hardly care to face it twice. Everywhere, in the temples, in the little shrines in the street, the emblem of the Creator is phallic. Round one most picturesque temple, built apparently long since British occupation began, probably since the battle of Waterloo, runs an external frieze, about ten feet from the ground, too gross for the pen to describe,—scenes of vice, natural and unnatural, visible to all the world all day long, worse than anything in the Lupanar in Pompeii. Nothing that I saw in India roused me more to a sense of the need of religious renovation by the Gospel of Christ than what met the eye openly, right and left, at Benares.” (“Tribune,” New York, Nov. 11, 1888.)

“Forty years ago, during a stay of three months in Bombay, I saw frequently cows wandering in the streets, and Hindu devotees bowing, and lifting up the tails of the cows, rubbing the wombs of the aforesaid with the right hand, and afterwards rubbing their own faces with it.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, dated Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.)

Almost identical information was communicated by General J. J. Dana, U. S. Army, who, in the neighborhood of Calcutta, over forty years ago, had seen Hindu devotees besmeared from head to foot with human excrement.

Among the superstitious practices of the Greeks, Plutarch mentions “rolling themselves in dung-hills.” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s trans., Boston, 1870, vol. i. p. 171, art. “Superstitions.”) Plutarch also mentions “foul expiations,” “vile methods of purgation,” “bemirings at the temple,” and speaks of “penitents wrapped up in foul and nasty rags,” or “rolling naked in the mire,” “vile and abject adorations,”—(pp. 171-180.)

This veneration for the excrement of the cow is to be found among other races. The Hottentots “besmear their bodies with fat and other greasy substances over which they rub cow-dung, fat and similar substances.”—(Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 25, 73, 139.)

“Every idea and thought of the Dinka is how to acquire and maintain cattle; a certain kind of reverence would seem to be paid them; even their offal is considered of high importance. The dung, which is burnt to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their persons, and the urine, which is used for washing and as a substitute for salt, are their daily requisites.”—(Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” vol. i. p. 58.)

In the religious ceremonies of the Calmuck Lamas, “Les pauvres jettent au commencement de l’office, qui dure toute la journée, un peu d’encens sur de la bouse de vache allumée et portée par un petit trépied de fer.”—(“Voy. de Pallas,” vol. i. p. 563.)

XVIII.

ORDURE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES.

Among the Banians of India, proselytes are obliged by the Brahmans to eat cow-dung for six months. They begin with one pound daily, and diminish from day to day. A subtle commentator, says Picart, might institute a comparison between the nourishment of these fanatics and the dung of cows which the Lord ordered the prophet Ezekiel to mingle with his food.[36]

This was the opinion held by Voltaire on this subject. Speaking of the prophet Ezekiel, he said: “He is to eat bread of barley, wheat, beans, lentils, and millet, and to cover it with human excrement.”[37] It is thus, he says, that the “children of Israel shall eat their bread defiled among the nations among which they shall be banished.” But “after having eaten this bread of affliction, God permits him to cover it with the excrement of cattle simply.”

The view entertained by some biblical commentators is that the excrement was used for baking the bread; but if this be true, why should human fæces be used for such a purpose? (Consult Lange’s Commentaries, article “Ezekiel,” and McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, article “Dung.”)

“For mere filth, what can be fouler than 2 Kings xviii. 27, Isaiah xxxvi. 12, and Ezekiel iv. 12-15 (where the Lord changes human ordure into ‘cow chips’)? ‘Ce qui excuse Dieu,’ said Henri Bayle, ‘ce qu’il n’existe pas.’ I add, as man has made him.”—(Richard F. Burton, “Terminal Essay” to his edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. x. p. 181, foot-note, London, 1886.)

Bayle does not allude to the baking of bread with ordure in his brief article upon the prophet Ezekiel; neither does Prof. J. Stuart Blaikie in his more comprehensive dissertation in the Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Ezekiel.”

“The use of dung by the ancient Israelites is collected incidentally from the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel, being commanded, as a symbolic action, to bake his bread with dung, excuses himself from the use of an unclean thing, and is permitted to employ cow’s dung instead.”—(Strong and McClintock’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical and Classical Literature,” New York, 1868, vol. ii. article “Dung.”)

“I fear that Voltaire cannot be taken as an authority on Hebrew matters. I believe that the passage from Ezekiel is correctly rendered in the revised edition, where at verse 15 ‘thereon’ is substituted for ‘therewith’ of the old version. The use of dried cow’s-dung as fuel is common among the poorer classes in the East; and in a siege, fuel, always scarce, would be so scarce that a man’s dung might have to be used. I do not think that one need look further for the explanation of verses 15-17; the words of verse 15 are not ambiguous, and that used for dung is the same as the Arabs still apply to the dried cakes of cow’s dung used for fuel. Voltaire and Picart both seem to have used the Vulgate, in which verse 12 is wrongly rendered.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, Cambridge, England.)

“Les nombreux exemples qui précèdent rendent moins intéressante la question de savoir an Ezéchias stercus comederit; ce ne serait qu’un mangeur de plus. Pourtant on peut voir dans la Bible le verset 12 du chap. iv. de ce prophète: ‘et quasi sub cinericium hordaceum comedes illud et stercore quod egreditur de homine operies illud in oculis eorum;’ et les diverses interprétations données par les différents traducteurs et commentateurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 93-96.)

Schurig consacre un paragraphe à discuter an Ezechias stercus comederit.—(Idem, p. 39.)

Just exactly what Schurig thought on this subject may be stated in his own words. Although not positive, he inclines to the opinion that Ezekiel did eat excrement:—

“Denique, mandato divino, Propheta Ezechiel, cap. iv. ver. 12, placentam hordeaceam cum stercore humano parasse atque comedisse primo intuitu videtur, juxta versionem Lutheri.... Juxta Junium et Tremellium allegata verba sic sonant: Comedes cibum ut placentam hordeaceam, et ad orbes excrementi humani parabis placentam istam in oculis illorum. Juxta Sebastianum Schmidium: Sicut placentam hordeorum comedes eum; quod ad ipsum tamen, cum stercore fimi hominis facies in oculis eorum. Bene etiam hunc locum explicat Textus Gallicus meæ editionis: Tu mangeras de fouaces d’orge, et les cuiras avec la fiente qui sort hors de l’homme eux le voyans.”—(“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 782, 783.)

“Ezekiel says that his God told him to lie for three hundred and ninety days on his left side, and then forty days on his right side, when ‘he would lay hands on him and turn him from one side to another;’ also that during all this period he was only to eat barley bread baked in too disgusting a manner to be described.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 597.)

“This last command was, however, so strongly resented that his Deity somewhat relaxed it.”—(Idem.)

The most rational explanation of this much-disputed and ambiguous passage must necessarily be such as can be deduced from a consideration of Ezekiel’s environment.

Giving due weight to every doubt, there remains this feature: the prophet unquestionably was influenced and actuated by the ideas of his day and generation, which looked upon the humiliations to which he subjected himself as the outward manifestations of an inward spirituality.

Psychologically speaking, there is no great difference between the consumption of human excrement and the act of lying on one’s side for three hundred and ninety days; both are indications of the same perverted cerebration, mistaken with such frequency for piety and holiness.

“Isaiah had periods of indecent maniacal outbursts; for we are told that he once went about stark naked for three years, because so commanded by the Lord.”—(“Rivers of Life,” vol. ii. p. 537, quoting Isaiah xx. 2, 3.)

THE SACRED COW’S EXCRETA A SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE.

The foregoing testimony, which could readily be swelled in volume, proves the sacred character of these excreta, which may be looked upon as substitutes for a more perfect sacrifice. In the early life of the Hindus it is more than likely that the cow or the heifer was slaughtered by the knife or burnt; as population increased in density, domestic cattle became too costly to be offered as a frequent oblation, and on the principle that the part represents the whole, hair, milk, butter, urine, and ordure superseded the slain carcass, while the incinerated excrement was made to do duty as a burnt sacrifice.[38]

It was hardly probable that such practices, or an explanation of the causes which led to their adoption and perpetuation, should have escaped the keen criticism of E. B. Tylor.

“For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations, the Hindu has recourse to the sacred cow.... The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustration which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow’s urine and water.... Applications of _nirang_, washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, and the purification of him who has touched a corpse.”—(E. B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” London, 1871, vol. ii. pp. 396, 397.)

“It will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone for a human life, if we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a bullock, or a Kimbunda will expiate the blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood will wash away the other. For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice, the following may serve: Among the Khonds of Orissa, where Colonel MacPherson was engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by the sect of the Earth-goddess, they at once began to discuss the plan of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now, there is some reason to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for the following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that those who worship the Light-god hold a festival in his honor, when they slaughter a buffalo in commemoration of the time when, as they say, the Earth-goddess was prevailing on men to offer human sacrifices to her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody-minded Earth-goddess under a mountain and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle, saying, ‘Liberate the man, and sacrifice the buffalo.’ It looks as though this legend, divested of its mythic garb, may really record a historical substitution of animal for human sacrifice. In Ceylon, the exorcist will demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, and the patient in frenzy answers, giving the demon’s name, ‘I am So-and-so; I demand a human sacrifice, and I will not go without.’ The victim is promised, the patient comes to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice is made; but instead of a man they offer a fowl. Classic examples of a substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice of a doe for a virgin to Artemis in Laodicæa, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniæ.

“There appears to be a Semitic connection here, as there clearly is in the story of the Æolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth) instead of a new-born child a new-born calf, shoeing it with buskins and tending the mother cow as if a human mother.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 366; or in New York edition, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 403, 404.)

“O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! which is the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies? Is it of sheep or of oxen? Is it of man or of woman?

“Ahura Mazda answered: It is of sheep or of oxen, not of man nor of woman, except these two, the nearest kinsman (of the dead) or his nearest kinswoman. The worshippers of Mazda shall therefore procure the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard vii., Avendidad, Zendavesta, Oxford, 1890, p. 96.)

“A prince may sacrifice his enemy, having first invoked the axe with holy texts, by substituting a buffalo or goat, calling the victim by the name of the enemy throughout the whole ceremony.”—(“The Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the “Calica Purana,” in vol. 5, “Transactions Asiatic Society,” 4th edition, London, 1807, p. 386.)

“An interesting chapter of the Aitareya-brahmanam, on the sacrifice of animals, shows us how, next to man, the horse was the supreme sacrifice offered to the gods; how the cow afterwards took the place of the horse, the sheep of the cow, the goat of the sheep; and at last vegetable products were substituted for animals,—a substitution or cheating of the gods in the sacrifice, which perhaps explains even more the fraud of which, in popular stories, the simpleton is always the victim; the simpleton hero being the god himself, and the cheater man, who changes, under a sacred pretext, the noblest and most valued animals for common and less valued ones, and finally for vegetables apparently of no value whatever. In Hindu codes of law we have the same fraudulent substitution of animals under a legal pretext. ‘The killer of a cow,’ says the code attributed to Yagnavalkyas, ‘must stay a month in penitence, drinking the panchakaryam’ (that is, the five good productions of the cow, which, according to Manus, are milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung), sleeping in a stable, and following the cows.’”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 44, 45.)

“The sacred books of the Hindus contain the most formal and detailed instructions about human sacrifices, and on what occasions and with what ceremonies they are to be offered; sometimes on an enormous scale,—as many as one hundred and fifty human victims at one sacrifice.”—(Ragozin, “Assyria,” New York, 1887, pp. 127-128.)

Continuing, Ragozin says: “When bloody sacrifices, even of animals, were in great part abolished, and offerings of cakes of rice and wheat were substituted, the humane change was authorized by a parable which told how the sacrificial virtue had left the highest and most valuable victim, man, and descended into the horse, from the horse into the steer, from the steer into the goat, from the goat into the sheep, and from that at last passed into the earth, where it was found abiding in the grains of rice and wheat laid in it for seed.

“This was an ingenious way of intimating that henceforth harmless offerings of rice and wheat cakes would be as acceptable to the deity as the living victims, human and animal, formerly were.”—(Idem, p. 128.)

As the animal victim became more and more valuable, we have seen that its excreta were offered in its place.

The Celtic stock, it is now generally admitted, represents a very early migration from India. Exactly when this migration began and was completed we have no means of determining; but we may safely say, judging from the prominence in Celtic folk-lore of the chicken-dung, that it did not occur until the cultus of India was beginning to cast about for some suitable substitute for human sacrifice.[39]

Inman takes the ground that the very same substitution occurred among the Hebrews. Commenting upon 1 Kings xix. 18, he says: “In the Vulgate the passage is thus rendered: ‘They say to these, Sacrifice the men who adore the calves;’ while the Septuagint renders the words, ‘Sacrifice men, for the calves have come to an end,’ indicating a reversion to human sacrifice.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,” London, 1878, article “Hosea.”)

“He that killeth an ox as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol.”—(Isaiah lxvi. 3. Reference given to the above by Prof. W. Robertson Smith.)

“In the earliest period the horse seems to have been the favorite animal for sacrifice.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm, vol. i. p. 47.)

“The Brahmans show how, in Hindostan, the lower animals became vicarious substitutes for man in sacrifice.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, vol. ii. p. 40, footnote.)

If the cow have displaced a human victim, may it not be within the limits of probability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine are substitutes, not only for the complete carcass, but that they symbolize a former use of human excreta?[40] The existence of ur-orgies has been indicated in Siberia, where the religion partakes of many of the characteristics of Buddhism.[41] The minatory phraseology of the Brahminical inhibition of the use of the fungi which enter into these orgies has been given _verbatim_; so that, even did no better evidence exist, enough has been presented to open up a wide range of discussion as to the former area of distribution of loathsome and disgusting ceremonials, which are now happily restricted to small and constantly diminishing zones.

HUMAN ORDURE AND URINE STILL USED IN INDIA.

It is well to remember, however, that in India the more generally recognized efficacy of cow urine and cow dung has not blinded the fanatical devotee to the necessity of occasionally having recourse to the human product.

“At about ten leagues to the southward of Seringapatam there is a village called Nan-ja-na-gud, in which there is a temple famous all over the Mysore. Amongst the number of votaries of every caste who resort to it, a great proportion consists of barren women, who bring offerings to the god of the place, and pray for the gift of fruitfulness in return. But the object is not to be accomplished by the offerings and prayers alone, the disgusting part of the ceremony being still to follow. On retiring from the temple, the woman and her husband repair to the common sewer to which all the pilgrims resort in obedience to the calls of nature. There the husband and wife collect, with their hands, a quantity of the ordure, which they set apart, with a mark upon it, that it may not be touched by any one else; and with their fingers in this condition, they take the water of the sewer in the hollow of their hands and drink it. Then they perform ablution and retire. In two or three days they return to the place of filth to visit the mass of ordure which they left. They turn it over with their hands, break it, and examine it in every possible way; and, if they find that any insects or vermin are engendered in it, they consider it a favorable prognostic for the woman.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 411.)[42]

XIX.

EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS.

The Romans and Egyptians went farther than this; they had gods of excrement, whose special function was the care of latrines and those who frequented them. Torquemada, a Spanish author of high repute, expresses this in very plain language:—

“I assert that they used _to adore_ (as St. Clement writes to St. James the Less) stinking and filthy privies and water-closets; and, what is viler and yet more abominable, and an occasion for our tears and not to be borne with or so much as mentioned by name, they adored the noise and wind of the stomach when it expels from itself any cold or flatulence; and other things of the same kind, which, according to the same saint, it would be a shame to name or describe.”[43]

In the preceding lines Torquemada refers to the Egyptians only, but, as will be seen by examining the Spanish notes below, his language is almost the same when speaking of the Romans.[44] The Roman goddess was called Cloacina. She was one of the first of the Roman deities, and is believed to have been named by Romulus himself. Under her charge were the various cloacæ, sewers, privies, etc., of the Eternal City.[45]

“Les anciens avaient fait plusieurs divinités du Stercus; 1. Stercus ou Sterces, père de Picus, inventeur de la méthode de fumer les terres (S. August. De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii. cap. 15). 2. Sterculius (Macrob., Saturn., lib. i. cap. 7); 3. Stercutius (Lactant. de fal. reb.), Stercutus, Sterquilinus, Sterquiline, divinités qui présidaient aux engrais. Quelques personnes croient que c’était un surnom de Saturne comme inventeur de l’agriculture; d’autres y reconnaissent la terre elle-même. Pline dit que ce dieu était fils du dieu Faune et petit-fils de Picus, roi des Latins.—(Pline, lib. xvii. cap. 9, num. 40; Persius, sat. i. ver. 3.)

“On honore aussi Faunus avec les deux derniers surnoms.”—(Pline, loc. cit. Bib. Scat.)

“Consultez sur cette déesse en l’honneur de laquelle on a frappé des médailles, Lactant. Instit. lib. i. cap. 20, p. 11; St. Cyp. Van. d. id. cap. 2, par. 6; Minutius Felix, Oct. cap. 25; Pline, Hist. Nat. lib. xiv. cap. 29; Tite Live, 3, 48; Banier, Myth. tome i. 348; iv. 329, 338.”—(Bib. Scat. p. 43, footnote.)

As far as possible, the above citations were verified; the edition of St. Augustine consulted was that of the Reverend Maurice Dods, Edinburgh, 1871.

“Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina.”—(Minutius Felix, “Octavius,” cap. xxv., edition of Edinburgh, 1869.)

“Colatina, alias Clocina, was goddess of the stools, the jakes, and the privy, to whom, as to every of the rest, there was a peculiar temple edified.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,”? lib. 16, cap. 22, giving a list of the Roman gods.)

The following epigram is taken from Harington’s “Ajax,” p. xviii.:

“The Romans, ever counted superstitious, Adored with high titles of divinity, Dame Cloacina and the Lord Stercutius,— Two persons, in their state, of great affinity.”

For further references to Cloacina, see p. 264.

“Stercus, Dieu particulier qui présidait à la garde-robe. Ce dernier nous rappelle qu’à l’art. Scopetarius, num. 111, nous avons dit quelques mots de Cloacine, déesse des égouts.

“On trouve encore dans Arnobe un dieu Latrinus duquel il dit: ‘Quis Latrinus præsidem latrinis?’”—(Adv. Gent. lib. 4.)

“Horace et tous les poëtes du temps d’Auguste, parlent de Stercus et ses circonstances et dépendances en cent endroits de leurs ouvrages. Martial, Catulle, Pétrone, Macrobe, Lucrèce, en saupoudrent leurs poésies; Homère, Pline, Lampride en parlent à ciel et à cœurs couverts; Saint Jérome et Saint Augustin ne dédaignent pas d’en entretenir leurs lecteurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 1, 2.)

“Dans Plautus, Aristophane fait dire par Carion que le dieu Esculape aime et mange la merde: il est merdivore, comme écrit le traducteur latin; Prave dieu, comme Sganarelle, qui a dit ce mot sacramentel et profond,—‘La matière est-elle louable?’ Il trouve dans les excréments le secret des souffrances humaines. Son trépied prophétique et médical, c’est une chaise percée.—(Idem, p. 66.)

“Sterculius. (Myth.) surnom donné à Saturne, parcequ’il fut le premier qui apprit aux hommes à fumer les terres pour les rendre fertiles.”—(“Encyc. Raisonnée des Sciences,” etc., Neufchatel, 1765, tome quinzième, art. “Sterculius.”)

The Romans “had a god of ordure named Stercutius; one for other conveniences, Crepitus; a goddess for the common sewers, Cloacina.”—(Banier, “Mythology,” vol. i. p. 199.)

“Sterculius was one of the surnames given to Saturn because he was the first that had laid dung upon lands to make them fertile.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 540.)

THE ASSYRIAN VENUS HAD OFFERINGS OF DUNG PLACED UPON HER ALTARS.

Another authority states that “the zealous adorers of Siva rub the forehead, breast, and shoulders with ashes of cow-dung,” and, further, he adds: “It is very remarkable that the Assyrian Venus, according to Lucian, had also offerings of dung placed upon her altars.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. i. pp. 172, 173.)[46]

THE MEXICAN GODDESS SUCHIQUECAL EATS ORDURE.

The Mexicans had a goddess, of whom we read the following:—Father Fabreya says, in his commentary on the Codex Borgianus, that the mother of the human race is there represented in a state of humiliation, eating _cuitlatl_ (_kopros_, Greek). The vessel in the left hand of Suchiquecal contains “_mierda_,” according to the interpreter of these paintings.—(See note to p. 120, Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities,” vol. iv.)

The Spanish _mierda_, like the Greek _kopros_, means _ordure_.

Besides Suchiquecal, the mother of the gods, who has been represented as eating excrement in token of humiliation, the Mexicans had other deities whose functions were more or less clearly complicated with alvine dejections. The most prominent of these was Ixcuina called, also, Tlaçolteotl, of whom Brasseur de Bourbourg speaks in these terms: The goddess of ordure, or Tlaçolquani, the _eater of ordure_, because she presided over loves and carnal pleasures.[47]

Mendieta mentions her as masculine, and in these terms: The god of vices and dirtinesses, whom they called Tlazulteotl.[48]

Bancroft speaks of “the Mexican goddess of carnal love, called Tlazoltecotl, Ixcuina, Tlacloquani,” etc., and says that she “had in her service a crowd of dwarfs, buffoons, and hunchbacks, who diverted her with their songs and dances and acted as messengers to such gods as she took a fancy to. The last name of this goddess means “eater of filthy things,” referring, it is said, to her function of hearing and pardoning the confessions of men and women guilty of unclean and carnal crimes.—(Bancroft, H. H. “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. iii. p. 380.)

In the manuscript explaining the Codex Telleriano, given in Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities,” vol. v. p. 131, occurs the name of the goddess Ochpaniztli, whose feast fell on the 12th of September of our calendar. She was described as “the one who sinned by eating the fruit of the tree.” The Spanish monks styled her, as well as another goddess, Tlaçolteotl,—“La diosa de basura ó pecado.” But “basura” is not the alternative of sin (pecado); it means “dung, manure, ordure, excrement.”[49] It is possible that, in their zeal to discover analogies between the Aztec and Christian religions, the early missionaries passed over a number of points now left to conjecture.

In the same volume of Kingsborough, p. 136, there is an allusion to the offerings or sacrifices made Tepeololtec, “que, en romance, quiere decir sacrificios de mierda,” which, “in plain language, signifies sacrifices of excrement.” Nothing further can be adduced upon the subject, although a note at the foot of this page, in Kingsborough, says that here several pages of the Codex Talleriano had been obliterated or mutilated, probably by some over-zealous expurgator.

Deities, created in the ignorance or superstitious fears of devotees, are essentially man-like in their attributes; where they are depicted as cruel and sanguinary toward their enemies, the nation adoring them, no matter how pacific to-day, was once cruel and sanguinary likewise. Anthropophagous gods are worshipped only by the descendants of cannibals, and excrement-eaters only by the progeny of those who were not unacquainted with human ordure as an article of food.

ISRAELITISH DUNG GODS.

Dulaure quotes from a number of authorities to show that the Israelites and Moabites had the same ridiculous and disgusting ceremonial in their worship of Bel-phegor. The devotee presented his naked posterior before the altar and relieved his entrails, making an offering to the idol of the foul emanations.[50] Dung gods are also mentioned as having been known to the chosen people during the time of their idolatry.[51]

Mr. John Frazer, LL.D., describing the ceremony of initiation, known to the Australians as the “Bora,” and which he defines to be “certain ceremonies of initiation through which a youth passes when he reaches the age of puberty to qualify him for a place among the men of the tribe and for the privileges of manhood. By these ceremonies he is made acquainted with his father’s gods, the mythical lore of the tribe and the duties required of him as a man.... The whole is under the tutelage of a high spirit called ‘Dharamoolun.’ ... But, present at these ceremonies, although having no share in them, is an evil spirit called ‘Gunungdhukhya,’ ‘eater of excrement,’ whom the blacks greatly dread.” Compare this word “Gunungdhukhya,” with the Sanskrit root-word “Gu,” “excrement;” “Dhuk” is the Australian “to eat.”—(Personal letter from John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., dated Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889. Continuing his remarks upon the subject of the evil spirit “Gunungdhukhya,” he says: “This being is certainly supposed to eat ordure; and such is the meaning of his name.”)

King James gravely informs us that “Witches ofttimes confesse that in their worship of the Devil.... Their form of adoration to be the kissing of his hinder parts.”—(“Dæmonologie,” London, 1616, p. 113.) This book appeared with a commendatory preface from Hinton, one of the bishops of the English Church.

“Witches paid homage to the devil who was present, usually in the form of a goat, dog, or ape. To him they offered themselves, body and soul, and kissed him under the tail, holding a lighted candle.”—(“History of the Inquisition,” Henry C. Lea, New York, 1888, vol. iii., p. 500.)

Knowing of the existence of “dung gods” among Romans, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Moabites, it is not unreasonable to insist, in the present case, upon a rigid adherence to the text, and to assert that, where it speaks of a sacrifice as a sacrifice of excrement and designates a deity as an eater of excrement, it means what it says, and should not be distorted, under the plea of symbolism, into a perversion of facts and ideas.

Some writers made out the name of the god “Belzebul” to be identical with “Beelzebub,” and to mean “Lord of Dung,” but this interpretation is disputed by Schaff-Herzog.—(“Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge,” New York, article “Beelzebub.”)

XX.

LATRINES.

The mention of the Roman goddess Cloacina suggests an inquiry into the general history of latrines and urinals. Their introduction cannot be ascribed to purely hygienic considerations, since many nations of comparatively high development have managed to get along without them; while, on the other hand, tribes in low stages of culture have resorted to them.

In the chapter treating upon witchcraft and incantation enough testimony has been accumulated to convince the most sceptical that the belief was once widely diffused of the power possessed by sorcerers, _et id omne genus_, over the unfortunate wretches whose excreta, solid or liquid, fell into their hands; terror may, therefore, have been the impelling motive for scattering, secreting, or preserving in suitable receptacles the alvine dejections of a community. Afterwards, as experience taught men that in these egestæ were valuable fertilizers for the fields and vineyards, or fluids for bleaching and tanning, the political authorities made their preservation a matter of legal obligation.

The Trojans defecated in the full light of day, if we can credit the statement made to that effect in the “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” p. 8, in which it is shown that a French author (name not given) wrote a facetious but erudite treatise upon this subject.

Captain Cook tells us that the New Zealanders had privies to every three or four of their houses; he also takes occasion to say that there were no privies in Madrid until 1760; that the determination of the king to introduce them and sewers, and to prohibit the throwing of human ordure out of windows after nightfall, as had been the custom, nearly precipitated a revolution.—(See in Hawkesworth’s “Voyages,” London, 1773, vol. ii. p. 314.)

“These were more cleanly than most savages about excrements. Every house had a concealed (if possible) privy near, and in large ‘Pas’ a pole was run out over the cliff to sit on sailor-fashion.”—(“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthropological Institute,” London, November, 1889.)

Marquesas Islands. “They are peculiarly cleanly in regard to the egestæ. At the Society Islands the wanderer’s eyes and nose are offended every morning in the midst of a path with the natural effects of a sound digestion; but the natives of the Marquesas are accustomed, after the manner of our cats, to bury the offensive objects in the earth. At Taheite, indeed, they depend on the friendly assistance of rats, who greedily devour these odoriferous dainties; nay, they seem to be convinced that their custom is the most proper in the world; for their witty countryman, Tupaya, found fault with our want of delicacy when he saw a small building appropriated to the rites of Cloacina, in every house at Batavia.”—(Forster, “Voyage round the World,” London, 1777, vol. ii. p. 28.)

Forster speaks of the traffic between the English sailors and the women of Tahiti, in which the latter parted with their personal favors in return for red feathers and fresh pork; in consequence of a too free indulgence in this heavy food, the ladies suffered from indigestion. “The goodness of their appetites and digestion, exposed them, however, to inconveniences of restlessness, and often disturbed those who wished to sleep after the fatigues of the day. On certain urgent occasions they always required the attendance of their lovers; but, as they were frequently refused, the decks were made to resemble the paths in the islands.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 83.)

In ancient Rome there were public latrines, but no privies attached to houses. There were basins and tubs, which were emptied daily by servants detailed for the purpose. No closet-paper was in use, as may be imagined, none having yet been invented or introduced in Europe, but in each public latrine, there was a bucket filled with salt water, and a stick having a sponge tied to one end, with which the passer-by cleansed his person, and then replaced the stick in the tub.[52] Seneca, in his Epistle No. 70, describes the suicide of a German slave who rammed one of these sticks down his throat.

The warning “Commit no nuisance,” or in French “Il est défendu de faire ici des ordures,” is traceable back to the time of the Romans, who devoted to the wrath of the twelve great gods, “and of Jupiter and Diana as well, all who did any indecency in the neighborhood of the temples or monuments.” “On nous saura gré de rapporter ici une inscription qui se lisait autrefois sur les thermes de Titus; ‘Duodecim Dios et Dianam et Jovem Optimum Maximum habeat iratos quisquis hic minxerit aut cacarit.’” In Genoa, excommunication was threatened against all who infringed upon this same prohibition.

Privies were ordered for each house in Paris in 1513, whence we may infer that some house-builders had previously of their own impulse added such conveniences; as early as 1372, and again in 1395, there were royal ordinances forbidding the throwing of ordures out of the windows in Paris, which gives us the right to conclude that the custom must have been general and offensive; the same dispositions were taken for the city of Bordeaux in 1585.

Obscene poetry was known in latrines in Rome as in our own day, and some of the compositions have come down to us.—(See “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 13-17.)

The Romans protected their walls “against such as commit nuisances ... by consecrating the walls so exposed with the picture of a deity or some other hallowed emblem, and by denouncing the wrath of heaven against those who should be impious enough to pollute what it was their duty to reverence. The figure of a snake, it appears, was sometimes employed for this purpose.... The snake, it is well known, was reckoned among the gods of the heathens.”—(“Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs,” Rev. John James Blunt, London, 1823, p. 43.)

Herodotus informs his readers that the Egyptians “ease themselves in their houses, but eat out of doors, alleging that whatever is indecent, though necessary, ought to be done in private, but what is not indecent openly.”—(“Euterpe,” p. 35.)

Herodotus also speaks of the Egyptian king Amasis having made an idol out of a gold foot-pan, “in which the Egyptians formerly vomited, made water, and washed their feet” (“Euterpe”). Minutius Felix, in his “Octavius,” refers to this, and takes umbrage that heathen idols made of such foul materials should be adored (see his chapter xxv.).

Tournefort mentions latrines in Marseilles. “They make advantage of the very excrements of the Gally-Slaves by placing at one end of the Gallies proper vessels for receiving a manure so necessary to the country.”—(“A Voyage to the Levant,” edition of London, 1718, vol. i. pp. 13-14.)

There must have been latrines in Scotland, because James I. of that kingdom was killed in one in the Monastery of the Black Friars, in Perth, in A.D. 1437; yet for many years later pedestrians in the streets of Edinburgh, after night-fall, took their own risks of the filthy deluge which house-maids were wont to pour down from the windows of the lofty houses.

“As in modern Edinburgh so in ancient Rome, night was the time observed by the careful housekeeper for throwing her slops from the upper windows into the open drain that ran through the street beneath.”—(Footnote to page 146 of Edward Walford’s (M.A. of Baliol, Oxford) ed. of Juvenal, in “Ancient Classics for English Readers,” Philadelphia, 1872, quoting from Juvenal the line, “Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown,” Satire III., line 274.)

“’Tis want of sense to sup abroad too late Unless thou first hast settled thy estate; As many fates attend thy steps to meet As there are waking windows in the street: Bless the good gods and think thy chance is rare To have a piss-pot only for thy share.”

(Dryden’s translation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.)

“And behold, there is nurra goaks in the whole kingdom (Scotland), nor anything for pore servants, but a barrel with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs of the family are emptied into this here barrel once a day; and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windere that looks into some street or lane, and the maid calls, ‘Gardy loo!’ to the passengers, which signifies, ‘Lord have mercy upon you!’ and this is done every night in every house in Hadinborough.”—(“Humphrey Clinker,” Tobias Smollett, edition of London, 1872, p. 542.)

The above seems to have been a French expression,—“Gare de l’eau.”

“The cry of all the South was that the public offices, the army, the navy, were filled with high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines and McGillvrays.... All the old jokes on hills without trees, girls without stockings, men eating the food of horses, pails emptied from the fourteenth story, were pointed against these lucky adventurers.”—(T. B. Macaulay, “The Earl of Chatham,” American edition, Appleton and Co., New York, 1874, p. 720.)

The addition of privies to the homes of the gentry would appear to have been an innovation in the time of Queen Elizabeth, else there would not have been so much comment made upon the action of Sir John Harington, her distant cousin, who erected one as a fitting convenience to his new house, near Bath, and published a very Rabelaisian volume upon the subject in London in 1596. The title of the book, being quite long,—“A Discourse on a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax,”—will in subsequent citations be given simply as Harington’s “Ajax.” From the description of the latrine in question there is no doubt that Harington anticipated nearly all the mechanism of modern days.

Richard III. is represented as having been seated in a latrine, “sitting on a draught,” when he was “devising with Terril how to have his nephews privily murdered.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 46.)

There is little reason to doubt that all houses in England, and all Continental Europe as well, were provided with receptacles for urine in the bed-chambers, even if no regular latrines existed outside of the monasteries and other community-houses. Dr. Robert Fletcher, U. S. Army, who has contributed the following, is of the opinion that these conveniences were provided for ladies only, and submits the following passages in support of his conclusions:—

“Hamjo, in the ‘Wanderer,’ part 2, by Sir Thomas Killigrew, describing to Senilia the probable manners of a rude husband, says that, on retiring to bed, ‘the gyant stretches himself, yawns, and sighs a belch or two, stales in your pot, farts as loud as a musket for a jest,’” etc.

In Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare” is a curious print of a bishop blessing a newly married pair in the bridal bed; on the lady’s side a chamber-pot is ostentatiously displayed.

Douce quotes the following from a rare “Morality,” entitled, “Le Condemnation des Banquets:” “Pause pour pisser le fol. Il prengt un coffinet en lieu de orinal et pisse dedans et tout coule par bas.”

Hobbs, the Tanner of Tamworth, introduced by Heywood in his play of “King Edward the Fourth,” the hero of the old ballad, furnished his rooms with urinals suited to his trade. He says to his guests, the King and Sellinger: “Come, take away, and let’s to bed. Ye shall have clean sheets, Ned; but they be coarse, good strong hemp, of my daughter’s own spinning. And I tell thee your chamber-pot must be a fair horn, a badge of our occupation; for we buy no bending pewter nor breaking earth.”—(“1 King Edward the Fourth,” iii. 2, Heywood, 1600.)

Additional references of the same tenor are to be found in the “Pilgrims,” Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 1: “The Scourge of Villanie,” Marston, 1599, satire 2; and in the following, which does not accord with Dr. Fletcher’s opinion that such utensils were provided solely for the female members of the household.

“_Host._ Hostlers, you knaves and commanders, take the horses of the knights and competitors; your honorable hulks have put into harbor; they’ll take in fresh water here, and I have provided clean chamber-pots.”—(“The Merry Devil of Edmonton,” 1608.)

Such vessels were in use in Ireland, where they were called “omar-fuail,” from _omar_, a vessel, and _fuail_, urine. They must have been employed from the earliest centuries. “And they (the Sybarites) were the first people who introduced the custom of bringing chamber-pots into entertainments” (Athenaus, book xii. cap. 17).

It is not easy to detect any essential difference between the manners of the people of Iceland, as described by Bleekmans on another page, and those of the more polished Romans.

Bed-pans were used in France in the earliest days of the fifteenth century. They are noted in “The Farce of Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480).—(See “Le Moyen Age Médical,” Dupouy, Paris, 1888, p. 280 _et seq._, and the translation of the same by Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1890, p. 82.)

“Maids need no more their silver pisse-pots scour, ... Presumptuous pisse-pot, how did’st thou offend? Compelling females on their hams to bend? To kings and queens we humbly bend the knee, But queens themselves are forced to stoop to thee.”

(“On Melting down the Plate, or the Piss-Pot’s Farewell,” State Poems, vol. i. part 2, p. 215, A.D. 1697.)

“What need hath Nature of silver dishes or gold chamber-pots?”

(“The Staple of News,” Ben Jonson, iii. 2; London, 1628.)

“In the ‘Chronicle of London,’ written in the fifteenth century, a curious anecdote is related, to the effect that in A.D. 1258-60, a Jew, on Saturday, fell into a ‘privy’ at Tewksbury, but out of reverence for his Sabbath, would not allow himself to be drawn out. The next day being Sunday, the Earl of Gloucester would not let any one draw him out;” and so, says the Chronicle, “the Jew died in the privy.”—(“A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483,” London, 1827, p. 20, quoted by Buckle in “Commonplace Book,” p. 507, in vol. ii. of his Works, London, 1872.)

“Heliogabalus’ body was thrown into a jakes, as writeth Suetonius.”—(Harington’s “Ajax,” p. 46.)

Heliogabalus was killed in one (latrine); Arius, the great heresiarch, and Pope Leo, his antagonist, had the same fate. Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany and Spain, was born in one in the palace of Ghent, of Jeanne of Aragon, in 1500; hence, they must have been introduced in the localities named.—(See Biblioth. Scatal. p. 17.)

“Urinary reservoirs were erected in the streets of Rome, either for the purpose of public cleanliness, or for the use of the fullers, who were accustomed to purchase their contents of the Roman government during the reign of Vespasian, and perhaps other emperors, at a certain annual impost, and which, prior to the invention or general use of soap, was the substance employed principally in their mills for cleansing cloths and stuffs previous to their being dyed.”—(John Mason Good, translation of Lucretius’ “De Natura Rerum,” London, 1805, vol. ii. p. 154, footnote.)

“Vases, called Gastra, for the relief of passengers, were placed by the Romans upon the edges of roads and streets.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyc. of Ant.,” London, vol. i. p. 526, article “Urine.”)

“Les Chinois semblent manquer d’engrais, car on trouve de tous côtés des lieux d’aisance pour les besoins des voyageurs.”—(“Voyage à Pékin,” De Guignes, Paris, 1808, vol. i. p. 284; and again, vol. iii. p. 322.)

“Large vases of stone-ware are sunk in the ground at convenient places for the use of passing travellers.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 134.)

“A traveller who lately returned from Pekin asserts that there is plenty to smell in that city, but very little to see.... The houses are all very low and mean, the streets are wholly unpaved, and are always very muddy and very dusty, and as there are no sewers or cess-pools, the filthiness of the town is indescribable.”—(“Chicago News,” copied in the “Press,” Philadelphia, Penn., May 14, 1889.)

“By the Mahometan law, the body becomes unclean after each evacuation ... both greater and smaller ... requires an ablution, according to circumstances.... If a drop of urine touches the clothes, they must be washed.” For fear that their garments have been so defiled, “the Bokhariots frequently repeat their prayers stark naked.” ... The matter of cleaning the body after an evacuation of any kind is defined by religious ritual. “The law commands ‘Istindjah’ (removal), ‘istinkah’ (ablution), and ‘istibra’ (drying,)”—i. e., a small clod of earth is first used for the local cleansing, then water at least twice, and finally a piece of linen a yard in length.... In Turkey, Arabia, and Persia all are necessary, and pious men carry several clods of earth for the purpose in their turbans. “These acts of purification are also carried on quite publicly in the bazaars, from a desire to make a parade of their consistent piety.” Vambéry saw “a teacher give to his pupils, boys and girls, instruction in the handling of the clod of earth, and so forth, by way of experiment.”—(“Sketches of Central Asia,” Arminius Vambéry, London, 1868, pp. 190, 191.)

Moslems urinate sitting down on their heels; “for a spray of urine would make hair and clothes ceremonially impure.... After urining, the Moslem wipes the os penis with one to three bits of stone, clay, or a handful of earth, and he must perform Wuzu before he can pray.” Tournefort (“Voyage au Levant,” vol. iii. p. 355) tells a pleasant story about certain Christians at Constantinople who powdered with poivre d’Inde the stones in a wall where the Moslems were in the habit of rubbing the os penis by way of wiping.—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 326. Again, in footnote to p. 229, vol. iii., he says, “Scrupulous Moslems scratch the ground in front of their feet with a stick, to prevent spraying and consequent defilement.”)

Marco Polo, in speaking of the Brahmins, says, “They ease themselves in the sands, and then disperse it, hither and thither, lest it should breed worms, which might die for want of food.”—(“Travels,” in Pinkerton, vol. vii. pp. 164, 165.)

Speaking of the Mahometans, Tournefort says, “When they make water, they squat down like women, for fear some drops of urine should fall into their breeches. To prevent this evil, they squeeze the part very carefully, and rub the head of it against the wall; and one may see the stones worn in several places by this custom. To make themselves sport, the Christians smear the stones sometimes with Indian pepper and the root called ‘Calf’s-Foot,’ or some other hot plants, which frequently causes an inflammation in such as happen to use the Stone. As the pain is very smart, the poor Turks commonly run for a cure to those very Christian surgeons who were the authors of all the mischief. They never fail to tell them it is a very dangerous case, and that they should be obliged, perhaps, to make an amputation. The Turks, on the contrary, protest and swear that they have had no communication with any sort of woman that could be suspected. In short, they wrap up the suffering part in a Linen dipped in Oxicrat tinctured with a little Bole-Armenic; and this they sell them as a great specifick for this kind of Mischief.”—(Tournefort, “A Voyage to the Levant,” London, 1718, vol. ii. p. 49.)

“Some of their doctors believe Circumcision was not taken from the Jews, but only for the better observing the Precept of Cleanness, by which they are forbidden to let any Urine fall upon their flesh. And it is certain that some drops are always apt to hang upon the Præputium, especially among the Arabians, with whom that skin is naturally much longer than in other men.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 46.)

The Mahometans have “Two ablutions, the great and small.... The first is of the whole body, but this is enjoined only to” those “who have let some urine drop upon their flesh when they have made water.” This he enumerates among “The Three great Defilements of the Mussulmans.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 48.)

John Leo says of those “Arabians which inhabit in Barborie, or upon the Coast of the Mediterranean Sea.... Their churches they frequent very diligently, to the end they may repeat certain prescript and formall Praiers, most sperstitiously perswading themselves that the same day wherein they make their praiers, it is not lawfull for them to wash certaine of their members, when, as at other times, they will wash their whole bodies.”—(“Observations of Africa,” in Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol. ii. p. 766.)

“Les lieux destinés à la décharge de la nature ... sont toujours propres.... Les Turcs ne sont point assis comme nous quand ils sont en ces lieux-là, mais ils s’accroupissent sur le trou qui n’est relevé de terre que d’un demy-pied ou d’un peu plus.... Les Turcs et tous les Mahométans en général ne se servent point de papier à de vils usages, et quand ils vont à ces sortes de lieux ils portent un pot plein d’eau pour se laver.”—(J. B. Tavernier, “Relation de l’intérieur du Sérail du Grand Seigneur,” Paris, 1675, p. 194.)

“Nunquam Turcas seu papyro pro anistergio uti, sed pro magno ipsis delicti habere, et quidem ideo, quia fortasse Nomen Dei ipsi inscriptum sit vel inscribi possit, refert Thevenot, Itinerar. Orient. lib. 1, cap. 33, p. m. 60. Et juxta A. Bubeqv., Ep. 3, p. m. 184, Turcæ alvum excrementis non exonerant quin aquam secum portant, qua partes obscenas lavent.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 796.)

Rabelais has written a characteristic chapter on the expedients to which men resorted before the general introduction of paper for use in latrines; see his chapter xiii., “Anisterges.”

“Nothing could be more filthy than the state of the palace and all the lanes leading up to it. It was well, perhaps, that we were never expected to go there; for without stilts and respirators it would have been impracticable, such is the filthy nature of the people. The king’s cows even are kept in his palace enclosure, the calves actually entering the hut, where, like a farmer, Kamresi walks among them, up to his ankles in filth, and inspecting them, issues his orders concerning them.”—(Speke, “Nile,” London, 1863, vol. ii. p. 526, describing the palace of King Kamresi, at the head of the Nile.)

“Shortly afterwards, a disturbance arose between some of my people and the natives, owing to one of my men who retired into a patch of cultivated ground having been discovered there by the owner. He demanded compensation for his land having been defiled, and had to be appeased by a present of cloth. If they were only half as particular about their dwellings as their fields, it would be a good thing, for their villages are filthy in the extreme, and would be even worse but for the presence of large numbers of pigs which act as scavengers.”—(“Across Africa,” Cameron, London, 1877, vol. ii. p. 200.)

“I was disgusted with the custom which prevailed in the houses like that in which I was lodged, of using the terrace as a sort of closet; and I had great difficulty in preventing my guide, Amer el Walati, who still stayed with me and made the terrace his usual residence, from indulging in the filthy practice.”—(Dr. Henry Barth, “Travels in North and Central Africa,” Philadelphia, 1859, p. 429, description of Timbuctoo.)

“They (the Tartars) hold it not good to abide long in one place, for they will say when they will curse any of their children, ‘I would thou mightest tarry so long in one place that thou mightest smell thine own dung as the Christians do;’ and this is the greatest curse they have.”—(“Notes of Richard Johnson, servant to Master Richard Chancellor,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 62. “Voyages of Sir Hugh Willoughby and others to the Northern parts of Siberia and Russia.”)

The Tungouses of Siberia told Sauer that “they knew no greater curse than to live in one place like a Russian or Yakut, where filth accumulates and fills the inhabitants with stench and disease.”—(Sauer, “Expedition to the North parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 49.)

“It is a common obloquy that the Turks (who still keep the order of Deuteronomy for their ordure) do object to Christians that they are poisoned with their own dung.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 115.)

“The aspect of the village itself is very neat, the ground being often swept before the chief houses; but very bad odors abound, owing to there being under each house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste liquids and refuse matter poured down through the floor above. In most other things, Malays are tolerably clean—in some scrupulously so—and this peculiar and nasty custom, which is almost universal, arises, I have little doubt, from their having been originally a water-loving and maritime people, who built their houses on posts in the water, and only migrated gradually inland, first up the rivers and streams, and then into the dry interior.

“Habits which were once so convenient and cleanly, and which had been so long practised as to become a part of the domestic life of the nation, were of course continued when the first settlers built their houses inland; and, without a regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the villages is such that any other system would be very inconvenient.”—(“The Malay Archipelago,” Alfred Russell Wallace, London, 1869, vol. i. p. 126.)

Forster speaks of “an intolerable stench which arises from the many tanks dispersed in the different quarters of the town, whose waters and borders are appropriated to the common use of the inhabitants” (“Sketch of the Mythology of the Hindoos,” George Forster, London, 1785, p. 7); but, he adds, “The filth alone which is indiscriminately thrown into the street.”

“There are some Guai, which ... dawbe ouer their houses with Oxe-dung.... They touch not their meat with the left hand, but use that hand only to wipe and other unclean offices.”—(Marco Polo, in Purchas, vol. i. p. 105.)

“Having list at any time to ease themselves, the filthy lousels had not the manners to withdraw themselves further from us than a Beane can be cast. Yea, like vile slouens, they would lay their tails in our presence, while they were yet talking with us.”—(Friar William de Rubruquis, the Franciscan, sent by Saint Louis, of France (King Louis IX.), as ambassador to the Grand Khan of Tartary in A.D. 1235,—in Purchas, vol. i. p. 11.)

“A great magnifico of Venice, being ambassador in France, and hearing a noble person was come to speak with him, made him stay till he had untied his points; and when he was new set upon his stool, sent for the nobleman to come to him at that time, as a very special favor.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 30.)

“The French courtesy I spake of before came from the Romans; since in Martial’s time, they shunned not one another’s company at Monsieur Ajax.” (“Ajax” as used by Harington, is a play upon the words “a Jakes.”)—(See Harington, “Ajax,” p. 38.)

Carl Lumholtz stated to the author that the Australians urinate in the presence of strangers, and while talking to them.

“Il n’est fonction physiologique ou besoin naturel qu’ils aient gêne à satisfaire en public. ‘Une coutume n’a rien d’indécent quand elle est universelle,’ remarque philosophiquement un de nos voyageurs.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 71,—“Les Inoits Occidentaux,” quoting Dall.)

Padre Gumilla says that the Indians on the Orinoco have the same custom as the Jews and Turks have of digging holes with a hoe and covering up their evacuations. (See “Orinoco,” Madrid, 1741, p. 109.) No such cleanliness can be attributed to the Indians of the Plains of North America or the nomadic tribes of the Southwest.

“And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.

“For the Lord, thy God, walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy; that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”—(Deuteronomy xxiii.)

Speaking of the Essenes, Josephus informs us: “On the seventh day ... they will not even remove any vessel out of its place, nor perform the most pressing necessities of nature. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they first are admitted among them), and, covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit. After which they put the earth that was dug out again into that pit.

“And even this they do only in the most lonesome places, which they choose for this purpose. And it is a rule with them to wash themselves afterwards, as if it were a defilement.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” edition of New York, 1821, p. 241.)

“The Rabbinical Jews believed that every privy was the abode of an unclean spirit of this kind” (i. e., an excrement-eating god), “which could be inhaled with the breath, and descending into the lower parts of the body, lodge there, and thus like the Bhutas of India, bring suffering and disease.” (Personal letter from John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.)

In descriptions of Jerusalem, we read of the “Dung Gate,” by or through which, all the fecal matter of the city had to be carried.—(See Harington, “Ajax,” p. 87.)

“When an aborigine obeys a call of nature, he always carries a pointed instrument with which to turn up the ground, so that his fecal excreta may be hidden from the keen vision of the vagabond Bangals.” (“Bangals” are the native witches or their parallels.)—(“Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina,” A. Brough-Smith, vol. i. p. 165.)

The same custom has been ascribed to the Dyaks of Borneo. It is by no means certain that this custom had its origin in any suggestion of cleanliness; on the contrary, it is fully as probable that the idea was to avert the maleficence of witchcraft by putting out of sight material the possession of which would give witches so much power over the former owner.

Mr. John F. Mann confirms from personal observation that the natives of Australia observed the injunction given to the Hebrews in Deuteronomy. “From personal observation, I can state that the natives, all over the country, as a rule, are particular in this matter, but it was many years before I ascertained the reasons for this care. Sorcery and witchcraft exist in every tribe; each tribe has its ‘Kooradgee’ or medicine-man; the natives imagine that any death, accident, or pain, is caused by the evil influence of some enemy. These ‘Kooradgees’ have the power not only of inflicting pain, but of causing all kinds of trouble. They are particular to always carry about with them, in a net bag, a ‘charm’ which is most ordinarily made of rock crystal, human excrement, and kidney fat. If one of these medicine-men can obtain possession of some of the excrement of his intended victim, or some of his hair, in fact anything belonging to his person, it is the most easy thing in the world to bewitch him.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., Neutral Bay, New South Wales.)

“The disposal of excreta is not so much for the sake of cleanliness as to prevent any human substance from falling into the hands of an enemy.”—(Idem.)

Schurig devotes a long paragraph to an exposition of the views entertained by learned physicians in regard to the effects to be expected from the deposition of the fecal matter upon plants that were either noxious or beneficial to the human organism; in the former case, the worst results were to be dreaded from sympathy; in the latter, only the most salutary. Rustics, in his opinion, enjoyed better health than the inhabitants of cities for the very peculiar reason that the latter evacuated in latrines and in the act were compelled to inhale the deleterious gases emanating from the foul deposits already accumulated; whereas the countryman could go out to a comfortable place in the fields and evacuate without the danger and inconvenience to which the urban population were subject.

But he takes occasion to warn his readers that they must be careful not to defecate upon certain malignant herbs which might be the cause of virulent dysentery. “Præterea cavendum est ne feces supra herbas malignas exulcerantes sive violenter purgantes deponamus hinc enim causa latente dysenteria periculosa inducitur quæ vix nisi herbis prorsus putrefactis ullis medicamentis cedit.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 792, paragraph 66.)

Colonel Garrick Mallery, United States Army, reports having met with people of respectability and intelligence in the mountainous parts of Virginia who hold the same views upon the subject of latrines.

“Ye great ones, why will ye disdain To pay your tribute on the plain? Why will you place in lazy pride? When from the homeliest earthenware Are sent up offerings more sincere Than where the haughty Duchess locks Her silver vase in cedar box.”

(Dean Swift.)

“Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments sur l’herbe croissante, c’est un pacittiya, etc.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884. Soc. Asiatique.) These bhikshuni are the nuns of Thibet, and the word “pacittiya” means a sin.

The following beastly practices are related of the Capuchins: “Tunica replicata, absque impedimento cacat et mingit, anum fune abstergit.”—(Fosbroke, “British Monachism,” quoting “Specimen Monchologiæ.”)

There are no latrines of any kind in Angola, West Africa; the negroes believe that it is very vile to frequent the same place for such purposes. They do not cover up their excrements, but deposit them out in the bushes. Sometimes it happens that a man will defecate inside the house, in which case he will be laughed at all the rest of his life, and be called “D’Kombe,” which is a kind of leopard.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy, translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

The following is the epigram of Martial “ad Furium”:—

“A te sudor abest, abest saliva, Mucusque et pituita mala nasi, Hunc ad munditiem adde mundiorem, Quod culus tibi purior salillo est, Nec toto decies cacas in anno; Atque id durius est faba et lapillis, Quod tu si manibus teras fricesque, Non unquam digitum inquinare possis.”

The Hon. John F. Finerty called public attention to the fact that in the city of Mexico, ten years ago, beggars of the vilest caste invariably made a practice of defecating upon the marble steps of the main entrance to the grand cathedral.

Dr. J. H. Porter states that in some parts of the Mexican republic the women come out in front of their doors to urinate; the author has seen them doing this, and also defecating in the streets of Tucson, at that time the capital of Arizona; he has seen the same practice in several of the smaller hamlets of that territory and Sonora and New Mexico, but always at night.

The Mexicans living on our side of the border never constructed privies for their dwellings, a custom perhaps derived from Spain, where we have seen that even in Madrid the construction of such conveniences was unknown until after the middle of the last century.

POSTURE IN URINATION.

The Apache men in micturating always squat down, while the women, on the contrary, always stand up. Giraldus Cambrensis says of the Irish: “Præterea, viri in hac gente sedendo, mulieres stando, urinas emittunt.”—(“Opera,” edited by James Dimock, and published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, London, 1867, vol. v. p. 172.)

The author has seen an Italian woman of the lower class urinating in this manner in the street near San Pietro in Vinculis, Rome, in open daylight, in 1883.

French women were to be seen in the streets of Paris urinating while standing over gutters.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)

“Among the Turks, it is an heresy, to p—s standing.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” in the chapter “Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 43.)

The Egyptian “women stand up when they make water, but the men sit down.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 35.)

Mr. Carl Lumholtz (author of “Among Cannibals,” New York, 1889) also stated that the Australian men squatted while urinating; the women generally stood erect, but upon this point he was not quite sure.

“Mantegazza, in his ‘Gli amori degli uomini,’ describing the operation of splitting the male urethra, practised among Australian tribes, remarks: ‘To urinate, they squat down like our women, lifting the penis slightly. It appears that, on the contrary, Australian women urinate standing.’ (He is apparently quoting from Michluchs-Maclay.) Among the Kaffirs, etc., at the Cape, the usual practice, I understand, does not differ from ours.”—(Personal letter from Havelock Ellis, Esq., editor of the Contemporary Science series, dated Red Hill, Surrey, Oct. 8, 1889. From this gentleman there was also received much matter of a most valuable character, from the early English dramatists, travellers, and others, which has been already quoted from these sources direct.)

“Behold the strutting Amazonian whore! She stands in guard, with her right foot before: Her coat tucked up, and all her motions just, She stamps, and then cries, ‘Hah!’ at every thrust. But laugh to see her, tired from many a bout, Call for the pot, and like a man piss out.”

(Juvenal, Satire VI., Dryden’s translation.)

The Thibetan nuns are forbidden to adopt certain postures, as are the monks.

“110, 111. Ne pas se soulager debout, n’étant pas malade, est une règle qu’on doit apprendre.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884, Soc. Asiatique.)

“Æsop, that great man, saw his master make water as he walked. ‘What!’ said he; ‘must we, then, dung as we walk?’”—(Planudus, quoted by Montaigne, “Essays,” Hazlitt’s translation, New York, 1859, vol. iii. p. 467.)

The lazzaroni of Naples are more filthy in all these respects than the wildest Maori, Bedouin, or Apache Indian, as the author can assert from disagreeable personal observation.

“It can be justly said that the inhabitants of Cadiack, if we except the women during their monthly periods and their lying-in, have not the least sense of cleanliness. They will not go a step out of the way for the most necessary purposes of nature; and vessels are placed at their very doors for the reception of the urinous fluid, which are resorted to alike by both sexes.”—(Lisiansky, “Voyages,” p. 214, quoted also in Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 81.)

“Par suite des ordures et du manque d’air, l’intérieur des huttes répand une puanteur presque insupportable.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, “Les Inoits Orientaux.”)

Old women in Switzerland urinate standing, especially in cold weather.—(Rev. Mr. Chatelain, himself a native of Switzerland, and now a Protestant missionary in Angola, Western Africa.)

The men of Angola, Africa, urinate standing; the women of the same tribes urinate standing, as a general thing, although there are some exceptions. It should be remembered that the Jesuits have had missions in that region for two hundred years, and some effect upon the ideas of the people, due to these ministrations as well as to the occupancy of the country by the Portuguese, should be perceptible.

Gómara says of the Indians of Nicaragua: “Mean todos do les toma la gana—ellos en cuclillas y ellas en pie.”—(“Historia de las Indias,” p. 283.)

The Mojaves of the Rio Colorado follow the same rule as the Apaches.

In Ounalashka, the houses are divided by partitions. “Each partition has a particular wooden reservoir for the urine, which is used both for dyeing the grass and for washing the hands, but after cleansing the latter in this manner, they rince them in pure water.”—(Sarytschew, in “Phillip’s Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. vi. p. 72.)

Dr. Porter communicates the information that he has often heard the Arctic explorer Dr. Hayes speak of the propensity of the Eskimo of the east coast of Greenland to use the trench to the hut as a latrine. He tried in vain to prevent this practice among his Eskimo attendants, but believed that they had a pride among themselves in leaving conspicuous traces of their presence.

For urinals among the Eskimo, see also notes from Egede, Egede Saabye, and Richardson, under “Industries,” in this volume.

“Neither is it lawfull for any one to rise from the table to make water; but for this purpose the daughter of the house, or another maid or woman, attendeth always at the table, watchfull if any one beckon to them; to him that beckoneth shee gives the chamber-pott under the table with her owne hands; the rest in the meanwhile grunt like swine least any noise bee heard. The water being poured out, hee washeth the bason, and offereth his services to him that is willing; and he is accounteth uncivill who abhorreth this fashion.”—(Dittmar Bleecken’s “Voyage to Iceland and Greenland,” A.D. 1565, in Purchas, vol. i. pp. 636-647.)

Steller’s account shows that in his time the people of Kamtchatka had no regular water-closets.

“The dogs steal food whenever they can, and even eat their straps. In their presence no one is able to ease nature without the protection of a club for the purpose of keeping them at a distance. As soon as he leaves, the dogs rush to the spot, and under much snarling and snapping each seeks to grasp the deposit.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

In the Eskimo myths there is the story of the Eskimo boy, an orphan, who was abused by being made to carry out of the hut the large urine vessel. This would indicate a certain antiquity for the employment of these vessels.—(See “The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in “Sixth Annual Report,” Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 631.)

In the city of Bogota, Colombia, South America, the lower classes urinate openly in the streets; in the city of Mexico, the same practice prevailed until recently.

In “The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona,” the author had something to say touching the practice of the Moquis, Zuñis, and others of the Pueblo tribes, of collecting urine in vessels of earthenware; this was for the purpose of saving the fluid for use in dyeing the wool of which their blankets and other garments were to be made. It was noticed, however, that a particular place was assigned for such emergencies as might arise when the ordinary receptacles might not be within reach. Thus, in the town of Hualpi (on the eastern mesa in the northeast corner of the Territory of Arizona), one of the corners had been in such constant use, and for so long a time that the stream percolating down from the wall had eroded a channel for itself in the friable sandstone flooring, which would serve to demonstrate that the place had been so dedicated for a very extended number of years.

Latrines of some sort would seem to have been in use among the natives of Australia, if we are to interpret literally the expression employed by A. Brough Smyth, which see under “Myths” in this volume. The Tonga Islanders, in the mortuary ceremonies of their great chiefs, are stated to have had them (see under “Mortuary Ceremonies” in this volume).

Carl Lumholtz did not observe latrines of any kind among such of the Australians as he visited.

Among the Chinese “it is usual for the princes, and even the people, to make water standing. Persons of dignity, as well as the vice-kings, and the principal officers, have gilded canes, a cubit long, which are bored through, and these they use as often as they make water, standing upright all the time; and by this means the tube carries the water to a good distance from them.[53] They are of opinion that all pains in the kidneys, the strangury, and even the stone, are caused by making water in a sitting posture; and that the reins cannot free themselves absolutely of these humors but by standing to evacuate; and that thus this posture contributes exceedingly to the preservation of health.”—(“The Travels of Two Mahometans through India and China,” in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 215.)

The Persian “must not pray before an overhanging wall, or in a room where there is a pot de chambre.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887, p. 444, quoting from the Shahr.)

In the Hawaiian Islands, if a man’s shadow fall on a chief, the man is put to death.—(See “The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 190.)

“These natives (East Siberia) always preserve for use in their domesticity the urine of the whole family; it is preserved in a large tub or half-barrel, procured from the whale-ships or found in the drift that comes upon their shores. They use the warm water from their bodies for cleansing their bodies; the rim that gathers round the high-water mark of their cess-pool is used for smearing their bodies to kill the vermin.... The habits of these people are beastly in the extreme.... They seemed to have no aversion whatever to close contact with the feces of men or animals.”—(Personal letter of Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy, to Captain Bourke.)

Van Stralenberg says of the “Koræiki” (Koraks): “For their necessary occasions they make use of a tub, which they have with them in the hut, and when full they carry it out, and make use of the same tub to bring in water for other occasions.”—(“Histori-Geographical Description of the North and East Parts of Europe and Asia,” p. 397.)

By referring to page 390 of this volume, it will be seen that the Lapps, upon breaking camp, made it a point to burn the dung of their reindeer in cases where any of these animals had died of disease; while it is also related that immigrants to California from the States of Missouri and Arkansas, for some reason not understood, had the singular custom of burning their own excrement in the camp-fire.

“When they ease themselves, they commonly go in the morning unto the Towne’s end, where there is a place purposely made for them, that they may not bee seene, so also because men passing by should not be molested with the smell thereof. They also esteeme it a bad thing that men should ease themselves upon the ground, and therefore they make houses which are borne up above the ground, wherein they ease themselves upon the ground, and every time they do it they wipe; or else they goe to the water’s side to ease themselves in the sand; and when the Priuie houses are full, they set fire to them, and let them burn to ashes; they pisse by jobs as dogs doe, and not all at one time.”—(Master Richard Jobson, A.D. 1620, “Gold Coast of Africa,” in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 932.)

XXI.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF THE RITES CONNECTED WITH THE WORSHIP OF BEL-PHEGOR.

Precisely what ceremonial observances the ritual of Bel-Phegor demanded of the suppliant at his shrine is not likely ever to be known. It would be worse than useless to attempt in a treatise of this kind to affirm or deny the existence of the obscene usages alleged to have formed part of his worship; sufficient, at this moment, to lay before reflecting minds testimony on both sides of the question, with reasons for the belief that flatulence could be presented as an oblation, with examples of quaint customs which may partake of the nature of “survivals” from religious ceremonies of a nature not far removed from those supposed to have been associated with the rites of Bel-Phegor.

Well has an old author remarked: “Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of one seems madness to another, to afford an account or rational of old rites requires no rigid reader.”—(Sir Thomas Browne, “Religio Medici,” edition of Boston, 1868, p. 329, article “Urn-Burial.”)

“Le Pet était une divinité des anciens Égyptiens; elle était la personnification d’une fonction naturelle. On la figurait par un enfant accroupi qui semble faire effort, et on peut en voir la représentation dans les ouvrages d’antiquité. Le poême Calotin, intitulé le Conseil de Momus (voyez aux Polygraphes) donne, contre la page 19, deux figures de ce dieu. L’une était en cornaline de trois couleurs; l’autre en terre cuite, se trouvait dans le cabinet du Marquis de Cospy, et la figure en a été donnée dans le Museum Cospianum. L’auteur de la Dissertation sur un ancien Usage (voyez le numéro 18) conteste que ces figurines se rapportent au Crepitus, et croit qu’elles ont été inventées dans un but plus solide.

“C’est de Minutius Felix que nous vient la reconnaissance du Crepitus, qui, lors même qu’il aurait été célébré réellement en Égypte, n’était peut-être qu’une caricature imaginée par les plaisants du jour. Ménage cependant affirme que les Pélusiens adoraient le Pet; il dit que Baudelot en a donné la preuve dans les éditions de son premier vol., et qu’il en possédait une figure. (Voy. Menagiana, 1693, no. 397. St. Jerome dit la même chose sur Isaie, xiii. 46. Voy. encore Klotz, act. littér. t. v., première partie, 1, Elmenhorst sur l’Octavius de Minutius Felix; Mythol. de Banier, t. 1; Montfaucon, ‘l’Antiquité expliquée,’ t. iii. part 2, p. 336.)

“Quelques antiquaires ont cru pouvoir identifier le dieu Crepitus des Romains avec Bel-Phegor, Baal-Phegor ou Baal-Peor, dieu Syrien,—Phegor, assure-t-on, ayant ce sens en Hebreu. (Origen contra Celsus; Minutius Felix.) Mais, sur cette dernière divinité les savants sont fort peu d’accord.

“Origène, St. Jerome, Salomon Ben Jarchi, lui donnent une signification qui la rendrait tout à fait indigne de figurer dans notre catalogue; mais Maimonide (Moge Nevoch, cap. 46) et Salom. Ben Jarchi (Comment. 3, sur Nomb. ch. 25) prétendent que son culte était plus sale que obscène, et les traducteurs de ces rabbins pour exprimer le principal détail des cérémonies célébrées en l’honneur du dieu de Syrie, disent: ‘Distendere coram eo foramen podicis et stercus offere.’

“Ajoutez que les pets étaient de bon augure chez les Grecs, de mauvais augure chez les Romains.”—(Voy. Scaliger, Auson.)

“No one now supposes that the Rabbins had anything but their imaginations to go on in what they say about Baal-Peor; they invented the story as a fanciful etymology of the name.”[54]—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith to Captain Bourke.)

Citations have already been made from the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, a curious collection of learning, no name and no place of publication of which can be found, but which seems to have been printed by Giraudet et Jouaust, 315 Rue Saint Honoré, Paris, granting that this title be not fictitious. In that work are to be seen the titles of no less than one hundred and thirty-three treatises upon Flatulence, some grotesque, some coarse, one or two of quaint erudition.

No. 88, entitled “Éloge du Pet, dissertation historique, anatomique et philosophique sur son origine, son antiquité, ses vertus, sa figure, les honneurs qu’on lui a rendus chez les peuples anciens, etc.; avec une figure représentant le dieu Pet, et cette inscription: Crepitui ventris conservatori deo propitio (p. 38),” the stupendous work of Sclopetarius, No. 111, of the Bibliotheca (Frankfort, 1628) seems to have been a monumental labor upon a subject not generally dissected. The same remark may be applied to “Physiologia crepitus ventris” of Rod. Goclenius, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1607, No. 123 of the Bibliotheca.

The earliest known work upon this curious topic is “Le plaisant deuis du Pet,” Paris, 1540.

“Origen saith the name Baal-Peor signifieth filthiness, but what filthiness he knew not; Salomon Ben Jarchi writeth they offered to him ordure, placing before his mouth the likeness of that place which Nature hath made for egestion.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 85.)

A reference to the work of Bel-Phegor is to be found in the following couplet from a book entitled “Conseil de Momus:”—

“La deuxième moitié du premier chant est consacrée

‘A certains vents coulis Jadis adorés à Memphis.’”—(Bib. Scat., p. 7.)

“The antient Pelusiéns, a people of lower Egypt, did (amongst other whimsical, chimerical objects of veneration and worship) venerate a Fart, which they worshipped under the symbol of a swelled paunch.”—(“A View of the Levant,” Charles Perry, M. D., sm. fol., London, 1743, p. 419.)

“Time has preserved to us a figure of this ridiculous Divinity, which represents a very young child in the posture of that indecent action whence this god has his name.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, 1740, vol. ii. pp. 52 _et seq._)[55]

“Their Beetle-gods out of their privies; yea, their Privies and Farts had their unsavorie canonization and went for Egyptian deities.... So, Hierome derideth their dreadfull deitie, the Onion, and a stinking Fart, Crepitus ventris inflati que Pelusiaco religio est, which they worshipped at Pelusium.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 641.)

It may be well to bear in mind that the heathen idea of the power of a god was entirely different from our own. The deities of the heathen were restricted in their powers and functions; they were assigned to the care of certain countries, districts, valleys, rivers, fountains, etc. Not only that, they were capable of aiding only certain trades, professions, etc. They were not able to cure all diseases, only particular kinds, each god being a specialist; consequently, each was supposed to take charge of a section of the human body. This was the case with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others. In mediæval times the same rule obtained, only in place of gods, we find saints assigned to these functions. Brand, Pop. Antiq. vol. i. p. 356, _et seq._, gives a list of the saints, and the functions ascribed to each. On page 366 of the work just cited, it will be seen that Saint Erasmus was in charge of “the belly, with the entrayles.” Keeping this in view, we can better understand the peculiar ceremonies connected with the worship of Bel-Phegor; he was, no doubt, the deity to whom the devotee resorted for the alleviation of ailments connected with the rectum and belly, much as he would, at a later date in the history of religion, have invoked Saint Phiacre to relieve him “of the phy or emeroids, of those especially which grow in the fundament.” (See in Brand, loc. cit. p. 362.) On the same principle that the worshipper was wont to hang up in the temples of Esculapius wax and earthen representations of the sore arms, legs, and other members which gave him pain, the worshipper of Bel-Phegor would offer him the sacrifice of the flatulence and excrement, testimonies of the good health for which gratitude was due to the older deity.

“The Egyptians divided the human body into thirty-six parts, each of which they believed to be under the particular government of one of the decans or aerial demons who presided over the triple divisions of the twelve signs; and we have the authority of Origen for saying that when any part of the body was diseased, a cure was effected by invoking the demon to whose province it belonged.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 47.)

The ascription of particular signs of the Zodiac to the care of different members of the human anatomy is in line with the same religious idea; because the signs of the Zodiac, especially the Animal signs, were once Animal Gods.

Hone, in his “Every-Day Book,” has a therapeutical hagiology, too long to be here repeated.

“Melton says, ‘The saints of the Romanists have usurped the place of the Zodiacal constellations in their governance of the parts of man’s body,’ and that ‘for every limb they have a saint.’” Thus Saint “Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles in the place of Libra and Scorpius.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 54.) Next follows a long list of saints, with the particular functions assigned to each, beginning first with the list to be found in Hone, which Pettigrew extends.—(“Saint Giles and Saint Hyacinth against Sterility,” idem, pp. 55, 56.)

“In later times, according to Herodotus, a particular and minute division of labor characterized the Egyptians; the science of medicine was distributed into different parts; every physician was for one disease, not more; so that every place was full of physicians, for some were doctors for the eyes, others for the head; some for the teeth, others for the belly; and some for occult disorders. There were also physicians for female disorders. The sons followed the professions of their fathers, so that their numbers must necessarily have been very great.”—(Idem, p. 44.)

As the Egyptian priests were the doctors of that country, it is perfectly in accord with the eternal fitness of things that we should find them, even after they had been differentiated into different professions, restricted to the treatment of special diseases, much as the gods whom the priests once represented had been restricted.[56]

“The art of medicine is thus divided among them (Egyptians). Each physician applies himself to one disease only and not more. All places abound in physicians; some physicians are for the eyes, others for the teeth, others for the parts about the belly, and others for internal disorders.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 82.)

Hone shows that every joint of the fingers was dedicated to some saint.—(See his “Every-Day Book,” vol. ii. p. 48.)

“But, under the venerated name of Hermes, were issued books of astronomical forecasts of diseases, setting forth the evil influence of malignant stars upon the unborn; telling how the right eye is under the sun, the left under the moon, the hearing under Saturn, the brain under Jupiter, the tongue and throat under Mercury, smelling and tasting under Venus, the parts that have blood under Mars.... The early centuries next after the Christian era produced a rank crop of literary forgeries.”—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. pp. 11, 12.)

“The New Zealanders gave a separate deity to each part of the body.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 11.)

The interview between Moses and Jehovah, where the latter refused to allow the prophet to see the glory of his face, but made him content himself with a view of his posterior, indicates that the sacred writers of the earlier periods were living in an atmosphere of thought which accepted all such ideas as those surrounding the Bel-Phegorian ceremonials.

The Hebrews believed that Jehovah should be propitiated with sweet savors:[57] “Offer up a sweet savor unto the Lord.” Bel-Phegor and other deities of the gentiles, who were the gods of particular parts of the human body, would, in all probability, be pleased with oblations coming especially from that particular part; thus, the god of Hunting had offerings of game; the gods of the Seas had sacrifices of fish; babies were offered to the deities of Childbirth; therefore the gods of the fundament should, naturally, be regaled with excrement and flatulence.

Harington calls attention to David’s prophecy in the 77th Psalm: “Percussit inimicos suos in posteriores, opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis.” “He smote his enemies in the hinder parts and put them to a perpetual shame.”—(“Ajax,” p. 25.)

The absence of unity is the characteristic of all primitive forms of religious thought; hence, the various differentiations mentioned above occur as a matter of religious necessity.

Among the practices prohibited by the Taoist religion: “A man must not sing and dance on the last day of the moon.... Must not weep, spit, or be guilty of other indecency towards the North.”—(Legge, “Religions of China,” p. 187.)

The Parsis have a curious idea suggestive of the Hebrew antagonism to the worship of Bel-Phegor: “14. The rule is that when one retains a prayer inwardly and wind shall come from below, or wind shall come from the mouth, it is all one.” (Shayast la Shayast, Max Müller’s edition, Oxford, 1880, cp. x. verse 14, p. 221. A footnote explains: “Literally, ‘both are one,’ that is, in either case the spell of the vag or prayer is broken.”)

“The Bedawi, who eructates as a matter of civility, has a mortal hatred to a crepitus ventris; and were a by-stander to laugh at its accidental occurrence, he would be at once cut down as a ‘pundonor.’ The same is the custom among the Highlanders of Afghanistan. And its artificial nature suggests direct derivation; for the two regions are separated by a host of tribes, Persians and Beloch, who utterly ignore the pundoner and behave like Europeans. The raids of the pre-Ishmaelitish Arabs over the lands lying to the northeast of them are almost forgotten; still, there are traces, and this may be one of them.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. v. p. 137.)

According to Niebuhr, the voiding of wind is considered to be the gravest indecency among the Arabs; some tribes make a perpetual butt of the offender once guilty of such an infraction of decorum; the Belludjages, upon the frontiers of Persia, expel the culprit from the tribe. Yet Niebuhr himself relates that a sheik of the tribe “Montesids” once had a contest of this kind among his henchmen, “avoit autorisé un défi dans ce genre entre ses domestiques et couronné le vainqueur.” (Niebuhr, “Description de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 27.) Snoring and Flatulence would seem to have been considered equally offensive by the Tartars. See Marco Polo’s reference to the mode of selecting wives for the Grand Khan (in Purchas, vol. i. p. 82). He says that the Grand Khan puts those deemed to be eligible under the care of “his Barons’ wives,” “to see if they snore not in their sleepe, if in smell or behaviour they bee not offensive.”

“Yet it is holden a shame with them to let a fart, at which they wondered in the Hollanders, esteeming it a contempt.”—(“Negroes of Guinea,” Purchas, vol. v. p. 718.)

On the Gold Coast of Africa, the negroes “are very careful not to let a fart, if anybody be by them; they wonder at our Netherlanders that use it so commonly, for they cannot abide that a man should fart before them, esteeming it to be a great shame and contempt done unto them.”—(Master Richard Jobson, A.D. 1620, in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 936.) In the Russian sect of dissenters called the “Bezpopovtsi,” “during the service of Holy Thursday, certain of them, known as ‘gapers’ or ‘yawners,’ sit for hours with their mouths wide open, waiting for ministering angels to quench their spiritual thirst from invisible chalices.”—(Heard, “Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” pp. 200, 201.)

Bastian, in “Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde” (vol. i. p. 9), quotes from Kubary, “Religion of the Pelew Islands,” to the effect that in cases of death, the vagina, urethra, rectum, nostrils, and all other orifices of the body are tightly closed with the fibres of certain roots or sponge, to prevent the escape of any of the liquids of the body, which seem to be of some use to the spirit of the deceased.—(Contributed in a Personal letter from Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.)

In Wallachia, “No mode of execution is more disgraceful than the gallows. The reason alleged is that the soul of a man with a rope round his neck, cannot escape from his mouth.”—(Maltebrun, “Universal Geography,” Boston, 1847, vol. ii. p. 458, article “Hungary.”)

“The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body, especially the mouth and nostrils.”—(Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 125.)

“Caton appliquait à l’objet d’un de nos chapitres; ‘Nullum mihi vitium facit.’ ... C’est ce que disait Caton lorsqu’un de ses esclaves pétoit en sa presence.”—(Bib. Scat., “Oratio pro Guano Humano,” p. 21.)

In Angola, West Coast of Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives, but any license of this kind, taken while strangers are in the vicinity, is regarded as a most deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola; interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

The poet Horace “a consacré plusieurs vers au sujet qui nous occupe. On peut voir particulièrement la Satire VIII. qui contient le passage suivant:—

“‘Mentior, at si quid merdis caput inquiner albis Corvorum, atque in me veniat mictum atque cacatum Julius, et fragilis pedacia, furque Voranus.’”—(Bib. Scat. p. 76.)

The celebrated English orator, Charles James Fox, is credited with the authorship of “An Essay upon Wind,” published anonymously in London, and numbered 91 in the Bib. Scat. (p. 39).

Martin Luther had many struggles and disputes with his Satanic Majesty, in all of which the latter came off second best. Melanchthon is cited as describing one of these, in which there were results worthy of incorporation in this work: “Hoc dicto victus Dæmon, indignabundus secumque murmurans abiit, eliso crepitu, non exiguo, cujus fussimen tetri odoris dies aliquot redolebat hypocaustum.” Vid. Joh. Wier, de Præstig. Dæmon. cap. 7, p. m. 54, in Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 795, article “De Crepitu Diaboli.”

“Luther relates a story of a lady who ‘Sathanum crepitu ventris fugavit.’”—(“Les Propos de Table de Luther,” par G. Brunet, Paris, 1846, p. 22, quoted in Buckle’s “Commonplace Book,” p. 472, vol. ii. of his “Works.” All the English editions of Luther’s “Table Talk,” so far as known to the author, are “expurgated.”)

“Ciceron, considérant le Peditus comme une victime innocente, opprimée par la civilisation de son temps, poussait en sa faveur le cri de liberté et formulait ses droits.” As a footnote to the foregoing we read the following extract from Cicero: “Crepitus æque liberos ac ructus esse opportere.”—(Lib. 9, Epist. 22.)

“Memento quia ventus est vita mea.”—(Job. vii. 9.)

“Pedere te mallem, namque hoc nec inutile, dicit Symmachus, et risum res movet ista simul.”—(Martial, vii. 17, 9.)

“‘Le Tonnerre, ce n’est qu’un Pet;’ c’est Aristophane qui le dit.” Βροντὴ καὶ πορδή, ὁμοίω—(“Nućes.”)

All the preceding from Bib. Scat., article, “Oratio pro Guano Humano.”

Consult Aristophanes, “The Clouds,” act v. scene 2.

“Dissertation sur le dieu Pet,” par M. Claude Terrin.—This author is stated to have cited from Clemens Romanus and Saint Cæsar.—(See Bib. Scat., p. 37.)

Suetonius has the following remarks upon the Roman Emperor Claudius: “It is said too that he intended to publish an edict ... allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension occasioned by flatulence.” This was upon “hearing of a person whose modesty, under such circumstances, had nearly cost him his life.”—(“Claudius,” xxxii.)

Plutarch asks the question: “Question 95. Why was it ordained that they that were to live chaste should abstain from pulse?... Or rather was it because they should bring empty and slender bodies to their purifications and expiations? For pulse are windy and cause a great deal of excrements that require purging off. Or is it because they excite lechery by reason of their flatulent and windy nature?” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s English translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 254.)

“The fact that in honor of the arrival of friends, the house is swept and strewn with sand, and that the people bathe at such occasions, shows that cleanliness is appreciated. The current expression is that the house is so cleaned that no bad smell remains to offend the guest. For the same reason the Indian takes repeated baths before praying, ‘that he may be agreeable to the Deity.’”—(“Report on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada,” Dr. Franz Boas, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting, 1889, p. 19.)

“Saul went into a cave ‘ut purgaret ventrem.’”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 25.)

XXII.

OBSCENE TENURES.

In close connection with this worship of Bel-Phegor, if there ever was such a worship, may be examined the obscene tenures by which certain estates in England were held in “sergeantcy.” No less an authority than Buckle, the historian, deemed an investigation of these not beneath the dignity of his intellect, as may be ascertained by a glance at his article “Contributions to the History of the Pet,” in his “Commonplace Book,” p. 472. He refers to “Miscellanea Antica Anglicana,” Blount’s “Ancient Tenures,” Luther’s “Table Talk” (as above), Dulaure’s “Des Divinités Génératrices,” Niebuhr’s “Description of Arabia,” Gifford’s edition of Ben Jonson, “The Staple of News,” by Ben Jonson, Wright’s “Political Ballads,” in vols. iii. and vii. of the Percy Society’s publications. With the exception of the first named, all the above have been examined, and a transcription made of the notes, which will be found inserted in their proper place.

“The Lord of the Manor of Essington holds tenure from the lord of the Manor of Hilton in this way. He, the first named, must bring a goose each New Year to the hall of the Manor of Hilton, and drive it at least three times around the fire, ‘while Jack of Hilton is blowing the fire.’ This Jack of Hilton is an image of brass, of about twelve inches high, kneeling on his left knee, and holding his right hand upon his head, and his left upon pego, or his viretrum, erected, having a little hole at the mouth, at which, being filled with water, and set to a strong fire, which makes it evaporate like an aelopile, it vents itself in constant blast, so strongly that it is very audible, and blows the fire fiercely.”—(Blount, “Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors,” Hazlitt’s edition, London, 1874, p. 118.)

This recalls the “mannikin” of Brussels, which may have superseded some long since forgotten local deity; it still serves political purposes occasionally.

Blount’s work was first issued under the title of “Jocular Tenures.”

The prevalence of phallic worship all over Flanders should be adverted to in mentioning the “mannikin” of Brussels.

Dulaure (“Des différens Cultes,” Paris, 1825, vol. ii. p. 272 _et seq._) describes the phallic shrines of Saints Foutin, Guerlichon _et al._ “Anne d’Autriche, épouse de Louis XIII., y alla en pélerinage,”—that is, to the shrine of Saint Foutin.

He also shows that the use of the “raclure” of these phallic saints prevailed in France until the opening years of the present century.

“Rowland, le Sarcere, holds one hundred and ten acres of land in Hemington, County of Suffolk, by serjeantcy, for which on Christmas Day, every year, before our sovereign lord the King of England, he should perform altogether and at once a leap, a puff, and a fart.”—(Idem, p. 154.)

“One Baldwin also formerly held these lands by the same service, and was called by the nickname of Baldwin le Peteur, or Baldwin the Farter.”—(Idem, p. 154.)

Dr. Fletcher, president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., called attention to the fact that reference to the above tenure of Baldwin, “per saltum, sufflatum, et pettum,” is given in the Ingoldsby Legends, “The Spectre of Tappington,” based upon Blount. Ducange, in his “Glossarium,” proves the antiquity of these tenures, which go back, so far as known, to the earliest years of the fourteenth century.—(See Ducange, article “Bombus.”)

Ducange also describes the peculiar custom governing the admission of “filia communis” into the “villa Montis Lucii,” of which more anon.

“Barrington, in his ‘Observations on the Statutes,’ speaking of the people, says: ‘They were also, by the customs prevailing in particular districts, subject to services not only of the most servile, but the most ludicrous nature.’ ‘Utpote Die Nativitatis Domini coram eo saltare, buccas cum sonitu inflare, et ventrum crepitum edere.’ (Struvii Jurispr. Feud. p. 541.) Sir Richard Cox, in his ‘History of Ireland,’ likewise mentions some very ridiculous customs which continued in the year 1565.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 515, article “Fool-Plough and Sword-Dance.”)

“Monstrelet, en décrivant une fête que donna en 1453 le duc de Bourgogne, dit qu’on y voyait: une pucelle qui, de sa mamelle, versait hypocras en grande largesse; à côté de la pucelle était un jeune enfant qui, de sa broquette, rendait eau rose.”—(Chroniq. vol. iii. fol. 55 v.; Dulaure, “Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. i. p. 324, footnote.)

That these customs, absurd, obscene, irrational, as they appear in the light of to-day, had their origin in the mists of antiquity is not at all improbable; neither is it a violent assumption to attribute a religious origin to them. It is conceded that they had all the force of legalized customs; and law was anciently part and parcel of religion’s dower.

The remarks of Ducange are inserted because they may not be readily accessible to every reader. He quotes from Camden and Spellman.

Baldwin “Qui tenuit terras in Comitatu Suffolciensi, per serjenciam pro qua debuit facere, singulis annis (die Natali Domini), coram Domino Rege, unum saltum, unum sufflatum, et unum bombulum.”

“Hemingston, wherein Baldwin le Petteur (observe the name) held land by serjeantcy (thus an ancient book expresses it), for which he was obliged every Christmas Day to perform before our lord the King of England one saltus, one sufflatus, and one bumbulus; or as it is read in another place, he held it by a saltus, a sufflus, and a pettus,—that is (if I apprehend it aright), he was to dance, make a noise with his cheeks, and let a fart. Such was the plain, jolly mirth of those days.”—(Camden, “Brittania,” edition of London, 1753, vol. i. p. 444.)

Grimm was impressed with the undeniable intermixture of the old religious doctrine with the system of law; for the latter, “even after the adoption of the new faith, would not part with certain old forms and usages.” (“Teutonic Mythol.,” introduc. p. 12.) In another paragraph he says: “I shall try elsewhere to show in detail how a good deal in the gestures and attitudes prescribed for certain legal transactions savors of priestly ceremony at sacrifice and prayer.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 92.)

XXIII.

TOLLS OF FLATULENCE EXACTED OF PROSTITUTES IN FRANCE.

Another odd usage of which no explanation has been transmitted is thus described by Ducange, Dulaure, and others:—

“En outre, chaque fille publique qui se livre à quelque homme que ce soit, lorsqu’elle entre pour la première fois dans la ville de Montlucon, doit payer sur le pont de cette ville quatre deniers, ou y faire un pet.”—(Dulaure, “des Divin. Générat.” p. 279, quoting from Ducange, “Glossarium,” article “Bombus.”)

In a work by the Abbé Roubaud, entitled “La Pétérade, poême en quatre chants,” we are informed, “Il renvoie à Ducange pour prouver qu’en France on admettait les pets comme monnaie de cours en paiement des péages.... Bombi pro scudis valebant.”—(“Bib. Scatalogica,” p. 48.)

If we may believe Victor Hugo, the custom of the “péage” at the bridge of Montluc was generally known to the people of France in the fifteenth century. Thus, in the first chapter of “Notre Dame,” the populace of Paris, at the Feast of Fools, are represented as indulging in much badinage,—

“Dr. Claude Choart, are you seeking Marie la Giffards?”

“She’s in the Rue de Glatigny.”

“She’s paying her four deniers,—quatuor denarios.”

“Aut unum bumbum.”

Dulaure again quotes Ducange in regard to the tolls demanded of public women first crossing the bridge at Montluc. He finds description of this peculiar toll in registers dating back to 1398; he also sees the resemblance between this toll and the tenure of the Manor of Essington.—(See “Traité des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 315, footnote.)

Surgeon Robert M. O’Reilly, U. S. Army, states that among the Irish settlers who came to the United States in the closing hours of the last century the expression was common, in speaking of Flatulence, to term it “Sir-Reverence.”

“Sir-Reverence. In old writers, a common corruption of ‘save reverence,’ or ‘saving your reverence,’—an apologetic phrase used when mentioning anything deemed improper or unseemly, and especially a euphemism for _stercus humanum_.” “‘Cagada,’ a surreverence.”—(Stevens’s “Sp. Dict.,” 1706.)

“Siege, stool, sir-reverence, excrement.”—(Bishop Wilkins’s “Essay towards a Philosophical Language,” 1688, p. 241.)

“Thoo grins like a dog eating sir-reverence.” (Holderness, “Glossary, English Dialect Society.”) Compare Spanish _salvanor_, anus. (Stevens.)—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smith Palmer, London, 1882.)

THE SACRED CHARACTER OF BRIDGE-BUILDING.

It is quite within the bounds of argument and proof to show that the Romans looked upon the building of a bridge as a sacred work. Upon no other hypothesis can we make clear why their chief priest was designated “the Greatest Bridge-Builder” (the Pontifex Maximus). That this idea was transmitted to the barbarians who occupied Continental and insular Europe would be a most plausible presumption, even were historical evidence lacking.

Concerning the tolls exacted from the prostitutes who crossed certain bridges in France, and the tenures by which certain estates were held in England, we have to bear in mind that during the Middle Ages bridges were erected by bodies or associations of bridge-builders, which seem to have been secret societies. “It seems not improbable that societies or lodges of bridge-builders existed at an early period, and that they were relics of the policy of Roman times; but the history of such societies is involved in obscurity. The Church appears to have taken them up and encouraged them in the twelfth century, and then they were endowed with a certain religious character.... The order of bridge-builders at Avignon, with the peculiar love of punning which characterized the Middle Ages, were called ‘fratres pontificales,’ and sometimes ‘fratres pontis’ and ‘factores pontium.’ ... According to Ducange (Gloss. v. fratres pontis), their dress was a white vest with a sign of a bridge and cross of cloth on the breast.” (“Essays on Archæological Subjects,” Thomas Wright, London, 1861, vol. ii. p. 137 _et seq._, article “Mediæval Bridge-Builders.”) In this connection it may be just as well to remember that the Pope of Rome is still the Pontifex Maximus.

Knowing that bridges were constructed by secret societies, we have fought out half our battle; for these secret societies were undoubtedly under the patronage and protection of some god in heathen times, or of some saint in later days, reserving for the honor of the latter the same ritual which had been consecrated to the devotion of the heathen predecessor.

The following from Fosbroke is pertinent: “Plutarch derives the word ‘Pontifex’ from sacrifices made upon bridges,—a ceremony of the highest antiquity. These priests are said to have been commissioned to keep the bridges in repair, as an indispensable part of their office. This custom no doubt gave birth to the chapel on London bridge, and the offerings were of course for repairs.” In another place he mentions “the annexation of chapels to almost all our bridges of note.”—(“Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. i. pp. 62, 146, article “Bridges.”)

“Gottling (Gesch. d. Rom. Staatsv. p. 173) thinks that ‘Pontifex’ is only another form for ‘pompifex,’ which would characterize the pontiffs only as the managers and conductors of public processions and solemnities. But it seems far more probable that the word is formed from _pons_ and _facere_, ... and that consequently it signifies the priest who offered sacrifices upon the bridge.”—(“Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” William Smith, LL. D., Boston, 1849, article “Pontifex.”)

“Les Romains avaient réuni en collége sacerdotal leurs constructeurs de ponts.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 116.)

Among the Romans—who were the great architects of the European world, and whose aqueducts, baths, roads, and bridges have never been approached in strength or beauty by those of any other nation about them—it was to be expected that the title of the great priest should be Pontifex Maximus, on the same principle that among the Todas of the Nilgherris, who are pre-eminently a pastoral race, the chief medicine man or priest is called Palal, “meaning the Great Milker.”—(See for these statements “Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 260, article “Les Monticules des Nilgherris.”)

The legends of the Middle Ages, all over Europe, from South Germany to Scandinavia, are filled with references to bridges, mills, and churches, but especially bridges, built by the Devil exclusively or by his assistance; and in every case there is the suggestion of human sacrifice having been offered.

“As a rule, the victims were captive enemies, purchased slaves or great criminals.... Hence, in our own folk-tales, the first to cross the bridge, the first to enter the new building or the country, pays with his life, which meant falls a sacrifice.... In folk-tales we find traces of the immolation of children; they are killed as a cure for leprosy, they are walled up in basements.... Extraordinary events might demand the death of kings’ sons and daughters, nay, of kings themselves.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Grimm, vol. i. p. 46.)

“When the Devil builds the bridge, he is either under compulsion from men or is hunting for a soul; but he has to put up with the cock or chamois, which is purposely made to run first across the new bridge,” or “they make a wolf scamper through the door” of the new church, or a goat.—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 102.)

“When the new bridge at Halle, finished in 1843, was building the common people fancied a child was wanted to be walled into the foundations.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 1142.)

“In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries them under the foundation-stone, or he lays the foundation-stone on the man’s shadow. It is believed that the man will die within a year.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 144.)

It is not our purpose to carry this part of the discussion farther. The curious may consult Grimm, who shows the frequency with which human victims were walled up alive in new castles, ramparts, bridges, and other structures. As time passed on and man grew wiser, there was a substitution of a coffin as a symbol of the human victim; in stables a calf or a lamb was buried alive under the main door, sometimes a cock or a goat; under altars, a live lamb; in newly opened graveyards, a live horse. All this testimony points conclusively to the fact that every such structure was begun at least under auspices from which all traces and suggestions of heathenism had not yet been eliminated; consequently we shall not be very much in error in deciding that there was some survival of a religious rite in the peculiar ceremony insisted upon at crossing the bridge of Montluc, or that it, as all others, was built by architects who still adhered to the old cultus, and had influence enough with the rustic population to secure the incorporation of certain features of a sacred character belonging to the superseded ritual, and which have come down to us, or almost to us, in a more or less mutilated and distorted condition.

A very interesting article is to be found in “Mélusine,” Paris, May 5, 1888, which may be read with great profit at this moment; it is entitled “Les Rites de la Construction,” and relates the popular tradition of the failure to maintain a bridge at a place called Resporden, in Cornwall, as each was swept away by flood almost as soon as completed. The good people of the vicinity suspected sorcery and witchcraft, and consulted a witch, whose directions were couched in these terms: “Si les gens de Resporden veulent avoir un pont qui ne fasse plus la culbute, ils devront enterrer vivant dans les fondations un petit garçon de quatre ans.... On placera l’enfant dans une futaille défoncée, tout nu, et il tiendra d’une main une chandelle bénite, de l’autre un morceau de pain.”

An unnatural mother was found who gave her infant son for the sacrifice, receiving some compensation, and the poor victim was walled up alive as directed; the bridge was completed, and has since withstood all the ravages of storm and freshet; but the tale still repeats the last words of the hapless babe,—

“Ma chandelle est morte, ma mère, Et de pain, il ne me reste miette.”

The unnatural mother very properly went insane in a few days after the sacrifice; and the wail of the abandoned babe is still to be heard in the moaning of the winds and the sobs of the rains that fall upon Resporden.

XXIV.

OBSCENE SURVIVALS IN THE GAMES OF THE ENGLISH RUSTICS.

The rough games of the English rustics are not altogether free from vestiges of the same nature as have been recorded of the Arabian sheik in preceding pages. For example, in Northumberland, England, there was a curious diversion called “F⸺g for the pig.” Brand gives no explanation of the custom, which may be allied to the jocular tenures mentioned by Blount, and with them to the worship of Bel-Phegor. Brand says: “The ancient grossièreté of our manners would almost exceed belief. In the stage directions to old Moralites we often find, ‘Here Satan letteth a f⸺.’”—(“Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 9, article “Country Wakes.”)

In London itself such “survivals” lingered down to very recent periods. “In former times the porters that plyed at Billingsgate used civilly to entreat and desire every man that passed that way to salute a post that stood there in a vacant place. If he refused to do this, they forthwith laid hold of him, and by main force bouped his ⸺ against the post; but if he quietly submitted to kiss the same, and paid down sixpence, then they gave him a name, and chose some one of the gang for his godfather. I believe this was done in memory of some old image that formerly stood there, perhaps of Belius or Belin.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 433, article “Kissing the Post.”)

All these customs, absurd as they seem to us, may have been parts of the ritual of deities of the same class as Bel-Phegor, who looked after the excreta perhaps, and the organs connected therewith; some kind of a tribute was demanded, and none could be more appropriate than the offering of the parts or the submission to some pain inflicted upon them by those in charge of the shrine.

Crossing the Atlantic, a custom suspiciously like the preceding, was still to be heard of, as a rough boyish prank, in Philadelphia, Penn., thirty or more years ago. Whenever it happened that any boy was guilty of flatulence, all the party of school-boys would cry, “Touch wood!” and run to touch the nearest tree-box; those who were slow in doing this were pounded by the more rapid ones.

“Then, lads and lasses, merry be, ... And, to make sport, I f⸺t and snort.”

(“The Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,” supposed to be by Ben Jonson, quoted in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 420.)

The following memoranda from Buckle, “Commonplace Book,” seem to have no value beyond merely filthy stories:—

“Ludlow’s f⸺ was a prophetique trump; There never was anything so jump; ’Twas a very type of a vote of this rump, Which nobody can deny.”

Ludlow is a stanch Republican. The incident alluded to was a subject of much merriment, and exercised the pen of some of the choicest poets of the latter half of the seventeenth century.—(“Ballad: A New Year’s Gift for the Rump,” Jan. 5, 1659, and footnote in Percy Society’s “Early English Poetry,” London, 1841, vol. iii. p. 176.)

“And then my poets, The same that writ so subtly of the fart.”

(“The Alchemist,” Ben Jonson, act ii. scene 1.)

“Who the author alluded to should be I cannot say. In the collection of poems called ‘Musarum Deliciæ; or, The Muse’s Recreation,’ by Sir John Ennis and Dr. Smith, there is a poem called ‘The Fart censured in the Parliament House.’ It was occasioned by an escape of that kind in the House of Commons. I have seen part of this poem ascribed to an author in the time of Elizabeth, and possibly it may be the thing referred to by Jonson.” (Whalley.) But Gifford, from whose later editions I have drawn my material, comments to the effect that “this escape, as Whalley calls it, took place in 1607, long after the time of Elizabeth. The ballad is among the Harleian Manuscripts, and is also printed in the State Poems; it contains about forty stanzas of the most wretched doggerel.”—(Gifford’s edition of Jonson, London, 1816.)

“The Fool of Cornwalle.” “I was told of a humorous knight dwelling in the same countrey (that is, Cornwall), who upon a time, having gathered together in one open market-place a great assemblie of knights, squires, gentlemen, and yeomen, and whilst they stood expecting to heare some discourse or speech to proceed from him, he, in a foolish manner (not without laughter), began to use a thousand jestures, turning his eyes this way and then that way, seeming always as though presently he would have begun to speake, and at last, fetching a deepe sigh, with a grunt like a hogge, he let a beastly loud fart, and tould them that the occasion of this calling them together was to no other end but that so noble a fart might be honoured with so noble a company as there was.”—(“Jack of Dover’s Quest of Inquiry,” in Percy Society, vol. vii. p. 30, London, 1852. “Jack of Dover,” A.D. 1604.)

“The Foole of Lincoln.” “There dwelleth of late a certaine poore labouring man in Lincoln, who, upon a time, after his wife had so reviled him with tongue nettle as the whole streete rung again for weariness thereof, at last he went out of the house, and sate him downe quietly upon a blocke before his owne doore; his wife, being more out of patience by his quietness and gentle sufferaunce, went up into the chamber, and out at the window powred downe a pisse-pot upon his head; which when the poor man sawe, in a merry moode he spake these words: ‘Now, surely,’ quoth he, ‘I thought at last that after so great a thunder we should have some raine.’”—(Idem, vol. vii. p. 15.)

The preceding filthy pleasantry comes down from a very distinguished origin. Harington recalls the adventure of the “good Socrates, who, when Xantippe had crowned him with a chamber-pot, he bore it off single with his head and shoulders, and said to such as laughed at it,—

“It never yet was deemed a wonder To see that rain should follow thunder.”

(“Ajax,” p. 94.)

“_Nathaniel._ They write from Libtzig (reverence to your ears) The art of drawing farts from out of dead bodies Is by the brotherhood of the Rosie Cross Produced unto perfection, in so sweet And rich a tincture.”

(“The Staple of News,” Ben Jonson, Gifford’s edition, London, 1816, act iii. scene 1, p. 240.)

XXV.

URINE AND ORDURE AS SIGNS OF MOURNING.

Care should be taken to distinguish between the religious use of ordure and urine, and that in which they figure as outward signs of mourning, induced by a frenzy of grief, or where they have been utilized in the arts.

Lord Kingsborough (Mexican Antiquities, vol. viii. p. 237) briefly outlines such ritualistic defilement in the Mortuary Ceremonies of Hebrews and Aztecs, giving as references for the latter Diego Duran, and for the former the prophet Zechariah, chap. iii.: “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel,” etc.

“The nearest relations cut their hair and blacken their faces, and the old women put human excrement on their heads,—the sign of the deepest mourning.”—(“The Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, pp. 200, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

XXVI.

URINE AND ORDURE IN INDUSTRIES.

The economical value of human and animal excreta would seem to have obtained recognition among all races from the earliest ages. It is not venturing beyond limits to assert that a book could be written upon this phase of the subject alone. It is not essential to incorporate here all that could be compiled, but enough is submitted to substantiate the statement just made, and to cover every line of inquiry.

It might perhaps be well to consider whether or not the constant use of and familiarity with human urine and ordure in houses, arts, and industries of various kinds would have a tendency to blunt the sensibilities of rude races, so that in their rites we could look for the introduction of these loathsome materials; just as we find that all those races whose women are allowed to go naked place a very slight value upon chastity.

“It certainly is not possible to separate the religious uses of urine from its industrial and medical uses.... Probably nearly everywhere it has been the first soap known. Does not this aspect of the matter need to be insisted on, even from the religious point of view?... In England and France, and probably elsewhere, the custom of washing the hands in urine, with an idea of its softening and beautifying influence, still subsists among ladies, and I have known those who constantly made water on their hands with this idea.”—(Havelock Ellis, “Contemporary Science Series,” London, Personal letter.)

TANNING.

The inhabitants of Kodiak employ urine in preparing the skins of birds, according to Lisiansky.—(“Voyage round the World,” London, 1814, p. 214.)

“Les gants, articles de grand luxe, et de haute élégance, faits pour recouvrir de blanches mains et des bras dodus, sont imbibés d’un jaune d’œuf largement additionné dudit liquide ambré.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 72.)

By the Eskimo urine is preserved for use in tanning skins,[58] while its employment in the preparation of leather, in both Europe and America, is too well understood to require any reference to authorities.

The Kioways of the Great Plains soaked their buffalo hides in urine to make them soft and flexible.[59]

Urine is employed by the Tchuktchi of Siberia “in curing or tanning skins.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, Boston, Mass., 1885, p. 318.)

Sauer says that the Yakuts tan deer and elk skins with cow-dung.—(“Expedition to the North parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 131.)

Dung is used in tanning by the Bongo of the upper Nile region.—(See Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” London, 1878, vol. i. p. 134.)

Bernal Diaz, in his enumeration of the articles for sale in the “tianguez” or market-places of Tenochtitlan, uses this expression: “I must also mention human excrements, which were exposed for sale in canoes lying in the canals near this square, which is used for the tanning of leather; for, according to the assurances of the Mexicans, it is impossible to tan well without it.”—(Bernal Diaz, “Conquest of Mexico,” London, 1844, vol. i. p. 236.)

The same use of ordure in tanning bear-skins can be found among the nomadic Apaches of Arizona, although, preferentially, they use the ordure of the animal itself.

Gómara, who also tabulated the articles sold in the Mexican markets, does not mention ordure in direct terms; his words are more vague: “All these things which I speak of, with many that I do not know, and others about which I keep silent, are sold in this market of the Mexicans.”[60]

Urine figures as the mordant for fixing the colors of blankets and other woollen fabrics woven by the Navajoes of New Mexico, by the Moquis of Arizona, by the Zuñis and other Pueblos of the Southwest, by the Araucanians of Chili, by Mexicans, Peruvians, by some of the tribes of Afghanistan, and other nations, by all of whom it is carefully preserved.

BLEACHING.

“Roman fullers used human urine in their business, and Pliny says it was noticed that they never suffered from gout.”—(Pliny, “Natural History,” lib. xxviii. cap. 3: Bohn).

Urine has also been employed as a detergent in cleaning wool.—(Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Bleaching.”)

DYEING.

Urine is used in dyeing by the people of Ounalashka, according to Langsdorff, “Voyages” (vol. ii. p. 47); also, according to Sarytschew, in “Philip’s Voyages” (vol. vi. p. 72).

The same use of it has been attributed to the Irish by Camden, in “Brittania,” edition of London, 1753, vol. ii. p. 1419. His statement is quoted by Buckle: “In 1562, O’Neal, with some of his companions, came to London and astonished the citizens by their hair flowing in locks on their shoulders, on which were yellow surplices, dyed with saffron or stained with urine.”—(“Commonplace Book,” vol. ii. p. 236.)

“As a substitute for alum, urine was employed.”—(“Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans,” W. J. Hoffman, M. D., in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” 1889.)

“The preparation of blue, violet, and bluish-red coloring matters from lichens by the action of the ammonia of stale urine, seems to have been known at a very early period to the Mediterranean peoples, and the existence, down almost to the present day, of such a knowledge in the more remote parts of Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia, renders it not improbable that the art of making such dyes was not unknown to the northern nations of Europe also.”—(“The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” Eugene O’Curry, introduction by W. K. Sullivan, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and New York, 1873, p. 450.)

PLASTER.

As a plaster for the interior of dwellings, cow-dung has been used with frequency; that the employment of the ordure of an animal held sacred by so many peoples has a religious basis, is perhaps too much to say, but it will be shown, further on, that different ordures were kept about houses to ensure good luck or to avert the maleficence of witchcraft.

Marco Polo has the following: (In Malabar) “there are some called Gaui, who eat such oxen as die of themselves, but may not kill them, and daub over their houses with cow-dung.”—(Marco Polo, in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 162.)

The huts in Senegal were plastered “with cow-dung, which stunk abominably.”—(Adamson, “Voyage to Senegal,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 611.)

“The cow-dung basements around the tents” of the Mongols are spoken of by Rev. James Gilmour.—(“Among the Mongols,” London, 1883, p. 176.)

“A floor is next made of soft tufa and cow-dung.”—(Livingston, “Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 293.)

Animal dung is used as a mortar by the inhabitants of Turkey in Asia living in the valley of the Tigris.—(See “Assyrian Discoveries,” George Smith, New York, 1876, p. 82.)

The natives of the White Nile, the tribes of the Bari, make “a cement of ashes, cow-dung, and sand,” with which “they plaster the floors and enclosures about their houses.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, Philadelphia, 1869, p. 58. See the same author for the Latookas, idem, p. 135; and for the statement that the Obbos plaster enclosures, walls, and floors alike, see pp. 203, 262.)

Pliny tells us that the threshing-floors of the Roman farmers were paved with cow-dung; in a footnote it is stated that the same rule obtains in France to this day.—(Pliny, lib. lxxviii. cap. 71: Bohn).

Horse-dung was considered very valuable as a luting for chemical stills and furnaces.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 815; also, as a “Digesting medium,” idem.)

Of the Yakuts of Siberia it is related: “In dirtiness they yield to none; for a grave author assures us that the mortars which they use for bruising their dried fish are made of cow-dung hardened by the frost.”—(Maltebrun, “Universal Geography,” vol. i. p. 347.)

“The people of Jungeion ... collected the dung of cows and sheep ... dried it, roasted it on the fire, and afterwards used it for a bed.”—(Mungo Park, “Travels in Africa,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 834.)

“The vessels in which they (the Yakuts) stamp their dried fish, Roots and Berries, are made of dried Oxen and Cow’s dung.”—(Van Stralenberg, p. 382.)

The Index to the first volume of Purchas has “Dung bought by sound of tabor, p. 270, 1. 40;” and “Dung of Birds, a strange report of it;” but neither of these could be found in the main portion of the volume.

AS A CURE FOR TOBACCO.

The best varieties of Tobacco coming from America were arranged in bunches, tied to stakes, and suspended in privies, in order that the fumes arising from the human ordure and urine might correct the corrupt and noxious principles in the plant in the crude state.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 776. “Ex paxillo aliquandiu suspendere in Cloacis Tabacum,” etc.)

“I heard lately from good authority that, in Havana, the female urine is used in cigar-manufacturing as a good maceration.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Gustav Jaeger, Stuttgart, August 29, 1888.)

TO RESTORE THE ODOR OF MUSK AND THE COLOR OF CORAL.

The odor of musk and the color of coral could be restored by suspending them in a privy for a time.—(See Danielus Beckherius, “Medicus Microcosmus,” London, 1600, p. 113.)

“Paracelsus scil. mediante digestione stercus humanum ad odorem Moschi redigere voluit.”—(Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Comment. Ludovic. Lyons, 1690, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172.)

“Moschi odorem deperditum restitui posse, si in loco aliquo, ubi urina et excrementa alvina putrescunt, detineatur, apud autores legimus.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 768.)

“Fit, ut Moschus longo tempore æmittat odorem, quem tamen recuperat si irroretur cum pueri urina, vel si suspendatur in latrina humana.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. p. 276.)

CHEESE MANUFACTURE.

“A storekeeper in Berlin was punished some years ago for having used the urine of young girls with a view to make his cheese richer and more piquant. Notwithstanding, people went, bought and ate his cheese with delight. What may be the cause of all these foolish and mysterious things? In human urine is the Anthropin.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Gustav Jaeger, Stuttgart, August 29, 1888.)

“En certaines fermes de Suisse on se sert, m-a-t’on-dit, de l’urine pour activer la férmentation de certaines fromages qu’on y plonge.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Bernard to Captain Bourke, dated Cannes, France, July 7, 1888.)

Whether or not the use of human urine to ripen cheese originated in the ancient practice of employing excrementitious matter to preserve the products of the dairy from the maleficence of witches; or, on the other hand, whether or not such an employment as an agent to defeat the efforts of the witches be traceable to the fact that stale urine was originally the active ferment to hasten the coagulation of the milk would scarcely be worth discussion.

OPIUM ADULTERATION.

The smoker of opium little imagines that, in using his deadly drug, he is often smoking an adulterated article, the adulterant being hen manure; he is thus placed on a par with the American Indian smoking the dried dung of the buffalo, and the African smoking that of the antelope or the rhinoceros.

EGG-HATCHING.

In the description of the province of Quang-tong, it is stated that the Chinese hatch eggs “in the Oven, or in Dung.”—(Du Halde, “History of China,” London, 1741, vol. i. p. 238.) See the same statement made in Purchas, vol. i. 270.

In China “their fish is chiefly nourished with the dung of Oxen that greatly fatteth it.”—(Perera, in Purchas, vol. i. p. 205.)

TAXES ON URINE.

The Roman emperors imposed a tax and tolls upon urine because of its usefulness in many things.—(“Dreck Apotheke,” Paullini, p. 8. See previous statements in this volume and consult Suetonius “Vespasian.”)

CHRYSOCOLLON.

There was a cement for fixing the precious metals, which cement was known as “Chrysocollon,” and was made with much ceremony from the urine “of an innocent boy.” There are various descriptions, but the following, while brief, contain all the material points.

Galen describes this Chrysocollon, or Gold-Glue, as prepared by some physicians from the urine of a boy, who had to void it into a mortar of red copper while a pestle of the same material was in motion, which urine carefully exposed to the sun until it had acquired the thickness of honey, was considered capable of soldering gold and of curing obstinate diseases: “Attamen medicamentum quod ex urina pueri conficetur quod quidam vocant chrysocollon, quia eo ad auri glutinationem utuntur, ad ulcera difficilia sanatu optimum esse assero fit autem id figura phiali confecto mortario ex ære rubro habentem pistillum ejusdem materiæ in quod mejente puero pistillum circumages, identidem, ut non tantum a mortario deradedet, etc.” (“Opera Omnia,” Kuhn’s edition, vol. xii. pp. 286, 287.)

Dioscorides describes the manufacture thus: “Quinetiam ex ea (i. e. ‘pueri innocentis urina’) et ære cyprio idoneum ferruminando glutea paratur.”—(“Materia Medica,” Kuhn’s edition, vol. i. p. 227 _et seq._)

If a boy’s urine be rubbed up in a copper mortar with a copper pestle, it makes a sort of mucilage which can be used to fasten articles of gold together, as Sextus Placitus tells us: “Si pueri lotium cuprino mortario et cuprino pistello contritum fuerit, aurum solidat.”—(“De Medicamentis ex Animalibus,” edition of Lyons, 1537, pages not numbered, article, “De Puello et Puella Virgine.”)

The definition given by Avicenna, the Arabian authority, is: “Quæ fit ex urina infantium mota in mortario æro cum aceto in sole.”—(Vol. i. p. 336, a 34 _et seq._)

We also read of an “Alchymical Water,” called “Diana,” for transmuting metals into gold and silver; it was believed that this preparation was efficacious “ad mutandum Mercurium in Solem vel Lunam.” (“Sol” was gold, “Luna” was silver; see notes from Paracelsus below.) This “Diana” was employed in the preparation of “Crocus Martis,” as well as in that of “Oleum Martis,” for giving metals the color of gold, for polishing gold plate, for giving a fine temper to the best iron or steel implements, and for making the “Chrysocolla” just described.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” Beckherius, pp. 103-108.)

Paracelsus, speaking of the metals says: “Sol, that is Gold; Luna, that is silver; Venus, that is Copper; Mercury, that is Quicksilver; Saturnus, that is Lead; Jupiter, that is Tinne; Mars, that is Iron.”—(“The Secrets of Physicke,” English translation, London, 1633, p. 117.)

FOR REMOVING INK STAINS.

Human urine was considered efficacious in the removal of ink-spots.—(See Pliny, Bohn, lib. v. and lib. xxviii.)

AS AN ARTICLE OF JEWELRY.

Fossilized excrement is used in the manufacture of jewelry, under the name of “Coprolite.”

Lapland women carry a little case made from the bark of the birch tree, “which they usually carry under the girdle” in which is to be found reindeer dung, not as an amulet but to aid in weaning the young reindeer by smearing the udders of the dams.—(See Leems’ “Account of Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 405.)

But, from other sources, we have learned that the Laps attached the most potent influences to ordure and urine believing that their reindeer could be bewitched, that vessels could be hastened or retarded in their course, etc., by the use of such materials. Several examples of this belief are given in this volume; see under “Witchcraft.”

TATTOOING.

Langsdorff noticed that urine entered into the domestic economy of the natives of Ounalashka. He tells us that the tattooing was performed with “a sort of coal dust mixed with urine, rubbed in” the punctures made in the skin (“Voyages,” vol. ii. p. 40). That the tattooing with which savages decorate their bodies has a significance beyond a simple personal ornamentation cannot be gainsaid, although the degree of its degeneration from a primitive religious symbolism may now be impossible to determine. Even if regarded in no other light than as a means of clan-distinction, there is the suggestion of obsolete ceremonial, because the separation into castes and gentes is in every case described by the savages concerned as having been performed at the behest of some one of their innumerable deities, who assigned to each clan its appropriate “totem.” Clan marks may be represented in the tattooing, the conventional signs of primitive races not having yet been sufficiently investigated; for example, among the Apaches three marks radiating out from a single stem represent a turkey, that being the form of the bird’s foot. At the dances of the Indians of the pueblo of Santo Domingo, on the Rio Grande, New Mexico, the bodily decorations were, in nearly every case, associated with the clan “totem;” but this fact never would have been suspected unless explained by one of the initiated. In one of the dances of the Moquis the members of the Tejon or Badger clan appeared with white stripes down their faces; that is one of the marks of the badger, as they explained.

The author does not wish to say much on this topic, since his attention was not called to it until a comparatively late period in his investigations; but he was surprised to learn that the Apaches, among whom he then was, although marking themselves very slightly, almost invariably made use of an emblemism of a sacred character; moreover, it was very generally the work of some one of the “medicine men.”

The tattooing of the people of Otaheite seen by Cook was surmised by him to have a religious significance, as it presented in many instances “squares, circles, crescents, and ill-designed representations of men and dogs.” (In Hawkesworth’s “Voyages,” London, 1773, vol. ii. p. 190.) Every one of these people was tattooed upon reaching majority. (Idem, p. 191.) It is stated that certain chiefs in New Zealand, unable to write their names to a document presented to them for signature drew lines like those tattooed upon their faces and noses.—(See “Voyage of Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. ii. p. 586.)

Among the Dyaks of Borneo “all the married women are tattooed on the hands and feet, and sometimes on the thighs. The decoration is one of the privileges of matrimony, and is not permitted to unmarried girls.”—(“Head-Hunters of Borneo,” Carl Bock, London, 1881, p. 67.)

A recent writer has the following to say on this subject: “The tattoo marks make it possible to discover the remote connection between clans; and this token has such a powerful influence upon the mind that there is no feud between tribes which are tattooed in the same way. The type of the marks must be referred to the animal kingdom; yet we cannot discover any tradition or myth which relates to the custom. There is no reason for asserting that there is any connection between the tattoo marks and Totemism, although I am personally disposed to think that this is sometimes the case. The tattooing, which usually consists in the imitation of some animal forms, may lead to the worship of such animals as religious objects.” (“The Primitive Family,” C. N. Starcke, Ph. D., New York, 1889, p. 42.) Here is an example of putting the cart before the horse; in all cases investigation will show that the animal was a god, and for that reason was imprinted on the person of the worshipper as a vow of supplication or prayer.

In another place the same writer says that tattooing had “to be performed by a priest.”—(Idem, p. 241.)

The religious element in Totemism has been plainly revealed by W. Robertson Smith in Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Sacrifice,” and by James G. Frazer, M.A., in his “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887.

Andrew Lang devotes several chapters to the subject (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” London, 1887, vol. i. cap. 3). He says of the Australian tribes: “There is some evidence that in certain tribes the wingong or totem of each man is indicated by a tattooed representation of it upon his flesh” (p. 65). On another page, quoting from Long’s “Voyages,” 1791, he says: “The ceremony of adoption was painful, beginning with a feast of dog’s flesh, followed by a Turkish bath, and a prolonged process of tattooing.”—(Idem, p. 71.)

A traveller of considerable intelligence comments in these terms upon the bodily ornamentation of the Burmese:—

“Burmah is the land of the tattooed man.... In my visit to the great prison here, which contains more than three thousand men, I saw six thousand tattooed legs.... The origin of the custom I have not been able to find out. It is here the Burmese sign of manhood, and there is as much ceremony about it as there is about the ear-piercing of girls which chronicles their entrance upon womanhood. There are professional tattooers, who go about with books of designs.... The people are superstitious about it; and certain kinds of tattooing are supposed to ward off disease. One kind wards off the snake-bite, and another prevents a man from drowning.”—(Frank G. Carpenter, in the “Bee,” Omaha, Nebraska, May 19, 1889.)

Surgeon Corbusier, U. S. Army, says of the Apache-Yumas of Arizona Territory, that “the married women are distinguished by seven narrow blue lines running from the lower lip down to the chin.... Tattooing is practised by the women, rarely by the men.... A young woman, when anxious to become a mother, tattooes the figure of a child on her forehead.”—(In the “American Antiquarian,” November, 1886.)

The “sectarial marks” of the Hindus are possibly vestiges of a former practice of tattooing. Coleman (“Mythology of the Hindus,” London, 1832, p. 165) has a reference to them.

Squier, in his monograph upon “Manobosho,” in “American Historical Review,” 1848, says that the Mandans have a myth in which occurs the name of a god, “Tattooed Face.”

Alice Oatman stated distinctly that “she was tattooed by two of their (Mojaves) physicians,” and “marked, not as they marked their women, but as they marked their captives.” Be that as it may, the four lines on her chin, as well as can be discerned from the indifferent woodcut, are the same as can be seen upon the chins of Mojave women to-day.—(See Stratton’s “Captivity of the Oatman Girls,” San Francisco, 1857, pp. 151, 152.)

Maltebrun says of the inhabitants of the Island of Formosa: “Their skin is covered with indelible marks, representing trees, animals, and flowers of grotesque forms.”—(“Universal Geography,” American edition, Philadelphia, 1832, vol. ii. lib. 43, p. 79, article “China.”)

“The practice of marking the skin with the figures of animals, flowers, or stars, which was in existence before the time of Mahomet, has still left traces among the Bedouin women.”—(Idem, vol. i. lib. 30, p. 395.)

Speaking of the Persian ladies, the same authority says: “They stain their bodies with the figures of trees, birds, and beasts, sun, moon, and stars.”—(Idem, vol. i. lib. 33, p. 428, article “Persia.”)

In the “Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London,” vol. vi., it is stated that the “Oraon boys (India) are marked when children on the arms by a rather severe process of puncturation, which they consider it manly to endure.”

“Mojave girls, after they marry, tattoo the chin with vertical blue lines.”—(Palmer, quoted by H. H. Bancroft in “Native Races,” vol. i. p. 480.)

In the cannibal feast of the Tupis of the Amazon, Southey says, “The chief of the clan scarified the arms of the Matador above the elbow, so as to leave a permanent mark there; and this was the Star and Garter of their ambition, the highest badge of honor. There were some who cut gashes in their breast, arms, and thighs on these occasions, and rubbed a black powder in, which left an indelible stain.”—(Quoted by Herbert Spencer in “Descriptive Sociology.”)

“A savage man meets a savage maid. She does not speak his language, nor he hers. How are they to know whether, according to the marriage laws of their race, they are lawful mates for each other? This important question is settled by an inspection of their tattoo marks. If a Thlinkeet man, of the Swan stock, meets an Iroquois maid, of the Swan stock, they cannot speak to each other, and the ‘gesture language’ is cumbrous. But if both are tattooed with the Swan, then the man knows that this daughter of the Swan is not for him.... The case of the Thlinkeet man and the Iroquois maid is extremely unlikely to occur, but I give it as an example of the practical use among savages of representative art.”—(“Custom and Myth,” Andrew Lang, New York, 1885, p. 292.)

“Tattooing is fetichistic in origin. Among all the tribes, almost every Indian has the image of an animal tattooed on his breast or arm, which can charm away an evil spirit or prevent harm to them.”—(Dorman, “Primitive Superstition,” New York, 1881, p. 156.)

“The Eskimo wife has her face tattooed with lamp-black, and is regarded as a matron in society.”—(“Schwatka’s Search,” William H. Gilder, New York, 1881, p. 250.) “I never saw any attempt at figure or animal drawing for personal ornamentation. The forms are generally geometrical in design and symmetrical in arrangement.... None of the men are tattooed.”—(Idem, p. 251.)

“The Mojaves of the Rio Colorado tattoo, but the explanation of the marks was exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory. The women, upon attaining puberty, are tattooed upon the chin, and there seem to be four different patterns followed, probably representing as many different phratric or clan systems in former times.”—(See the author’s article in the “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” Cambridge, Mass., July-September, 1888, entitled “Notes on the Cosmogony and Theogony of the Mojaves.”)

Swan, in his notes upon the Indians of Cape Flattery, contents himself with observing that their tattooing is performed with coal and human urine.

“In order that the ghost may travel the ghost road in safety, it is necessary for each Lakota during his life to be tattooed either in the middle of the forehead or on the wrists. In that event, his spirit will go directly to the ‘Many Lodges.’ ... An old woman sits in the road, and she examines each ghost that passes. If she cannot find the tattoo-marks on the forehead, wrists, or chin, the unhappy ghost is pushed from a cloud or cliff, and falls to this world.”—(Dr. J. Owen Dorsey, in the “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” April, 1889.)

Of the islands of the South Pacific, Kotzebue says, “I believe that tattooing in these islands is a religious custom; at least, they refused it to several of our gentlemen at Otdia, assuring them that it could only be done in Egerup.”—(“Voyages,” vol. ii. pp. 113, 135, London, 1821.)

“Tattooing is by no means confined to the Polynesians, but this ‘dermal art’ is certainly carried by them to an extent which is unequalled by any other people.... It is practised by all classes.... By the vast number of them it is adopted simply as a personal ornament, though there are some grounds for believing that the tattoo may, in a few cases and to a small extent, be looked upon as a badge of mourning or a memento of a departed friend. Like everything else in Polynesia, its origin is related in a legend which credits its invention to the gods, and says it was first practised by the children of Tharoa, their principal deity. The sons of Tharoa and Apouvarou were the gods of tattooing, and their images were kept in the temples of those who practised the art as a profession, and to them petitions are offered that the figures might be handsome, attract attention, and otherwise accomplish the purpose for which they submitted themselves to this painful operation.... To show any signs of suffering under the operation is looked upon as disgraceful.”—(“World,” New York, May 10, 1890, quoting from “The Peoples of the World.”)

“In the Tonga and Samoan Islands, the young men were all tattooed upon reaching manhood; before this, they could not think of marriage.... Tattooing is still kept up to some extent, and is a regular profession.... There are two gods, patrons of tattooing,—Taema and Tilfanga.”—(See Turner’s “Samoa.”)

“One of the features of the Initiation among the Port Lincoln tribe was the tattooing of the young man and the conferring of a new name upon him.”—(“The Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

It is well to observe that each tribe in a given section has not only its own pattern of tattooing, but its own ideas of the parts of the person to which the tattooing should be applied. Thus, among the Indians of the northwest coast of British Columbia, “Tattooings are found on arms, breast, back, legs, and feet among the Haidas; on arms and feet among the Tshimshian, Kwakiutl, and Bilqula; on breast and arms among the Nootka; on the jaw among the coast Salish women.”—(“Report on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada,” Franz Boas, in “Trans. Brit. Assoc. Advancement of Science,” Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting, 1889, p. 12.)

Sullivan states that the custom of tattooing continued in England and Ireland down to the seventh century; this was the tattooing with woad.—(See his Introduction to O’Curry’s “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” p. 455.)

The Inuits believe that “les femmes bien tatouées” are sure of felicity in the world to come.—(See “Les Primitifs,” Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 120.)

“Although the practice of the art is so ancient that we have evidence of its existence in prehistoric times, and that the earliest chronicles of our race contain references to it, yet the term itself is comparatively modern.... The universality as well as the great antiquity of the custom has been shown by a French author, Ernest Berchon, ‘Histoire Médicale du Tatouage,’ Paris, 1869, which begins with a quotation from Leviticus xiv., which in the English version reads thus: ‘Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.’ Don Calmet, in commenting upon this passage, says that the Hebrew literally means ‘a writing of spots.’ Many Italians have been tattooed at Loretto. Around this famous shrine are seen professional tattooers, ‘Marcatori,’ who charge from half to three quarters of a lire for producing a design commemorative of the pilgrim’s visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto. A like profitable industry is pursued at Jerusalem.... Religion has some influence (in the matter of tattooing) from its tendency to preserve ancient customs. At Loretto and Jerusalem tattooing is almost a sacred observance.”—(“Tattooing among Civilized People,” Dr. Robert Fletcher, Anthropological Society, Washington, D. C., 1883, pp. 4, 12, and 26.)

“Father Mathias G. says that in Oceania every royal or princely family has a family of tattooers especially devoted to their service, and that none other can be permitted to produce the necessary adornment.”—(Idem, p. 24.)

“Tatowiren, Narbenzeichnen und Korperbemalen” (Tattooing, Cicatricial Marking and Body Painting), by Wilhelm Joest, Berlin, 1887, a superbly illustrated volume, has been reviewed by Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army, in the “American Anthropologist,” Washington, D. C., ending in these words, “The author’s opinion, however, that ‘tattooing has nothing to do with the religion of savages, but is only a sport or means of adornment, which, at most, has connection with the attainment of maturity,’ is one which will not be generally concurred in by those who have studied this practice as it exists among our American savages.”

AGRICULTURE.

In the interior of China, travellers relate that copper receptacles along the roadsides rescue from loss a fertilizer whose value is fully recognized.

These copper receptacles recall the “Gastra,” of the Romans, already referred to under the heading of “Latrines.”

“Les Chinois fument leurs terres autant que cela est en leur pouvoir; ils emploient à cet usage toutes sortes d’engrais, mais principalement les excréments humains, qu’ils recueillent à cet effet avec grand soin. On trouve dans les villes, dans les villages, et sur les routes, des endroits faits exprès pour la commodité des passans, et dans les lieux où il n’y a pas de semblables facilités, des hommes vont ramasser soir et matin les ordures et les mettent dans des panniers à l’aide d’un croc de fer à trois pointes.

“On traffique dans ce pays de ce qu’on rejette ailleurs avec horreur et celui qui reçoit d’argent en France pour nettoyer une fosse, en donne au contraire en Chine pour avoir la liberté d’en faire autant. Les excréments sont portés dans de grands trous bien mastiqués, faits en pleine campagne, dans lesquels on les délaye avec de l’eau et de l’urine et on les répand dans les champs à mesure qu’on a besoin. On rencontre souvent sur la rivière à Quanton des bateaux d’une forme particulière destinés au transport de ces ordures et ce n’est pas sans surprise qu’on en voit les conducteurs être aussi peu affectés qu’ils le paroissent de l’odeur agréable d’une pareille marchandise.”—(“Voyage à Pekin,” De Guignes, Paris, 1808, vol. iii. p. 322.)

“The dung of all animals is esteemed above any other kind of manure. It often becomes an article of commerce in the shape of small cakes, which are made by mixing it with a portion of loam and earth, and then thoroughly drying them. These cakes are even brought from Siam, and they also form an article of commerce between the provinces. They are never applied dry, but are diluted with as much animal water as can be procured.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 124.)

“They even make sale of that which is sent privately to some distance in Europe at midnight.” (Du Halde, “History of China,” London, 1736, vol. ii. p. 126.) This statement of Father Du Halde can be compared with what Bernal Diaz says of the markets of the city of Mexico at the time of Cortés: “There are in every province a great number of people who carry pails for this purpose; in some places they go with their barks into the canals which run on the back side of the houses, and fill them at almost every hour of the day.”—(Du Halde, idem, p. 126.)

Rosinus Lentilius, in “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig, 1694, states that the people of China and Java buy human ordure in exchange for tobacco and nuts. This was probably on account of its value in manuring their fields, which, he tells us (p. 170), was done three times a year with human ordure. This leads him to make the reflection that man runs back to excrement,—“Unde stercus in alimentum et hoc rursum in stercus.”

“The Japanese manure their fields with human ordure.”—(See Kemper’s “History of Japan,” in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 698.)

“Yea, the dung of men is there sold, and not the worse merchandise, that stink yielding sweet wealth to some who goe tabouring up and down the streetes to signifie what they woulde buy. Two or three hundred sayle are sometimes freighted with this lading in some Port of the Sea; whence the fatted soyle yields three Haruests in a yeare.”—(Mendex Pinto, “Account of China,” in Purchas, vol. i. p. 270.)

“Heaps of manure in every field, at proper distances, ready to be scattered over the corn.”—(Turner, “Embassy to Tibet,” London, 1806, p. 62.)

The Persians used pigeon’s dung “to smoak their melons.”—(John Matthews Eaton, “Treatise on Breeding Pigeons,” London, no date, pp. 39, 40, quoting from Tavernier’s first volume of “Persian Travels.”)

The finest variety of melon, “the sugar melon,” “cultivated with the greatest care with the dung of pigeons kept for the purpose.”—(“Persia,” Benjamin, London, 1877, p. 428.)

Fosbroke cites Tavernier as saying that the King of Persia draws a greater revenue from “the dung than from the pigeons” belonging to him in Ispahan. The Persians are said to live on melons during the summer months, and “to use pigeons’ dung in raising them.”—(“Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii.)

Human manure was best for fields, according to Pliny (Nat. Hist. lib. 17, cap. 9). Homer relates that King Laertes laid dung upon his fields. Augeas was the first king among the Greeks so to use it, and “Hercules divulged the practice thereof among the Italians.”—(Pliny, idem, Holland’s translation.)

Urine was considered one of the best manures for vines. “Wounds and incisions of trees are treated also with pigeon’s dung and swine manure.... If pomegranates are acid, the roots of the tree are cleared, and swine’s dung is applied to them; the result is that in the first year the fruit will have a vinous flavor, but in the succeeding one it will be sweet.... The pomegranates should be watered four times a year with a mixture of human urine and water.... For the purpose of preventing animals from doing mischief by browsing upon the leaves, they should be sprinkled with cow-dung each time after rain.”—(Pliny, lib. 17, cap. 47.)

Schurig calls attention to the great value attached by farmers and viticulturists to human ordure, either alone or mixed with that of animals, in feeding hogs, in fertilizing fields, and in adding richness to the soil in which vines grow. See “Chylologia,” p. 795.

In Germany and France, during the past century, farmers and gardeners were generally careful of this fertilizer.

“In the valley of Cuzco, Peru, and, indeed, in almost all parts of the Sierra, they used human manure for the maize crops, because they said it was the best.”—(Garcillasso de la Vega, “Comentarios Reales,” Clement C. Markham’s translation, in Hakluyt Society, vol. xlv. p. 11.)

“Conocian tambien el uso de estercolar las tierras que ellos llamaban Vunaltu.”—(“Historia Civil del Reyno de Chile,” Don Juan Ignacio Molina, edition of Madrid, 1788, p. 15.)

Amelie Rives, in her story “Virginia of Virginia,” relates that a certain family of Virginia was taken down with the typhoid fever on account of “making fertilizer in the cellar.” We may infer that this “fertilizer” was largely composed of manure. This is the interview between Mr. Scott and Miss Virginia Herrick: “‘The tarryfied fever’s a-ragin’ up ter Annesville,’ he announced presently. Virginia faced about for the first time. ‘Is it?’ she asked; ‘who’s down?’ ‘Nigh all of them Davises. The doctor says as how it’s ’count o’ their makin’ fertilizer in their cellar.’”—(In “Harper’s Magazine,” New York, January, 1888, p. 223.)

Animal manure was known as a fertilizer to the Jews (2 Kings ix. 37; Jeremiah viii. 2, ix. 22, xvi. 4, and xxv. 33). Human manure also. (Consult McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, article “Dung.”)

URINE USED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF SALT.

Gómara explains that, mixed with palm-scrapings, human urine served as salt to the Indians of Bogota,—“Hacen sal de raspaduras de palma y orinas de hombre.”—(“Hist. de las Indias,” p. 202.)

Salt is made by the Latookas of the White Nile from the ashes of goat’s dung.—(See “The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, Philadelphia, 1869, p. 224.)

Pallas states that the Buriats of Siberia, in collecting salts from the shores of certain lakes in their country, are careful as to the taste of the same: “Ils n’emploient que ceux qui ont un goût d’Urine et d’alkali.” (“Voyages,” Paris, 1793, vol. iv. p. 246.) This shows that they must once have used urine for salt, as so many other tribes have done.

The Siberians gave human urine to their reindeer: “Nothing is so acceptable to a reindeer as human urine, and I have even seen them run to get it as occasion offered.”—(John Dundas Cochrane, “Pedestrian Journey Through Siberian Tartary,” 1820-23, Philadelphia, 1824, p. 235.)

Melville also relates that he saw the drivers urinate into the mouths of their reindeer in the Lena Delta.—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke.)

Here the intent was evident; the animals needed salt, and no other method of obtaining it was feasible during the winter months. Cochrane is speaking of the Tchuktchi; but he was also among Yakuts and other tribes. He walked from St. Petersburg to Kamtschatka and from point to point in Siberia for a total distance of over six thousand miles. His pages are dark with censure of the filthy and disgusting habits of the savage nomads, as, of the Yakuts, “Their stench and filth are inconceivable.... The large tents (of the Tchuktchi) were disgustingly dirty and offensive, exhibiting every species of grossness and indelicacy.” Inside the tents men, women, and girls were absolutely naked. “They drink only snow-water during the winter, to melt which, when no wood can be had, very disgusting and dirty means are resorted to,” etc. But nowhere does he speak of the drinking of human urine, which, as has been learned from other sources, does obtain among them.

(Tchuktchees of Siberia.) “It would be impossible, with decency, to describe their habits, or explain how their very efforts towards cleanliness make them all the more disgusting.... It requires considerable habitude or terrible experience in the open air to find any degree of comfort in such abodes. The Augean stables or the stump-tail cow-sheds appear like Paradise in comparison.”—(“Ice-Pack and Tundra,” Gilder, New York, 1883, p. 105.)

PREPARATION OF SAL AMMONIAC, PHOSPHORUS, SOLUTION OF INDIGO.

Diderot and D’Alembert say that the sal ammoniac of the ancients was prepared with the urine of camels; that phosphorus, as then manufactured in England, was made with human urine, as was also saltpetre.—(Encyclopædia, Geneva, 1789, article “Urine.”)

Sal ammoniac derives its name from having been first made in the vicinity of the temple of Jupiter Ammon; it would be of consequence to us to know whether or not the priests of that temple had administered urine in disease before they learned how to extract from it the medicinal salt which has come down to our own times.

Schurig devotes a chapter to the medicinal preparations made from human ordure. In every case the ordure had to be that of a youth from twenty-five to thirty years old. This manner of preparing chemicals from the human excreta, including phosphorus from urine, was carried to such a pitch that some philosophers believed the philosopher’s stone was to be found by mixing the salts obtained from human urine with those obtained from human excrement.—(See “Chylologia,” pp. 739-742.)

The method of obtaining sal ammoniac was not known to Pliny; he knew of gum ammoniac, which he says distilled from a tree, called metopia, growing in the sands near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, in Ethiopia.—(Nat. Hist. lib. 12, cap. 22.)

“A notion has prevailed that sal ammoniac was made of the sand on which camels had staled, and that a great number going to the temple of Jupiter Ammon gave occasion for the name of ammoniac, corrupted to armoniac. Whether it ever could be made by taking up the sand and preparing it with fire, as they do the dung at present, those who are best acquainted with the nature of these things will be best able to judge. I was informed that it was made of the soot which is caused by burning the dung of cows and other animals. The hotter it is the better it produces; and for that reason the dung of pigeons is the best; that of camels is also much esteemed.” (Here follows a description of the method of distilling this soot.)—(Pocock’s “Travels in Egypt,” in Pinkerton, vol. xv. p. 381.)

“Purifiée, l’Urine sert dans les arts pour dégraisser les laines, dissoudre l’indigo, prépare le sel ammoniac.”—(Personal letter from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, South Kensington Museum, June 18, 1888.)

MANURE EMPLOYED AS FUEL.

The employment of manures as fuel for firing pottery among Moquis, Zuñis, and other Pueblos, and for general heating in Thibet, has been pointed out by the author in a former work. (“Snake Dance of the Moquis,” London, 1884.) It was used for the same purpose in Africa, according to Mungo Park. (“Travels,” etc., p. 119.) The dung of the buffalo served the same purpose in the domestic economy of the Plains Indians. Camel dung is the fuel of the Bedouins; that of men and animals alike was saved and dried by the Syrians, Arabians, Egyptians, and people of West of England for fuel. Egyptians heated their lime-kilns with it.—(McClintock and Strong, “Dung.” See, also, Kitto’s Biblical Encyclopædia, article “Dung.”)

Pocock says of camel dung: “In order to make fuel of it, they mix it, if I mistake not, with chopped straw, and, I think, sometimes with earth, and make it into cakes and dry it; and it is burnt by the common people in Egypt; for the wood they burn at Cairo is very dear, as it is brought from Asia Minor.”—(Pocock, in Pinkerton, vol. xv. p. 381.)

Bruce does not allude to any of the filthy customs which are detailed by Schweinfurth, Sir Samuel Baker, and others; he does say that the Nuba of the villages called Daher, at the head of the White Nile, Abyssinia, “never eat their meat raw as in Abyssinia; but with the stalk of the dura or millet and the dung of camels they make ovens under ground, in which they roast their hogs whole, in a very cleanly and not disagreeable manner.”—(“Nile,” Dublin, 1791, vol. v. p. 172.)

“Argol, the dried dung of camels, is the common fuel of Mongolia.”—(“Among the Mongols,” Rev. James Gilmour, London, 1883, pp. 84, 146, 191, 296.)

The dung of camels is the fuel of the Kirghis.—(See “Oriental and Western Siberia,” T. W. Atkinson, New York, 1865, pp. 218, 221.)

See also “From Paris to Pekin,” Meignan, London, 1885, pp. 186, 306, 310, 333; Burton’s edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. iii. p. 51; Father Gerbillon’s Account of Tartary, in Du Halde, vol. iv. p. 151.

“Asses’ dung used for fuel and other purposes, such as making Joss sticks.”—(Burton’s edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 149, footnote.)

Cow-dung fuel and sheep-dung fuel alluded to by Huc, as used in Thibet.—(See also Manning, Bogle, and Della Penna, in Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, p. 70.)

Friar William de Rubruquis, the Minorite, sent as ambassador to the Grand Khan of Tartary, by Saint Louis, King of France, in 1253, speaks of eating “Unleavened bread baked in Oxe-Dung or Horse-dung” (in Purchas, vol. i. p. 34). Cow dung used for the same purpose in Thibet.—(See Turner’s “Embassy to Thibet,” London, 1806, p. 202.)

“Cowe-dung fewell,” in Malta, mentioned by Master George Sandys, A.D. 1610 (in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 916).—(“Stercus bouinum,” in Egypt, idem, vol. ii. p. 898.)

Yak manure used as fuel in Eastern Thibet, according to W. W. Rockhill in “Border Land of China,” in “Century” Magazine, New York, 1890.

Cow manure employed for the same purpose by the people of Turkey in Asia, in the valley of the Tigris, near Mosul, according to George Smith.—(“Assyrian Discoveries,” New York, 1876, p. 122.)

The “whole fuel” of the Mongols is “cow or horse dung dried in the sun.”—(Father Gerbillon’s Account of Tartary, in Du Halde, vol. iv. pp. 234, 270.)

The use of cow-dung as fuel in certain parts of the world would seem not to be entirely divested of the religious idea.

“Firewood at Seringapatam is a dear article, and the fuel most commonly used is cow-dung made up into cakes. This, indeed, is much used in every part of India, especially by men of rank; as, from the veneration paid the cow, it is considered as by far the most pure substance that can be employed. Every herd of cattle, when at pasture, is attended by women, and these often of high caste, who with their hands gather up the dung and carry it home in baskets.

“They then form it into cakes, about half an inch thick, and nine inches in diameter, and stick them on the walls to dry. So different indeed are Hindu notions of cleanliness from ours that the walls of their best houses are frequently bedaubed with these cakes; and every morning numerous females, from all parts of the neighborhood, bring for sale into Seringapatam baskets of this fuel. Many females who carry large baskets of cow-dung on their heads are well-dressed and elegantly formed girls.”—(“A Journey through Mysore,” Buchanan, Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 612.)

SMUDGES.

Dried ordure is generally used for smudges, to drive away insects; the Indians of the Great Plains beyond the Missouri burned the “chips” of the buffalo with this object.

The natives of the White Nile “make tumuli of dung which are constantly on fire, fresh fuel being added constantly, to drive away the mosquitoes.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Baker, p. 53.)

“When they burn it (the dung of a camel) the smoke which proceeds from it destroys Gnats and all kinds of vermin.”—(Chinese recipes given in Du Halde’s “History of China,” vol. iv. p. 34.)

Schweinfurth describes the Shillooks of the west bank of the Nile as “burning heaps of cow-dung to keep off the flies.”—(“Heart of Africa,” vol. i. p. 16. See also “Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, New York, 1877, p. 215.)

Such smudges were employed by the Arabians to kill bed-bugs. “Effugatione Cimicum” effected by a “suffumigium” of “stercore vaccino.”—(“Avicenna,” vol. ii. p. 214, a 47.)

Rev. James Gilmour describes a mode of extinguishing a burning tent, observed among the Mongols, the counterpart of which is to be found in “Gulliver’s Travels.”—(See “Among the Mongols,” p. 23.)

Lucius Cataline, accused by Marcus Cicero of raising a flame in the city of Rome, “I believe it,” said he, “and, if I cannot extinguish it with water, I will with urine.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” cap. “Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 22.)

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EXCRETA TO PROMOTE THE GROWTH OF THE HAIR AND ERADICATE DANDRUFF.

For shampooing the hair, urine was the favorite medium among the Eskimo.[61]

Sahagun, gives in detail the formula of the preparation applied by the Mexicans for the eradication of dandruff: “Cut the hair close to the root, wash head well with urine, and afterward take amole (soap-weed) and coixochitl leaves—the amole is the wormwood of this country [in this Sahagun is mistaken]—and then the kernels of aguacate ground up and mixed with the ashes already spoken of (wood ashes from the fire-place), and then rub on black mud with a quantity of the bark mentioned (mesquite).”[62]

A similar method of dressing the hair, but without urine, prevails among the Indians along the Rio Colorado and in Sonora, Mexico. First, an application is made of a mixture of river mud (“blue mud,” as it is called in Arizona) and pounded mesquite bark. After three days this is removed, and the hair thoroughly washed with water in which the saponaceous roots of the amole have been steeped. The hair is dyed a rich blue-black, and remains soft, smooth, and glossy.

Dove-dung was also applied externally in the treatment of baldness.—(Hippocrates, Kuhn, lib. 2, p. 854.)

The urine of the foal of an ass was supposed to thicken the hair. (See Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap 11.) Camel’s dung, reduced to ashes and mixed with oil, was said to curl and frizzle the hair (idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 8). The natives of the Nile above Khartoum have “their hair stained red by a plaster of ashes and cow’s urine.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 39.)

And the Shillooks of the west bank make “repeated applications of clay, gum, or dung,” to their hair.—(“Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, vol. i. p. 17; idem, the Nueirs, p. 32.)

“L’aqua ex stercore distillata fait pousser les cheveux” (Bib. Scat. p. 29), while Schurig (Chylologia, p. 760) says that the same preparation “promotes the growth of the hair and prevents its falling out.”

Schurig further says that swallow-dung was of conceded efficacy as a hair-dye, and was applied frequently as an ointment. (Idem, p. 817.) He recommends the use of mouse-dung for scald head and dandruff, and even to excite the growth of the beard. (Idem, p. 823 _et seq._) Ammonia, or, more properly speaking, “the ashes of hartshorn, burnt and applied with wine,” was known to Pliny as a remedy for dandruff. (Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 11.) Possibly the use of hartshorn for this purpose sprang from the prior use of urine, from which hartshorn or ammonia was gradually manufactured.

For loss of hair, the dung of pigeons, cats, rats, mice, geese, swallows, rabbits, or goats, or human urine, applied externally, were highly recommended by Paullini, in his “Dreck Apothek,” Frankfort, 1696.

Cat-dung was highly recommended by Sextus Placitus.

AS A MEANS OF WASHING VESSELS.

Among the Shillooks, “ashes, dung, and the urine of cows are the indispensable requisites of the toilet. The item last named affects the nose of the stranger rather unpleasantly when he makes use of any of their milk vessels, as, according to a regular African habit, they are washed with it, probably to compensate for a lack of salt.”—(“Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, vol. i. p. 16.)

“The Obbo natives are similar to the Bari in some of their habits. I have had great difficulty in breaking my cow-keeper of his disgusting custom of washing the milk-bowl with cow’s urine, and even mixing some with the milk. He declares that unless he washes his hands with such water before milking the cow will lose her milk. This filthy custom is unaccountable.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Baker, p. 240.)

A personal letter from Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy, states that the natives of Eastern Siberia use urine “for cleansing their culinary materials.”

By the tribes on Lake Albert Nyanza, the “butter was invariably packed in a plantain leaf, but frequently the package was plastered with cow-dung and clay.” (“The Albert Nyanza,” p. 363. See, also, extract from Paullini, on p. 316, and from Schurig, p. 121, of this volume.) There certainly seems to be a trace of superstition in the first case mentioned by Sir Samuel Baker.

In the County Cork, Ireland, rusty tin dishes are scoured with cow manure; the manure is blessed, and so will benefit the dishes and bring good luck. It is a not infrequent custom to bury “keelars” and other dishes for holding milk under a manure-heap during the winter and early spring (when cows are apt to be dry, and the milk-dishes empty), to protect them (the dishes) from persons evilly disposed, who might cast a spell on them, and so bewitch either the cows or the milk. Such an evil-eyed person could not harm a dish unless empty.

“The cow is believed to be a blessed animal, and hence the manure is sacred.” (Personal letter from Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.) This belief of the Celtic peasantry apparently connects itself with the religious veneration in which the cow is held by the people of India.

FILTHY HABITS IN COOKING.

The Eskimo relate stories of a people who preceded them in the Polar regions called the Tornit. Of these predecessors, they say, “Their way of preparing meat was disgusting, since they let it become putrid, and placed it between the thigh and the belly to warm it.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Dr. Franz Boas, in Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 635.)

This recalls the similar method of the Tartars, who used to seat themselves on their horses with their meat under them.

XXVII.

URINE IN CEREMONIAL ABLUTIONS.

Where urine is applied in bodily ablutions, the object sought is undoubtedly the procuring of ammonia by oxidation, and in no case of that kind is it sought to ascribe an association of religious ideas. But where the ablutions are attended with ceremonial observances, are incorporated in a ritual, or take place in chambers reserved for sacred purposes, it is not unfair to suggest that everything made use of, including the urine, has a sacred or a semi-sacred significance.

No difficulty is experienced in assigning to their proper categories the urinal ablutions of the Eskimo of Greenland (Hans Egede Saabye, p. 256); of the Alaskans (Sabytschew, in Phillips, vol. vi.); of the Indians of the northwest coast of America (Whymper’s “Alaska,” London, 1868, p. 142; H. H. Bancroft, “Nat. Races,” vol. i. p. 83); of the Indians of Cape Flattery (Swan, in “Smithsonian Contrib.”); of the people of Iceland (see below); of Siberia (see below); and of the savages of Lower California.

Pericuis of Lower California. “Mothers, to protect them against the weather, cover the entire bodies of their children with a varnish of coal and urine.”—(Bancroft, vol. i. p. 559.)

Clavigero not only tells all that Bancroft does, but he adds that the women of California washed their own faces in urine.—(“Hist. de Baja California,” Mexico, 1852, p. 28; see, also, Orozco y Berra and Baegert.)

“People of Iceland are reported to wash their faces and hands in pisse.” (Hakluyt, “Voyages,” vol. i. p. 664.) This report was, however, indignantly denied of all but the common people by Arugrianus Jonas, an Icelandic writer.

The inhabitants of Ounalashka “wash themselves first with their own urine, and afterwards with water.”—(“Russian Discoveries,” William Coxe, London, 1803, quoting Solovoof’s “Voyage,” 1764, p. 226.)

In the same volume is to be found the statement that in Alaska and the Fox Islands, the people “washed themselves, according to custom, first with urine, and then with water.”—(p. 225, quoting “Voyage of Captain Krenitzin,” 1768.)

When a child gets very dirty “with soot and grease,” a Vancouver squaw uses “stale urine” to cleanse it. “This species of alkali as a substitute for soap is the general accompaniment of the morning toilet of both sexes, male and female. During winter they periodically scrub themselves with sand and urine.”—(J. G. Swan, “Indians of Cape Flattery, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” No. 220, p. 19.)

Among the Tchuktchees, urine “is a useful article in their household economy, being preserved in a special vessel, and employed as a soap or lye for cleansing bodies or clothing.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, p. 318.)

“But they also wash themselves, as well as their clothes, with it; and even in the hot bath, of which men and women are alike fond, because they love to perspire, it is with this fluid they sometimes make their ablutions.”—(Lisiansky, “Voyage round the World,” London, 1811, p. 214.)

Used as “a substitute for soap-lees, according to Langsdorff.”—(“Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. ii. p. 47.)

“By night, the Master of the house, with all his family, his wife and children, lye in one room.... All of them make water in one chamber-pot, with which, in the morning, they wash their face, mouth, teeth, and hands. They allege many reasons thereof, to wit, that it makes a faire face, maintaineth the strength, confirmeth the sinewes in the hands, and preserveth the teeth from putrefaction.”—(“Dittmar Bleekens,” in Purchas, vol. i. p. 647.)

After describing the double tent of skins used by the Tchuktchees, Mr. W. H. Gilder, author of “Schwatka’s Search,” says all food is served in the “yoronger,” or inner tent, in which men and women sit, in a state of nudity, wearing only a small loin-cloth of seal-skin.

After finishing the meal, “a small, shallow pail or pan of wood is passed to any one who feels so inclined, to furnish the warm urine with which the board and knife are washed by the housewife. It is a matter of indifference who furnishes the fluid, whether the men, women, or children; and I have myself frequently supplied the landlady with the dish-water. In nearly every tent there is kept from the summer season a small supply of dried grass. A little bunch of this is dipped in the warm urine and serves as a dish-rag and a napkin. These people are generally kind and hospitable, and were very attentive to my wants as a stranger, and regarded by them as more helpless than a native. The women would, therefore, often turn to me after washing the board and knife, and wash my fingers and wipe the grease from my mouth with the moistened grass. Any of the men or women in the tent who desired it would also ask for the wet grass, and use it in the same way.

“It was not done as a ceremony, but merely as a matter of course or of necessity.

“I do not think they would use urine for such purposes if they could get all the water, and especially the warm water, they needed. But all the water they have in winter is obtained by melting snow or ice over an oil lamp,—a very slow process; and the supply is therefore very limited, being scarcely more than is required for drinking purposes, or to boil such fresh meat as they may have.

“The urine, being warm and containing a small quantity of ammonia, is particularly well adapted for removing grease from the board and utensils, which would otherwise soon become foul, and to their taste much more disagreeable.

“The bottom of the ‘yoronger’ is generally carpeted with tanned seal-skins, and they too are frequently washed with the same fluid. The consequence is that there is ever a mingled odor of ammonia and rotten walrus-meat pervading a well-supplied and thrifty Tchouktchi dwelling.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)

“Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas.” “A drunken man that pisses under the table into his companion’s shoes.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article as above.)

This use of urine as a tooth-wash has had a very extensive diffusion; it is still to be found in many parts of Europe and America, of boasted enlightenment. The Celtiberii of Spain, “although they boasted of cleanliness both in their nourishment and in their dress, it was not unusual for them to wash their teeth and bodies in urine,—a custom which they considered favorable to health.”—(Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.,” vol. v.