Part 2

Herodotus mentions[34] that, in the annual feast in honor of the god Osiris, “every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house” on the evening before the festival. Osiris was the god who was the judge of the soul after death, and who in a peculiar sense stood for the truth of the life to come. Every Egyptian desired, above all, to be in loving covenant with Osiris, and when he would offer a welcoming sacrifice to him, he did so before the door of his own house, as before the primitive family altar. That it was the _blood_ poured out at the threshold which was the essential act of covenanting in this sacrifice to Osiris, is evidenced in the fact that the animal sacrificed was not eaten in the family of the sacrificer, but was carried away by the swineherd who furnished it.

Bunches of grass dipped in blood, and touched by the king, as if made representative of his dignity and power, are to-day placed on the threshold, as an offering, and as averters of evil, in Equatorial Africa. This is known there as an ancient custom. In Uganda, “every house has charms hung on the door, and others laid on the threshold.” An offering to the _lubare_, or local spirit, must be thrown across the threshold, from within the house, before a native ventures to leave his home in the morning.[35] Charms for this purpose are kept behind the door.

One of the requirements in the Vedic law (the sacred law of the Hindoos) was, that “on the door-sill (a bali must be placed) with a mantra addressed to Antariksha (the air),”[36] by a house father, in his home;[37] that is, that an offering, with an invocation to a deity, should be a sacrifice at the threshold altar. Other references in the Hindoo laws seem to demand bali offerings “at all the doors, as many as they are,” in a house, and evidence the importance and sacredness attaching to the doorway.[38]

The threshold seems to have special reverence in Northwestern India, in connection with the seasons of seedtime and harvest. At seedtime “a cake of cowdung formed into a cup” is placed on the threshold of the householder; it is filled with corn, and then water is poured over it as a libation to the deities. Cowdung is not only a means of enrichment to the soil, but it is a gift from the sacred cow, and so, in a sense, represents or stands for the life of the cow. It is laid on the threshold altar as an offering of life. The libation of water is an accompaniment of that offering; water is essential to life and growth, and it is a gift of the gods accordingly. Seed-sowing is recognized as an act which needs the blessing of the gods, and on which that blessing is sought in covenant relations.

At early harvest time the first-fruits of the grain-field are not taken to the threshing-floor, but are brought home to be presented to the gods at the household altar, and afterwards eaten by the family, with a portion given to the Brahmans. The first bundle of corn is deposited at the threshold of the home, and a libation of water is made as a completion of its offering. The grain being taken from the ear, of a portion of this first-fruits, is mixed with milk and sugar, and every member of the family tastes it seven times.[39]

Among the Prabhus of Bombay, at the time of the birth of a child, an iron crowbar is placed “along the threshold of the room of confinement, as a check against the crossing of any evil spirit.” This is in accordance with a Hindoo belief that evil spirits keep aloof from iron, “and even nowadays pieces of horseshoe can be seen nailed to the bottom sills of doors of native houses.”[40] Iron seems, in various lands, to be deemed of peculiar value as a guard against evil spirits, and the threshold to be the place for its efficacious fixing.

Similarly, “in East Bothnia, when the cows are taken out of their winter quarters for the first time, an iron bar is laid before the threshold, over which all the cows must pass; for, if they do not, there will be nothing but trouble with them all the following summer.”[41]

Among the folk customs in the line of exorcism and divination in Italy, the threshold has prominence. “In Tuscany, much taking of magical medicine is done on the threshold; it also plays a part in other sorcery.”[42] A writer mentions a method of exorcism with incense, where three pinches of the best incense, and three of the second quality, are put in a row on the threshold of the door, and then, after other incense is burned within the house in an earthen fire-dish, these “little piles of incense on the threshold of the door” are lighted, with words of invocation. This process is repeated three times over.[43]

A method of curing a disorder of the wrist prevalent in harvest time, in North Germany, is by taking “three pieces of three-jointed straw,” and so laying them “side by side as to correspond joint by joint,” then chopping through the first joint into the block beneath. This “ceremony is performed on the threshold, and ends with the sign of the cross.”[44]

Observances with reference to the threshold are numerous in Russia. “On it a cross is drawn to keep off _maras_ (hags). Under it the peasants bury stillborn children. In Lithuania, when a new house is being built, a wooden cross, or some article which has been handed down from past generations, is placed under the threshold. There also when a newly baptized child is being brought back from church, it is customary for its father to hold it for a while over the threshold, ‘so as to place the new member of the family under the protection of the domestic divinities’ [bringing it newly into the family covenant at the threshold altar].... Sick children, who are supposed to have been afflicted by an evil eye, are washed on the threshold of their cottage, in order that, with the help of the Penates who reside there, the malady may be driven out of doors.”[45]

At the annual feast known as “Death Week,” among Slavonic peoples, marking the close of winter and the beginning of spring, the peasants in rural Russia combine for a sacrifice to appease the “Vodyaoui,” or aroused water-spirit of the thawing streams. They also prepare a sacrifice for the “Domovoi” or house-spirit. A fat black pig is killed, and cut into as many pieces as there are residents in the place. “Each resident receives one piece, which he straightway buries under the door-step at the entrance to his house. In some parts, it is said, the country folk bury a few eggs beneath the threshold of the dwelling to propitiate the ‘Domovoi.’”[46]

When a Magyar maiden would win the love of a young man, or would bring evil on him because of his reluctance, she seeks influence over him by means of the sacred threshold. “She must steal something from the young man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold,” with a prayer for the object of her desire.[47]

A superstition is prevalent in Roumania, that if a bat, together with a gold coin, be buried under the threshold, there is “good luck” to the house.[48] Various superstitions, in connection with the bat are found among primitive peoples.[49]

In Japan, the threshold of the door is sprinkled with salt, after a funeral, and as a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger.[50] Salt represents blood.

Among the Dyaks of Borneo, a pig’s blood is sprinkled at the doorway to atone for the sin of unchastity by a daughter of the family. Again, the blood of a fowl is sprinkled there at the annual festival of seed-sowing, with prayers for fecundity and fertility.[51]

“On New Year’s morning, along the coast [in Aberdeenshire] where seaweed is gathered, a small quantity is laid down at each door of the farm-steading [the buildings of the homestead], as a means of bringing good luck.” And fire and salt are put on the threshold of the byre-door before a cow leaves the building after giving birth to a calf.[52]

Of portions of Ireland, it was said, early in this century: “On the 11th of November, every family of a village kills an animal of some kind or other; those who are rich kill a cow or sheep, others a goose or a turkey; while those who are poor ... kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the house; ... to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling.”[53]

Holes bored in the door-sill, and plugged with pieces of paper on which are written incantations, a broom laid across the door-sill, or “three horseshoes nailed on the door-step with toes up,” are supposed to be a guard against witches or evil spirits in portions of Pennsylvania to-day.[54] Many a Pennsylvanian is unwilling to cross, for the first time, the threshold of a new home, without carrying salt and a Bible.

Among the Indians in ancient Mexico there was an altar near the door of every house, with instruments of sacrifice, and accompanying idols.[55]

“Threshold” and “foundation” are terms that are used interchangeably in primitive life. The sacredness of the threshold-stone of a building pivots on its position as a foundation stone, a beginning stone, a boundary stone. Hence the foundation stone of any house, or other structure was sacred as the threshold of that building. According to Dr. H.V. Hilprecht, in the earlier buildings of Babylonia the inscriptions and invocations and deposits were at the threshold, and later under the four corners of the building; but when they were at the threshold they were not under the corners, and _vice versa_. It would seem from this that the corner-stone was recognized as the beginning, or the limit, or the threshold, of the building. It may be, therefore, that the modern ceremonies at the laying of a “corner-stone” are a survival of the primitive sacredness of a threshold-laying.[56]

It would seem, moreover, as if the sanctity of the threshold as the primitive altar were, in many places, in the course of time transferred to the family hearth. In the primitive tent the household fire was at the entrance way, as it is in the tents of the East to-day. Where Arabs have camped on an Eastern desert, the place of the shaykh’s tent can always be known by the blackened hearthstones at its entrance, or threshold, where he welcomed guests to the hospitality of his tribe and family by the sharing of bread and salt, or by the outpouring of the blood of a slaughtered lamb or kid.

If, indeed, the earliest dwelling of man was a cave, rather than a tent, the household fire was still at its entrance; and the threshold was the hearthstone. When, in the progress of building-changes, the hearthstone was removed to the center of the building, or of the inner court, its sanctity went with it, as the place of the family fire. Thus, for example, in Russia, the Domovoi, or household deity, who is honored and invoked at the threshold, “is supposed to live behind the stove now, but in early times he, or the spirits of the dead ancestors, of whom he is now the chief representative, were held to be in even more direct relations with the fire on the hearth; as were the Penates of the Romans, who were sometimes spoken of as at the threshold, and again as at the hearth.”[57]

A recognition of the peculiar sacredness of the threshold is shown, in different lands, by the popular unwillingness to have the dead carried over it on the way to burial. In India, the body of one dying in certain phases of the moon can in no wise be carried over the threshold. The house wall must be broken for its removal.[58] When Chinese students are attending the competitive examinations for promotion, they are shut up in rooms until their work is completed. If one of them dies at such a time, “the body is removed over the back wall, as the taking out openly through the front door would be regarded as an evil omen.”[59]

In the capital of Korea there is a small gate in the city wall known as the “Gate of the Dead,” through which alone a dead body can be carried out. But no one can ever enter through that passage-way.[60]

There is a recognition, in Russian folk-tales, of safety to the spirit of one who dies in a house, if his body be passed out _under_ the threshold of the outer door.[61]

It is not allowable to carry out a corpse through the main door of a house in Italy. There is a smaller door, in the side wall, known as the _porta di morti_, which is kept closed except as it is opened for the removal of a body at the time of a funeral.[62]

In Alaska, it is deemed an evil omen for the dead to be carried over the threshold. “Therefore the dying one, instead of being allowed to rest in peace in his last hours, is hastily lifted from his couch and put out of doors [or out of the house] by a hole in the rear wall” so as not to have a corpse pass the threshold.[63]

In some communities, in both Europe and America, the coffin is passed out of the house through the window, instead of through the door, at a funeral. And again, the front door is closed and a window is opened at the time of a death, in order that the spirit may pass out of the house in some other way than over the threshold.[64]

Even though the dead may not be lifted over the threshold altar, the dead may be buried underneath it. In both the far East and the far West, burials under the threshold are known. And in Christian churches of Europe, a grave underneath the altar is an honored grave for saint or ecclesiastic.

In the Apocalypse the seer beheld “underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”[65]

3. THRESHOLD COVENANTING IN THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.

Marriage customs in various parts of the world, in ancient and modern times, illustrate this idea of the sacredness of the threshold as the family altar.

In portions of Syria, when a bride is brought to her husband’s home, a lamb or a kid is sacrificed on the threshold, and she must step across the outpoured blood.[66] This marks her adoption into that family.

Among the wide-spreading ʾAnazeh Bed´ween, the most prominent and extensive tribe of desert Arabs, whose range is from the Sinaitic Peninsula to the upper Desert of Syria, “when the marriage day is fixed, the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the father of his bride, and then, before witnesses, he cuts its throat. As soon as the blood falls upon the earth [and the earth is the only threshold of a tent], the marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.”[67] “In Egypt, the Copts sacrifice a sheep as the bride steps into the bridegroom’s house, and she is compelled to step over the blood which flows upon the threshold in the doorway.”[68] It is evident, moreover, that this custom is not confined to the Copts.[69]

Blood on the threshold, as an accompaniment of a marriage, is still counted important among Armenian Christians in Turkey. After the formal marriage ceremony at the church, the wedded pair, with their friends, proceed to the bridegroom’s home. “At the moment of their arrival a sheep is sacrificed on the threshold, over the blood of which the wedding party steps to enter the house.”[70]

In the island of Cyprus, a bridegroom is borne to the house of his bride on the wedding morning, in a living chair formed by the crossed hands of his neighbor friends. Dismounting at her door, “as he is about to pass in, a fowl is brought and held down by head and feet upon the threshold of the door; the bridegroom takes an axe, cuts off the head, and only then may he enter.”[71]

Like customs are found among yet more primitive peoples. Thus, for instance, with the western Somali tribes, in east Central Africa: “On reaching the bridegroom’s house a low-caste man sacrifices a goat or sheep on the threshold; and the bride steps over it;” and again when the bridegroom returns from his devotions at a neighboring _masjid_ (a place of public prayer) to claim his bride, as he reaches his threshold, “another goat is sacrificed, and he steps over it in the same way as his bride.”[72] Again the bridegroom himself brings the bride from her father’s hut to his own, accompanied by young men and maidens dancing and singing. “On reaching the new hut, the bride holds a goat or sheep in the doorway, while the bridegroom cuts its throat in the orthodox manner with his _jambia_ (long knife). The bride dips her finger in the blood, smears it on her forehead, ... and then enters the _gúrí_, stepping over the blood. The bridegroom follows her, also stepping over the blood, and is accompanied by some of his nearest male relatives.”[73]

There are traces of such customs, also, among the natives of South Africa,[74] and elsewhere.

Besides the bloody sacrifices at the threshold, in the marriage ceremony, there are, in different countries, various forms of making offerings at the threshold, and of surmounting obstacles at that point, as an accompaniment of the wedding covenant. All these point to the importance and sanctity of the threshold and doorway in the primitive mind.

A bride, in portions of Upper Syria, on reaching her husband’s house, is lifted up so that she can press against the door-lintel a piece of dough, prepared for the purpose, and handed to her at the time. This soft dough, thus pressed against the plastered or clay wall, adheres firmly, and is left there as long as it will remain. The open hand of the bride stamps the dough as it is fixed in place, and in some cases the finger points are pricked before the stamping, so that the blood will appear as a sign manual on the cake of dough.[75]

When a bride reaches the door of her husband’s house, among the fellaheen of Palestine, a jar of water is placed on her head. She must call on the name of God as she crosses the threshold; and, at the same moment, her husband strikes the jar from her head, and causes the water to flow as a libation.[76]

Among the Wallachians there is a marriage rite, said to be of Latin origin, because there was a similar rite among the old Latins. The Wallachian bride is borne on horseback, with an accompanying procession, to the house of the bridegroom. “At the moment when the betrothed maiden dismounts from her steed, and is about to cross the threshold, they present to her butter, or sometimes honey, and with this she smears the door-posts.”[77]

An observer says of this rite: “For the same reason among the Latins, the word for wife, _uxor_, originally _unxor_, was derived from the verb _ungere_, ‘to anoint,’ because the maidens when they reached the threshold of their future husbands, were similarly accustomed to anoint the door-posts.” In support of this fanciful etymology, old-time commentators on Terence and Virgil are cited;[78] which shows, at least, that this ceremony at the threshold of the husband’s home has long been recognized as of vital importance in the marriage contract and relation.

It is customary, among the Greeks in Turkey, for the mother of the bridegroom, as he leaves his home to go for his bride on the morning of his wedding, to lay across his pathway a girdle, over which he steps, and to pour a libation of water before him.[79]

In the Morea, in the vicinity of Sparta, it is said that, when the bride is brought to her new home, the mother of the bridegroom “stands waiting at the door, holding a glass of honey and water in her hand. From this glass the bride must drink; ... while the lintel of the door is smeared with the remainder; ... in the meantime one of the company breaks a pomegranate on the threshold.”[80] In Rhodes, when the newly married couple enter the doorway of their new home, the husband “dips his finger in a cup of honey, and traces a cross over the door.... A pomegranate is placed on the threshold, which the young husband crushes with his foot as he enters, followed by his wife, over whom the wedding guests throw corn and cotton seeds and orange flower water.”[81]

On Skarpanto (Carpathos), an island lying between Rhodes and Crete, when the bridegroom reaches the door of the bride’s house “he is greeted by the mother of the bride, who touches the nape of his neck with a censer containing incense.... She further gives him a present called _embatikon_,–that is to say, ‘the gift of in-going,’–and then places on the threshold a rug or blanket folded, with a stick resting on one of the corners. The bridegroom advances his right foot, breaks the stick and passes in.”[82]

Among the Morlacchi, in Dalmatia, it is, or was, a custom for a bride to kneel and kiss the threshold of her husband’s home, before crossing it for the first time. Her mother-in-law, or some other near relative of her husband, at the same time presented her with a sieve full of different kinds of grain, nuts, and small fruits, which the bride scattered behind her back as she passed in.[83]

It is a custom in portions of Russia, when the bride is about to leave her father’s home to meet the bridegroom, for the friends of the bridegroom to appear at the door, and request that the bride be brought to them. “After their request has been many times repeated, the ‘princess’ [as the bride is called] appears, attended by her relatives and attendants, but stops short at the door. Again the bridegroom’s friends demand the bride, but are told first to ‘cleanse the threshold; then will the young princess cross the threshold.’” Thereupon gifts are made by the bridegroom’s friend, and the bride crosses the threshold to go to the bridegroom.[84]

Among the Mordvins (or, Mordevins), a Finnish people on the Volga, there are various customs in connection with marriage, tending to confirm the idea that the threshold is the household altar. In a ceremony of betrothal, with a conference over the terms of dowry, a prayer is offered to the “goddess of the homestead,” and the “goddess of the dwelling-house;” “the girl’s father then cuts off the corner of a loaf of bread with three slashes of a knife, salts it, and places it under the threshold, where the Penates are believed to frequent. This is called the ‘gods’ portion.’” Bread and salt are factors in a sacred covenant, and their proffer to the household gods, at the threshold altar, would seem to be an invitation to those gods to be a party to the new marriage covenant. Again, after the terms of betrothal are agreed on, there is the feast of “hand-striking,” or ratification of the betrothal. On that occasion also the “gods’ portion” is offered; and “a little brandy is spilt under the threshold. Bread and salt are once more placed under the threshold by the bride’s father, who carries it from the table to the household altar “on the point of the knife–under no circumstances in his hands.”[85]

A custom of strewing the threshold of the home of a new-married couple prevailed in Holland until recent times.[86] This was obviously a form of offering at the household altar.

On the evening before the marriage ceremony, in the rural districts and smaller towns of Northern Germany, the boys and girls, and others in the neighborhood, are accustomed to appear at the door of the bride’s house, and smash on the threshold earthen pots and jars, with loud cries of joy. “Sometimes, whole car-loads of broken pottery have to be removed from the door the next morning.” And when the young couple return to their home, after the ceremony at the church, poor boys and girls are accustomed to stretch a colored cord across the door of the house, to prevent a passage over the threshold, unless the bridegroom throws a handful of small coins among those who bar the way.[87]