Ritual and belief

by Edwin Sidney Hartland

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

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

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

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

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

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

“Sehr back an’ sehr behns,

Cairrit a’ ——s’ stanes.”^[164.2]

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

But he appears in other forms. A favourite is that of a horse, sometimes described as with hoofs reversed. At Bohuus in West Gothland he was caught by means of a cunningly contrived halter, from which he could not break loose. His captor kept him all the spring and made him plough his fields. Only when once the halter accidentally slipped off was the Neck able to escape this slavery. He sprang like lightning into the water, dragging the harrow after him. The Neck also causes disease. His appearance forbodes tempest. He haunts wells and must be propitiated with offerings, or measures must be taken to render him innocuous.^[166.1]

Without pausing to analyse the complex character assigned to the Neck, it will be abundantly clear that he belongs to the same category as the foregoing, and may be subdued by similar means. To fetch parallels to the spirit of the Jabbok from Scotland and Sweden may be thought going far afield. It is going no farther than Dr Frazer himself goes for examples of the custom of propitiating river-spirits. The protest often uttered by cautious anthropologists against those who would cast the net so widely has its reason. When we are dealing with customs it is well to remember that customs superficially alike may spring from quite different social organizations, and their real intentions may be divergent or even opposite: in short, they may have nothing in common but external resemblance. They cannot be understood without taking into account the sequences of which they are often part, and the social organization and cultural condition from which they spring. It is otherwise when those great products of human imagination that animate the world about us are concerned. The personalities believed to haunt mountain and stream, air and water, heaven and earth, are elemental conceptions, the inevitable offspring of the human mind in its intercourse with nature. Analogies discovered between them are real analogies; they are the proofs of the essential oneness of mankind in the snow-hut of an arctic winter and the tree-shelter of a tropical forest. And when we find the relations believed to exist between such personalities and human beings, the need of their conciliation or coercion in order to obtain benefits for their human worshipper or antagonist, and the means taken for this purpose, the same, with only such variations as may be accounted for by differences of environment, then we may with confidence appeal to them as mutually illustrative.

For these reasons it would appear that we must regard such tales as those of the kelpie and the water-bull of Scotland and the Isle of Man, or the Neck of Sweden, as illuminating the legend of Jacob’s struggle at the ford of the Jabbok. Professor Frazer rightly adduces as in some degree analogous the story of Menelaus catching the shy sea-god Proteus sleeping on the sands, and compelling him to say his sooth, as Jacob compels the angel to pronounce a blessing, and that of Peleus catching and conquering the sea-goddess Thetis to be his bride. Here we are reminded of a cycle of traditions found all over the world, and known as the Swan-maiden cycle. The heroine of the tale is a supernatural being, usually in the form of a bird which casts its feathers like a robe and becomes human. The hero, possessing himself of the robe, acquires power over her and makes her his wife, only to lose her again when she recovers it. As told in Scotland and the adjacent isles, in the Faeroe Islands and Iceland, the lady is a seal.^[167.1] It may be doubtful whether Thetis was ever so represented; but it is certainly most suggestive that Proteus was discovered sleeping among the seals. For it is not only for matrimonial purposes that these supernatural beings are caught in modern märchen. In a Tamil tale the hero steals the dress of one of a band of divine maidens, and thereby compels her to bring him a certain divine parijata, or flower of the coral tree, which was demanded by another lady as the price of her hand.^[168.1] In the Spanish tale of The Marquis of the Sun, the Marquis is a great gamester. A man who played with him lost all he had, and then staked his soul and lost it. To get it back he was advised to watch on the banks of a river. Three princesses would come in the guise of doves, cast their feathers and bathe. He was to take the dress of the smallest and thus compel her to show him the road to the Marquis her father’s castle.^[168.2] It is true that both these adventures do result in the hero’s union with the bird-maiden. Such union is, however, incidental. In a Samoyed Swan-maiden story the heroine, captured in the usual way, flings the hearts of herself and her husband, as well as of other members of his family, into the air; and their owners in consequence remain neither living nor dead. The husband’s father’s sister goes in search of the hearts to the lake where the bride was captured, and finds her six sisters there swimming as before. She takes possession of the clothes of one of them, and thus compels her to restore the hearts of her relatives.^[168.3] So the hero of a tale told by a tribe on Vancouver Island is sent in search of his daughter, who has eloped with a wolf. He sees a number of young wolves playing at ball, having laid aside their mantles. He sets himself down beside the mantles, and in this way putting their owners to shame at being found naked, compels them to bring him to his son-in-law’s abode.^[168.4] The mantles are obviously the wolf-skins, laid aside to enable their owners to appear in human form.

Wolves are of course not water-spirits, like swans or seals; but they obey the same law as that imagined for the latter. The man who seizes something which is at once the symbol of their supernatural character and the source of their power, renders them helpless and compels them to his will. The contest is in these cases one of trickery and determination, rather than of strength. The captures of Proteus and of Thetis, however, seem to have been effected by main force and a wrestler’s skill. This is often the case with the capture of mermaids in the west of Europe. Hugh Miller long ago translated into literature a local legend of Cromarty which told how John Reid captured on the shores of the Firth a mermaid, from whom he extracted as a ransom the grant of three wishes, including prosperity and union with the maiden of his choice.^[169.1] Mermaid-stories thus agree with kelpie-stories and with those of Proteus and the spirit of the Jabbok in assigning victory to the strength and skill of the human wrestler.

Water-spirits are not the only supernatural beings with whom men are represented in story as matching themselves. The Lushei clans of Assam believe in various demons that inhabit hills, streams and trees. They are called Huai, those inhabiting the water being known as Tui-huai, and those residing on the land as Rām-huai. A certain sacrifice, generally of a big sow, is offered to the Rām-huai. It is called Sakhua. One night, towards morning, it is related, a Rām-huai appeared to a man who had unwittingly neglected his Sakhua sacrifice. It came into the straw where he was sleeping and wrestled with him until daylight. Even then it followed him and wrestled with him again; nor does the man seem to have been loth. At last he conquered the Rām-huai, who then told him that his Sakhua sacrifice was over-due; and he performed it at once. Sometimes the Rām-huai appears as a tiger and sometimes as a man. On this occasion he seems to have been in human form.^[170.1]

Yet even in such a contest the skill displayed may be much more than a trick of jiu-jitsu. An example or two will suffice. In the Wild Huntsman of Teutonic lands anthropologists agree in recognizing traditions of the god Woden. He is well known to the German rustic as Wod. A tale from Mecklenburg represents a peasant as encountering him one dark night in the form of a tall man on a white horse. The peasant accepts the stranger’s challenge to pull against him, and grasps one end of a heavy chain, while the stranger ascends into the clouds with the other end. The peasant knows that, if he lose, he is himself lost. He quickly twists the end around a stalwart oak, and the Huntsman tugs in vain. A second and a third time the contest is renewed, after he has persuaded the stranger that he is holding the chain, and it is only his own strength that is being put forth. The oak-tree creaks and crackles to its roots, but finally holds its ground. Wod owns himself vanquished, and rewards his courageous antagonist with a share of his game—a haunch of venison, which turns to a rich booty of gold and silver ere he reaches home.^[170.2] We are indebted to Ovid for another example. He tells us how Numa by the advice of Egeria entrapped Picus and Faunus, two ancient rustic deities who were wont to drink of a certain stream. The king tempted them by means of wine placed beside the fountain; and when they had fallen into the slumber of intoxication he issued from his ambush and put them in chains. As the price of freedom he compelled them to bring down Jupiter from the sky, to give him the famous formula for averting the thunderbolt.^[171.1] Innocents like these are of course easily caught with strong drink. In Greek tradition Silenus, who as the son of a nymph was described as of condition inferior to the gods, but superior to mortals and to death, was not superior to some mortal weaknesses. Indeed, he was notoriously convivial. Hence he fell victim to a similar wile on the part of Midas, the Phrygian king. Nor was he released before he had revealed some astounding geographical and ethnological information, that staggered the sceptical Ælian when he found it placed on record in the now lost pages of Theopompus.^[171.2]

Such legends of contest are not confined to merely second-rate personages like these subordinate or superseded divinities. When in the Iliad Diomed attacks and wounds Aphrodite, she goes crying to her mother. Dione by way of consolation recounts a list of Olympian gods who have grievously suffered in fight with headstrong and violent men. It includes Ares, Hera, and Hades, all of them potent figures in Greek mythology. Ares was bound by Otus and Ephialtes, the sons of Aloeus, and kept in durance vile for thirteen moons, until Hermes came to his rescue. Even he, it seems, was obliged to have recourse to secret means to steal him away. The arrows of Herakles inflicted grievous wounds on Hera and Pluto. And though naturally Dione denounces untimely death as the penalty for such presumption, the injuries received in the conflict are not all on one side.^[171.3] Odin himself fights more than once in the Scandinavian lays and sagas against human antagonists. Nay, if M. A. J. Reinach’s interpretation be accepted, Jacob’s opponent at the ford of the Jabbok was no other than “Elohim in person.” The growth of religious feeling, on this theory, found this coarse representation abhorrent; and while the incident, being part of the sacred legends, could not be ignored or repudiated, it was so altered as to obscure its real significance.^[172.1]

However this may be, tales like these are echoes of belief in the possibility of a successful corporeal struggle with the mysterious powers. They are blurred memories of the practice of threatening and even attacking what we call supernatural beings under their material manifestations. Those beings were conceived, if not always in human form, at least as human in their wills and passions, hence in their motives and modes of action. The only way in which they differed from humanity was in their vaster and undefined powers. They were, to adopt Matthew Arnold’s phrase, magnified, non-natural—that is to say, mysterious—men.^[172.2] Thus conceived, they were accessible to every sort of influence that affected mankind, including coercion. But it took a bold man to coerce them, though the task might be attempted upon occasion, even by ordinary mortals—not always with success. Sometimes the contest is of a more distinctly intellectual character. The trial of musical skill between Apollo and Marsyas will occur to everyone. The Egyptian king called by Herodotus Rhampsinitus is said to have penetrated to Hades and there played at dice with Demeter. Varying fortune attended him; but he was so far successful that he returned with a golden handkerchief, the gift of the goddess. And the Egyptians still in the historian’s time celebrated a feast in memory of the adventure.^[173.1]

If we turn from legend to fact, we find the belief translated into action, into the attempt to control the supernatural by force. Thus did Xerxes when he lashed the Hellespont and let down fetters into it, for destroying the bridge he had endeavoured to build.^[173.2] Thus did the ancient priestesses of the Canary Islands when rain was too long in coming: they beat the sea with rods to punish the spirit of the waters for withholding the boon they needed.^[173.3] In the same way (the tale is probably at least founded on fact), when the Nile had risen to the height of eighteen cubits—higher than it had ever risen before—Pheros, the son and successor of Sesostris, is declared to have taken a spear and driven it into the midst of the whirling waters. It is added—and here we have a testimony to the recognition by the ancient Egyptians of the awful divinity whom the king had thus challenged—that he was thereupon struck with a disease of the eyes and made blind.^[173.4] The vengeance mentioned by Dr Frazer as taken by the Kakhyeen of Upper Burmah points distinctly to the same intention. “If some friend or relative has been drowned in crossing a river, the avenger repairs once a year to the banks, and, filling a bamboo vessel with the water, hews it through with his dah [sword] as if he were despatching a living enemy.”^[174.1] The Korwas of Chota Nagpur on a similar occasion shoot arrows into the river.^[174.2]

After comparing these cases there can be little doubt that the Celtic practice of fighting the waves reported by Ælian was not undertaken as a foolhardy piece of presumption, but literally as a combat with a foe susceptible to such attacks, or (as the Irish text suggests) a necessary proceeding in self-defence, lest otherwise the sea should encroach upon the land. The orenda of the land-dwellers was pitted against that of the waters.

The conclusion will be confirmed by considering a few examples of the treatment of divinities other than those of sea or river. The tribe of the Getai, the bravest of the Thracians, were in the habit, during thunderstorms, of shooting arrows up to the sky and threatening their god. It is indeed not clear what god they threatened. Usually it is understood to be the god Zalmoxis, pre-eminently the god of the Getai. But he seems to have been a chthonic divinity; and as the text of Herodotus stands they recognized no other god. The historian’s account of him is rationalized; and there is reason to think that he failed to grasp all the essentials of the Getic religion: his own doubts on the subject are more than hinted at. In shooting upwards, however, and uttering threats, the Getai must have menaced some being conceived more or less in personal terms. This is sufficient for our present purpose.^[174.3] The Atarantes, who dwelt ten days’ journey from Mount Atlas, in like manner cursed the sun when he was at his height and reviled him with all manner of foul terms, because he oppressed both themselves and their land by his burning heat.^[175.1] Among the Bayaka of the Kasai district in the Congo State it is common to hear people running about at night and shouting insults to Moloki, a malignant spirit who has made them ill, or caused the death of a relation.^[175.2] The Bechuana, on the great central plain of South Africa, ascribe changes of weather to the influence of the manes of deceased members of the tribe. They are called by the generic term Barimo, of which the singular form, Morimo, was adopted by the early missionaries to translate God; and it is now frequently used with that meaning. When hail damaged the crops, or rain fell unseasonably, Moffat tells us, Morimo would be cursed in the vilest language. “Would that I could catch it, I would transfix it with my spear!” exclaimed in the missionary’s hearing a chief whose judgement on other subjects would command attention.^[175.3] On the occasion of an earthquake a traveller saw the Bakwena women in an instant rushing out of their huts, with clubs and hoes in their hands, holding them up at the sky, and cursing God with most awful imprecations and demoniac yells.^[175.4] The proceedings of the Zulus, neighbours of the Bakwena, during a thunderstorm were thus described by a native to Bishop Callaway: “When it thunders the doctors go out and scold it; they take a stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven. They say they can overcome the lightning. They shout and take shields and sticks; they strike on their shields and shout. And when it clears away again they say, ‘We have conquered it.’ They say they can overcome the heaven.”^[176.1] The Hottentots curse the thunder and shoot their poisoned arrows at the lightning, telling him to be off. Some of them, however, adopt a milder course, assembling to dance and sing an incantation. Two specimens of these incantations have been preserved. The thunder is thus addressed:

“Son of the Thunder-cloud,

Thou brave loud-speaking Guru!

Talk softly, please,

For I have no guilt!

Leave me alone (Forgive me)!

For I have become quite weak (= I am quite stunned, perplexed).

Thou, O Guru,

Son of the Thunder-cloud!”

The other incantation is addressed to the lightning. It is a dramatic performance, the lightning being played by one person, the chorus representing the appeal of the inhabitants of the kraal.

Chorus.

“Thou, Thunder-cloud’s daughter, daughter-in-law of the Fire!

Thou who hast killed my brother!

Therefore thou liest now so nicely in a hole!

Solo.

(Yes) indeed, I have killed thy brother so well!

Chorus.

(Well) therefore thou liest (now) in a hole.

Thou who hast painted thy body red, like Goro!

Thou who dost not drop the menses,

Thou wife of the Copper-bodied man (the mythical ancestor of the Hottentots)!”^[176.2]

Perhaps the sex of the lightning here may render it more amenable to the softer arts of persuasion. The Bushmen used to look steadily at the quarter whence the lightning came. They believed its object was to kill them by stealth, and that if they looked towards it they would cause the thunderbolts to turn back. It appears, they said, “to fear our eye, when it feels that we quickly look towards it.… Therefore it goes over us; it goes to sit on the ground yonder, while it does not kill us.”^[177.1] In other words, they believed themselves so powerful that the lightning quailed before them and did not dare to strike. Among the Nandi, a Nilotic tribe of East Africa, it is the duty of the Toiyoi, or Thunder-clan, when a heavy thunderstorm occurs, to seize an axe and, having rubbed it in the ashes of the fire, to throw it outside the hut, crying out: “Thunder, be silent in our village!”^[177.2] Among their neighbours (but not kinsfolk), the Wawanga, an old man was recently found by a government official to have stuck a curious-looking spear in an ant-hill in his village to drive off the hail.^[177.3]

Similar practices are found in the less advanced cultures of the New World. The Hurons of Canada were in the habit of sticking their javelins into the ground point upwards. The explanation they gave, as reported by the Jesuit Father, was that the thunder had intelligence, and it would, on seeing these naked javelins, turn aside and be careful not to come near their cabins.^[177.4] The Salinans of California possess an amulet which will stop the thunder, if it be held in the hand and pushed out towards a thunder-cloud.^[177.5] The Guaycurus of Paraguay, great and small, on the occasion of a great storm of wind and rain, issued from their huts armed with clubs and sticks, and uttering terrible cries, to fight with the hurricane, persuaded that it was an attack on them by evil spirits, and that they must defend themselves without showing cowardice.^[178.1] According to legends current at the time of the conquest, “the hapiñuñu, or bosom-clutching spirits, who were believed to have been the original occupants of the Peruvian valleys, were forcibly expelled by the early human inhabitants, immigrants from the country of the Guaycurus. When the ancestors of the Incas arrived in the sierra ‘from beyond Potosi’—that is, from the Gran Chaco—these spirits, according to a fragment of an ancient song which has been preserved by an Indian writer, disappeared with terrible cries, saying:

‘We are conquered! We are conquered!

Alas, for I lose my lands!’”^[178.2]

The tribes of the Uaupes River in Brazil, after a funeral, shoot into the air to chase away, and if possible kill, the evil-disposed spirit which has caused the death.^[178.3]

In tropical surroundings, separated from the Hurons by nearly half the globe, by the whole breadth of the Pacific Ocean and nearly the whole breadth of the continent of North America, the Kai-folk of the Kai, or forest hinterland of the south-eastern coast of German New Guinea, adopt the very same measure as they for protection against the storms. Like their surroundings, their culture is widely different from that of the Hurons. They dwell in frail cabins raised upon posts, in order to secure them from the intrusion of their half-domesticated swine and the attacks of the wilder animals. These huts cluster on the mountain-side in tiny villages of from two to six. Their framework is of wood, bound together with tough lengths of a climbing plant. The walls consist of long pandanus leaves; and they are thatched with leaves of the sago-palm, or with grass. It is obvious that such feeble structures can offer little resistance to high winds. Happily wind-storms are of rare occurrence; but when they do come they wield terrific force, splitting or uprooting powerful trees. Against the onslaught of such foes, which, it need not be said, are regarded as personal beings, the Kai-folk have more than one means of defence. They take one of the jawbones of wild beasts which hang in the hut as trophies of the chase, put it in the fire and pray the storm-spirit to accept the soul of the deceased animal and spare the house. But they do not rely on the chance of placating the spirit; they oppose him with threats and with weapons. They fasten a pointed stake or spear before the windward side of the house, its point turned to the wind, so that it will “prick him in the belly,” and thus compel him to leave the hut in peace. Or they reply to each gust by striking the threshold with a club or stone-axe, crying out: “If you tread here on my house, I will smash your feet!”^[179.1]

Almost all nations in the lower culture hold an eclipse to be the attempt on the part of some evil-disposed being to eat up or destroy the sun or moon. The custom of terrifying and driving him away is too well known to need illustration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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