§ 3. Sacrifices to Water-spirits
|Stories of the Perseus and Andromeda type.| Ibn Batutah’s narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides closely resembles a well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions have been found from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia, Scandinavia, and Scotland in the West. The story varies in details from people to people, but as commonly told it runs thus. A certain country is infested by a many-headed serpent, dragon, or other monster, which would destroy the whole people if a human victim, generally a virgin, were not delivered up to him periodically. Many victims have perished, and at last it has fallen to the lot of the king’s own daughter to be sacrificed. She is exposed to the monster, but the hero of the tale, generally a young man of humble birth, interposes in her behalf, slays the monster, and receives the hand of the princess as his reward. In many of the tales the monster, who is sometimes described as a serpent, inhabits the water of a sea, a lake, or a fountain. In other versions he is a serpent or dragon who takes possession of the springs of water, and only allows the water to flow or the people to make use of it on condition of receiving a human victim.[[506]]
|Water-spirits conceived as serpents or dragons.| It would probably be a mistake to dismiss all these tales as pure inventions of the story-teller. Rather we may suppose that they reflect a real custom of sacrificing girls or women to be the wives of water-spirits, who are very often conceived as great serpents or dragons. Elsewhere I have cited many instances of this belief in serpent-shaped spirits of water;[[507]] here it may be worth while to add a few more. Thus the Warramunga of Central Australia perform elaborate ceremonies to appease or coerce a gigantic, but purely mythical water-snake who is said to have destroyed a number of people.[[508]] Some of the natives of western Australia fear to approach large pools, supposing them to be inhabited by a great serpent, who would kill them if they dared to drink or draw water there by night.[[509]] The Indians of New Granada believed that when the mother of all mankind, named Bachue, was grown old, she and her husband plunged into the Lake of Iguague, where they were changed into two enormous serpents, which still live in the lake and sometimes shew themselves.[[510]] The Oyampi Indians of French Guiana imagine that each waterfall has a guardian in the shape of a monstrous snake, who lies hidden under the eddy of the cascade, but has sometimes been seen to lift up its huge head. To see it is fatal. Canoe and Indians are then dragged down to the bottom, where the monster swallows all the men, and sometimes the canoe also. Hence the Oyampis never name a waterfall till they have passed it, for fear that the snake at the bottom of the water might hear its name and attack the rash intruders.[[511]] The Huichol Indians of Mexico adore water. Springs are sacred, and the gods in them are mothers or serpents, that rise with the clouds and descend as fructifying rain.[[512]] The Tarahumares, another Indian tribe of Mexico, think that every river, pool, and spring has its serpent, who causes the water to come up out of the earth. All these water-serpents are easily offended; hence the Tarahumares place their houses some little way from the water, and will not sleep near it when they are on a journey. Whenever they construct weirs to catch fish, they take care to offer fish to the water-serpent of the river; and when they are away from home and are making pinole, that is, toasted maize-meal, they drop the first of the pinole into the water as an offering to the serpents, who would otherwise try to seize them and chase them back to their own land.[[513]] In Basutoland the rivers Ketane and Maletsunyane tumble, with a roar of waters and a cloud of iridescent spray, into vast chasms hundreds of feet deep. The Basutos fear to approach the foot of these huge falls, for they think that a spirit in the shape of a gigantic snake haunts the seething cauldron which receives the falling waters.[[514]]
|Sacrifices of human beings to water-spirits.| The perils of the sea, of floods, of rapid rivers, of deep pools and lakes, naturally account for the belief that water-spirits are fickle and dangerous beings, who need to be appeased by sacrifices. Sometimes these sacrifices consist of animals, such as horses and bulls,[[515]] but often the victims are human beings. Thus at the mouth of the Bonny River there is a dangerous bar on which vessels trading to the river have been lost. This is bad for business, and accordingly the negroes used to sacrifice a young man annually to the spirit of the bar. The handsomest youth was chosen for the purpose, and for many months before the ceremony he lodged with the king. The people regarded him as sacred or ju-ju, and whatever he touched, even when he passed casually through the streets, shared his sanctity and belonged to him. Hence whenever he appeared in public the inhabitants fled before him, lest he should touch their garments or anything they might be carrying. He was kept in ignorance of the fate in store for him, and no one might inform him of it under pain of death. On an appointed day he was taken out to the bar in a canoe and induced to jump into the water. Then the rowers plied their paddles and left him to drown. A similar ceremony used to be performed at the New Calabar River, but the victim was a culprit. He was thrown into the water to be devoured by the sharks, which are there the principal fetish or ju-ju.[[516]] The chiefs of Duke Town, on the same coast of Guinea, were wont to make an annual offering to the river. A young woman of a light colour, or an albino, was chosen as the victim. On a set day they decked her with finery, took her down to Parrot Island, and with much ceremony plunged her in the stream. The fishermen of Efiat, at the mouth of the river, are said still to observe the rite in order to ensure a good catch of fish.[[517]] The King of Dahomey used to send from time to time a man, dressed out with the insignia of office, to Whydah to be drowned at the mouth of the river. The intention of the sacrifice was to attract merchant ships.[[518]] When a fisherman has been carried off by a crocodile, some of the natives on the banks of Lake Tanganyika take this for a sign that the spirit deems himself slighted, since he is obliged to come and find victims for himself instead of having them presented to him. Hence the sorcerers generally decide that a second victim is wanted; so, having chosen one, they bind him hand and foot and fling him into the lake to feed the crocodiles.[[519]] The crater of the volcano Tolucan in Mexico encloses two lakes of clear cold water, surrounded by gloomy forests of pine. Here, in the eighteenth month of the Toltec year, answering to February, children beautifully dressed and decked with flowers and gay feathers used to be drowned as an offering to Tlaloc, the god of the waters, who had a fine temple on the spot.[[520]] The Chams of Annam have traditions of a time when living men were thrown into the sea every year in order to propitiate the deities who looked after the fishing, and when children of good family were drowned in the water-channels in order that the rice-fields might be duly irrigated.[[521]]
|Water-spirits conceived as beneficent beings who dispense fertility.| This last instance brings out a more kindly aspect of the water-spirits. If these beings are dreaded by the fisherman and the mariner who tempt the angry sea, and by the huntsman who has to swim or ford the rushing rivers, they are viewed in a different light by the shepherd and the husbandman in hot and arid lands, where the pasture for the cattle and the produce of the fields alike depend on the supply of water, and where prolonged drought means starvation and death for man and beast. To men in such circumstances the spirits of the waters are beneficent beings, the dispensers of life and fertility, whether their blessings descend as rain from heaven or well up as springs of bubbling water in the parched desert. In the Semitic East, for example, where the rainfall is precarious or confined to certain seasons, the face of the earth is bare and withered for most of the year, except where it is kept fresh by irrigation or by the percolation of underground water. Here, accordingly, the local gods or Baalim had their seats originally in spots of natural fertility, by fountains and the banks of rivers, in groves and tangled thickets and green glades of mountain hollows and deep watercourses. As lords of the springs and subterranean waters they were supposed to be the sources of all the gifts of the land, the corn, the wine and the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and the fig-trees.[[522]]
|Water-spirits conceived as bestowing offspring on women.| Where water-spirits are thus conceived as the authors of fertility in general, it is natural that they should be held to extend the sphere of their operations to men and animals; in other words, that the power of bestowing offspring on barren women and cattle should be ascribed to them. This ascription comes out clearly in a custom observed by Syrian women at the present day. Some of the channels of the Orontes are used for irrigation, but at a certain season of the year the streams are turned off and the dry bed of the channels is cleared of mud and any other matter that might clog the flow of the water. The first night that the water is turned on again, it is said to have the power of procreation. Accordingly barren women take their places in the channel, waiting for the embrace of the water-spirit in the rush of the stream.[[523]] Again, a pool of water in a cave at Juneh enjoys the same reputation. The people think a childless couple who bathe in the water will have offspring.[[524]] In India many wells are supposed to cure sterility, which is universally attributed to the agency of evil spirits. The water of seven wells is collected on the night of the Diwali or feast of lamps, and barren women bathe in it in order to remove their reproach. There is a well in Orissa where the priests throw betel-nuts into the mud. Childless women scramble for the nuts, and she who finds them will be a happy mother before long. For the same reason, after childbirth an Indian mother is taken to worship the village well. She walks round it in the course of the sun and smears the platform with red lead, which may be a substitute for blood. A Khandh priest will take a childless woman to the meeting of two streams, where he makes an offering to the god of births and sprinkles the woman with water in order to rid her of the influence of the spirit who hinders conception.[[525]] In the Punjaub a barren woman who desires to become a mother will sometimes be let down into a well on a Sunday or Tuesday night during the Diwali festival. After stripping herself of her clothes and bathing in the water, she is drawn up again and performs the chaukpurna ceremony with incantations taught by a wizard. When this ceremony has been performed, the well is supposed to run dry; its quickening and fertilising virtue has been abstracted by the woman.[[526]] The Indian sect of the Vallabhacharyas or Maharajas believe that bathing in a sacred well is a remedy for barrenness in women.[[527]] In antiquity the waters of Sinuessa in Campania were thought to bless childless wives with offspring.[[528]] To this day Syrian women resort to hot springs in order to obtain children from the saint or jinnee of the waters.[[529]] In Scotland the same fertilising virtue used to be, and probably still is, ascribed to certain springs. Wives who wished to become mothers formerly resorted to the well of St. Fillan at Comrie, and to the wells of St. Mary at Whitekirk and in the Isle of May.[[530]] In the Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway, women desirous of children pray at St. Eany’s Well, by the Angels’ Walk, and the men pray at the rag well by the church of the Four Comely Ones at Onaght.[[531]] Child’s Well in Oxford was supposed to have the virtue of making barren women to bring forth.[[532]] Near Bingfield in Northumberland there is a copious sulphur spring known as the Borewell. On the Sunday following the fourth day of July, that is about Midsummer Day, according to the old style, great crowds of people used to assemble at the well from all the surrounding hamlets and villages. The scene was like a fair, stalls for the sale of refreshments being brought and set up for the occasion. The neighbouring slopes were terraced, and seats formed for the convenience of pilgrims and visitors. Barren women prayed at the well that they might become mothers. If their faith was strong enough, their prayers were heard within the year.[[533]]
|Love of river-spirits for women in Greek mythology.| In Greek mythology similar ideas of the procreative power of water meet us in the stories of the loves of rivers for women and in the legends which traced the descent of heroes and heroines from river-gods.[[534]] In Sophocles’s play of The Trachinian Women Dejanira tells how she was wooed by the river Achelous, who came to her father and claimed her hand, appearing in the likeness now of a bull, now of a serpent, and now of a being with the body of a man and the front of an ox, while streams of water flowed from his shaggy beard. She relates, too, how glad she was when Hercules presented himself and vanquished the river-god in single combat and took her to wife.[[535]] The legend perhaps preserves a reminiscence of that custom of providing a water-god with a human wife which has been practised elsewhere. The motive of such a custom may have varied with the particular conception which happened to prevail of the character of the water-god. Where he was supposed to be a cruel and destructive being, who drowned men and laid waste the country, a wife would be offered simply to keep him in good humour, and so prevent him from doing mischief. But where he was viewed as the procreative power on whom the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of men and animals depended, his marriage would be deemed necessary for the purpose of enabling him to discharge his beneficent functions. This belief in the amorous character of rivers comes out plainly in a custom which was observed at Troy down to classical times. Maidens about to marry were wont to bathe in the Scamander, saying as they did so, “Scamander, take my virginity.” A similar custom appears to have been observed at the river Maeander, and perhaps in other parts of the Greek world. Occasionally, it would seem, young men took advantage of the practice to ravish the girls, and the offspring of such a union was fathered on the river-god.[[536]] The bath which a Greek bride and bridegroom regularly took before marriage appears to have been intended to bless their union with offspring through the fertilising influence of the water-nymphs.[[537]]
Thus it would appear that in many parts of the world a custom has prevailed of sacrificing human beings to water-spirits, and that in not a few cases the ceremony has taken the form of making over a woman to the spirit to be his wife, in order either to pacify his fury or to give play to his generative powers. Where the water-spirit was regarded as female, young men might be presented to her for a similar purpose, and this may be the reason why the victims sacrificed to water-spirits are sometimes males. Among civilised peoples these customs survive for the most part only in popular tales, of which the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, with its mediaeval counterpart of St. George and the Dragon, is the most familiar example. But occasionally they appear to have left traces of themselves in ceremonies and pageants. Thus at Furth in Bavaria a |Midsummer custom of slaying the dragon at Furth in Bavaria.| drama called the Slaying of the Dragon used to be acted every year about Midsummer, on the Sunday after Corpus Christi Day. Crowds of spectators flocked from the neighbourhood to witness it. The scene of the performance was the public square. On a platform stood or sat a princess wearing a golden crown on her head, and as many silver ornaments on her body as could be borrowed for the purpose. She was attended by a maid of honour. Opposite her was stationed the dragon, a dreadful monster of painted canvas stretched on a wooden skeleton and moved by two men inside. From time to time the creature would rush with gaping jaws into the dense crowd of spectators, who retreated hastily, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to escape. Then a knight in armour, attended by his men-at-arms, rode forth and asked the princess what she did “on this hard stone,” and why she looked so sad. She told him that the dragon was coming to eat her up. On that the knight bade her be of good cheer, for that with his sword he would rid the country of the monster. With that he charged the dragon, thrusting his spear into its maw and taking care to stab a bladder of bullock’s blood which was there concealed. The gush of blood which followed was an indispensable part of the show, and if the knight missed his stroke he was unmercifully jeered and taunted by the crowd. Having despatched the monster with sword and pistol, the knight then hastened to the princess and told her that he had slain the dragon who had so long oppressed the town. In return she tied a wreath round his arm, and announced that her noble father and mother would soon come to give them half the kingdom. The men-at-arms then escorted the knight and the princess to the tavern, there to end the day with dance and revelry. Bohemians and Bavarians came from many miles to witness this play of the Slaying of the Dragon, and when the monster’s blood streamed forth they eagerly mopped it up, along with the blood-soaked earth, in white cloths, which they afterwards laid on the flax-fields, in order that the flax might thrive and grow tall. For the “dragon’s blood” was thought to be a sure protection against witchcraft.[[538]] This use of the blood suffices to prove that the Slaying of the Dragon at Furth was not a mere popular spectacle, but a magical rite designed to fertilise the fields. As such it probably descended from a very remote antiquity, and may well have been invested with a character of solemnity, if not of tragedy, long before it degenerated into a farce.
|St. Romain delivers Rouen from a dragon.| More famous was the dragon from which, according to legend, St. Romain delivered Rouen, and far more impressive was the ceremony with which, down to the French Revolution, the city commemorated its deliverance. The stately and beautiful edifices of the Middle Ages, which still adorn Rouen, formed a fitting background for a pageant which carried the mind back to the days when Henry II. of England and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy, still had their palace in this ancient capital of their ancestral domains. Legend ran that about the year 520 A.D. a forest or marsh near the city was infested by a monstrous beast in the shape of a serpent or dragon, which every day wrought great harm to Rouen and its neighbourhood, devouring man and beast, causing boats and mariners on the river Seine to perish, and inflicting other woes innumerable on the commonwealth. At last the archbishop, St. Romain, resolved to beard the monster in his den. He could get none to accompany him but a prisoner condemned to death for murder. On their approach the dragon made as though he would swallow them up; but the archbishop, relying on the divine help, made the sign of the cross, and at once the monster became so gentle that he suffered the saint to bind him with his stole and the murderer to lead him like a lamb to the slaughter. Thus they went in procession to a public place in Rouen, where the dragon was burnt in the presence of the people and its ashes cast into the river. The murderer was pardoned for his services; and the fame of the deed having gone abroad, St. Romain, or his successor St. Ouen, whose memory is enshrined in a church of dreamlike beauty at Rouen, obtained from King Dagobert in perpetuity a privilege for the archbishop, dean, and canons of the cathedral, to wit, that every year on Ascension Day, the anniversary of the miracle, they should |In memory of this deliverance the archbishop and chapter of Rouen were annually allowed to pardon a malefactor on Ascension Day.| pardon and release from prison a malefactor, whomsoever they chose, and whatever the crime of which he had been guilty. This privilege, unique in France, was claimed by the chapter of the cathedral as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century; for in 1210, the governor of the castle of Rouen having boggled at giving up a prisoner, the chapter appealed to King Philip Augustus, who caused an enquiry to be made into the claim. At this enquiry nine witnesses swore that never in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy, had there been any difficulty raised on the point in question. Henceforward the chapter seems to have enjoyed the right without opposition down to 1790, when it exercised its privilege of mercy for the last time. Next year the face of things had changed; there was neither archbishop nor chapter at Rouen. A register of the names of the prisoners who were pardoned, together with an account of their crimes, was kept and still exists. Only a few of the names in the thirteenth century are known, and there are many gaps in the first half of the fourteenth century; but from that time onward the register is nearly complete. Most of the crimes appear to have been murder or homicide.
|Ceremony of the annual pardon and release of a prisoner at Rouen.| The proceedings, on the great day of pardon, varied somewhat in different ages. The following account is based in great part on a description written in the reign of Henry III. and published at Rouen in 1587. Fifteen days before Ascension Day the canons of the cathedral summoned the king’s officers to stop all proceedings against criminals detained in prison. Afterwards, on the Monday of Rogations, two canons examined the prisoners and took their confessions, going from prison to prison till Ascension Day. On that day, about seven o’clock in the morning, all the canons assembled in the chapter-house and invoked the grace of the Holy Spirit by the hymn Veni creator Spiritus, and other prayers. Also they made oath to reveal none of the depositions of the criminals, but to hold them sacred under the seal of confession. The depositions having been taken and the commissioners heard, the chapter, after due deliberation, named him or her among the prisoners who was to receive the benefit of the privilege. A card bearing the prisoner’s name and sealed with the seal of the chapter was then sent to the members of parliament, who were sitting in full assembly, clad in their red robes, in the great hall of the palace to receive the nomination of the prisoner and to give it legal effect. The criminal was then released and pardoned. Immediately the minster bells began to ring, the doors of the cathedral were flung open, the organ pealed, hymns were sung, candles lit, and every solemnity observed in token of joy and gladness. Further, in presence of the conclave all the depositions of the other prisoners were burnt on the altar of the chapter-house. Then the archbishop and the whole of the clergy of the cathedral went in procession to the great square known as the Old Tower near the river, carrying the shrines and reliquaries of the minster, and accompanied by the joyous music of hautboys and clarions. Apparently the Old Tower occupies the site of the ancient castle of the Dukes of Normandy, and the custom of going thither in procession came down from a time when the prisoners were detained in the castle-dungeons. In the square there stood, and still stands, a platform of stone raised high above the ground and approached by flights of steps. Thither they brought the shrine (fierte) of St. Romain, and thither too was led the pardoned prisoner. He ascended the platform, and after confessing his sins and receiving absolution he thrice lifted the shrine of St. Romain, while the innumerable multitude assembled in the square cried aloud, each time the shrine was lifted, “Noel! Noel! Noel!” which was understood to mean “God be with us!” That done, the procession re-formed and returned to the cathedral. At the head walked a beadle clad in violet, who bore on a pole the wicker effigy of the winged dragon of Notre Dame, holding a large fish in its mouth. The whispers and cries excited by the appearance of the monster were drowned in the loud fanfares of cornets, clarions, and trumpets. Behind the musicians, who wore the liveries of the Master of the Brotherhood of Notre Dame with his arms emblazoned on an ensign of taffeta, came the carved silver-gilt shrine of Notre Dame. After it followed the clergy of the cathedral to the number of two hundred, clad in robes of violet or crimson silk, bearing banners, crosses, and shrines, and chanting the hymn De resurrectione Domini. Then came the archbishop, giving his blessing to the great multitude who thronged the streets. The prisoner himself walked behind, bareheaded, crowned with flowers, carrying one end of the litter which supported the shrine of St. Romain; the fetters he had worn hung from the litter; and with him paced, with lighted torches in their hands, the men or women who, for the last seven years, had in like manner received their pardon. Another beadle, in a violet livery, marched behind bearing aloft on a pole the wicker effigy of the dragon (Gargouille) destroyed by St. Romain; in its mouth the dragon sometimes held a live animal, such as a young fox, a rabbit, or a sucking pig, and it was attended by the Brotherhood of the Gargouillards. The clergy of the thirty-two parishes of Rouen also took part in the procession, which moved from the Old Tower to the cathedral amid the acclamations of the crowd, while from every church tower in the city the bells rang out a joyous peal, the great Georges d’Amboise thundering above them all. After mass had been performed in the cathedral, the prisoner was taken to the house of the Master of the Brotherhood of St. Romain, where he was magnificently feasted, lodged, and served, however humble his rank. Next morning he again presented himself to the chapter, where, kneeling in the presence of a great assembly, he was severely reproved for his sins and admonished to give thanks to God, to St. Romain, and to the canons for the pardon he had received in virtue of the privilege.
|History and meaning of the privilege of the Fierte or shrine of St. Romain at Rouen.| What was the origin and meaning of this remarkable privilege of the Fierte, as the shrine of St. Romain was called? Its history has been carefully investigated by A. Floquet, Chief Registrar of the Royal Court of Rouen, with the aid of all the documentary evidence, including the archives both at Rouen and Paris. He appears to have shewn conclusively that the association of St. Romain with the custom is comparatively late. We possess a life of the saint in Latin verse, dating from the eighth century, in which the miracles said to have been wrought by him are set forth in a strain of pompous eulogy. Yet neither in it nor in any of the other early lives of St. Romain and St. Ouen, nor in any of the older chronicles and martyrologies, is a single word said about the destruction of the dragon and the deliverance of the prisoner. It is not till 1394 that we meet for the first time with a mention of the miracle. Moreover, the deliverance of the prisoner can hardly have been instituted in honour of St. Romain, else it would have taken place on the twenty-third of October, the day on which the Church of Rouen celebrates the translation of the saint’s bones to the cathedral. St. Romain died in 638, and his bones were transferred to the cathedral of Rouen at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. Further, Floquet has adduced strong grounds for believing that the privilege claimed by the chapter of Rouen of annually pardoning a condemned criminal on Ascension Day was unknown in the early years of the twelfth century, and that it originated in the reign of Henry I. or Stephen, if not in that of Henry II. He supposes the ceremony to have been in its origin a scenic representation of the triumph of Christ over sin and death, the deliverance of the condemned prisoner symbolising the deliverance of man from the yoke of corruption, and bringing home to the people in a visible form the great mystery which the festival of the Ascension was instituted to commemorate. Such dramatic expositions of Christian doctrine, he points out, were common in the Middle Ages.
|Suggested origin of the custom.| Plausible as is this solution of the problem, it can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory. Had this been the real origin of the privilege, we should expect to find the Ascension of Christ either plainly enacted, or at least distinctly alluded to in the ceremony; but this, so far as we can learn, was not so. Again, would it not savour of blasphemy to represent the sinless and glorified Redeemer by a ruffian stained with the blackest crimes? Moreover, the part played by the dragon in the legend and in the spectacle seems too important to allow us to explain it away, with Floquet, as a mere symbol of the suppression of paganism by St. Romain. The tale of the conquest of the dragon is older than Christianity, and cannot be explained by it. At Rouen the connexion of St. Romain with the story seems certainly to be late, but that does not prove the story itself to be late also. Judging from the analogy of similar tales elsewhere, we may conjecture that in the Rouen version the criminal represents a victim annually sacrificed to a water-spirit or other fabulous being, while the Christian saint has displaced a pagan hero, who was said to have delivered the victim from death and put an end to the sacrifice by slaying the monster. Thus it seems possible that the custom of annually pardoning a condemned malefactor may have superseded an older practice of treating him as a public scapegoat, who died to save the rest of the people. In the sequel we shall see that such customs have been observed in many lands. It is not incredible that at Rouen a usage of this sort should have survived in a modified shape from pagan times down to the twelfth century, and that the Church should at last have intervened to save the wretch and turn a relic of heathendom to the glory of God and St. Romain. But this explanation of the famous privilege of the Fierte is put forward with a full sense of the difficulties attending it, and with no wish to dogmatise on so obscure a subject.[[539]]