ANCESTOR-WORSHIP.—MAN-WORSHIP.—THE GRAND LAMA.
“Homo est medicus, et ex homine medicina paratur,” said Flemming, in his “De Remediis ex corpore humano desumtis,” that is to say, man being a doctor, from man medicine is prepared.
The savage, with all his fear of the vague and indefinable, had still a wonderful belief in himself as the greatest of nature’s works; all his great gods he created in his own image and likeness; he went even further, and ascribed to the priests or representatives of the gods, the same respect and veneration as were supposed to be due to the gods themselves; hence arose man-worship, still existing in Thibet in its most pronounced form, and surviving in Europe down to the present generation almost, in the modification known as “touching for the king’s evil,” which touching derived its efficacy from the double belief that all ailments were sent from some supernatural, and, generally, maleficent, source, and could, therefore, best be cured by the imposition of the hands of an individual whom the inunction of a little consecrated fat had bound more closely to the Omnipotent.[101]
This belief cropped out in charms and talismans, which were nothing more nor less than medicines to avert bad luck and remedy disease, itself a manifestation of bad luck; or, to express the idea still more clearly, medicines themselves were nothing but charms originally, in the application of which our forefathers paid less attention to pharmaceutical properties than they did to those of an occult or “sympathetic” nature which their own ignorance attributed to them.
Animals and plants and stones, being objects of worship, were naturally enough called upon to furnish remedies for all ailments, and palliatives for every misfortune. The grandest animal of all, man, could not well be omitted from the Materia Medica; every thing that pertains to either sex, either in structure or in function, must have impressed the untutored mind with a sense of awe; all excretions, solid or fluid, were invested with mystic properties, and called into requisition upon occasions of special import.
On the subject of man-worship, consult Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. i. c. 2, pp. 8, 9.
“Among the negroes, royalty is deified; kings are supposed to be of the race of gods, and, after death, become demi-gods.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 24.)
Saliva, the ordure, urine, catamenial fluid, blood, bile, calculi, bones, skulls,—all were mysterious, and therefore were “medicine,” especially when obtained from a saint or lama.
This belief subsisted among tribes and communities long after civilization of a high type had been attained, and is probably what Saint Mark alludes to in an ambiguous passage, when he says, “It is not the things which enter a man’s body, but those which come out of it, which defile him.”
Again, it is not from the bodies of the living alone, but from the corpses of the dead likewise, that medicinal preparations were derived; but in the latter case there enters into the question another expression of thought, shared by primitive man in all countries and in all ages; i. e., that the part is ever the representative of the whole, and that when the whole cannot be obtained, the part will be equally efficacious. Hence the precious care with which, in all communities in a low state of culture, the bones, teeth, rags of clothing, and other exuviæ of the sacred dead have been treasured.
LII.
EASTER EGGS.
The constant use of the egg in effecting these cures by transplantation awakens a suspicion that the origin of the pretty custom of giving away Easter eggs, beautifully colored, was induced by something more than charitable impulse. Nearly every usage that remains among us as a game or a play derives from a serious ancestry. Easter was pre-eminently the festival of the Christian church which most tenaciously preserved the rites of paganism. It was, for some reason, looked upon as the season when the human body, as well as the house occupied by that body, should undergo a thorough cleansing, and get rid of all its ailments. The coloring of the eggs suggests color-symbolism, an essentially heathen idea, still retained among ourselves in full vigor, under many Protean disguises.
When the Puritans gained control of the government of Great Britain, the coloring of eggs, as we may imagine, was temporarily discontinued. The “picking” of the eggs is a survival from one of the innumerable forms of divination by lot in which the pagan mind of Rome and elsewhere delighted.
Therefore we may reasonably conclude that the custom, as transmitted to us, is a “survival” from a religious usage intended to effect the transference by lot of the diseases with which the egg-players were afflicted.
“The oldest, most familiar, and most universal of all Easter customs are those associated with eggs. Hundreds of years before Christ, eggs held an important place in the theology and philosophy of the Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks, and Romans, among all of whom an egg was the emblem of the universe, and the art of coloring it was profoundly studied. The sight of street boys striking their eggs together to see which is the stronger and shall win the other, was as common in the streets of Rome and Athens, two thousand years ago, if we are to believe antiquarians, as it is in any of our American cities to-day. These eggs, now called Easter eggs, were originally known as Pasche eggs, corrupted to paste eggs, because connected with the Paschal or Passover feast. One reason for associating the egg with the day on which our Saviour rose from the dead may be, that the little chicks entombed, so to speak, in the egg, rising from it into life, was regarded as typical of an ascension from the grave.
“In the north of England it is customary to exchange presents of Easter eggs among the children of families who are on intimate terms, a custom which also prevailed largely among the ancients, and to which the sending of Easter cards and other offerings, which has become so popular here of late years, may be traced.”—(From the “Press,” Philadelphia, Penn., April 21, 1889.)
“Thirty years ago, it was a common practice for all elderly people to be bled or cupped each spring.”—(“Folk-Medicine of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Hoffman, in Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., 1889.)
“To hang an egg laid on Ascension Day in the roof of the house, preserveth the same from all hurt.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 193.)
“The modern custom, practised in Tripoli, of a widow transferring her misfortunes from herself by delivering four eggs to the first stranger she meets.”—(Dalyell, “Superstitions of Scotland,” p. 110.)
“It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malign influences which have been long accumulating among them.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 163.)
“Modern Jews sacrifice a white cock on the eve of the Festival of Expiation, nine days after the beginning of their new year. The father of the family knocks the cock thrice against his own head, saying, ‘Let this cock be a substitute for me,’ etc.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 195.)
The negroes of Guinea seem to entertain notions on this subject worthy of incorporation in this chapter: “The sending of the parrot’s egg signifies, Choose the kind of death which would be easiest to you; otherwise, we will choose for you.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 23.)
In many portions of Europe there are still in existence rustic observances which, under the mask of games, preserve to the mind of the anthropologist the former rite of human sacrifice. Among these may be mentioned one from Sweden, in which a boy—who in the past ages was evidently the victim selected for sacrifice, and to bear to the gods the messages of the community,—goes about from house to house, carrying a basket, in which he collects gifts of eggs and the like. (Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 78.) It seems to be logical to imagine that these gifts, sent to the deities to propitiate them, also served the purpose of carrying away from the donors any ailments with which they were afflicted,—the same purpose for which Easter eggs were broken, and the transfer of illness brought about by lot. The insignificance of the egg as an offering, in comparison with the benefits to be expected, offers no argument in rebuttal of the opinions just expressed. We should bear in mind the proneness of the devotee to reduce the money value of his sacrifice or oblations to the minimum. This is peculiar to no cultus, confined to no latitude. The worship of the chicken-god was apparently very widely ramified, especially among the divisions and subdivisions of what we have chosen to call the Aryan family. To several of these branches, notably the Wendish and the Celtic, the chicken was, perhaps, the principal god; and he remains to this day in his proud position, whence the first missionaries were unable to dislodge him, at the summit of the sacred tree or spire of the village church.
Naturally enough, what we should expect to see upon the recurrence among these tribes of a festival in which their principal spiritual powers were to be invoked to expel all forms of disease and evil from among their worshippers, would be the sacrifice of chickens; but the poverty or the niggardliness of the suppliant in many cases suggested a substitution of the cheaper offering, the egg, which may, in its turn, have been replaced by the feathers of the bird.
In parts of India, to this day, the scapegoat of the community is a cock. “In southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice, covered with red powder, a wooden doll, representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera was thus transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony, and passed the scourge on to its neighbors.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 191.)
“When spring comes,” said Pantagruel to Panurge, “I will take a purge.”
“Les œufs sont partout fatidiques.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 356, art. “Les Kolariens du Bengalou.”)
LIII.
THE USE OF BLADDERS IN MAKING EXCREMENT SAUSAGES.
It was believed to be peculiarly necessary that the urine or ordure of those suffering from epilepsy, yellow jaundice, quartan fevers, etc., should be placed in a pig’s bladder, and hung up in the chimney; in other words, they were made into an excrement sausage.
Traces of the employment of these sausages appear from the most remote times. Galen has a paragraph which reads as if he had some such practice in mind. Speaking of human ordure, he says: “Utitur non modo medicamenti quæ focis imponuntur commiscens, sed iis quoque quæ intro in os sumuntur.” It would seem that he was alluding to mixtures in domestic medicine when some such preparations were placed on the hearths (focis).
For the potency of these excrement sausages in rescuing victims from the clutches of witches, from the yellow jaundice, from fevers, and other troubles we have the assurances of such grave and reputable writers as Schurig, Paullini, Etmuller, Frommann, and others of ages past; while Black certifies to their use in Staffordshire; and Hoffman tells us of customs among the Germans of Pennsylvania which are distinctly and undeniably modifications of those transmitted from the mother-country. Reference to the words of these authorities, as herein quoted, is recommended; among them the following may be found worthy of remark.
“The entrails will be affected with corrosion when hot excrement is placed in a bladder.”—(Frommann, p. 1023.)
Schurig instances a farmer who by hanging up in his chimney the dung of his neighbor’s horses drove them all into a consumption.—(“Chylologia,” p. 815.)
In the Island of Nukahiva the witch wasn’t content with getting the excrement of the victim; it had to be put in a “bag woven in a particular manner,” and buried.—(Krusenstern.)
The devil cannot be more completely frustrated than by placing upon some of his works human ordure, or by hanging human ordure in the smoke of the chimney.—(Paullini, p. 260.)
“A certain man bewitched a boy nine years old by placing the boy’s ordure in a hog’s bladder and hanging the sausage in a chimney.”—(Idem, p. 261.)
In Staffordshire, to cure the yellow jaundice, a bladder was often filled with the urine of the patient and placed near the fire. (Black, “Folk-Medicine.”) It is strange to encounter among the Australians the very same ideas, expressed in identical terms, in regard to effecting enchantments by means of the victim’s ordure, wrapped in a roll or bundle not altogether unlike the sausages of European occult art.
“Should a Bangal in the course of his wanderings drop across an old encampment of Bukeens, he searches about for some débris (such as bones) of the food they have eaten; but should his search for bones or some other kindred débris be unsuccessful, as frequently happens (from the fact of its being a habit common to all the aboriginal tribes to consume by fire the bones of the game upon which they have fed before they abandon a camp), he anxiously scans the ground all round the abandoned camp for feculent excrement; and should any of the Bukeens, from laziness or other cause, have omitted to use his paddle, or to have used it carelessly, the vigilant Bangal pounces upon the unhidden feces as a miser would upon a treasure.
“After he has secured his savory find, he lubricates a piece of opossum-skin with the kidney-fat of some of his victims, and carefully wraps it round his treasure, after which yards of twine are wound round and round, each wind being what sailors term a ‘half-hitch.’ ... At night, when all in camp are quiet, the Bangal carefully takes his prize from the bag, beginning a low, monotonous chant, while he thrusts one end of the prepared roll into the fire (the fire is small by design); during the process of gradual combustion the chant is continued.... Should it be his wish to kill the Bukeen outright in one night, he keeps up the chant, and pushes the burning roll forward into the glowing embers as it consumes, and when the last vestige of it has dispersed in unsavory smoke the life of the Bangal’s victim has ceased.... Should the Bangal, however, wish to prolong the dying agonies of his foe, he merely burns a small portion of the roll nightly, chanting his incantation during the process, and should months pass before the roll is totally consumed so long will the torture of his victim continue.”—(“The Aborig. of Vict. and Riverina,” Beveridge, Adelaide, 1889, p. 169, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, secretary.)
“In Thuringia a sausage is stuck in the last sheaf at threshing, and thrown with the sheaf on the threshing-floor. It is called the “barrenwurst,” and is eaten by all the threshers. After they have eaten it, a man is encased in pease straw, and thus attired is led through the village.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 371.)
Attaching to this array of facts the value which properly belongs to each and every one of them, and no more, it seems that the Feast of Fools may be better understood by regarding it as the burlesque and distorted “survival” of a sacred, comitial gathering of the gens or community, in which the excrement sausage served a now completely forgotten purpose in eliminating from the people the baleful curse of witchcraft, epilepsy, jaundice, fevers, and other disorders which would not yield promptly to the simple medicaments of primitive therapeutics.
LIV.
CONCLUSION.
Lastly, it may be urged that the thoughtful consideration of this subject will not be without results of importance to science. It shows us, if we may employ a mathematical expression, that by integrating the equation of man’s development between the limits zero, in which these disgusting practices had full sway, and the limit of A.D. 1891, the precise extent of his advancement in all that we call civilization can better be understood.
The biologist and psychologist may find material to demonstrate to what extent primitive man, in corresponding environment in different regions of the world, will display the same instincts and act under identical impulses.
The student of comparative mythology will certainly discover much to interest and instruct him.
The student of folk-lore should find here a field promising the most prolific results. Folk-usage, especially in folk-medicine,—which is simply the crystallization of the mythology and religious medicine of the most primitive ages,—should respond most generously to any demands that may be made upon this and other points which the ordinary writer believes to be too unclean for his pen.
To the author it has been a work involving apparently endless research, much of it barren of result, and a correspondence with scholars in all countries, whose contributions have been of the first importance in determining that the filthy rite of urine-drinking as seen among the Zuñis of the United States was paralleled by the orgies of other savages, and had its counterparts and imitations in the “survivals,” often distorted into burlesque, of nations of high enlightenment.
Verily, it may be said in concluding, as in beginning this volume, the proper study of mankind is man; the study of man is the study of man’s religion.