STERCORACEOUS CHAIR OF THE POPES.
“Stercoraire, Chaire (Hist. des Papes); c’est ainsi qu’on nommoit à Rome, au rapport de M. L’Enfant, une chaire qui étoit autrefois devant le portique de la basilique, sur laquelle on faisait asseoir le Pape le jour de sa consécration. Le chœur de musique lui chantoit alors ces paroles du Psaume 113, selon l’Hébreu, et le 112, selon la Vulgate, v. 6, et suiv. ‘Il tire de la poussière celui qui est dans l’indigence et il élève le pauvre de son avilissement pour le placer avec les princes de son peuple;’ c’étoit pour insinuer au Pape, dit cardinal Raspon, la vertu de l’humilité, qui doit être la compagne de sa grandeur. Cet usage fut aboli par Léon X, qui n’étoit pas né pour ces sortes de minuties.”—(“Encyc. ou Dict. Raison. des Sciences,” etc., Neufchatel, 1765, tome quinzième, article as above.)
Consult Ducange also, “Stercoraria Sedes,” wherein it is stated that the use of this chair could be traced back to the tenth century.
“Stercoraria sedes, in qua creati pontifices ad frangendos elatos spiritus considerent, unde dicta.”—(Baronius, “Annales,” Lucca, 1758.)
Read also the remarks upon the subject of Ducking Stools, from which this seems to have been derived, under “Ordeals and Punishments.”
Father Le Jeune relates, among the ceremonies observed by the Indians of Canada upon capturing a bear, that no women were allowed to remain in the lodge with the carcass, and that special care was taken to prevent dogs from licking the blood, gnawing the bones, or eating the excrement.—(See “Relations,” 1634, vol. i., Quebec, 1858.)
XXIX.
ORDURE IN SMOKING.
Among all the observances of the every-day life of the American aborigines, none is so distinctly complicated with the religious idea as smoking; therefore, should the use of excrement, human or animal, be detected in this connection, full play should be given to the suspicion that a hidden meaning attaches to the ceremony. This would appear to be the view entertained by the indefatigable missionary, De Smet, who records such a custom among the Flatheads and Crows in 1846: “To render the odor of the pacific incense agreeable to their gods it is necessary that the tobacco and the herb (skwiltz), the usual ingredients, should be mixed with a small quantity of buffalo dung.”[63]
The Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others of the plains tribes, to whom the buffalo is a god, have the same or an almost similar custom.
The Hottentots, when in want of tobacco, “smoke the dung of the two-horned rhinoceros or of elephants.”—(Thurnberg’s Account of the Cape of Good Hope, quoted in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 141.)
The followers of the Grand Lama, as already noted, make use of his dried excrements as snuff, and an analogous employment of the dried dung of swine retained a place in the medical practice of Europe until the beginning of the present century, and may, perhaps, still survive in the Folk-medicine of isolated villages.
The people of Achaia say “that the smoke of dried cow dung, that of the animal when grazing I mean, is remarkably good for phthisis, inhaled through a reed.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. xxviii. cap. 67.)
Dung is also used in Central Africa. “A huge bowl is filled with tobacco and clay and sometimes with a questionable mixture, the fumes are inhaled until the smoker falls stupefied or deadly sick—this effect alone being sought for.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, p. 266.)
“In Algeria, gazelle droppings are put in snuff and smoking tobacco; the Mongol Tartars mix the ashes of yak manure with their snuff.”—(Personal letter from W. W. Rockhill.)
Mr. Rudyard Kipling shows in his “Plain Tales from the Hills” (“Miss Youghal’s Sais”) that the native population of India is accustomed to use a mixture of one part of tobacco to three of cow-dung.
XXX.
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.
“To multiply and replenish the earth,” was the first command given to man; to love, and to desire to be loved in return, is the strongest impulse of our nature, and therefore it need surprise no student who sets about investigating the occult properties attributed to the human and animal egestæ to find them in very general use in the composition of love-philters, as antidotes to such philters, as aphrodisiacs, as antiphrodisiacs, and as aids to delivery.