[250] Torquemada, op. cit. ii. 415.
[251] Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, loc. cit. p. 155.
[252] Mariner, op. cit. ii. 237, 155.
[253] Ibid. ii. 238.
Why are the blessings and curses of parents supposed to possess such an extraordinary power? One reason is no doubt the mystery of old age and the nearness of death. As appears from several of the cases already referred to, it is not parents only but old people generally that are held capable of giving due effect to their good and evil wishes, and this capacity is believed to increase when life is drawing to its close. The Herero “know really no blessing save that conferred by the father on his death-bed.”[254] According to old Teutonic ideas, the curse of a dying person was the strongest of all curses.[255] A similar notion prevailed among the ancient Arabs;[256] and among the Hebrews the father’s mystic privilege of determining the weal or woe of his children was particularly obvious when his days were manifestly numbered.[257] But, at the same time, parental benedictions and imprecations possess a potency of their own owing to the parents’ superior position in the family and the respect in which they are naturally held. The influence which such a superiority has upon the efficacy of curses is well brought out by various facts. According to the Greek notion, the Erinyes avenged wrongs done by younger members of a family to elder ones, even brothers and sisters, but not vice versâ.[258] The Arabs of Morocco say that the curse of a husband is as potent as that of a father. The Tonga Islanders believe that curses have no effect “if the party who curses is considerably lower in rank than the party cursed.”[259] Moreover, where the father was invested with sacerdotal functions—as was the case among the ancient nations of culture—his blessings and curses would for that reason also be efficacious in an exceptional degree.[260]
[254] Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 468.
[255] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, iv. 1690.
[256] Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, pp. 139, 191.
[257] Cheyne, in Encyclopædia Biblica, i. 592.
[258] Iliad, xv. 204: “Thou knowest how the Erinyes do always follow to aid the elder-born.” Cf. Müller, Dissertations on the Eumenides, p. 155 sq.