[206] The same practice prevailed among the ancient Arabs (Wellhausen, op. cit. p. 122), and some other cases are recorded by Dr. Frazer (op. cit. i. 370 sq.). I cannot accept Wellhausen’s explanation (op. cit. p. 124) that the hair is allowed to grow for the purpose of being sacrificed when the vow is fulfilled.
Generally, a curse follows the course which is indicated by the curser. But it does not do so in every case, and it has a tendency to spread. In ancient India[207] and among the Arabs[208] and Hebrews,[209] there was a belief that a curse, especially if it was undeserved, might fall back on the head of him who uttered it. The same belief prevailed, or still prevails, among the Irish;[210] so, also, according to an English proverb, “curses, like chickens, come home to roost.” According to Plato, the curse of a father or mother taints everything with which it comes in contact. Any one who is found guilty of assaulting a parent, shall be for ever banished from the city into the country, and shall abstain from the temples; and “if any freeman eat or drink, or have any other sort of intercourse with him, or only meeting him have voluntarily touched him, he shall not enter into any temple, nor into the agora, nor into the city, until he is purified; for he should consider that he has become tainted by a curse.”[211] Plutarch asks whether Jupiter’s priest was forbidden to swear for the reason that “the peril of perjury would reach in common to the whole commonwealth, if a wicked, godless, and forsworn person should have the charge and superintendence of the prayers, vows, and sacrifices made on behalf of the city.”[212] The Romans believed that certain horrid imprecations had such power, that not only the object of them never escaped their influence, but that the person who used them also was sure to be unhappy.[213] Among the Arinzes, an oath is reckoned a terrible thing:—“They do not suffer a person, who has been under the necessity of expurgating himself in so dreadful a manner, to remain among them: he is sent into exile.”[214] According to Bedouin notions, a solemn oath should only be taken at a certain distance from the camp, “because the magical nature of the oath might prove pernicious to the general body of Arabs, were it to take place in their vicinity.”[215] “To take an oath of any sort,” says Burckhardt, “is always a matter of great concern among the Bedouins. It seems as if they attached to an oath consequences of a supernatural kind…. A Bedouin, even in defence of his own right, will seldom be persuaded to take a solemn oath before a kadhy, or before the tomb of a sheikh or saint, as they are sometimes required to do; and would rather forfeit a small sum than expose himself to the dreaded consequences of an oath.”[216] Exactly the same holds good for the Moors. The conditional self-curse is supposed in some degree to pollute the swearer even though the condition referred to in the oath be only imaginary, in other words, though he do not perjure himself. This, I think, is the reason why, among the Berbers in the South of Morocco, persons who have been wrongly accused of a crime, sometimes entirely undress themselves in the sanctuary where they are going to swear. They believe that, if they do so, the saint will punish the accuser; and I conclude that at the bottom of this belief there is a vague idea that the absence of all clothes will prevent the oath from clinging to themselves. They say that it is bad not only to swear, but even to be present when an oath is taken by somebody else. And at Demnat, in the Great Atlas, I was told that when a person has made oath at a shrine, he avoids going back to his house the same way as he came, since otherwise, at least if he has sworn false, his family as well as himself would have to suffer.
[207] Atharva-Veda, ii. 7. 5.
[208] Goldziher, Abhandlungen, i. 38 sq.
[209] Ecclesiasticus, xxi. 27.
[210] Wood-Martin, op. cit. ii. 57 sq.
[211] Plato, Leges, ix. 881.
[212] Plutarch, Questiones Romanae, 44.
[213] Idem, Vita Cassi, 16.
[214] Georgi, op. cit. iii. 54 sq.