[215] Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 73.
[216] Ibid. p. 165.
If a curse is infectious, it is naturally liable to contaminate those who derive their origin from the infected individual. The house of Glaucus was utterly extirpated from Sparta, in accordance with the words of the oracle, “There is a nameless son of the Oath-god who has neither hands nor feet; he pursues swiftly, until, having seized, he destroys the whole race, and all the house.”[217] So, too, the Erinyes visited the sins of the fathers even on the children and grandchildren;[218] and the Erinyes were originally only personifications of curses.[219] It is said in the Ecclesiasticus:—“A man that useth much swearing shall be filled with iniquity, and the plague shall never depart from his house…. If he swear in vain, he shall not be innocent, but his house shall be full of calamities.”[220] Casalis remarks of the Basutos, that “the dreadful consequences that the curse of Noah has had for Ham and his descendants appear quite natural to these people.”[221] The Dharkâr and Majhwâr in Mirzapur, believe that a person who forswears himself will lose his property and his children;[222] but as we do not know the contents of the oath, it is possible that the destruction of the latter is not ascribed to mere contagion, but is expressly imprecated on them by the swearer.[223] Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, “any accident that happens to a man, who has been known to take a false oath, or to his children or grandchildren, is carefully recorded in memory, and attributed to this sole cause.”[224] Among the Karens the following story is told:—“Anciently there was a man who had ten children, and he cursed one of his brethren, who had done him no injury; but the curse did the man no harm, and he did not die. Then the curse returned to the man who sent it, and all his ten children died.”[225] The Moors are fond of cursing each other’s father or mother, or grandfather, or grandfather’s father, such a curse being understood to involve their descendants as well. The Rev. R. Taylor says of the Maoris, “To bid you go and cook your father would be a great curse, but to tell a person to go and cook his great-grandfather would be far worse, because it included every individual who has sprung from him.”[226]
[217] Herodotus, vi. 86. Cf. Hesiod, Opera et dies, 282 sqq.
[218] Aeschylus, Eumenides, 934 sqq.
[219] Aeschylus (Eumenides, 416 sq.) expressly designates the Erinyes by the title of “curses” (ἀραὶ), and Pausanias derives the name Erinys from an Arcadian word signifying a fit of anger. Cf. von Lasaulx, ‘Der Fluch bei Griechen und Römern,’ in Verzeichnis der Vorlesungen an der Julius-Maximilians-Universitaet zu Würzburg im Sommer-Semester 1843, p. 8; Müller, Dissertations on the Eumenides of Aeschylus, p. 155 sqq.; Rohde, ‘Paralipomena,’ in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 16 sq.
[220] Ecclesiasticus, xxiii. 11. Cf. ibid. xli. 5 sqq.; Wisdom of Solomon, iii. 12 sq., xii. 11.
[221] Casalis, Basutos, p. 305.
[222] Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, ii. 287; iii. 444. Cf. ibid. i. 132.
[223] Among these tribes it is usual to swear by “putting a bamboo on the head,” or “touching a broad-sword, touching the feet of a Brâhman, holding a cow’s tail, touching Ganges water.” But among many of the other tribes described by Mr. Crooke, persons swear on the heads of their children (ibid. i. 11, 130, 172; ii. 96, 138, 339, 357; iii. 40, 113, 251, 262; iv. 35), or with a son or grandson in the arms (ibid. ii. 428), and in such cases the death of the child would naturally be expected to follow perjury as a direct result of it. Among the Kol, the usual form of an oath is, “May my children die if I lie” (ibid. iii. 313).