[187] Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 285.
[188] Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 164, n. 1.
[189] Ibid. p. 336, n. 1.
[190] Pierotti, Customs and Traditions of Palestine, p. 95 sq. According to Roman sources (Digesta, xlvii. 11. 9), there was in the province of Arabia an offence called σκοπελισμό ς, which consisted in laying stones on an enemy’s ground as a threat that if the owner cultivated the land “malo leto periturus esset insidiis eorum, qui scopulos posuissent”; and so great was the fear of such stones that nobody would go near a field where they had been put.
[191] Gomara, Primera parte de la historia general de las Indias, ch. 79 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxii. 206).
[192] von Martius, Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 37 sq.
[193] Ibid. p. 34.
[194] Cf. van Gennep, op. cit. p. 185 (natives of Madagascar). It was an ancient Roman usage to inter the dead in the field belonging to the family, and in the works of the elder Cato there is a formula according to which the Italian labourer prayed the manes to take good care against thieves (Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 75). Cicero says (Pro domo, 41) that the house of each citizen was sacred because his household gods were there.
[195] Rowley, Africa Unveiled, p. 174. Bastian, Afrikanische Reisen, p. 78 sq. 3 Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, p. 85. Cf. Schneider, Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 230. If we knew the ceremonies with which magicians transform ordinary material objects into fetishes, we might perhaps find that they charge them with curses. Dr. Nassau says (op. cit. p. 85):—“For every human passion or desire of every part of our nature, for our thousand necessities or wishes, a fetich can be made, its operation being directed to the attainment of one specified wish.” See also Schultze, Der Fetischismus, p. 109.
We have previously noticed another method of charging a curse with magic energy, namely, by giving it the form of an appeal to a supernatural being.[196] So also spirits or gods are frequently invoked in curses referring to theft. On the Gold Coast, “when the owner of land sees that some one has been making a clearing on his land, he cuts the young inner branches of the palm tree and hangs them about the place where the trespass has been committed. As he hangs each leaf he says something to the following effect: ‘The person who did this and did not make it known to me before he did it, if he comes here to do any other thing, may fetish Katawere (or Tanor or Fofie or other fetish) kill him and all his family.’”[197] In Samoa, in the case of a theft, the suspected persons had to swear before the chiefs, each one invoking the village god to send swift destruction if he had committed the crime; and if all had sworn and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs solemnly made a similar invocation on behalf of the thief.[198] The Hawaiians seem likewise to have appealed to an avenging deity in certain cursing ceremonies, which they performed for the purpose of detecting or punishing thieves.[199] In ancient Greece it was a custom to dedicate a lost article to a deity, with a curse for those who kept it.[200] Of the Melanesian taboo, again, Dr. Codrington observes that the power at the back of it “is that of the ghost or spirit in whose name, or in reliance upon whom, it is pronounced.”[201] In Ceylon, “to prevent fruit being stolen, the people hang up certain grotesque figures around the orchard and dedicate it to the devils, after which none of the native Ceylonese will dare even to touch the fruit on any account. Even the owner will not venture to use it till it be first liberated from the dedication.”[202] On the landmarks of the ancient Babylonians, generally consisting of stone pillars in the form of a phallus, imprecations were inscribed with appeals to various deities. One of these boundary stones contains the following curse directed against the violator of its sacredness:—“Upon this man may the great gods Anu, Bêl, Ea, and Nusku, look wrathfully, uproot his foundation, and destroy his offspring”; and similar invocations are then made to many other gods.[203]