After comparing these cases there can be little doubt that the Celtic practice of fighting the waves reported by Ælian was not undertaken as a foolhardy piece of presumption, but literally as a combat with a foe susceptible to such attacks, or (as the Irish text suggests) a necessary proceeding in self-defence, lest otherwise the sea should encroach upon the land. The orenda of the land-dwellers was pitted against that of the waters.
The conclusion will be confirmed by considering a few examples of the treatment of divinities other than those of sea or river. The tribe of the Getai, the bravest of the Thracians, were in the habit, during thunderstorms, of shooting arrows up to the sky and threatening their god. It is indeed not clear what god they threatened. Usually it is understood to be the god Zalmoxis, pre-eminently the god of the Getai. But he seems to have been a chthonic divinity; and as the text of Herodotus stands they recognized no other god. The historian’s account of him is rationalized; and there is reason to think that he failed to grasp all the essentials of the Getic religion: his own doubts on the subject are more than hinted at. In shooting upwards, however, and uttering threats, the Getai must have menaced some being conceived more or less in personal terms. This is sufficient for our present purpose.[174.3] The Atarantes, who dwelt ten days’ journey from Mount Atlas, in like manner cursed the sun when he was at his height and reviled him with all manner of foul terms, because he oppressed both themselves and their land by his burning heat.[175.1] Among the Bayaka of the Kasai district in the Congo State it is common to hear people running about at night and shouting insults to Moloki, a malignant spirit who has made them ill, or caused the death of a relation.[175.2] The Bechuana, on the great central plain of South Africa, ascribe changes of weather to the influence of the manes of deceased members of the tribe. They are called by the generic term Barimo, of which the singular form, Morimo, was adopted by the early missionaries to translate God; and it is now frequently used with that meaning. When hail damaged the crops, or rain fell unseasonably, Moffat tells us, Morimo would be cursed in the vilest language. “Would that I could catch it, I would transfix it with my spear!” exclaimed in the missionary’s hearing a chief whose judgement on other subjects would command attention.[175.3] On the occasion of an earthquake a traveller saw the Bakwena women in an instant rushing out of their huts, with clubs and hoes in their hands, holding them up at the sky, and cursing God with most awful imprecations and demoniac yells.[175.4] The proceedings of the Zulus, neighbours of the Bakwena, during a thunderstorm were thus described by a native to Bishop Callaway: “When it thunders the doctors go out and scold it; they take a stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven. They say they can overcome the lightning. They shout and take shields and sticks; they strike on their shields and shout. And when it clears away again they say, ‘We have conquered it.’ They say they can overcome the heaven.”[176.1] The Hottentots curse the thunder and shoot their poisoned arrows at the lightning, telling him to be off. Some of them, however, adopt a milder course, assembling to dance and sing an incantation. Two specimens of these incantations have been preserved. The thunder is thus addressed:
“Son of the Thunder-cloud,
Thou brave loud-speaking Guru!
Talk softly, please,
For I have no guilt!
Leave me alone (Forgive me)!
For I have become quite weak (= I am quite stunned, perplexed).
Thou, O Guru,
Son of the Thunder-cloud!”
The other incantation is addressed to the lightning. It is a dramatic performance, the lightning being played by one person, the chorus representing the appeal of the inhabitants of the kraal.
Chorus.
“Thou, Thunder-cloud’s daughter, daughter-in-law of the Fire!
Thou who hast killed my brother!
Therefore thou liest now so nicely in a hole!
Solo.
(Yes) indeed, I have killed thy brother so well!
Chorus.
(Well) therefore thou liest (now) in a hole.
Thou who hast painted thy body red, like Goro!
Thou who dost not drop the menses,
Thou wife of the Copper-bodied man (the mythical ancestor of the Hottentots)!”[176.2]
Perhaps the sex of the lightning here may render it more amenable to the softer arts of persuasion. The Bushmen used to look steadily at the quarter whence the lightning came. They believed its object was to kill them by stealth, and that if they looked towards it they would cause the thunderbolts to turn back. It appears, they said, “to fear our eye, when it feels that we quickly look towards it.… Therefore it goes over us; it goes to sit on the ground yonder, while it does not kill us.”[177.1] In other words, they believed themselves so powerful that the lightning quailed before them and did not dare to strike. Among the Nandi, a Nilotic tribe of East Africa, it is the duty of the Toiyoi, or Thunder-clan, when a heavy thunderstorm occurs, to seize an axe and, having rubbed it in the ashes of the fire, to throw it outside the hut, crying out: “Thunder, be silent in our village!”[177.2] Among their neighbours (but not kinsfolk), the Wawanga, an old man was recently found by a government official to have stuck a curious-looking spear in an ant-hill in his village to drive off the hail.[177.3]
Similar practices are found in the less advanced cultures of the New World. The Hurons of Canada were in the habit of sticking their javelins into the ground point upwards. The explanation they gave, as reported by the Jesuit Father, was that the thunder had intelligence, and it would, on seeing these naked javelins, turn aside and be careful not to come near their cabins.[177.4] The Salinans of California possess an amulet which will stop the thunder, if it be held in the hand and pushed out towards a thunder-cloud.[177.5] The Guaycurus of Paraguay, great and small, on the occasion of a great storm of wind and rain, issued from their huts armed with clubs and sticks, and uttering terrible cries, to fight with the hurricane, persuaded that it was an attack on them by evil spirits, and that they must defend themselves without showing cowardice.[178.1] According to legends current at the time of the conquest, “the hapiñuñu, or bosom-clutching spirits, who were believed to have been the original occupants of the Peruvian valleys, were forcibly expelled by the early human inhabitants, immigrants from the country of the Guaycurus. When the ancestors of the Incas arrived in the sierra ‘from beyond Potosi’—that is, from the Gran Chaco—these spirits, according to a fragment of an ancient song which has been preserved by an Indian writer, disappeared with terrible cries, saying:
‘We are conquered! We are conquered!
Alas, for I lose my lands!’”[178.2]
The tribes of the Uaupes River in Brazil, after a funeral, shoot into the air to chase away, and if possible kill, the evil-disposed spirit which has caused the death.[178.3]
In tropical surroundings, separated from the Hurons by nearly half the globe, by the whole breadth of the Pacific Ocean and nearly the whole breadth of the continent of North America, the Kai-folk of the Kai, or forest hinterland of the south-eastern coast of German New Guinea, adopt the very same measure as they for protection against the storms. Like their surroundings, their culture is widely different from that of the Hurons. They dwell in frail cabins raised upon posts, in order to secure them from the intrusion of their half-domesticated swine and the attacks of the wilder animals. These huts cluster on the mountain-side in tiny villages of from two to six. Their framework is of wood, bound together with tough lengths of a climbing plant. The walls consist of long pandanus leaves; and they are thatched with leaves of the sago-palm, or with grass. It is obvious that such feeble structures can offer little resistance to high winds. Happily wind-storms are of rare occurrence; but when they do come they wield terrific force, splitting or uprooting powerful trees. Against the onslaught of such foes, which, it need not be said, are regarded as personal beings, the Kai-folk have more than one means of defence. They take one of the jawbones of wild beasts which hang in the hut as trophies of the chase, put it in the fire and pray the storm-spirit to accept the soul of the deceased animal and spare the house. But they do not rely on the chance of placating the spirit; they oppose him with threats and with weapons. They fasten a pointed stake or spear before the windward side of the house, its point turned to the wind, so that it will “prick him in the belly,” and thus compel him to leave the hut in peace. Or they reply to each gust by striking the threshold with a club or stone-axe, crying out: “If you tread here on my house, I will smash your feet!”[179.1]