It was customary at Rome to offer goats at the Lupercal; and two youths underwent the pretence of a human offering, doubtless once anything but a sham. A sacrificial meal followed. The Luperci, then, girt with skins of some of the slain animals, cut other skins into strips, and armed with the strips ran up and down the Via Sacra, across the Forum and through the city, striking all whom they met. Women who desired to be made fruitful used, it is said, to place themselves naked in the way and receive the blows upon their palms.[171.2] Dr. Ploss compares with this the procedure in Voigtland and other parts of Germany at the Easter festival, when the young fellows chase the girls out of their beds with green twigs.[171.3] Similar is the object of the custom observed from India to the Atlantic Ocean of throwing grain and seeds of one sort or another over a bride, and apparently of the custom of flinging old shoes. The wandering Gipsies of Transylvania are said to throw old shoes and boots on a newly married pair when they enter their tent, expressly to enchance the fertility of the union. In Germany, pieces of cake are thrust against the bride’s body.[171.4] About Chemnitz a table-cloth seems to acquire prolific virtue by serving at a first christening dinner; and it is sometimes cast over a barren wife.[172.1] The Asturian ballad already cited in an earlier chapter ascribes to the borage the power to affect any woman treading on it as it affected the unfortunate princess Alexandra.[172.2] Rolling beneath a solitary apple-tree seems an approved method of obtaining pregnancy among the Kara Kirghiz women.[172.3]
Amulets play a great part in procuring offspring. I have only space for a few examples. A porcupine’s foot is a favourite talisman among the Moorish women of Marocco. The Northern Basuto in the Transvaal lay the fault of childlessness on the husband. He has done to death by witchcraft one of his kin, or committed some other wrong towards the dead man, who is therefore angry. After consulting a wizard, and ascertaining to whom is to be ascribed the evil, he goes to the grave, acknowledges his fault, prays to the dead for forgiveness, and takes back from the tomb a stone, a twig, or some other object, which he carries about, or deposits in his courtyard, as a fetich or a charm. If he duly honour it, it will restore the good understanding between the deceased and himself, and give him the benefit he desires. An Otchi Negress will take a fetich conditionally on its giving her children. If a child be born, it is a fetich-child and is considered to belong to the fetich, just as in many of the tales the child is given by an ogre upon the stipulation that it shall belong to the ogre, and be fetched away, either when he pleases, or at a fixed period. The women of Mecca commonly wear a magical girdle to yield them fertility. In Persia, as we have seen, the mandrake is worn as an amulet.[173.1] On the Banks’ Islands, women take certain stones to bed with them for the same purpose.[173.2]
In the interior of western Africa, over the border of Angola, on the way from Malange, barren Negresses have been found wearing two little carved ivory figures representing the two sexes in a string round the body.[173.3] The phalloi worn by Italian women are familiar to every student of folklore; and the images worn by Danubian Gipsies have already been mentioned. The worship of the linga is a favourite one with Hindu women. The representation is sometimes carved and painted red, at other times a mere rough upright stone. Such idols are to be seen everywhere in India; and their pious worshippers may often be observed decking them with flowers, red cloth or gilt paper, like the Madonna in Roman Catholic churches. Siva himself, the third in the modern Hindu Trimurti, is represented under this form; and under this form—softened down by Southey in his finest poem from the grotesque obscenity of the original story—he appeared when
“Brahma and Vishnu wild with rage contended,
And Siva in his might their dread contention ended.”
A cannon, old and useless and neglected, belonging to the Dutch Government, lay in a field at Batavia, on the island of Java. It was taken by the native women for a linga. Dressed in their best, and adorned with flowers, they used to worship this piece of senseless iron, presented it with offerings of rice and fruits, miniature sunshades, and coppers, and completed the performance by sitting astride upon it as a certain method of winning children. At length an order arrived from the Government to remove it as lumber; and removed it was, to the great dismay of the priests, who had pocketed the coppers and had manufactured and sold the sunshades—probably also to the dismay of the ladies who depended upon its miraculous power—but at all events, it is satisfactory to know, without injuriously affecting the increase of the population.[174.1] At Roman weddings one of the ceremonies was the culminating rite so dear to these Batavian women; and its object was that the bride might conceive.[174.2] At Athens there is a rock near the Callirrhoe, whereon women who wish to be made fruitful rub themselves, calling on the Moirai to be gracious to them. And Bernhard Schmidt, writing on the subject, recalls that not far from that very spot the heavenly Aphrodite was honoured in ancient times as the eldest of the Fates.[174.3] At the foot of another hill is a seat cut in the rock on the banks of a stream. There the Athenian women were wont to sit and let themselves slip on the back into the brook, calling on Apollo for an easy delivery. The stone is black and polished with the constant repetition of these invocations; for still on a clear moonlit night young women steal silently to the spot to indulge in the same exercise, though we may presume their prayers are nominally addressed to some other divinity.[174.4] Near Verdun in Luxemburg, Saint Lucia’s arm-chair is also to be seen in the living rock. There childless women sit and pray, afterwards awaiting with confidence the fulfilment of their petitions. A curious rite used until the Reformation to be performed at the shrine of Saint Edmund at Bury St. Edmund’s. A white bull was kept on the fields of the manor of Habyrdon, and never yoked to the plough nor baited at the stake. When a married woman wished for offspring he was “led in procession through the principal streets of the town to the principal gate of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing, and a shouting crowd; the woman walking by him and stroking his milk-white sides and pendent dewlaps. The bull being then dismissed, the woman entered the church, and paid her vows at the altar of Saint Edmund, kissing the stone, and entreating with tears the blessing of a child.”[175.1] In the Pyrenees near Bourg d’Oueil is a stone figure of a man about five feet in height, on which barren women rub themselves, embracing and kissing it. In Brittany there are several shrines of this worship. Newly-wedded pairs from the neighbourhood of Plouarnel and Saint Renan sometimes go to the menhir of Kervéathon in the lande of Kerloas; and there bride and bridegroom rub simultaneously their abdomens against the two rough sides of the stone. By this the husband hopes to get many sons—the wife hopes to get not merely fecundity but the whip-hand of her husband. Near Rennes the newly married go, the first Sunday of Lent, to jump on a stone called the Bride-stone (Pierre des Épousées), singing the while a special song. Down to the Revolution there stood at Brest a chapel of Saint Guignolet, containing a priapian statue of the holy man. Women who were, or feared to be, sterile, used to go and scrape a little of the phallos, which they put into a glass of water from the well and drank. Another Breton saint called Guerlichon was similarly honoured.[176.1]
There is a miraculous stone on the sacred hill of Nikko in Japan, at which women who want to become mothers throw stones, sure of having their ambition gratified if they succeed in striking it. And in the Uyeno Park at Tokio is a seated statue of Buddha. Whoso succeeds in flinging a stone upon the sacred knees attains the same result. At Whitchurch near Cardiff, in the last century, a woman animated by the wish for children would go on Easter Monday to the parish churchyard, armed with two dozen tennis balls, half of them covered with white leather and the other half with black, and would throw them over the church. The operation was to be repeated every year until her wish was accomplished.[176.2] I shall return to these practices in a future chapter. In the Tirol there are miraculous images beside which little waxen figures in the shape of toads are hung. The figures are called Muettern. It is believed that every woman has inside her a creature in this form. Many a mother has gone to sleep with her mouth open, and the muetter has crept out and gone to plunge into the nearest water. If she do not close her mouth, the muetter by-and-bye gets back safely, and the woman, previously sick, is restored to health. But if she close her mouth, she dies. Unfruitful women offer these waxen figures to images of the Madonna, or of the Pietà.[177.1] On the Gold Coast, Bassamese women who are possessed by a demon of barrenness meet at the fetich hut and deposit consecrated vases and figures of clay representing mothers nursing, while they present to the fetich offerings of tobacco and handkerchiefs. The demons are frightened away by the noise of fire-arms, drums and the blowing of horns. The officiating chief makes an offering of gold-dust, and then spirts a mouthful of rum over the belly of every woman who desires issue. An improvised banquet brings the solemnity to a close.[177.2] The figures in both these cases may be regarded as a symbolic dedication of the mother, or more probably the child, to the supernatural being whose aid, like that of the ogre in the tale, is invoked. The women on the Babar islands in the Malay Archipelago take measures bearing some superficial resemblance to the last, but widely different in meaning. The help of a man who is rich in children is first obtained. The husband then collects fifty or sixty young kalapa fruits, while the wife prepares a doll about twenty inches long in red kattun. On the appointed day the man comes to their hut, puts the husband and wife to sit near together, and sets before them a plate containing sirih-pinang and a young kalapa fruit. The latter is opened, and both husband and wife are sprinkled with the juice. The assistant then takes a fowl, holds its feet against the woman’s head and prays, apparently in her name: “O Upulero, make use of this fowl, let fall a man, let him step down into my hands, I pray thee, I implore thee, let fall a man, let him step down into my hands and on my lap!” He asks the woman: “Is the child come?” She answers: “Yes, it is already sucking.” Then he touches the man’s head with the fowl’s feet and mutters certain formulæ. The fowl is put to death by a blow against the posts of the hut, opened, and the veins about the heart probed. It is laid on a plate and put on the domestic altar. The news is spread in the village that the woman is pregnant, and every one comes and congratulates her. The husband borrows a cradle, in which the doll is placed, and for seven days it is treated as a new-born child.[178.1] Here it is simulation that plays the important part. In addition to the prayer and sacrifice, which might be found anywhere, the Babar islander pretends that the prayer has been granted, and acts accordingly. Simulation as a form of magic is well known over the whole earth. As applied to cause conception it is not one of the practices to which we have had to direct special attention in this chapter. But it deserves a passing notice as strengthening the general argument that conception is held to be caused by other than natural means. A common form of simulation for the purpose of obtaining children is found in the custom of putting a boy to sit on the bride’s lap at a wedding. The ceremony was usual among the ancient Aryans, and is prescribed in detail in the Âpastamba.[178.2] It is still followed in the east of Europe and elsewhere. In England, to rock an empty cradle is to rock a new baby into it. The Bechuana, Basuto and Agni women carry dolls, which they treat like children.[178.3] And in China a barren woman adopts a little girl to produce conception—a practice for which an elaborate reason is assigned. In the invisible world, it is said, every woman is represented by a tree, which bears as many flowers as she is fated to bear children. If she be sterile, her tree will not bear; and then, just as a fruit-tree is grafted to make it bring forth fruit, so by adopting a little girl she will provoke on her tree the germination of flowers, and thus become fruitful.[179.1]
Reviewing the superstitious rites here brought together, it will be seen that no case is found where fecundity has been held to be procured by the sense of smell, or of sight, as in some of the tales. It was, however, an ancient classical belief that partridges were impregnated in some such way; for Pliny tells us that if the female only stood opposite to the male and the wind blew from him towards her, or if he simply flew over her head, or very often if she merely heard his voice, it would be enough.[179.2] Though we do not find the possibility of obtaining fecundity by a glance, we have in the superstitions of the Evil Eye so widely, well-nigh universally, spread a belief in a power quite as great, though exercised in a different way. In the power of magicians to eat by a look, the Evil Eye performed the converse of impregnation. The authorities on this subject have been laboriously collected by M. Tuchmann, to whose work the reader is referred.[179.3] Belief in impregnation by the wind only would seem to present difficulties at least as great as any of these. Yet it was a common belief among the ancients, not merely used for a poetical ornament by Vergil, but repeated without question as a literal fact by men of lofty intellect and wide attainments like Pliny and Augustine, that mares were, in Lusitania, as the former asserts, or in Cappadocia, according to the latter, fertilised by wind.[180.1] And if the inhabitants of the district of Lampong, in the island of Sumatra, be not maligned, they, at the beginning of the present century, believed all the people on the neighbouring island of Engano to be females who were impregnated in the same manner.[180.2]
It cannot of course be asserted that in every instance of magical practices collected in the present chapter, pregnancy is believed to be supernaturally caused by the means prescribed, apart from the natural means, as in the tales. Indeed, the natural means are often expressly to be employed in addition to the magical ceremonies. Yet the line between natural and supernatural is so faint in savage minds that it is difficult to know how much is to be ascribed to the one and how much to the other. And we are justified in believing, not only that the practices tend to render credible the stories, but further that the stories and the practices—as well as superstitions, like those mentioned in the last paragraph, unconnected with practice—are inextricably intermingled, and owe their origin to the same habit of thought. Nor must we forget that the relationship between father and child was in early times imperfectly recognised. The researches of the last five-and-twenty or thirty years have established that among many savage races the father was held to be no relation to his children. Even where he exercised, as among the native Australians, despotic power over wife and children, the latter were held to be his rather as owner than as begetter; and the ownership of both wife and children passed at his death to his brothers, while at the same time the relationships of the children were reckoned exclusively with their mother’s kin. This system of relationships, known scientifically as Mother-right, traces whereof are almost everywhere found, can only have sprung either from a kind of promiscuity wherein the true father could not have been ascertained, or from an imperfect recognition of the great natural fact of fatherhood. Both causes, perhaps, played their part. But at least we may say that the attitude of mind which favours the practices and beliefs we have been discussing is one which would be consistent, and consistent alone, with the imperfect recognition of paternity. And it is unquestionable that the superstitions, once rooted, would be likely to survive long after paternity had become an accepted fact, and, tenacious of their existence, would seek new grounds of justification. This would have the effect of gradually transforming the stories from matter-of-fact statements of no unusual interest into sacred legends, into mere tales told for pleasure, and into wonders believed but unexplained, and the practices into religious rites and rude medical prescriptions.
CHAPTER VII.
DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.
In the course of our examination of tales of Supernatural Birth we have more than once found that birth was to the hero merely a new manifestation. He had previously existed in other shapes, and by undergoing birth (preceded sometimes, but not always, by death) he was entering on a new career, he was ascending a new stage of being. The child in the Annamite story of Posthumous Revenge had been an eel, with liberty of metamorphosis into other forms. Marjatta’s child in the half-heathen postscript to the Kalevala had been the creator of the sun and moon. Yehl, the Thlinkit hero-god, repeatedly became the son of ladies, who were beguiled into swallowing a pebble, a blade of grass, or even a drop of water, which was no other than the divinity in disguise. The subject, however, is so important, not merely in the general study of savage ideas, but in relation to the myth of Perseus, especially in its modern forms, that it is necessary to deal with it a little more at length.