Moreover, the curious detail mentioned by Mrs. Evans in reference to the rags tied on the bushes at Elian’s Well—namely, that they must be tied on with wool—points further to a degradation of the rite in the case we are now examining. Probably at one time rags were used, and simply tied to the sacred tree with wool. What may have been the reason for using wool remains to be discovered. But it is easy to see how, if the reason were lost, the wool might be looked upon as the essential condition of the due performance of the ceremony, and so continue after the disuse of the rags.
Nor can we stop here. From all we know of the process of ceremonial decay, we may be tolerably sure that the rags represent entire articles of clothing, which were at an earlier period deposited. There is no need to discuss here the principle of substitution and representation, so familiar to all students of folklore. It is sufficient to point out that, since the rite is almost everywhere in a state of decay, the presumption is in favour of entire garments having been originally deposited; and that, in fact, we do find this original form of the rite in the ancient and several of the modern examples I have cited on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. Entire articles of clothing seem also to have been usually left at several Scottish wells in quite recent times. Such was a chalybeate spring in the parish of Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire. As its virtue was invoked not only for human beings but for cattle, the tribute consisted of “part of the clothes of the sick and diseased, and harness of the cattle.”[203.1] If we may trust the slovenly compilation of Mr. R. C. Hope on the holy wells of Scotland, a traveller in 1798, from whom he professes to quote, but whom he neither names nor identifies, relates of the Holy Pool of Strathfillan in Perthshire, that “each person gathers up nine stones in the pool, and after bathing, walks to a hill near the water, where there are three cairns, round each of which he performs three turns, at each turn depositing a stone; and if it is for any bodily pain, fractured limb, or sore, that they are bathing, they throw upon one of those cairns that part of their clothing which covered the part affected; also, if they have at home any beast that is diseased, they have only to bring some of the meal which it feeds upon, and make it into paste with these waters, and afterwards give it to him to eat, which will prove an infallible cure; but they must likewise throw upon the cairn the rope or halter with which he was led. Consequently the cairns are covered with old halters, gloves, shoes, bonnets, night-caps, rags of all sorts, kilts, petticoats, garters and smocks. Sometimes they go as far as to throw away their halfpence.”[204.1] From this account it appears that stones from the pool, rags, garments which had covered the diseased parts of the devotees, and halfpence, had all the same value. The stones could not have been offerings, and it was evidently not usual to throw away halfpence. The gifts of rags and articles of clothing are ambiguous. If we must choose between regarding them as offerings and as vehicles of disease, the analogy of the gifts at the shrine of Saint Michel-la-Rivière favours the former. Under ecclesiastical patronage, however, the rite had doubtless been manipulated to the benefit of the officials; and we can use the instance no further than as proof that the deposit of garments was ambiguous enough to develop sometimes into pious gifts, if it developed at other times into devices for the shuffling of disease off the patient on another person.[204.2]
Cairns have already been mentioned as occurring in Buddhist lands, where we found an apparent equality in the offerings of stones and of other things at these sacred places, just as at Strathfillan. But the custom of erecting piles of stones is so ancient and widespread, that it may be worth while looking at it a little more closely before proceeding with our inquiry. Dr. Andree, whose ethnographical collections have furnished me with many examples for the present chapter, has brought together a large number of instances of cairns from all quarters of the globe. They resolve themselves, on examination, into three classes.
First are those to which no additions are made and where no rites are performed. Of such it may be said broadly that they only exist where the original purpose of the cairn has been forgotten, and probably the race that erected it has passed away. Of this kind was the cairn at Gilead, said to have been erected by Jacob and Laban on the scene of their final reconciliation and parting.[205.1] It is hardly necessary to say that there is nothing worthy of being called evidence in favour of the tradition preserved in Genesis. We may conjecture that it was a place held sacred by the predecessors of the conquering Hebrews. If the Batoka were not in the habit of adding to the pile mentioned by Livingstone, that pile must be set down as belonging to the same class. They declared it was made by their forefathers by way of protest against the wrong done them by another tribe not named, as an alternative to fighting.[206.1] The omission of the name of the offending tribe is an index to their forgetfulness of the real object of the cairn. Such, too, were the small heaps of stones found by Darwin on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas in Uruguay. The Indians are extirpated from the district, and nobody knows the purpose for which the heaps were erected.[206.2]
Another kind of cairn is that which is piled over the place where death, especially a violent death, has been suffered. To this every wayfarer makes his contribution; and doubtless originally the dead body lay beneath the mass. The most familiar instances are the cairns raised over Achan and Absalom.[206.3] The custom, however, is by no means confined to the Hebrews, or to the Semitic race; and in districts where stones are few, branches and pieces of wood are piled. Thus, near Leipzig is a heap of boughs to which every passenger adds three. Elsewhere in Germany, in Italy, Switzerland, Brittany, Lesbos, Armenia, the upper valley of the Nile, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Venezuela, the valley of the Plate, and Patagonia, similar piles are recorded, as well as among the Bushmen and Amakosa of South Africa. The Bushmen are reported to declare that the Devil is buried under these heaps; and every Bushman throws a stone as he passes, that Satan may not rise again. In case of sickness, pilgrimages are made to them and prayers for help offered.[207.1] The various graves of Heitsi-eibib, or Tsuni-ǁgoam, the ancestor-god of the Khoi-khoi, are marked by cairns on which every one who passes by flings a stone or twig. Sometimes the offering is a piece of the wayfarer’s clothes, flowers or zebra-dung. A prayer for success is muttered if the wayfarer be hunting; and occasionally even honey and honey-beer are offered.[207.2] These graves are, in fact, shrines of worship. And it is noteworthy that the gifts to the divinity are in general of no value in themselves, and that prominent among them are the stones and branches which are thrown, in other parts of the world, upon grave-cairns to which no other act of worship is now offered.
The third class of cairns consists of such as are erected on spots which for any reason are recognised as sacred. To this class belong the obo of Tibet. In Buddhist lands cairns are to be seen on the top of every pass and almost of every mountain. Frequently they are adorned with prayer-streamers and bones of sheep; and flat stones inscribed with the formula Om mani padme hum are laid upon them by worshippers. Passengers constantly add to the pile rough stones which they have picked up in climbing the ascent. In India cairns, especially cairns of Kankar, or calcareous limestone, to which every one adds, are not uncommon. Such is the shrine of Anktaha Bir, the hero of the Kankar-heap, in the village of Niámatpur.[207.3] Among the Dyaks of Batang Lupar the heaps are said to be erected in memory of great liars. Stones and branches are thrown upon them; and after the liar’s name has been long forgotten the heap remains. In the Caucasus the mountain-tops are sacred to the prophet Elijah (who, there is little reason to doubt, has succeeded to an ancient thunder-god) or to some other saint. Perilous places and places struck by lightning are marked by cairns. At the latter a pole is stuck up from which a black goat-skin flies. Around a certain rock in the Sinaitic peninsula Professor Palmer found small heaps of stones, said to have been first erected by the Israelites in memory of the water obtained from that very rock by Moses. The Arabs retain the practice in hopes of propitiating the great lawgiver. If any of them have a sick friend, he throws a stone in his name, and in the expectation of his speedy recovery. In Arabia, indeed, heaps of this kind are often to be seen, some of them of enormous size. In South America the passes of the Cordilleras are marked by cairns originally built before the Conquest. To this day the Indians fling stones upon them, or lay there a little offering of fresh coca-leaves, or spit upon them the coca-quids they have been chewing. Sometimes they stand and pull out a few of their eyebrow-hairs, blowing them in the direction of the sun—an ancient rite recorded by the Spanish conquerors among their observations of the Peruvian cult. In North America piles of stones are often mentioned, to which every traveller is accustomed to add. The old inhabitants of Nicaragua threw stones and grass upon them, believing themselves thereby to be freed from hunger and fatigue. In Europe, Saint Wolfgang’s chapel and well are renowned among the shrines of the Salzkammergut. Up the steep stony path on either side pilgrims carry to the sacred spot heavy stones, which now lie there in heaps. The story goes that when enough have been gathered, the saint will build himself a new and larger church; but this is, of course, a modern theory to account for the practice.[209.1] In the Aran Islands, though we are not told of any such piles, “numerous rounded pebbles are placed on the well and on the altar of St. Columb Kill.”[209.2] On the island of Iniskill, off the coast of Donegal, on the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage where the last of the “stations” performed by the pilgrims is a rough pile of stones, formerly the altar of a now ruined church. On the top of the pile is laid a flat stone, through which a circular hole about three inches in diameter has been bored. In this hole Mr. Borlase found shreds of coloured stuff (doubtless from their own clothes), rosaries and bronze medals, put there by devotees.[209.3] Lastly, it may be mentioned that, among the Basuto, heaps of stones are to be found by the wayside near a village, to which every traveller adds a pebble, on which he has first spit.[209.4]
Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places are sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who must always be propitiated—all the more if they have died in a manner unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an earlier part of the present chapter. Alike—and this is a point of cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices—the gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be, it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed, by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from his mouth. The Landnámabók mentions an early settler of Iceland named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into it all remnants had to be thrown.[210.1] This was not a mere paltry economy of worship; for we are told he was “a great blót-man,” in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity; and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.
With the practices at cairns in our mind, then, let us return to the customs at wells and trees.
M. Monseur, fixing his attention on instances like those of the Croix Saint Zè and Saint Guirec, in which pins or nails were stuck into the cross, or tree, or figure of the saint, suggests that the aim was, by causing pain or inconvenience to the object of worship, to keep in his memory the worshipper’s prayer. And he refers, by way of illustration, to the tortures inflicted on children at the beating of boundaries, and to the flogging said to have been given to children in Lorraine on the occasion of a capital punishment, the intention of which incontestably was to preserve a recollection of the place or the incident.[211.1] M. Gaidoz, dealing with similar cases, and similar cases only, propounded years ago a theory somewhat different. In replying recently to M. Monseur, he recalls his previous exposition, and reiterates it in these words: “The idol is a god who always appears somewhat stupid; it moves not, it speaks not, and, peradventure, it does not hear very well. It must be made to understand by a sign, and a sign which will be at the same time a memento. In touching the idol, especially in touching the member corresponding to that which suffers, its attention is directed to the prayer. And more than that is done in leaving a nail or a pin in its body, for this is a material memento for the idol.” In putting it in this way, the learned professor does not desire to exclude the ideas of an offering and a transfer of disease, for he expressly adds that both these ideas are mingled with that of a memento.[212.1]
Let us take stock of the conditions to be fulfilled in order to a satisfactory solution of the problem. It must be equally applicable to sacred images, crosses, trees, wells, cairns and temples. It must account not merely for the pins in wells and the rags on trees, but also for the nails in trees, the pins in images, the earth or bricks hung on the sacred tree in India, the stones and twigs, flowers and coca-quids thrown upon cairns, the pellets which constellate Japanese idols, the strips of cloth and other articles which decorate Japanese temples, the pilgrims’ names written on the walls of the temple of Kapila on the banks of the Hugli, the nails fixed by the consuls in the Cella Jovis at Rome, and those driven into the galleries or floors of Protestant churches in Eastern France. These are the outcome of equivalent practices, and the solution of their meaning, if a true one, must fit them all. M. Gaidoz’ suggestion of a memento comes nearer to this ideal than any other hitherto put forward. But does it touch cases like those of the Lapalud, the Stock im Eisen, and the Cella Jovis, where the rite was unaccompanied by any prayer? The two former cases, indeed, if they stood alone, might be deemed worn and degraded relics of a rite once gracious with adoration, prayer and thanksgiving. But nothing of the sort accompanied the driving of a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter, nor, so far as we can learn, the yet older custom observed by the Etruscans at Vulsinii, of sticking a nail every year in the temple of Nortia, the fate-goddess. On the contrary, in both these classical instances the rite was so bare and so ill-understood, that it was looked upon merely as an annual register or record. Almost as little does M. Gaidoz’ explanation seem to fit the throwing of pins into a well, the burial of a coin, as in Mecklenburgh, under a tree, or the marriage-nails of Montbéliard. Like M. Monseur’s theory, it is applicable in its full significance only to examples of the rite as practised on statues; and it assumes that trees and crosses and other rude forms are mere makeshifts for the carven image, deteriorated survivals of idols strictly so called.[213.1] But this is to put the cart before the horse. There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to suppose exactly the reverse. And in this connection it is significant that neither at Rome nor at Vulsinii (the earliest examples we have in point of time) were the nails fastened into the image, but into the temple wall.