I believe that a profounder thought forms the common ground in which all the customs under consideration—or, as I should prefer to say, all the variations of a single custom—are rooted. They are simply another application of the reasoning that underlies the practices of witchcraft and folk-medicine discussed in previous chapters. If an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. A pin that has pricked my wart, even if not covered with my blood, has by its contact, by the wound it has inflicted, acquired a peculiar bond with the wart; the rag that has rubbed the wart has by that friction acquired a similar bond; so that whatever is done to the pin or the rag, whatever influences the pin or the rag may undergo, the same influences are by that very act brought to bear upon the wart. If, instead of using a rag, I rub my warts with raw meat and then bury the meat, the wart will decay and disappear with the decay and dissolution of the meat. In like manner my shirt or stocking, or a rag to represent it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone or a pellet from my hand cast upon a sacred image or a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food cast into a sacred waterfall or bound upon a sacred tree, or a nail from my hand driven into the trunk of the tree—is thenceforth in continual contact with divinity; and the effluence of divinity, reaching and involving it, will reach and involve me. In this way I may become permanently united with the god.
This is an explanation which I think will cover every case. Of course, it cannot be denied that there are instances, like some of the Japanese and Breton cases, where, the real object of the rite having been forgotten, the practice has become to a slight extent deflected from its earlier form. But it is not difficult to trace the steps whereby the idea and practice of divination became substituted for that of union with the object of devotion. Still less can it be denied that, where the practice has not been deflected, the real intention has in most places been obscured. These phenomena are familiar to us everywhere, and will mislead no one who understands that the real meaning is not what the people who practise a rite say about it, but that which emerges from a comparison of analogous observances.
A few other customs remain to be considered. Prominent among these is a rite well known to all students of classical antiquity—that of the consecration of locks of hair at various shrines. It was usually performed in consequence of a vow made by the parents at birth. The actual ceremony took place on arriving at manhood or womanhood. A lock of the hair and of the sprouting beard of the youth, a tress from the maiden’s head, was cut off and presented to the god; and in Greece the youth then received the clothing of an ephebos and was admitted to such of the privileges of a free citizen as his age entitled him. The dedication of the hair was regarded as a symbol of that of the entire person. And this dedication was extended to other occasions, such as before marriage, before and after childbed, or at the time of making or fulfilling a vow. Pausanias mentions a statue of Hygeia hardly to be seen, by reason partly of the hair cut off by women and bound or placed upon it.[216.1] On the death of one very dear, a lock of the survivor’s hair was frequently cut off and placed in the corpse’s hand or upon the grave, as Herakles did to Sostratos, and Achilles to Patroklos. So Death was said to cut off the hair of those who were about to die. Euripides represents him as declaring:
“Sacred to us Gods below
That head whose hair this sword shall sanctify.”
Graves and sacred trees were favourite places for the deposit of the hair. Beneath the olive which grew upon the tomb of Hyperoche and Laodike, in the entrance of the sanctuary of Artemis at Delos, epheboi laid the first fruits of their beards, and bridal pairs their hair. At Megara was the grave of the virgin Iphinoe, the daughter of Alcathous. Brides there performed funeral rites, before the wedding ceremony, and cut off their hair. The Roman Vestals, on attaining womanhood, consecrated to Juno Lucina and hung upon her tree, which was older than the temple, the locks of their hair; whence it was called the arbor capillata. At the completion of the mysteries of Cybele the votaries dedicated locks of their hair at the door of her temple; and in the same way the Bacchic votaries, when their mysteries were finished, dedicated their locks at sacred pine-trees. In this connection, too, we may remember that the Flamen Dialis buried the clippings of his hair and nails beneath a lucky tree.[217.1]
The usage also extended to the Hebrews. It is referred to in the legislation on vows and on mourning; and many examples are familiar to us in the Bible, from Samson and Job to the Apostle Paul. The ancient Arabs and Egyptians also on similar occasions cut or shaved their hair.[217.2] Nor was it confined to ancient times. In the seventeenth century the Serbs used to cut their hair and bind it on the grave of a dead relative; and among the Albanians the sisters, daughters-in-law, grown-up daughters and wife of a dead man are said still to cut their hair in token of grief. The mourning women at Lecce in Apulia pluck out their hair and strew it on the corpse.[217.3] Zingerle quotes from an old manuscript in the Franciscan monastery at Botzen in the Tirol a superstition which directs the hair of a sick man to be cut off, rolled in wax and afterwards offered at some sacred shrine.[217.4] A story is told in the province of Posen of the daughter of a day-labourer who was sick and given up by the physician. She begged her parents, as they stood by her bed plunged in helpless grief, to cut off her hair and lay it upon the crucifix in the convent at Exin. This was done, and she recovered; and, marvellous to state, the hair grew upon the head of the crucifix until it reached the ground, to the gratification of the pious from all parts of the province.[218.1] At Flastroff, in Lorraine, sick or vicious horses are taken in pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Elias on the 25th June. After mass, at which the owners of the animals are present, the horses are paraded round the outside of the chapel. A handful of hairs from the tail of each of them is deposited on the steps of the altar, sometimes accompanied by a gift of money; and the owner takes away a cupful of holy water, made for the purpose, in order to mix it with the animal’s drink. The custom of taking the horses themselves is now disappearing. The owners, instead, take their handfuls of horsehair, make the tour of the altar after mass to kiss the relic of the saint, and deposit the offerings of hair in a niche in the wall of the apse on the left side of the altar. And this has probably been found equally efficacious.[218.2]
In some districts of the Abruzzi there is yet practised a rite that seems to be a survival of an ancient act of worship such as I have just referred to. Two or more girls who are desirous of swearing eternal friendship of the most sacred kind join hands in a church and compass the altar three times. They afterwards exchange kisses; and each of them, pulling out a hair, hides it in some hole or dark recess of the building. One of them then, standing in front of the altar, lifts her hand as if to count her companions, and solemnly chants verses, the import of which is to pronounce them henceforth gossips, spiritual kindred, entitled to share one another’s food, and further to invoke blessing or ban, according as either of them shall fulfil or neglect the duties of the relationship.[219.1] Reginald Scot, apparently quoting Martin of Arles and speaking of the Spaniards, mentions that “maids forsooth hang some of their haire before the image of S. Urbane, bicause they would have the rest of their haire grow long and be yellow.”[219.2] Pettigrew cites Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall as authorities for the statement that pilgrims to Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, a sacred well dedicated to Saints Quan and Brogawn, after performing certain circuits and reciting prayers, go thrice round a tree on their bare knees and then cut off locks of their hair and tie them on the branches as a specific against headache. The tree, we are told, was an object of veneration and was covered with human hair.[219.3] So at the two Hungarian fountains already mentioned clothes and hair from the patients’ heads are left on adjacent trees “as gifts for the water-spirit.”[219.4] In Turkey among the Greek Christians three tiny locks are cut, if they can be found on a baby’s head at his baptism, and thrown into the font in the name of the Trinity; and the font is afterwards emptied into a pit or well under the floor of the church.[219.5]
Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few examples, and must content myself with referring the reader for others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to sticks over the graves of females.[220.1] And Olearius, who was in Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr. Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.[220.2] When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of his successor and offering them to his manes.[220.3] At the junction of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage, Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the stream.[220.4] The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.[220.5] Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the crater.[220.6] About Lake Nyassa, in East Central Africa, one of the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the bush.[221.1] On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath is administered by the fetish-priest. His bossum, or fetish, consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath, he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel, rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker, and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the vessel.[221.2] The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging them upon the dead body;[221.3] and in various parts of America widows are required to shave or cut their hair.[221.4] Indeed, haircutting or shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when
“Round the funeral pyre the populace
Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound
Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped
O’er the dead body of their withered prince.”[222.1]
It was not, however, always possible or convenient to do this; and it has consequently been dispensed with until the purpose has been forgotten.